Byron Allen bought into Starz in March talking about owning the whole company. By the end of September he owned none of it, and he was nearly $20 million richer for the seven months in between.
A securities filing disclosed on October 29 shows that Allen Family Capital, Allen’s family office, sold all 1,803,786 of its Starz shares between August 7 and September 29. The sales brought in about $44.9 million. Allen had paid $25 million for the same shares, so the trade produced an estimated gain of $19.9 million before taxes and transaction costs.
A stake bought from a former Treasury secretary
The entry was as deliberate as the exit. In March, Allen Family Capital bought its 10.7 percent stake from Liberty 77 Capital, the investment firm tied to former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, at $13.86 a share. Allen held no Starz stock before the purchase. He told The Hollywood Reporter how the deal came together, recounting that he simply agreed to take the shares for $25 million and bought them.
The sale prices tell the second half of the story. Allen sold in tranches at roughly $21 to $27 a share, close to double his entry price, according to the filing. A position he built in one private transaction came out the other side, seven months later, worth almost twice what he paid.
The takeover that the board blocked
What changed was not the price. It was the path to control. Allen said publicly after buying in that he wanted to acquire Starz outright, telling The Wrap that when he was ready to buy the company, he would buy the entire company. Starz answered with a shareholder rights plan, the defensive measure known as a poison pill, which would dilute an investor who tried to build a controlling stake without board approval.
His own filing language had always left the door open. Allen Family Capital described the March purchase as made for investment purposes and said the position could rise or fall with Starz’s performance and market conditions. The cautious sentence in the filing turned out to be the accurate one. Once the board made a takeover fight the only route to control, Allen took the profit instead.
Starz, standing on its own
The exit landed on the same day Starz reported its third-quarter results. The network, which separated from Lionsgate in 2025 and now trades on its own, posted revenue of $322.4 million, up 0.5 percent from a year earlier. Its net loss narrowed to $34.8 million from $52.6 million a year earlier, and streaming revenue rose 1.7 percent to $226.6 million, carried by franchises such as Power and Outlander.
Starz keeps its independence. Allen keeps the gain, and the capital. His Allen Media Group portfolio still holds The Weather Channel and HBCU Go, and earlier this year he took a controlling stake in BuzzFeed. The Starz chapter closed the way his filing said it could: a good investment, reviewed on a continuing basis, sold when the numbers said sell.
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