Lionsgate has confirmed it is continuing with its plan to separate its studio and Starz businesses. While it is still possible that a sale of Starz could take place at some point in the future, the current plan is to separate the two businesses into different companies.
Lionsgate had already confirmed its plan to spin Starz off into its own business. Back in September, for example, the company not only confirmed in an SEC filing that it is going to separate the businesses, but also that its StarzPlay streaming platform was being rebranded as Lionsgate+ in a number of international markets.
Today Lionsgate announced it had filed a Form 10 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, further confirming that the separation is moving ahead as planned.
According to Lionsgate, the motion Picture and television production segments will become an independent and separately traded public company. This is what Lionsgate is referring to as its ‘studio‘ business. In contrast, the company’s media networks segment, basically Starz, would continue to operate as the existing company.
“We remain excited by the prospect of separating Lionsgate and Starz into standalone companies with strong financial foundations that will allow each company to pursue its own distinct strategy while offering investors the opportunity to own both a pure-play publicly-traded content studio and a premium subscription platform,” Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer said.
While the latest filing does confirm the separation is continuing as planned, it doesn’t provide any update on the expected timeline. Instead, Lionsgate said that the timing “will be subject to a number of factors including ongoing and potential business opportunities as well as the condition of the financial markets.”
Starz only recently increased the price of its subscription, taking the monthly cost up to $9.99, an increase of $1 a month. In terms of subscribers, Starz ended the first quarter of this year with more than 20 million domestic subscribers.
