The UK business (EAUS) is continuing to improve ahead of guidance as expected and its turnround can now be judged a success. Management has announced an aggressive plan to extract synergy from the recently acquired Thus
In our view the potential for synergies from an acquisition of Thus by C&W, though more limited than might be supposed, would still have a significant impact on the combined entity at the EBITDA level
International performance continued to be weak apart from Macau, although well within EBITDA guidance. Turnaround in Jamaica remains a significant challenge
Yell announced this week that full year sales growth (to March 2008) in its UK operations would be 2%, sharply down from the previously forecast 3%, due to “toughening market conditions” since the start of 2008
O2 this week announced changes to its contract tariffs; however, these will have limited impact for most of their subscribers, and the reductions to their data pricing only bring them into line with changes the other operators have already made
Rumours that Google was acquiring Yell emerged at the end of last week, but we doubt the search giant would be interested in purchasing a traditional media company, particularly not one predominantly in print