VIA - Viacom Inc.
27.40 +0.32 (1.18%)
After hours: 6:15PM EST
| Previous Close | 26.56 |
| Open | 27.13 |
| Bid | 26.87 x 1000 |
| Ask | 31.50 x 1100 |
| Day's Range | 26.56 - 27.25 |
| 52 Week Range | 23.18 - 37.54 |
| Volume | 161,594 |
| Avg. Volume | 67,821 |
| Market Cap | 9.661B |
| Beta (3Y Monthly) | 1.36 |
| PE Ratio (TTM) | 7.06 |
| EPS (TTM) | 3.83 |
| Earnings Date | N/A |
| Forward Dividend & Yield | 0.80 (3.16%) |
| Ex-Dividend Date | 2019-09-13 |
| 1y Target Est | 78.00 |
- Yahoo Finance Video
Viacom beats quarterly revenue estimates
Viacom shares are up after the company reported a double beat for Q4. Yahoo Finance’s Brian Cheung, Sibile Marcellus and Heidi Chung break it down on YFi AM.
- American City Business Journals
Justice Dept. seeks to end 70-year-old Hollywood antitrust rules
The DOJ has reappraised the so-called "Paramount Decrees" and determined that the industry has changed so significantly that the regulations are no longer useful.
- Business Wire
GAMCO’s Proxy Voting Committee’s Preliminary Reflections on Upcoming 2020 Proxy Season
GAMCO Asset Management Inc. , an affiliate of GAMCO Investors, Inc. , on behalf of its investment advisory clients, is evaluating actions intended to improve corporate governance and board composition at several of its portfolio companies.
- Business Wire
Viacom and CBS Announce ViacomCBS Corporate Leadership
CBS (NYSE: CBS.A, CBS) and Viacom (NASDAQ: VIAB, VIA) today announced additional senior appointments for ViacomCBS’ corporate leadership. “Our team of highly accomplished corporate leaders will draw on their deep experience and expertise to help drive ViacomCBS’ success,” said Bob Bakish, President and Chief Executive Officer, Viacom, who will serve as President and Chief Executive Officer of ViacomCBS upon close.
- Business Wire
Chris Brown Ft. Drake Leads Winners Pack at BET Presents: 2019 Soul Train Awards Hosted by Tisha Campbell and Tichina Arnold
Lizzo, Cardi B, H.E.R., Khalid and More Bring Home Top Honors
- Business Wire
Viacom Renews The Office Through 2025
Comedy Central Extends Exclusive Cable Rights for The Office Through 2021
- Business Wire
JoJo Siwa, Why Don’t We, French Montana, and Blanco Brown to Perform at Nickelodeon’s U.S. SlimeFest Music Festival, March 21-22 at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif.
Tickets for Two-Day Kids and Family Event Go on Sale to the General Public Friday, Nov. 22, at 10 a.m.
- Business Wire
Nickelodeon’s JoJo Siwa D.R.E.A.M. The Tour Adds 50 New Dates In 2020!
Tickets On Sale to General Public Friday, Nov. 22, at 12:00 p.m. Local Time
- TheStreet.com
[video]Viacom Gains for Second Day; Analyst Sees Benefits From Pending CBS Merger
Viacom shares are climbing Friday after MoffettNathanson said the entertainment company's fourth-quarter results, released Thursday morning, were an unexpected positive for the stock.
- TheStreet.com
Viacom's Charts Can't Divine Impact on Price Action of CBS Merger
For his first Executive Decision segment of "Mad Money" Thursday, Jim Cramer spoke with Bob Bakish, president and CEO of Viacom Inc. , which just reported its final quarter as an independent company before its planned merger with CBS Corp. . Shares of Viacom, which is a holding of Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS charitable trust, rose by 1.9% on Thursday. Bakish said Viacom was able to deliver on all its promises for 2019 and it looks forward to the CBS merger, which is expected to close in early December.
- TheStreet.com
Viacom Remains Too Cheap to Ignore After Earnings Beat
Buy Viacom between its weekly value level at $19.83 and its monthly risky level at $23.75. The stock is too cheap to ignore both fundamentally and technically.
