Elon Musk Races to Secure Financing for Twitter Bid – Morgan Stanley, the investment bank working with Mr. Musk on the potential deal, has been calling banks and other potential investors to shore up financing for the offer, four people with knowledge of the situation said. Mr. Musk is first focused on raising debt and has not yet begun to seek equity financing for his bid, one of the people said.
Mr. Musk is evaluating various packages of debt, including more senior debt known as preferred debt and a loan against his shares of Tesla, the electric carmaker that he runs, two of the people said. Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm, is among the parties considering offering debt financing in a bid for Twitter. The equity he needs is likely to be sizable. [NY Times]
Netflix Stock Dives by 25% in After Hours Trading After Subscriber Losses – Netflix on Tuesday reported a loss of 200,000 subscribers during the first quarter — its first decline in paid users in more than a decade — and warned of deepening trouble ahead.
The company’s shares cratered more than 25% in extended hours after the report on more than a full day’s worth of trading volume. Fellow streaming stocks Roku, Spotify and Disney also tumbled in the after-hours market after Netflix’s brutal update.
Netflix is forecasting a global paid subscriber loss of 2 million for the second quarter. The last time Netflix lost subscribers was October 2011. [CNBC]
News Corp Will Help Launch Online Sports-Betting Company in Australia – News Corp is entering the sports-betting market, joining a consortium to launch an online wagering brand in Australia, according to people familiar with the matter.
The consortium is joining a competitive field in one of the most mature sports-betting markets in the world. The company has a current working title of BetR, according to one of the people. [Wall Street Journal]
Elon Musk Criticizes Netflix – Musk tweeted Tuesday that “The woke mind virus is making Netflix unwatchable”. This was in response to a Slashdot story on the streamers’ subscriber loss.
The Tesla CEO also tweeted “Can they please just make sci-fi/fantasy at least *mostly* about sci-fi/fantasy?”.
Warner Bros. Discovery has suspended all external marketing spend for CNN+ and has laid off CNN’s longtime chief financial officer as it weighs what to do with the subscription streaming service moving forward, five sources tell Axios.
Discovery executives are frustrated that the service launched. If CNN held off launching CNN+ until after the merger, it would have been easier to pivot the company’s efforts towards something better aligned with Discovery’s goals. [Axios]
Paramount shares behind the scenes training footage from Top Gun: Maverick – The Tom Cruise film debuts in theaters May 27.
Jerry West demands retraction of his ‘cruel’ portrayal in ‘Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty’ – NBA icon and Los Angeles Lakers legend Jerry West is declaring the depiction of his character in HBO’s “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty” to be “cruel” and “deliberately false,” and is demanding a retraction within two weeks from today.
“The portrayal of…West…is fiction pretending to be fact — a deliberately false characterization that has caused great distress to Jerry and his family,” Skip Miller, West’s attorney, said in a statement. “Contrary to the baseless portrayal in the HBO series, Jerry had nothing but love for and harmony with the Lakers organization, and in particular owner Dr. Jerry Buss, during an era in which he assembled one of the greatest teams in NBA history.” [LA Times]
