All right. Thank you everyone for being here again. Hope everyone enjoyed lunch. We are very excited to have Dennis Cinelli, CFO of Paramount Skydance here. Dennis, thank you so much for being here.
Thanks for having me.
Making your PSKY Investor Conference debut.
That's right.
We are excited to host you for that. Before we jump into Paramount Skydance, can you tell us about how your experience? It's a nice wide-ranging experience that you have. GE Ventures, Uber, and then Scale AI. How did that help position you for the CFO role at Paramount Skydance? Maybe what attracted you to the role after you did join the Paramount board back in September?
Yeah. It's been a journey. Let's see. I grew up in New Jersey, so not too far from here. Went to University of Maryland. I, you know, I thought I'd be more of an entrepreneur. You know, I started a small business in high school. I studied finance and entrepreneurship at University of Maryland. I joined GE out of college thinking I'd be there for a few years and ended up spending 11 years, 13 cities. I was at GE for 11 years, 13 cities, seven or eight businesses. Everything from locomotives and power equipment, to I did a brief stint actually at NBCUniversal, which was my first education in the media business. I helped lead a team when we sold NBC to Comcast.
I then went on and did I was at lighting, I was at healthcare. My last I knew I wanted to get to tech, so my last job at GE was kind of my bridge into Silicon Valley. I was the CFO for GE Ventures. From there I got lucky. It was the middle of 2016. I joined Uber in 2016 when Uber was primarily a rides business. You know, Travis was still the CEO. Went on a journey. I spent 6 years at Uber. I went on to take on all the finance teams for the first, my 4 years or so. I was in that seat when we took the company public in 2019 as we went through the crazy ride sharing war days.
We burned $20 billion during my time at Uber. Let's come back to sort of like operational efficiency and analytical rigor. I got a chance in my career to step out of which, of finance and be more of an operational GM. I ran the U.S. and Canada rides business as the GM, and which was an interesting time coming right out of COVID. I also ran the jump and bike and scooter business. In the middle of 2022, I kind of followed with which is a very sort of cliché, you know, business track in Silicon Valley, which is at some point, you know, go earlier stage. I joined a company called Scale AI, and this was pre-ChatGPT.
This was In the middle of 2022, Scale AI was a very different company than it is today. Really over the last 3, now 4 years, got to see the AI evolution from a front row seat, right? ChatGPT launched in November, December of 2022. Scale AI revenue went vertical at a smaller scale, but like NVIDIA. Our largest customers were all the model builders. You know, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, et cetera. Then I played a broad role. I was able to run finance and parts of operations and data science analytics, and it really helped me stay both at an operationally complex companies, but also at the front edge of technology.
I did have a opportunity to join the board of Paramount in September, and I thought this would be like a quarterly board gig, you know. We'd meet quarterly, you know, then when David Ellison called me to join, he's like, "Well, at your first board meeting, we're gonna anoint you, and then we're gonna start bidding on Warner Bros." It went from, it went from a quarterly board gig to, you know, nearly daily. Long story short, you know, I'm excited to be here.
The reason why I think, you know, it's hard to talk about yourself a lot, but the reason why I think I'm uniquely positioned in the state of this company is, you know, I have this experience, you know, having spent a lot of time at GE in operationally complex large organizations, right? Sort of getting my teeth in finance at those, you know, places where, you know, we'd run around chasing pennies, you know, at the quarter end. Spent really the bulk of my career in technology, right? Sort of bringing technology in to transform businesses, whether that was growing Uber or Scale. Now we're really excited about what we can do here at Paramount Skydance.
Awesome. All right. That's a great setup in terms of where we're gonna be going with all this. You guys just obviously gave us your first quarter earnings update. Maybe just taking a step back, that there's the three North Stars priorities that you guys have laid out for Paramount. Talk to us about your confidence level of achieving these priorities. We understand it's early days, obviously, to your point, but how you feel about, you know, what the path ahead is on executing upon them.
Yeah. We really feel like Q1 was about building momentum. You know, building momentum as Paramount Skydance, but also building momentum into what we want to accomplish when we combine with Warner Bros. Discovery. You know, our priorities for the business were, you know, accelerate our content engine, scale streaming, and do it efficiently. We really feel like Q1 goes to show you know, we did those things, right? You know, number one, we've seen the content engine start to scale. We've talked about how at Paramount, you know, last year we released eight films. This year we're on track for 15 films. Scream VII came out in the first quarter, you know, exceeded our expectations, $200 million of worldwide box office.
