Bullish Outlook on Lions Gate (LGF) and Madison Square Garden (MSG) Due to Strong Content, I.P.

November 21, 2012

Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. (LGF) and The Madison Square Garden Company (MSG) offer opportunities and a bullish outlook for investors due to their ownership of strong content and its underlying I.P., says Ben Mogil, Analyst at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co., Inc.

“We’d actually put Madison Square Garden, because they’ve got a bunch of very strong cable networks. These are the two MSG channels in New York that own the sports teams,” he said. “They’ve got the broadcast rights and they certainly are very strong on the content side — that they own the underlying I.P. effectively around the games.”

Mogil also favors LGF because it owns a couple of projects for next year, that if they succeed also will be major producers of franchises. The company already has a core base to its business with its ownership of the “Twilight” and “Hunger Games” movies.

“You’ve got a company that, for three years or four years, I had a ‘hold’ on the stock, and then, we upgraded around $9.50. The stock now is $16,” he said. “And it’s interesting, while like obviously upgrading $9.50 to $16 has been a good call, the other part of the good call, to be honest, was having a ‘hold’ on the stock for three years.”