Shares of Lionsgate Studios Corp. have risen 49% in the past six months, 24% in the past month and 26% year to date.
The increase comes as activist investor Anson Funds, which become a major shareholder in the company last year, previously asked the movie studio to consider an outright sale or asset sales following its split from Starz in May.
Per a 13F filed on Nov. 13, the firm owns 7,013,596 shares of Lionsgate Studios Corp. valued at $48,393,812 as of the end of September.
In addition to Anson Funds, billionaire Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management and former Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin’s Liberty Strategic Capital have both built stakes in the company.
As of their latest available filings, Liberty Strategic Capital owned 36,476,036 common shares, representing a 12.77% stake as of the end of June. Meanwhile, Point72 owned 4,575,372 shares valued at $26,582,910 as of the end of June.
TheWrap also previously reported back in July that Legendary Entertainment was eyeing a potential acquisition of Lionsgate. At the time, both companies declined to comment.
When asked about the M&A environment during the studio’s latest earnings call in November, executives acknowledged that it is “incredibly disruptive.”
“There’s a lot of uncertainty out there right now,” CEO Jon Feltheimer said at the time. “All we can do is keep sticking to our knitting, building into next year with a great TV slate, a great film slate and this library really starting to perform.”
“I think uncertainty when it’s hanging over the market makes everybody buy a little bit less. The extended process of Skydance and Paramount froze Paramount for a lot of time. We’re pretty excited about that being resolved. They’ve laid out to the selling community what they’re looking for. They have an appetite to buy more dramas, more scripted in general,” chief creative officer Kevin Beggs added. “I think you’re going to see more clarity around Comcast between the Peacock NBC Studio side and Versant, where we have Rainmaker, which has done really well. So that consolidation could happen, but in stronger buyers that have bigger appetite and are signaling to the selling community that they’re healthy, that’s a positive. Obviously, the more buyers than not as good, but unhealthy buyers are not good.”
Lionsgate Studios Corp. shares are currently up 1.7% on Thursday, trading at $8.60 apiece, off its 52-week high of $9.14 per share. The company has a market cap of $2.49 billion.