We're gonna, you know, produce over 100 titles this year across, you know, both internal and external consumption. We On the streaming business, Paramount+ grew 17% year-over-year. Growth is accelerating as we both realize the benefits from a lot of the content investments we were making. This is, you know, UFC, a lot of the new shows. You know, Landman was the number 1 show on Paramount+. We've seen great pickup on Matlock, which is both CBS and on Paramount+. We're doing the things around in Paramount+ on monetization. You know, we're starting to see our digital ads investment come through, seeing growth in digital, and we expect that to accelerate.
On TV media, which is our broadcast and linear business, we said we would manage the structural declines in that business by driving stable to improving margins. In Q1, revenue was down 6% in that segment, and we drove up 5 points of margin year-on-year. We feel like we're building momentum going into the deal. We talked a lot about the synergies on standalone Skydance, which is, when we announced the deal, we'd said we'd do $2 billion in synergies. We now said we'd get to through $2.5 billion this year and exceed overall $3 billion as our standalone Paramount Skydance merger, let alone what we're gonna do combined.
We just feel like Q1 was a good momentum driver, right? We have reaffirmed our guidance. Still early in the year, but feeling good about where we're gonna perform. On the deal side, right, we continue to build momentum towards close. We expect to close the deal in Q3. We announced some milestones along the way. We had the shareholder vote in April, where the Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders approved the deal. We've announced a portion of the equity's been syndicated to strategic investors. We've also made progress along on our debt financing, where we put in place $10 billion of permanent capital, and we've syndicated out the rest of the bridge to about 18 banks.
We've talked about going forward, you know, as we go to place that debt, the mix we're gonna have. We're gonna have a mix of investment grade debt as well as high yield. Overall, you know, we feel good about the momentum we have going into Paramount Skydance and what we've laid out to execute, and then feel good about closing the deal and starting to execute on that as well.
Clearly there's lots going on at the company right now. Let's try to talk about the Warner Bros. deal as much as possible. Understand there's limitations in terms of how much you can share given the pending deal. Help us understand, and you've started to allude to it, how much Warner Bros. Discovery can really help accelerate some of these priorities, and especially what we focus on is the global streaming scale, but even in terms of all of the linear assets that you bought as well.
Yeah. We've always talked about M&A, and obviously this is a big M&A, as an accelerant to our strategy, and we really feel like it does just that, right? You know, overall this deal creates a more competitive offering for the consumer, for creators. You have to sort of take the pieces of the deal. The first, right, we combine with Warner Bros. Discovery 200 years of storytelling, right? The core of this company is storytelling and creative. And you're talking about a company that will combine the, you know, Harry Potter and Game of Thrones, the Landman universe, the rest of the Taylor Sheridan universe. We just were at the Dutton Ranch premiere last night. It's gonna be amazing, a new launch from Paramount+ on Friday.
You're talking about in kids and family, Nickelodeon with PAW Patrol, with Looney Tunes. We just feel we're really excited about the compelling IP and portfolio we combine together, it's very complementary, as well as what we're gonna drive. Number two, we get to scale in streaming immediately, right? You're talking about a company that has about 200 million subs immediately, and then we can continue to scale and grow from there. We'll talk about that. Then a global reach linear portfolio that, you know, we've taken a clear-eyed view on what that portfolio will do, and we can talk about that.
You're talking about you bring together, CBS, CNN, the cable nets around, you know, Discovery, TNT, TBS, Food Network, HGTV, right, and the ability to leverage those profits to reinvest in our North Star priorities, to really grow the studios and streaming business. When we put this together, we feel like we get to, you know, a very scaled business very quickly. It accelerates our North Star priorities. We're gonna do this by marrying You know, we talked about a next generation media company, by marrying art and technology. You see this expression from our leadership team, right? You have amazing executives that have storied careers in Hollywood, coupled with those of us from, coming from Silicon Valley, our Chief Product Officer and the people he's bringing in. I've spent a lot of time there.
Our chief people officer. You really get this combination of art and technology that I don't think the market's really seen. We're really excited about what that can deliver and we'll talk about what that can deliver financially since you know I'm the CFO and the finance guys. We'll get through it.
Okay. We will get there. Another part of large media M&A that I think many in this room are very familiar with is where the expected revenues and cost synergies are promised and then fail to come to fruition. Talk to us from the CFO's perspective how you approach the deal math and why this time will be different.
