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Pfizer plans to raise $31 billion through a debt offering to fund its proposed acquisition of cancer drug maker Seagen, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The biotech company’s debt offering is expected to close on Friday, the SEC filing said.
The offering comes as corporations like Apple, T-Mobile and Merck rush to tap the U.S. bond market ahead of a potential spike in borrowing costs sparked by the debt ceiling standoff. 
Pfizer, which is based in New York, expects to complete the $43 billion Seagen buyout later this year or in early 2024. 

A logo for Pfizer is displayed on a monitor on the floor at the New York Stock Exchange, July 29, 2019.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters

Pfizer plans to raise $31 billion through a debt offering to fund its proposed acquisition of cancer drug maker Seagen, for what would be its largest takeover since 2009, according to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Pfizer expects to complete the $43 billion Seagen buyout later this year or in early 2024. 

The debt offering is expected to close Friday, according to a prospectus supplement New York-based Pfizer filed with the SEC late Tuesday. 
The pharma giant’s debt offering would be the biggest since CVS Health sold $40 billion of bonds in 2018 to finance its acquisition of health insurer Aetna. 
Pfizer’s move comes as other corporations including Apple, T-Mobile and Merck rush to tap the U.S. bond market ahead of a potential spike in borrowing costs sparked by the debt ceiling standoff. 
Pfizer’s stock price dropped slightly on Wednesday.
The company said it will secure funding for the deal to buy Bothell, Washington-based Seagen through eight tranches of notes that will mature between 2025 and 2063.

Each tranche is worth $3 billion to $6 billion.
The yield to maturity on Pfizer’s 10-year bonds would be 4.75%, which is around 125 basis points higher than the U.S. 10-year Treasury note.

Signage outside Seagen headquarters in Bothell, Washington, on Tuesday, March 14, 2023.
David Ryder | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase are managing the debt sale. 
Pfizer in March agreed to buy Seagen for $229 per share in cash. 
On Monday, the two companies submitted paperwork for their proposed merger to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, kicking off a review period for the deal.
Investors are likely to monitor that high-stakes review closely, particularly in light of the lawsuit filed Tuesday by the FTC seeking to block Amgen’s proposed $27.8 billion acquisition of Horizon Therapeutics.
The Seagen deal is expected to strengthen Pfizer’s portfolio of cancer drugs by bringing a class of antibody-drug conjugates, medicines that are designed to directly kill cancer cells and spare healthy ones.
Seagen has four approved cancer therapies, which raked in combined sales of nearly $2 billion in 2022. 
Pfizer has said it expects more than $10 billion in “risk-adjusted” sales from Seagen in 2030.
That revenue could help offset an ongoing decline in sales of Pfizer’s Covid vaccine and antiviral pill Paxlovid as the world emerges from the pandemic, and relies less on those products. More

Bankrupt rocket company Virgin Orbit received a $17 million “stalking horse” bid for its modified 747 carrier jet and other aircraft assets.
Virgin Orbit agreed to the terms of the potential aircraft deal from aerospace venture Stratolaunch, which is owned by Cerberus Capital Management.
Cerberus previously looked to take Richard Branson’s distressed rocket company private, and was among the closest of several potential bidders to striking a deal, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

Bankrupt rocket company Virgin Orbit received a $17 million “stalking horse” bid for its modified 747 carrier jet and other aircraft assets, as it continues to examine options during Chapter 11 court proceedings.
Virgin Orbit agreed to the terms of the potential aircraft deal from aerospace venture Stratolaunch, which is developing the world’s largest airplane called “Roc” as an airborne platform for hypersonic flight testing. A stalking horse bid represents the first foray on assets of a bankrupt company, and effectively sets the minimum bid for any potential competing offers.

According to bankruptcy filings released Tuesday, the stalking horse agreement followed “hard-fought negotiations” between the companies. The deal would see Stratolaunch buy Virgin Orbit’s aircraft assets for cash, with a $1.7 million deposit to be made by the buyer immediately in escrow if the deal goes through.
Virgin Orbit filed for bankruptcy protection on April 4 after the company failed to secure a funding lifeline and laid off nearly its entire workforce.
“Stratolaunch continually evaluates how to increase our capacity to meet the customer demand while ensuring our country has the capability to accelerate hypersonic technology via leap-ahead flight demonstrations,” the company said in a statement.
Stratolaunch is owned by Cerberus Capital Management – which bought the company from the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Vulcan in 2019.
Cerberus previously looked to take Richard Branson’s distressed rocket company private, and was among the closest of several potential bidders to striking a deal, but ultimately balked, according to a person familiar with the late stages of Virgin Orbit’s attempts to avoid bankruptcy.

