After ADT's news, Ascent stock rises
By Spencer Ives
Updated Wed February 17, 2016
Ascent Capital Group's stock price rose yesterday, on news of the ADT/Apollo deal.
I asked Imperial Capital's Jeff Kessler about the stock's jump and he characterized it as a “knee jerk reaction to the fact that the only other company in the United States that's public, being traded, is being taken over.”
Yesterday (Feb. 16) Ascent's stock price rose as high as 49 percent over its previous close of (Feb. 12) of $8.27 per share. Yesterday's high was $12.29. The stock closed at $11.00 and had been hovering around that price today.
Ascent's stock price has been declining over the last 12 months. This time last year the stock price was $47.50.
Kessler pointed out that AlarmForce, another publicly traded alarm company, also saw a small increase after the news of ADT's acquisition agreement. “If ADT is taken private [Alarm Force and Ascent] will be the only two publicly traded alarm companies,” he said.
Ascent Capital Group is a more well known peer to ADT, Kessler said, which is why Ascent's price was affected more than that of AlarmForce.
“It will certainly have more people eyeing Ascent, to see whether or not there is some value in the Ascent monitoring capability for another buyer,” Kessler said. “Certainly I would think that private equity firms are looking at Ascent, because the stock has fallen down so far … but there's no guarantees.”
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