Last week, Telesat announced that it finally secured the funding for Lightspeed, its LEO satellite constellation targeting the global enterprise connectivity market. The stock subsequently doubled as investors contemplate Telesat’s place among other high-profile LEO constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper. We have been waiting for this moment for over 2 years and as…
Yesterday, ESPN announced a sports betting licensing deal with Penn Gaming, which gave up on (and gave away) Barstool Sports (link). Nobody had interest in an ESPN sports betting deal a couple years ago when, under former CEO Bob Chapek, Disney had been seeking over $3 billion in licensing fees over 10 years. Sportsbooks firmly believed…
Following last week’s Q2 2023 Warner Bros. Discovery earnings release, Puck News’ Matt Belloni interviewed LightShed’s Rich Greenfield on the current state and future of WBD, the strategic challenges facing Disney, Disney CEO Bob Iger’s decision to bring back former execs Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs as consultants, as well as the latest news and…
A few weeks ago, Disney CEO Bob Iger gave a candid and thought-provoking interview on CNBC from the annual Sun Valley Conference (link). The strategic challenges laid out in Iger’s recent interview reminded us in many ways of his groundbreaking industry comments on the onset of cord-cutting and its impact on ESPN back in August…
Earlier this year, Google reached an agreement with the NFL to exclusively distribute NFL Sunday Ticket starting with the 2023 season. Sunday Ticket had been exclusively available on DirecTV since its launch in 1994. Google is offering Sunday Ticket at a discounted buy-through of YouTube TV, as well as standalone via YouTube Primetime Channels. Pricing…
Iridium declined 15% yesterday on results that were better than we expected. The sharp selloff appears to have been triggered by investors with higher growth expectations. Specifically, there was apparently some misguided investor expectation of seeing a revenue ramp from direct to device activations in 2023. To be fair, equipment sales did moderate and this…
Here are our ten key questions for Netflix management on Wednesday’s Q2 2023 earnings interview (our Q1 2023 questions can be found here). 1) How prepared were you for a joint WGA/SAG strike? The industry has long known a dual strike is a possibility. NFLX appears to have some unique opportunities to mitigate the impact given…
Welcome to the Eighth Edition of the LightShed Earnings Scorecard – our attempt to hold companies and analysts accountable for the quality of earnings calls. We also have been able to track the rapid increase in interest in AI and quick disinterest in discussing Inflation on these calls. This quarter, we tracked 71 companies. We…
The lifeblood of Disney, more than any other media company, is its content. Quality content, especially franchise content, drives an unparalleled global flywheel spanning streaming, linear TV, theme parks, consumer products, interactive entertainment and more. Unfortunately, Disney’s content engine is sputtering relative to its own high bar. Compared to the last few years of Disney…
Dish issued a press release this morning indicating that it hit their buildout requirements to cover 70% of the US population. It has 30 days to file a report that certifies this with the FCC. Unfortunately, we do not expect the FCC to comment on the matter for the foreseeable future, if ever. We believe the…
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