Representatives for Cerberus did not respond to CNBC requests for comment on the take-private discussions. A Virgin Orbit spokesperson declined to comment on the potential Cerberus deal, but said in a statement that the company is “pleased that the numbers and quality of the indications of interest reflect the innovative ideas and hard work the team has put into the development of this unique system.”

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Virgin Orbit previously disclosed that it received “over 30 indications of interest” during its bankruptcy process, with the company continuing to look for a wholesale deal.
A bankruptcy auction is set for Monday, with a court hearing scheduled for 2 p.m. ET on May 24 to approve the results.

Stratolaunch, the world’s largest airplane, lands at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California after its first successful flight on April 13, 2019.
Stratolaunch More

Target said organized retail crime is worsening and will fuel $500 million more of lost and stolen merchandise this year than last year.
CEO Brian Cornell said the company has taken measures to prevent theft and keep stores open.
Other retailers have also spoken out about rising retail crime and blamed online marketplaces.

Locked up merchandise, to prevent theft in Target store, Queens, New York. 
Lindsey Nicholson | Universal Images Group | Getty Images

Target said Wednesday that organized retail crime will fuel $500 million more in stolen and lost merchandise this year compared with a year ago.
Target’s inventory loss, called shrink, totaled about $763 million last fiscal year, based on calculations from the company’s financial filings. With the anticipated increase, shrink this year would surpass $1 billion.

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It can be difficult to quantify theft, since shrink includes inventory loss from other causes, such as employee theft or damage, too.
CEO Brian Cornell called out the challenge on the company’s fiscal first-quarter earnings call, saying the retailer and others are grappling with rising theft on top of slower sales and more price-sensitive shoppers. He described retail theft as “a worsening trend that emerged last year,” and said violent incidents have increased at Target’s stores.
“The problem affects all of us, limiting product availability, creating a less convenient shopping experience, and putting our team and guests in harm’s way,” he said on the call.
Organized retail crime has become a hot-button issue in the industry, and some companies have blamed the growth of online marketplaces that allow thieves to anonymously sell electronics, makeup and other items they stole from stores. Home Depot, Walmart, Best Buy, Walgreens and CVS are among the major retailers that have spoken about the problem, saying that shrink has gotten worse.
“The country has a retail theft problem,” Home Depot CFO Richard McPhail said on a call with CNBC on Tuesday. “We’re confident in our ability to mitigate and blunt that pressure, but that pressure certainly exists out there.”

Yet it’s hard to verify if organized retail theft has grown and if so, by how much. Shrink cost retailers $94.5 billion in 2021, up from $90.8 billion in 2020, according to the National Retail Federation. Its data is anonymized and shared by retailers, so it cannot be fact-checked.
External retail crime accounts for only 37% of those losses, or about $35 billion, the NRF data shows.
There are other caveats. Covid fears and pandemic-related temporary store closures disrupted 2020, potentially tamping down foot traffic for both shoppers and thieves. Plus, shrink comes not just from shoplifting and employee theft, but from damaged products such as dinged furniture and expired food.
Target has become more vocal about organized retail theft, as it has struggled with excess inventory and its margins have disappointed. It missed Wall Street’s earnings expectations for three consecutive quarters last year. Unwanted merchandise sat around in its stores and warehouses, before the company took aggressive action to cancel orders and mark items down.
Cornell, however, has stressed that more theft is the driving Target’s worsening shrink.
Chief Financial Officer Michael Fiddelke said on the company’s investor call Wednesday that shrink reduced the company’s gross margin rate in the fiscal first quarter by a full percentage point compared with a year ago.
Cornell said Target is trying to reduce theft by installing protective fixtures and adjusting assortment in some stores. He said the company is working with politicians, law enforcement and retail industry trade groups to come up with policy solutions.
Some retailers and trade organizations pushed for the INFORM Consumers Act, a law that’s intended to require verification so thieves can’t easily sell stolen or counterfeit goods through online marketplaces. It was included in Congress’ omnibus spending package late last year and relies on enforcement by state attorneys general.
Cornell said the company is “focused on keeping our stores open in the markets where problems are occurring.” It has roughly 1,900 stores across the country, which are located in suburban areas and major cities including New York City and San Francisco.
— CNBC’s Gabrielle Fonrouge contribute to this report. More

