Wednesday marked one week since Starz completed its separation from Lionsgate and began trading on the NASDAQ under the STRZ ticker. On May 9, Starz President and CEO Jeffrey Hirsch rang the NASDAQ opening bell, joined by “Power Book III: Raising Kanan” stars Patina Miller and MeKai Curtis, along with Starz Networks President Alison Hoffman and Original Programming President Kathryn Busby. Employees from STARZ’s offices in New York, Santa Monica and Greenwood Village, Colorado, celebrated the company’s milestone with curated employee events and joined the bell-ringing ceremony virtually.

“From our inception, Starz has always been viewed as a complementary service focusing on women and underrepresented audiences… We are laser-focused on continuing to be that add-on service to all the broad-based streamers out there. Over the last seven years we have successfully transitioned our business from just being an old, traditional cable network to 70% of our revenue today is digital. So we are a modern, digital streaming network,” Hirsch said in his remarks.

It’s been a pretty good start for the stock, which opened on May 7 at $8.00 and shares closed that day at $11.20. It’s been up from there, with STRZ closing on May 14 at $12.21. The Starz crew is adjusting to life as a standalone company, naming some familiar names to its board of directors, such as former AMC Networks CEO turned Sapan Studios President Josh Sapan, MLC Strategies President and former FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, Oxygen Media co-founder Lisa Gersh, Liberty Global Chief Content Officer Bruce Mann and Lionsgate Vice Chair Michael Burns.

One of the board’s first orders of business was to change Starz’s fiscal year end from March 31 to Dec. 31, getting it off the Lionsgate fiscal calendar. Starz will file an annual report for the fiscal year that ended on March 31 shortly (Lionsgate is set to post results on May 22) and after that it’s next fiscal year will end on Dec. 31, 2025. As a result of the change, the company will file a Transition Report on Form 10-K for the nine-month transition period from April 1, 2025 to December 31, 2025. – Amy Maclean

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