Strummer Posted May 20, 2014 Report Share Posted May 20, 2014 So Mick Foley thinks part of the reason for the stock drop is because Triple H and Stephanie are too convincing as evil bosses and people can't tell the difference between the show and real life Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted May 20, 2014 Report Share Posted May 20, 2014 That's of course ridiculous. It also assumes most stockholders watch WWE programming. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cm funk Posted May 20, 2014 Report Share Posted May 20, 2014 So Mick Foley thinks part of the reason for the stock drop is because Triple H and Stephanie are too convincing as evil bosses and people can't tell the difference between the show and real life  Foley took a few too many chairshots to the head  I honestly think long-term this is going to be a blip on the radar for WWE going forward. They lost investor confidence, and it's their own fault for over promising, but these people who bought into the hype were, frankly, idiots. Anyone could analyze the WWE and see the peaks and valleys in stock price and business and come to the conclusion that it's a stock you should buy when it's low, sit on it, ride it, sell high on it....rinse, wash, repeat. The WWE's business model is profitable, diversified, and sustainable....and they have the built in advantage of essentially being a monopoly in the wrestling industry with no real competition in sight. Seemingly lost in the all the craziness and massive sell of of their stock now is that.......they did get a sizable increase in domestic tv rights. They did get a better deal in the UK. I don't doubt that they will get a better deal in India and other countries when deals come up. The Network start up costs are the big sunken cost on the books and they've been very up front about that. In time I expect the Network to be profitable, and I think they were ahead of the curve with it. And we all knew before it even started that there will be a gradual price increase on it.  Attracting corporate talent might be a short-term issue because at the moment WWE has the stink of failure on it, but I don't think it'll be that big of a deal. And Vince/WWE have always been good at hunkering down during lean times, so if it comes to cutting costs on TV/live event production it will probably be minimal and barely noticeable to the average viewer  Now, they do need to keep putting on a good core product, and should probably be adding more varied content from their library onto the Network and pushing it more on TV. They need to work hard at this stuff. If Sting is really in the fold now.....promote the hell out of him and at the same time roll out old GCW/NWA/WCW content on the Network. Guarantee people will sign up for that stuff. Don't blow your load all at once......but start doing more to attract the supposed 50 million people with an "affinity" for pro-wrestling Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted May 20, 2014 Report Share Posted May 20, 2014 How did no one in WWE see that launching the Network would negatively impact their TV deal? Clearly their ideal goal is to have Raw and Smackdown on the Network as soon as they can, and there's no way NBCU would go for that. Why would they want to give WWE more money to cushion the loss of PPV revenue when NBCU is owned by a major cable provider (Comcast)? Â Clearly the company is undervalued due to the wrestling stigma, but if Vince actually honest-to-goodness thought tripling the rights fees was possible he's way more out of touch than anyone suspected. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mookeighana Posted May 20, 2014 Report Share Posted May 20, 2014 How did no one in WWE see that launching the Network would negatively impact their TV deal? Clearly their ideal goal is to have Raw and Smackdown on the Network as soon as they can, and there's no way NBCU would go for that. Why would they want to give WWE more money to cushion the loss of PPV revenue when NBCU is owned by a major cable provider (Comcast)? Â Clearly the company is undervalued due to the wrestling stigma, but if Vince actually honest-to-goodness thought tripling the rights fees was possible he's way more out of touch than anyone suspected. I wouldn't say that they didn't see it, but they apparently underestimated the risk it posed. I wrote about this back in November - launching the WWE Network before they had secured the domestic TV deals (which would be needed to subsidize the launch for awhile) seemed foolish to me. It seemed doubly foolish when it was clear that the WWE Network was going to be over-the-top and they now appeared to be biting the hand that was feeding them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted May 20, 2014 Report Share Posted May 20, 2014 Not only that, now there's a second law firm investigating them for potential securities fraud. It's becoming apparent that Vince either doesn't understand how the stock game operates or he's been a carny so long he thinks he can pull a work on Wall Street. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted May 20, 2014 Report Share Posted May 20, 2014 In fairness, I think most of this is hysterical overreacting from investors who don't understand WWE's core business. Vince is suffering for it without question and has made a few tactical mistakes, but this is all kind of a circus that started with the 60 million fans number. If people paid attention to the television ratings, they would know that number to be completely ridiculous. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted May 21, 2014 Report Share Posted May 21, 2014 It might have been worse if they realized WWE's core business was bullshitting people. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
