Pandora Stock Slumps After Liberty Media CEO Says Music Streamer Is Overvalued
Shares of streaming-music company Pandora fell more than 6% Tuesday, after Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei said it was unlikely the John Malone-led conglomerate would buy Pandora at its current stock price.
Maffei, speaking at Deutsche Bank’s Media, Internet & Telecom Conference on Monday after the market closed, called Pandora “overvalued” and said a deal would be more likely at $10 per share. Pandora’s stock had previously closed at $12.47 per share Monday.
Following Maffei’s remarks Pandora stock opened down 3.9% Tuesday before falling as much as 6.9%, to $11.61 per share, in morning trading.
Last summer, Liberty Media offered $15 per share to acquire Pandora, in a deal worth about $3.4 billion — an offer rejected by Pandora’s board. Then in December, Pandora was reported to be open to discussing a sale to Liberty Media-controlled satellite-radio service SiriusXM.
Pandora faces numerous competitors, including Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon, Google and YouTube, and iHeartRadio. In January, Pandora announced that it was cutting its workforce by 7%. The company last week named former TiVo exec Naveen Chopra as its CFO.
Founded in 2000, Pandora began as an ad-supported internet radio service that plays a stream of songs based on artist or genre, and has since rolled out an ad-free subscription offering. Last September the company reached deals with the three big record labels and smaller players, and plans to debut an on-demand music-subscription service in early 2017.
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