4 Media Stocks Barclays Analysts Are Chatting About

In a report published Thursday, Barclays analyst Kannan Venkateshwar contemplated on the reasons behind the spike in the shares of

. Since the announcement of the deal between

and

on February 13, 2014, Charter's shares have jumped 40%, while the market has risen 14% over the same period. In the report Barclays noted, "Charter's earnings and FCF expectations have not moved up materially and Charter is actually part of much a smaller deal than previously envisaged. We attribute the run-up in part to investor expectations around the potential for deal scenarios that differ to the original proposed deal between Comcast, TWC, and Charter." Provided such a deal comes through, there seems to be growing confidence in "potential free cash flow inflection" at the company during 2017-2018, the analyst said. These different deal scenarios seem to be already "more than adequately" reflected in the Charter stock. "Using the market implied probability of Charter potentially having a shot at buying all of TWC, we believe the weighted average across scenarios being considered at present would imply a Charter stock price of $192. However, this assumes no execution risk of any kind which, in our opinion, is premature given Charter's own track record over the last couple of years," Venkateshwar wrote. While the longer-term Charter story appears positive, the analysts believe that the "equity is priced close to perfection" and does not leave room for any risk between now and the closing of a deal. In separate notes, Barclays lowered its estimates for

(rated Underweight) and

(rated Equal Weight) following their 4Q earnings reports. The price target for TIVO has been reduced from $14 to $13. The price target for

(rated Overweight) has been slashed from $57 to $44 to reflect updated NAV for the broadband spin.