Lionsgate shareholders approve split of studios business from Starz

Lionsgate Studios is behind hit franchises like John Wick, starring Keanu Reeves

Lionsgate

Lionsgate shareholders have voted overwhelmingly in favour of the full separation of the US company’s studio business and network and streamer Starz.

Approval of the move, which has been in the pipeline for around three years, came during a shareholder meeting on Wednesday.

It is expected that the full separation will be complete by early May, with trading beginning the following day.

Once the separation is complete, Lionsgate Studios will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol LION, while the newly renamed Starz Entertainment will be listed on the NASDAQ as STRZ.

Shareholder approval was one of the final pieces in a manoeuvre that has been delayed 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) and Comcast in the midst of spinning off seven of its cable networks, and other assets, into a separate publicly traded company.