NEW YORK—Sprint PCS’ tracking stock price spiked on Thursday following a report that parent company Sprint Corp. was looking at removing its tracking stocks to help reduce confusion among its investors.
Sprint Chief Executive Officer William Esrey told Bloomberg that the move to remove the tracking stock may be adopted sometime in the next five years.
The stock opened at $11.40 per share before briefly shooting up to $12 per share when the report was announced. The stock eventually closed at $11.56 per share on Thursday before dropping around 10 percent to around $10.50 per share in early trading on Friday.
Sprint originally split Sprint PCS off into a tracking stock in 1998 in a move many analysts said would unlock the true value of the wireless operations. The tracking stock price began at around $7 per share before jumping to around $50 per share in early 2000 when they were split and continued to climb above $60 per share until mid-2000. Since then, Sprint PCS’ stock price has fallen with the rest of the telecommunications industry and currently trades around $11 per share.
