Porter Bibb on Viacom: Dauman Is On The Down Escalator (Audio)

dot net. Stocks retreated. SMP five hundred index down for the sixth time in seven days, amidst selling in healthcare and technology shares that have been the market's weakest all year. SMP five hundred index down six to two thousand seventy one, a drop of three tents upon percent down. Industrials down fifty seven, drop also of three tenths of one percent, as stacktown forty four, drop of nine tenths of one percent.

The tenure down eight thirty seconds. The yield there one point six percent, Gold up three ten anounce, the thirteen O one a gain of two tens up one percent. Crude of four point one percent of dollar rating nine of barrel right now on West Texas Intermediate. I'm Charlie Pellett, and that's a Bloomberg Business Flash. You're listening to Taking Stop with Kathleen Hay and Pim Fox on Bloomberg Radio. Viacom,

Viacom and Sumner Redstone. While Viacom projecting poor results for its quarter ending this month, but the company shares well, they seem to be following the potential moves of the chief executive, Philippe Dowmon. Is he closer to an exit? Well, let's find out more from Porter Bib. He is managing Partner Media Tech Capital Partners. You can be followed on Twitter at Porter three. Al Right, Porter Bib, give us your estimate of Philippe Dowmon. Will he be the chief

executive of Viacom come Labor Day? Absolutely not. He's on the down escalator right now and they're holding the exit doors wide open for him. He's his only hope right now, Frankly, is the delays that the three or four legal actions that are pending right now might take over the course of a slow summer. But he's definitely out of the picture. Well, why why did he do this? I mean, why did why did uh revsone decided this was time for him to go? Well, I'm not sure it was entirely Sumner's decision.

I think Sherry Redstone, who has made a rapprochement with her father after many, many years of estrangement, she has a very clear picture of the fact that over the last five years Phil Dolman has lost almost half of the share value, the market value of Vehicom, and he's shown absolutely no inclination of being able to reverse that trend. Porter, what if you could tell us about the actual businesses and whether they will be combined if indeed Mr donmin

leaves Viacom. Well, there there's a lot of talk right now on the street about putting CBS and Viacom together when they were split. Um, when half a dozen years ago Redstone thought he could take one and one and create four or five out of separate entities. That hasn't happened. One and one now equal about one and a half um, not two and less. Moonviz is uh the real star of this sort of tale because he's done miracles with CBS with without any real global franchise, without a whole

lot of content creativity beyond the basic CBS network. UH, and he's shown a very daring and leadership position in terms of network chief executives in going over the top before and separately from his competition. So you just said that you didn't think that Sherry Redstone wants to run the company. You have that, Well, that's that's her declared position.

She She has met frequently with Domin and with with Moonves and is pretty articulate about the fact that she's trying to preserve the value of the Redstone trust and maximize the value that Domin is seeing dissipate every day in Vehicom. So if that's the case, and with the potential alst of these five Viacom directors, what do you think is motivating Sherry Redstone value? She she wants to get the best value she can for Vehcom. I don't think she ever intends and never has intended to uh

get involved in direct management. She's vice chairman right now of both companies and she's going to uh do whatever she can to maximize the value of Vehicom. CBS is probably fully valued right now with not a lot of growth opportunity. The word on the street is that these

companies have to come back together. Um Les Mondos is not particularly enamored at that idea, but I think that it's very likely that there once the Dolman situation is resolved and the new board that Redstone has nominated, UM, well, it takes place, and that that's sometime late summer. Uh. He's done a very judicious and and appropriate job of getting approval of the Delaware Chancery Court, and that that

might take six or eight weeks. But once the new boy, which is a highly competent independent board is in place, Dolman's gone. The old board, which is heavily uh leaning towards Mr Dolman, will also vacate. Then there will be a move to put the companies together, and that will probably trigger uh the interest of some white knight acquirers, of which there is no limit. Well, there is this

the time to buy Vehicom. I think you're already seeing the stock going went up a little bit better than one percent today just on on the news of of uh, the the change of board members at Redstone and announced yesterday. I think it's you have to realize that this is a content company. Vehicom has a terrific underperforming cable networks MTV, Nickelodeon,

b ET, Comedy Central. They are certainly terrific brands that have seen better days, but they still have a great value in terms of the archival content and the potential under new management to become very, very prominent over the top um distribution channels. Again, they also have Paramount Pictures, which Dolman has tried to find a minority investor in and somebody is going to see that is not only a huge library of great product, but a potential global

motion picture company. Porter big thank you so much for joining us managing partner Media Tech Capital Partners. Thank you for joining us on taking stock right here on Bloomberg Radio. Coming up on Bloomberg Law, a new hedge fund insider trading case that is revealing the flow of information between Wall Street and Washington d C. That's next,