Disney, Paramount, Sony Pictures In Play Due to Time Warner/Fox
Reports that Twenty-First Century Fox Inc. (FOXA) made an $85 per share offer to acquire Time Warner Inc. (TWX) have sent shares of Time Warner soaring Wednesday morning. The total value of the deal was around $80 billion and, according to the reports, was first made verbally in June and then in writing this month. Time Warner has "curtly" rejected the offer, according to sources cited by The New York Times.
At Tuesday's closing price of $71.01, Time Warner's market cap was around $62.6 billion. How Fox mastermind Rupert Murdoch planned to pay $80 billion for Time Warner is a reasonable question, but a combination of new Fox stock and cash borrowed at today's low rates is the most likely answer. And with the Federal Reserve making more noises about a return to positive interest rates, we might be on the lookout for more offers like this.
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The most valuable of the entertainment companies is Walt Disney Co. (DIS), which has a market cap of around $149 billion and owns both the lucrative Stars Wars and Marvel Comics franchises. To say nothing of the famous Mouse and the ABC and ESPN networks.
Could Disney go shopping for, say, Paramount Studios, currently included in the Viacom Inc. (VIAB) stable? Viacom's market cap is around $36 billion, just higher than the nearly $34 billion value of CBS Corp. (CBS). Could Viacom try to pick up CBS?
And then there is Sony Corp. (SNE) and its Sony Pictures Entertainment group. Activist investor Daniel Loeb, head of hedge fund Third Point, last year suggested that Sony spin off 15% to 20% of the entertainment company's U.S. assets and cut back on expenses at the studio. Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai told Variety in February, "I'm not even entertaining the notion of selling our entertainment assets."
Despite Hirai's comments, if the belt-tightening the company has introduced doesn't produce better revenues and higher profits, a spin-off or a sale of the movie business could be a real option. Sony's market cap is less than $18 billion, making it an even more appealing target.
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Time Warner shares were up about 15% in premarket trading Wednesday to $81.74, well above the 52-week range of $57.59 to $73.07.
Twenty-first Century Fox shares were down about 0.4%, at $35.40 in a 52-week range of $29.42 to $36.43.
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