Sphere Entertainment Co. shares rose 5.4% to $35.04 this week after Point72 Asset Management, the Wall Street giant’s hedge fund Steve Cohenacquired a 5.5% stake in the company, making it one of the best performing companies this week. Billboard Global Music Index.
Cohen is the owner of the New York Mets professional baseball team. Sphere’s sister company MSG Sports — James Dolan is CEO of both companies – owns two of the city’s biggest professional sports franchises, the New York Knicks basketball team and the New York Rangers hockey team. The Sphere venue in Las Vegas will host its first sporting event on Friday night (June 28): the National Hockey League Draft.
Radio companies Cumulus Media and iHeartMedia gained 9.1% and 9.0%, respectively, this week, with the radio stocks outperforming other publicly traded music companies in the Billboard Global Music Index. Both Cumulus and iHeartMedia recovered nearly half of their losses from the past two weeks. After a 21.1% drop from June 7 to June 21, Cumulus closed at $2.04. Similarly, iHeartMedia had lost 21.1% over the past two weeks and ended this week at $1.09. Townsquare Media, which is not included in the index, rose 9.2% to $10.93, turning its 5% year-to-date loss into a 3.7% gain.
However, 2024 is still a tough year for many radio stations as they navigate a challenging advertising climate. As of June 28, iHeartRadio is down 59.2% and Cumulus is down 61.7%.
The Billboard Global Music Index was virtually unchanged from the previous week, rising less than a point to 1,815.54. The index’s annual gain was also unchanged at 18.3%. Most stocks showed little movement, with 16 of the 20 companies falling in the +2.1% to -3.4% range. Although 12 of the companies posted gains, the biggest gainers are among the index’s smallest companies, and those gainers were outpaced by losses from larger companies such as Spotify (down 1.1%), CTS Eventim (down 1.3%) and SiriusXM (down 3.4%).
Streaming stocks had the worst week of any sector, losing an average of 0.4 percent. The top streamer was Anghami, which rose 0.9 percent to $1.07. Cloud Music and Deezer each lost less than 1 percent. LiveOne fell 1.3 percent to $1.57.
Reservoir Media was the week’s biggest gainer after it rose 11.9% — up 9.6% on Friday alone — to $7.90. The rise came without any major news or analyst commentary. The last analyst to raise his price target on Reservoir was B. Riley on May 31, a day after Reservoir said its annual revenue rose 18% to $145 million.
All K-pop companies posted modest gains this week. HYBE rose 1.3% to 202,500 won ($146.60). SM Entertainment, also a member of the Billboard Global Music Index, rose 1.1% to 80,400 won ($54.21). JYP Entertainment rose 2.1% to 57,300 won ($41.48) and YG Entertainment fell 1.0% to 40,300 won ($29.18). All four stocks have fallen sharply in 2024, however, with an average year-to-date decline of 22.6%.
Major stock indices posted mixed results this week. In the US, the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.2% to 17,732.60 and the S&P 500 fell 0.1% to 5,460.48. South Korea’s KOSPI Composite Index gained 0.5% to 2,797.82. In the UK, the FTSE 100 lost 0.9%. China’s Shanghai Composite Index fell 1.0% to 2,967.40.
