Karen Egan, at Enders Analysis, said: “Openreach, like the other established players, are suffering line losses as a consequence of the alt-net fibre goldrush, and TalkTalk customer declines.
“It makes things tough for now but the free cashflow recovery story is not at risk and the line losses should moderate as the alt-nets no longer have the funding to expand their networks.”
Openreach, which operates a nationwide broadband network and sells access to other providers, accounts for about 30% of BT’s sales. Pressure from a new crop of challenger fiber optic providers, known as alt-nets, are hurting some older providers, Enders Analysis analyst Karen Egan said.
“Openreach is suffering losses to the alt-nets in the same way that the rest of its established peers are,” she said. “It’s tough for now, but those losses will naturally deplete as the alt-net funding market has dried up.”
“KKR wants to send a message that scale will bring higher margins,” says François Godard, a senior media analyst at Enders Analysis. “The M&A scene will continue to be dynamic, so we can expect Mediawan to keep growing.” The company refinanced last year, raising a €500 million loan and a €225 million revolving credit facility, which analysts say will fund acquisitions. D’Arvieu says Mediawan is unlikely to embark on a shopping “frenzy”, but will instead target partners that share the same “artistic vision as us”.
Pay TV gets the word out, too, with Sky’s coverage undoubtedly excellent, their funds having helped orchestrate England’s World Cup wins and more. The media research firm Enders Analysis reported last year that “young viewers now consume nearly half of their sports through Sky … which refutes the widely held view that young people don’t watch sport behind a paywall”.
“Is Sky facing a slow death? No,” says Claire Enders, the founder of Enders Analysis. “They have survived 13 years against the likes of Neftlix spending enormous amounts of money and it is not like their model has been unseated, it has just had to change.
“It has been an incredibly tough market, and there are more TV options than ever before, and Sky is investing very heavily in a number of strategies to reduce dependency on content now on streaming services.
“You can say they have been through the worst already and come out the other side, the business has stabilised and is being set up for the very long term.”
As Enders Analysis’ senior research analyst Jamie MacEwan put it, direct response is over 60% of online ad spend, and focusing on the technology and partnerships to cater to this demand is a recurring theme across ad platforms. Pinterest’s own efforts, which span improvements to its visual search capabilities as well as launching its own AI-campaign tool Performance+, are starting to bear fruit.
“The industry needs to move beyond a binary subscription-or-advertising model,” said Enders Analysis senior analyst Abi Watson. “Programs like this let publishers monetize their most valuable users in more sophisticated ways.”
“[The Leadership Institute] delivers two things for the Journal: a reputational halo effect and increased customer lock-in, especially for corporate subscriptions,” Watson said. “It creates more predictable annual cash flow while deepening ties with influential business audiences.”
“It’s not completely uncontroversial to say that referral traffic will decline more [as a result of Google AI overviews and AI engines], it’s a question of how much,” said Douglas McCabe, CEO of media analysis firm Enders Analysis.
McCabe believes publishers are slowly and reluctantly accepting that the incentives of the tech platforms — building people’s habitual use of answer engines, and providing the kind of utility that keeps them within the engines as long as possible — do not align with ensuring publishers get referral traffic. Website monetization itself, he believes, is under threat.
All Points Fibre has built out its network to 568,000 homes at the end of March, according to estimates from Enders Analysis, the research company. The company reported a pre-tax loss of £35.2 million for 2023.
Karen Egan, at Enders Analysis, said that Cityfibre’s wholesale model means it benefits from well-known brands such as TalkTalk and, shortly, Sky, placing customers onto its network, which “gives it a credible path to towards much higher network take-up rates than those enjoyed by retail-focused altnets”.
