Paramount, Netflix’s bidding war ‘underscores’ Warner Bros. value

Yahoo Finance Video

Wed, February 25, 2026 at 12:25 AM GMT+9

In this video:

•                                       StockStory Top Pick 
  

  NFLX

  +1.26%

 PSKY  

 +0.24%  

 

 

 WBD  

 +0.62%  

Paramount Skydance (PSKY) has revised and ramped up its offer to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), challenging Netflix’s (NFLX) own bid for the media giant.

Sevens Report Research founder Tom Essaye, Yahoo Finance Senior Reporter Ines Ferré, and Yahoo Finance Markets and Data Editor Jared Blikre all weigh in on whether Paramount’s new deal is sweet enough for WBD to reconsider a sale to streamer Netflix.

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Opening Bid.

Video Transcript

00:00 Speaker A

It’s time now for our stock of the day. Welcome back to Opening Bid. Paramount revised its offer to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery. Warner Brothers in a statement to Yahoo Finance said that it received a revised proposal from Paramount Skydance to acquire all of the outstanding shares of WBD common stock. Now the company did not specify the exact price that Paramount Skydance had offer, but Yahoo Finance did reach out to Paramount Skydance for comment on the report, but did not hear back. It’s the latest development in this ongoing battle, this saga between Paramount and Netflix for to complete a deal to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery. So does this latest development change anything for investors? Let’s take it to the opening bid panel. We have Tom Essay, Jared Blikry and Inez Ferre. Tom, let’s get to you first because this is truly a movie-like saga that we have been watching for months. So who wins this? And does this latest sort of change the way that we’re going? Who wins here?

01:21 Tom Essay

I think Netflix still wins. I mean that the so Warner Brothers is still accepted the bid from Netflix and now they’re going to consider this elevated bid from Paramount, which we can assume is above $30 because I believe that was the last uh bid that they made. We don’t know where Netflix is in the process, but we do know that Netflix has a lot of money and are likely well able to increase their bid if necessary to secure the rights. You know, this is sort of a refreshing little like, you know, break from all this concern that AI is going to ruin society. It’s it’s just an old-fashioned bidding war and it’s sort of fun to watch and it’s obviously great for Warner Brothers shareholders and happy for them. And look, it it it underscores the value of Warner Brothers. uh really their their their content, right? And their property. and that still is incredibly valuable and incredibly important. I think ultimately though Netflix wins, they have the most money.

02:37 Speaker A

Tom, we love a little old school in this AI driven uh trade stock market rather. Are you concerned at all about any regulatory risk if Netflix is the winner?

02:52 Tom Essay

Yes, I I don’t think this is a slam dunk uh that that this gets approved. Um I’m not sure that it’s it’s it’s necessarily substantially more likely either through through Paramount, right? So I think that there is regulatory risk here that has to be negotiated by either party, but I think that that that’s something that they can deal with and address through spin outs and and things like that uh down the road. I think ultimately the the shareholders still go with Netflix and then we we let the the courts and the lawyers figure out whether or not it actually gets approved.

03:34 Speaker A

And as Netflix, keep in mind, as we just said, as Tom has been saying, Netflix still thinks it could be the winner here. We’ve heard from Wall Street analysts like Alicia Reese over at Wedbush that concerns around the deal as this sort of lingers on aren’t really necessary. What are you hearing from the street?

04:00 Inez Ferre

Yeah, basically, uh Alicia Reese is basically saying that Netflix is a healthy company with or without this deal. I mean, she’s pointing out to the fact that the core business is is healthy. You’ve got ad busi their ad revenue that is expected to at least double this year. And then you’ve got their uh live content, all all of their better targeting, leveraging of AI. All of these sort of uh issues around Netflix, which makes it a very good company, which she’s basically saying, if they get this deal, great, if they don’t get this deal, it’s still a good company. The same cannot be said for Paramount. Uh the street pretty much thinks that Paramount needs to have this deal, whereas for Netflix, it would be a nice to have deal. As far as the volatility that you’ve seen with the stock this year, I mean you are looking at Netflix that’s down 15% year to date. But uh Wedbush still has an outperform rating on the stock and a 115,000 to uh $115 target price target on the stock. So that would be almost a 50% upside.

05:25 Speaker A

Jared, really quickly here, why is this a must do for Paramount? What are you hearing?

05:31 Jared Blikry

You know, there’s a club and Paramount’s not in it. So you got Netflix, you got Disney and you got Amazon Prime and WBD would put Paramount in that club. I was I was talking to Sean Mcnoty of the ankler about this yesterday in an interview on our shows and that was his uh main point right there. So, this is a deal that Paramount really needs and I agree with the regulatory risks too though. This could be pushed out to 2027, 2028 and if Paramont doesn’t get the deal, well, who else is available? NBCU would look nice, but that would take a hostile probably takeover. Uh other than that, you got to develop your own IP and that takes a lot of money and time. So, uh I expect Paramount to really fight this to the end. So we’ll see what happens.

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