Shares of Dish Network Corp. got a big boost Tuesday, after the pay-TV services company disclosed that co-founder Jim DeFranco had bought nearly $16 million worth of the company’s stock a few days before it closed at a 14-year low.
The stock
DISH,
shot up 5.5% in morning trading Tuesday, enough to pace the S&P 500’s
SPX,
gainers. The company’s market capitalization was about $6.1 billion.
According to a Form 4 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission late Monday, DeFranco bought 1.45 million Dish shares on March 2 at a price of $10.84, for a value of $15.72 million. The stock traded in an intraday range that day of $10.64 to $11.13, before closing at $10.98.
FactSet, MarketWatch
On Monday, the stock’s closing price of $10.90 was the lowest since March 20, 2009.
DeFranco co-founded the company in 1980 with Charlie Ergen and Cantey Ergen. He is currently one of the company’s executive vice presidents and a member of Dish’s board of directors.
DeFranco is Dish’s eighth-largest shareholder, with nearly 3% of the shares outstanding, according to FactSet data.
Dish’s stock has dropped 20.4% over the past three months and tumbled 61% over the past 12 months. The Communication Services Select Sector SPDR exchange-traded fund
XLC,
has dropped 15.3% over the past year, while the S&P 500 has lost 4.5% in the same period.
