Investing

4 Companies That May Benefit From the Rio Olympic Games

Mayer Winkler

Published: May 19, 2016 8:45 am

Last Updated: January 13, 2020 7:51 am

The Olympic Games are just around the corner, less than three months away, and any global concentration of business, entertainment and consumption like the games could lead to gains for companies that are well prepared to meet demand.

Here are four stocks that offer both direct and indirect exposure to the Rio Summer Olympics.

Comcast

NBC, owned and operated by NBC Universal, is a subsidiary of Comcast Corp. (NASDAQ: CMCSA), and it picked up the rights to broadcast the Olympic games for $1.28 billion. NBC will broadcast the event across several platforms, both live and as a prepackaged format.

The broadcaster already has generated more than $1 billion in ad sales, and it has a number of prime time and cable channel inventory slots left to sell.

It also plans to offer streaming coverage on a subscription and ad-based model. NBC broke even in the 2012 Olympics, generating just shy of $41.3 billion off the back of the event, and it generated a small net income on the most recent winter Olympics. Having already chalked up nearly 80% of its outlay in ad sales, expectations are that the company will replicate its Sochi success and pull in a positive bottom line.

This, of course, only addresses the quantifiable benefit. The intangibles that come with exclusive broadcasting (say, for example, the ability to advertise cross network shows to new viewers) could easily outweigh the dollar figure ad sales benefit.

Ralph Lauren Corp. (NYSE: RL) is designing and supplying Team USA with its ceremonial and casual clothing and footwear for the event, and it no doubt will capitalize on the coverage for raw attention to its brand. A host of different media channels already have drawn attention to the collaboration between Team USA and Ralph Lauren, with a high-profile debuting covered across most major news networks leading this push at the end of April.

Replica versions off the Team USA ceremonial outfits are already available at a premium markup, and as the games unfold, this could draw a large number of buyers to the Ralph Lauren website, and in turn, generate satellite sales outside of the portfolio of Olympic attire.
Dow Chemical

Four years ago Dow Chemical Co. (NYSE: DOW) drew some unwanted attention when it partnered with the London Olympics as an official sponsor, but that hasn’t stopped the company becoming the worldwide official sponsor for Rio 2016, as well as the games’ official chemicals partner. The company is trying to establish itself as a green organization and to prove itself as being at the cutting edge of technology for renewable resources.

The company has designed and built a number of the vehicles and devices used in the games, including the Team USA luge and bobsled. It also will be setting up a host of displays and presentations with the goal of building its brand in line with the green initiative.

This one is more of an intangible benefit than the Ralph Lauren addition to this list, but one that is valuable to Dow nonetheless. If the company can use the event to answer some of the issues put forward by critics in the last games, then the longer term benefit of brand awareness and recovery should outweigh the cost of sponsorship, reported to be somewhere in the region of $100 million.

Aethlon Medical

The outbreak of Zika has been a hot topic this year, and it is one of the major issues surrounding the Rio Olympics. Talk of potential boycotts by athletes, and some officials even going so far as to suggest women avoid attending the games altogether due to the risk of serious birth defects from the virus, have thrust the Zika virus into the spotlight, and with it, companies working on treatments in the space. One of them is Aethlon Medical Inc. (NASDAQ: AEMD).

Aethlon’s lead technology is a treatment called the Hemopurifier, and it targets a wide spectrum of viral pathogens, one of which is Zika. Earlier this month, Aethlon announced the progress of an FDA-approved study that is testing the Hemopurifier against a range of pathogens.

It’s a small trial of just 10 patients, and six are already in treatment. With this in mind, it shouldn’t be long before the company completes the study, and can present to the FDA. If there is a Zika outbreak at the games this year, expect this company to capture more attention.