Viacom (VIAB, $26.97), AT&T (T, $30.80) renew distribution contract; Viacom stock has record climb on the news

Viacom shares rose the most in seven months on Monday, after it announced the renewal of its distribution deal with AT&T.

Earlier, Viacom had warned viewers of its conflict with Time Warner-owner AT&T, and had accused AT&T of bias towards the latter’s content. Viacom had also previously said that it offered options to AT&T to reduce customers’ bills. AT&T had hit back claiming that some of Viacom’s channels were losing popularity, and called it “a serial bad actor” in negotiations with pay-TV companies.

If the dispute hadn’t been resolved, DirecTV customers could have lost access to Viacom channels like Nickelodeon, BET, MTV, Comedy Central and Paramount. "We are pleased to announce a renewed Viacom-AT&T contract that includes continued carriage of Viacom services across multiple AT&T platforms and products," the companies said in a statement Monday.

Viacom shares surged as much as +8% on the news.

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Sergey Savastiouk, Ph.D. has a degree in Applied Mathematics from Moscow University and has extensive experience as an entrepreneur, investor, manager, and mathematician. His professional expertise is in applied mathematics, mathematical modeling, system and pattern analysis, and software and hardware system integration. He has served as the CEO of several hi-tech start-up companies and nonprofit organizations, which has given him proven capabilities in business strategy for high-tech start-up companies, market assessment, company formation, team building, product development, marketing, and sales. He has published numerous articles in journals and magazines on related fields. As a retail investor, he spent 15 years developing his proprietary trading and quantitative algorithms (now Tickeron’s A.I.), which brought him significant returns in trading the stock market. His current work and goal in founding Tickeron is to bring professional, sophisticated stock market analysis capabilities to retail investors via an easy-to-use interface.