Skydance closes the Warner deal and starts trading as SKYD with about $80 billion of debt

Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery became one company on Tuesday. The combined firm is called Skydance Corp. David Ellison is chairman and chief executive. Variety valued the transaction at 111 billion dollars including the Warner debt Skydance is taking on. TechCrunch reported the acquisition figure as 110 billion. Warner shareholders received 31.01666668 dollars in cash for each share. Warner Bros. Discovery stopped trading on Nasdaq. Skydance Class B shares begin on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SKYD.

The company said the merged business will have annual revenue of nearly 70 billion dollars. Variety reported that it will also carry about 80 billion dollars of net debt. That pairing, a 70 billion revenue line and an 80 billion debt stock, is the number that will govern the first year more than the library titles. Interest on that debt has to be paid before any savings from putting Paramount+ and HBO Max under one roof show up in cash.

The assets now in one set of accounts are unusually wide. Television networks include CBS, CNN, Comedy Central, MTV, TBS and Food Network. The streaming services are Paramount+ and HBO Max. Film and series franchises cited by the company and by TechCrunch include The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, the DC universe and Yellowstone. Ellison said in a statement that the day was historic "not just for Skydance but for our entire industry", and that the aim had been a stronger competitor "with the talent, resources, and reach to tell great stories in every genre, on every platform". He said the focus now was building a company that "empowers creatives, entertains audiences and rewards shareholders".

The close comes a little more than a year after Paramount Skydance, itself the product of Ellison's 2025 purchase of Paramount Global, opened the bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. The Ellison family is the largest shareholder. Larry Ellison, David's father and the co-founder of Oracle, is the fortune behind that stake. The regulatory path ran through US competition review and a shareholder vote on the cash price. The odd cents in the cash figure, 31.01666668 dollars, are the kind of number that comes out of a formula rather than a round negotiation. It is the figure Warner holders actually receive.

What the close does not settle is the cost of carrying CNN, a broadcast network and two streaming apps while servicing 80 billion dollars of debt. Ellison's statement lists creatives, audiences and shareholders in one sentence. The debt schedule will rank those claims. SKYD's first sessions on the NYSE will show how equity investors price a studio library against that interest bill. Until the company publishes a pro forma interest expense and a timeline for any streaming combination, the public facts are the ones filed on Tuesday: a new name, a cash price of 31.01666668 dollars, revenue near 70 billion, and net debt near 80 billion.