While the Skydance and Paramount (NASDAQ:PARA) deal seems to be, indeed, a done deal, there’s still a chunk of window left for other offers to come in. However, electronics company Sony (NYSE:SONY) will not be making that offer, reports note, and that gave Sony a fractional upward boost in Friday afternoon’s trading.
With Sony now officially not coming back to the table in Paramount’s “Go Shop” period, that takes the only other confirmed offer off the table. The Skydance offer came in at over $8 billion, which was actually less than a third of the offer that Sony originally placed at $26 billion. However, Sony’s bid was for the whole company, whereas Skydance is mainly looking to buy Shari Redstone’s stake while giving other investors the option of selling their shares.
That $26 billion offer was “refined” shortly thereafter, but it’s a safe bet that the offer wouldn’t come back anyway. After all, there are issues of foreign ownership in broadcasting to consider, and given Paramount’s ownership of CBS, that would leave Sony in a bad position overall. Plus, there’s the matter of regulatory issues, and given how activist the Federal Trade Commission has been on this sort of thing, it likely wouldn’t get past the regulatory stage.
Forget It, Going to Comic-Con Instead
And that was when Sony decided to pack up and head for Comic-Con instead. Specifically, the San Diego Comic-Con where it brought along a host of new developments about several fan-favorite properties. It also brought the hardware on which to enjoy them, with BRAVIA televisions and home audio on display.
Sony highlighted several properties, including “The Boys,” “For All Mankind,” and recent it-had-no-business-being-this-good entrant, “Twisted Metal.” Several giveaways, including T-shirts and posters, were on hand, as well as drawings for larger-scale hardware like the BRAVIAs displayed at the show.
Is SONY Buy or Sell?
Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on SONY stock based on two Buys assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 2.8% rally in its share price over the past year, the average SONY price target of $108 per share implies 12.02% upside potential.
