Obradi obradah
9.8K posts

Obradi obradah
@bradrick
Techie, foodie, bevvie. I do media things. Intermittent sufferer from the midnight disease. Proud papá. Opinions are my own.
The BK Katılım Mayıs 2009
1K Takip Edilen869 Takipçiler

@SpursOfficial What on earth does this team do on the training ground? They get sloppier by the week, and not an idea in sight. No evidence of a plan or even a direction of travel. Just lumping the ball around and hoping not to get trampled. Soulless and grim.
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@BonkDaCarnivore Also, #PSKY's offer was/is for the entire company, whereas #NFLX is offering only for Warner Bros., leaving the rest of the bundle available for further exploits.
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Time for a lesson in economics! It's so rare I get to do these these days with how upside down everything is.
$NFLX is paying $27.50 for $WBD. $PSKY was offering $30. Warner is taking Netflix's lower offer. People who don't understand economics are crying foul at this, stating Warner is taking the lesser offer to create a "woke monopoly" (whatever the hell that means anymore).
But shareholder value isn't measured in purely the premium paid on an equity to acquire the assets. It's measured in future returns and the health of the company.
First, let's look at the size of the 2 companies. Paramount Skydance ("Skydance") has a market cap of 14.75 billion dollars. Remember this number, it becomes important in a second. Netflix has a market cap of 425 billion, making $NFLX approximately 29 times bigger than Paramount.
Netflix has an amazing balance sheet with only 14 billion in debt on the books in spite of its MUCH larger size relative to Skydance - which has about 15 billion in debt on its books. Remember that Skydance's market cap is only 14.75 billion, so they actually owe more in debt than the company is worth. So right out of the gate, Netflix is, by far, the healthier company.
If WBD had accepted Skydance's bid of $30 per share, all cash, Skydance's debt would have ballooned to almost 90 billion dollars thanks in large part to its acquisition of Paramount (and a bribe to Trump, don't forget that) just a couple of months ago. The combined worth of Skydance and Warner would only be about 75 billion. Meaning it would be even more underwater.
So if Warner's goal is to merge with an entity that can protect the Warner brand and the IP it holds rather than sell it off for parts to try and stay afloat, the Skydance offer needed to be dismissed out of hand.
Then we look under the hood. Again, Skydance was offering $30 all cash (financed by a ton more debt). $NFLX's offer was a combination of cash ($23.50 a share) and about $4.15 in $NFLX equity, collared to a current depressed share price driven by the recent split of $NFLX shares. Netflix itself is an incredibly strong brand and almost always one of the best performers on the market. Meaning that it's entirely probable by the time this deal closes that the value of the $NFLX equity provided in this deal would make the sum total of the deal to Netflix well in excess of $30 per share like Skydance is offering (with no guarantee Skydance would even be able to raise the capital to complete the purchase)
Which brings us to the most important parts:
1) We already saw this after Skydance acquired Paramount - the first thing they did was implement thousands of layoffs in an effort to trim 3 billion dollars of expenses off the books, because Skydance couldn't afford to keep Paramount fully operational. If Skydance were to buy Warner, you could expect an exacerbated repeat of that. Meaning Warner jobs would be heavily on the chopping block. And
2) Skydance at that point would be leveraged to the hilt as a result of these 2 studio acquisitions...so where, exactly, are they going to get the capital in order to fund theatrical ventures that these days can run a quarter of a billion dollars? You think Skydance is going to have the money to create a series of DC superhero movies (the most expensive of all because of all the CGI)? NOT A CHANCE! Skydance would have to drastically reduce its portfolio offerings and very likely sell some of the brand IP under the Warner logo just to make ends meet. In effect, a corporate raidership job where they sold the most valuable assets for parts and then pocketed the money as they saddled $PSKY with an ever growing debt load they'd never be able to repay. Absolutely ZERO shareholder value in the Skydance offer.
Meanwhile, $NFLX doesn't actually have a lot of its own IP, but certainly has the capital necessary to make a splash in that space. Further, taking the Netflix offer over Skydance's maintains competition in the space. Since Skydance already has an enormous amount of studio IP, consolidation of that would be bad for the consumer. In Netflix's case, that competition is maintained because Netflix is essentially entering into a competitive space it didn't exist in previously. The number of competitors in the space remains at 3 - Paramount, Warner, and MGM (which Amazon recently acquired). The Skydance offer is actually the one that drives monopolistic practice, not prevents it.
Back in my VC days, it was incredibly routine for the offer we'd put in for a series/seed round of a startup to not be the most lucrative on paper, but was almost always the best offer for the company in question - because there was more to the offer than simply the check that was being written; it was the support, infrastructure, expertise and guidance that we could offer over the higher dollar offer by a competing firm. Smart companies almost always took our lower bids over more cash upfront because they knew we were better equipped to guide them through the turbulent waters of growth and see to it that they achieved more value on the other end. I sometimes talk about a farm tech company that my firm was bidding against JD Vance's firm back in the day. JD's firm offered more money upfront, but had no support infrastructure. The company in question ended up taking the offer from Vance's firm over ours, and proceeded to waste away into oblivion because all they got was the cash - they couldn't succeed operationally. Meanwhile, we went out and found another startup in the same space, and successfully guided it to a healthy offering. To this day, it's in a much more robust and successful space. Thankfully for that company, the leaders of the org saw the value beyond just the size of the check. My history is littered with those stories.
So, dear reader, the TL:DR if you made it this far: Netflix offers fewer job cuts, more growth of the Warner studio, less risk to investors, higher growth potential, stability, and maintains competition that is beneficial to consumers. Judging offers purely by number is a remedial viewpoint for those who don't understand structure of economy. Using organizational economic foundations, it's demonstrably true that $27.50 is more than $30.
Congratulations to Netflix on the acquisition, and congratulations to the board, employees, and shareholders of Warner Discovery (of which I am one) on making the right choice.

Charles Gasparino@CGasparino
SCOOP: As reported @paramountco @Skydance is now looking to launch a hostile bid for @wbd because it feels its $30 a share all cash offer is actually higher than what @netflix offered in terms of cash, stock and the value of the spinoff of the cable business--sources. story developing
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Here is what Meta’s upcoming Twitter competitor looks like. The company is talking to Oprah and other celebs about being early users.
"We’ve been hearing from creators and public figures who are interested in having a platform that is sanely run”theverge.com/2023/6/8/23754…
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@thfcRomero @COYS_com uhhh, gonna need a longer tweet for that one
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@thespursweb They shipped more goals than any other team in the PL this year so sure, that’ll fix our defensive problems.
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I always dread pride month for exactly this reason. All the gay sex I’m forced to have. It wouldn’t be so bad, but for the government commissars, always watching, always critiquing my technique.
Feels bad man. At least there’s glitter.
The Federalist@FDRLST
Pride Month Is A Cynical Exercise In State-Enforced Homosexuality thefederalist.com/2023/05/25/pri…
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With Slot now out of the picture, who do you want as the next #THFC head coach?
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