Netflix has dropped out of the bidding war to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), declining to raise its offer to counter a higher bid made this week by rival company Paramount Skydance, owned by David Ellison.
In a statement released Thursday, Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters announced their decision and said that “at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive.”
“The transaction we negotiated would have created shareholder value with a clear path to regulatory approval,” said the streaming giant’s co-chief executives. “However, we’ve always been disciplined, and at the price required to match Paramount Skydance’s latest offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive, so we are declining to match the Paramount Skydance bid.”
In December, Netflix seemed poised to swoop up a large swath of WBD’s business, including HBO and the Warner Bros. movie studio, in an $83 billion deal. In response, Ellison, tech heir and son of billionaire Oracle founder Larry Ellison, launched a takeover bid of $111 billion. The proposal included buying a purchase price of $31.00 per WBD share in cash (Netflix originally offered $27.75 per share) and paying the $2.8 billion termination fee Warner Bros. would be required to pay to Netflix.
Now that Netflix has stepped aside, the stage is set for Ellison’s Paramount to take home the prize in the fight for the global media company that owns lucrative IPs for franchises like Harry Potter, the DC Universe, Looney Tunes, Scooby-Doo, Fifty Shades of Grey, and The Lord of the Rings.
Still, the Paramount Skydance and WBD pact isn’t official yet and needs the approval of U.S. and European government regulators. In the meantime, WBD has already set its sights on the future. “Once our Board votes to adopt the Paramount merger agreement, it will create tremendous value for our shareholders,” said WBD CEO David Zaslav in a statement. “We are excited about the potential of a combined Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery and can’t wait to get started working together telling the stories that move the world.”
