Shares of Warner Bros. Discovery tumbled over 4% on Tuesday morning as the Newhouse family revealed they would be selling 100 million of their shares in the media giant for $10.97 apiece, or around $1.1 billion.
The family, which owns Condé Nast and has sizable stakes in Charter Communications and Reddit, agreed to make the sale on June 30, which includes 14,158,459 shares held by Advanced Newhouse Partnership and 85,841,541 shares held by A/NPP Diversified Holdings LLC.
“The Sale is intended to provide financial flexibility to support the Reporting Persons’ ongoing estate planning, its investment program, and for other general corporate purposes,” the family stated in a 13D filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday. “Following this transaction, the Reporting Persons ceased being the beneficial owners of more than 5% of the Issuer’s outstanding shares.”
The Newhouse family were early investors in Discovery Communications and previously held around an 8% stake in WBD following the merger in 2022.
They also had two board members — Steven Newhouse and Steve Miron — though the pair resigned from their roles last year after the U.S. Department of Justice launched a probe into whether their service on the board violated the Clayton Antitrust Act.
Following the sale, the Newhouse family will beneficially own 98,181,749 shares, or a 3.97% stake, per the filing. That puts them under the 5% SEC reporting threshold, which means they will no longer be required to publicly disclose their holdings.
The move comes as Warner Bros. Discovery is preparing to split its global linear networks business and streaming and studios business into two separate, publicly traded companies in 2026.
Global Networks will include CNN, TNT Sports in the U.S., Discovery, top free-to-air channels across Europe, Discovery+ and Bleacher Report (B/R). It will retain a 20% stake in the studios and streaming business to help the company deleverage and is expected to take the majority of WBD’s roughly $37 billion in gross debt.
The Studios & Streaming business will include Warner Bros. Television Group, Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, DC Studios, HBO and HBO Max, Warner Bros. Games, Tours, Retail and Experiences, as well as studio production facilities in Burbank and Leavesden.
Despite Tuesday’s drop, shares of WBD are up 53% in the past year and 2.3% year to date.
