Warner Bros Discovery said to increase loan plans for second time

Investing.com -- Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. increased its loan sale for a second time on Tuesday, enabling the media company to fully replace $15 billion of short-term financing ahead of its planned acquisition by Paramount Skydance Corp.

A JPMorgan Chase & Co.-led bank group raised the loan from approximately $10 billion, according to a Bloomberg report Tuesday. The offering was already increased last week due to strong demand for credit.

The dollar portion is expected to reach between $12.5 billion and $13.75 billion, while the €1 billion ($1.16 billion) tranche may potentially expand to €2 billion, the report said.

Warner Bros. is seeking to refinance short-term debt before the takeover. The increased size means all of the bridge loan would be replaced, the report added.

Investors have an opportunity to purchase the new loans at a discounted rate of 99 cents, which would allow them to make a profit if the sale to Paramount proceeds, as loans are typically repaid at par when ownership of a business changes. Commitments for both tranches are due on Wednesday, the report said.

The financing comes ahead of the $110 billion consolidation of two major Hollywood media companies. Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. are preparing to sell approximately $50 billion of debt to support the acquisition, in what is expected to be a major offering of the year.

The debt package may include around $30 billion of investment-grade bonds, approximately $12 billion of high-yield bonds, and $7.5 billion of loans, and may be sold to investors within the next couple of weeks, Bloomberg previously reported.

You May Also Be Interested In

• Tesla Crash Into Texas Home Now Under Federal Safety Probe - WSJ
• FAA awards ASI $875 million contract to overhaul flight scheduling
• Groq raises $650m to expand AI inference cloud operations