Dish Network stock fell more than 5% Wednesday after JP Morgan media analyst Phil Cusick downgraded the stock, casting doubt on the satellite TV giant’s wireless plans and adding that the one potential bright spot in the strategy is at least two-to-three years off.

Cusick downgraded Dish shares to “underweight” from “neutral,” but raised his 12-month target on the shares from $38 to $45 each, saying that its plans to build a wireless network in the next several years could be extremely costly and that the No. 2 satellite TV service provider enters the market at a time when barriers are high and competition is fierce. 

Dish shares fell as much as 7.3% ($3.16 each) to $40.42 per share on June 9, closing at $40.44 each, down 7.2%. 

“We can’t find a way but to be skeptical on the Dish story,” Cusick wrote. “[W]e have nothing but respect for Dish chairman Charlie Ergen and his team, but can’t get over our skepticism on three major issues.”

Those issues, according to Cusick are the difficulty in building a wireless network, Dish is expected to struggle to compete against wireless carriers with double and triple its spectrum holdings, and fears that Dish may be too late to the 5G game as other carriers have accelerated deployment and eliminated any advantage Dish would have had if it had been first. 

Dish has said it would spend about $10 billion to build a nationwide 5G wireless network based on ORAN technology, a figure that many analysts said is shockingly low. Dish has about one year to make the network available to 20% of the country as part of the federal requirements for its wireless spectrum licenses, and to 70% of the country by June 2023, deadlines the company says will be reached easily but that other analysts are skeptical can be achieved without a partner. Dish has said it will launch service first in Las Vegas in the third quarter. 

Also Read: Dish: No Partner Needed for Wireless Dance 

Some had hoped that partner would be Amazon, and Dish said in April that it picked the e-retailing giant to provide cloud services for its wireless offering. But so far, Dish is expected to build the network on its own. 

In his report, Cusick wrote that the only bright spot for Dish’s wireless endeavors -- a possible partnership with Amazon in some sort of “Prime Wireless” offering -- if it were to occur, is at least two to three years off in the future. 

“What could a ‘Prime Wireless’ offer look like? What would it bring? We think a lot about where we could be wrong, and how Dish could really disrupt the wireless industry,” Cusick wrote, adding that it’s difficult to see how the satellite company could offer disruptive pricing on its own. 

While Cusick says it is possible that Dish and Amazon could mirror what e-retailers Rakuten and Jio have done with wireless -- offering months or years of free wireless service to drive Prime subscriptions -- he still has doubts.

Also Read: Satellite TV: Five Years, That’s All You’ve Got 

Cusick estimated that it could cost Amazon as little as $11 per subscriber per month to offer a Dish wireless service with Amazon Prime, but he wondered “why Amazon would do this until Dish’s network is proven and of sufficient quality. It makes a lot more sense to us, if it happens, 2-3 years from now at earliest.”

Cusick also speculated on a possible merger of satellite TV assets with rival DirecTV, which in February said it would spin off its TV business with private equity firm TPG. He added a deal is more likely to happen now, especially as content providers continue to unleash direct-to-consumer products, but would likely take at least a year to complete.  

Also Read: Dish Gets Back to its Rural Roots

“We believe that a combination of Dish and DirecTV is likely to face substantial regulatory scrutiny should the parties come to an agreement given the rural concentration of the sub base, but we believe that a deal can eventually be approved,” Cusick wrote. “A deal could be announced by 2022, after AT&T's sale of DirecTV to TPG closes, but getting Ergen and AT&T executives to agree on a price is likely to face hurdles.”

Cusick noted that while the 2007 merger of Sirius Satellite Radio and XM Satellite Radio Holdings is often cited when predicting federal approval of a Dish-DirecTV union, it took 17 months for that earlier deal to get the regulatory nod, “despite the stress that the businesses were under.”

Controversial media analyst Rich Greenfield has joined four former BTIG colleagues to create LightShed Partners, a telecom, media and technology research firm that will provide clients research and analytical information on public and private companies in the space.

