Yesterday, a block of 6 million Roku shares went up for sale. That night, Fox Corp. reached out to Morgan Stanley, asking the company to take on Fox’s 5% stake in Roku, according to sources for The Wall Street Journal.
Morgan Stanley accepted the deal, took the shares, and sold for $58/share. Today, Roku bounced back from Monday’s losses, with shares now at $69.46.
Fox has owned a portion of Roku since 2013. While there was a hiccup in the relationship just before the Super Bowl, with Roku threatening to drop Fox channels, Roku sent a positive statement to WSJ following the sale of shares.
“Fox was an early, pre-IPO investor in Roku. Fox has developed streaming channels on the Roku platform for many of their most popular brands. We look forward to continued partnership and to helping make their OTT strategies highly successful,” said a Roku spokeswoman.
We now know that the sale of Roku shares was planned to free up funds for the purchase of Tubi. Fox acquired the free streaming service this afternoon for $440 million in cash.
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