Buffett Increases Stake in SiriusXM, Now Holds 32%
Berkshire Hathaway, under Warren Buffett, has recently continued to increase its stake in satellite radio company SiriusXM, now holding 32% of the company's shares.
According to filings submitted by Berkshire to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, from last Wednesday to Friday, the company purchased approximately 3.6 million shares of SiriusXM through multiple transactions, with a total investment of about $87 million.
This increase occurred after Liberty Media completed its restructuring. Liberty Media, a company owned by billionaire John Malone, merged its SiriusXM-related stocks in early September and spun off the Atlanta Braves baseball team into a separate publicly traded company. Berkshire also holds shares in the baseball team. This restructuring is part of Malone's adjustment to his media empire.
Berkshire first purchased tracking stocks in Liberty Media in 2016 and began heavily buying tracking stocks in SiriusXM at the beginning of 2024. CNBC pointed out that Berkshire may have seen opportunities in merger arbitrage, thus choosing to continue investing.
Although Buffett is already 94 years old this year, he has never publicly discussed this investment. It is currently unclear whether this decision was made by him personally or by his two investment managers, Ted Weschler or Todd Combs.
SiriusXM is currently facing subscriber loss and unfavorable demographic changes, leading to its unpopularity on Wall Street. According to FactSet data, only 5 out of 14 analysts gave the stock a "buy" rating. Analyst Sebastiano Petti from JPMorgan gave a "sell" rating, expressing concerns about the company's long-term growth potential.
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In addition, Liberty Media's restructuring led to a 12% reduction in the number of SiriusXM shares, which may cause the company to suspend stock buybacks until 2027, potentially putting pressure on the stock price. Although SiriusXM's stock price once rose by more than 9.3% after Berkshire's increase, the stock has still fallen by more than 50% this year.
Berkshire's last major investment in a large media company was in 2022, when it purchased Class B shares of Paramount Global. However, this investment quickly encountered problems, and Buffett revealed in May this year that he had sold all of these stocks at a loss. Buffett said that the failed investment in Paramount made him think more about what people value most in their leisure time. He pointed out that the streaming industry has many competitors, all vying for viewers' consumption, thus triggering a fierce price war.
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