Skate’s Reports: 2014 Was the Worst

Skate’s Reports: 2014 Was the Worst Year for Global Art Industry Stocks

2014 was the worst year for the global art industry companies tracked by Skate’s Art Stock Index (SASI) since 2005. SASI tracks 16 listed companies that derive most of their business from servicing the art market, collectors and/or artists, with business models from art auctions and dealers to art media companies and image licensing platforms.

Skate’s Art Stock Index lost 25.8 percent in 2014 thus significantly underperforming all general market benchmarks. This massive decline was largely driven by the three largest companies by market cap, Sotheby’s, Shutterstock, and Poly, which saw deep double-digit dips for their share price this year (see Exhibit 2). 2014 performance was particularly painful (negative 27.6 percent) for Chinese auction powerhouse Poly since the firm went public in 2014 (see our coverage at www.skatepress.com/market-notes/issue-84/) and then destroyed value for its IPO investors who so far lost almost 3 dollars on each 10 they invested at IPO, which was clearly overpriced in the first place. In fact, all of 2014’s art industry IPOs did poorly, with British Scholium also losing 22 percent from its IPO date (see Scholium IPO coverage at