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

Sky made a surprisingly weak start to 2019, with revenue growth decelerating to 1.9% (the first time below 4% since the European businesses merged in 2015), due to weaker ARPU trends.

However, Sky expects improvement to follow, blaming one-off factors in the quarter. The ARPU weakness drove EBITDA down 11.3%, but this should bounce back across the rest of 2019 as football rights costs turn from a drag to a positive.

Comcast highlighted collaborations with Sky across tech, advertising, content distribution and even news, stating it is on track to achieve the anticipated $500 million in annual synergies over the next couple of years.

Market revenue growth accelerated to 3% in Q4, but it might never reach this level again, being helped by a never-to-be-repeated BT overlapping price rise

With price rises becoming more challenging in general, and superfast pricing under pressure in particular, maintaining/increasing ARPUs is becoming more difficult despite superfast volumes surging

Openreach’s ultrafast roll-out has accelerated, challenging Virgin Media and bringing the prospect of further price premia, but perhaps too late to be of significant benefit in 2019

After strong underlying 2018 results, the more subdued outlook for 2019 is an important shift, driven by regulatory pressure on mobile, higher programming costs, one-offs and softening demand

Lightning is continuing to drive market share gains in new build areas, and should provide a 2ppt tailwind to revenue growth in 2019, but enhanced visibility on the economics of rollout suggests that its conservative approach is a wise one

In existing build areas, Virgin Media is facing-off pricing pressure from TalkTalk on high speed, and potentially from BT on even higher ultrafast speeds, with it moderating pricing and launching a market-beating 500Mbps product in Spring 2019 in response

Addressable linear TV advertising, where precision-targeted ads overlay default linear ads, could enhance the TV proposition for advertisers, agencies and viewers, benefiting all broadcasters

In the context of dwindling linear viewing and rocketing online video ad spends, the adoption of Sky AdSmart and similar services on YouView and Freeview could take addressable TV ads from a sideshow to a pillar of revenue

Addressable linear is a bigger and more strategic prize for broadcasters than BVOD ads. Sky holds the key to wider adoption of its AdSmart platform if it can find a way – or a price – to bring ITV Sales and/or 4 Sales on board 

Across the EU4, pay-TV is proving resilient in the face of fast growing Netflix (with Amazon trailing), confirming the catalysts of cord-cutting in the US are not present on this side of the Atlantic. Domestic SVOD has little traction so far.

France's pay-TV market seems likely to see consolidation. Meanwhile, Germany's OTT sector is ebullient, with incumbents bringing an array of new or enhanced offers to market.

Italy has been left with a sole major pay-TV platform—Sky—following Mediaset's withdrawal, while Spain's providers, by and large, are enjoying continued growth in subscriptions driven by converged bundles and discounts.

Sky’s revenue growth under Comcast appears to have accelerated since it last reported as an independent company, largely driven by sports rights expansion in Italy, which also drove bumper subscriber growth in Q3 2018 

Sky UK likely enjoyed a steadier performance, helped by accelerating high speed adoption, a price rise in April, increased international sales, and improving premium channel adoption on third-party platforms

Comcast expects continued acceleration into 2019, with profitability taking a hit from increased sports rights in Italy in H1, but this is more than compensated for by reduced English Premier League rights costs in H2
 

As Phase 1 digital shift from broadcast analogue to digital nears completion, individual platform growth trends have almost flattened out

The most likely area of change in platform trends over the next ten years concerns basic only subscription pay-TV, where we anticipate an overall increase in the total pay-TV base and change in platform balance arising from the introduction of low price basic packages

Phase 2 digital convergence between TV and the internet promises to take many years to reach maturity, and many questions need to be addressed in order to be able to assess its potential impact on the current broadcast TV marketplace over the next ten years.

In this presentation we show our analysis of trends in UK broadband and telephony to September 2011, together with our latest projections for residential broadband subscribers and market shares to 2016. Highlights for the 2011 September quarter include accelerating growth in the number of subscribers to high speed broadband, and the continuing increase in market share of BT Retail and BSkyB at the expense of virtually all other players. This quarter’s edition includes a look at high speed broadband pricing, and our take on the new guidelines on broadband advertising.

Although we continue to expect broadband subscriber growth to drop, we expect growth to be supported by increasing adoption among older and/or lower income householders, who are becoming more aware of the benefits of going online. We have also increased our residential market share projection for BT Retail, which has gained real momentum over the past year, with brand strength among late adopters and effective marketing of high speed broadband both having an impact.

Spotify has just passed the 2 million subscriber mark in Europe and the US, and could reach 2.5 million by the end of 2011

Smartphone adoption and partnerships with MNOs and ISPs have proven a key driver of subscription in Europe for Spotify, which lacks a telecoms partner in the US. We think subscription is profitable

Spotify’s lower usage caps on the freemium tier will help compress total losses in 2011 in relation to the £25 million reported in 2010, despite the US launch