Warner Bros. DiscoveryWBD
$70.9B market capOwns Warner Bros., HBO and Max, CNN and Discovery, carrying heavy debt from the merger.
Warner Bros. Discovery in 36 checks
Warner Bros. Discovery at a glance: how it scores on value, growth, quality, health, shareholder returns and trend. The fuller the shape, the stronger the company. Behind each axis are six pass-or-fail checks from its filings, spelled out in the chapters below. Point at an axis to see them.
The business itself is the question here - 12 of 36 checks passed.
Value
What you pay today for what the business produces, measured against WBD's own history and its peers, never a universal rule.
Fairly priced on some measures, rich on others - sales multiple above its own long-run norm (judged on sales - not yet profitable).
Warner Bros. Discovery isn't profitable yet - so is the price high compared to its sales?
→At 2.0x sales, the market is paying +94% more than WBD's own 6-year median of 1.0x. Expectations are elevated, so more has to go right to justify the price. Today's multiple is the highest in the charted history.
What has the market paid for WBD over the years?
→At 2.0x sales, the market is paying +94% more than WBD's own 6-year median of 1.0x. Expectations are elevated, so more has to go right to justify the price. Today's multiple is the lowest in the charted history.
What cash return does the business throw off per dollar of market value?
3.1%FCF yield today
◌ 2026 = at the latest close (2026-09-04), over the trailing twelve months; earlier years are annual averages
→At 3.1%, you get less cash per dollar of market value than the 6-year median of 14.6% - the market is charging more for the same cash.
What does “Value” actually mean?
Value asks what you pay for each dollar of earnings, sales or cash the business produces. A high multiple isn't automatically bad - fast growers earn theirs - but a price far above the company's own history means the market expects a lot to go right. We compare each multiple to the company's own past and to its sector, never to a universal rule.
How we scored it · 3 of 6 checks passed
| – | Cheaper than its own history (sales - not yet profitable) | under 3 years of history |
| ✓ | Cheaper than its peers (sales) | 1.96 vs 2.50 (peer median) |
| ✓ | Cheap on enterprise value vs sales | 2.80 vs 3.00 (peer median) |
| ✓ | Free cash flow yield above 3% | 3.1% vs 3.0% |
| ✕ | Cheap on enterprise value | 26.58 vs 14.00 (peer median) |
| ✕ | Price isn't outrunning growth | no positive three-year earnings growth behind the price |
Growth
What the company has actually reported - is it selling more, and is more of it becoming profit?
Growth is weak or inconsistent - the trend, not the story, is the problem.
Revenue: is the business selling more than it used to?
◌ 2026 = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter, not a full fiscal year
→Revenue reached $37.3B in 2025, compounding +3% a year since 2022 though the pace has cooled. The trailing twelve months are already running at $36.1B, behind the last full year.
Net income: how much of that revenue becomes profit?
◌ 2026 = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter, not a full fiscal year
→Net income was $727M in 2025, against $-11.3B the year before. Earnings per share moved -512% over the last twelve months. Trailing twelve-month profit stands at $-3.2B.
How fast is it growing, year by year?
-5%revenue growth, FY 2025
Shown separately because they would flatten the axis: 2019 earnings +248% · 2022 earnings -833% - rebounds off a collapsed prior year.
→Revenue grew -5% in 2025. Each point is one year's change against the year before.
What does “Growth” actually mean?
Growth here is what the company has actually reported to the SEC - not a forecast. We look at the last year, the three-year pace, whether growth is speeding up or slowing down, and whether it's been consistent rather than one lucky year. Hatched bars are fourth quarters we derived from annual filings (companies file a full-year 10-K rather than a Q4 report).
How we scored it · 0 of 6 checks passed
| ✕ | Outgrew its sector last year | -6.1% vs 5.2% (sector 70th pct, n=61) |
| ✕ | Sustained growth beats its sector (3 years) | 3.3% vs 5.2% (sector 70th pct, n=57) |
| ✕ | Profits grew last year | -512.4% vs 0.0% |
| ✕ | Profit growth beats its peers | loss-making: TTM net income $-3.2B |
| ✕ | Growth is speeding up, not slowing | 1y -6.1% vs 3y 3.3% |
| ✕ | Grew per share, not just in total | -15.4% vs 0.0% |
Quality
Whether the growth makes real money - margins, returns on capital, and whether profits turn into cash.
Profitability is thin or negative - the growth isn't turning into money yet.
Margins: of every $1 of sales, how much survives each cost layer?
