Penn Entertainment CEO Jay Snowden used the company’s post-earnings stock slump as a buying opportunity.
Snowden bought 34,700 shares on Friday at an average price of $14.32 each for $496,938.70, according to a form 4 released about 10 minutes before the market opened Monday.
That was enough time for a positive rally as open-market purchases from insiders are typically seen as a vote of confidence in a company. That rally continued through the day as PENN closed at $15.60, up 7.3% from Friday‘s close.
PENN still has some work to do get back to its pre-earnings price. The stock closed Wednesday at $16.35 before tumbling 10.4% on Thursday on its third-quarter results and the early end of its 10-year ESPN Bet partnership with Disney.
Penn stock down YTD
The company’s stock actually rallied in premarket Thursday on the news that Penn and Disney were mutually ending the $2 billion deal for ESPN Bet that should have run through 2033, but that could not be sustained with its earnings miss.
Through Friday, Penn’s stock is down nearly 27% from the $19.87 price it opened the year at on Jan. 2. It is down 36% from its 52-week closing high of $22.73 hit on Feb. 14.
For comparison, Penn’s stock was at $27.10 on Aug. 9, 2023, when the company ended its partnership for Barstool Sportsbook and announced its deal for ESPN Bet.
Snowden still here despite digital woes
Penn Entertainment has had a difficult run during Snowden’s tenure as CEO, which began Jan. 1, 2020 when the then-COO took over for Tim Wilmott.
Since then, Penn has spent billions of dollars on two digital deals that have netted the company fewer than 5 million digital customers. The acquisition of Barstool Sports was considered a failure by many, paying $550 million for the entire company only to sell it back to founder Dave Portnoy for $1.
Penn got just 1.5 million digital customers from the Barstool partnership after originally touting 66 million “Stoolies” the company would tap directly into. Of those 66 million, 62% said they gambled, with 44% of those gamblers saying they bet on sports weekly.
Activist investor HG Vora began a proxy battle this year to get its own representatives added to the board of directors, claiming the company’s multiple investments of more than $4 billion in its interactive segment was an “abject failure” in January 2025.
