Paramount To Open New Tomb Raider Ride

[The Interpreter]

..in South Korea:

http://www.tombraiderchronicles.com/headlines3442.html

[fan of beast]

i was under the impression that paramount wanted out of the theme park business.

[The Interpreter]

Nope. CBS wanted out of the theme park business. Viacom, which owns Paramount Pictures, wanted no part of the domestic theme park business...which is how CBS ended up with the parks to start with...then CBS sold them for $1.24 billion, which doubtless upset the daylights out of the Viacom people, who had not wanted to keep the US/Canadian parks.

[Erosarrow05]

...and here i was thinking CBS landed the parks because they were deemed a "slow growth" operation.

and...

if Viacom wanted no part of the domestic theme park business as you claim, why then would Viacom not approve of the CBS sale of parks they no longer desired a part of Viacom portfolio

[The Interpreter]

because Viacom never, ever dreamed that CBS would get that much money out of the parks when they were sold. If they had, they would have kept them themselves to sell and keep the money.

[Gordon Bombay]

Viacom also played with the idea of selling the parks in late 2004/early 2005 before the split to Viacom/CBS and at the time Kinzel and co. had stated numerous times that they weren't interested in such an acquisition (at the time). In fact, hardly any interest was show at all. Funny how things change.

[DegenRider]

Funny too that CBS is Viacom and a NEW Viacom was formed when they split and the OLD Viacom became CBS. So it was the same handlers just different hands.

[The Interpreter]

Well, in reality one Sumner Redstone controls it all with an iron hand....to this day.

[Erosarrow05]

so you mean to tell me that Viacom, with all their resources and advisors, did not know how much the parks were worth and could potentially go for? I find that beyond hard to believe, especially in corporate america, and even more so with the media juggernaut Viacom.

[The Interpreter]

No one, not even CBS, thought Cedar Fair would be zany enough to pay $1.24 billion for the parks. The very tippy top estimate of what the parks would bring was $1.25 billion, and that was basically a sucker's figure, designed to get bidders excited and bidding. Cedar Fair, to be kind, paid top dollar at the top of the market, right before the real estate bust, what with the credit crunch.

Note that the market cap for the entire company now hovers right around what Cedar Fair paid for just the Paramount Parks....

[Erosarrow05]

They paid top dollar to be kind? (lol) "No one" is a fairly broad sweeping term, CBS knew, maybe not a large number of individuals but to think otherwise would be naive. To this day I don't believe there has ever been any information released regarding bidders/bids for the Paramount Parks. I've never read anything about CBS being shocked the parks went for that selling price. Im not trying to be rude, but again, I just cannot believe CBS didn't have a very accurate selling price for a company that is in an extremely slow growth market.

[WooferBearATL]

They paid top dollar to be kind? (lol) "No one" is a fairly broad sweeping term, CBS knew, maybe not a large number of individuals but to think otherwise would be naive. To this day I don't believe there has ever been any information released regarding bidders/bids for the Paramount Parks. I've never read anything about CBS being shocked the parks went for that selling price. Im not trying to be rude, but again, I just cannot believe CBS didn't have a very accurate selling price for a company that is in an extremely slow growth market.

Believe it.

Everything that everyone has chimed in on is perty much accurate.

[KIBeast]

And here I thought the idea was to low ball when it comes to bidding.

[jzarley]

At the time of the auction, most analysts and industry experts (i.e., Dennis Spiegel), estimated that the Paramount Parks would go for somewhere between $800M to $1.25B, with most assuming the parks would go for right around $1B. However, from reports at the time, there were multiple serious bidders so the price continued to rise. Obviously, CF was one of the final bidders (since they "won" and all), but the other final bidders have never been disclosed. Although, if I were betting, my money would be on one of the equity funds like Blackstone, etc.

Something I've always found kind of interesting...after the acquisition was announced, CBS/CF had to release Paramount Park's financial performance information as part of the SEC conditions of the merger (something we had never seen before, since the parks were always just an operating unit of a larger corporation). Those reports showed Par Parks to be financially very solid and successful...HOWEVER--CBS had no corporate debt attributed to the parks, so in effect they were operating in a debt-free environment (pretty much a true EBITDA situation). Obviously, CF doesn't have that same luxury as to roll up the parks' debt to a different balance sheet.

[Erosarrow05]

Woofer, perhaps you could point me towards some literature that would attest to the CBS executives and their advisors naiveity when it came to the value of their parks. Because again, Im not buying into it...