Buy Sirius Through Liberty Media, Says Buckingham

Buckingham Research recommended Liberty Media to gain exposure to Buy-rated Sirius XM due to its 17 percent discount to NAV (compared to Sirius, which trades at market price). It should be noted that the company’s stake in Sirius represents 81 percent of its NAV.

What’s New

September auto sales data show a consistently solid new car funnel at Sirius. This supports Buckingham’s expectation of 1.95 million subscriber net adds for 2015, above guidance, which calls for 1.8 million net adds.

Related Link: Toyota Selects Sirius XM Connected Vehicle Services To Provide Next Generation

Another key point in the firm’s thesis is Liberty Media’s market price, which implies negative value for the company’s stake in Braves and its legal battle against Vivendi.

The Thesis

Ratcliffe believes Liberty Media’s stock is attractive due to the potential upside that the underlying Sirius shares provide. Another source for upside comes from the “potential compression in the discount to NAV,” which currently stands at 17 percent, versus the firm’s target of 5 percent.

The experts think both companies will eventually be combined into a single entity. However, this is more of a long-term view, since Liberty has “no pressing need to get access to SIRI's balance sheet capacity.” Since the analysts believe that Liberty’s management would seek a premium in any kind of combination, they remain “skeptical they'd want to start that negotiation from a position of a significant market discount.”

Disclosure: Contributor Javier Hasse holds no positions in any of the securities mentioned above.

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