On 4 June 2024, Enders Analysis co-hosted the annual Media and Telecoms 2024 & Beyond Conference with Deloitte, sponsored by Barclays, Financial Times, Salesforce and Adobe. 

With over 580 attendees and over 40 speakers from the TMT sector, including leading executives, policy leaders, and industry experts, the conference focused on how new technologies, regulation and infrastructure will impact the future of the industry. 

This is the edited transcript of Session Three, covering: consolidation in the telecoms sector; fixed-mobile convergence; and the future of the fibre industry. Videos of the presentations are available on the conference website.

On 4 June 2024, Enders Analysis co-hosted the annual Media and Telecoms 2024 & Beyond Conference with Deloitte, sponsored by Barclays, Salesforce, the Financial Times, and Adobe.

With over 580 attendees and over 40 speakers from the TMT sector, including leading executives and industry experts, the conference focused on how new technologies, regulation and infrastructure will impact the future of the industry.

This is the edited transcript of Session One, covering: the evolution of streaming models, and public service broadcasting in the digital age. Videos of the presentations will be available on the conference website.

Vodafone has finalised its deal to sell its Italian business to Swisscom for €8bn, opting for greater regulatory certainty and higher upfront proceeds rather than a potentially higher offer from Iliad for an Italian JV.

The company has grasped the nettle on the trailed dividend cut, bringing the announcement forward from the expected May timing, and halving the payout.

The company is highlighting how well it is positioned to grow now without Italy and Spain, and with the prospect of a better position in the UK. Germany will be more important than ever in this growth equation.

Streaming profitability beckons, but owes much to the profitable services folded into companies’ DTC segments alongside the headline streamers.

There is a broader move towards bundling and price rises. The former bolsters subscriber additions and lifetime value but is ARPU-dilutive, while price rises will bump up both ARPU and churn.

2024 marks the first year with multiple players at scale in the ad space, as Prime Video entered the market. Other streamers with high CPMs and lower scale may be forced to re-examine their offerings.

Vodafone has confirmed that it is in discussions to sell its Italian business to Swisscom for €8bn having rebuffed a higher offer from Iliad for an Italian JV in December.

The Spanish and Italian deals should be reassuring to investors, are helpful to the growth profile of the company, and may help to reduce any conglomerate discount in the share price.

The all-important free cashflow impact of the deals remains to be seen with potential for buybacks of up to €10bn compensating for the direct dilution of the deals and softening the blow of any dividend downgrade in May.

Meta's China risk is overstated: the spend from Chinese advertisers is diverse and resilient to everything short of a full-blown trade war. 

Apple (and Tesla) are in the more precarious position of selling directly in-market, and face sharpening domestic competition.

Amazon's exit from selling in China still leaves it exposed: its marketplace strategy is built on Chinese sellers, whose potential routes to market are proliferating with local platforms going global.  

Sony PlayStation’s next CEO will have hard decisions to make: compete against a resurgent multiplatform Microsoft, or retreat and defend an increasingly rickety PlayStation console model.

New gaming hardware will have an outsize influence in the year ahead, giving gamers unprecedented choice, starting with XR headsets and continuing to a likely new Nintendo Switch.

YouTube’s foray into browser-based games will be the service to watch in 2024. If successful, streaming services, including Netflix, will be on track to become heavyweight game platforms.

Overall radio listening remains robust and continues to make up the majority of audio time, however a worrying decline in both reach and hours amongst younger people makes further innovation necessary

Shifting audio distribution trends driven by digital and IP listening, as well as the increasing influence of smart speakers and connected devices, represent significant challenges for the radio industry going forward

Strong collaboration and regulatory support will be needed to reconnect with elusive younger listeners, prevent US tech companies from becoming de-facto gatekeepers, and preserve the public value at the core of the UK radio industry

Vodafone’s leverage issue continues to drive its strategy and operational focus, as evidenced in its H1 results with solid EBITDA but lacklustre revenues.

Its leverage crisis is severely exacerbated by the prospect of a fibre build in Germany as well as a sizeable headwind to its cable business momentum there. Further sell-downs at Vantage will help and we view the prospects of consolidation as slightly improved, with Spain the most promising option.

Growth in the UK appears to be on hold and the outlook is mixed with VMO2’s notice for early termination for its MVNO, ongoing B2B weakness expected but significant inflation-linked price rises on the cards.

Facebook has been caught unawares by the significant impacts of privacy changes to its advertising revenue, posting an uncharacteristic quarterly decline as its costs are set to spiral

Facebook’s ageing user demographics are a long-standing and growing issue, as competitor platforms erode Facebook’s attraction to the young. Recent negative PR only compounds a brewing problem of relevance as social media shifts towards being content, rather than network-driven

By pinning its name to the metaverse, Facebook hopes to redefine its narrative and claim the benefits of managing the platform of the future, but significant challenges in the entertainment, enterprise, and tech spheres stand in its way