Breaking Down John Malone’s Investments, Company by Company

By Crayton HarrisonCrayton Harrison, Cedric SamCedric Sam and Mathieu Benhamou

Published: September 28, 2017 | Updated: August 14, 2018

Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

John Malone’s potent mix of cable and media investments has long attracted imitators hoping to benefit from the wisdom as an industry pioneer. Gabelli & Co. even put together an exchange-traded fund that imitates Malone’s investments for clients. This year, the strategy hasn't been as successful, with media companies struggling to keep up with changing viewer habits and online competition. Malone's portfolio has trailed the S&P 500 by about 13 percentage points.

Still, tracking Malone’s holdings is a great way to divine how one of the industry's most influential moguls thinks about the future of media. Keeping up with Malone is a challenge that requires investors to keep up with a head-spinning number of financial maneuvers, weird trading vehicles and merger deals.

So we’re putting it all in one place for you—Malone’s various stakes and his voting position in public companies—to provide a clearer picture of his reach and influence across the industry. His investment maneuvering rarely seems to slow down. In the past year, for example, two of his biggest companies, Liberty Global Plc and Liberty Interactive Corp., split into four separate entities, and he sold more than a third of Liberty Global Plc to Vodafone Group Plc for about $22 billion. One thing is certain: Malone is always up to something big. Here’s a primer on how his holdings stack up.

These are John Malone’s top holdings

Different share classes allow Malone to have quasi control over Liberty Media, Qurate Retail, GCI Liberty, Liberty Global and Liberty Latin America.

Shares in the company

Voting shares

Liberty Media Corp.

Divided among three tracking stocks, Liberty Media is home to Malone’s sports and satellite radio investments. It’s been around in some form since 1991 and once traded as a tracking stock when Malone sold TCI to AT&T Inc.

Liberty Braves

The Atlanta Braves and the team’s stadium and related real estate projects are represented by this tracking stock. It’s one of the few ways investors can bet on the value of a major league franchise in the U.S.

8.0% Position

Voting 47.7%

Liberty SiriusXM Group

This tracking stock represents Liberty Media’s 69 percent stake in Sirius XM Holdings Inc., the satellite radio provider. Sirius XM, meanwhile, has a minority investment in Pandora Media Inc., the online radio company.

7.5% Position

Voting 47.0%

Formula One Group

The racing circuit, one of Malone’s newest investments, was acquired in 2016. It has hired longtime media executive Chase Carey as CEO and is exploring ways to increase its popularity in the U.S.

3.1% Position

Voting 47.7%

Other direct holdings

Liberty Broadband Corp.

This isn’t really much of a company—it consists almost entirely of a 21 percent stake in Charter Communications Inc., the second-biggest cable provider in the U.S. In addition to Malone’s direct holdings in Liberty Broadband, his Liberty Interactive owns a 24 percent stake. (See below for more.) Malone has spoken of Charter, which acquired Time Warner Cable in 2016, as a potential vehicle to further consolidate the cable industry in the U.S.

3.7% Position

Voting 47.1%

Liberty Expedia Holdings Inc.

Mostly a trading vehicle representing a 16 percent stake in Expedia, the online-travel destination, this company also includes full ownership of Vitalize LLC, a fitness site that used to be called Bodybuilding.com.

5.4% Position

Voting 32.9%

Discovery Inc.*

The cable TV powerhouse, which owns Animal Planet and TLC in addition to its flagship network, acquired Scripps Networks Interactive, home of HGTV and the Food Network, in 2018. It’s part of Malone’s strategy to fuse some of the smaller players in TV into a bigger, more powerful company.

4.0% Position

Voting 27.4%

Ascent Capital Group Inc.

Formerly a media production company, it’s now mostly known for owning MONI Smart Security, which sells security systems to homes and businesses. Ascent has been a public company since 2008.

4.5% Position

Voting 17.6%

Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.

The studio, home of “The Hunger Games” and “Orange Is the New Black,” merged with premium-TV provider Starz—another Malone holding—late in 2016. Malone shares control of Lions Gate with another big-time investor, Mark Rachesky of MHR Fund Management LLC.

5.3% Position

Voting 7.8%

Qurate Retail Inc.

A home-shopping giant that includes the HSN and QVC networks, plus online retailer Zulily and a minority stake in florist FTD.

6.1% Position

Voting 38.3%

GCI Liberty Inc.

Owner of GCI, Alaska's biggest phone carrier by sales, and Evite, the online event-planning service, plus a 24 percent stake in Liberty Broadband (see above); a 26 percent stake in LendingTree and a 2 percent stake in Charter.

4.1% Position

Voting 22.8%

Liberty Global Plc

Malone's European media businesses, including pay-TV provider Virgina Media Plc in the U.K. and Belgium's Telenet. A deal to sell Germany's Unitymedia and properties in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania to Vodafone is expected to close by the end of 2019.

3.1% Position

Voting 28.4%

Liberty Latin America Ltd.

Until recently a part of Liberty Global, the company includes about 1 million TV customers in Chile and 1.7 million mobile-phone users in Panama, among other markets. Malone has indicated it's a possible vehicle for mergers and acquisitions in the region.

4.3% Position

Voting 24.2%

Secondary holdings via Greg Maffei

Shares in the company

Voting shares

Liberty TripAdvisor Holdings Inc.

The company, which owns a 22 percent stake in online travel site TripAdvisor Inc., used to be controlled by Malone, but he passed the shares over to his right-hand man Greg Maffei, essentially as a bonus.

3.7% Position

Voting 27.3%

With so many holdings in media production and distribution, Malone has a lot of options to combine or rejigger his companies as the industry continues to evolve via streaming and wireless technology. Or he can sell, if the right offer comes along. If there's one thing Malone has shown over the years, it's a willingness to shake things up.