The earnings reports for entertainment giant Paramount (PARA) recently emerged, and there was some good news to be had therein. Turns out Paramount+ is making some headway and bringing in some new viewers with it. That was good enough news for investors as shares gained over 2% in the closing minutes of Friday’s trading.
The earnings report presented both good news and bad. Revenue was down, somewhat, dropping 6% to reach $7.19 billion. However, the biggest reason for that disparity was that, the year before, Paramount had the Super Bowl to broadcast. Without that outlier event, Paramount revenue was actually up 2%. Revenue from film was actually up 4%, hitting $627 million. Yet despite this, revenue from theatrical productions was actually down a bit. Further, television media revenue was down as well, around 13%. That was mostly, again, because of the Super Bowl.
However, Paramount+ added a healthy 1.5 million new subscribers, which brought the platform to a total of 79 million subscribers globally. Meanwhile, Paramount also still expects to see its merger with Skydance go through, and soon; the transactions are expected to close in the first half of 2025. Given that the first half of 2025 has around seven weeks left of life to it, it would likely be a good idea to start considering a plan B.
More Calls to Fight Trump
Meanwhile, another report suggests that Paramount should fight back against the lawsuit from President Donald Trump, with everyone from lawmakers to CBS’ own stars stepping in to encourage the company to fight back against the figure that has to approve that merger.
We have already seen the coalition of senators featuring Bernie Sanders come out in favor of Paramount to fight back, and we have also been seeing a number of Paramount’s own employees calling for active resistance. With several legal experts suggesting the suit is frivolous—like Jonathan Turley, a professor at Georgetown Law and a Fox News contributor—such calls to fight back are not out of line. But given that Trump has already won a string of settlements from Disney (DIS) to Meta Platforms (META), Paramount’s willingness to settle is not out of line either.
Is Paramount Stock a Good Buy Right Now?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Sell consensus rating on PARA stock based on two Buys, seven Holds and six Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 6.83% loss in its share price over the past year, the average PARA price target of $11.92 per share implies 0.08% downside risk.
