5Mon·

Paramount Global CLASS A and CLASS B shares (complicated questions for professionals)


First of all, we all know the difference between Class A and Class B shares. Basically, Class A shares have voting rights and are more expensive, while Class B shares are priced lower (and therefore may have a higher dividend yield) and have no voting rights.


In principle, it should not matter which of the two shares you buy, as the performance is almost identical. This also works very well with Berkshire in the following example $BRK.A (+0.04%) and $BRK.B (-0.11%)


However, I have now found a very complicated case involving the shares of Paramount Global, namely $PARA (-1.16%) and $PARAA (-0.61%) These basically work in the same way as described above, but the charts are completely independent of each other. For example, over the year (YTD) the Class A share has gained +16%, while the Class B share has fallen by -8%.


Now the takeover that all shareholders are hoping for is finally on the horizon (I reported on it) and something strange is happening again. The Class A share, which is actually performing better, rises by +10% over the month, while the Class B share rises by +30%.

But that makes no sense at all, because if we assume a takeover, the Class A share should actually be much more interesting, as the aim is to buy up the voting rights.


Am I crazy, or does this really not make any sense at all?

1 Comment

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I could give you reasons why the two diverge and even so, it is more and more often that there are differences and something like Berkshire is more and more the rarity. It happens more and more that you hardly get anything for voting rights, and you hardly get any dividends for no voting rights.
To give a proper answer you would have to look at the case in detail and that would take a lot of time. I don't think anyone here would voluntarily look at the share structures, buyback, share ratio etc., but maybe someone would be willing to do so

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