Shares of Spotify Technology SA (NYSE:SPOT) are 2.8% lower to trade at $707.60 this morning, after the music streaming company announced CEO Daniel Ek plans to resign, and will be replaced by co-CEOs Alex Norström and Gustav Söderström, effective Jan. 1.
This morning Goldman Sachs downgraded the SPOT to "neutral" from "buy" and trimmed its price target to $765 from $770, the analyst in coverage noting much of the company's value is already priced in.
Spotify stock is 11% off its June 27 all-time high of $785. But despite today's struggles, SPOT is still 55% higher in 2025, with support for recent sideways trading at its 100-day moving average.
Put traders have been moving in over the past two weeks. This is per SPOT's 10-day put/call volume ratio of 1.44 over at the International Securities Exchange (ISE), Cboe Options Exchange (CBOE), and NASDAQ OMX PHLX (PHLX), which ranks in the 77th percentile of readings from the past 12 months.
Options are affordably priced, per the stock's Schaeffer's Volatility Index (SVI) of 38%, which ranks in the 16th percentile of its annual range. This implies that options players are pricing in lower-than-usual volatility expectations.
