Paramount’s Slashed Dividend Will Cost It

The media giant behind the “Mission Impossible” franchise has been facing one of its own: how to pay for an expensive pivot to streaming long past the time when investors were willing to write blank checks for that. 

Now Paramount Global’s checks to investors won’t be nearly as large as they used to be. The company announced a “dividend modification” with its first-quarter results Thursday morning. That modification—a 79% cut to what the company had been paying—will help it conserve $500 million in cash annually. Paramount Chief Financial Officer Naveen Chopra noted on Thursday’s earnings call that the move “does not mean that we intend to spend more than previously planned on streaming.” Rather, he described it as an effort to “de-lever our balance sheet, which is generally a smart thing to do in an uncertain macro environment.”