Yeah. We are clear. This is a big undertaking, right? We've been planning for it. I think number one, just sort of the culture around this is very different than prior mergers. You're talking about a company that's owner-operator led. Right. The CEO is the largest shareholder in the company that permeates, and the leadership team is incentivized suitably. It's very much like the mindset in Silicon Valley, right? Where everyone's an owner in that company. That is a different lens than prior media mergers. But it's not the only thing. As we think about this, and the way we've, you know, the way we've done this is, you know, given that lens, we also have thought about the model conservatively.
You know, what we've put out in terms of our financial guidance, and I wanna walk through the pieces, is what we believe is a conservative model that recognizes the challenges ahead, you know, in the business as well as the opportunity. If you think about, if you think about the business, right? What we've said is on a revenue side, we can drive growth in the business mid-single digits. We do that through a couple ways. Number one is through streaming, right? You combine the scaled streaming platform, we'll talk about unifying the, you know, the platform under one service. You get all the benefits of that in terms of like technology, and the compelling content portfolio, and that will really drive growth over time. That will also be complemented by our studio business.
On studios, we're marrying the Warner Bros. film and TV studios with Paramount. Warner Bros., we're assuming that, you know, effectively they continue on their trajectory, but a lot of what growth is driven in the studio segment is us completing the rebuild on the Paramount side that we've been on, right? Moving from 8 films last year to 15, executing on our TV studio strategy, which was really the Skydance team coming in and what their strategy was. When you combine on the studios business, this is 30 theatrical films a year. That 30 theatrical films is very complementary. If you think about it, 30 films a year means every 11 days we're landing a new film on the streaming platform and the benefits there. As well as continue to ramp our TV slate.
The growth engines will be definitely streaming and studio. We've taken a clear-eyed view on the revenue decline for linear. We are not assuming any revenue synergies, even though there could be some as we put these portfolios together, we are assuming that the structural decline in the pay TV sub-universe will continue. That being said, we can still use these highly profitable assets as a cash flow generation to fund and reinvest in the business. That's on the revenue side. Then on the synergy side, you're talking about, you know, we talk about the $6 billion plus number. $6 billion to put into context, is about 11% of the combined company cost structure.
On a pro forma basis, when you put Warner Bros. and Paramount together, it's about a $50 billion plus cost base. $6 billion, you know, is we think a very approachable and achievable number that will fall through the bottom line, and this is net of our reinvestments. Because you're putting two complementary businesses together, and you can really drive efficiency. You know, you think about marketing spend, right? Today we have two teams marketing to similar audiences in some ways, right? We can reduce that efficiency or realize that efficiency. You're talking about a technology stack that has many different systems that we can streamline, right? Today's AI tools allow you to get at that even faster. Then you talk about corporate functions and procurement efficiencies that you can really drive across the organization.
We put this, we put the business together, we really see why it's different is because, you know, you can drive growth, we can execute on the synergies. We're gonna do that. You know, we're ramping up our integration efforts. You know, the result is you have a business that even if we just get to peer level margins, this is mid 20% EBITDA margins, generating $10 billion of free cash flow by 2030, which allows us to both reinvest in the business and continue to pay down the debt.
Okay. You talked a lot about reinvesting as part of that answer. We've gotten a lot of questions, and our focus too is how the combined company or even standalone Paramount Skydance today balances the content spending increases and that reinvestment that you're talking about with the elevated debt levels, again, pre or post-deal. Help us think about the sustainability of the current content spending as standalone Skydance, and anything you can comment on the combined very significant $30+ billion of combined content spending as part of the pro forma deal.
I think it's helpful on content. You know, we view content IP, our storytelling, as our growth driver. My job is to make sure we deliver, we spend that content money to deliver the best long-term value, but it truly is the lifeblood of this business, right? It truly is what will drive growth. I have a saying, which is, "I think the best companies walk and chew gum. The best companies grow and make money." This deal is not just about cutting for the sake of cutting. It is about we need to grow and we need to make money, and we are gonna balance both those things. The content budget we have, to your point, is, you know, $30 plus billion pro forma.
You know, for example, you know, Netflix has announced about $20 billion in cash content spend. Disney's at $24 billion. We think that's a healthy number to help us continue to grow. In our model, we expect content spend to continue to increase and continue to grow as we realize the benefit of that, right? That's a growth driver for us. You're right, like there are ways for us to continue to be efficient. You have to kind of piece out the content spend, right? In our studios business, content is both an internal, you know, internal deliveries as well as external deliveries.
