Sirius shares’ low price ‘is saying 2 things’ about Wall Street p...
Sirius shares’ low price “is saying 2 things” about Wall Street perception of the company: Analysts don’t have “as good a sense of the future of Sirius” as the company does, and they believe a merger with XM “is…
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not going to happen,” Sirius CEO Karmazin told shareholders last week. In his most pessimistic appraisal yet, Karmazin said the merger faces an “uphill battle” gaining govt. approval. That contrasts sharply with Karmazin’s statement when the merger was announced that the odds of approval were better than 50-50 (CD Feb 21 p1). In Sirius’s Q1 earnings call, Karmazin said XM and Sirius had said all along that the merger process would be “extensive,” and it’s moving ahead. Feb. 21, the trading day after the merger announcement, Sirius shares closed at $3.92. They closed at $2.92 Tues. “There are some people that follow this who are more expert about it than I am and say that the market is saying that there’s an 80% likelihood that the merger is not going to happen,” Karmazin said: “I can only tell you that the Justice Department has to say it’s anticompetitive, the FCC, it’s not in the public interest. I still believe this merger should be approved. The market is saying [otherwise]. I don’t know what else we can do. Time will tell.”