The other day I had a serious discussion with some friends about the future of unskilled workers. The income inequality in our society is partly caused by skill inequality. Some skills and jobs are more scalable and therefore naturally command a salary premium. For example, an NFL player can collect a huge paycheck because even if each of the millions of TV viewers is chipping in only one penny per game, that adds up to a large sum. By contrast, even the best plumber in the world can fix only so many houses in a day. His service is not scalable, so his income is going to be limited.
Articles for Viacom
Entertainment Stocks: Selling Dreams to the Have-Nots
Graph ItNEW!Friday, January 27th, 2012 by Trefis Team
Viacom Earnings Preview: What We Are Watching
Graph ItNEW!Thursday, January 26th, 2012 by Trefis Team
Viacom (NASDAQ:VIA) began the new year by announcing that its filmed entertainment division Paramount Pictures was the 2011 leader in terms of worldwide box office sales. The studio generated global revenue of about $5.2 billion with about 38% coming from the U.S. box office. Traditionally filmed entertainment has been a small portion of Viacom’s value, about 15% according to Trefis estimates, compared to the cable networks on which the company primarily relies. However if Paramount is able to continue capturing market share the movie business could become more important. The company is reporting its Q4 and full year 2011 earnings on February 2nd, at which time we will update our analysis. Viacom competes with other media companies such as Time Warner (NYSE:TWX), Disney (NYSE:DIS) and News Corp. (NASDAQ:NWS).
Our price estimate for Viacom stands at $64, a premium of about 20% to the market price. Read More »
Viacom Updates: Company Worth $64 on Ad Sales Outlook
Graph ItNEW!Thursday, December 15th, 2011 by Trefis Team
Viacom’s (NASDAQ:VIA) Q4 results have a slight overhang due to decline in ratings of its most valuable channel Nickelodeon. We estimate that Nickelodeon constitutes about 15% to Viacom’s value and so is the single most important channel. However, the ad sales from this channel tend to be a greater proportion of overall ad sales in Q4, due to holiday season. Thus the impact of ratings decline could be more visible in Q4 and mitigate in the subsequent quarters. The company’s management stated at UBS’s annual media and communications conference that while there has been some softness in the ad market in recent weeks, things should improve in the Q1 2012. This provides some encouragement for its medium term outlook as ad sales form an integral part of Viacom’s revenues as they do for other media companies such as CBS (NYSE:CBS) and News Corp. (NASDAQ:NWS)
See our full analysis for Viacom
In another development, Viacom has announced $1 billion in debt offering. The credit rating agency Fitch has assigned BBB+ rating to this new debt issuance and expects that it will be used for repayment of the earlier debt and share repurchases.
Overall it seems that analysts are slightly positive on the stock despite the fact that Q4 earnings could be affected due to Nickelodeon ratings decline. Equity research analysts from firms such as Morgan Stanley, Piper Jaffray, Benchmark Co. and Deutsche Bank have price targets for Viacom at $52, $53, $51 and $60 respectively.
Our price estimate of $64.29 for Viacom, implies a premium of more than 30% to the market price.
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Viacom Updates: Paramount Rolls On, Expands Stock Buybacks & Switching Exchanges
Graph ItNEW!Friday, November 25th, 2011 by Trefis Team
A couple of weeks back, Viacom (NYSE:VIA) reported its Q4 fiscal 2011 earnings, demonstrating good revenue growth driven by success of its film studio Paramount, lifting the stock. For the movie fans, the company’s film unit is going to bring in some excitement by releasing news movies for its famous franchises such as Star Trek, Paranormal Activity and Transformers. While the film side continues to be bright, there are concerns around advertising market in Q4. The company’s CEO has mentioned that the U.S. advertising market is experiencing a slowdown in the ongoing quarter. This might not only impact results for Viacom, but also for its rivals such as CBS (NYSE:CBS), Time Warner (NYSE:TWX) and News Corp (NASDAQ:NWS).