◌ 2026 = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter (2026-06-30), not a full fiscal year
→Operating margin widened 24 points to 2% since 2022. After everything, 2 cents of each sales dollar reaches net profit. WBD doesn't tag a gross-profit line in its filings, so the chart starts at operating margin.
Earnings quality: do the reported profits turn into real cash?
◌ 2026 = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter (2026-06-30), not a full fiscal year
→The company generated $4.3B of operating cash in 2025. With no profit to compare against, cash generation is the number that matters here.
What does it earn on the money it uses?
◌ 2026 = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter (2026-06-30), not a full fiscal year
→ROE of 2% but ROCE of only 1% - a chunk of those shareholder returns is manufactured with leverage, not operations.
How much of every sales dollar ends up as free cash?
◌ 2026 = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter, not a full fiscal year
→8 cents of every sales dollar became free cash in 2025, and it has held steady since 2022 - its weakest conversion on record.
What does staying competitive cost, per dollar of sales?
◌ 2026 = trailing twelve months to the latest filed quarter (2026-06-30), not a full fiscal year
→The biggest claim on each sales dollar is capital spending, at 3% of revenue (stock compensation 2%).
When sales grow, do profits grow faster?
→Operating profit outgrew revenue in only 2 of the last 5 years. Costs are growing roughly in step with the business, so scale isn't yet paying for itself.
Does WBD earn more on its capital than that capital costs?
→WBD earns 0.8% on the capital it employs, below the 10% most investors treat as the cost of capital.
What does “Quality” actually mean?
Quality asks whether the growth makes real money. Margins show how much of each sale survives costs; return on equity shows what shareholders earn on their capital; and the profit-to-cash comparison catches companies whose accounting profits never turn into actual cash.
How we scored it · 2 of 6 checks passed
| ✓ | Better gross margins than peers | 89.7% vs 52.5% (market 70th pct) |
| ✕ | Runs leaner than peers (operating margin) | -3.5% vs 13.8% (sector 70th pct, n=62) |
| ✕ | Actually profitable | TTM net income $-3.2B |
| ✕ | Earns well on shareholders' money | -9.6% vs 11.1% (sector 70th pct, n=53) |
| ✕ | Earns a real return on the capital it employs | -1.6% vs 10.0% |
| ✓ | Generates cash despite the loss | TTM operating cash flow $3.4B on a net loss of $3.2B |
Health
The balance sheet stress test: could WBD survive a bad year?
The balance sheet carries real risk - read the checks before anything else.
Could it handle its debt if things went wrong?
→Debt of $33.5B sits against $3.4B of cash, or 1.0x shareholders' equity. Earnings don't currently cover the interest bill at all.
Is the company's own capital growing or shrinking?
→The company's own capital shrank from $45.2B in 2023 to $32.8B (-27%). Buybacks or losses are drawing the buffer down - the distinction matters.
What does “Health” actually mean?
Health asks one question: can the business survive a bad year? We check whether near-term bills are covered, whether debt is modest and shrinking, whether earnings comfortably pay the interest, and - for loss-makers - how many years of cash are left at the current burn rate.
How we scored it · 2 of 6 checks passed
| ✕ | Comfortable near-term liquidity | 0.78 vs 1.50 |
| ✕ | Debt isn't dominating | 1.02 vs 1.00 |
| ✓ | Debt trending the right way | debt/equity 1.02 now vs 1.27 five years ago |
| ✕ | Earnings cover the interest | -0.57 vs 5.00 |
| ✕ | Converts sales to cash better than its sector | 9.5% vs 23.1% (sector 70th pct, n=64) |
| ✓ | Self-funding | TTM free cash flow $2.2B |
Shareholder returns
How much cash actually flows back to owners - dividends, buybacks, whether the share count truly falls, and whether what is handed back is affordable.
WBD returns nothing to owners yet, and the share count keeps rising - every dollar stays in the business.
How much goes back to shareholders - and how much leaks out as stock compensation?
→Stock compensation ($769M) flows out with nothing returned - the dilution is winning.
How fast is your ownership being diluted - or concentrated?
→3.3% more shares last year - your stake was diluted by that much.
WBD has issued or retired shares - did shareholders end up better off?
Both lines start at 100 in 2011, so the gap between them is what each share gained or lost. Share counts are split-adjusted.
→WBD's share count rose +350% from 2007 to 2025 while revenue per share grew +186%. Holders are further ahead than before, though the gain per share is smaller than the growth in the business.
Why compare buybacks with stock compensation?
A company can trumpet billions in buybacks while quietly issuing nearly as much stock to employees. What matters to you is the net effect: is the share count actually falling? If not, the 'return' is mostly recycling.
