Pre-Markets Continue Higher. PSKY Not Done Pursuing WBD

Monday, December 22, 2025

Welcome to Christmas Week on Wall Street — three and a half trading days (closing early, 1pm, on Wednesday the 24th, Christmas Eve, and closed all of Thursday in observance of Christmas Day) which may be uncommonly filled with economic data, largely due to delays related to the government shutdown. Today will be generally unencumbered with new reports.

Tuesday, however, is a different story: Q3 GDP, Durable Goods Orders, Industrial Production and Capacity Utilization, and Consumer Confidence are all on the docket. We may even see the full (delayed) Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) report tomorrow ahead of the bell, but this — which is also the Fed’s preferred series of metrics on domestic inflation — had been pushed back previously.

Pre-market futures are in the green among major indexes at this hour, although the blue-chip Dow has been dribbling near breakeven most of the early trading session: +22 points. The S&P 500 is +28 points, the Nasdaq +163 and the small-cap Russell 2000 +14 points. The Nasdaq, thanks to a strong Friday session, led these indexes higher last week; the Russell 2000 leads over the past month of trading.
 

PSKY Reignites Hostile Bid for Warner Brothers

Last week, a letter to Warner Brothers Discovery WBD shareholders stated that they should dismiss consideration of Paramount Skydance’s PSKY hostile bid to take over the entertainment giant and instead accept the offer from Netflix NFLX. This morning, PSKY has returned with a new bid, which addresses many of the concerns cited in the letter but keeps the offer price — $30 per share, all cash, for 100% of WBD’s assets — the same.

Biggest among these changes is the agreement for PSKY CEO David Ellison’s father Larry — co-founder of Oracle ORCL and for a time the richest man in the world — that $40.4 billion of Ellison family trust money would be guaranteed to secure this deal. Also included will reportedly be Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) and investments from Abu Dhabi and Qatar, but not Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners, which withdrew its $200 million earlier.

This extended offer also pushes out the deadline for acceptance from January 8, 2026 to January 21.This new deal also raises the amount promised in case the deal falls through to match the $5.8 billion Netflix had guaranteed. One main difference between the offers is that Netflix plans to spinoff the Discovery Channel to an already interested party, while PSKY would take on all of WBD’s assets.

There may be some issues beyond the financing aspect of a PSKY takeover, as well. When Skydance bought Paramount this past summer, one of David Ellison’s first moves was to install former opinion writer Bari Weiss as head of CBS News. Since then, and including last night’s pulling of a “60 Minutes” report on prisons in El Salvador and a high-profile (but low ratings) interview with Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika, there is a growing concern that the news division at CBS has taken a hard right turn.

Warner Brothers Discovery owns CNN (which President Trump himself called a “disgrace” and needs to be sold), HBO Max, and many other entities that may be subjected to a similar fate. Thus far, this has not been an issue in the forefront of negotiations for the sale of WBD, but we should keep it in mind as we seek the odds for this acquisition moving in one direction or the other.

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