Feb. 17 (UPI) -- Warner Bros. Discovery announced that Netflix has granted it a limited 7-day waiver to allow WBD to talk with Paramount Skydance about its amended offer.
The waiver ends Feb. 23 and is designed to allow Warner Bros. stockholders to gain clarity on their options and to allow Paramount to make its best and final offer, a press release from WBD said. Netflix still retains its matching rights according to the merger agreement.
The WBD board said it continues to unanimously recommend the Netflix merger and urges shareholders to reject the Paramount offer.
The ongoing saga of the Warner Bros. sale has been going on since October, when the company said it was open to offers. On Dec. 5, after a bidding war between Netflix and Paramount, WBD accepted Netflix's bid. Soon after, Paramount launched a hostile bid to buy WBD, but the board didn't budge. Then Paramount announced that Oracle creator Larry Ellison would back the deal with $40 billion in equity. On Jan. 20, Netflix changed its offer to all cash, then on Feb. 10, Paramount did the same and added some extras to address some of WBD's concerns.
The extras included paying the $2.8 billion termination fee that WBD would owe Netflix and an agreement to back WBD's debt costs. It said it would pay a ticking fee of 25 cents per share for each quarter the deal is delayed, starting in 2027, giving WBD shareholders about $650 million in cash per quarter. But it didn't raise the $30-per-share bid.
