Paramount Says Skydance Deal Will Close Next Week. Why the Stock Just Got Downgraded.

Paramount said after Friday’s closing bell that it expects to close its merger with Skydance Media on Aug. 7. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Paramount Global will take on a (slightly) different name when the entertainment company’s messy merger with Skydance Media finally closes next week. The stock, which will trade under the new ticker PSKY, has been hit with a downgrade on the news.

Paramount said late Friday that it expects the deal to close next Thursday, Aug. 7. The new company, known as Paramount Skydance Corporation, will trade on the Nasdaq .

Investors who own common stock and aren’t Paramount employees will have until 5 p.m. Eastern time on July 31 to decide whether to take $15 in cash for some of their shares.

The Federal Communications Commission finally approved the $8 billion merger between Skydance and Paramount late Thursday. The FCC’s signoff came after Paramount agreed earlier this month to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit by President Donald Trump that alleged CBS’s 60 Minutes had edited an interview with Kamala Harris, his rival for the presidency, to make her responses to questions sound better than they were in real time. CBS denied any wrongdoing.

Paramount stock slipped 1.6% on Friday, and was down another 0.6% to $12.97 in early trading on Monday. The S&P 500 was 0.1% higher.

Shares may have been sliding due to a downgrade by Seaport Research Partners analyst David Joyce. He cut his rating to Sell from Neutral, and set an $11 price target on the soon-to-be PSKY shares.

“The risk is that, post-tender, shares could give back some of the deal-related upside [they] enjoyed over the past year,” Joyce wrote in a research note, adding that recent moves like Paramount’s decision to drop The Late Show with Stephen Colbert raised questions about the company’s “go-forward strategy.”

Write to George Glover at george.glover@dowjones.com