Warner Bros merger to saddle Paramount Skydance with $79 billion debt

The Paramount Skydance-Warner Bros Discovery merger will create a combined entity that would have a net debt of about $79 billion, Paramount said on Monday, ruling out any plan to divest or spinoff the cable assets.

The companies will fold their streaming services, including Paramount+ and HBO Max, into a single platform, Paramount CEO David Ellison said on a call with analysts.

Together the companies already serve more than 200 million direct-to-consumer subscribers in more than 100 regions, Ellison said, giving them the scale and firepower to better compete in a market dominated by Netflix.


Paramount signed the $110 billion, or $31-per-share, deal for Warner Bros early on Friday, after Netflix declined to raise its offer. The acquisition is expected to save more than $6 billion in costs, with a big share coming from "non-labor sources" by clubbing streaming technology stacks and cloud providers of the companies, among others, Paramount strategy chief Andy Gordon said.