Warren Buffett Says He Has Sold All Of His Paramount Global Stock At A Steep Loss

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Warren Buffett claims to have sold all his shares in Paramount Global at a significant loss.

Speaking at his company Berkshire Hathaway’s annual meeting today in Omaha, NE, the billionaire investor took full ownership of the bad decision. Despite speculation to the contrary, he said, “It was 100% my decision” to invest in Paramount in 2022. “We sold everything and we lost quite a bit of money. It happens in this business. (Watch a clip of him above.)

At the end of 2023, Berkshire owned 63.3 million shares of Class B stock, or non-voting stock, worth about $800 million at the time. The stake, which represented about 10.1% of the company’s equity, helped boost the stock when Buffett initially invested in 2022. He later made public comments criticizing companies pursuing Netflix in subscription streaming, a cohort that includes Paramount, given the economic situation. of the emerging sector.

Known as the Oracle of Omaha, Buffett has made many missteps during his decades of investing. Owning Paramount stock, Buffett said, “made me think even further…harder, even about the whole question of what people do with their free time and what are the guiding principles of running a entertainment business of any kind. ” He added dryly: “I think I’m smarter than I was a year or two ago. But I also think I’m poorer because I acquired the knowledge the way I did.

Paramount’s Class B shareholders recently railed against the company’s merger negotiations with Skydance Media due to dilution concerns. Shari Redstone controls nearly 80% of the company’s voting stock, or Class A stock, and favored a two-step, all-stock deal with Skydance. An exclusive negotiating window between the companies expired at midnight Friday and a special board committee met today to consider an alternative all-cash merger proposal of Sony Pictures Entertainment and the private equity giant Apollo. This deal has a preliminary price tag of $26 billion and would likely see all shareholders pay a premium.

Wall Street generally approved of the Sony/Apollo deal, but Redstone was more reluctant to accept it because it would likely result in the dissolution of the company and the merger of Paramount’s film studio with Sony’s. Redstone’s father, Sumner Redstone, considered Paramount Pictures, which he acquired after a bitter battle with Barry Diller, to be the centerpiece of his media empire.