Greenfield will be joined in the new venture by former BTIG technology analyst Walter Piecyk and former BTIG media analyst Brandon Ross, former BTIG telecom analyst Joseph Galone and former BTIG VP of media and tech equity research Mark Kelley. Together the partners have more than 20 years of TMT research experience and have worked together for more than a decade.

Greenfield has been a media analyst for quite awhile himself, covering the space for Goldman Sachs for eight years before moving on to Fulcrum Research in 2003 and Pali Research in 2007. He joined BTIG in 2010.  At BTIG, Greenfield has been a big proponent of streaming media and the continued dismantling of an antiquated programming model.

Greenfield had said that he and Piecyk would split from BTIG to start their own firm in July. At the same time, BTIG said it would collaborate with the new firm “on a variety of important strategic initiatives.” 

According to a press release, LightShed will initially offer tiered, subscription research for institutional investors like its first client, venture capital giant KKR.

LightShed added that it has also struck a strategic relationship with KKR, a long-time TMT investor that has deployed $26 billion in TMT transactions since 1983. KKR will work closely with LightShed’s founders as they build their research platform for TMT investors globally.

“LightShed is the culmination of our team’s decades of work analyzing the tectonic shifts in TMT, from the earliest stage startups to publicly-traded industry behemoths. We have always pushed boundaries in our research and this new enterprise will allow us to be even more creative in helping our clients identify trends ahead of the broader market,” Greenfield said in a press release.

[embed]https://twitter.com/RichLightShed/status/1171455751971196928[/embed]

At launch, LightShed also offers its subscribers and corporate clients a library of historical analysis going back to 2006 via its website www.lightshedtmt.com.

“The LightShed team pioneered the blog format for institutional research and will continue to innovate research techniques and mediums, both to educate our clients and to interact with the key TMT industry executives,” Piecyk said in a press release. “While others are busy mailing PDF’s, we will be seeking to leverage popular, user friendly modes of communication, multimedia and new web technologies to push the LightShed platform even further and provide differentiated content to our clients.”

LightShed said it will also provide premium subscribers with opportunities and special events that give them the ability to engage with executives and thought leaders in the industry.

“In our experience, nothing is more valuable to investors than sitting face-to-face with industry executives to understand how they think about their business and the rapidly evolving TMT industry landscape, whether it be a legacy industry giant, an established disruptor or a pre-seed startup,” said Ross said in a press release. 

No, Richard Greenfield is not headed to Disney to become a special assistant to Bob Iger.

But the high-profile technology-media-telecom (TMT) analyst is leaving equity research company BTIG Research, along with fellow analysts Walter Piecyk and Brandon Ross to form a new, unnamed TMT venture.

The news was announced earlier this afternoon by BTIG, which said it will partner with the new company.

“We are excited to work with Rich, Walt and Brandon as their business takes shape in the coming weeks. Their team will produce innovative independent investment research and create a new media company that is expected to fully assess the disruptive forces across the technology, media and telecommunications industries,” said Steven Starker, co-founder of BTIG.

According to the announcement, the new company will "offer inventive ways of accessing intriguing TMT portfolio companies, both public and private, and will offer thematic research.”

BTIG said it plans to collaborate with the new firm on a variety of important strategic initiatives.

“This new venture will enable Rich, Walt and Brandon to be even more entrepreneurial, an attribute which has driven the success of BTIG since inception,” said Scott Kovalik, co-founder and CEO of BTIG. “Rich, Walt and Brandon have always pushed to provide unique and thematic views; while we will miss having them on our platform, we are happy to be aligning with their new efforts.”

On LinkedIn, connections to Greenfield were messaged that they should congratulate him on his new position, “TBD,” at “TBD.”

“We are looking forward to this next chapter and appreciate the support we have received from the BTIG leadership team and our BTIG family,” Greenfield said. “We are proud to have initiated TMT coverage at the firm nearly a decade ago, and we continue to believe in the quality of its research, products and the value it delivers to clients.”

Greenfield has achieved somewhat of a celebrity presence among TMT analysts, notably sparring at times with Disney, a company he has covered for years.

In 2016, he was the subject of a Michael Wolff takedown in The Hollywood Reporter headlined, “Michael Wolff on Digital Media's Favorite Analyst: Often Quoted ... and Often Wrong.”