Netflix: The great escape
“Marry in haste, repent at leisure” is the credo of conjugal sceptics the world over, and it may well apply for shareholders of Paramount Skydance after its $111bn offer for Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) finally persuaded Netflix to abandon its pursuit of the 103-year-old not-so-blushing bride.
The market clearly thought Netflix had the luckiest escape since Hugh Grant avoided the clutches of Duckface in Four Weddings and a Funeral; its share price was up 13.8% as it walked away with a $2.8bn break fee.
WBD CEO David Zaslav has played a blinder throughout the bidding war, shepherding Paramount’s initial bid of $19 a share all the way up to $31, and persuading Paramount CEO David Ellison to get his very own Daddy Warbucks, Larry Ellison, to backstop the financing and whisper sweet nothings into the ear of his close chum Donald Trump to clear any pesky regulatory issues. Zaslav is estimated to be in line to trouser a healthy $700m from the deal, and it’s now up to Paramount to handle the debt burden and make it work.
Netflix, meanwhile, walks away from what it described as a “nice-to-have-at-the-right-price” but not a “must-have-at-any-price”, with plenty of powder left to keep on growing its core business. Since 2020 its subscriber numbers are up by almost two-thirds, and it deserves a pat on the back for refusing to succumb to deal fever, especially since Taylor Sheridan, the architect of many of Paramount+’s blockbuster hits, has done a bunk and is moving to NBCUniversal.
Beyond Meat: Where’s the beef?
It’s been a lengthy tale of woe for the fake-meat industry since the heady days of 2019, when Beyond Meat listed at a market capitalisation of about $4bn.
By the summer of 2021 its share price had peaked at a sliver over $150 before it started its vertiginous descent to its current position just below the $1 mark. In the immortal words of the waiter who delivered champagne to George Best’s hotel room, where he was entertaining a partly clad Miss World on a bed covered in his casino winnings: “Where did it all go wrong?”
First there’s the product itself. While there are devotees who claim to enjoy the cooked version, the aroma that emerges from the packet when you crack it open suggests that this is something that comes from a galaxy far, far away.
The idea that it might be healthier than the real thing has been kiboshed by its classification as an ultra-processed food due to its encyclopaedic ingredient list, and farming subsidies in the US mean that it remains stubbornly more expensive than the real thing.
Culturally it’s tricky to compete with a health secretary like Robert F Kennedy Jr, who may not enjoy a juicy vaccine but is happy to endorse a slogan such as “Eat Real Steak”.
It’s hard to imagine anybody summoning up the energy to storm the Capitol on a vegan patty, and a hard day of deporting anybody who looks like they might potentially be an immigrant demands a slab of Texas’s finest. Fewer than one in 10 US adults admit to dabbling with the fake stuff, even behind closed doors.
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