Virgin Galactic is targeting as early as May 25 for the launch of its next spaceflight.
The Unity 25 mission marks both the company’s first in nearly two years since flying founder Sir Richard Branson and its planned last step before beginning commercial service.
It represents the company’s fifth spaceflight to date, launching out of Spaceport America in New Mexico.

Carrier aircraft VMS Eve is seen in the background shortly after releasing VSS Unity, which is firing its engine and acclerating during the company’s fourth spaceflight test, Unity 22, carrying founder Richard Branson on July 11, 2021.
Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic is targeting as early as May 25 for the launch of its next spaceflight, which marks both its first in nearly two years since flying founder Sir Richard Branson and its planned last step before beginning commercial service.
Called Unity 25, the mission represents the company’s fifth spaceflight to date, launching out of Spaceport America in New Mexico. It is a “final assessment” flight, with six Virgin Galactic employees onboard for a short trip to the edge of space.

The update comes after a longer-than-expected refurbishment period for the company’s spacecraft: A couple months after Branson’s flight, and following an FAA investigation into a mishap during his trip, the company paused operations for what was intended to be an “eight to 10 months” process – but ended up taking nearly 16 months instead.
Shares of Virgin Galactic rose about 5% in premarket trading Wednesday following the announcement. The company reported first-quarter results earlier this month that revealed widening losses as it funds development and expansion of its spacecraft fleet.

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In-house pilots Mike Masucci and CJ Sturckow will fly spacecraft VSS Unity, while Jameel Janjua and Nicola Pecile will fly carrier aircraft VMS Eve. In the passenger cabin will be Chief Astronaut Instructor Beth Moses, as well as astronaut instructor Luke Mays, senior engineering manager Christopher Huie, and senior manager of internal communications Jamila Gilbert.
Virgin Galactic’s approach to space tourism is to fly up to an altitude of about 40,000 feet, release the spacecraft and fire its engine to climb past 80 kilometers (or about 262,000 feet) – the altitude the U.S. recognizes as the boundary of space.
Known as sub-orbital, this type of spaceflight gives passengers a couple minutes of weightless, unlike the much longer, more difficult, and more expensive orbital flights conducted by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. After flying on his own craft in 2021, Branson told CNBC he hopes to fly with SpaceX.
Depending on the outcome and data gathered from Unity 25, the company aims to fly its first commercial mission in “late June.” More

Target’s sales barely grew year over year and comparable sales were flat in the fiscal first quarter.
Consumers are buying more necessities, as they watch their budgets.
The retailer stuck with its previous full-year guidance.

Shopping carts outside a Target store in the Queens borough of New York, US, on Saturday, May 13, 2023. Target Corp. is scheduled to release earnings figures on May 17. 
Bing Guan | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Target on Wednesday topped Wall Street’s earnings expectations, even as the discounter’s sales barely grew year over year and its shoppers bought more necessities.
The company’s shares were choppy in premarket trading as investors processed the report and the company’s second-quarter guidance. Target said it expects sales to remain sluggish in the current quarter, marked by a low-single-digit decrease in comparable sales.

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The big-box retailer stuck with its full-year outlook. It expects comparable sales will range from a low-single-digit decline to a low-single-digit increase for the fiscal year. Target said its full-year earnings per share will range between $7.75 and $8.75. 
Even as customers buy fewer discretionary items, Target is drawing them to stores with groceries, everyday essentials and on-trend items, CEO Brian Cornell said on a call with reporters. 
Here’s what Target reported for the three-month period that ended April 29, compared with Refinitiv consensus estimates:

Earnings per share: $2.05 vs. $1.76 expected
Revenue: $25.32 billion vs. $25.29 billion

Target’s net income for the fiscal first quarter dropped to $950 million, or $2.05 per share, from $1.01 billion, or $2.16 per share, a year earlier.  
Total revenue rose nearly 1% from $25.17 billion a year ago, coming in just above analysts’ expectations. 

