Analyst projects Steph Curry may be worth $14 billion to Under Armour
Steph Curry is the best and most exciting basketball player in the world. He's also, on and off the court, an extremely valuable property.
The Golden State Warriors know this better than anyone. Curry was awarded the NBA's Most Valuable Player trophy last season after he led Golden State to a championship.
But when you're dealing with an athlete who's soaring as high as Curry is, there's even more on the line than an NBA title. Billions of dollars—literally, with a "B"—are at stake. Just ask Under Armour. Here's what Jay Sole, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, had to say about how much the sportswear company's growth potential is tied to Curry's success (via Business Insider):
"Its Stephen Curry signature shoe business is already bigger than those of LeBron, Kobe, and every other player except Michael Jordan. If Curry is the next Jordan, our call will likely be wrong." Sole named his bull case for the stock "Spicy Curry," with a price target of $127.50, and said it would become "the world's No. 2 athletic brand" based on the performance and popularity of Curry. If Curry continues his streak, the difference in market-cap value of the company could be approximately $14 billion, with Under Armour being valued at about $14.1 billion under Sole's base case and $28.2 billion in his bull case.
Yikes. It appears Curry has escaped Earth's gravitational pull and is somewhere, dancing, outside our atmosphere. His popularity doesn't boggle the mind, but how fast he became this popular does.
The 27-year-old is almost definitely going to win his second-straight MVP Award this year, and there's a good chance his Warriors will go down as the greatest team in NBA history. What's next?
Stephen Curry and Jamie Foxx put on a fireworks show in Under Armour's cosmic new ad: https://t.co/x6cjI4yaLN pic.twitter.com/5m16bZOMiS
— Sprouting Follow (@sproutingfollow) February 23, 2016
Is it possible Curry releases a signature shoe that breaks, um, every sneaker sales record in existence? It's on the table! He may end up being more popular than Michael Jordan, in a market that's far more competitive than the one Jordan started to thrive in nearly three decades ago.
Curry can do for Under Armour what Jordan did to Nike. That's almost as incredible as every single thing the NBA's leading scorer is doing on the court this season.
He's unprecedented in so many different ways. Under Armour owes him a really big hug.
