D.C. Memo: Black Friday – Cable One Suffers Massive Wall Street Selloff
◾ TDS Gains 2,800 Broadband Subs ◾ Trump Budget Cuts USDA Broadband Funds ◾ FCC Seeks Comment on LPTV 5G Broadcast Plan ◾ Carr Keeps vMVPD Docket Alive ◾ Youngkin Vetoes Data Center Bill in Virginia
Wall Street: Cable One’s stock symbol is CABO. Given how things went down on Wall Street in Friday trading, OMG might be more appropriate. It was ugly, just a total wipeout. It was thought that maybe CABO had hit rock bottom several quarters ago, but the rock turned out to be silt. Brace yourself for the bad news – Cable One’s stock dropped $109.48 per share to close at $152.51, a one-day decline of 42% that slashed $608 million from the company’s market cap that’s been in a dire freefall for years. In December 2020, Cable One had a market value of $13 billion; today, it stands at $858 million. KeyBanc analyst Brandon Nispel and Raymond James analyst Frank Louthan both downgraded the name after CEO Julie Laulis announced Thursday after the market closed that the regional ISP with about 1 million broadband subscribers lost about 10,400 of them in the first quarter and was suspending its quarterly cash dividend – which paid out $2.95 a share on March 7 – to save about $67 million annually. "We expect the shareholder base to turn over and the path to regaining credibility to be long and arduous, and as such, we cannot have a constructive rating on the name,” Louthan said. (More after the paywall.)