Part of that content spend is truly driving third-party deliveries and growth and profitability. In the streaming business, we'll have opportunities for us to sort of, you know, look at that portfolio and make sure it's the most efficient portfolio, and we use a lot of analytics around this to think about what drives the most subs growth, user growth, and engagement over time, and we can optimize that portfolio. On the linear side of the business, in broadcast, we have our strong sports portfolio, but we also have the ability, and this is the playbook we have at Paramount, is to leverage our library, and leverage our broadcast studio capability to really drive efficient content and high quality content in the cable nets, but doing that at the right level.
Overall, we kind of view as, you know, we have the tools with the pro forma company, you know, to make sure we are growing content and growing the business, doing that efficiently while also, you know, hitting our financial goals.
Okay. You talked about sports. I need to go there. Understanding that there might be only a limited amount that you can say on the NFL potential negotiations, anything you can share with us just in terms of how you see this playing out. You know, clearly adding an extra late season primetime game to the lineup should be viewed positively. Maybe just talk to us about the relationship with the NFL, the potential negotiation and maybe more broadly, how you see that fitting in within your overall sports portfolio.
I get asked this question a lot.
Yeah, I think so.
Mostly I can say what we've said externally already, which is we have a great partnership with the NFL. To put it into context, right, last season on CBS was the most successful broadcast season in NFL history for us. You know, viewership continues to grow, CBS and the Paramount ecosystem, including Paramount+, are a broad reach engine to drive fandom for the NFL. There's a lot of value for them as well as us. We expect to be in business with the NFL for a long period of time. I also think I can't really speak for them, but I hope and I assume that they do the same just given the value we're driving. We have a good relationship. You know, there's a lot of active dialogue around this.
We're planning now for the next season, right. The schedule's already coming out, so we're moving forward. That's hopefully a good signal for everyone, like, this relationship continues to remain healthy and active. We'll have more to say if there's more to say on the NFL. I would also take the point of, you know, we have a broad sports portfolio, both at Paramount and as well as what we get when we combine with Paramount and Warner Bros., right? You know, just in Paramount, we made a big investment in UFC. This is performing really well on Paramount+, you know, 10 billion viewers, 100 million cumulative hours. These are users that are coming in and engaging in more content. They're generally younger viewers. The UFC is also helpful because it's a year-round sport.
You know, we have fights continuously, so it drives that engagement you want, whereas, you know, other sports are more seasonal. We complement that with UEFA and the Champions League. As you think about what we get when we merge with Warner Bros., you know, we have NASCAR, we have the TNT Sports, we have Olympics in Europe. We, you know, we have MLB. We just feel really good about sports being a compelling offering in the company for the combined company. We think sports will be a key driver, not just the NFL, but the overall portfolio.
Okay. I imagine sports is also gonna play a big part in the combined streaming offering too. Let's go to streaming for a second. When we think about, and we talked about it at the beginning already, but this, the combined scale that you will get with putting these two services together, how do you think about the future of the streaming business, both in the U.S. and I'd say maybe even more importantly as we think about global scale, which is, I think the defined priority, thinking about the international growth of putting those two services together?
We, you know, we talked about when we combine these two services, and we've talked about that we want to unify the service, and I think we'll get into technology. You know, you have just this amazing compelling offering. You know, we're putting two premium content portfolios together, right? The HBO content portfolio, the Paramount+ content portfolio. This is really premium, premium lined up in terms of general entertainment. And we think one of the most compelling general entertainment portfolios out there. You couple that with the broad sports portfolio that we talked about, right, and news, when you have CBS News and CNN. We just view, you know, the capability, the content portfolio and IP portfolio as one of the most compelling in the market.
You couple that with what we're gonna do on tech. You know, we talked a little about, like, tech and art coming together. As we realize the benefits of converging our platform, unifying the service, you start to get the benefits of, you know, user growth, retention, engagement, and we can sort of go on through that. Ultimately, the streaming platform comes together and we, you know, view it as two engines. You know, the way we see it is the streaming business will power the growth of the business in the future, and we can do that profitably. We'll do that through a mix of continuing in the domestic, to your point, and there is tremendous growth internationally.
