Faber Report: Paramount deal moves to fast lane

What do you got for me? You got Paramount, I got Paramount. You know, Jim, it’s funny. It’s, I know Paramount is a small, relatively small company. The amount of interest in it is incredible. I have to tell you, there’s not a day that doesn’t go by that I don’t get a number of phone calls from people who I haven’t heard from in a little while who want us. What’s going on? I mean guy let I read my friends, I read my great friend Jim Stewart spoke about it and and I keep saying, well I want more on charity. Yes, what is charity? Let me let me give you a quick favorite report on what’s going on right now because it is interesting we are in that 30 day exclusive period. Of course that will expire actually in early May in which David Ellison, along with his partners at the private equity firm Redbird are negotiating A transaction under which, as I’ve said any number of times, but of course it’s worth coming back to. That would involve both buying National Amusements, where the control stock is held and Sherry Redstone would sell it. They’ve already agreed is my understanding. I think others may have reported this to a price there that was done, that was done actually months ago, still subject to due diligence, but they’ve agreed. The key, though, is the negotiations between this buying group and Paramount itself. And the special committee, of course, for the Board of Directors. By the way, the big story that Julia has been covering, for example, is the fact that 4 directors on Paramount’s board are going to step aside at the annual meeting. But what I’m going to come back to, Jim, is the deal itself, because you’ve already had a number of shareholders coming out saying, wait a second, you’re going to dilute us, you’re going to pay a premium for Sherry stock and what do we get out of it? And you might imagine there’s some frustration in the Ellison camp in the sense of they can’t really explain their deal. They don’t yet really have that deal fully in place, but I can give you some sense at least based on any number of conversations I’ve had with people close to and familiar with their thinking as to what they’re talking about. First of all, you still need to negotiate an exchange ratio by which Paramount would essentially buy Skydance that is part of this deal. It’s not a one time deal where they just buy control of National Amusements. They’ve linked the two National amusements. Got got to buy that, that you also need to get a special committee of the degrees that you can merge Skydance into Paramount. So your need you need Paramount to come up with an exchange ratio that’s being negotiated. They’re narrowing that range. And in fact next week for the first time Ellison’s group, the Ellison Redbird Group is going to begin conducting due diligence at Paramount. They are having meetings with management and that process is beginning. So they’re deep into this. They haven’t yet agreed to though an exchange ratio and as I have reported a number of times, beyond the equity that would be exchange for Skydance, you would also have an additional equity issuance by Paramount for which Red Bird, Ellison, Larry Ellison, KKR, which owns some of this guidance would step up and buy more equity that would be used in part to deliver and do a number of other things. The plan on the part of of of Ellison is to radically restructure paramount, massively cut costs in terms of rationalizations and get the stock to frankly they believe what could be multiples of the current price. That’s their hope and their plan. That by the way is what Cheri Redstone has signed off on right now. Despite the fact that from what I’ve heard there may have been a couple of opportunities. She had to sell National Amusements and only National Amusements at a higher price than she’s agreed to currently with Ellison because she believes in this plan and she would remain A shareholder. By the way in in the new pro forma company holding on to her common, her non voting stock. Will it all happen? What are the synergies for example available? Could it be a billion, could it be two or three billion in synergies? There aren’t certain, but they certainly have a good deal of confidence Jim, that in fact they can reduce costs de lever and essentially restructure Paramount in a way. By the way, that would have reverberations far beyond Paramount itself, because we talk so often about streaming direct to consumer, whether it’s Netflix or Disney or Peacock or Warner Brothers discoveries Max. And so it will be very interesting, if this deal actually does happen, to see what comes out of it.