Cable & Wireless full year results to March 2007: a start is a start
The performance of the international business remains solid
Recent reports
Defined roles within the advertising ecosystem are a thing of the past: everyone is adapting by building out functionality to claim share as the constants underpinning advertising—attribution, discoverability, and regulation—change.
There is a new wave of M&A, partnerships and developments from agencies, adtech, and big tech in data and AI, as all sides position themselves to reshape the terms of online advertising at a time of maximum uncertainty.
Big tech platforms are leveraging their scale and AI investments in attempts to reset broad swathes of the market. Publishers are exposed; their way forward relies on asserting their value through direct audiences and collaboration on sector-wide innovations
In a soft market for both consumer and B2B, service revenue trends continue to be dominated by in-contract price increase dynamics.
VodafoneThree’s launch signalled a cautious tone about prospects for mobile growth, presumably allowing for a degree of integration disruption.
VodafoneThree and VMO2 traded 79 MHz of usable spectrum, leaving VodafoneThree in a strong position spectrum-wise, albeit with some challenges given that its merger conditions reduce flexibility in its coverage approach.
Altnets in the UK: Consolidation endgame
26 June 2025The largest UK altnets are now all at or close to EBITDA positive, but still heavily cashflow negative even pre-interest costs and with paused builds, due to various below-the-line cash costs requiring continuous funding. EBITDA margins of as much as 35%+ are required to actually be cashflow breakeven.
Altnet economics are still challenging even if debts are fully written off, with a payback of more than 5 years on customer acquisition and connection costs alone.
The consolidation endgame is increasingly imminent, with the outcome likely to be a mix of CityFibre/VMO2 acquisitions, stand-alone niche players continuing, and abandoned assets, with the outcome for the rest of the sector more benign under any scenario than current trends.