As we think about international, you know, you're seeing us really, make sure we can leverage both the global portfolio content we have, sports being a good one, all the premium content. What's really interesting, like, you know, the CBS procedurals are really good in international markets. We'll add in local where needed, right? One of the reasons why we really feel good about the competitive nature of the deal is we're gonna be another local buyer in these markets for creators. They're really excited about that, so we can complement that. Then we have sports rights. You know, UFC in Latin America is performing really well.
In Europe, we'll have the Olympics and the Champions League that really drive acquisition and growth for the overall streaming business. I, you know, I think we feel like as you put that portfolio together, it's a compelling portfolio and a really big growth driver for us going forward.
Okay. Maybe as a follow-up to what you alluded to, anything you can share about how quickly we should expect? I think there's a big question on timing around this. As you think about bringing these different services together, and maybe any financial expectations that you can share around that too would be helpful.
Sure. It's helpful context on what we've been doing at Paramount to instruct what you might be able to infer as we execute the platform convergence in the combined company. If you remember, you know, Paramount had 3 different tech stacks: Paramount+, BET+, Pluto, running not just separate tech stacks, but siloed. We've been on a journey, and we'll complete that journey this summer, where we're converging all of those services into one service. One tech stack, one tech stack, and we'll be able to launch relaunch Pluto in the summer under that new tech stack. What does that give you, right? It's the benefits of what you get at tech companies, right?
You have the ability to put all your users, all your data into one container, into one box, and be able to deliver a better end user experience, more features in the app, better search, better recommendation, better discovery. At the same time, you know, you're able to, you know, drive efficiencies in how you operate the tech operations. Given what, you know, the learnings from the conversions in Paramount, as we think about unifying the back end between Paramount and Warner Bros., we do think we can do it faster. Our expectation is we can do it in half the time. That's not I think a lot of people, I get a lot of questions around what the brand going to be and what the name of the service is going to be.
You can make an announcement here.
That's not, that's not, I can tell you that we have an amazing marketing team that's studying that to make sure we honor the legacy of both studios when it comes out. The real what I'm really concerned about is the substance behind it, right? Like, what do you have in terms of the substance of the content portfolio, then how do you think about the experience and the ability for us to get the levers and monetization up. That's what we're talking about, which is when you merge the platforms together, you get all the user, all the data in one spot. It allows you now at scale, right? This is where I think we wanna continue to articulate the value of scale.
When you have that scale, we have more data, more users, more content. All your levers get better, right? Our growth engine gets better to acquire new users. Our engagement levers get better. Our retention levers get better, right? They feed on themselves. That's what we're really excited about as we put them together, and given the learnings we have, given the tech team investment we have, we really feel like we can do that very quickly.
Okay
when combined.
That's very helpful. When thinking about pricing as part of this monetization lever, Paramount+ just put through a price increase, I believe in January. If you could talk about how that's performing. I think you've mentioned some initial data points, at least, on the earnings call. When thinking about the lessons learned from that, and maybe help us think how that gets applied when thinking about putting these services together as well.
Yeah. It's a great example of our owner operator mentality coming through thinking long term. You know, we came in, I've been here 3 months. The rest of the leadership team, 9 months. We're over 9 months into this journey.
Right.
We came in and recognized we needed to invest in the content and platform. We've been green lighting, and we green lighted 20 TV shows since I've been here. We made investment in key sports content with UFC. We realized there's the ability when you deliver value to a consumer, you can monetize that. One of the ways we monetize that is through the price adjustment we announced in January. As I talked about on the earnings call, you know, performing at expectations, right? You naturally saw a little bit of a churn increase when you announce it and execute it, and we've seen that moderate, and we're delivering the value through. In terms of revenue, ARPU is up 14% in Q1.
That is a sort of microcosm how we think about long-term value pricing, bundling for the service going forward. We first start with, do we have a good compelling offering? We talked about the IP and the storytelling and what we can deliver. Do we have a good user experience? Over time, we will be open to, and this is the Silicon Valley mindset of experimenting and iterating on what's the best way to price and bundle it, irrespective of the brand conversation, but like how you monetize it over time. I think it's worth also noting is sometimes I find in this market, everyone only thinks about subscriptions and price, and that's your revenue driver. What we are about is not, that's not the only lever.
Okay.
Right? We're investing in Pluto, which is an ad-supported model, right, that's a lever. We have an ad tier in Paramount+. We have launched new features. We have Eclipse, which is early days. Our goal is to drive more monetization levers, right? It's not just subs and sub revenue. It is about really using the leverage of the art and technology to make sure we monetize, you know, different levers over time.
