The purchase, which will give Adelphia leverage in the increasingly competitive cable industry, will be relatively neutral on earnings on an earnings before income tax and amortization basis and will be slightly dilutive on a normal earnings basis, Vice President of Finance Jim Brown said in a brief phone conversation.

The deal, which is expected to close during the third calendar quarter of 1999, includes the assumption of $1.6 billion in debt, the cable system operators said in a joint statement.

New Canaan, Conn.-based Century's Class A stockholders will receive cash of $9.16 per share and 0.6122 shares of Adelphia Class A Common Stock. Century's Class B Common stockholders will receive $11.81 in cash and 0.6360 shares of Adelphia Class A Common Stock.

Following the merger, the former stockholders of Century will own about 48.7 million shares of Adelphia's Class A Common Stock.

There will be nothing "dramatic" in terms of job cuts and Adelphia will not take a charge to earnings due to the acquisition, Brown said.

With the purchase of Century, Adelphia's annual revenues will exceed $2 billion and it will serve about 4.7 million subscribers, with more than 90 percent of its customers concentrated in 11 major clusters.

Century, which operates cable television systems with significant concentrations of subscribers in California, Colorado and Puerto Rico, recently agreed with Tele-Communications Inc. to create a 70 percent-owned joint venture that would operate a cable system group serving about 800,000 subscribers in the Los Angeles area.

In February, Adelphia agreed to buy privately held, cable television firm FrontierVision Partners LP for $2.1 billion in a cash, debt and stock deal.

In December, it bought Verto Communications, which provided cable TV to about 56,000 subscribers.

Adelphia closed down 25 cents at $57.13 Thursday. Century closed up 13 cents at $35.38 Thursday.