AT&T has agreed to spin off and combine WarnerMedia with its rival Discovery in a multibillion-dollar deal to create a media empire that has the programming heft to compete with Disney and Netflix in a global streaming race.
The deal comes just three years after AT&T paid $85.4 billion (€70.3 billion) for the owner of CNN, HBO and Warner Bros and reflects the break-neck pace of change for traditional US media groups attempting to reinvent themselves as streaming services.
Under the proposed tie-up, one of Hollywood’s most prized portfolios – including Warner Bros film and television studios, the HBO network and a portfolio of cable channels including CNN – will be brought together with the “real life” output of Discovery, whose brands range from sport and wildlife to home renovation programmes.
Transaction
David Zaslav, Discovery’s long-serving chief executive, will lead the combined group, which will be 71 per cent owned by AT&T. Jason Kilar, the executive brought in last year to accelerate WarnerMedia’s shift to streaming with HBO Max, was not mentioned in the merger filing.
The transaction represents a humbling retreat for AT&T, which ran up one of corporate America’s biggest debt piles in a gamble to become the world’s biggest vertically-integrated content and distribution company.
“This should put an end to the debate about synergies between content and distribution,” said Jonathan Chaplin, analyst at New Street Research, who called the deal “complete capitulation”.
The spin-off is the latest in a series of unsentimental deals by John Stankey, who took over as chief executive last year, to unwind the expansionist legacy of his predecessor and refocus the company on its core business.
This included selling a 30 per cent stake in DirecTV to private equity group TPG this year. The deal valued the ailing television business at $16.25 billion (€13.38 billion), roughly a third of what Stankey’s predecessor paid for it six years ago.
Impetus
The impetus for the deal is the accelerating race between the world’s biggest tech and media companies to catch up with Netflix and own a piece of the future of entertainment. Within the past 18 months alone, Disney, Apple, WarnerMedia, Comcast, Discovery and others have launched streaming platforms with global ambitions.
Writing before the announcement of the deal, Jason Bazinet, analyst at Citi, said he could imagine “several other potential suitors entering the fray” for Discovery or to propose a competing merger with WarnerMedia. “We would not rule out Comcast, Disney or ViacomCBS getting involved,” he wrote.
AT&T and Discovery included significant termination fees under the deal, agreeing to pay $720 million or $1.8 billion respectively if the deal fell through.
Discovery and WarnerMedia generated combined revenues of $41 billion in 2020, which compares with the $65 billion turnover of Disney, the world’s biggest media group. – The Financial Times
