Warner Bros. Discovery is cutting its profit expectations for the year, saying it will likely incur costs as high as $500 million tied to the ongoing Hollywood writers' and actors' strike.
Warner Bros. Discovery owns HBO and Max, CNN, TNT and a host of other entertainment outlets, including DC Comics.
The company said in a regulatory filing that it now expects 2023 adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization to be between $10.5 billion to $11 billion, down from $11 billion to $11.5 billion.
“While (Warner Bros. Discovery) is hopeful that these strikes will be resolved soon, it cannot predict when the strikes will ultimately end. With both guilds still on strike today, the company now assumes the financial impact to (Warner Bros. Discovery) of these strikes will persist through the end of 2023,” the company stated.
Wall Street is shaky Thursday as investors consider both the upsides and downsides of the latest signals that the U.S. economy remains in much better shape than feared.
Threatened by possible shortages of lithium for electric car batteries, automakers are racing to lock in supplies of the once-obscure “white gold” in a politically and environmentally fraught competition from China to Nevada to Chile.
The number of different electronic cigarette devices sold in the U.S. has nearly tripled to over 9,000 since 2020, driven almost entirely by a wave of unauthorized disposable vapes from China, according to tightly controlled sales data obtained by The Associated Press.