Netflix’s Amended Offer Puts Pressure on Paramount

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Carol Masser 1:11
This is Bloomberg Tech. Coming up, Netflix reaches an amended all-cash agreement to buy Warner Brothers Discovery's studio and streaming business, aiming to expedite the sale. Plus, we bring you some of our top tech conversations from the World Economic Forum, CEOs from G42, Anthropic, DeepMind, and many more. And VC firms continue piling into defence tech, this as geopolitical tensions escalate between the US and Greenland. And that takes us to the markets, Ed, because the tussle over Greenland, the concerns around further tariffs on Europe and what Europe's reaction to the United States might be, has got volatility higher and risk assets lower. We're selling America again. NASDAQ off by 1.2%, having its worst day in over a month.
Carol Masser 1:54
The S&P 500 wipes out its gains for the year and you're seeing money move into the havens such as gold. Ed, what are you looking at underneath the hood? I'm looking at Netflix reaching an amended agreement with Warner Brothers Discovery for an all cash offer to buy the studios and streaming businesses. And remember, the plan is for them to then spin off the legacy networks. And this was the overhang. Paramount's argument was that its bid was superior because of the stock component that had been in Netflix's initial offer. Bloomberg reported last week that this was going to happen, so it's confirmation. That's where the names involved are trading. There's still a lot more to come, of course. Let's get the reaction and analysis to the new offer with Geetha Ranganathan from Bloomberg Intelligence.
Carol Masser 2:38
And you write two things in your research. The first, that this ramps up the pressure on Paramount, Geetha, but also it raises the stakes for Netflix. Let's start with... with why you think this ramps up the pressure on Paramount.
Geetha Ranganathan 2:51
Yeah, this really ramps up the pressure on Paramount because really the ball is now in their court. They've been arguing for the longest time that the Netflix offer obviously is not that great because it had that stock confident. Now obviously Netflix making it an all cash deal. And now really what this hinges on is the value of the cable networks business. So remember Netflix is only buying the studio and streaming assets. There is still that cable networks business from Warner which they expect to spin out. And if you read a filing that was put out by Warner today, they have those cable networks valued anywhere from about $1.50, depending on how you value it, per share, going up to as high ed as about $7 a share.
Geetha Ranganathan 3:32
So, again, I think they believe that they can actually extract more value if they go ahead and they complete that spin-out. So, now, really, this is really kind of up the ante for Paramount. They have to raise their bid significantly, I would think, in order to sway Warner's board. Heather, you think $32 is the magic number. Why? I actually think, so 32 we think is a starting point to get Warner back to the board. Just kind of looking at the value of the networks, looking at possible termination fees, financing costs. But really, again, we think that Warner really looks at its cable networks business. Yes, there is no doubt that this is a declining business.

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