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Canoeguyyy's avatar

Hi David, great writeup! I've also been looking at Paramount closely and wanted to highlight a couple of things: 1) EBIT for CBS and the local stations in the years prior to the pandemic was closer to $2B. The $2.7-$3 includes EBIT for Showtime and S&S. I ultimately think the analysis by parts hinges on the multiple you could get for CBS. Also, although low revenue the local stations are very high EBIT% (50%+ from what I remember). It would be very interesting to know how their margins have been impacted the last 5 years. 2) I think Showtime is worth quite a bit more than $4B. EBIT in 2018 was $0.9B. It's also very high margin, I think largely due to the PPV events they put on. 3) I wouldn't subscribe any value to Paramount+ as I think if the company were to ultimately be sold for parts, it's a platform know for it's poor technology that's losing money. They also don't own any IP as it would have been sold off with the other parts. On this, do you know how pricing between Paramount+ and the internal studios works (i.e., how CBS, Nickolodeon, etc. charge Paramount+) for using their content? I assume they must do it on a fair market value basis.

I calculated a "conservative" total value of $35B, implying a double. What makes Paramount very interesting to me isn't actually the upside or potential surprise upside if it sells for parts or as a whole. It's the downside protection. I really don't think you can lose money here as you're protected by a library of very valuable assets that don't deplete, even if they continue to burn cash with Paramount+ for another couple of years. I'm thinking of upping to a 15-20% position.

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Josh's avatar

Good work here. I agree with much of what you highlighted. I would however put the streaming at a $0 valuation and the Paramount library much higher than you showed. I believe content owners would be more profitable going back to licensing to a few of the 3rd party streamers (Netflix, Amazon, etc).

Even though I would put Paramount+ at $0, I still agree with your overall assessment of $0.20 to $0.30 on the dollar at these prices.

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