“Comcast is very much interested in M&A dealmaking, but it still has a “high bar” for potential acquisitions, co-CEO Mike Cavanagh told Wall Street analysts Thursday. Cavanagh was asked about reports that Comcast may be interested in pursuing Warner Bros. Discovery, and whether Comcast would be able to get a deal through given the current”, — write: www.hollywoodreporter.com
Cavanagh was asked about reports that Comcast may be interested in pursuing Warner Bros. Discovery, and whether Comcast would be able to get a deal through given the current regulatory regime. The executive noted the looming Versant spinoff, and that with NBC, theme parks and Peacock left as the media assets, that is the rubric through which they would examine any deals.
With Versant set up “to pursue strategies that didn’t fit inside the new NBC media business,” any deals would need to plug into what the company is keeping. He also suggested that Comcast is not as concerned about regulatory issues as some observers are.
“You can expect that any view we would have about other media assets that could be complementary to our existing media business would be of the same sort. So in this case, it would be streaming assets and studio assets, since there’s no other parks assets out there,” Cavanagh said. “So I think in light of that, what we’d be looking for and what we’re going to look like post-divest and spin, I think more things are viable than maybe some of the public commentary that’s out there.”
The comments certainly suggest that Comcast would be interested in WBD’s streaming and studios business if it follows through with its own split, a move that would likely impact Paramount’s ongoing efforts to cut a deal with WBD for the entire company.
Cavanagh noted, however, that the company won’t be doing deals for deals-sake.
“The bar is very high for us to pursue any M&A transactions, given how strongly we feel about the businesses we have, the strategies we’re pursuing and the opportunities we have ahead of us. So that continues to be an important anchor point for how we think about things,” Cavanagh said. “You should expect us to look at things that are trading in our in the space around our industry, it’s our job to try to figure out if there’s ways to add value. But I would point out that with the Versant spin, we’ve set the NBC media business up, pairing Peacock on the streaming side with with NBC broadcast. You’ve seen lots of news lately about us attracting the NBA, Taylor, Sheridan and the like, over the long term, and you put that business alongside, you know, one of the finest studio businesses in the industry, and our parks business, and I think the strategies we have are really sound and durable without M&A.”