Crestview Partners has seen the value of its investment in Cumulus Media go down since it agreed to jump into the radio industry as a major investor for Lew Dickey’s effort to greatly expand the company by buying a larger rival, Citadel Broadcasting. But with the Cumulus stock price down, Crestview has been an active buyer of the shares.
At the closing of the deal for Cumulus Media to acquire Citadel Broadcasting, Crestview received 51,843,318 newly minted shares and warrants to purchase 7,776,498 more shares at the exercise price of $4.34 per share for an investment of a quarter billion dollars.
In addition, Crestview purchased 4,270,628 shares of the Class A Common Stock in a series of open market transactions for $12,055,901 around the time of the deal closing.
There’s been no incentive to exercise any of the warrants, since the stock price for Cumulus has been below the $4.34 per share price when the Citadel transaction was set in stone. But Crestview apparently thinks the stock is a bargain, so it has been active in buying shares on the open market.
In its most recent SEC filing Crestview reported buying 102,000 shares at $3.00 each. That brought its total holdings of Cumulus Media Class A shares to 59,157,083. (The figure doesn’t include the out-of-the-money warrants.)
Cumulus closed Tuesday (12/6) at $3.11.
