Business

MSG’s stock rises on Clippers sale

Madison Square Garden chief Jim Dolan doesn’t have to like disgraced Clippers owner Donald Sterling — but on Friday he had 111 million reasons to thanks him.

MSG, which owns the New York Rangers and the Knicks, saw its value spike by about $111 million, hours after former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer agreed to buy Sterling’s Clippers for a jaw-dropping $2 billion.

“The Knicks are intrinsically worth 40 percent to 50 percent more than the Clippers,” said Rich Tullo, an analyst at Albert Fried & Co., who said he believes MSG to have a value of roughly $6 billion.

The entertainment company’s stock closed Friday up 3.3 percent, to $54.85 — giving it a market cap of $4.2 billion.

“That’s like buying the assets at a 50 percent discount to market value,” said Tullo, who has had a target value of $85 per share on MSG since March.

Amy Yong, who covers MSG for Macquarie Securities, took Tullo’s target for MSG — and went a bit higher.

Considering the Knicks were valued at $1.4 billion and the Rangers at $1 billion a year ago, she said a sum-of-parts analysis that incorporates recent developments could show MSG to be worth up to $95 per share.

By these outsized measures, the Rangers extending their season to the Stanley Cup Finals is more of a feel-good factor.

Analyst Tullo estimated each post-season home game generated an extra $1 million in cash flow for MSG — an amount that would have been much higher were it not for the team’s having to give up broadcast rights at the end of the regular season.

But that doesn’t keep the feel-good factor from feeling, well, really good.