- Barrons.com
Viacom Earnings Boost the Stock, but Investors Are Still Sour on CBS Merger
Viacom has managed to do what CBS couldn’t: impress investors with its quarterly earnings. (VIA)e stock (ticker: VIAB) rose 2.3% in Thursday trading after reporting its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings before the market opened. Wall Street had expected $3.42 billion in revenue and 77 cents in earnings per share, according to FactSet.
- Investing.com
Stocks - Walmart, Viacom Rise Premarket; Canopy Growth, Cisco Fall
Investing.com - Stocks in focus in premarket trading on Thursday:
- TheStreet.com
Before Its Merger With CBS, Viacom Puts On a Strong Final Act
Viacom raises the curtain on fourth-quarter earnings that beat analysts' forecasts, thanks in large part to a strong final act within its previously floundering Paramount division, which returned to full-year ...
- Business Wire
Viacom Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year Results
NEW YORK-- -- Grew Domestic Advertising Revenue 6% for the Quarter and 1% for the Full Year Achieved Domestic Affiliate Revenue Growth of 1% for Both the Quarter and Full Year Returned Paramount to Profitability, with Full Year Adjusted Operating Income Improvement of $117 Million Accelerated Viacom’s Evolution with Continued Growth at Advanced Marketing Solutions – including Pluto TV – and Studio ...
- TheStreet.com
[video]Viacom Posts Fourth-Quarter Earnings Beat as Paramount Regains Luster
Viacom posts fourth-quarter earnings that beat analysts' forecasts as it continues to make inroads in capitalizing off its programming, and as its fabled but previously floundering Paramount unit regains its luster.
- Yahoo Finance
Walmart, Nvidia earnings — What to know in markets Thursday
Retail behemoth Walmart and chip giant Nvidia’s earnings reports will be closely monitored by investors Thursday.
- American City Business Journals
Viacom bucks direct-to-consumer streaming trend with new Netflix deal for Nickelodeon
Viacom has not announced plans for one all-encompassing streaming service like Disney, WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal have. Instead, it has several.
- Investopedia
Top Consumer Discretionary Stocks for November 2019
These are the consumer discretionary stocks with the best value, fastest growth, and most momentum for November.
- American City Business Journals
Why Paramount's fix of a 'Sonic' film after fan outcry is a sign of change in Hollywood
The character's earlier design would’ve been a huge blow for Paramount and killed any hope of a franchise, says Eric Yaverbaum.
- Business Wire
BET Networks Announces Second Season Pick up for Its Bold and Sexy Scripted Series “GAMES PEOPLE PLAY”
Today BET Networks announced the second season pick-up for its smart, sexy drama series “GAMES PEOPLE PLAY.” Starring Lauren London, Sarunas J. Jackson, Parker McKenna Posey, Karen Obilom and Jackie Long, season one of “GAMES PEOPLE PLAY” followed a desperate basketball wife trying to protect her family, a tenacious journalist struggling to rebuild a tarnished career, and a scandalous groupie looking ...
- Barrons.com
CBS and Viacom Stocks Fell After CBS Reported Earnings That Missed Expectations
CBS reported GAAP earnings of 85 cents a share, below estimates of 92 cents a share. Revenue of $3.295 billion was just short of Wall Street’s $3.37 billion estimate.
