Has Warren Buffett made a Mistake in Buying Paramount!? PARA (Div 3%) vs. PARAP (Div 13%)- Different Classes of Equity Shares in Paramount.


Please help me think this through!

Paramount Global has three classes of equity shares! Warren Buffett bought class B equity shares of Paramount Global (PARA)! But why did Warren Buffett buy Class B shares? Did he make a mistake in buying Class B shares? The convertible preferred equity (PARAP) gives you a dividend yield of 12.75% vs 2.97% for Class B shares! Is this a mistake?

I know there is a premium. There is a $15.78 premium TODAY on the 5.75% Series A Mandatory Convertible Preferred Stock $PARAP.

BUT each convertible preferred equity share will (from Paramount's 2021 10K)

  • Pay $5.75/year (12.75% dividend yield at today’s prices)
  • Convert to a minimum of 1.0013 and a maximum of 1.1765 shares of our Class B Common Stock on April 1, 2024.
  • Preferred Dividends are cumulative if not paid.
  • Preferred Dividends have preference over common dividends.

Laying out cashflows indicate that the PARAP stock price+ dividends cashflows are higher than PARAs indicating a mistake.

But an incremental cash flow analysis shows PARA better off.

Clearly, we do not know what the price of $PARA is going to be on 4/1/2024. Nor do we know what the discount rate Warren Buffett is using. So we can run a sensitivity analysis on these two assumptions.

Here is the google spreadsheet. I cant attach the graph or pics here. So I've tried to detail it out here.

What do you think? How else can I evaluate $PARA vs. $PARAP?


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