CBS - ViacomCBS Inc.
| Previous Close | 39.34 |
| Open | 39.34 |
| Bid | 0.00 x 800 |
| Ask | 0.00 x 1300 |
| Day's Range | 39.22 - 41.78 |
| 52 Week Range | 35.02 - 53.71 |
| Volume | 24,859,882 |
| Avg. Volume | 5,658,485 |
| Market Cap | 15.331B |
| Beta (3Y Monthly) | 1.22 |
| PE Ratio (TTM) | 5.29 |
| EPS (TTM) | 7.71 |
| Earnings Date | Feb 12, 2020 - Feb 17, 2020 |
| Forward Dividend & Yield | 0.72 (1.77%) |
| Ex-Dividend Date | 2019-09-09 |
| 1y Target Est | 47.54 |
- American City Business Journals
Streaming roundup: Disney driving billion-dollar content race
The streaming landscape is in the midst of an arms race that The Walt Disney Co. is only escalating with the arrival of Disney+.
- American City Business Journals
CBS and Viacom are one again
It's official: Sister mass media conglomerates CBS Corp. and Viacom Inc. are back under the same roof. The two companies' $12 billion merger closed after market hours on Wednesday. The combined entity has been renamed ViacomCBS Inc.
- Bloomberg
CBS and Viacom Are Still Selling Wall Street on Their Deal
(Bloomberg) -- Viacom Inc. and CBS Corp. completed their merger on Wednesday, ending three years of on-and-off talks and creating what they boast is an entertainment colossus without peer. The hope is that the combined company, rechristened ViacomCBS Inc., will spit out hit TV shows and movies faster than you can say Netflix.But Wall Street has been skeptical. Shares in both companies have tumbled more than 14% since they announced plans to combine in August, erasing billions of dollars in market value. Shareholders of CBS have sued the company in Delaware, alleging the merger only benefits its controlling shareholder, National Amusements Inc., the movie-theater chain owned by the Redstone family.The shares began to rebound on Wednesday, a sign that investors are finally warming to the deal. But ViacomCBS still has a long way to go before winning over skeptics.Even media analysts, typically a staid and supportive bunch, have questioned the logic of the deal. Michael Nathanson, co-founder of Moffett Nathanson LLC, dubbed an October filing that outlined details of the merger “an abject disaster.”That wasn’t the reception Shari Redstone was hoping for when she began agitating for a merger of the two companies back in 2016. That was when she supplanted her father, Sumner Redstone, as the public face of a family business with a clear goal: reunite the two companies that her father split apart in 2006.Wall Street was mixed on the deal at the time, but saw the logic for Viacom. The owner of MTV and Nickelodeon was losing teenagers to Netflix, advertisers to YouTube and confidence among its own employees. Combining with CBS would give the combined company the heft to negotiate better deals with pay-TV operators and advertisers.CEO ClashesYet the family met resistance from the leadership of both companies, leading to legal disputes with both Viacom chief Philippe Dauman, her dad’s old lawyer, and CBS boss Les Moonves, a TV industry legend. Dauman was fired in 2016, and Moonves was ousted last year after more than a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct.Now that the merger is finally a reality, it looks late -- and the combined company looks small. ViacomCBS has a market capitalization of about $20 billion, a fraction of heavyweights Walt Disney Co., Comcast Corp., AT&T Inc. and Netflix Inc. Its $27 billion in annual sales is a fraction of all those companies but Netflix, which is growing at a much faster rate.Redstone would prefer investors look at another number: the $13 billion that the two companies are spending annually on TV shows and movies. That figure puts ViacomCBS in the same league as the biggest entertainment companies in the world, and speaks to what Redstone and Viacom chief Bob Bakish have said is a differentiated strategy. While AT&T, Comcast