Can WWE Break Out of Its Recent Stock Slump?

Shares of World Wrestling Entertainment (NYSE: WWE ) hit a 52-week low last week. Let's take a look at how the company got there to find out if it's about to get pinned to the mat.

It hasn't been a good time for entertainment stocks over the last few years, and WWE's just one of the specialist stocks that's gotten body-slammed by changing consumer interests. Fellow live-entertainment purveyor Live Nation (NYSE: LYV ) is doing worse, and even diversified brands like Time Warner (NYSE: TWX ) have fallen on hard times

WWE's bread and butter is its annual Wrestlemania pay-per-view match, but that event alone can't drive its growth. Neither, it seems, can its international events, which took in less revenue in 2011 than they did the year before. It wasn't just WWE facing headwinds with its live shows. Live event promoters of all kinds saw trouble -- Madison Square Garden (NYSE: MSG ) , despite strong share-price growth over the last two years, was hurt by the basketball strike that cut last season short.

Some companies associated with the WWE brand have been similarly smacked down. THQ (Nasdaq: THQI ) is one of the worst-performing stocks of the last five years (at least among those that haven't gone bankrupt), and a glance at past sales of its licensed WWE console titles offers one clue as to why. The series peaked years ago, and despite solid sales for the latest iteration, it hasn't come close to matching the high points in sales reached during the middle of the last decade.

WWE's well-known for paying out as much as it can in dividends, but is that strategy sustainable?...More?

source: fool.com