“The world’s largest asset manager” has disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission that it has snapped up a sizable percentage of publicly traded stock associated with a media company that recently shed all of its radio properties and canceled the Pickler & Ben syndicated TV program in order to focus on being a station operator.
In a SC 13G/A filing with the SEC, BlackRock Inc. revealed that now holds 8,593,267 Class A common shares of The E.W. Scripps Co.
That represents 12.5% of all outstanding Scripps shares.
It is a significant increase in ownership from one year ago. In BlackRock’s previous filing dated Jan. 28, 2019, it reported owning 7,834,163 shares.
As such, BlackRock has bumped up its “SSP” ownership by 9.7%.
News of BlackRock’s investment in Scripps could come at a better time for the company. Since reaching a six-month high of $16.77 on Jan. 16, SSP has been on a steep decline, tumbling to $12.14 on Jan. 31.
As of 2:30pm Eastern Tuesday (2/4), SSP was up 2.1% to $12.86.
It’s been a rocky 12 months on Wall Street for Scripps, with early April 2019 trading in the high-$22 range and an $11.39 close logged in mid-August 2019. The Jan. 16 closing price was the best finish for SSP since mid-May 2019.
