Jon Quast

Personally, I wish I'd have bought it after it fell after earnings, but still, it's one that I expect to be a long-term, drama-free contributor to my stock performance and one that I like here.

Now, I get it for Paramount.

It's homecoming in the streaming service space, and Paramount's running out of dance partners.

There's consolidation happening, and Paramount doesn't want to be the smallest player, so I get why it wants Warner Brothers.

But it's very hard for it to pull off because it is such a small player.

Netflix is going to be a lot easier.

It's going to have much easier access to the capital to get this deal done.

I'm still not convinced, though, that this is a great move for Netflix.

I will give an example here of Disney acquiring Fox back in 2019.

Disney stock has underperformed since it did that move.

A big part of that is how much leverage it took on to make it happen.

This would be a big move for Netflix.

I don't know where it's going to come up with all the cash either, maybe some debt in that mix, maybe some equity.

I'm not sure where that all comes from, but it's the one that can get the deal done for sure, and it's going to be able to do it a lot faster.

I think that's what it's trying to do by potentially switching that bid to all cash, get the deal done as quickly as possible before too many people ask questions or a dark horse comes in with a competing bid.

I think that that was the exact word I was going to use, is flexible.

You're just so much more flexible when you don't have a high debt burden and when you are generating a lot of cash.

You have a lot of options on the table.

You boost that debt up.

You take the options off the table a little bit.