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Paramount Skydance wants WBD

secondchoice said:
He doesn't have a Hundred Billion in the bank. It's all "paper profit". Oracle not going away but the only way you get the (profit) is to sell the stock, then pay taxes. If Oracle stock goes down so does his net worth. I'm not saying they could be destitute even really rich folks can have cash issues.
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Doesn’t matter if it’s all “paper profit.”

Keep in mind that rich people can borrow massive amounts of money based on the value of those “paper” assets which gives them huge financial power and resources.

This is why you should never listen to rich people who claim they are “not taking a salary.” The reality is that they are borrowing their income at very favorable interest rates and paying the loans down with increases in stock price. They play the margins.

The rules are different for the extremely wealthy.
 
Mediafrog+ said:
This is why you should never listen to rich people who claim they are “not taking a salary.” The reality is that they are borrowing their income at very favorable interest rates and paying the loans down with increases in stock price. They play the margins.
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Not necessarily. The stock also pays a dividend. Oracle stock paid a $2 a share dividend this year. Plus the yield. So he's getting cash every quarter from the stock he owns:

www.marketbeat.com

Oracle (ORCL) Dividend Yield 2025, Date & History

Is Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) a good stock for dividend investors? View the latest ORCL dividend yield, history, and payment date at MarketBeat.
www.marketbeat.com www.marketbeat.com
 
I've mentioned before that since I retired almost two years ago, I've been rotating my streaming subscriptions---never more than a couple at a time (at one point while I was still working, I had eight).

One of our favorite shows, Only Murders In The Building, started a new season on Hulu this week.

Used to be I'd subscribe to Hulu. But I know that Hulu is baked into Disney+, so that's easy.

But---what I'd forgotten is that Disney+ has an alliance with HBO Max and you can get a bundle that includes all three services.

I'd been paying $16.99 a month for HBO Max without commercials, and HBO Max is the one streaming service that I keep year-round.

A Disney+/Hulu no-commercial bundle is $19.99 a month, but the Disney+/Hulu/HBO Max ad-free bundle is $29.99 a month.

So I ditched my original HBO Max subscription, and went for the bundle, which is like adding Disney+/HBO Max ad-free for 13 bucks.

So let's play this out:

Paramount buys Warners.

Paramount+ gets absorbed into HBO Max, the way Hulu is embedded in Disney+. Warner-Paramount gets more penetration for Paramount+ not just by having it in HBO Max, but through its Disney+ bundle alliance sending customers their way.

They're friends, not enemies.

And the streaming landscape (not counting YouTube and minor players) is:

  • Amazon Prime
  • Netflix
  • Disney+
  • HBO Max

Those are your big four dominant players, with Peacock a weakling and Apple+ having made the conscious decision to be a boutique service instead of a market share monster.
 
secondchoice said:
He doesn't have a Hundred Billion in the bank. It's all "paper profit". Oracle not going away but the only way you get the (profit) is to sell the stock, then pay taxes. If Oracle stock goes down so does his net worth. I'm not saying they could be destitute even really rich folks can have cash issues.
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Larry could always sell his yacht….
 
So, let's say, after a Skydance Paramount/Warner Bros Discovery merger, CBS is spun off, along with TNT, TBS, truTV, Cartoon, Nick at Nite, MTV, BET, VH1, OWN, Paramount Network and any other linear assets they would like to shed.

How much would that fetch in the open market and who would buy that type of collection?
 
stationless listener said:
So, let's say, after a Skydance Paramount/Warner Bros Discovery merger, CBS is spun off, along with TNT, TBS, truTV, Cartoon, Nick at Nite, MTV, BET, VH1, OWN, Paramount Network and any other linear assets they would like to shed.

How much would that fetch in the open market and who would buy that type of collection?
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Remember Comcast is keeping its linear network (NBC) and spinning off most of their other networks into a separate company, not selling the other networks to another company.
 
TheBigA said:
It's interesting to me that Comcast would want to buy a company with a big cable TV presence, at a time when they're spinning off those assets.
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The prize is HBO Max. They can just stuff Peacock in there and suddenly be a leader in streaming. Then they'll do the breakup Zaslav was going to do and use it to offset the purchase.

Warners is also a big deal for them. Universal/Warners would be a bigger studio than Paramount/Warners would be.

If Universal wins, Ellison has Paramount+ and Paramount and not much else (we both agree CBS and the linear assets are gone from the portfolio soon).

This is why Zaslav sees value in a sale now. Comcast has some substantial upside in the deal and Skydance is sorta screwed without it.

It would have been one thing if Zaslav had just said no sale and proceeded with the spin-off...but if Comcast has it and Skydance is empty-handed, there's not a lot left for Skydance to acquire that gives it major-player scale against Disney and Comcast. So both sides have incentive to bid big and to be ready to top the other guy for a round or two.

The potential sticking point: Trump likes Ellison and hates Brian Roberts at Comcast. In the world we live in right now, Comcast could have the winning bid and Trump could f**k 'em over in the regulatory phase.
 
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TheBigA said:
It's interesting to me that Comcast would want to buy a company with a big cable TV presence, at a time when they're spinning off those assets.
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There is also speculation the buyer will acquire the studios (WB) and possibly HBOMax and WBD will spin off the remaining assets into a separate company (as was their original plan).
 
michael hagerty said:
The prize is HBO Max. They can just stuff Peacock in there and suddenly be a leader in streaming. Then they'll do the breakup Zaslav was going to do and use it to offset the purchase.

Warners is also a big deal for them. Universal/Warners would be a bigger studio than Paramount/Warners would be.

If Universal wins, Ellison has Paramount+ and Paramount and not much else (we both agree CBS and the linear assets are gone from the portfolio soon).

This is why Zaslav sees value in it now. Comcast has some substantial upside in the deal and Skydance is sorta screwed without it.

It would have been one thing if Zaslav had just said no sale and proceeded with the spin-off...but if Comcast has it and Skydance is empty-handed, there's not a lot left for Skydance to acquire that gives it major-player scale against Disney and Comcast. So both sides have incentive to bid big and to be ready to top the other guy for a round or two.

The potential sticking point: Trump likes Ellison and hates Brian Roberts at Comcast. In the world we live in right now, Comcast could have the winning bid and Trump could f**k 'em over in the regulatory phase.
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What I'd like to see from this is the breakup of ONN. That would certainly hurt the egos of the current commander-in-chief and the head of the Department of War, I mean, Defense.
 


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