Optimism bloomed in the media business after Donald Trump was elected last November. Executives trumpeted a more M&A-friendly era, with the “pace of change” for dealmaking starting to quicken.
Paramount Global and Skydance Media were seen as beneficiaries of the turnover of administrations. The two companies had announced an $8 billion deal to merge last July, projecting the deal would close during the first half of 2025. In light of the election outcome, Bloomberg hastened to report last December, Skydance CEO David Ellison and his management team had begun “preparing to take over Paramount even sooner than they once thought,” expecting a resolution by late-March or early-April.
Momentum has since moved in the other direction, in large part because of Trump’s jeremiad against traditional media companies and also the actions of his faithful appointee as FCC chair, Brendan Carr. Even though the deal is widely expected to eventually go through, it appears less and less likely to happen on schedule, and the amount of compromise required of the companies remains unclear.
Meanwhile, Paramount’s unusually structured organization, with three top execs sharing the Office of the CEO on an interim basis, is continuing to try to encourage staffers to tune out the noise and deliver results. Thursday will be the latest example, as Paramount Pictures takes the stage in Las Vegas to pitch its upcoming releases at CinemaCon.
Non-film divisions of the company have also had a busy week, with the advertising group hosting a press briefing and streaming flagship Paramount+ throwing a splashy New York premiere for MobLand. (No lies were detected in the tagline of a P+ sizzle reel screened at the latter event: “2025 will be unforgettable.”)
Reps from Paramount and Skydance declined to comment on the state of the merger.
Wall Street has started to get restless as the clock keeps ticking. Deutche Bank analyst Bryan Kraft on Wednesday downgraded Paramount shares to “hold” from “buy,” citing the regulatory process as a key factor.
“The media industry has continued to evolve over the past nine months since the merger agreement was signed, but we don’t know how Skydance’s plans and targets have evolved in response to such changes,” Kraft wrote in a note to clients. “We will reserve judgment until we hear more from management regarding their strategy, tactical plans, potential asset dispositions and acquisitions, and anticipated financial performance. Until such time, we’d prefer to allocate capital toward other companies in the sector.”
Michael Morris of Guggenheim retained his “buy” rating on Paramount in a client note this week, but he lowered his financial targets from where they had been last summer. “Pressure is building,” warned one of the subheads in the note. “We believe current Paramount management is executing on the cost discipline outlined prior to the announced Skydance acquisition and embedded in the post-transaction outlook provided by new leadership,” Morris wrote.
Even after the transaction closes, Morris believes the newly combined time will need time to find its footing. “We believe reinvigorating the creative process and productivity under new leadership will be challenging, and investor focus should be on a reasonable post-transaction level of profitability,” he wrote. “Given the weakening in market conditions and the additional pressure on revenue, we believe investor confidence in the multi-year outlook provided by Skydance leadership in July 2024 needs to be bolstered.”
Carr has long signaled that the process could take a while. ““At this point, we haven’t made a lot of progress on any transaction at the agency,” Carr told reporters in late-February. The review is now a bit more than two-thirds of the way through the FCC’s 180-day “shot clock,” an informal timeline for the agency to evaluate mergers.
After a conservative group filed a “news distortion” complaint last fall over the way Paramount division CBS News edited an interview of former Vice President Kamala Harris for 60 Minutes, Carr agreed to factor it into the review process. Trump has also filed a $20 billion lawsuit over the handling of the interview in a Texas court. (A separate legal tangle remains in play: a Delaware lawsuit by Class B shareholders of Paramount, who say they have been disadvantaged by the Skydance deal..)
Settlement talks have been held in recent weeks, which unsettled a number of people inside and outside the company, but such a path is hardly unusual in the current environment. Disney this year agreed to settle a winnable lawsuit filed by Trump over misstatements by ABC News, and tech companies have made all sorts of efforts to cozy up to the White House. (Major concessions by law firms targeted by Trump also merit a mention.)
While the idea of settling with the government rankles a number of news staffers at CBS, it is increasingly clear that middle ground will have to be sought. And Trump loyalists aren’t the only ones making that case. Adonis Hoffman, a longtime fixture in Washington, D.C. circles whose backgrounds includes a stint as chief of staff and senior legal advisor for interim chair and FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn (a Barack Obama appointee), believes a CBS settlement is crucial.
Hoffman shared with Deadline a copy of a memo he sent to top execs at Paramount, titled “How to Get Your Merger Approved By The FCC.” He advised top leadership, “In my view, Chairman Carr’s public comments suggest you are a long way from approval.” Given that, his list of recommendations included finding a way to resolve the 60 Minutes cases: “Consider a comprehensive negotiated settlement with all parties involved,” he wrote, “the terms of which should be selectively disclosed.”
Regardless of the murkiness of government dealings, recent financial reports show a game effort by Paramount to continue pushing toward its strategic goals, including streaming profitability. The company will post earnings for the January-to-March quarter sometime in the next month or so.
In its last quarterly report, Paramount said in February its fourth-quarter streaming subscriber growth hit its highest level in two years, with 5.6 million subscribers coming aboard for a total of 77.5 million. Direct-to-consumer profitability also improved by $1.2 billion in 2024 and the division is expected to turn a profit later this year. While questions remain, especially about the plan for declining linear TV networks, the business is still throwing off a lot of cash. Free cash flow increased by $489 million last year, its best mark in four years.
Even if the financials stay in a decent range, though, there is the question of morale, which Paramount Pictures troops will need to shore up as they tout the next Mission: Impossible, Sonic and Scream outings in Vegas.
Morris, the Wall Street analyst, touched on workforce sentiment in his latest assessment of Paramount. “The uncertainty faced by the current employee base,” he cautioned, is apt to cause “incremental negative impact on near-term revenue potential.”
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