Lionsgate and Starz are set to begin trading as standalone companies today after the Supreme Court of British Columbia approved their full separation.Lionsgate is expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol LION today, while the newly renamed Starz Entertainment will be listed on the Nasdaq as STRZ.It comes after Lionsgate shareholders last month voted overwhelmingly in favour of the full separation of the US company’s studio business from Starz.The split has been in the pipeline for around three years and has faced delays on several occasions for differing reasons, including Lionsgate purchasing Entertainment One and the US actors and writers strikes in 2023.The full separation comes around a year after Lionsgate created Lionsgate Studios via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, Screaming Eagle Acquisition Corp.The split will allow investors to individually value each of the assets, and, crucially, also sets the company up for future M&A moves. Whether Lionsgate is a buyer or seller over the next couple of years remains to be seen, though it has been widely speculated that Lionsgate Studios, whose portfolio includes The Hunger Games, The Twilight Saga, John Wick and the US version of Ghosts, will become an acquisition target.Lionsgate Studios consists of Lionsgate’s television studio, feature film group, its 20,000-title film and TV library and talent management firm 3 Arts, while Starz Entertainment includes the Starz pay TV network and streaming service.Lionsgate is not alone in making moves to reorganise its business in a way that it hopes will give more options to create shareholder value now and in the future.Both Warner Bros Discovery and Comcast are executing not-altogether-dissimilar moves, with the former recently reorganising into two main divisions (one for networks and the other for studios and streaming), while Comcast is in the midst of spinning off seven of its cable networks, and other assets, into a separate publicly traded company.
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