Actor and entrepreneur Ryan Reynolds and other owners of Mint Mobile have sold the direct-to-consumer prepaid wireless brand to T-Mobile in a deal worth $1.35 billion.
Publicly traded U.S. telco T-Mobile announced the deal today to acquire Mint’s privately held parent, Ka’ena Corporation, which also houses the Ultra Mobile and Plum brands. It will pay up to a maximum of $1.35 billion in a combination of 39% cash and 61% stock. The actual price will be based upon Ka’ena’s performance “during certain periods before and after the closing,” with the transaction expected to close later this year.
Ryan Reynolds will continue on in his creative role on behalf of Mint. Mint founders David Glickman and Rizwan Kassim will remain onboard at T-Mobile to manage the brands, which will generally operate as a separate business unit.
“Mint Mobile is the best deal in wireless and today’s news only enhances our ability to deliver for our customers. We are so happy T-Mobile beat out an aggressive last-minute bid from my mom Tammy Reynolds as we believe the excellence of their 5G network will provide a better strategic fit than my mom’s slightly-above-average mahjong skills,” said Reynolds. “I am so proud of the entire Mint team and so excited for what’s to come.”
The brands will continue to use T-Mobile’s 5G network. T-Mobile gets their sales, marketing, digital, and service operations and plans to use its supplier relationships and distribution scale to help the brands to grow.
Specifically, it will leverage Mint’s industry-leading digital D2C marketing expertise as part of its broader portfolio to reach new customer segments and geographies. It said the Mint and Ultra brands are complementary to the company’s current prepaid service offerings Metro by T-Mobile, T-Mobile branded prepaid and Connect by T-Mobile.
“Mint has built an incredibly successful digital direct-to-consumer business that continues to deliver for customers on the Un-carrier’s leading 5G network and now we are excited to use our scale and owners’ economics to help supercharge it – and Ultra Mobile – into the future,” said Mike Sievert, CEO of T-Mobile. “Over the long-term, we’ll also benefit from applying the marketing formula Mint has become famous for across more parts of T-Mobile. We think customers are really going to win with a more competitive and expansive Mint and Ultra.”
Glickman, CEO of Mint, Ultra and Plum, said the transaction validates our meteoric success and will unite two proven industry innovators committed to doing things differently in the wireless industry.”
The Deadpool star was a previous co-owner of Aviation Gin and sold the brand to Diageo in 2020 in a deal worth up to $610 million.
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