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Toronto, Canada<\/strong>\u00a0 \u2013 WildBrain has signed a definitive agreement to sell its 41% stake in Peanuts Holdings, the holding entity for the Peanuts IP, to Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc. and Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. (together \u201cSony<\/strong>\u201d) for $630 million cash.<\/p>\n The ownership of rights to the Peanuts brand and the management of its business are handled by Peanuts Worldwide LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Peanuts Holdings LLC. The family of Charles M. Schulz, creator of Peanuts, retain their 20% stake in the brand. The transaction is subject to certain closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.<\/p>\n The net proceeds will fully repay WildBrain\u2019s Senior Secured Credit Facility (including all fees), leaving over $40 million cash surplus. These funds, plus annual interest savings and incremental balance sheet capacity, will fuel growth in:<\/p>\n Under the agreement, WildBrain also remains a multi-year partner to Peanuts for key services, including:<\/p>\n Josh Scherba, President and CEO of WildBrain, said: \u201cOver the past several years, we\u2019ve successfully executed a strategy to drive growth for our own and partner entertainment properties, harnessing our capabilities across franchise management and consumer products licensing, content distribution on our premium digital network, and production at our studio. The strength of this platform has been proven by the growth in revenue we\u2019ve driven for Peanuts, achieving a record high for the brand in fiscal 2025. Selling our stake in Peanuts crystallizes the brand\u2019s value, eliminating our debt and providing capital flexibility to reinvest in high-growth, high-margin opportunities, especially for IP that we own outright, such as Strawberry Shortcake, Teletubbies and others in our deep portfolio, such as Degrassi, Inspector Gadget and more.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cSony has been an excellent partner on the Peanuts brand for many years, and we\u2019re confident that Charlie Brown, Snoopy and the gang are in good hands. Since we originally acquired the brand in 2017, we have materially grown its audience through an expansive partnership with Apple TV for new content, including a new feature film currently in production, and also through growing a robust licensing program across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific. We\u2019d like to thank Tim Erickson and the Peanuts Worldwide team, as well as the Schulz family, for their incredible collaboration on these endeavors. We look forward to working with them and the Sony team as valued partners to continue driving global growth for Peanuts in the years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n Transaction History & Returns<\/strong><\/p>\n EBITDA directly attributable to WildBrain\u2019s 41% ownership stake in Peanuts was $27 million in Fiscal 2025. Including certain consolidation benefits, WildBrain\u2019s recognized EBITDA in respect of its 41% ownership stake in Peanuts was $43 million in Fiscal 2025. Interest savings alone are more than double the free cash flow WildBrain earned from its stake in Peanuts over the last 12 months.<\/p>\n Refinement and simplification to focus on high-growth, high-cash generative opportunities<\/strong><\/p>\n Over the past three years WildBrain has demonstrated the power of its platform to drive meaningful growth across the kids\u2019 digital ecosystem, first with Peanuts, and now more recently with Strawberry Shortcake and Teletubbies. WildBrain is leaning into this strong foundation of success to double down on its high growth opportunities driven at scale across its platform. The transaction announced today is expected to provide the Company with the capacity under an optimized capital structure to invest approximately $50 to $100 million in growth opportunities to enhance its strategic platform and drive significant shareholder value.<\/p>\n With a clean balance sheet, the Company\u2019s capital allocation priorities center on long-term value creation, including scaling its wholly owned franchises, expanding its premium digital content network and advertising footprint, investing in emerging technologies to drive innovation and efficiencies, and evaluating opportunities for share buybacks and disciplined bolt-on acquisitions.<\/p>\n Scherba continued: \u201cAt WildBrain, we are building the family entertainment company of the future, propelled by beloved franchises scaled across our unique, integrated platform. In the past year alone, we\u2019ve delivered nearly 200% growth for Strawberry Shortcake and more than 60% for Teletubbies. Our flywheel strategy drives fandom and brand affinity, turning that into high-margin, repeatable profit. We have built a successful, brand-agnostic platform, and I\u2019m confident we can replicate the success of Peanuts to unlock the value of our deep portfolio of IP. Going forward, as we lean into key opportunities to accelerate growth, we will continue to look for strategic ways to simplify and focus our global business.\u201d<\/p>\n WildBrain further simplified its business in recent quarters through the closure of its broadcast television channels in Canada, as previously announced, which has unburdened it from ownership restrictions under Canadian broadcast regulations, providing greater strategic flexibility and opportunities for the Company as it optimizes long-term shareholder value. As a result of this change, the Company has removed its variable voting structure, previously applicable to non-Canadian shareholders, and has simplified its share structure to a single voting class of Common shares for all shareholders, as approved by WildBrain shareholders at its annual and special meeting on December 18, 2025.<\/p>\n The Company has undertaken a number of strategic actions in the past 18 months, with this transaction representing the most material. As the Company continues to evolve its operating model, \u00a0it intends to pursue several initiatives to create efficiencies, as well as re-segmenting its financial reporting to better reflect the business post-transaction. As a result of these changes, Fiscal 2026 guidance is being paused.<\/p>\n Nick Gawne, WildBrain CFO, said: \u201cThis transaction marks a pivotal moment for WildBrain as we look to the future. By deleveraging, we can now redeploy cash flows from debt service into strategic investments that not only accelerate growth in our franchises and premium digital content network but also allow us to invest in technologies to streamline operations and drive margin expansion. We remain highly confident in the growth potential of our core business, and by improving our capital structure, this transaction enables us to better demonstrate the strong cash-generation characteristics embedded in our business model.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source licensinginternational.org \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Strategic transaction crystallizes the brand\u2019s substantial value creating opportunity to accelerate growth Fully de-levers WildBrain\u2019s balance sheet, eliminating all debt and saving approximately $50 million in annual interest payments and leaving over $40 million cash surplus Allows reinvestment in high-growth, cash-accretive opportunities across wholly owned franchises, premium digital network, and innovative technologies WildBrain retained by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2205181,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2205180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/WildBrain-Sells-Stake-in-Peanuts-Holdings-to-Sony-Pictures-Entertainment.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2205180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2205180"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2205180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2205182,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2205180\/revisions\/2205182"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2205181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2205180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2205180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2205180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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