How we scored it · 0 of 6 checks passed
| ✕ | Share count isn't climbing | shares up 30.4% over 3 years |
| ✕ | Buybacks outpace the stock issued to staff | no buybacks against $813M of stock compensation |
| ✕ | Hands cash back to owners | no dividends and no buybacks in the last twelve months |
| ✕ | Meaningful yield to owners (dividends and buybacks) | 0.00 returned, 0.0% of market value |
| ✕ | Buybacks are sustained, not one-off | 0.00 bought back in the last twelve months, $953M the year before; no dividend |
| ✕ | Buybacks growing | 0.00 vs $953M the year before; no dividend |
Trend analysis
What the market is doing about all of the above. This is price behaviour, not a fact about the business - read it as the market's current opinion, scored on six checks like every other chapter. The market is the S&P 500, measured by the SPY ETF with dividends included, over 3 months (63 trading sessions) and 12 months (252).
The market agrees: the stock is in a healthy uptrend on every horizon.
How is WBD's trend actually behaving right now?
Chart by TradingView
→WBD is in a clear uptrend. The price is above the band where recent trading settled, and that band is still rising underneath it, so the floor keeps moving up. The last two weeks are running ahead of the last month and the price is above where it stood a month ago, so the shorter-term readings back the trend up. The band drawn for the coming weeks turns upward partway through, so the support beneath the price should firm up from there. The band is unusually narrow at the moment, which makes it easy to cross in either direction.
How the trend above is worked out
The trend read comes from the daily Ichimoku picture, a standard trend indicator, translated out of its jargon. It builds a band from the midpoints of the last 9, 26 and 52 sessions' highs and lows - in effect, the range where recent trading has settled - and draws that band 26 sessions into the future. Price above the band is an uptrend, below it a downtrend, inside it no trend. Because the band is drawn forward, the support for the next few weeks is already fixed and a change of its direction can be seen coming. We also compare the last two weeks against the last month, and today's price against where it stood a month ago. None of this says anything about the business; it describes the price only, and it is not advice. Where a check says 'the S&P 500', the comparison is with the SPY ETF including dividends, on the same adjusted basis as the stock's own price: short means 3 months, 63 trading sessions; long means 12 months, 252.
How we scored it · 5 of 6 checks passed
| ✓ | Trading above its cloud | 1.00 vs 0.50 |
| ✕ | Long-term trend structure is healthy | 27.10 vs 27.29 |
| ✓ | Rising over 3 months | 7.7% vs 0.0% |
| ✓ | Beating the S&P 500 over 3 months | 7.7% vs 4.7% |
| ✓ | Beating the S&P 500 over 12 months | 140.0% vs 20.0% |
| ✓ | Not in a deep hole | -5.8% from its 52-week high |
Insider activity
What the people running the company do with their own shares - reported to the SEC within two days, classified so pay-plumbing doesn't masquerade as conviction.
Are the people running it buying or selling with their own money?
→No open-market buying, and $160M of selling across 5 months. Selling alone is a weak signal - much of it is pre-scheduled - but the absence of buying tells you no insider saw the price as a bargain.
Who did what, exactly?
| Date | Insider | Role | Type | Shares | Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-09-03 | Kenneth W Lowe | Director | SELL | 200,000 | $6M |
| 2026-08-27 | Jean-Briac Perrette | Pres.&CEO, Global Streaming | SELL | 126,707 | $4M |
| 2026-08-14 | David Zaslav | Chief Executive Officer & Pres | exercise | 194,999 | $2M |
| 2026-08-14 | David Zaslav | Chief Executive Officer & Pres | SELL | 194,999 | $5M |
| 2026-08-13 | David Zaslav | Chief Executive Officer & Pres | SELL | 94,906 | $3M |
| 2026-08-13 | David Zaslav | Chief Executive Officer & Pres | exercise | 678,267 | $7M |
| 2026-08-13 | David Zaslav | Chief Executive Officer & Pres | SELL | 678,267 | $19M |
| 2026-08-13 | Fazal F Merchant | Director | SELL | 71,539 | $2M |
| 2026-08-12 | Richard W Fisher | Director | SELL | 20,000 | $549,200 |
| 2026-08-11 | Kenneth W Lowe | Director | SELL | 120,000 | $3M |
Why do the transaction types matter so much?
Most insider filings are not trades: stock grants, option exercises and tax withholding are how executives get paid, and gifts are estate planning. The signal lives in open-market transactions - a buy means an insider chose to spend their own cash on the stock. Sells are murkier: many are pre-scheduled 10b5-1 plans set months in advance. That's why the chart counts only open-market activity, and the table labels every row.