THB #451: Yes, A Paramount Global Piece

The end of the year media obsession with The Netflix 18215 data dump and Shari Redstone’s next choice at Paramount is exhausting me…. mostly because the media is so busy trying to come up with narratives (all made up, educated only by speculation, as mine will be) that most versions of the analysis tends to miss the fundamentals of both businesses, Streaming (led by Netflix) and Paramount Global.

Today, I’m going to dig into and (hopefully) simplify Paramount Global’s situation.

There is exactly one new piece of information involved with the Shari Redstone story. She had the conversation with David Ellison and RedBird Capital and she wants us to know she had the conversation with David Ellison and RedBird Capital. The result of that obviously intentional leak has been a roughly 10% bump in stock price. But let’s get out of the moment (aka, the oldest trick in the book)…

In March 2020, Paramount Global stock dipped under $20 a share for the first time since 2010.

As you can see, the stock peaked in early 2021 (top price, $97.35), when people convinced themselves that the launch of Paramount+ was going to change everything.

Unfortunately, it changed everything.

The stock dropped back down to earth in one month. And the stock hasn’t seen $30 since June 2022.

And in the last 7 months, the stock has been stock under $20… even with the current pop coming off the rumor. The low was on October 27, when the stock closed at $10.70 for the day.

As of this writing, on Dec 14, 2023, stock price is $16.71

Here’s my take.

Nothing is getting better. The had the top linear/streaming hybrid series in Yellowstone… and it just didn’t matter. They had the #1 domestic movie of 2022 in Top Gun: Maverick… and it just didn’t matter. CBS was a very close #2 to NBC amongst broadcast viewership last year… it just doesn’t matter.