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We downgrade our recommendation on Liberty Media Corp. ( LMCA ) to Underperform based on its disappointing third quarter of 2013 financial results. Both the top and the bottom line fell below the respective Zacks Consensus Estimate. We do not find any near-term growth catalyst for the company. Currently, Liberty Media carries a Zacks Rank #5 (Strong Sell).

Why the Downgrade?

Liberty Media is steadily restructuring its business model, targeting to control several subscription-based businesses. We believe that the strategic investment in several subscription-based companies will make the company's overall financials volatile. Liberty Media currently controls a 27.3% stake in Charter Communications Inc. ( CHTR ), the fourth largest pay-TV operator in the U.S.

Liberty Media is aggressively pursuing an idea so that Charter Communications can acquire Time Warner Cable Inc. ( TWC ), the second largest cable MSO (multi service operator) in the U.S. However, Charter needs to raise at least $25 billion for this takeover, which will significantly leverage the company's balance sheet.

Even if Charter succeeds to raise that amount from the market, other competitors such as Comcast Corp. ( CMCSA ), Cox Communications and several private equity firms may offer more attractive bids for Time Warner Cable.

Liberty Media's businesses are susceptible to rapid technological changes. Large cable TV operators are increasingly deploying digital TV networks, which are gradually gaining huge market traction. Increasing deployment of personal video recorders, video-on-demand technology and IPTV network are systematically changing the distribution and viewing habits of the common people.

The multi-channel video market in the U.S. is almost saturated. Roughly, 87% of the TV households in the U.S. are multi-channel TV subscribers. It is not easy to lure customers from competitors since every operator is offering innovative packages.

CHARTER COMM-A (CHTR): Free Stock Analysis Report

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Liberty Media Down to Underperform - Analyst Blog

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C.J.Guerin, MRC Toxicology Unit/ Science Photo Library

Nerve cells (red) that act as receptors for hypocretins, hormones that regulate the sleep cycle, are attacked by the immune system in narcolepsy patients.

As the H1N1 swine flu pandemic swept the world in 2009, China saw a spike in cases of narcolepsy a mysterious disorder that involves sudden, uncontrollable sleepiness. Meanwhile, in Europe, around 1 in 15,000 children who were given Pandemrix a now-defunct flu vaccine that contained fragments of the pandemic virus also developed narcolepsy, a chronic disease.

Immunologist Elizabeth Mellins and narcolepsy researcher Emmanuel Mignot at Stanford University School of Medicine in California and their collaborators have now partly solved the mystery behind these events, while also confirming a longstanding hypothesis that narcolepsy is an autoimmune disease, in which the immune system attacks healthy cells.

Narcolepsy is mostly caused by the gradual loss of neurons that produce hypocretin, a hormone that keeps us awake. Many scientists had suspected that the immune system was responsible, but the Stanford team has found the first direct evidence: a special group of CD4+ T cells (a type of immune cell) that targets hypocretin and is found only in people with narcolepsy.

Up till now, the idea that narcolepsy was an autoimmune disorder was a very compelling hypothesis, but this is the first direct evidence of autoimmunity, says Mellins. I think these cells are a smoking gun. The study is published today in Science Translational Medicine1.

Thomas Scammell, a neurologist at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, says that the results are welcome after years of modest disappointment, marked by many failures to find antibodies made by a person's body against their own hypocretin. Its one of the biggest things to happen in the narcolepsy field for some time.

It is not clear why some people make these T cells and others do not, but genetics may play a part. In earlier work2, Mignot showed that 98% of people with narcolepsy have a variant of the gene HLA that is found in only 25% of the general population.

Environmental factors, such as infections, probably matter too. Mellins working model is that narcolepsy happens when people with a genetic predisposition, which involves having several narcolepsy-related gene variants, encounter an environmental factor that mimics hypocretin, triggering a response from the immune system. The 2009 H1N1 virus was one such trigger: the team found that these same special CD4+ T cells also recognize a protein from the pandemic H1N1 virus.

Narcolepsy of course was around long before the 2009 pandemic. And since new cases of the disease tend to arise right after winter following the seasonal peak in flu it's possible that other strains or even other viruses are involved, too.

See more here:
Narcolepsy confirmed as autoimmune disease

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