Paramount opens high-grade bond sale to help fund Warner Bros. Discovery deal

The sale adds a high-grade tranche to the $44.4 billion debt offering Paramount launched a day earlier

Paramount has launched a sale of high-grade bonds tied to its acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. The offering builds on a $44.4 billion debt sale the company launched Monday to help fund the deal.

Proceeds from that broader offering are meant to sit alongside cash on hand, term loans and previously announced equity financing to pay for the acquisition and repay existing debt. As of Monday morning, the junk-bond portion of that sale, worth $12.4 billion equivalent, had drawn more than $23 billion in orders, Bloomberg reported, with yields offered as high as about 9%. Price talk on the 10-year dollar notes was in the low 9% area, Bloomberg reported via Yahoo Finance. Paramount is aiming to price all the bonds and loans tied to the financing by Wednesday, October 1, Bloomberg reported via The Edge Malaysia.

In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Paramount said the closing date for the acquisition remains uncertain and that the merger will only go through once conditions in the Warner Bros. Discovery merger agreement are satisfied or waived, Deadline reported. The filing set October 7 as a marker date for the offering, according to Deadline. A federal judge's decision remains the last hurdle to closing, Deadline reported.

The bond sale is the mechanical follow-through on financing that was already flagged as pending once antitrust settlements cleared the main regulatory obstacle to the deal. Completion of the notes sale is not a condition to closing, so today's launch reduces funding uncertainty only at the margin. It does not amount to new information about whether the deal will close, since that probability was already priced in after the settlements and financing plan were disclosed. The sale is the deal proceeding as expected, not a new catalyst.