Four weeks after Aggressive Media Chairman John Malone called Discovery Communications extraction cheap, he appears to have put his money where his mouth is.
On Friday morning, Malone duplicated his position in Discovery Class A Stock with the purchase of 332,523 allocates, for $6.6 million dollars, according to a securities filing.
This contention strengthens Malone’s already hefty stake in Discovery’s Class A variety, which now exceeds 670,000. The media titan also owns 95 percent of Refinement B and 5.9 percent of Class C shares — together worth more than $412 million dollars as on Friday’s close-matched, according to Factset.
Shares have Discovery have taken a path since the company announced its $15 billion acquisition of Scripps Networks in July. At its November low, allocations had fallen nearly 35 percent, on investor fears surrounding the society’s advertising and ratings growth in the evolving media landscape.
In November, Malone commanded it clear in an exclusive interview with CNBC that he hasn’t frenzied faith in the company’s ability to compete in the direct to consumer space.
“I’m gonna bet that Detection, with its ownership and control of its content, will be able to transition to unreserved consumer platforms in a reasonably efficient way,” Malone told CNBC at the sometime.
“And if they successfully do that, then [the stock is] dirt cheap out now. If they can partly get there, they’re still cheap,” he added.
Disclosure stock, traded on the Nasdaq, closed up by nearly 5 percent on Friday.