Cable Takes A Licking
Market Sheds Another 374 points
By Mike Farrell -- Multichannel News, 9/22/2008 4:47:00 PM
It was another tough day on Wall Street as investors, skittish over a $700 billion federal plan to bail out failing banks, rising oil prices and a decline in the dollar, drove the Dow Jones industrial average down 373 points, or about 3.3%, to 11,015.69 on Monday. Cable stocks were even hit a little harder—shares of the five publicly traded MSOs were down between 3% and 9% for the day.
Charter Communications had the biggest percentage decline in the sector (9%), dipping 9 cents each to 89 cents per share on Monday. Charter was followed by Cablevision Systems, which fell more than 6% ($1.78) to $25.75 on Monday. Next was Comcast, down 4% (83 cents each) to $19.88 per share; Time Warner Cable, down 95 cents (3.7%) to $24.83; Charter Communications fell 9 cents (9.2%) to 89 cents each; and Mediacom Communications closed off 18 cents (2.5%) to $7.17 per share.
Satellite TV stocks fared a little better—Dish Network declined 3.4% (86 cents each) to close at $24.47 per share and DirecTV Group was down 2.2% (55 cents) to $24.69 per share.
Programmers were equally battered. Disney dropped 4.3% ($1.43 per share) to $32.91 each; Viacom dipped 4.7% ($1.25 each) to $25.65; News Corp. fell 6.8% (95 cents each) to $13.04 per share and Scripps Networks Interactive dropped 4% ($1.68 each) to $39.92 per share.
