Here’s a more realistic way to put it: WBD just took a $9 billion accounting loss because it concluded that its aging TV assets weren’t worth as much as it thought — probably because they won’t be showing NBA games after next season. To put that into perspective, WBD’s entire market cap is about $18 billion.
Investors responded to the news by sending the company’s shares down more than 8%.
Okay, what’s next?
If you or I buy something and it turns out we overestimated its value too much, bad things can happen.
But the problem with massive corporate writedowns is that, despite being admissions of failure, Wall Street tends to be largely silent when they happen.
This is largely because these results were not surprising. The market had already decided that this was not working, and its share price had already reflected that. That is what is happening with Worldboard – its share price has been in decline for most of its more than two years of existence.
WBD CEO David Zaslav promises Wall Street that everything will be fine, and that his digital future looks great. The problem is his traditional TV networks, like TNT, TBS and TLC. They’re in a long-term decline but still very profitable. That makes it hard to do anything with them, one way or another.
In his words, there are “difficult conditions in the traditional business sector.”
And that’s one of the big problems with the breakup plan the company tried last month — who wants to own the part of the company that doesn’t work?
WBD also seems to have realized that this plan wouldn’t work, so it pulled the plug on its trial balloon this week. The new, new plan, says the Financial Times.The idea is to sell smaller parts of the company. Maybe a Polish broadcaster, or part of its gaming business.
But remember that Zaslav’s other plan is to consolidate the companies: he says he wants to buy some things, although many believe he will be the one to buy them. In fact, today’s news has made his company more expensive for a potential buyer.