Atlanta Braves fans can now own a stake in the baseball team as it became Major League Baseball’s only publicly-traded franchise. The four-time World Series champion began trading under the ticker BATRA on the Nasdaq last week after its official split from Liberty Media Corp. Top executives rang the opening bell at the exchange Wednesday morning. “I think it gives shareholders an opportunity to feel like they’re direct owners of the Braves,” Liberty Media CEO Greg Maffei said Wednesday on CNBC’s ” Squawk on the Street .” The move brings “greater transparency and greater information flows, and a focus just on the performance of the team and our real estate opportunities in The Battery.” Atlanta Brave Holdings encompasses the baseball team and its real estate development known as The Battery, which includes its ballpark, Truist Park. The newly public stock has dipped less than 1% to trade around $44 apiece since its first day of trading. “We’ve been in existence for 150 years. And for the better part of 50 years we’ve been inside of public companies, first with Turner Broadcasting and ultimately Liberty Media and then became a tracking stock and now an asset backed equity,” Atlanta Braves president and CEO Derek Schiller said. “All those times, we’re understanding more and more about what it takes to operate a business in the public sector.” Tracking stocks are assets that trade depending on the financial performance of a specific business within a company. One example of that is Liberty Media Formula One , which trades based on the performance of the global motorsport series. The Formula One tracking stock hit an all-time high last month. Maffei said the split created a path where the team can be bought by an interested party as a whole, but the company doesn’t have any plan or intent to do that. The executive said profits of the franchise will continue to be driven by operations on the field and of the real estate. “The financial results of the company have continued to improve, not only with increased fan attendance, not only with better monetization of those fans, but frankly also with the real estate development,” Maffei said. The Braves have the best record in Major League Baseball this year, at 64 wins and 35 losses. They’re also the favorites to win the World Series, according to Fanduel Sportsbook. Outfielder Ronald Acuña Jr. also has the second-highest batting average in the major at .328. He’s also among the the top 5 players in on base percentage and slugging percentage.
Read the full article here
