“Sirius XM (SIRI) continues to affirm the belief that there’s never a dull moment in SIRI-Land,” Wall Street Playbook writes for Seeking Alpha. “Shares of the satellite radio provider closed up more than 2% to $3.27 on Tuesday. But the stock is still down more than 6% year-to-date.”
“It seems Sirius is still feeling the positive residual effects from Apple’s (AAPL) rumored $3.2 billion deal for Beats Electronics,” WSP writes. “Not only did this news go viral, given that Apple has track record of having made only small acquisitions, it also elevated the profile of audio streaming rivals like Pandora (P), which was essentially left for dead following its 50% stock decline.”
“The idea is, if Apple is willing to shell out a 60% premium for Beats, which according to Forbes is worth $2 billion, then certainly someone, possibly Google (GOOG, GOOGL), will go after Pandora. On Tuesday, some of that optimism also trickled to Sirius XM,” WSP writes. “Benzinga is reporting that Wunderlich Securities analyst Matthew Harrigan, while reiterating a Hold rating and $3.50 price target on the stock, said: ‘Although Apple’s possible $3.2B acquisition of Beats has few immediate implications, it does show that competition is gravitating toward full ecosystem players such as Apple and Amazon (AMZN), more so than current music streaming only entrants such as Spotify or even Pandora’s ‘Music Genome’ …Accelerating competition from Apple and other entrants may restrain multiple expansion even as Sirius renews repurchase activity. We also would not exclude Sirius M&A activity, per Liberty Media (LMCA) CEO Greg Maffei’s comments.'”
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