and Disney trip over one another to create their own Netflix, ViacomCBS will sell to all of them.Viacom’s Paramount produces “Jack Ryan” for Amazon, while Nickelodeon just signed a deal to make programs for Netflix. CBS both produces “Dead to Me” for Netflix and several shows for its own streaming service.Shares RallySome investors are coming over to their way of thinking. Viacom rallied the most since May on Wednesday, climbing as much as 6.1%. CBS rose as much as 6.2%. Both stocks came off their highs by the close, each rising more than 3%. ViacomCBS begins trading under the symbols VIACA and VIAC on Thursday.“It’s somewhat frustrating the way the stocks have traded; it’s like there are no believers out there,” said John Miller, a senior vice president at Ariel Investments, which holds stock in both companies. “We continue to believe this merger makes complete sense.”Miller said he expects “unbelievable” political advertising revenue in the 2020 election cycle, and said the companies are bringing together valuable programming. “The combination will make both companies stronger,” he said.Still, the combined company’s strategy remains confusing to many. At the same time it licenses “South Park,” one of its most popular programs, to AT&T’s HBO Max, ViacomCBS will maintain its own streaming service, All Access. The spending on original programming for All Access and Showtime is what prompted Nathanson to use the phrase “abject disaster” in the first place. The cash burn from that spending exceeded his forecast.Tough SpotBakish, who will run the combined company, is in an unenviable position. He doesn’t want to give up on the money he can get licensing programs to streaming services starved for hit shows, but he can’t forgo the world of streaming altogether. Wall Street has rewarded Disney for taking on Netflix head-to-head, but it is in the unique position of owning Marvel, “Star Wars” and Pixar.Investors’ concerns don’t stop there. They expected more cost synergies. They wanted more insight into how the two companies would benefit one another. Press appearances from Bakish have done little to assuage their concerns.But competing on the internet is not the only -- or even the main -- rationale for doing the deal. It does create a formidable TV company that will own the most-watched U.S. network, the most-watched kids’ TV network, one of the major Hollywood studios and a premium cable network in Showtime. All together, they will command more than 20% of TV viewing and the largest audience in almost every demographic of any company.“It’s a reach story,” Bakish told Bloomberg News in an interview the day the deal was announced. “We will have the largest TV business in the U.S. on a combined basis, and it strengthens our position to create value.”Bakish, Redstone and the leadership at CBS all say they’re convinced this deal is a no-brainer. Now they just need to convince everyone else.(Updates with deal’s completion in first paragraph, shares in 11th paragraph.)To contact the reporter on this story: Lucas Shaw in Los Angeles at lshaw31@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net, John J. Edwards IIIFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Business Wire
ViacomCBS Announces Completion of the Merger of CBS and Viacom
ViacomCBS Inc. (Nasdaq: VIACA, VIAC) ("ViacomCBS") today announced the completion of the merger between CBS Corporation and Viacom Inc. The combined company, which is renamed ViacomCBS, creates a premium content powerhouse with global scale, including leadership positions in markets across the U.S., Europe, Latin America and Asia.
- ETF Trends
Bet on This Industry ETF in December
Investors looking for winning sector and industry ETFs this month may be inclined to lean toward retail fare because we’re in the midst of the holiday shopping season, but historical data suggest some ...
