WFAN’s parent company remains in a death spiral.
From The Philadelphia Business Journal (via our brethren at Crossing Broad):
Trading of Audacy stock was halted Tuesday afternoon with the New York Stock Exchange informing the Philadelphia-based audio content provider that it will initiate a delisting proceeding.
In a memo to employees, Audacy CEO David Field said the NYSE informed the company Tuesday that it was not in compliance with continued listing standards because its common stock traded at an “abnormally low selling price.”
When trading of Audacy stock was halted at 2 p.m., the share price was down more than 12% to 9 cents from Monday’s close of 11 cents.
The stock is holding steady at nine cents as of publication Thursday morning. So if this was 1987, Jordan Belfort would be hawking it. It’s not what you want.
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Audacy — now in an appeal period — has a shareholder’s meeting on May 24. The company is hoping to attempt a stock market Hail Mary and implement a reverse stock split to get shares back over $1, among other things to regain NYSE compliance status. Audacy has not been at a buck since July and has blown through several grace periods before the hammer was dropped Tuesday.
Even if Audacy pulls the maneuver off, there is no guarantee it will work. Even the company has expressed some reservations. And the longer this goes, the more the August 2022 report the company will declare bankruptcy — which was vehemently denied by Audacy — looks premature rather than inaccurate.
So what does this all mean for our beloved sports talk radio station? Not necessarily much. WFAN is a behemoth. It and Philadelphia’s WIP are two of the only things that work for Audacy. Any austerity measures will crush Audacy’s lesser markets instead.
That said: it does seem conceivable there may not be enough pennies in the piggy bank to make it worth Craig Carton’s while to choose WFAN over FS1 if and when that time comes. So we’ll see.
James Kratch can be reached at james.kratch@xlmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @jameskratch.