Comparable sales, a key retail metric that tracks sales at stores open at least 13 months and online, were about flat in the first quarter compared with the year-ago period. That was about in line with Wall Street’s expectations of 0.2% growth, according to Street Account estimates.
Shoppers spent less as the quarter went on, Chief Growth Officer Christina Hennington said on a call with investors. Sales were strongest in February, weakened in March and softened further close to the end of April, she said.
Beauty was the strongest category, with sales growing in the mid-teens year over year. Food and beverage grew in the high single-digits. And household essentials sales rose by low single-digits, as customers bought health and pet items.
Other categories that include more discretionary items, including apparel and home, posted sales declines that ranged from mid single-digits to low double-digits, Hennington said. She added that when customers did buy those items, they tended to get them last minute, such as right before a holiday.
As customers bought different items, they shopped differently, too. Comparable store sales grew 0.7%, but comparable digital sales declined by 3.4% versus the year-ago period.
Cornell said a decrease in packages shipped to homes in part drove the weaker digital sales. Those deliveries skew toward discretionary items, compared with Target’s same-day curbside pickup orders, which tend to include more everyday needs like food or diapers, he said.
At Target’s stores and online, shopper traffic grew roughly 1%, on top of 3.9% growth in the year-ago period.
Target has had a challenging year of squeezed profits and softening demand, after a surge of growth during the Covid pandemic. Its annual revenue jumped by about $31 billion – or nearly 40% – from the fiscal year that ended in January 2020 to the fiscal year that ended this January.
In the year-ago quarter, the discounter’s troubles gained steam as it coped with higher freight costs and popular pandemic purchases like bicycles and kitchenware lingered on shelves. The retailer’s stock fell, as it missed Wall Street’s earnings expectations three quarters in a row.
After Target canceled orders and cleared through the inventory glut, another storm cloud appeared: shoppers had become more frugal.
Target on Wednesday showed signs of getting its inventory and profits back on track. Its fiscal first-quarter earnings beat expectations and its gross margin rate of 26.3% rose from a year ago, as freight costs fell and the retailer had fewer markdowns.
Yet its operating margin rate still has not climbed back to pre-pandemic levels. That won’t happen until next fiscal year or later, the company said in February.
Inventory dropped 16% year over year at the end of the quarter, driven by a 25% reduction in discretionary merchandise categories. The company has been ordering more food and high-frequency items to better mirror customers’ spending shift.
Other retailers have noticed a change in shoppers’ purchases, too. On Tuesday, Home Depot missed revenue expectations and lowered its forecast. The company’s CFO, Richard McPhail, said customers are buying fewer big-ticket items and taking on smaller projects. Plus, he added, they are spending again on services and already bought many items they needed when stuck at home due to Covid concerns. 
Target’s Cornell called out another challenge for retailers: organized retail theft. He said Target expects shrink will reduce the retailer’s profitability by more than half a billion dollars compared with last year. 
 “The unfortunate fact is violent incidents are increasing at our stores and across the entire retail industry,” he said on the call with reporters. 
He added the trend hurts the shopping experience by leaving shelves half-full for customers and employees rattled.
While Target reported a better-than-expected quarter Wednesday, executives stressed that strain on U.S. households will leave it facing challenges for the near future.
“The consumer is under pressure,” Hennington said on the call with reporters. “The consistent inflation, the running out of savings as well as just economic uncertainty in general is having an impact on their choices and they’re making trade-offs.”
Yet she said Target is getting them to open their wallets by dangling holiday-themed items, new products and lower prices. It’s gotten a pop in sales from food, decor and gifts during Valentine’s Day and Easter, from movie-themed toys and fresh collections of women’s dresses. More

Kraft Heinz is launching a customizable sauce dispenser with more than 200 possible combinations for restaurants.
The company hopes to appeal to consumers looking for more variety, spiciness and sweetness in their sauces and to learn what new condiments it should launch in grocery stores.
Kraft Heinz has been leaning into its away-from-home segment to drive sales as part of its broader turnaround strategy.

