Warner Bros. Discovery, the owner of HBO, CNN and other streaming and studio businesses, said Tuesday it is putting itself up for sale.
In a press release, the company announced “a review of strategic alternatives to maximize shareholder value,” which is Wall Street speak for a sale. Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) said it had recently received “unsolicited interest” from “multiple parties for both the entire company and Warner Bros.” alone.
WBD houses a variety of media businesses, from cable networks and news outlets to popular franchises, movie studios and streaming platforms. The company also holds the rights to broadcast a range of sports internationally, from the Olympics and the French Open in Europe to the Premier League in the U.K.
The company said that while it shops itself around, it will continue to work on the previously announced split of its cable networks from its streaming and studio businesses.
Warner Bros. Discovery shares surged on the news, rising more than 10% at the start of trading.
The move comes as the media industry has continued a yearslong consolidation effort sparked in part by changes in consumer habits, most notably the rise of internet-based competitors such as Netflix and the decline in cable TV viewership.
Any deal for part or all of the company would be a sizable one. As of Monday’s close of trading, Warner Bros. Discovery had a market value of more than $45 billion. It also carries billions of dollars of debt on its balance sheet.
WBD’s studio business could be attractive to a streaming or tech company. It has released a number of recent box office hits and holds the rights to Harry Potter and DC Comics heroes such as Superman, as well as other popular franchises.
In September, rival Paramount Global was preparing a bid for all of WBD, but that appeared to stall in recent weeks.
Tuesday’s news injects fresh uncertainty into WBD’s business, which in recent years has gone through a series of changes.
In the early 2000s, when it known as Time Warner, the company was transformed by a string of deals that included spinning off Time Warner Cable and Time magazine. In 2014, the company faced a takeover bid from Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which was later withdrawn.
AT&T acquired Time Warner in 2016 for $85 billion, merging it with some TV assets that it already owned. But that deal faced a yearslong battle with the Justice Department, which sought to block it on anti-trust grounds. AT&T ended up spinning off the company in another deal, which set the stage for a 2022 merger with Discovery.
In June, Warner Bros. Discovery announced its latest deal, which will ultimately cleave off HBO and its HBO Max streaming platform, along with Warner Bros. studio and DC Comics, into a new company.
WBD’s latest announcements closely mirror the moves of other major media companies.
Earlier this year, Skydance acquired CBS owner Paramountwhile in late 2024 Comcast announced it would spin off many of its cable networks, including CNBC and MSNBC, into a new company called Versant.
Under Comcast’s spinoff plan, the Peacock streaming platform, Bravo and NBC broadcast network will remain part of Comcast, which owns NBC News parent company, NBCUniversal.
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