Warner Bros. Discovery, the owner of HBO, CNN, and other cable networks, said on Tuesday that it is putting itself up for sale.
In a press release, the company announced a “review of potential alternatives,” Wall Street speak for a sale. WBD said it had recently received “unsolicited interest” from “multiple parties for both the entire company and Warner Bros.”
The company said that while it shops itself around, it will continue to work on the previously announced split of its cable networks from its streaming and studio business.
Any deal for part of all of the company would be a sizable one. As of Monday’s close of trading, Warner Bros. Discovery had a market value of more than $45 billion. It also carries billions of dollars of debt on its balance sheet.
In September, Paramount Global was preparing a bid for all of WBD, however it appeared to stall in recent weeks.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Keep in mind, splitting the company is still on the table. Someone like Amazon could swoop in and just buy the Warner Bros. half to get the catalog and HBO Max, and just leave the Discovery half to rot.
I wouldn’t say no to Amazon, they suck but they aren’t the other media conglomerates. Only thing about them that bothers me is their Prime Video app is atrocious, Max is way better, and I’d be concerned it would get “Primed.”
I don’t know, Max has been really rough for live events.
Well, maybe they could compromise and take the interface of Max and the smoothness of events on Prime, they did NASCAR and TNF mostly without flaw.