A rendering of the Heinz Remix dispenser
Source: Kraft Heinz

For more than 125 years, Heinz bottles have touted “57 varieties,” a number completely made up by its founder with little to no real-life application.
Now, Kraft Heinz wants to offer customers more than three times that number of condiment options through a new customizable sauce dispenser, created for food-service clients.

The machine, called the Heinz Remix, is the latest example of Kraft Heinz leaning into its away-from-home segment to grow sales. The company has expanded distribution in airports, launched a deluxe version of its mayonnaise for chefs and reformulated its Lunchables so they can be served in schools. In the first quarter, Kraft Heinz’s North American food service division reported sales growth of more than 25%.
The company will unveil the Remix at the National Restaurant Association Show, which kicks off Saturday in Chicago. It plans to pilot the dispenser in restaurants as soon as the end of this year.
“We are very, very clear that away-from-home and foodservice gives us an opportunity to test, to learn, to understand and to build trends much earlier than we have done historically,” said Peter Hall, Kraft Heinz’s head of its North American food service division.
Hall said the company is still working through the specific business model for the Heinz Remix. It’s also looking at how the dispenser could be used for drive-thru orders, he said. But the machine requires more time and effort than throwing a handful of ketchup packets in a takeout bag, which will likely pose a challenge for speed-focused drive-thru lanes.
To make a customized sauce, consumers will use the touchscreen to select a base of either ketchup, ranch, 57 Sauce or BBQ sauce; add in “enhancers” that include jalapeno, smoky chipotle, buffalo and mango; and set one of three intensity levels.

Alan Kleinerman, head of disruption at Kraft Heinz, told CNBC his favorite combination is ranch dressing, with a heavy dose of jalapeno and a lighter infusion of smoky chipotle. But a dark horse — mango ketchup — generated the most buzz around Kraft Heinz’s office recently, he said.
The company created the Heinz Remix in just six months, with helping hands from Microsoft, device engineers and internet-of-things developers.
“We’ve been on this journey to make innovation the number one growth driver across our business,” Kleinerman said. “To do that, we knew we needed to operate differently than we had in the past, to think bigger, to be more consumer-centric.”
The Oscar Mayer owner is in the middle of a turnaround after its former management’s focus on cost-cutting led to eroding sales in North America. Its troubles culminated in 2019 as it disclosed $16.6 billion in write-downs on iconic brands, such as Cool Whip and Kraft, and an SEC probe into its accounting.
In its latest quarter, Kraft Heinz reported North American sales grew by 6.2% as higher prices offset shrinking demand from inflation-weary shoppers. Shares of Kraft Heinz have fallen 3% this year, giving it a market value of $48.5 billion. Shares of the S&P 500 have risen 7% in the same time.

Taste-testing new products

While the Heinz Remix is new, its design feels familiar, thanks to its resemblance to the Coca-Cola Freestyle machine, which was launched nearly 15 years ago.
Today, Coke’s touchscreen drink dispensers can be found in more than 50,000 locations, including McDonald’s restaurants, AMC movie theaters and Target stores. Customers’ favorite custom orders from Freestyle machines have inspired the beverage giant to introduce new bottled drinks, such as Sprite Cherry and Coke with Cherry and Vanilla.
“They showed the power of iteration and innovating as they received feedback,” Kleinerman said of Coca-Cola.
But he added that consumers and food service operators were the primary inspiration for the Heinz Remix.
“I think it’s easy enough to draw the parallels, but this was an opportunity born through the original insights that came through and our desire to really change and build on the experience that consumers have today,” Kleinerman told CNBC.
Customers have been asking Kraft Heinz for condiments that are spicier or that mix sweet and savory, while restaurant operators told the company they wanted more variety, according to Kleinerman.
Like Coca-Cola, Kraft Heinz also plans to use the data from its sauce dispenser to decide what new products to release in grocery stores. The hope is that the Heinz Remix will drive new products that customers actually want, rather than those they say they want — but never buy.
In recent years, Heinz has already released a number of condiments inspired by combining its most-popular sauces, including “mayochup,” “kranch” and “buffaranch.” More

Elon Musk said he doesn’t care if his inflammatory tweets scare off potential Tesla buyers or Twitter advertisers.
“I’ll say what I want, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it,” Musk said.
His defense came a day after Musk tweeted attacks on liberal billionaire George Soros, who is often the target of anti-Semitic invective.

