ViacomCBS stock closes down 9% after company says it will raise $3 billion from stock offerings
The ViacomCBS logo is displayed on the Nasdaq MarketSite to celebrate the company’s merger, in New York, December 5, 2019.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Shares of ViacomCBS closed down 9% Tuesday, a day after the company said it would raise $3 billion from stock offerings.
ViacomCBS said it will sell $2 billion in class B common shares and $1 billion in Series A mandatory convertible preferred shares.
The stock offerings come just a few weeks after the company launched its Paramount+ streaming service, and the offerings will help the company bulk up its content. ViacomCBS said it would use the funds to power “investments in streaming,” among other general corporate purposes.
Media companies have been pouring funds into new content as the field gets more crowded, with competitors ranging from Netflix to AT&T‘s HBO Max. ViacomCBS has said it expects to invest around $5 billion in its streaming content by 2024. That’s up from a reported $1 billion last year. In that same time frame, it expects to hit between 65 million 75 million streaming subscribers.
Despite Tuesday’s stock dip, shares of ViacomCBS are up nearly 145% year to date.
