Paramount Global Stock Slides After Warren Buffett Chops Stake

Etan Vlessing
·2 min read
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Stock in Paramount Global slid after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway reported a one-third stake cut in the major studio.

Paramount Global shares fell by 36 cents, or nearly 3 percent, to trade at $12.83 on the NASDAQ Exchange at the market open on Thursday morning. That extended a late-day collapse in the studio’s stock Wednesday, falling by around 6 percent to $13.19 at one point in after-market trading.

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Berkshire Hathaway in a securities filing late Wednesday said it had sold 30.4 million shares in Paramount Global, or around a third of its investment stake, during its fourth quarter to Dec. 31, 2023, according to a Bloomberg tally.

That stake sale coincided with market speculation that David Ellison’s Skydance Media and RedBird Capital were eying a potential takeover of Shari Redstone’s controlling stake in the conglomerate. Another media mogul, Byron Allen, also made a play for Paramount Global by revealing a $14.3 billion offer to buy all outstanding shares in the studio.

Should a deal for National Amusements or Paramount Global come to pass, market analysts expect significant divestitures for Paramount Global, including Skydance and Paramount possibly combining their filmed entertainment studios for greater scale as a content producer.

In these speculative scenarios, the future of the loss-making Paramount+ streaming platform is up in the air, and PlutoTV and some linear TV channels could be sold off. Paramount’s stock also lost value over 2023 as streaming and pay TV subscriber losses mounted, and only rebounded when the studio was talked about as an acquisitions target.

Buffett is the biggest outside investor in the studio, while Redstone effectively controls Paramount Global through National Amusements’ controlling stake and a multi-class share structure.

Paramount discloses its fourth-quarter and full-year 2023 earnings results Feb. 28.

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