- Thomson Reuters StreetEvents
Edited Transcript of CBS earnings conference call or presentation 12-Nov-19 1:30pm GMT
Q3 2019 CBS Corp Earnings Call
- Bloomberg
Facebook Backs Political Ads Policy Despite Pushback
(Bloomberg) -- Facebook Inc. is not backing down on its policy to show political ads, even after competitors have made changes amid concerns that tech platforms allow politicians to amplify misleading messages.In a briefing to reporters in Brussels, Nick Clegg, the company’s vice president for global affairs and communications, said Facebook wouldn’t follow its competitor Twitter Inc. in shunning political advertisements from its platform.Clegg said Facebook has proven to be an “extremely important instrument by which democratic debate is enriched” by lending a voice to politicians that challenge incumbents. The former U.K. deputy prime minister added that there’s “a strongly-held view in the company that it’s a legitimate use of our platform.“Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive officer, separately told CBS News in an interview to air Dec. 3 that it’s important that people “can see for themselves what politicians are saying.”Twitter in October said it would ban political ads, with the exception of some “cause-based” ads for certain issues, while Alphabet Inc.’s Google in November said it would severely limit how political advertisers can target people online. Some news outlets reported in November that Facebook was also mulling changes to its ads policy, including to limit the level of detail political campaigns or groups can use to target voters.Responding to the reports, Clegg said Monday it had looked at both Twitter and Google’s changes to their ads policies and could consider enhancements and improvements in the future, but that the “fundamental architecture of our approach to allow political ads” won’t change.The Facebook executive said the decision wasn’t commercial, adding that political ads would likely make up less than 0.5% of the company’s total revenues next year.Zuckerberg has come under fire for his position because it means politicians can publish lies or misinformation on the social network and pay Facebook to spread those messages to voters. President Trump’s campaign has already taken advantage of the policy by running recent ads claiming Democratic front-runner Joe Biden bribed Ukrainian officials -- claims that have been debunked.Separately, Facebook on Monday also announced a limited trial of a new tool that will allow users to transfer their Facebook photos and videos to other services, starting with Google Photos. All data transferred will be encrypted and any initiation of transfers will require users to enter their password, Facebook said.The announcement comes as the social media giant’s data practices is under heavy scrutiny in Europe, from both privacy and competition regulators.“The pressure from regulators in the name of competition is to allow data to walk about a bit more,” Clegg said, adding that making data more portable also posed new privacy risks of their own. “The more you move stuff around the more of it can get lost and exposed.”To contact the reporter on this story: Natalia Drozdiak in Brussels at ndrozdiak1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Giles Turner at gturner35@bloomberg.net, Nate LanxonFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
- Business Wire
Viacom CEO Bob Bakish to Participate in the UBS Global TMT Conference
CBS (NYSE: CBS.A, CBS) and Viacom (NASDAQ: VIAB, VIA) today jointly announced that Bob Bakish, current President and Chief Executive Officer of Viacom, and appointed President and Chief Executive Officer of ViacomCBS, will participate in a question and answer session during the UBS Global TMT Conference in New York, NY on Monday, December 9, 2019 at 12:15 p.m. ET. The pending merger to combine CBS and Viacom is expected to close after market hours on Wednesday, December 4th. A live webcast of the session will be available to the general public through a link on the Investors homepages of CBS’s website (investors.cbscorporation.com) and Viacom’s website (ir.viacom.com).
- Financial Times
FirstFT: Today’s top stories
Following a meeting with Afghan president Ashraf Ghani, Mr Trump told reporters that the Taliban “wants to make a deal” and that US officials were “meeting with them”. Mr Trump on Thursday said the Taliban was willing to agree to a ceasefire.
- Insider Monkey
Were Hedge Funds Right About Souring On CBS Corporation (CBS)?
Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) lagged the larger S&P 500 ETF (SPY) by more than 10 percentage points since the end of the third quarter of 2018 as investors first worried over the possible ramifications of rising interest rates and the escalation of the trade war with China. The hedge funds and institutional investors we track […]
- PR Newswire
W.R. Berkley Set to Join S&P 500; RLI to Join S&P MidCap 400; The St. Joe Company to Join S&P SmallCap 600
S&P; MidCap 400 constituent W.R. Berkley Corp. (NYSE:WRB) will replace Viacom Inc. (NASD:VIAB) in the S&P; 500, S&P; SmallCap 600 constituent RLI Corp. (NYSE:RLI) will replace W.R. Berkley in the S&P; MidCap 400, and The St. Joe Co. (NYSE:JOE) will replace RLI in the S&P; SmallCap 600 prior to the open of trading on Thursday, December 5. S&P; 500 constituent CBS Corp. (NYSE:CBS) is acquiring Viacom in a deal expected to be completed soon pending final conditions. Post acquisition, CBS will change its name to ViacomCBS Inc. and will trade on the NASDAQ stock exchange under ticker VIAC.
- American City Business Journals
Channel 7 comfortably beating Channel 5 in late local news ratings derby
Channel 7's deep bench of talent continues to work to keep the station well out in front of its nearest rival, Channel 5, in late local news ratings.
- American City Business Journals
Swarm owner optimistic despite low attendance: ‘We’ll get there, I know we will’
Georgia Swarm became world championships in 2017, but the fan support hasn't quite reflected their successes.
