Eminence Capital takes Entain stake north of 5%

Eminence Capital CEO Ricky Sandler has confirmed that the investment vessel has increased its stake in global entertainment and gaming company Entain to 5.18%, making Eminence the fourth-largest shareholder in the company.

Eminence Capital and its increasing role in Entain

Sandler, who leads the global asset management firm, added 7.1 million shares, buying them on June 3, and pushing the total holdings of his company to 37,154,030 total shares in the FTSE100 listed firm.

This pushes the total stake controlled by Eminence Capital to 5.18%, and still trailing the next closest investor, Black Rock, with a share of the capital of 5.59%. The other big investors in the company presently are The Capital Group Companies, which own 15.16% of the total capital, and Dodge & Cox, which owns another 9.99%.

Sandler has been one of the biggest activist investors in the company as well, as Entain went through turbulent times, not least as part of the closure of an investigation over its former business unit in Turkey, but also because of its questionable mergers and acquisition strategy which was brought into question by Eminence.

A growing choir of investors had criticized Entain when Sandler was invited to join the company’s Board of Directors and get an inside scoop on its day-to-day business. Although lessening Sandler’s public criticism, which started with a letter, the investor himself has been adamant about seeing Entain through what he considered to be a series of poor decisions on a leadership level.

Reckoning with past mistakes, and a course to a brighter future

He put into question many of the acquisitions the company had made over the past years, asking what the real value to Entain as a company was. Yet, there has been a big shift in the way Entain run things. A strategic review, launched partly to assuage investor fears, and partly to set the company on a new path to profitability, focused exclusively on determining what Entain’s core priorities would be.

In the process, which was completed last month, Entain said that it would be shedding Crystalbet, a betting and gaming operator that did not meet the criteria for core business. For its part, Entain has been adamant about the success of the BetMGM joint venture it operates with the eponymous hospitality and gaming giant.

In the meantime, BetMGM has been able to scale well beyond its bastion in the United States and has begun carving out markets in Europe. The company also recently pulled out of 140 markets.

Image credit: Unsplash.com