I don’t keep track of oracle stock but just glancing at it it looks like there was a rapid spike before the drop, like quite a bit larger than the market overall? And then it dropped back to previous level. So they effectively missed out on some growth over that period but the -50% isn’t as dramatic in context.
The media mergers happening now are a pure survival play. Margins are collapsing, ad rates are collapsing, audiences are fragmented. Every media company is trying to scale up to survive terrible market conditions.
Reducing audience fragmentation and being able to negotiate better ad rates are the only way to do that. These companies were going to lose all of this money (and more) if they didn't merge. These layoffs are happening regardless.
It's funny because in the tech industry with funding drying up the exact same thing is happening but editorial is so happy to dunk on people they hate that they're too dumb to see the obvious.
The source for the headline, Variety, says “Paramount Skydance (PSKY) on Nasdaq, Warner Bros. Discovery had a market capitalization of $77.7 billion and Paramount was around $11 billion. Today, Skydance has a market cap of under $40 billion — less than half the predecessor companies’ combined value” [1].
Of course it does. It has a bunch of debt. The correct metric is enterprise value [2].
11 comments
[ 8.3 ms ] story [ 38.7 ms ] threadThe media mergers happening now are a pure survival play. Margins are collapsing, ad rates are collapsing, audiences are fragmented. Every media company is trying to scale up to survive terrible market conditions.
Reducing audience fragmentation and being able to negotiate better ad rates are the only way to do that. These companies were going to lose all of this money (and more) if they didn't merge. These layoffs are happening regardless.
It's funny because in the tech industry with funding drying up the exact same thing is happening but editorial is so happy to dunk on people they hate that they're too dumb to see the obvious.
M&A accelerates in a down market. QED.
The source for the headline, Variety, says “Paramount Skydance (PSKY) on Nasdaq, Warner Bros. Discovery had a market capitalization of $77.7 billion and Paramount was around $11 billion. Today, Skydance has a market cap of under $40 billion — less than half the predecessor companies’ combined value” [1].
Of course it does. It has a bunch of debt. The correct metric is enterprise value [2].
[1] https://variety.com/2026/film/news/skydance-market-cap-less-...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_value