You've alluded to this through a lot of your answers, but I think that the terms that you guys have self-described as, you know, building a tech hybrid or a next generation media and entertainment company. Maybe just putting all that innovation and focus on the tech side together with the content side, maybe help us understand how does that change the trajectory or what we're used to seeing from traditional media. Why should we be thinking about this differently?
For sure. I think first and foremost, it is very much we're powered by storytelling, accelerated by technology. This is a storytelling company first and foremost. You're This is coming from a person who's spent the last four years at the forefront of AI. The reason why I'm here is I believe it, right? The human creativity, the talent you can bring, and we want to be the number one attractor of talent. You start there, right? The creativity is that, is the power, is the engine. That being said, you know, David's been very clear, you know, Hollywood has really been pushed in. You know, the tech companies have really pushed into Hollywood, and they're becoming more and more media companies.
We fundamentally believe, based on what we're building, we can have a high quality creative storytelling company, a media company pushed back because we can bring in the appropriate technology talent. How I've seen this evolution is you're going from, you have a couple layers, right? The first is team. You're going from you know, media companies, and we have a lot of great people on the team, but been primarily IT organizations, and we are retooling how they think, their stature in the company, the quality of the talent in the company for them to be much more Silicon Valley product led, and a mindset shift in how we execute. That's quality, that's mindset, et cetera. That goes as we've elevated our leader, our Chief Product Officer and Technology Officer to the leadership level, right?
He's not buried in the organization. He is a member of leadership team. That's first and foremost. Number 2, you've started to see us build momentum. In technology, these things start to build momentum, right? You're kind of seeing that. We've talked about convergence of the tech stack. We've talked about what we're doing in terms of, you know, features in Clips launched on the app that came out and from idea to the first iteration in a few months. We talked about improving our ad tech. Precision+ is a tool that we're using with for advertisers to help them target more effectively. What you'll start to see as you get through convergence, you know, better ML tools for search and recommendation.
As we get the better tech stack, we put everything in the box, that becomes the flywheel for technology organizations to really deliver on the value.
Okay. Clearly storytelling, as you've mentioned, plays a big piece of that. Let's go to the studio side. You've talked about this 30 plus theatrical release slate, and been very clear about the 45-day window commitment after acquiring Warner Bros. and even building towards that today. Maybe help us understand the How does the performance of that slate dictate what it looks like in the future? Is that gonna be based on, you know, specific ROI or the whole slate, and how you reevaluate that commitment over time?
Yeah. We've been very clear. The combined company will produce 30+ films theatrically. They have a full 45-day theatrical window before they move on to transactional and SVOD. That's not just good for creators in the Hollywood industry, it's actually good for business. 30 films, sometimes we get some skepticism around, but it's just basic math. Paramount's doing about 15 films this year. Warner Bros. do about 15 films this year. We're gonna add the two studios together, and we're gonna continue the output, right? There's not anything special about 30 other than that we were committed to continue the output of both studios side by side. That's number 1. Number 2, the output is good not just for theatrical, but it's good for our streaming business. What does that mean?
We have 30 films a year, so that's a film dropping on our streaming business every 11 days. And these films are coming in full theatrical release, full marketing budget, right? If you wanna generate IP that's gonna last forever, that you can monetize over many years and generations, you're not doing that on made-for-streaming movies, right? This is the challenge that other platforms have, which is they spend a lot of money on films, but they're not generating IP. We have films that are full marketing budgets, right? Which is an amazing marketing team we have. Full theatrical, and they're coming into our, into our platform, and our platform doesn't have to pay the full cost. It's being underwritten by a full, you know, ultimate windowing strategy, theatrical plus others.
Not only are they the best user and engagement drivers, user acquisition engagement drivers, but they're also coming into our platform cheaper than they would otherwise with the full marketing behind it. We just see the studio, especially the film side, as this amazing flywheel. It's not just about sort of this, you know, this creative commitment, it is very much good for business. That's on the film side. On the other side, which is our TV studios, right? Our TV studios are generating some of the most iconic TV, you know, on Paramount Television Studios and then think about HBO.
Sure.
