Bob Bakish, CEO of Paramount Global, took the floor for the first time publicly since the renamed company’s recent and not well-received Investor Day, touting streaming prospects but acknowledging, “We are going to have to prove that to you over time” – referring to Wall Street.
The stock took a hit as jitters over hefty increases in DTC content spending and an undetermined path to profitability outweighed strong growth forecasts for revenue and subscribers.
“We didn’t necessarily get the market reaction we would have hoped for,” Bakish said in a keynote Q&A Tuesday at a media conference hosted by Morgan Stanley. When pressed on when streaming might hit break-even, Bakish said, “We feel good about the trajectory.” He declined to give specifics, but did mention one concession. The “movie a week on Paramount+” he’d promised in 2021 will become “a movie every other week. We think that’s a better investment strategy.”
The company expects 100 million streaming subscribers by 2024. It expects losses to peak in 2023 and then begin to moderate.
“I know people are worried about investment levels [but] look at what we are investing in. New series, which we have a good track record on, and repatriating good product that is out there to get it back under our control.”
He said that when he looks at a company to buy, “The single most important thing is, if you buy the company can you use the content? And the answer is usually, no, not for a while… A fact that was missed in some of the post investor call narrative.”
More to come…
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