On Friday, Warner Bros. shares Discovery closed flat $17.10which means an increase of over 36 percent since September 11 – the day when the first reports of Ellison's interest in taking over the competitor appeared. A few weeks earlier, Skydance had completed an $8 billion acquisition deal Paramount Global.
Warner Bros. Discovery, owner of brands such as HBO, Max, Warner Bros. Entertainment, CNN and TNT — currently has market capitalization of USD 42.3 billion. However, Bloomberg did not say whether the offer also included taking over WBD's debt, which as of June 30 amounted to $35.6 billion After initial talks failed, Paramount is considering several options, including increasing the proposal amount.
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According to the website Paramount Skydance is in talks with Apollo Global Managementwhich was previously interested in acquiring Paramount Global, regarding possibly joining the WBD takeover offer. Despite requests and inquiries from Reuters, representatives of Paramount, WBD and Apollo did not comment on this matter on Sunday.
During the Bloomberg Screentime conference in Los Angeles, David Ellison did not confirm that his company had submitted a formal offer to purchase WBD. However, he explained that Paramount needs to scale up content and format productionto achieve sustainable growth in the competitive streaming world. He referred to the earlier words of WBD's president, David Zaslav, who said that the industry needs it further consolidation.
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“I think there are a lot of real M&A opportunities in the near future. We need more content to drive audience engagement – more movies, more series, more scale,” Ellison said.
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As previously reported by the Wall Street Journal, the possible Skydance offer would concern all of Warner Bros. Discovery. The proposal came at a time when WBD is preparing for division into two separate companies — Warner Bros. (including film and streaming activities) and DiscoveryGlobal (bringing together television channels and the Discovery+ service). A decision on this matter is expected to be made next spring.