flyonthewall2983 Posted May 21, 2014 Report Share Posted May 21, 2014 Not only that, now there's a second law firm investigating them for potential securities fraud. It's becoming apparent that Vince either doesn't understand how the stock game operates or he's been a carny so long he thinks he can pull a work on Wall Street. Â Am I reading this right, there are two separate firms investigating this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted May 21, 2014 Report Share Posted May 21, 2014 Yes. Â I wish we lived in a world where he could be investigated for fraud over changing the hometowns of wrestlers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tim Posted May 21, 2014 Report Share Posted May 21, 2014 Not only that, now there's a second law firm investigating them for potential securities fraud. It's becoming apparent that Vince either doesn't understand how the stock game operates or he's been a carny so long he thinks he can pull a work on Wall Street. Â Nothing is more carny with more works than Wall Street. But Vince is out of his carny league there. He's dealing with people who can actually win Senate races. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kjh Posted May 21, 2014 Report Share Posted May 21, 2014 In fairness, I think most of this is hysterical overreacting from investors who don't understand WWE's core business. Vince is suffering for it without question and has made a few tactical mistakes, but this is all kind of a circus that started with the 60 million fans number. If people paid attention to the television ratings, they would know that number to be completely ridiculous. Â The profitability of WWE's core business (house shows, merchandising, DVDs, licensing, etc) is declining, which is one of the things worrying investors. I'm not sure it really is hysterical overreacting when WWE's cash on hand is down to $87.3 million with projections of another $37-44 million in losses for the rest of the year and another $27 million in dividends to pay up. That doesn't leave a lot of wiggle room if the WWE Network takes longer to become profitable than expected. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Loss Posted May 21, 2014 Report Share Posted May 21, 2014 But the panicked reaction was because they only got a 50% increase on TV rights, not because of their lower cash on hand, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sek69 Posted May 21, 2014 Report Share Posted May 21, 2014 I may have been reading it wrong, but I took it as most of the panic coming from only getting 50% when Vince stated on at least a couple different conference calls the expectation was to triple, double at least. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kjh Posted May 21, 2014 Report Share Posted May 21, 2014 The panic was a combination of under delivering on the network deal and revealing at the same time in their press release on the matter that (a) the Network now needed 1.3-1.4 million subscribers to break even and ( the company was going to post a huge loss for the year as a whole. Most analysts thought that they'd lose money in the first two quarters, but make the losses back in the second two quarters of the year and break even for the year. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Petey Posted May 21, 2014 Report Share Posted May 21, 2014 Ultimately, they'll be fine. Vince still has a bunch of money and as the former great NY sports radio host Chris Russo once said, this is much hubadoo about nothing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WingedEagle Posted May 21, 2014 Report Share Posted May 21, 2014 Vince & co. control enough of the stock that absent fraud, which there is no legitimate evidence of to this point, this is all just a cash grab by opportunistic third parties. Shareholder litigation is big business. They churn these things out like widgets, collect their fees and move onto the next one. There's a lot of noise because of the stock's rapid rise & fall. But last I checked its higher right now than it was a year ago. Hopefully folks in Stamford and their counsel take a deep breath and stay the course. