TRACKING STOCK: What is It?

By Staff Reporters

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A tracking stock, also known as letter stock and/or targeted stock is a specialized equity offering issued by a company that is based on the operations of a defined business within the larger organization (such as, for instance, a wholly owned subsidiary of a diversified firm). Therefore, the tracking stock will be traded at a price related to the operations of the specific division of the company being “tracked”.

Tracking stock is typically limited, or has no voting rights. Often, tracking stock is issued to separate a high-growth (but initially, unprofitable) division from its parent company, while the parent company and its shareholders remain in control of the subsidiary’s operations.

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Breaking New Example

The Atlanta Braves professional baseball team is set to be spun-off into an independent company along with their related properties (Battery) in two weeks. Along with this change, an as-of-yet unknown amount of equity in the company is set to be publicly traded on the stock market. The easiest explanation of this transition is to get a more accurate (Liberty Media’s Ownership) valuation of the franchise as a precursor to a sale. The Braves already have a pretty unique business structure, being owned by a publicly traded media conglomerate as a semi-autonomous entity within the conglomerate and a tracking stock, but this formalizes the franchises independence much more.

In the view of some, there is significantly more downside as a fan than upside to a sale, as the absolute upside involves more spending on the team payroll, but the team already is near the top of the league in payrolls and the team performance on the field is clearly top tier in the league. The downside is that the new ownership meddles more in the operations of the club in a negative way and/or slashes budgets, etc.

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