First Kill All of the Video Distributors…Paramount Runs An Experiment
Graph ItNEW!Thursday, October 6th, 2011 by Trefis Team
What would happen if Random House launched an online competitor to Amazon’s book site? Crazy right? But Paramount is running a little experiment that is basically the same thing. They quietly launched direct rentals of Transformers: Dark of the Moon from their web site. Sounds crazy but combine original content with an off-the-shelf video rental platform and a little known effort called Ultraviolet and it might payoff, just not in the way you think.
Nickelodeon Tops Ratings, Supporting Viacom’s $60 Value
Graph ItNEW!Tuesday, July 12th, 2011 by Trefis Team
According to a company press release, Viacom’s (NYSE:VIA) kid focused channel Nickelodeon ended up being among the top cable networks in Q2 2011, an arena in which companies like Time Warner (NYSE:TWX), Disney (NYSE:DIS) and News Corp (NASDAQ:NWS) have significant presence. This performance was led by programs such as iCarly. The company also states that this was 65th consecutive quarter when Nickelodeon’s stood as basic cable’s top total day network with kids in the range of 2-11 years as well as among total viewers. This certainly begs the question, is Nickelodeon important to Viacom & assuming so, then how much?
Paramount Announces New Animation Unit Though Small Impact to Viacom
Graph ItNEW!Monday, July 11th, 2011 by Trefis Team
Viacom’s (NYSE:VIA) film division Paramount Pictures will launch its own animation division according to a recent press release. This division will be responsible for producing high quality animation movies with budgets of up to $100 million. This comes on the heels of its first fully owned computer generated imagery (CGI) animated film, Rango, which grossed over $240 million earlier this year. This investment is a necessary step for the company given the success of animated movies recently, especially 3D ones, and is similar to what Disney (NYSE:DIS) has done with Pixar’s animation studio.
The 4 Most Valuable Channels for Viacom
Graph ItNEW!Monday, May 23rd, 2011 by Trefis Team
Viacom (NYSE:VIA) competes with other media conglomerates like Disney (NYSE:DIS), News Corp (NASDAQ:NWS), CBS (NYSE:CBS) and Time Warner (NYSE:TWX) in media and entertainment business. The company is heavily dependent on TV channels for its value. Below we take a quick look at the most valuable channels for Viacom.
Viacom Pulls Channels from iPad App Raising Stakes in the Streaming Standoff
Graph ItNEW!Thursday, April 7th, 2011 by Trefis Team
Viacom (NYSE:VIA) was one of the content owners that pulled its channels from Time Warner Cable’s (NYSE:TWC) iPad app recently. This combined with its changing stance regarding Hulu points to the growing friction between content owners and those companies involved in distribution through new streaming platforms like Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), Hulu and now tablets. As the landscape changes for delivering content, we expect to see Viacom along with competitors like News Corp (NASDAQ:NWS), Time Warner (NYSE:TWX) CBS (NYSE:CBS) and Disney (NYSE:DIS) position for a greater share of the revenues and benefit from providing content to through these new channels.
What Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2 Means to Time Warner
Graph ItNEW!Thursday, March 31st, 2011 by Trefis Team
Warner Brothers, Time Warner’s (NYSE:TWX) movie entertainment arm, is going to launch part 2 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows in 3D during 2011. We take this opportunity to estimate the value of such movies from Time Warner’s perspective. Time Warner competes with Viacom (NYSE:VIA), News Corp (NASDAQ:NWS), CBS (NYSE:CBS) and Disney (NYSE:DIS) in the media and entertainment business.
