After nearly a year of closing deals, an opportunity has opened up for top Warner Bros. executives. Discovery to sell their shares after the company announced its latest quarterly earnings. Most of those top executives, including CEO David Zaslav, profited, SEC filings show.
On Tuesday, Zaslav filed to sell more than 4 million shares in the company, worth just over $114 million. Other executives, including CFO Gunnar Weidenfels, streaming chief J.B. Perrett, chief revenue and strategy officer Bruce Campbell, and international president Gerhard Zeller, have also filed to sell stock worth millions, according to forms filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday.
The filings indicate that executives will not receive all of the proceeds, as a portion will be retained for tax purposes.
The sales came as WBD has now signed a deal to sell itself in a $111 billion deal to Paramount Skydance, for $31 per share. A year ago, WBD stock was trading at $11 per share. As a major shareholder in the company, Zaslav continues to have a strong incentive to lock in the outcome of the deal and in the company’s performance.
So why sell? WBD has been engaged in a deal-making frenzy since last June, when it announced its plan to split itself into two companies. A few months later, Paramount, led by David Ellison, reached out to inquire about an acquisition. What followed, of course, was a public process that eventually brought Netflix and NBCUniversal into the mix, leading to last week’s shocking turn of events.
Senior executives can only sell shares in short periods of time, after public companies report earnings, to avoid allegations of insider trading. Because of the split announcement in June, and then the hostile sale and bidding process last week, there has been no opportunity for executives to sell yet.
Zaslav is set to receive up to $600 million for his shares in the company (a final figure has not yet been determined in light of Paramount’s excessive bidding for Netflix), while other top executives will receive more than $100 million. Sales this week are just the opening payment before the closing payout.
