Last week was a fantastic one for Pandora Media stock, thanks to a still-unconfirmed CNBC report that the streaming audio service provider is now reconsidering a merger acquisition with Sirius XM?
Does that make Pandora a smart buy? Don’t bet on it, says an analyst with The Street.
According to Shubhankar Adhikari, a business writer and editor with six years of experience in covering key business issues, emerging market trends, and investment analysis, “Pandora Media needs to do more than reiterate its ambitious growth targets and subscription initiatives.”
In a rather unkind review of “P” shares, Adhikari noted that Pandora is losing both money and subscribers, pointing out that in 2015 Pandora Media’s losses increased “more than five-fold from 2014.”
He also found it disconcerting that Pandora has had negative operating cash flow over the past four quarters.
As Zacks Equity Research notes, analysts have observed that Pandora’s soon-to-launch service “doesn’t offer something radically different from what is already available in the market. They argue that Pandora’s entry has been pretty late in the on-demand music services arena, which boasts big names like Spotify and Apple.”