Enders’ senior analyst Francois Godard said the Canal+’s full-year result confirm that it’s a “value stock,” but that “it’s not a company that will see tremendous growth.”

“When you see tech companies who are posting 20% growth every year, that’s not what Canal+ is doing and that’s never been what they promised. Their reputation is built on the fact that they’re a solid company, which is built on a viable, cost-effective economic model that brings a slow but steady growth.”

Godard suggested that Canal+ may take longer than expected to find its footing at the London stock exchange because “it’s unlike any other listed media group.” “There are no comparisons and it’s difficult to explain the potential of their strategy because a lot of people are concerned about cord-cutting and don’t necessarily understand the value in aggregation,” says Godard. Ultimately, it requires some thoughts and long-term forecasting that investors don’t always seek,” he continued.

“Eutelsat absolutely cannot step in if Starlink were to leave Ukraine in the near future,” Enders analyst Hamish Low said by email. “Eutelsat might be able to provide some immediate help for the most critical communications, but can’t substitute for the whole range of ways that Starlink connectivity is being used.”

“Netflix has very little original home and garden programming and very little successful programming that it classifies as relaxing,” said Tom Harrington, the head of television at the research firm Enders Analysis. “But there’s a lot of ‘feelgood’ programming, mostly romantic, coming-of-age, Hallmark-esque movies, and it makes sense for Netflix to try to extend that mood into other genres.”

Enders Analysis CEO Douglas McCabe said it best: “...journalism provides material brand leverage, not its opposite. The whole system should be turned on its head, and quantify the benefits of context for pricing power and consumer propensity.”

France’s Ligue 1 launched a D2C platform in the UK last year after failing to sell the rights – “a sign of weakness”, according to media commentator Claire Enders of Enders Analysis.

“Fairy godmothers don’t always show up. The tech companies have not shown up and it’s for a very good reason. The models are very difficult and painful and it takes years to build them up,” said Enders. 

Claire Enders, the co-founder of Enders Analysis, a leading British research firm, was even more apocalyptic in her assessment of the piracy epidemic.

“We’ve had covid and a cost of living crisis in almost every market and that has led to incredible spikes in piracy,” she said. “It’s the number one problem in sport. It’s worth about 50 per cent of most markets and in India it’s more like 90 per cent.”

Enders believes that one of the reasons the Premier League’s media rights continue to grow in value is that the league, in partnership with its broadcast partners, police and Britain’s leading internet service providers, has been much tougher on piracy than its counterparts elsewhere.

She was particularly scathing about French football’s decision to ditch its long-term broadcast partner Canal+ in 2020 and described Italy’s efforts to fight piracy as “slack”.

Claire Enders, who has studied the Murdoch empire for 40 years, is among many analysts who see little logic in the recent developments. “As a business analyst, I don’t see what the purpose was. I don’t see what they’re in such great disagreement about, since they’ve all contributed hugely to the value created since the nadir of the company only 13 years ago.”

Enders said: “You wouldn’t even be able to put a valuation on those companies [the UK newspapers] because of the rules in place on foreign ownership.” While the radio assets are admired, the company moved its upstart news channel TalkTV because of losses.

“[Under the Broccolis] they were very restrained and disciplined about what they were producing, but you’d think the opposite is going to happen now,” said Tom Harrington, head of television for the research service Enders Analysis. “Amazon spent a lot of money on this and they’ll want more content for it.”

Why is Canal's mayonnaise not taking off? The channel would be difficult to value. "The company has no peer in Europe, except for Sky, but the British group left the stock market in 2018," emphasizes François Godard, analyst at Enders Analysis. Analysts need to have points of comparison. Especially since Canal sends a complicated message to the market, by being both a producer and aggregator of content."

“This will either go nowhere or there will be a settlement,” Tom Harrington, analyst at Enders Analysis predicts. “There’s only a limited life left on the original IP, the original version of the character would only be usable in niche circumstances, and it isn’t clear whether there would be an appetite for someone else to exploit it on a major scale. There are only a few companies that could make a Superman film of the standard that the public expects.”