Paramount insists that its offer for Warner is “superior” to that of Netflix and appeals to shareholders after its rejection

Paramount Skydance insisted this Thursday that its purchase offer for Warner Bros. Discovery at 30 dollars per share is “superior” to that of Netflix and appealed to the shareholders of the company for sale, despite the rejection of its board of directors.

The Warner Board of Directors (WBD) rejected Paramount’s latest acquisition offer this Wednesday considering it “inferior” to its agreement reached at the beginning of December with Netflix in “key aspects”, and urged its shareholders to speak out in the same sense.

David Ellison, chief executive officer of Paramount, said this Thursday in a statement that his company “clearly offers greater value to WBD investors”and that it will continue to “deal with them on the merits” of its offer and work on “a regulatory review process.”

Paramount noted that it has addressed “every concern” of WBD in the process, prompting mogul Larry Ellison, co-founder of Oracle and father of David Ellison, to offer a personal guarantee on December 22.irrevocable” to finance part of the proposal.

The Netflix offer

“Nevertheless, WBD continues to raise problems in Paramount offer which we have already addressed, including flexibility in interim operations,” he criticized. WBD reached a merger agreement with Netflix on December 5 for $82.7 billion, with a combination of cash, stock and debt, after which Paramount launched its current hostile bid (takeover) on December 8, for $108.4 billion.

The Netflix offer, of $27.75 per share, includes $23.25 per WBD share in cash and $4.50 in Netflix stock, plus a stake in the company’s pending Discovery Global unit.

Appeal to shareholders

Paramount argued that Netflix’s offer “contains many uncertain components and has already fallen in total value” because the price of the streaming leader has fallen, and he calculated that it now stands at $27.42 per share, below its $30.

Furthermore, he highlighted that the WBD advice has not disclosed analysis to help its shareholders value the potential ownership of the channel company Versant, which went public this week with poor results, and which “illustrates the complicated path that Discovery Global has ahead.”

Larry Ellison offered a guarantee of $40.4 billion to finance Paramount’s purchase of Warner, but maintained its offer to purchase the company for $30 per share in cash.