Viacom18
Sale comes after Reliance and Disney’s $8.5 billion deal to merge TV and streaming property in India
Paramount International has offered its 13% possession stake in Indian TV and streaming corporate Viacom18 to Reliance Industries for $517 million. Reliance used to be already the bulk proprietor of Viacom18.
The pact comes two weeks after Disney and Reliance Industries introduced a blockbuster $8.5 billion deal merging their huge Indian TV and streaming companies. As a part of that settlement, Reliance’s Viacom18 is merging with Disney’s Megastar India.
On March 13, Paramount International entered an settlement with Reliance Industries to promote Paramount’s whole 13.01% fairness pastime in Viacom18 for the identical to roughly $517 million in keeping with the present foreign currencies charge, in keeping with a submitting with the SEC on Wednesday.
Bodhi Tree, an organization managed via former Disney India chair Uday Shankar and James Murdoch, owns 15.97% of Viacom18.
Viacom18 calls itself “one in every of India’s quickest rising leisure networks.” The industry features a portfolio of 38 channels throughout common leisure, motion pictures, sports activities, adolescence, track and youngsters genres. JioCinema, Viacom18’s streaming platform, is amongst India’s best streaming services and products, whilst Viacom18 Studios has produced and disbursed Hindi movies and regional movies for greater than 13 years in India.
For Paramount International, the sale of its pastime in Viacom18 is a part of its efforts to strengthen its stability sheet. The media corporate ended 2023 with long-term debt of $14.6 billion, down from $15.6 billion a yr prior. In August 2023, Paramount International introduced a deal to promote the Simon & Schuster publishing industry to funding massive KKR for $1.62 billion in money. “[W]e’re extremely keen on proceeding to cut back stability sheet leverage,” Paramount International CFO Naveen Chopra stated at the corporate’s Feb. 28 profits name.
The ultimate of Paramount International’s sale of the Viacom18 stake is topic to positive normal prerequisites, together with receipt of appropriate regulatory approvals, in addition to the of completion of the prior to now introduced three way partnership involving Reliance, Viacom18 and Megastar Disney. After the ultimate, Paramount will proceed to license its content material to Viacom18, in keeping with the submitting.
