Buffett’s Take on Paramount Global: "It’s a great way to meet girls … but it’s not fundamentally a good business."

Here's Buffett's take on Paramount Global, a streaming company that BH invested in Q1 2022.

FULL TRANSCRIPT: BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY CHAIRMAN & CEO WARREN BUFFETT SPEAKS WITH CNBC’S BECKY QUICK ON “SQUAWK BOX” TODAY

BECKY QUICK: Very quickly, can I just ask you about Paramount? That’s another Berkshire investment that’s been a relatively new one. Is it because of streaming? What happened? WARREN BUFFETT: Streaming that, you know, it’s not really a very good business. And, you know, it the people in entertainment that make lots of money, the shareholders really haven’t done that great over time. And supplied the money, it’s a glamorous business. And I had some friends in Hollywood, you know? And they look for -- and they find ’em. I mean, it’s like it attracts people. And— BECKY QUICK: You mean suckers? WARREN BUFFETT: It’s a great way to meet girls for all I know. Well no, I mean, but the is it fundamentally that good a business, when it was distributing or producing movies or and you’ve got some people that have got deep pockets that aren’t gonna quit. And the product they’re offering people, the chance to watch all those movies, you know, for peanuts and all that. But can they -- we’ll find out. But so far, they haven’t been able to. They’ve been able to attract subscribers, but they attract ’em at a terrible price. BECKY QUICK: Alright. You gave a whole lotta reasons why not to buy Paramount. Why did you buy it? WARREN BUFFETT: Well, we’ll see what happens. 

Here is Buffett's thinking in a nutshell: "It's a glamorous business … you’ve got people with deep pockets. And the product they’re offering … the chance to watch all those movies … for peanuts … They’ve been able to attract subscribers but … at a terrible price." What he means is the customer acquisition cost is too high for the streaming business as PARA has to compete with better capitalized competitors like Netflix and Disney. But the streaming industry is full of deep-pocket players who might be eyeing PARA's IP assets. In other words, PARA is an acquisition play — just like BH's larger investment, Occidental Petroleum, might be.