Warner Bros Discovery expects up to $1.6 billion charge on scrapped content

KEY POINTS

• Media company Warner Bros Discovery on Monday said it was expecting to book a pre-tax charge of $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion in the third quarter, mainly related to content pulled from the streaming service HBO Max, such as "The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo."
• AT&T's WarnerMedia unit and Discovery completed their merger in April to form Warner Bros Discovery.

Celal Gunes | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Media company Warner Bros Discovery on Monday said it was expecting to book a pre-tax charge of $1.3 billion to $1.6 billion in the third quarter, mainly related to content pulled from the streaming service HBO Max, such as "The Not-Too-Late Show with Elmo."

AT&T's WarnerMedia unit and Discovery completed their merger in April to form Warner Bros Discovery.

Following the merger, the company has been taking a series of cost-cutting measures as part of its streaming overhaul and expects the restructuring efforts to be substantially completed by the end of 2024.

In its latest quarterly report in August, the company had laid out a new strategy to merge the HBO Max streaming service with Discovery+, combining WarnerMedia's dramas, comedies and movies with Discovery's reality shows.

Shares of the company were down 0.3% in after-market trading.