Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen Admits Company Must Walk “A Narrow Path” Toward Financial Stability; DirecTV Merger Pursuit Is Paused As Stock Crashes To 25-Year Low

deadline.com:

With its shares in free fall after a dismal third-quarter earnings report, Dish Network executives faced the music with Wall Street, conceding in an earnings call that they face an array of intensifying challenges. “We have a narrow path, but there is a path, to achieve financial stability and make sure we meet our commitments,” Chairman Charlie Ergen said. “Having been through this for a long time, we’ve had narrow paths before.” The company’s shares plunged more than 37% on more than eight times normal trading volume to finish the day at $3.44.

It was the stock’s biggest single-day drop in the nearly three decades since it began trading and its lowest closing price in 25 years.

Along with trying to squeeze money out of its legacy pay-TV business, whose subscriber levels are dropping by double-digit year-over-year rates, the company is still trying to pull off a grand strategic pivot.

With deep roots are in satellite TV, a business that was booming until about a decade ago, Dish opted to acquire billions of dollars’ worth of spectrum in recent years and sought to crash the wireless party.