- Bloomberg
Everyone Gets Paid in CBS-Viacom Except Shareholders
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Is it just me, or does the $100 million “severance” being paid to Joe Ianniello, the acting chief executive officer of CBS Corp., stink to high heaven? For starters, you can make a pretty compelling Elizabeth Warren-esque argument that handing a $100 million “severance” to someone who is not, in fact, leaving the company is exactly why income inequality has become such a hot-button issue.But let’s be old school about this. Let’s focus on the shareholders and how this is their money that’s being handed to Ianniello. It is also an unpleasant reminder of how the father-daughter combo of Sumner and Shari Redstone seemingly can’t resist throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at executives who have not done much for their stockholders.The Redstones, of course, control CBS through their privately held film exhibition company, National Amusements Inc. They also control Viacom Inc., which Sumner Redstone bought for $3.4 billion in 1987. (Viacom acquired CBS in 1999.) Until 2016, Sumner Redstone, now 96, was the executive chairman of both companies, though he had largely disappeared from public view two years earlier amid allegations that he was in serious decline. Shari Redstone, 65, is the vice chairman of both companies.In 2003, when CBS was still part of Viacom — and Sumner Redstone was still in charge — Les Moonves became its CEO, a position he retained when CBS was spun off in late 2005. Between 2007 and 2018, when Moonves was fired for sexual improprieties, the CBS board, led by the Redstones, paid him just shy of $700 million, according to figures compiled by Bloomberg. That’s an average of $63.6 million a year.I happen to think that $63 million a year is an absurd amount to pay a manager to run a company. But even if you accept that entertainment companies pay their executives insane amounts — Discovery Inc. paid its CEO, David Zaslav $129.4 million last year, for crying out loud — it is reasonable to assume that such an outsized paycheck would be justified by outsized performance.Not so. During the Moonves era at CBS, the S&P 500 Index returned an average of 9% a year. CBS returned 8.7% a year. In other words, the Redstones and the CBS board paid hundreds of millions of dollars of its shareholders’ money to a man who could barely keep pace with an index fund. (By comparison, the Walt Disney Co. returned 14.6%, and 21st Century Fox returned 10.5%.)The situation at Viacom is even worse. Remember Philippe Dauman, the former CEO whom Sumner Redstone once called “the wisest man I know”? He ran Viacom for a decade, from 2006 to 2016. According to Equilar, a company that compiles executive compensation figures, his compensation during those 10 years was nearly $500 million — while the stock gained a paltry 2.7% a year on average. You may recall that Dauman wound up in a nasty court fight with the Redstones in 2016, trying to keep his job by contending that Sumner Redstone was no longer mentally competent to make key business decisions. After winning that battle, the Redstones still handed Dauman a parting gift as they pushed him out the door: a $75 million severance package.Which brings us back to Ianniello. Although he has been acting CEO only since Moonves departed late last year, Ianniello has also been the recipient of the Redstones’ largesse: Between 2016 and 2018, as the company’s chief operating officer, his compensation averaged $27 million a year, according to Bloomberg. The stock? It dropped from the low 70s to the mid-40s during those three years. This is what’s known as “pay for pulse.”So why did Shari Redstone feel the need to hand Ianniello an additional $100 million? The reasons are twofold. First, Redstone is recombining Viacom and CBS. She doesn’t want Ianniello to leave — at least not right away — but she also isn’t going to make him the top dog. Second, for legal reasons, she can’t ramrod this deal through by herself, even though she is the controlling shareholder. She needs the CBS board and senior management to support the bid. “You need Joe to get the merger done,” Robin Ferracone, the CEO of executive compensation consulting firm Farient Advisors, told Bloomberg. “So you need to make him indifferent to whether he’s going to lose his job or not.”Yes, $100 million is certainly likely to buy a whole lot of indifference. Then again, $10 million probably could have achieved the same result. And in any case, if Shari Redstone needs $100 million to, er, persuade one of her executives to support her merger plan, maybe that suggests the merger’s success is not exactly a slam dunk.I have a hard time seeing how combining two underperforming media companies with a hodgepodge of assets will create a worthy competitor to powerhouses such as Disney, which rolled out its Disney+ streaming service on Tuesday morning, and AT&T, which next year will bundle its media assets into another streaming entrant, HBO Max. But Shari Redstone wants to combine Viacom and CBS, and with the help of that $100 million, that’s what’s going to happen. When the companies are merged, which is expected to take place next month, the CEO of the combined entity will be Bob Bakish, who is Viacom’s CEO.Since he took over Viacom, Bakish’s compensation has been surprisingly normal, at least by modern CEO standards. According to company filings, he received about $20 million a year in total pay in 2017 and 2018.But fear not. Once the deal is done, Bakish’s pay is set to jump to more than $30 million. I predict that he’ll be in Moonves/Dauman territory in no time. After all, overpaying executives is the Redstone way.To contact the author of this story: Joe Nocera at jnocera3@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Daniel Niemi at dniemi1@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Joe Nocera is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He has written business columns for Esquire, GQ and the New York Times, and is the former editorial director of Fortune. His latest project is the Bloomberg-Wondery podcast "The Shrink Next Door."For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
