{"id":129151,"date":"2025-11-11T06:57:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T06:57:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/129151\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T06:57:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T06:57:07","slug":"theres-no-must-have-for-us-in-ma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/129151\/","title":{"rendered":"‘There’s No Must-Have For Us’ in M&A"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tDavid Ellison<\/a> downplayed Paramount<\/a>\u2018s need to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery<\/a> during a conference call with Wall Street analysts on Monday after the company unveiled earnings that reflect the uphill climb<\/a> that it faces in revitalizing its film and TV assets.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s important to know that there\u2019s no must-have for us. We really look at this as buy-versus-build, and we absolutely have the ability to build to get to where we want to go,\u201d Ellison told Wall Street analysts when pressed about Paramount\u2019s pursuit of Warner Bros. Discovery. \u201cWe believe we can achieve our streaming goals, and that we can drive enterprise efficiency, and create value and long-term free cash flow generation all through the building.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEllison also vowed to be \u201cdisciplined\u201d in his approach to pursuing additional assets.\u201d It\u2019s understood that Paramount in recent weeks has fielded two offers to acquire all of Warner Bros. Discovery, including its linear cable networks.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs it relates to M&A, everything for us is going to tie back into, Does it accelerate those three core principles for us,\u201d Ellison said. \u201cWe\u2019re fortunate that we have the balance sheet to be able to be opportunistic when we think that M&A will accelerate our goals, but we\u2019re also long-term disciplined owner operators. We\u2019ll always approach things through the lens of, How do we maximize value for shareholders? And from an M&A standpoint, it\u2019s always going to be, How do we accelerate and improve our North Star principles?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEllison hammered his key points about investment, innovation and the clean-up that is still under way at Paramount for the new regime. The fine print of Paramount\u2019s earnings report discloses plans for a restructuring charge to be taken in Q4 of $500 million.<\/p>\n

\n\tEllison has emphasized the importance of upgrading Paramount\u2019s technological infrastructure and capabilities from the moment he sealed the sale agreement with former owner Shari Redstone in July 2024. On Monday\u2019s call, he cast the need in more urgent terms amid an arms race race with Silicon Valley firms. That\u2019s a world he knows well as the son of software billionaire Larry Ellison, a co-founder of Oracle.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOur goal is to accelerate innovation by making technology the core competency of our company. Competitors from Silicon Valley have quickly expanded into media and broader forms of entertainment, and if we want to remain competitive long term, we must strengthen our technology to do what it takes to position ourselves as the industry\u2019s most technologically capable media company,\u201d Ellison vowed. \u201cAgain, I want to stress that technology, at Paramount is not and never will be a replacement for human creativity. Rather, it serves as a powerful multiplier, enhancing performance, elevating the consumer experience and equipping our creative teams with the tools that will enable them to tell even better stories more efficiently and effectively.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAmong other highlights of the call:<\/p>\n

\n\t** Jeff Shell, president of Paramount, reaffirmed that the company does not plan to offload its linear cable channels, at least for the near term. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to spin off cable assets. This company has a history of spinning assets, and it hasn\u2019t gone very well for us and we think for others,\u201d Shell said. \u201cSo one of the big rationales is that when companies are standalone, they can focus on driving the value of the brands that they have in a more specific way. We are going to do that, but we\u2019re going to do that within our company so our shareholders get the value of that. We think we have some pretty good brands on the cable side,\u201d he said, citing Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central.<\/p>\n

\n\t** As expected, Paramount has divested itself from TV assets in Latin America, Argentina\u2019s broadcast channel Telefe and Chile\u2019s Chilevision. Shell was blunt about the reason why: \u201cWe have enough to do and invest in without investing in things that are not core to what\u2019s going to get us to global streaming scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t** Ellison and Shell also were effusive about the importance of the company\u2019s new $7.7 billion rights pact with UFC is to the future of Paramount+ and CBS. Shell told analysts that the UFC\u2019s year-round schedule will be a boon particularly for CBS, which has its big sports investments clustered around the fall and winter NFL schedule and spring NCAA tournament.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf you are going to design a sport for us, UFC is perfect in so many ways,\u201d Shell said. \u201cWe had a real desert of sports that ended with the Masters [golf tournament in April] and, you know, started again in the NFL. And we saw lots of churn over the summer as people turned off [Paramount+] and then turned it back on for NFL. And this is a year-round sport, which is very unusual for major sports.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Ellison downplayed Paramount\u2018s need to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery during a conference call with Wall Street analysts…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129152,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[11948,156,111,139,69,421,437,3204],"class_list":{"0":"post-129151","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-david-ellison","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-paramount","14":"tag-tv","15":"tag-warner-bros-discovery"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129151\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129152"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}