Veteran cable and satellite analyst Vijay Jayant is back in the game after a brief hiatus, initiating coverage of both sectors Monday.
Jayant has been a fixture on the cable scene for years -- he has covered the sector for Morgan Stanley, Barclays Capital and Citadel Securities since June 2000. He joined ISI Group, a full service broker-dealer offering macro research, fundamental research, trading and sales, in September after Citadel decided to shut down its equities research coverage and sell its investment bank.
In a 138-page report issued Monday, Jayant and former Sanford Bernstein analyst Judah Rifkin initiated coverage of Comcast, Cablevision, Time Warner Cable, Charter Communications, Dish Network and DirecTV with a "positive view," recommending the sector as a core holding and noting that the sector's consistent cash flow make it an offensive play in a defensive market.
Jayant wrote that in a "risk-on" environment he would prefer more levered names like Charter, Cablevision and Dish. In a "risk-off" environment, the veteran analyst recommended higher quality, larger capitalization names like DirecTV (his top pick overall), Time Warner Cable and Comcast. He added that currently ISI has a bias towards "risk-off."
