The following is excerpted from the question-and-answer section of the transcript.
(Questions from industry analysts are provided in full, but answers are omitted - download the transcript to see the full question-and-answer session)
Question: John Hodulik - UBS AG - Analyst
: Obviously, Warner Brothers is a significant deal for you guys and for and for the media industry. Help us understand the
rationale for the transaction and the benefits to both members and shareholders of the combination.
Unidentified Company Representative
Yeah, one, we recognize that this is unexpected. We haven't done this before, so maybe just walk you through a little bit of
how we think this creates value and sort of also how we get to there and think about how, what's the executability of all the
theories that we built into the case and so we've broken it down essentially into three phases and it's worth noting that Phase
I is essentially between now and close and Phase I , our job is to continue to grow our business.
We've got a tremendous opportunity for organic growth that we still are very excited about, and our job is essentially to execute
against that. We think that that's relatively low risk. We know how to go do that. By the way, Warner Brothers will be doing the
same in parallel as well.
And then you get into the close period and we see essentially this is where we saw two really big centers of value. That we
believe are highly executable, and we can implement in this phase. The first part is there's a bunch of titles, that the Warner
teams have that we think that there's more value to unlock in, and we think we have exactly the platform to go do that.
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DECEMBER 08, 2025 / 7:15PM, NEE.N - Nextera Energy Inc at UBS Global Media and Communications
Conference
We've got incredible reach. We've got a project experience that maximizes the value and. Content this is the business that
we are in essentially we are constantly in the business of evaluating various different licensing opportunities for titles and then
trying to figure out how do we maximize the value of that asset on our platform so again that's something we do day in and
day out and we think is relatively low risk to execute.
The other component is around HBO, the brand and the service, and you know HBO is an incredible brand with an incredible
history. It speaks Prestige TV. We want to double down on that concept and then we think that that gives us an additional
lever, additional tool essentially to think about how do we compose plans and offerings for different consumers that give them.
The right kind of entertainment they want at the right price point and we think that we are in the business of doing that kind
of optimization and you know it sounds like that might be hard to go do but recognize we've just done that we've done that
with our ads plan as an example we've had to think about how do you compose a set of offerings and maximize value for the
business while keeping consumers happy with different offerings so we see that again as you know completely executable.
And we know how to iterate and solve that problem as well and just to be clear that's when we sort of built our evaluation
model and sort of set the price those are the centers of value that we really put into that and so we felt like hey we can go
achieve on these things.
There's a third phase which is where you get into, we've got amazing IP and all sorts of things that we can go deliver on this.
We believe we're, very confident that there's things we're going to unlock that a value there.
We actually don't know exactly what those are, so we didn't give ourselves credit for them in the evaluation models. So I think
we've been appropriately conservative about building, a value where we think we can actually go deliver it. We think we can
deliver more. There's upside in the deal at the end of the day, but we're super. Excited on being able to deliver on those
pieces.
Unidentified Participant
Yeah, and I would just add to that, we're obviously the direct to consumer streaming business which we're deeply committed
to for both companies.
It's the consumers love it. I think it's something that we're quite good at in this transaction we pick up three businesses basically
that we're not currently in, so meaning we have no redundancies currently, but like one of them is a motion picture studio with
a theatrical distribution machine.
And so there's been a lot of speculation what we would do with this, and I think it's really important to note that we haven't
talked at all about what we're going to do with this, but what we are going to do with this is we're deeply committed to releasing
those movies exactly the way they've released those movies today. All three of these new businesses, we want to keep
operating largely as they are.
The theatrical business, we've not, been talked a lot about it in the past about wanting to do it because we've never been in
that business, and when this deal closes, we are in that business. And we're going to do it. So think about it.
If we did this deal 24 months ago, all of those movies we saw this year do so well at the box office for Warner Brothers would
have been released in the same way in theaters. I'm talking about Minecraft. I'm talking about Superman.
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DECEMBER 08, 2025 / 7:15PM, NEE.N - Nextera Energy Inc at UBS Global Media and Communications
Conference
I'm talking about Weapons, all those movies as sinners, these movies will be released on Netflix. Through theaters the way
that Warner Brothers did it before, but with the Warner Brothers operating entity, it's really important the way that they create
and the way that they drive value. We didn't buy this company to destroy that value.
The second one is the television studio who produce and license content to third parties. Also, we were never in that business.
We are now and I think it's an important thing that they are and when we get under the hood that's a really healthy business.
It's not as big as ours and that's why we haven't really focused that much on doing it.
The growth opportunity in our core business has been greater, but now in this transaction we own that business and Channing
and that group did a phenomenal job and we want them to continue to do that phenomenal job.
And then HBO is another example of that, which is, as Greg said, these are, this is a prestige television brand that people
really love, and I would say that they have been doing gymnastics to make themselves into a general entertainment brand.
And I think under this transaction they don't have to do that anymore. We're already a very well established general entertainment
brand, and we want HBO to double down on the things that people have loved for 50 years about HBO, the fact that prestige
television and movies in the various pay TV windows.
These are the things that we're going to keep going in this business, and I think when we looked at the whole deal, you'd see
that their assets work better in our business model and our business model works better with these assets.
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