Warner Bros. Discovery to take up to $4.3B in restructuring charges
Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ:WBD) is estimating that it will take on some $3.2B-$4.3B in pretax charges tied to restructuring its businesses.
In an SEC filing, the company says about $1.3B-$1.6B of those charges are coming in its third quarter.
That's tied to reviews coming out of April's merger of WarnerMedia with Discovery to create the company.
"As part of its plan to achieve significant cost synergies, in Q3 2022, the Company finalized the framework supporting its ongoing restructuring and transformation initiatives which will include, among other things, strategic content programming assessments, organization restructuring, facility consolidation activities and other contract termination costs," the company says.
Specifically, it's planning on $2B-$2.5B in "Strategic content programming assessments, leading to content impairment and development write-offs"; $800M-$1B in "Organization restructuring costs, including severance, retention, relocation, and other related costs"; and $400M-$700M in "Facility consolidation activities and other contract termination costs."
Of those amounts, cash expenditures will be in the range of $1B-$1.5B, it says. About $1B in pretax restructuring charges came in Q2.
The company intends to treat the charges as affecting comparability of results.