{"id":219225,"date":"2025-12-31T03:55:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T03:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/219225\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T03:55:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T03:55:07","slug":"warner-bros-discovery-soared-amid-bidding-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/219225\/","title":{"rendered":"Warner Bros. Discovery Soared Amid Bidding War"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThis year, David Ellison managed to do for Warner Bros. Discovery<\/a> what WBD CEO David Zaslav had struggled to do for more than three years: dramatically boost the market value of the company that combined Discovery and Warner Bros.<\/p>\n

\n\tShares of Warner Bros. Discovery, formed in April 2022, zoomed to all-time highs in 2025 \u2014 up more than 170% for the year. WBD as of Dec. 30 has a market capitalization of $71.8 billion, up from about $25 billion at the start of the year.<\/p>\n

\n\tWarner Bros. Discovery\u2019s Wall Street rally was triggered by Ellison: After his Skydance Media had swallowed up Paramount Global, he aggressively set his sights on buying WBD next \u2014 backed with billions from his father, Larry Ellison \u2014 and triggered an M&A battle that caused big swings in the stocks of WBD, Paramount Skydance<\/a> and Netflix<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tNetflix shares were up as much as 51% in mid-2025, as the streaming leader continued to show solid growth and analysts continued to be bullish on its future prospects. In October, amid the continuing climb of its share price, Netflix executed a 10-for-1 stock split<\/a>, to make it more affordable. 22.3% as of Dec. 30.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter Netflix announced an $83 billion deal<\/a> to buy Warner Bros.\u2019s studios and HBO Max businesses, investors got spooked at the prospect of the deal\u2019s uncertainty and heavy debt load. Still, Netflix shares ended the year up around 22%. Paramount shareholders, meanwhile, were enthusiastic about David Ellison\u2019s play for the company, but PSKY\u2019s stock price has fallen down as WBD repeatedly rebuffed the Paramount bid.<\/p>\n

\n\tComcast, which made an unsuccessful bid that proposed combining the WBD streaming and studios business with Comcast\u2019s related businesses<\/a>, saw its stock price languish, closing down 17% for the year. On Jan. 2, Comcast\u2019s spin-off of Versant (comprising cable networks like CNBC, MS NOW and USA) is set to close<\/a>. The goal of the Versant transaction is to unshackle the NBC broadcast and Peacock streaming businesses from the declining cable TV networks and convince investors the newly streamlined Comcast is worth more.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe M&A drama surrounding Warner Bros. isn\u2019t over yet. David Ellison has launched a hostile takeover attempt for Warner Bros. Discovery, hoping to convince WBD shareholders that his $30-per-share bid (which the WBD board has rejected) is a better than Netflix\u2019s terms. Last week, Paramount Skydance updated its offer for WBD with certain new provisions; among those, Larry Ellison\u00a0made an \u201cirrevocable personal guarantee of $40.4 billion\u201d toward Paramount\u2019s all-cash offer for WBD<\/a>. The WBD board is expected to turn that down, too, with a formal response in the next few days.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhether the Ellisons will go higher in their quest to capture Warner Bros. Discovery remains to be seen. Note that whoever ends up owning Warner Bros. Discovery, Zaslav stands to cash in from a sale: He\u2019s set to become a billionaire<\/a> given his WBD stock holdings regardless of whether Netflix completes the deal or Paramount Skydance swoops in to poach the whole company.<\/p>\n

\n\tHere\u2019s a chart showing the performance of top media stocks<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCreated with Datawrapper<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This year, David Ellison managed to do for Warner Bros. Discovery what WBD CEO David Zaslav had struggled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[93,61,60,113642,1868,65249,282,12481],"class_list":{"0":"post-219225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-media-stocks","12":"tag-netflix","13":"tag-paramount-skydance","14":"tag-tv","15":"tag-warner-bros-discovery"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}