Warner Bros. Discovery, the owner of HBO, CNN and other streaming and studio businesses, said Tuesday it is putting itself up for sale.<\/p>\n
In a press release, the company announced “a review of strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value,” which is Wall Street speak for a sale. Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) said it had recently received “unsolicited interest” from “multiple parties for both the entire company and Warner Bros.” alone.<\/p>\n
WBD houses a variety of media businesses, from cable networks and news outlets to popular franchises, movie studios and streaming platforms. The company also holds the rights to broadcast a range of sports internationally, from the Olympics and the French Open in Europe to the Premier League in the U.K.<\/p>\n
The company said that while it shops itself around, it will continue to work on the previously announced split of its cable networks<\/a> from its streaming and studio businesses.<\/p>\n Warner Bros. Discovery shares surged on the news, rising more than 10%.<\/p>\n The move comes as the media industry has continued a yearslong consolidation effort sparked in part by changes in consumer habits, most notably the rise of internet-based competitors such as Netflix and the decline in cable TV viewership.<\/p>\n Any deal for part or 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.<\/p>\n WBD’s studio business could be attractive to another studio owner, streaming or tech company. It has released a number of recent box office hits and holds the rights to Harry Potter and DC Comics heroes such as Superman, as well as other popular franchises.<\/p>\n Comcast, which owns NBC News parent company, NBCUniversal, is one of many companies likely to take a look at Warner Bros. Discovery’s assets, two people familiar with the matter told NBC News. But the company currently has a high bar for a deal, they said.<\/p>\n In September, rival Paramount Global was preparing a bid<\/a> for all of WBD, but that appeared to stall in recent weeks.<\/p>\n Tuesday’s news injects fresh uncertainty into WBD’s business, which in recent years has gone through a series of changes. <\/p>\n In the early 2000s, when it known as Time Warner, the company was transformed by a string of deals that included spinning off Time Warner Cable and Time magazine. In 2014, the company faced a takeover bid from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which was later withdrawn.<\/p>\n AT&T acquired Time Warner in 2016 for $85 billion, merging it with some TV assets that it already owned. But that deal faced a yearslong battle with the Justice Department, which sought to block it on anti-trust grounds. AT&T ended up spinning off the company in another deal, which set the stage for a 2022 merger with Discovery. <\/p>\n In June, Warner Bros. Discovery announced its latest deal, which will ultimately cleave off HBO and its HBO Max streaming platform, along with Warner Bros. studio and DC Comics, into a new company.<\/p>\n WBD’s latest announcements closely mirror the moves of other major media companies. <\/p>\n Earlier this year, Skydance acquired CBS owner Paramount<\/a>, while in late 2024 Comcast announced it would spin off many of its cable networks, including CNBC and MSNBC, <\/a>into a new company called Versant. <\/p>\n Under Comcast’s spinoff plan, the Peacock streaming platform, Bravo and NBC broadcast network will remain part of Comcast. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Warner Bros. Discovery, the owner of HBO, CNN and other streaming and studio businesses, said Tuesday it is putting itself up for sale. In a press release, the company announced “a review of strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value,” which is Wall Street speak for a sale. Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) said it had recently <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":4044,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4043","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4043\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marketsfortress.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}