In remarks at the company’s annual shareholder meeting yesterday, Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Höttges confirmed that the German telecom giant is now the majority shareholder of T-Mobile US (NASDAQ: TMUS). A U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Schedule 13D/A filing dated March 31, 2023, shows that Deutsche Telekom and its subsidiaries hold a combined 53.9 percent of T-Mobile US’s outstanding shares.
T-Mobile US traces its roots to the 1994 establishment of VoiceStream Wireless PCS as a subsidiary of Western Wireless Corporation. After its spinoff from parent Western Wireless in May 1999, VoiceStream Wireless was purchased by Deutsche Telekom in 2001 for $35 billion and renamed T-Mobile USA, Inc., as part of Deutsche Telekom’s European T-Mobile brand in 2002. In 2013, T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS finalized a merger of the two companies, which began trading as T-Mobile US.
On April 29, 2018, T-Mobile US and Sprint Corporation announced their intention to merge. The merger finally closed on April 1, 2020. Use of the Sprint brand was officially discontinued on August 2, 2020. At that point, Deutsche Telekom was T-Mobile US’s largest shareholder with 48.4 percent of the common stock.
Since then, Deutsche Telekom has worked steadily to gain majority ownership of T-Mobile US, which is the company’s best performing operating unit based on its full-year 2022 results.
