Sinclair Broadcast stock falls after double downgrade warns of ‘multiple pressures’

Shares of Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. were down 3% in after-hours trading Wednesday after Wells Fargo analyst Steven Cahall double-downgraded the broadcast company’s stock, lowering his rating to underweight from overweight and nearly halving his price target to $16 from a prior $30. The company “faces multiple pressures that we think are greater than TV broadcast peers,” he wrote in a late Wednesday note to clients. He worries about the company’s net retransmission trends, which he thinks create “more earnings revision risk” than what the company’s peers have. “The shares are inexpensive but so are the peers, so we prefer less estimate risk at slightly higher valuations,” Cahall wrote. The stock has declined 18% over the past three months as the S&P 500 has fallen 8%.

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