Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery, the parent company of both CNN and TNT, plummeted by 10 percent this week – reaching the lowest price on record – after the company reported serious financial troubles.
Warner missed every target across every income statement and throughout its entire operations. The company also wrote down the value of all of its traditional television network, which it acquired in 2022 when Warner Bros. Discovery was birthed out of an acquisition of WarnerMedia.
For the past quarter, Warner reported a net loss of $10 billion, a figure that includes additional charges of $2.1 billion from the merger. Revenue fell 6.2 percent to $9.71 billion during the same period.
"The write down confirmed that legacy cable channels like CNN and TNT are no longer worth what they were when the $42 billion merger was completed," reports explain, pointing to the ongoing collapse of CNNthat "just won't stop" as a major driver behind the company's financial woes.
"In fact, judging by the ongoing mass layoffs at the former, one can argue that CNN's value is now negative and will continue to be so until it stops hemorrhaging cash."
NBA helped spearhead Warner's demise
Things have changed so dramatically for legacy media outlets, especially in just the past several years, that company leaders are unable to prevent the carnage from worsening.
Warner CEO David Zaslav told investors on a call that things are now in uncharted territory when it comes to trying to steer the financial ship out of the iceberg-ridden waters.
"Two years ago, market valuations and prevailing conditions for legacy media companies were quite different than they are today," Zaslav told investors. "This impairment acknowledges this and better aligns our carrying values with our future outlook."
The move to write down $9.1 billion came just a month after the NBA decided to drop Warner as a broadcast partner and instead funnel $76 billion into an 11-year media rights deal with Walt Disney, Comcast and Amazon.
In response, Warner filed a lawsuit against the NBA alleging a breach of contract. Zaslav said the matter has now been "handed ... off to our lawyers" while expressing "confidence in our position."
The biggest elephant in the room, though, is the mass exodus of viewers who no longer watch cable news, especially the likes of CNN. The entire legacy media industry seems to be imploding as the world shifts towards a do as thou wilt system where anyone can become the "news" with their own social media channels, or portals.
Despite its newfound partnership with the NBA, assuming a judge does not strike it down, Disney is not in any better financial shape than Warner. The company announced its third-quarter results this week as well, sending its stock price to a 10-year low.
At Warner, more than 2,000 positions have been axed just in the past year, with plans to further cut expenses and draw in more revenue by raising the price of its Max streaming service. In just the past month, the CNN component of the Warner empire laid off 100 people to try to stop the bleeding.
"Under different management teams over the past 20 years, Warner Bros. has been involved in some of the worst and most criticized merger deals," it was further reported. "They include the $124 billion merger of Time Warner with America Online in 2001 and the later purchase of Time Warner by AT&T Inc. for $87 billion in 2018."
"Warner Bros. shares plunged as much as 9.9% to $6.95, the lowest price since the stock of the merged company began trading in April 2022, and down over 70% in the past two years."
No comments:
Post a Comment