LT Weekly: Jun 19, 2026
The market melt up is back in action with the Dow and the Russell 2000 hitting fresh new highs, and Nasdaq rising +2.4% this week, driven by the SOX up a massive +7.3%) Investors were more optimistic about the peace agreement but yields moved higher post Wednesday’s FOMC meeting which further raised the prospect of a rate hike this year.
As usual, there was no shortage of impactful developments and updates across the sector. This edition focuses on the below:
- Fox’s Surprise Roku Deal Highlights A Big Streaming Push
- Snap’s New Specs Are Met With Investor Scrutiny
- AI Policy Moves Into The Spotlight As Competition, Adoption, and Monetization Accelerates
- New Entrants & Mkt Expansions In The Emerging The Robotaxi Industry
- More Strategic Moves In Video Gaming Emerge
- Verizon Pushes Further Into Value, Bundles & Loyalty
- The Global Advertising Picture Is Even Rosier, Per WPP
- Grab Bag: World Cup Stats / UK Confirms Social Media Ban / Apple Price Raise
Also, LionTree Advisors served as exclusive financial advisor to Vox Media on the combination of its Publishing Brands with Penske Media Publishing. Vox Media is contributing a portfolio of digital brands, including SB Nation, The Verge, PopSugar, The Dodo, Punch, and Thrillist.
Enjoy the weekend.
Best,
Leslie
Fox’s Surprise Roku Deal Highlights A Big Streaming Push
On countless earnings conference calls, Fox’s mgmt. faced questions about what it plans to do with its strong balance sheet and while mgmt. expressed interest in disciplined M&A, they never found anything that met their thresholds until obviously this Roku deal that was annc’d out of the gate on Monday (which followed speculation hitting headlines on Friday). Per mgmt., “opportunities of this caliber are exceptionally rare,” and “nothing has the upside and the massive scale and opportunity that this transaction has.” Overall, Fox expects the pro forma business to “enhance our long-term revenue growth profile and drive accelerating EBITDA and free cash flow growth.”
The $22bn valuation for Roku valued the Co at ~3.5x and ~4.0x adj EBITDA based on 2026 and 2027 consensus estimates. Fox mgmt. characterized the $400mn run rate synergy target as conservative and flagged that it does NOT include any revenue synergies which could be “significant”. Proforma leverage will increase to 2.8x but mgmt. expects that to decline to its target within the first year or two post close. Importantly, the deal will not impact the Co’s mid-BBB investment grade credit ratings nor the buyback.
Digging a bit more into the strategic rationale, the deal unifies “the two most powerful forces reshaping video”, namely live news/sports and streaming, and pushes Fox into the highest-growth segments (CTV advertising and subscription aggregation) via Roku, the “front door to the streaming ecosystem.” Fox will also importantly layer Roku’s first-party data into Fox’s advertiser relationships. But areas of Wall Street analyst concern centered around potential Roku home-screen cannibalization from cross promotion, supplier-vs-distributor conflicts, and why Roku is selling now, but Fox’s/Roku’s mgmt. pushed back on each and stressed that “we are confident this is the right transaction at the right moment, for all the right reasons.”
-> Fox share fell -18% on the back of the transaction news while Roku trades down -1.5%, after trading up +20% on Friday when speculation hit the press