Two more Penn Entertainment insiders took to the open market this week, though they took their transactions in different directions.
Penn’s stock is still trying to claw its way back to its pre-earnings price of $16.35 before its third-quarter results and the announcement of the death of ESPN Bet and its 10-year sports betting deal with Disney led to a more than 10% tumble.
A nearly $500,000 open-market purchase from CEO Jay Snowden helped rally the stock a bit last week, but that momentum was not sustained. Penn closed at $13.65 Monday, a new 52-week closing low.
Penn’s stock was up around 3% at 1 pm Eastern Wednesday.
Director Black-Gupta sells
The first transaction came from Penn Director Vimla Black-Gupta on Friday, according to the Form 4.
She sold 7,987 shares at $14.51 each. The nearly $116,000 sale lowered her Penn holdings by 24.2% as she now owns 25,000 shares directly.
Penn chairman buys
Chairman David Handler, meanwhile, raised his direct ownership of Penn shares by 5.8% when he added 20,000 shares on Monday.
Handler bought all 20,000 at $14.25 each, totaling $285,000.
He now owns 362,941 shares directly and 20,000 indirectly through a foundation.
Blue skies ahead?
Now that Penn’s digital business is being right-sized with the early end of its $2 billion contract with Disney, earnings periods should be less volatile.
The quarterly digital losses never leveled off as ESPN Bet struggled to gain anywhere near the early share projections from Penn and masked the success of Penn’s robust retail casino portfolio.
Penn’s digital plan is now focused on online casino first, which has showed promising growth, especially since the launch of its standalone Hollywood Casino app. Online casino monthly active users jumped 79% in the third quarter compared to last year.
The company hopes to end the use of the ESPN Bet brand by Dec. 15 and will switch back to theScore Bet brand, which had been discontinued in the US and only used in Ontario since July 2022.
