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will finally get a chance to vote April 23 on the long-planned proposal to separate Lionsgate Studios from Starz.
A special meeting will be held on that date in order to hold the shareholder vote, Lionsgate announced Monday. Shareholders of record as of March 12 will be entitled to cast ballots at the meeting.
After evaluating a range of strategic options, Lionsgate settled on the separation of the Starz business from its film and TV studio in 2023. It has encountered a number of roadblocks on the way to making the split official.
CFO Jimmy Barge last week addressed the delays during an appearance at a Wall Street conference, telling investors the split was still on track to close by the end of April.
“We didn’t know there would be a pandemic, writer strikes and and then, somewhere along the way, we made a fantastic acquisition of eOne,” Barge explained. “So there have been quite a few things. But we are definitely there.”
The process of completing the separation has played out as others in the industry have moved in similar directions, the exec noted. Comcast in particular has made waves by creating a stand-alone company consisting of NBCUniversal cable networks. That spinoff, which is aiming to result in a new publicly traded entity by the end of 2025, will relieve the main company’s balance sheet of declining linear assets and offer potential strategic opportunities. Facing similar headwinds in its traditional networks business, Warner Bros. Discovery restructured itself earlier this year in order to create separation between its linear TV holdings and its other assets.
“You’re seeing a lot of people in the industry starting to segregate out their their linear business,” Barge said. “The good news is we don’t really have a linear business. We have Starz, which is premium and digital-first.” Digital accounted for 70% of total revenue in the most recent fiscal year, Barge noted.
Lionsgate owns almost 88% of Lionsgate Studios shares.
