Dec 10, 2019 Company News
Early Hints of CEO Bob Bakish's Vision for ViacomCBS
Bakish made news at the UBS Global TMT Conference. Here are the 5 takeaways.
ViacomCBS President and CEO Bob Bakish appeared onstage during the UBS Global TMT Conference yesterday, just days after the completion of the merger between Viacom and CBS. He took the opportunity to make a few announcements.
During the question and answer session, Bakish outlined several ways that the company will generate value for shareholders, cash flow for operations, and a competitive edge from the combination of assets and marketing solutions.
Here, we recap the five major announcements from the conference.
"At the core, this is one of the preeminent content companies in the world and you will see us really increase the return on our content assets," said Bakish. His list of cross-brand collaborations within the ViacomCBS portfolio included:
Bakish noted that ViacomCBS is in the process of retaining the commercial real estate firm CBRE to review the combined company’s entire real estate portfolio, including looking at potentially divesting of Black Rock, the Eero Saarinen-designed building in midtown Manhattan that's served as CBS' headquarters since the 1960s.
"We believe that is a very material financial asset," he said. "We also believe it is not an asset we need to own and, in fact, that value can be put to better use elsewhere."
Black Rock is one of the "non-core assets," including real estate assets and other assets, that Bakish said can be used to generate additional cash.
"I'm tremendously excited about what this combined company will do in the ad space in the U.S.," said Bakish before citing the news, released Monday, that CBS will join OpenAP, the advanced advertising consortium that aims to fast-track the adoption of audience-buying campaigns on television. The news means that CBS Television Network and CBS’ digital video assets will be available in the OpenAP Market.
It also means that once CBS assets are available, OpenAP will be the nation's largest advanced advertising platform. Its footprint will cover more than half of national TV ad dollars across 4 broadcast networks, 20 cable networks, and digital assets from Fox, NBCUniversal, ViacomCBS, and Univision.
Viacom was a founding member of OpenAP.
ViacomCBS is authorized to repurchase up to $2.5 billion in stock, and, per Bakish, will begin to buy back shares in the near term.
"We'll be back in the market soon. Now, we're doing that because we see an incredible value opportunity in our own stock and we want to invest in it. And we, of course, know that that will benefit the stock writ large," he said.
On the mention of buyback and dividends, Bakish was careful to caution that he doesn't plan to drastically reduce the amount of debt on its balance sheet. "We like being an [investment-grade] company but we don't believe we need to massively de-lever."
He pointed out that S&P Global Ratings recently affirmed ViacomCBS' investment-grade rating, making it an investment-grade company according to the ratings of all three credit rating agencies.