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Warner Bros. Discovery is formally up for sale, with the company inviting bids on the company as a whole or various slices of its assets. Paramount Skydance has already offered $24 per share for the whole company, but has so far had its proposals rebuffed by the media giant. CEO David Zaslav has financial bonuses attached to executing a sale, so he’s very much motivated in getting a deal done. Bluster or otherwise, Bloomberg reports he told senior executives that Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Comcast had shown interest in acquiring Warner Bros. expansive library of TV shows and films. It is very possible that Apple’s name is simply being bandied around to drum up higher bids. It’s unclear how serious the company is about acquiring big media companies. To date, Apple’s largest acquisition is Beats Electronics, for $3 billion back in 2013. Any acquisition of Warner Bros., even if divvied up in to parts, would cost tens of billions and involve a lot of aggravation and consolidation of labor and culture. In a recent podcast interview, Eddy Cue said Apple was not actively pursuing a deal to bolster its Apple TV service, saying the company generally prefers to build rather than buy, but he said he never rules anything out. Right now, Apple TV is marketed as an all original streaming service, but you have to assume Apple would consider adding prestige catalog content if it came available for a reasonable price tag. For instance, if the option was available for Apple to buy HBO’s intellectual property on its own, it would probably be interested. Apple seriously enquired about buying HBO from AT&T Time Warner about a decade ago, but AT&T also wanted to offload the cable networks, not just HBO on its own. This was baggage Apple was not interested in then, and probably isn’t now either. However, in the present, the financial position of Warner Bros. Discovery is in even more dire straits, so it is more willing to entertain offers that divvy it up for parts. Whether that means Apple will actually be able to get the crown jewels of HBO at a price it finds reasonable, is another step altogether. For now, talks are at an early stage. Interested parties including Apple will sign non-disclosure agreements with Warner Bros. Discovery so they can see sensitive financial data to learn about the state of the business more deeply. Then, they can choose if they want to tender an offer.
