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Claire Enders was quoted in the Financial Times on ITV facing off with BBC over joint streaming service BritBox. Claire Enders believes proposed advertising restrictions on unhealthy foods and pressure on the BBC to waive licence fees for the elderly mean the BBC, along with Channel 4 and Channel 5, are unlikely to pay.
Vodafone’s operating performance worsened again this quarter with revenues down 3.3% and an extension of its underperformance relative to peers
Vodafone was right to cut its dividend given the extremity of the cash constraint. With financials in Euro terms in negative territory and worsening, an elevated and progressive dividend was not sustainable
In spite of difficult market conditions, the lower end of guidance looks achievable as comparables will become easier and football rights costs decline. The transformation programme will need to pay off fast to deliver any meaningful growth
Joseph Evans was quoted in the Financial Times on Amazon leads $575m funding round into food delivery app Deliveroo. He said “Deliveroo has found a way to get things to people very quickly in built-up areas [so] that’s something that Amazon will be interested in. If right now they’re carrying pizzas and burgers, why shouldn’t they deliver books? If Amazon is serious about that market, they’ll put subsidies in. We know that they are willing to operate in a lossmaking business for a long time and their investors are willing to back them.”
Q1 results evidenced the downturn that Virgin Media had flagged in February. Consumer cable weakened sharply to just 1% growth vs 3%+ historically, partly thanks to ‘increased promotions in response to market dynamics’
Monetising Virgin’s speed advantage is becoming more challenging. Competition is hotting up for high-speed broadband in particular, fuelled by Openreach targets for smaller players and BT’s full fibre and G.fast rollouts
The company faces two vital strategic decisions – whether to wholesale BT’s fibre products outside its footprint, and whether to allow wholesale access to its own network. The former is likely to have the most legs and offers an alternative to further Lightning extension
BT is accelerating its ‘full fibre’ rollout, likely due to a combination of a successful build to date, very promising regulatory developments, and (let’s not deny it) worrying competitor build plans
Full year results were a little weak versus consensus, with guidance a little soft as well, leading to questions of how this can be funded, particularly the roll-out acceleration from 2021/22 to cover half the country by the mid-2020s
Whatever the funding mechanism, we regard the investment as sound, with BT’s planned operational transformation also promising but potentially requiring further upfront investment
Claire Enders was quoted in the Financial Times on Pressure mounts on ITV after Jeremy Kyle show death. She said “Markets may have gotten spooked, but investors and ITV are more concerned about broader issues that the whole industry is facing. Jeremy Kyle is bigger in the Daily Mail than in reality. People are assuming they have lost a bigger star than they actually have.”
Disney announced that it would acquire Comcast’s 33% share of Hulu in a put/call agreement that can be enacted by either party from January 2024, while taking full operational control of the vehicle immediately.
Under the agreement Disney will pay Comcast a minimum of $9 billion for its current stake, provided Comcast fulfils agreed capital calls, which going forward would be just over $500 million/year.
Disney secured the continued licensing of NBCUniversal content for Hulu, contributing about 30% of Hulu’s library, but Comcast can loosen obligations to Hulu for the launch of its own SVOD service in 2020.
Karen Egan was quoted in the Financial Times on Vodafone faces growth test after cut to dividend. She said "The company has been cutting costs, looking to form network-sharing deals and investing for 5G. But it is still underperforming. The dividend cut is a casualty of that underperformance rather than a solution for it."
Claire Enders was quoted in The Times on BBC may strip free licences from millions in means test. She said “It is bound to outrage millions of people that they will be paying for their licence fee. There will be 3.5 million extraordinarily angry people.”