Paramount Promises $6 Billion in Cost Savings Acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery
December 8, 2025
Paramount Skydance said it would seek $6 billion in cost synergies after acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery. The media giant Dec. 8 submitted a hostile $30-per-share offer for WBD — after the later Dec. 5 approved a $27.75-per-share offer from Netflix for its studio and streaming assets only.
Speaking on an investor call after its bid, Paramount CEO David Ellison said the company’s offer exceeded Netflix’s by $18 billion in additional cash, in addition to offering “far greater certainty,” both in terms of the regulatory approval and the economics of an all-cash transaction.
Ellison said his family’s Ellison Family Trust holds well more than $250 billion in Oracle stock, which is more than six times the needed equity to complete the WBD acquisition.
Ellison claims that despite addressing every concern the WBD board had, he did not receive a response to Paramount’s improved offer, and a deal with Netflix was announced the next day on Dec. 5.
“We want to bring our proposal directly to WBD shareholders to evaluate a clearly superior proposal across both economic value and regulatory certainty,” Ellison said on the call. “And we believe they deserve that choice.”
The executive called Netflix’s mostly-cash offer “uncertain,” leaving remaining WBD shareholders with “highly-leveraged” stock in the pending Global Networks TV assets spin-off business.
“It exposes shareholders to volatile Netflix shares that could drive value below headline levels and has a highly uncertain regulatory outlook,” Ellison said.
Paramount Skydance chief strategy officer and COO Andrew Gordon said the WBD acquisition would result in $6 billion cost synergies number after doing due diligence with Warner Bros. with the help of outside consultants at Bain.
“[Bain] guided us through the Paramount [Global acquisition] process and have allowed us to deliver on our earnings call, another $1.5 billion of efficiencies just at Paramount alone,” Gordon said.
He said Netflix’s deal would solidify streaming domination and effectively the end of the streaming wars, giving the Netflix-HBO Max combo a 43% share of all global SVOD subscribers and over 30% of U.S. subscribers.
“With HBO Max’s 125 million subscribers and Netflix’s 301 million, it would be the largest streaming service platform on the planet by far, with over 400 million subscribers and even greater number of subscribers at the planned closing, which is two years from today,” Gordon said.
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