Service revenue growth was up just 0.1ppts to 2.0% this quarter, as price rises in the UK and the peak of the roaming boost offset weakness elsewhere.
Price increases to combat inflationary cost pressures are gathering momentum—a potential revenue cushion as roaming tailwinds diminish and challenging economic conditions weigh.
Vodafone is battling strategic issues in most of its main markets—significant change in strategy will be required from the new leadership.
Rupert Murdoch is seeking to merge News Corp and Fox Corp, split up a decade ago, to create greater corporate scale and streamline management.
A recombined News Corp would generate revenues of c.$24 billion based on fiscal 2022 results, with EBITDA of $4.6 billion, and an enterprise value in the region of $25-26 billion.
An additional rationale for News Corp is the financial protection of cherished news brands such as the Wall Street Journal and the Times inside a stronger enterprise. While the first phase of online transformations has been successful, sustainability of trusted, quality news media is never settled or guaranteed. The objective could hardly be more important now and in the coming years.
FAST services that include digital linear channels (FAST channels) appear to be experiencing solid growth in the US. In the UK, this success has been used to highlight a potential mechanism to diversify away from broadcast linear and SVOD
However, the growth potential of these services on this side of the Atlantic contends with a very different video market than the US—the free output of the PSBs remains prolific and of high quality, while prominence legislation is likely to tougher
Furthermore, overall viewing of long-form video content is declining. Any new FAST services will be fighting for a declining amount of screen time with poor content slates and little name recognition—however, growing demand for US content is an advantage
European mobile service revenue growth was positive for the first time in five years this quarter as a resurgent mobility boost combined with the return of roaming revenues.
Q2 is set to be a mixed bag, with inflation-plus price increases expected in the UK, an elevated boost from the roaming recovery, but also some weakness in the B2B market.
We are also seeing the early impact from end-of-contract notification rules, particularly in Germany, and we expect ARPU pressure and churn to pick up elsewhere as the impact becomes more widespread.
European mobile revenue growth was flat again this quarter as a larger boost from annualising the roaming drag was outweighed by B2B weakness, a waning mobility boost and the unwind of pandemic upsides.
Italy saw the biggest improvement in its underlying trend as Iliad struggled to regain momentum, while competitive tension remains elevated in Spain and France.
Q4 looks mixed before 2022 kicks off with some market-specific positives for the UK, but the other European countries will finally face the impact of end-of-contract notifications.
The transition from linear to digital and on-demand usage has the potential to unravel national television ecosystems. Global tech monopolists may eventually control the interface and content discovery paths, pushing European providers down the supply chain.
Maintaining cultural sovereignty over the industry’s architecture is a prerequisite of a thriving, pluralistic ‘electronic public square’, as well as a high performing and locally-relevant creative economy.
Only consolidated commercial broadcasters have sufficient scale to steer national markets towards digital models where European content providers retain prominence and their ability to set the popular cultural agenda.
European mobile growth was essentially zero year-on-year—a significant improvement thanks to annualisation of the pandemic but there is little evidence of the reversal of its negative impacts.
Italy saw the biggest improvement in its underlying trend as the pandemic continued to suppress Iliad’s momentum, while elevated competitive tension in Spain and France ate into their annualisation boost.
Mobility and flight data suggests that Q3 will evidence a bigger boost from renewed travel than in Q2—positive for roaming revenues—but that the improvement in mobility will be weaker than in the June quarter.
Mobile growth dipped again to -3.3% for what we hope is the final time as widespread lockdowns impacted paid-for usage in most countries.
BT and Vodafone joined the other European MNOs in guiding to improving trends in 2021—expecting EBITDA momentum to be 7-10ppts better—slightly ahead of the 5-7ppts for the European operators.
We may even see positive revenue growth next quarter thanks to the simple annualisation of the first lockdown, with the UK the most to gain and Germany and Italy the least. Investment is creeping up too with higher capex guidance and better 5G momentum.
The Warner-Discovery and TF1-M6 merger plans have dramatically pushed consolidation up European commercial television’s agenda.
The first path—heralded by Bertelsmann’s RTL Group—would aim at creating
national broadcasters with the content scale to operate compelling online platforms.
An alternative path revives the never achieved idea of pan-European synergies,
leveraging increased international appetite for non-English language content—but
its champion, Italy’s Mediaset, lacks capacity to deliver.
As private sector employers faced an unprecedented degree of uncertainty, the volume of vacancies fell 60% from 2019 to 2020, driven by the arts & entertainment, food & hospitality and retail sectors, leading expenditure on recruitment advertising to fall by 32%.
In 2021, vacancies for temporary placements are surging as society proceeds to unlock, with the near-term labour market tight, boosting expenditure on recruitment. Our concern is the masked unemployment in B2C sectors that will emerge should furlough end on 30 September.
Judging by global revenue trends in FY2020, professionally-oriented networking platform LinkedIn gained from demand for hiring served by paid-for listings, also filling demand for events. Indeed, which serves the high-volume but lower-value end of labour markets, with a less fruitful budget and cost-per-click model, suffered mild revenue decline.