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Douglas said “A return to profits is a performance most media would take. The core business, effectively matching 2019 levels, has shifted to more sustainable online subscriptions with some healthy diversification growth on top."
“The FT is also better protected against economic headwinds than consumer media.”
Advertisers are rushing to create immersive virtual experiences to promote their brands, particularly on social gaming platforms with large built-in audiences. The interest shows no sign of waning.
We are in the very early days of metaverse marketing: formats are bespoke, costs are high and the data provided by platforms is rudimentary. Not all product categories are suited to a virtual incarnation.
The long-term promise is tantalising: advertising that is better than its real-world counterpart, that forges new relationships with customers, and that forms part of the product offering rather than just promotional activity.
Alice said "Better to sell before the death of one of them, an inheritance would quickly become complex."
She added "They are like these trees which never lose their leaves, because each generation loves them."
But the context is less favorable than for the sales of the Dylan and Springsteen catalogs. “The rates were very low, for the buyer, borrowing at 5 or 6% rather than 2 or 3%, that changes the situation,” says Alice Enders. To the point of considering a price drop? "It's possible" , supports the expert, for whom Pink Floyd have waited too long. In their song "Money", they sang about money: "Share it fairly, but don't take a slice of my pie" . The whole point is there.
Enders Analysis estimates that the combined Vodafone-Three entity would instantly become an £8bn revenue company, a little larger than EE at £7bn and O2 at £6bn, and far better placed to take them on.
Enders calculates that EE earns a return of 24pc on capital expenditure, while the two stragglers, Vodafone and Three, muster 8pc and 5pc respectively.
“The market seems to be heading towards greater polarisation between the haves and have-nots from a scale perspective, such that the smaller players may no longer be credible competitive forces,” Enders Analysis warned in a research note last week.
Karen Egan of Enders points out that aggregate investment doesn’t even need to go up. Even if it stays the same, with three rather than four, it will be far more effectively deployed, something we’ll tangibly see in more reliable calls and stronger coverage.
Joseph said Meta must persuade software developers that it is “worth their while” to build for its platform. “If Meta can offer creators the tools they need to build great content, and an audience to serve it to, then they’ll have cleared the first hurdle in the long race to rule the metaverse.”
Whether to allow a Vodafone/H3G merger is essentially a trade-off between range of consumer choice and costs of network duplication. With the need for the former diminishing and the latter increasing, the case for approval is strengthened.
H3G is in a negative spiral of small scale, low investment, and low returns. A merger would allow it to form part of a more credible competitor with a transformed returns profile—without rising prices or reduced industry investment levels.
The CMA’s aversion to mergers has been very stringent of late—an approach that risks deterring investment and compromising competitiveness. Consolidation in UK mobile is unlikely to happen without a change of mindset.
“Salto remains marginal in their economic model”, tempers François Godard, analyst at the London firm Enders. "The future of TF1 will probably be closer to YouTube than to Netflix", he continues, because the historical channels must above all draw a future in the offers financed by advertising. If they want to go back on the offensive, "I don't see how they can do it each on their own, there should be more collaboration between them or possibly with the public audiovisual sector", he believes.
