After buying Earthlink less than two years ago for $1.1 billion, Windstream has jettisoned the consumer business, selling it to a private equity firm for $330 million.  

This is Windstream’s third asset sale in a month, with the company selling dark fiber assets in Nebraska and Minnesota to Minnesota-based telecom provider Arvig Enterprises in two transactions.  

Dallas-based Trive Capital purchased the Earthlink consumer business for $330 million in cash. When Windstream purchased Earthlink, it touted the transaction’s value mostly in terms of the combined network’s reach of 145,000 route-miles of fiber, Earthlink’s early launch of SD-WAN and expected annual cost synergies of $125 million. Earthlink serves about 600,000 U.S. customers with services ranging from internet access, email and online back-up, to managed web design, web hosting. But as Windstream spokesperson Chris King told Bloomberg, “People paid $5 to $10 a month for email. It was not a strategic asset for us.”  

The Earthlink transaction “enables us to divest a non-core segment and focus exclusively on our two largest business units. In addition, it improves our credit profile and metrics in 2019 and beyond,” said Tony Thomas, president and CEO of Windstream, in a statement. Windstream’s two largest business segments by revenue are its enterprise/enterprise wholesale segment and its ILEC consumer and enterprise segment, according to the company’s most recent quarterly results. It also has a smaller wholesale segment and a consumer CLEC segment.  

In terms of the recent fiber sales, the Minnesota dark fiber was sold for $49.5 million in cash and the Nebraska fiber was sold for $11.5 million, with Windstream establishing a fiber relationship with Arvig that will allow Windstream to continue to utilize the network to sell its products and services.