Remember yesterday when things were looking a bit uncertain as far as the Paramount (NASDAQ:PARA) sale went? Well, things got even more uncertain in the meantime as reports suggest Sony (NYSE:SONY) is reconsidering its entire offer, and the offer wasn’t looking all that great to begin with. But despite this, media company Paramount gained fractionally in Wednesday afternoon’s trading, possibly because, at least now, some of the uncertainty is out in the open.
The latest word suggests that Paramount was in the process of opening up the books to Sony and Apollo Global Management (NYSE:APO), who were working together on the Paramount deal. The original offers were up around $26 billion, though reports noted that a good chunk of that was going to debt payment to Paramount’s creditors. Since then, something must have emerged from Sony’s perusal of Paramount’s books because it’s reportedly reconsidering the entire offer.
All This and Internal Strife
But it actually, somehow, gets worse from here. Paramount is now the butt of jokes, as represented by Seth Meyers, who made an appearance at the NBCUniversal (NASDAQ:CMCSA) upfronts. An upfront presentation is when media companies present their upcoming content to advertisers in advance so they can secure advertising spots. Meyers declared that he was “one of the two finalists” to buy Paramount, following a lucky find of “…$20 on the street this morning.”
Not that Meyers had much room to joke; at least Paramount+, Paramount’s streaming service, has a date in which it expects to be profitable, unlike NBCUniversal’s Peacock service.
Meanwhile, one of Paramount+’s biggest properties, “Yellowstone,” is now Costnerless. Kevin Costner departed the show and revealed that a combination of scheduling problems and labor relations with the studio made things rough enough for him to depart altogether.
Is Paramount a Buy or Sell Stock?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on PARA stock based on three Buys, 10 Holds, and eight Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 15.6% loss in its share price over the past year, the average PARA price target of $12.57 per share implies 0.80% upside potential.
