Time Warner, Come Clean with Your Investors

Warner of the Time Warner empire (TWX) delivered what many believe to be the death blow when it announced that starting this summer DVD's will be released in the Blu-ray format. Obviously very good news for Sony (SNE), and not so good news for Toshiba (TOSBF.PK). This is meant to bring to an end the format confusion of the market place.

Matt Hartley reported in a Report on Business article that unnamed industry analysts were speculating that Warner had been offered huge amounts of cash. Toshiba, it was rumored offered $100 million, while Sony offered $400 million; which seems like the better deal. The article did go on to say that Warner declined to comment on whether it was offered money to pick sides.

Why can't Time Warner investors know if they have been able to leverage their commanding position in the DVD market? If this is a one time payment, the $100 million represents 10% of the last quarterly reported income. If it's substantially more cash, then even more reason for the investor to know.

Time Warner needs to come clean with its own investors and let them know if wealth has been created.

Comments

[cp21yos:]

This questions was pretty clearly answered at CES wasn't it -
Q. Was there a Warner pay off?
A. Ron (as in Ron Sanders - Warner Home Video) says "I wish". He says any pay off would've been a drop in the bucket so the decision was not related to any payoffs.

See: www.engadget.com/2008/.../

2008 Jan 13 06:06 AM