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“These companies are still investing large amounts but capital deployed is going into technology like AI that is designed to reduce headcount intensity in the long run,” said Jamie MacEwan, Enders. “The next big bet is that they can do more with less.”
UK law permits PPL to collect royalties on the public performance of recordings, but performers on US recordings are not eligible for distribution, except for digital transmissions, under the principle of material reciprocity. The Government may reverse this principle, with US labels (and their UK subsidiaries) likely to lose out.
The EU Member States are also grappling with the issue. Rethinking reciprocity is more disruptive there than it would be in the UK, because of how the 'artist's share' of royalties has been treated.
Progress has stalled in the US on legislation to provide for sound recording radio broadcast rights, which would be of huge benefit to performers and labels, but is ferociously opposed by broadcasters.
“She’s all signed up to the strategy,” says Karen Egan, head of mobile at Enders Analysis. “Nonetheless, you will expect her to want to make her own mark somewhat, and I suppose there’s probably a bit of nervousness about what that might look like.”
“I’m not a huge fan of all this tinkering and restructuring in telecoms companies, just to make your mark as a new chief executive,” says Egan. “BT is not a place for revolutions.”
On valuation grounds the proposed transaction favoured Iliad. The JV, with an enterprise value of €14.9bn, would have raised €7bn in new debt to pay €6.6bn to Vodafone and €0.4bn to Iliad. That would have left Vodafone with cash and securities worth €10.5bn, or eight times its Italian unit’s forecast ebitda after lease payments. Iliad, admittedly faster growing but as yet barely profitable, would have been valued at 17 times ebitda, estimates Karen Egan at Enders Analysis.
“Culturally, Vodafone is closer to Swisscom than to Iliad, whose methods of forcing the agenda, for example anticipating the publication of a press release on its own offer, may have irritated management,” notes Karen Egan , the telecoms analyst for the London firm Enders.
Sony PlayStation’s next CEO will have hard decisions to make: compete against a resurgent multiplatform Microsoft, or retreat and defend an increasingly rickety PlayStation console model.
New gaming hardware will have an outsize influence in the year ahead, giving gamers unprecedented choice, starting with XR headsets and continuing to a likely new Nintendo Switch.
YouTube’s foray into browser-based games will be the service to watch in 2024. If successful, streaming services, including Netflix, will be on track to become heavyweight game platforms.
Karen Egan, an analyst at Enders Analysis, also sees a bigger benefit: “Unlike most industry consolidation, a merger in the mobile sector does not imply taking capacity out of the market – in fact the reverse”. So, there’d be the same amount of spectrum but more competition to fill it, potentially leading to better deals from “mobile virtual network operators”, such as Tesco, Asda and Sky that offer services via the four networks.