Viacom : All Articles
- Week of 2012-01-22
- 01/27/12 Entertainment Stocks: Selling Dreams to the Have-Nots
- 01/26/12 Viacom Earnings Preview: What We Are Watching
- Week of 2011-12-11
- Week of 2011-11-20
- Week of 2011-10-02
- Week of 2011-07-10
- 07/12/11 Nickelodeon Tops Ratings, Supporting Viacom’s $60 Value
- 07/11/11 Paramount Announces New Animation Unit Though Small Impact to Viacom
- Week of 2011-05-22
- Week of 2011-04-03
- Week of 2011-03-27
- 03/31/11 What Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2 Means to Time Warner
- 03/29/11 Why CBS Pulled Content from Netflix
- Week of 2011-03-06
- 03/09/11 Nickelodeon Monkeying Around with Online Games, Stock Upside is Limited
- 03/07/11 TV Channels Drive 79% of Viacom’s Stock Value
- 03/07/11 CBS Acquires Clicker to Expand Digital Business and Tap Internet TV’s Growth
- Week of 2011-02-27
- 02/28/11 Viacom’s Deal with Hulu Makes Sense
- Week of 2011-02-20
- Week of 2011-02-13
- Week of 2011-02-06
- 02/10/11 Viacom in Great Position to Benefit from Improving Cable Ad Market
- 02/08/11 News Corp Broadcasting Margins Improve, Supporting $23 Stock Value
- Week of 2011-01-30
- Week of 2011-01-23
- 01/27/11 Are Social Networks Stepping on Media Conglomerates’ Turf?
- 01/25/11 Impact of Avatar Sequels on News Corp Stock
- Week of 2011-01-16
- 01/18/11 Disney Could Spark Recovery in Box Office Market Share with Pirates of the Caribbean Releases
- 01/18/11 Could Comcast-NBC End Up Like Time Warner?
- Week of 2011-01-09
- 01/12/11 Viacom’s Home Entertainment Struggles May Be Temporary
- 01/11/11 $1 Billion MySpace Valuation Highlights Facebook’s Dominance, But News Corp Stock Still Cheap
- Week of 2011-01-02
- 01/06/11 Impact on CBS if Pandora Becomes the Biggest Threat to Radio
- 01/02/11 Dissecting Disney’s Spend by Product Line
- Week of 2010-12-26
- 12/31/10 News Corp’s BSkyB Deal to Grow Satellite Operations, Small Impact on Stock
- 12/30/10 NFL Fuels Disney’s ESPN Engine
- 12/28/10 Google TV Could Threaten Key Revenue Streams for Broadcast Networks
- Week of 2010-12-19
- Week of 2010-12-12
- 12/15/10 Upside to CBS from Viewership Strength
- 12/14/10 How Much Can Disney Gain from Netflix Deal?
- Week of 2010-12-05
- 12/10/10 HBO, MTV, ESPN, TNT, Nickelodeon – Which TV Channel is the Most Valuable?
- 12/08/10 Impact of 2 Disney Movies Hitting $1 Billion in 2010
- 12/07/10 Costs for Disney’s Shanghai Park a Concern
- Week of 2010-11-28
- Week of 2010-09-19
- Week of 2010-09-05
- Week of 2010-08-22
- 08/23/10 Slower Growth Expected for Disney Consumer Products Revenues
- 08/23/10 Disney Needs 30% Annual Revenue Growth from Playdom
- Week of 2010-08-15
- 08/20/10 Lower Fee per HBO Subscriber Expected for Time Warner
- 08/18/10 Lower Viacom Share of DVDs Sold in US
- Week of 2010-08-01
- Week of 2010-04-11
- 04/16/10 People Magazine Worth 5% of Time Warner’s Stock, 2x More than TIME Magazine
- 04/15/10 CBS Could See 8% Stock Upside If Radio Ad Market Improves in 2010
- 04/14/10 Time Warner’s Stock Depends on Modest Subscriber Fee Growth for TNT Channel
- 04/12/10 Disney’s CapEx Rivals that of Time Warner, News Corp and Viacom Combined
- Week of 2010-04-04
- 04/08/10 US Box Office Ticket Price Hikes Hardly Matter to Viacom’s Stock
- 04/05/10 The Disney Channel is Nearly 7% of Disney’s Stock
- Week of 2010-03-21
- Week of 2010-03-07
- Week of 2009-12-20
- Week of 2009-11-15
- Week of 2009-09-20
- 09/22/09 Does the Box Office matter?
- Week of 2009-08-23
- Week of 2009-07-26