Market revenue growth was robust in Q3 at 1.4%, but heavily supported by price rises whose effect will wane over the next year.

Broadband net adds remained negative, with pay TV and telephony more negative still, mainly thanks to strained consumer finances.

Declining volumes and waning price rise boosts are likely to lead the market into decline next year, with a recovering economy needed to reverse this.

 

CEO Bob Iger has announced that Disney is now in a "building" phase—indicating that the strategic turnaround is complete—however, upcoming breakeven of  streaming products owes much to cuts on programming spend

With the rest of Hulu soon to be acquired, Disney looks as if it is pulling out of India—this will make the company's presence outside of the US even more peripheral

In the UK, Disney+'s advertising-supported tier is now live, however, there are forces at play that limit Disney's ability to execute its tiering strategy as effectively as its biggest streaming competitor

With a difficult price rise adjustment now behind it, VMO2’s subscriber momentum is much improved, in part aided by accelerated network expansion.

Backbook pricing remains under pressure on the fixed network with revenues down 1.2% in spite of sizeable price rises and footprint expansion—upcoming OTS may exacerbate this issue.

VMO2 has thus far only countered the downside of the UK’s fibre revolution. A new approach to branding and expansion of its addressable market are upside opportunities—with the ultimate potential to even deliver improvements on its previous position.

Unable to match Netflix, financially-pressed Hollywood studios are cutting content output and reassessing the DTC model

Price rises are being forced through, however for challengers this is asking a lot from subs, who don’t see an improvement in product or usage

The corporate landscape is fluid—loss-making DTC platforms and revenue-plunging linear channels are candidates for M&A

Paid sharing and "price optimisation" are returning clear benefits for Netflix, with healthy subscriber growth (+8.8 million, up to 247 million) and an 8% YoY increase in revenue ($8.5 billion) in Q3. However, success of the advertising tier remains slow

In the UK, Netflix is growing revenues and ARPU, and although it is now a challenge to grow the subscriber base, there is a clear and large group of non-paying users that are now being targeted 

Netflix's per household engagement is materially higher than its direct competitors. However, this is plateauing and has implications for revenue levers such as advertising impacts and price rises

While VMO2's fixed price rises this year were always going to be quite tricky, the 1ppt boost to revenue growth was nonetheless disappointing on the back of price rises of 14%.

Both mobile and EBITDA performances were better, but H2 EBITDA growth will need to be considerably stronger to get to guidance levels, which will be all the more challenging with the loss of the Lycamobile MVNO.

With the erosion of VMO2's differentiators of split contracts and broadband speeds, growth at VMO2 will require addressing new parts of the market—both geographically and across the customer range.

Vodafone's headline revenue growth of +3.7% is actually a small decline once Rest of World exchange depreciation is accounted for. Europe, however, delivered an improving revenue trend to +0.4%, as signalled at Vodafone's FY results announcement.

The mix and operating trends are less positive, with growth driven by low-margin B2B, and subscriber losses accelerating in German fixed. Investors will be weighing up whether these results are green shoots of a recovery or another false dawn.

Although the company may reach its guided EBITDA on assumed exchange rates, it looks set to fall short in euro terms, which has implications for FCF and dividend cover.

Social tariffs have provided relief for some at a time of household income squeeze and otherwise unavoidable high inflation-driven telco price increases.

Adoption has risen but remains very low, limiting their effectiveness, and more widespread adoption would expose their shortcomings, with the risk of penalizing low cost operators and significantly increasing prices for non-adopters (by up to 20%).

A better approach might be to recognize that affordability issues are narrower but deeper than current social tariffs can address, with fuller, centrally funded subsidies targeted more narrowly at those most in need.

The three planks of Netflix's strategy to stoke growth are beginning to pick up pace: pricing optimisation, charging of non-paying users and advertising are returning benefits, if at different rates. For Q2, Netflix announced growth of 5.9 million subscribers (+8% YoY) with revenues growing but at a slower rate ($1.83 billion, +2.7% YoY)

Netflix's advertising tier remains predictably peripheral. However the restructuring of its product offering and an influx of potential new subscribers who find themselves kicked out of other accounts could result in the company beginning to present to advertisers what they really want: viewers that they cannot reach easily elsewhere, if not yet at scale

The published draft Media Bill does not appear to present major issues for Netflix from a compliance standpoint, however, a clearer understanding of what "appropriate prominence" for the PSBs means is needed to calculate the impact on the streamer's access to viewers

Service revenue growth dipped by 0.7ppts to 1.2% this quarter—a slightly disappointing performance given the price rises implemented in some markets.

The impact of price increases has been mixed, with little revenue benefit in France, somewhat better in Spain, and a shift to Iliad in Italy.

Q2 should be stronger, with the UK price rises kicking in, the promise of a turnaround from Vodafone Germany, but a waning of price rise benefits elsewhere.