Stock market today: Dow rises, S&P 500 and Nasdaq drop as defense stocks surge, tech slides

Paramount Skydance (PSKY) reaffirmed its offer on Thursday for Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), saying that its “fully financed all-cash offer” of $30.00 per share was “superior” to the existing agreement with Netflix.

“Our offer clearly provides WBD investors greater value and a more certain, expedited path to completion,” Paramount chairman and CEO David Ellison said in the release. “Throughout this process, we have worked hard for WBD shareholders and remain committed to engaging with them on the merits of our superior bid and advancing our ongoing regulatory review process.”

Earlier this week, Warner Bros. Discovery urged its shareholders to reject the offer, citing “significant costs, risks and uncertainties” associated with the offer, even after billionaire Larry Ellison, the father of David Ellison, personally backed the bid with $40.4 billion in equity financing.

Warner Bros claimed, “The risks inherent in the LBO [leverage buyout] structure are exacerbated by the amount of debt PSKY must incur.”

That deal would include all assets of the company, including Discovery Global, with linear TV brands like TNT Sports and CNN. In June, WBD shared that it intended to spin off those assets into a separate company.

In a release, Netflix co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters reiterated Warner Bros. Discovery’s statement that its cash and stock transaction offer of $27.75 per WBD share (a total enterprise value of roughly $83 billion) was a “superior value at greater levels of certainty.”

Since Netflix announced the initial agreement on Dec. 5, shares of the streaming giant have slid about 10%, whereas Paramount has posted a nearly 7% drop.

Both deals are still subject to regulatory approval, but the Ellison family did get Skydance’s $8 billion acquisition of Paramount approved in July of last year.