Enders Analysis co-hosted the annual Media & Telecoms 2017 & Beyond conference in conjunction with Deloitte, Moelis & Company, Linklaters and LionTree, in London on 2 March 2017.
This report contains the slides used by Tom Mockridge, Matthew Kirk, Andrew Griffith, and Geoff Moelis.
Enders Analysis co-hosted the annual Media & Telecoms 2017 & Beyond conference in conjunction with Deloitte, Moelis & Company, Linklaters and LionTree, in London on 2 March 2017.
The day saw over 450 senior attendees come together to listen to 30 leaders and senior executives of some of the most creative and innovative businesses in the media and telecoms sector, and was chaired by David Abraham.
This report provides edited transcripts of the presentations and panels, and you will find accompanying slides for some of the presentations here.
Videos of the presentations are available on the conference website.
Virgin Media successfully ramped up its network extension in Q4, passing more than double the homes in the previous quarter, and above the rate required to meet 2017 expectations
Net customer additions were, however, relatively weak, entirely due to extra churn caused by the price increase implemented in the quarter. The price increase’s effect on ARPU and revenue growth was muted by ARPU discounting for new customers, leaving revenue growth broadly unchanged
Subscriber growth has already improved in early 2017, and is likely to continue to improve through the year. The discounted ARPU impact will be more sustained, but robust revenue growth is still likely throughout the year
Despite a slowing of circulation decline in 2016, UK national newspaper brands continue to face profound structural challenges, with print advertising spend expected to be down at least -15% for the year
In digital advertising, tech and distribution platforms continue to dominate growth with newspaper publishers and other content producers competing for an increasingly small slice of the revenue pie
In this context, many publishers are turning to paid membership and content subscription models to generate online revenues; success here will require a radical shift in thinking to a retailer mindset that delivers high quality reader experiences through integrated execution of tech, data, marketing and design
UK mobile service revenue growth improved in Q3 to -0.8% from -1.7% in the previous quarter, a welcome turnaround after three quarters of declining growth. Pricing remains firm, data volume growth remains robust, and some of the one-off factors affecting the previous quarter have dropped out
Sky Mobile soft-launched at the end of 2016, and it is taking an aggressive approach with a very deep MVNO technical model with substantial fixed costs, a high advertising budget and ambitious internal subscriber targets. To date the fixed MVNOs have not had a substantial impact on the MNOs, targeting a customer base that is non-core, but with SIM-only on the rise this may change
Looking at recently released network performance statistics, the impact of spectrum disparities is clear, with EE both able to offer faster speeds nationwide due to its large blocks of 4G spectrum, and offer much faster speeds in London. EE also has a lead in geographic coverage, and is planning to push its coverage much further, creating a challenge for the other operators to keep up
The decline in print display advertising in national newspapers accelerated to -16% in 2015, while growth in digital advertising is slowing, and will be unable to offset revenue decline for the foreseeable future.
We believe this decline is structural and irreversible, continuing at a sharper pace than before despite the recovery in the UK economy in 2013-2015, and very different from the cyclical decline of 2009.
Publishers must convince brands and agencies that in the mobile era their superior content environments have added value. If scale newsrooms are to survive, costs must be reduced through collaboration and outsourcing.
Enders Analysis co-hosted its annual conference in conjunction with Deloitte, Moelis & Company, Linklaters and LionTree, in London on 8 March 2016. The event featured talks from 22 of the most influential figures in media and telecoms, and was chaired by Sir Peter Bazalgette.
This report provides edited transcripts of the talks, and you will find accompanying slides for some of the presentations here.
Videos of the presentations are available on the conference website.
Trinity Mirror is launching a national newspaper, New Day, into a challenging marketplace: declining volumes of -7%, and the loss of £121m (-9%) in advertising in 2015 alone
New Day has been inspired by market research into lapsed newspaper buyers. While consumer behaviour is largely driven by a shift to digital, mobile and social media distributed news, some consumers want a different print product from anything in the marketplace
In digital, New Day eschews the need for a website or App, focusing on social media to market the product; a rare example of a strategy that does not blur or compromise print and digital objectives
Project Lightning is showing clear signs of success, running ahead of new premises targets with ARPU and penetration levels in line with expectations, which helped deliver the strongest organic RGU performance in over seven years, and could add c1% to revenue growth in 2016
Recent performance, though strong, was not immune to the rivalry of Sky and BT, with efforts to manage profitability in the face of inflated sports content rights costs in turn yielding tension at the subscriber level; we anticipate round two when the 2016/17 Premier League kicks off in August
Mobile revenue growth was relatively weak and quad play penetration fell, but the H3G/O2 merger in the UK may provide an option to improve its mobile wholesale deal, and the cable/mobile JV in the Netherlands with Vodafone points to a possible similar deal in the UK in the longer term
The sale of the i, the innovative 2011 launch by the Independent, inevitably led to its parent’s death in print form and pushes two media experiments into the marketplace
ESI Media becomes the first publisher to switch a traditional national news brand into a digital-only service, while Johnston Press has developed a new local-national platform to compete with Trinity Mirror
Content publishers will increasingly experiment with vertical models and membership models for a range of services including access to some content as the challenges of the digital advertising market begin to mount