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“Breaking Bad” has been a boon for anyone who owns stock in AMC Networks (Nasdaq: AMCX).
The finale of the hit show about a high school chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin drew 10.3 million viewers Sunday night – a record for the cable network AMC. Buzz surrounding the Breaking Bad finale pushed AMC stock up 3.5% in the last week.
Now that AMC’s signature show is over, however, what happens to the stock from here?
Let’s take a quick look at the stock’s fundamentals:
Current Share Price: $68.94
Market Cap: $5 billion
Trailing P/E: 20
Forward P/E: 17.6
Profit Margin: 17%
Dividend: None
Those are pretty solid numbers, especially when you consider that AMC stock is already up more than 34% year to date. But how much of that bump was fueled by Breaking Bad?
Not much, it appears. AMC shares have actually fallen since peaking at $71 on August 7. The Breaking Bad finale gave the stock a nice late push, but AMC is only up 4.5% in the last three months.
And AMC’s success wasn’t predicated on one show. “Mad Men” and “Walking Dead” are other wildly popular, award-winning dramas that air on AMC. In fact, the Walking Dead premiere last October drew more viewers – 10.9 million – than the Breaking Bad finale just did.
The next season of Walking Dead premieres (fittingly) on Halloween, so that could give the stock a nice bump. Last year’s mid-October premiere gave the stock a 14% bump in 10 days.
Breaking Bad was undoubtedly a major part of AMC’s primetime lineup. But the network is not a one-trick pony.
Just because its signature show is dead, it doesn’t mean AMC stock is too.