Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: A Bidding War for Warner Bros.

Warner bidders

On Friday, after a fairly public auction process, the board of directors of Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. agreed to sell the company to Netflix Inc. In the deal, Warner shareholders would get three things:

• $23.25 per share in cash,
• $4.50 per share worth of Netflix stock, subject to a collar, and
• stock in a new company called Discovery Global: Netflix would only buy Warner’s studio and streaming business (including HBO and various movie franchises), and Warner’s shareholders would keep an assortment of television networks, including CNN Discovery. How much is that worth? We don’t know — the spinoff hasn’t happened yet ...