When you put those two together and you start to generate both for the streaming business as well as, for external, we see this overall studio being a growth driver for us. As you get to scale, generating really healthy margins. Warner Bros. already put out there that they expect their studio business on its own to generate $3 billion in adjusted EBITDA. We feel really good about, you know, what we get when we combine the two services together.
Okay. Let's go to linear, 'cause that is still an important part of the current cash flow. Thinking about the cord-cutting trends, what we all know, actually saw some improvement over the past couple quarters. Maybe just help us think about the stability of the core linear network cash flow and how does skinny bundles play into this?
It's good to make sure we separate linear into two pieces, right? You have broadcast CBS, which is a stable asset, right? This is, we talked about for the NFL, our prime time lineup. We have 13 of the top 20 TV shows in prime time, 4 of the top 4 new TV shows in broadcast. You have an asset here that's performing really well for us. That being said, we are, as I talked about, very clear-eyed on the secular declines, especially on cable. We've modeled that conservatively going forward.
We do think there's a playbook, and we've seen that we've executed that playbook here at Paramount, is that you can drive cost savings and the synergies and efficiencies when you put these portfolios together, and you can do it across the P&L or marketing efficiency we delivered on our TV media segment or content efficiency, you know, all the other costs. This will allow us to you know, sort of ride the secular decline, but also generate healthy profits to an, you know, overall, fund the business. We're gonna go through that shift, right? If you look out the next three years, majority of our business by 2030 will be studios and streaming, right?
We're going through that business model shift that a lot other industries have gone through, and we're gonna leverage this linear asset, to help us fund that next generation.
We did talk about, you know, the debt at the beginning, let's go maybe bigger picture. Think about the overall capital allocation for this combined company. Maybe just help us think about the priorities in terms of deleveraging versus the organic reinvestment that we talked about and even potential portfolio actions. Maybe think about how important investment grade is within all of this. You guys have been very clear about the target to get there.
Yeah. I mean, we understand the challenge ahead. We think we have a really compelling company as we talked about, and the financials, you know, it's my key job is to deliver. We think about capital allocation, one, you know, you do start with a very scaled company. You know, this is a pro forma company, $70 billion of combined revenue. Our capital allocation priorities are, number one, we're gonna invest, owner/operator mentality, to generate long-term growth. You know, we're gonna bring more analytical rigor around making sure those investments are paying off. You know, number two, we, you know, we are accelerating our priorities through M&A, big M&A transaction with Warner Bros..
The third one is just delivering on our commitment to get towards investment-grade metrics in the next 3 years. We've talked about that being about 3 times net leverage by 2030. We think we have, you know, the plan, our plan A to do that. That being said, we realize this is a, it's a challenge. There is plan B and there is plan C, right? We have a lot of levers in a company of this magnitude to be able to execute, to make sure we stay on track towards our overall growth goals and deliver on the deleveraging that we've talked about.
Okay. A big piece of that is gonna be the free cash flow conversion. You know, clearly there's a lot of working capital dynamics as part of running this business. Maybe just help us think about the levers on that free cash flow conversion over the next couple of years.
Yeah, I mean, the first step is getting, and we've talked about, is getting the business up to peer set margins, adjusted EBITDA margins. We'll do that through executing on our synergy program. If we talked about $6 billion in synergies, you know, only 11% of the cost base. We, you know, we're lining up to execute that. As you get the business overall to mid-20s% adjusted EBITDA margins, then our, you know, our model is to get to about peer set, which is about 50% free cash flow generation, conversion through that, there's a lot of levers, right? We will have levers around driving working capital improvements. We'll have levers on the synergies. We'll start to see some of the content investment realizing growth.
We feel good about this business by 2030 generating, you know, $10 billion plus of free cash flow.
Okay. I think we're almost out of time. Just to wrap everything up, hopefully when you're sitting here a year from now, maybe help us understand the most significant surprise or shift to the Paramount Skydance business or maybe even the overall media landscape as we're trying to think about how all these pieces land.
We're nine months in. I'm three months in. We're nine months as a new leadership team. I think overall I hope, and I expect this will have happened, you will be amazed at what we can accomplish in 12 months. We will have closed the deal. We will be well on our way to executing on our synergy targets. We will have a unified platform that's delivering one of the most compelling content portfolios and experiences in streaming. Lastly, we'll be hitting our financial goals, right? Our goal is to make sure we deliver for our consumers as well as make sure we hit our goals, and I hope to come back next year and talk you through it.
Awesome.
Thank you.
We hope to see you there. Thank you. Awesome.