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted May 21, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 21, 2014 Good luck on the fraud. It will be pretty easy for Vince, and the rest of the people involved, to say that they truly believed they were going to double their US TV deal. I also think it's going to be hard to identify anything fraudulent that they've said/release relating to the Network. Lastly, I don't think there's anything out there on Vince and any of the other people involved dumping an unusual amount of WWE shares when the stock was up around $30. You might find some executive selling shares / options that they just exercised, but that's not terribly uncommon. Â Agree with Winged that these are just trolling lawsuits. You have them in a variety of areas, such as shareholder lit trolls and patent lit trolls (probably the largest). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strummer Posted May 21, 2014 Report Share Posted May 21, 2014 Foley's post about the stock drop made the NY Daily News. Lol. Im sure the company has just been enthralled with him the last 6 months or so Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cm funk Posted May 21, 2014 Report Share Posted May 21, 2014 Good luck on the fraud. It will be pretty easy for Vince, and the rest of the people involved, to say that they truly believed they were going to double their US TV deal. I also think it's going to be hard to identify anything fraudulent that they've said/release relating to the Network. Lastly, I don't think there's anything out there on Vince and any of the other people involved dumping an unusual amount of WWE shares when the stock was up around $30. You might find some executive selling shares / options that they just exercised, but that's not terribly uncommon.  Doesn't appear so  http://www.insiderslab.com/PR4/WWE/  It is striking how much Stephanie dumped last year. The story that the money was being used to build a house always seemed fishy. Would make more sense if she was flipping it into safer investments Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kjh Posted May 22, 2014 Report Share Posted May 22, 2014  Good luck on the fraud. It will be pretty easy for Vince, and the rest of the people involved, to say that they truly believed they were going to double their US TV deal. I also think it's going to be hard to identify anything fraudulent that they've said/release relating to the Network. Lastly, I don't think there's anything out there on Vince and any of the other people involved dumping an unusual amount of WWE shares when the stock was up around $30. You might find some executive selling shares / options that they just exercised, but that's not terribly uncommon.  Doesn't appear so  http://www.insiderslab.com/PR4/WWE/  It is striking how much Stephanie dumped last year. The story that the money was being used to build a house always seemed fishy. Would make more sense if she was flipping it into safer investments   No, it's not fishy at all, as she sold her stock before the huge increases. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted May 22, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 22, 2014  Good luck on the fraud. It will be pretty easy for Vince, and the rest of the people involved, to say that they truly believed they were going to double their US TV deal. I also think it's going to be hard to identify anything fraudulent that they've said/release relating to the Network. Lastly, I don't think there's anything out there on Vince and any of the other people involved dumping an unusual amount of WWE shares when the stock was up around $30. You might find some executive selling shares / options that they just exercised, but that's not terribly uncommon.  Doesn't appear so  http://www.insiderslab.com/PR4/WWE/  It is striking how much Stephanie dumped last year. The story that the money was being used to build a house always seemed fishy. Would make more sense if she was flipping it into safer investments   Steph has just been selling off the options that she exercised:  http://biz.yahoo.com/t/97/7437.html  15-May-13 420,000 WWE Option Exercise 01-Aug-13 328,000 WWE Option Exercise 02-Oct-13 505,000 WWE Option Exercise  The sales are just automated (which is not uncommon for insiders), and if you subtract the sales from the options, the end result is 0 shares.  Nothing fishy there. It ended up being a tidy $13,791,575... though if she hung onto them and sold them when the stock was at it's peak, she could have bagged more. About $8.5M came when the stock was in the $9 to $11 range. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cm funk Posted May 22, 2014 Report Share Posted May 22, 2014 No, I just meant Meltzer's story on why she was cashing out was fishy. I assume there was a lot more to it than "$ to build a house". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted May 22, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 22, 2014 $13M would be a lot of money to "build" a house, as opposed to buying one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdw Posted May 22, 2014 Author Report Share Posted May 22, 2014 This is just funny-bad from our favorite bad wrestling writer at Grantland: Â http://grantland.com/the-triangle/wwe-stock-crash-vince-mcmahon-sports-business-analysis Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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