- Investopedia
Top S&P 500 Stocks for December 2019
The S&P 500 Index is a market-capitalization-weighted index of the 500 largest publicly traded companies in the U.S. It is widely regarded as the best gauge of large-cap U.S. equities. Some of the largest companies in the index include Microsoft Corp.
- Reuters
CBS ordered to disclose internal records on Viacom deal
The deal is scheduled to close on Dec. 4, combining CBS television network, CBS News, Showtime cable networks with MTV Networks, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and the Paramount movie studios. The judge, Joseph Slights of Delaware's Court of Chancery, ordered CBS to turn over materials the CBS board discussed when considering the merger with Viacom, which was split from CBS 13 years ago. The company was also ordered to provide documents regarding the nomination and appointment of board members to the special committee that approved the merger earlier this year, as well as some communications between Redstone and the board.
- American City Business Journals
Report: Stacey Abrams to produce a CBS TV drama based on one of her novels
Stacey Abrams is reportedly adapting one of her novels for CBS Television Studios. Abrams, the former minority leader in the Georgia House of Representatives who rose to national prominence during her 2018 gubernatorial bid, will be an executive producer of a CBS Corp. (NYSE: CBS) drama currently in development called "Never Tell," according to The Hollywood Reporter. "Never Tell" was the first of eight novels Abrams wrote under the nom de plume Selena Montgomery.
- Barrons.com
The CBS-Viacom Merger Is Going to Close Next Week
CBS and Viacom are set to consummate their merger on Dec. 4 after the stock market closes, bringing the businesses under the same management for the third time since the 1970s.
- Reuters
CBS and Viacom to close merger on Dec. 4
The all-stock merger of CBS Corp and Viacom Inc is expected to close on Dec. 4, the companies said on Monday. Shares of the combined company, which would be renamed as ViacomCBS Inc, are expected to start trading on Nasdaq from Dec.5 under the new ticker symbols "VIACA" and "VIAC", the companies said. Earlier in August, CBS and Viacom agreed to merge, creating a company with more than $28 billion in revenue, as an increasingly competitive media landscape prompted their controlling shareholder to reunify the U.S. entertainment companies 13 years after breaking them up.
- TEST Business Wire Releases
CBS Corporation and Viacom Inc. Announce Expected Closing Date of Merger
CBS Corporation (NYSE: CBS.A, CBS) and Viacom Inc. (Nasdaq: VIAB, VIA) today announced that their pending merger is currently expected to close after market hours on Wednesday, December 4th. Immediately following the closing, the combined company will be renamed "ViacomCBS Inc." ("ViacomCBS"), and it is expected to begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market ("Nasdaq") on Thursday, December 5th under the new ticker symbols "VIACA" and "VIAC".
- PR Newswire
CBS To List Shares Of ViacomCBS On Nasdaq Following Merger
CBS Corporation (NYSE: CBS.A and CBS) ("CBS") today announced that it has notified the New York Stock Exchange ("NYSE") that, following the effective time of the merger of Viacom Inc. ("Viacom") with and into CBS (the "merger"), with CBS continuing as the surviving company, CBS will delist its Class A and Class B common stock from the NYSE and will list the Class A and Class B common stock of the combined company, which at the effective time of the merger will be renamed "ViacomCBS Inc." ("ViacomCBS"), including the outstanding shares of CBS Class A and Class B common stock (which will remain outstanding shares of ViacomCBS), on the Nasdaq Global Select Market ("Nasdaq"). Trading of the Class A and Class B common stock of ViacomCBS on Nasdaq under the new ticker symbols "VIACA" and "VIAC," respectively, is expected to commence on the trading day following the effective time of the merger. Until the merger and subsequent transfer of listing to Nasdaq are complete, the CBS Class A and Class B common stock will continue to trade on the NYSE under the ticker symbols "CBS.A" and "CBS," respectively. The completion of the merger remains subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close by early December.
- Barrons.com
How to Play Media Stocks for the Coming Streaming Wars
Which of the media old guard are set up to succeed? Here’s how each of them is approaching the streaming future.
