Warren Buffett made a bad call with Paramount and said he made sure Berkshire Hathaway got out before the stock fell more.
At Berkshire’s annual meeting on Saturday, 93-year-old CEO Buffett told shareholders that he was directly responsible for the company’s Paramount share purchases in 2022, but that the company had now changed course.
“I was 100% responsible for the Paramount decision,” Buffett said. “It was 100% my decision, and we sold it all and we lost quite a bit of money, and that happens in this business, too.”
Berkshire had already cut its holdings of the media company—which owns the film production company Paramount Pictures, broadcaster CBS, and the streaming service Paramount+—by a third from 93.7 million shares to 63.3 million shares that were worth about $930 million at the end of 2023.
Buffett had previously been critical of streaming, saying in an April interview with CNBC that Paramount “isn’t fundamentally that good a business,” even as Berkshire was invested in the company. At the time, he was ambivalent, saying, “We’ll see what happens.”
The company’s bum Paramount bet made Buffett think deeper about the industry, he told shareholders.
“I certainly thought harder even about the whole question of what people do with their leisure time and what the governing principles are of running an entertainment business of any sort, whether it’s sports or movies or whatever it might be,” Buffett said.
Several interested parties have targeted Paramount for acquisition, including Sony and private equity firm Apollo and David Ellison’s Skydance Media. On Sunday, Paramount officially opened negotiations with Sony and Apollo, the New York Times reported.
Berkshire Hathaway reported a $12.7 billion profit for the first quarter, a drop from the $35.5 billion it netted in the same quarter a year prior. The decline was mostly due to a drop-off in the paper value of its holdings, and Buffett encouraged investors to look instead at the company’s operating earnings, which exclude its investments. The company’s operating earnings skyrocketed 39% year over year, coming in at about $11.2 billion.
The annual meeting over the weekend was the first since Berkshire vice chairman Charlie Munger died in November at the age of 99. Buffett seemed reflective as he noted Munger’s absence, wrapping up the meeting with somber thoughts.
“I not only hope you come next year. I hope I come next year,” he said.
Still, when it comes to his stock bets, the legendary investor was just as keen as ever, and even at 93 years old, learning from his mistakes—the hard way.
“I think I’m smarter now than I was a couple years ago,” Buffett said. “But I also think I’m poorer because I acquired the knowledge in the manner I did.”
