CEO James Meyer will retire at the end of the year, while CFO David Frear will leave the company in October
The shares of Sirius XM Holdings Inc (NASDAQ: SIRI) are down 4.1% at $5.41 this afternoon, after the broadcasting company announced CEO James Meyer will retire on Dec. 21 after eight years in his role. Meyer will be succeeded by sales head Jennifer Witz. AMC Networks' (AMC) finance head Sean Sullivan was also hired as the company's new chief financial officer to replace current CFO David Frear, starting Oct. 26.
On the charts, the security has had a rocky past several months. Though shares were able to rally to the $6.80 level in June, those efforts quickly fell short, and the stock is now slipping below the once supportive 80-day moving average, while the 10-day moving average has also acted as pressure during the past couple weeks. Year-to-date, SIRI is down 24.5%.
Despite the negative price action, analysts are optimistic towards the equity. Of the 13 in coverage, 10 sport a "strong buy" rating, and the remaining three carry a tepid "hold" or worse. Meanwhile, the 12-month consensus target price of $6.83 is a hefty 26.5% premium to its current perch, indicating price-target cuts could be on the security's horizon.
The options pits may already be producing headwinds. So far, 15,000 puts have crossed the tape, which is nearly 100 times the average intraday amount. Most popular is the November 6 put, followed by the December 6 put, with new positions being opened at both.
Expanding on this, SIRI's Schaeffer's put/call open interest ratio (SOIR) of 0.53 stands higher than 78% of readings from the past year, implying short-term options traders have been more put-biased than usual.