Chambers owns about one-sixth of Cox Enterprises, a telecommunications, media and automotive services conglomerate. The Atlanta-based company controls the third-biggest cable operator in the U.S., which serves about 6 million homes and businesses. The group reported combined revenue of $21.2 billion in 2019.
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Chambers owns 16% of Cox Enterprises, a closely held media conglomerate. He received the stake in December 2013 after his mother, Anne Cox Chambers, dissolved a trust that held 49.4% of Cox. Ownership is based on court documents and Cox's disclosure to Bloomberg that internal transactions resulted in equal stakes among the two owner families.
Cox Enterprises had revenue of $21.2 billion in 2019, according to information provided by the company. It has two main units: Cox Communications and Cox Automotive.
Cox Communications is the third-largest cable operator in the U.S., according to the company's website. It had revenue of $12.2 billion in 2019 and is valued based on the average enterprise value-to-Ebitda multiple of three publicly traded peer companies: Comcast, Verizon, and Rogers Communications.
Cox Automotive is a provider of car sales software technology. It had revenue of $7.6 billion in 2019 and is valued on the average enterprise value-to-Ebitda multiples of KAR Auction Services, CarMax and Penske Automotive.
Chambers' share of corporate-level debt is included as a liability.
Natalie Giurato, a Cox group spokesperson, provided revenue figures in May 2020 without further comment.
James Cox Chambers is the grandson of James M. Cox, who built a U.S. newspaper chain after buying the Dayton Evening News in 1898. He became a politician, serving first as an Ohio state representative, then as governor. He ran for the U.S. presidency as a Democrat in 1920, losing to fellow newspaper publisher Warren G. Harding. He gave each of his daughters, Anne and Barbara, 49.4 percent of the company. Chambers, born in 1957, is one of Anne's three children. She distributed her stake in the company in 2013.
Today, Chambers' cousin, James Kennedy, is chairman of Cox Enterprises. The company operates newspapers as well as one of the largest cable systems in the U.S. and automotive services brands.
Chambers is an organic farmer in Columbia County, New York, and is an actor, dancer and choreographer, according to his biography with Communities In Schools, a non-profit of which he is a director. He graduated from Bard College in 1981 and is on the board of directors of that Hudson Valley, New York, school.
He has two adult sons, James and Ulysses, and three grandchildren, according to documents filed with a Georgia court in 2013 as part of his mother's petition to distribute her shares in the company.