Elon Musk told CNBC’s David Faber on Tuesday that he doesn’t care if his inflammatory tweets scare away potential Tesla buyers or Twitter advertisers.
“I’ll say what I want, and if the consequence of that is losing money, so be it,” said Musk, who owns Twitter.

Musk has for years tweeted controversial items, including conspiracy theories and comments his critics have called broadly discriminatory.
His defense came after Musk caught renewed criticism for a tweet in which he likened liberal billionaire and Democratic donor George Soros to X-Men villain Magneto, a Jewish Holocaust survivor.
“He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity,” Musk tweeted Monday.
Musk has previously criticized Soros, whose family office, Soros Fund Management, recently cut its stake in Tesla. Soros, who is also Jewish, is a favorite target of right wing pundits and politicians and often the subject of anti-Semitic attacks. Soros and his family escaped the Nazis during World War II.
Critics said Musk’s tweets about Soros fit a larger pattern of attacks on the 92-year-old investor and Democratic donor. “Musk’s likening Soros to Magneto isn’t casual; it’s a nod to harmful antisemitic tropes of Jewish global control,” tweeted Alex Goldenberg, an analyst at the Network Contagion Research Institute. Israel’s Foreign Ministry, likewise, said Musk’s tweets had “anti-Semitic overtones.”

Musk on Tuesday denied he’s an anti-Semite. “I’m a pro-Semite, if anything,” he said when Faber asked him about the criticism. Musk has also previously tweeted and removed memes using Hitler.
Faber on Tuesday also asked Musk why he tweeted a link to someone who said a mass shooting at a Texas mall earlier this month might be part of “a bad psyop,” or “psychological operation.”
Investigators have probed whether the shooter, whom police killed, had expressed white supremacist views since he wore a “RWDS” patch, a reference to the phrase “Right Wing Death Squad,” which is used by extremists. He also had Nazi tattoos, including a swastika.
“I thought this ascribing it to white supremacy was bulls—,” Musk said, adding that he thinks there’s no proof the shooter was a white supremacist. “We should not be ascribing things to white supremacy if they’re — if it’s false.”
Since Musk took over Twitter last fall, the social media network has experienced a sharp decline in advertising revenue as brands and companies assessed changes to the platform and some called out its outspoken new owner.
Last week, Musk hired former NBCUniversal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino to replace him as Twitter’s CEO, a move widely seen as a way to jumpstart Twitter’s ad business. She started Sunday.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.
–CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report. More

The combined WWE-UFC will be called TKO Group Holdings.
The new sports entertainment company will trade publicly on the New York Stock Exchange.
UFC owner Endeavor and WWE aim to create a company valued at more than $20 billion.

World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. Chairman Vince McMahon appears in the ring during the WWE Monday Night Raw show at the Thomas & Mack Center August 24, 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Ethan Miller | Getty Images

World Wrestling Entertainment and Endeavor’s UFC announced last month they would merge later this year. Now we know the name of the combined company.
The new operation will be called TKO Group Holdings, a spokesperson for Endeavor confirmed Tuesday. As previously announced, it will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker TKO. The name is a reference to the professional fighting term “technical knockout.”

With the deal, Endeavor and WWE hope to create a sports entertainment giant valued at more than $20 billion.
Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel will also be the CEO of TKO Group, while Vince McMahon, WWE’s controlling shareholder and longtime boss, will serve as executive chairman of the new company. Endeavor will own a 51% stake, while WWE shareholders will get the remaining 49%.
Emanuel has said he intends to run “the same playbook” with WWE that Endeavor did with UFC, whose revenue surged 20% from 2021 to 2022.
“We have a track record of success with media rights,” Emanuel said last month. “WWE has similar scale to UFC. In the universe of assets at this scale, the opportunity is rare and finite.”
The deal is slated to close in the second half of the year. UFC and WWE will retain their respective names as part of TKO Group.

Despite WWE being scripted and UFC featuring authentic fights, the two organizations share much in common in terms of their combat sports content and cultures.
“This is going to be UFC 2.0,” Emanuel said in an interview that aired last month on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” More