Paramount shares jump 15% after Buffett’s Berkshire reveals new stake
Shares of Paramount Global jumped Tuesday after Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway revealed a new stake in the media company.
The stock rallied 10% in premarket trading Tuesday morning.
Berkshire bought 68.9 million shares of Paramount to build a stake worth $2.6 billion as of the end of March, according to a regulatory filing released Monday.
Paramount was Berkshire’s 18th largest holding at the end of the first quarter. The new stake adds another streaming property to Berkshire’s portfolio, whose top holding is Apple.
The media company in February rebranded from ViacomCBS to Paramount in a move to emphasize its flagship Paramount+ streaming service. While Paramount missed earnings expectations in its latest quarterly report, Paramount+ added 6.8 million subscribers in the first quarter.
Paramount shares are beating the market this year, down 7.2% versus the S&P 500’s 14.9% decline.
It is unclear if the purchase of Paramount shares came from Buffett or one his investing deputies, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler. Combs and Weschler independently manage roughly $30 billion of the conglomerate’s equity portfolio. In recent years, Berkshire bought a slew of technology names including Apple and Activision under their influence.
Berkshire also added new stakes in HP and Citigroup during the first quarter, among other changes to its equity portfolio
—CNBC’s Yun Li contributed reporting.
