Well, it’s official; there’s one more offer on the table for entertainment giant Paramount (NASDAQ:PARA). Apollo Global Management (NYSE:APO) has offered a whopping $11 billion to buy the studio, and investors are thrilled. Thrilled enough, in fact, to send share prices up nearly 11% in Wednesday afternoon’s trading.
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This may be the most concrete offer we’ve heard yet. While there’s another offer on the table from Skydance Media, reports suggest it was a “preliminary” offer, and there’s not much word on how much Skydance actually planned to pay.
Meanwhile, that $11 billion is substantially less than the $14.3 billion offer that media figure Byron Allen put up for the company, although reports suggest that Allen has made several offers to buy media outlets before that have ultimately failed to pan out. Despite this, the known offer numbers we have so far are all well above Paramount’s current market cap, which is around $8.6 billion at the time of writing.
Setting Up the Future
Even as an increasing number of suitors vie for control of Paramount, the company is actively working toward building its own future. We learned yesterday about the current fate of the “Star Trek” series in the works and how it’s likely to continue being a major tentpole at Paramount.
Meanwhile, we also have word about casting for the upcoming Knuckles film, which will be set between two major Paramount releases, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Further, Paramount is also rolling out a new Roblox (NASDAQ:RBLX) game featuring the “Avatar: The Last Airbender” characters.
Is Paramount Global a Buy, Hold, or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Hold consensus rating on PARA stock based on six Buys, six Holds, and nine Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 42% loss in its share price over the past year, the average PARA price target of $13.06 per share implies 5.54% upside potential.
