Here's a fun puzzle for you: a company wins a massive, high-profile takeover battle against a giant rival, and its stock... is still considered a bargain? That's the curious situation for Paramount Skydance Corp. (PSKY) right now.
The streaming and media wars took a decisive turn this week. The board of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD) officially labeled PSKY's bid a "superior proposal," which was basically a polite way of telling Netflix to put up or shut up. Netflix chose to shut up. The streaming giant, led by co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters, announced it would not match the higher price offered by Paramount Skydance, abandoning its $82.7 billion pursuit.
You'd think winning such a colossal deal would make PSKY's stock look expensive. Think again. Even as it secured its position as the winning bidder, PSKY's value score—a measure of how underpriced a stock is relative to its fundamentals—climbed to the 88.93rd percentile. That's a week-on-week rise. In plain English, this high percentile ranking suggests that while the market is currently bearish on the stock, the company's intrinsic worth is significantly higher than its current share price. The stock is, by this metric, increasingly attractive and underpriced.
So, what's the winning offer? The PSKY bid that scared off Netflix includes a $31 per share cash price for WBD and a massive $7 billion regulatory termination fee. That's the fee PSKY would pay if regulators block the deal. It's a serious commitment.
The market's reaction to all this has been... mixed, to say the least. On the one hand, Netflix investors were thrilled. Netflix Inc. (NFLX) shares climbed nearly 10% on the news as the company prioritized "financial discipline" over a costly bidding war. Sometimes the best deal is the one you don't do.
On the other hand, PSKY's market performance tells a different story. Despite securing the deal, the stock remains under pressure. It's down 15.17% year-to-date and has fallen 24.51% over the last six months. There was a pop on the news—the stock closed 10.04% higher at $11.18 on Thursday and was up another 8.41% in Friday's premarket—but that's just a bounce in a longer downtrend.
This creates a fascinating disconnect. The fundamental value story, as signaled by the rising value score, is screaming "buy." The technical picture, however, is flashing caution signs. Analysis of the price trend currently shows negative signals across short, medium, and long-term horizons. The stock is cheap, but it's also in a downtrend. Investors are left weighing a deep-value opportunity against persistent negative momentum.
It's the classic investor dilemma: do you buy the fundamentally cheap stock that nobody else wants right now, betting that the market will eventually recognize the value of the WBD deal? Or do you wait for the technical picture to improve, risking that the stock runs away without you? For now, Paramount Skydance is the winner on the dealmaking battlefield, but its stock is still fighting an uphill war for investor affection.
