Word: paramount
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...excitement of the moment, some Wall Street watchers speculated that new bidders might come forward and push the price of Paramount as high as $100 a share. But many experts on corporate value argue that Paramount is already overpriced at its current level. According to court papers in the case in Delaware, John Malone, the chairman of cable-TV giant Tele-Communications Inc., testified in a deposition that "one would have a hard time paying more than $75 a share" for Paramount. Malone is no casual observer: he reportedly offered Davis $70 a share for Paramount three years ago. Malone...
...What is Paramount really worth? To establish a price range, analysts tot up the cash flow produced by each of the company's lines of businesses and divide the result by Paramount's 118 million outstanding shares. The major holdings include Paramount Pictures (Wayne's World 2, Addams Family Values), the company's Simon & Schuster (now Paramount Publishing) book-publishing arm and Madison Square Garden. Running those numbers, Jessica Reif, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co., has put the value of Paramount as low as $60 a share. (The stock closed at 81 1/8 last week after the Delaware court ruling...
...question of value is ultimately in the eye of the beholder. "The conventional wisdom on the street is that Paramount is way overpriced," says J. Kendrick Noble Jr., who runs his own media consulting firm. "But here you have enormous egos who think they can work wonders with this company; so anything goes." Sometimes the egos get it right: Wall Street hooted at Ted Turner for paying $1.2 billion for the MGM film library in 1986, but today that price is considered a bargain...
...Paramount said its board would meet to set up a procedure to consider bids from all interested parties. So unless Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone decides to raise his bid, his company could be the loser. Diller, who watched the hearing on television from QVC's West Chester, Pennsylvania, offices, said he was "delighted" with the ruling. "Obviously he's very happy," said designer Diane von Furstenberg, a confidant. Yet neither she nor Diller was ready to declare final victory in the Paramount struggle. "Nothing is ever a fait accompli in life," Von Furstenberg said. "Only the future will tell...
...CAPTION: PARAMOUNT'S WILD RIDE