Verizon’s application to offer video service in the five boroughs of New York City continues to move rapidly through the approval process, as the NYC government appears focused on fostering greater competition in the city. The city first asked for applications on 4/11, VZ filed its formal application on 4/16, was approved by NYC’s DOITT…
Time Warner Cable (TWC) is now set to become a free-standing company at/around year-end 2008, albeit the mechanism for its separation from current parent Time Warner (TWX) remains to-be-determined. Concurrent with the year-end 2008 separation, TWC will make a special dividend payment of $10.27/share (and issue 80 mm shares to TWX for TWC NY), increasing…
The telecom industry in China will restructure as we detailed on February 6th and as most people expected, with China Telecom buying Unicom’s CDMA network, the remaining China Unicom merging with China Netcom and China Mobile buying China TieTong, a railroad communication company. Predictably, investors are concerned about the potential for increased regulation on China…
Jeff Bewkes, TWX’s CEO, has rapidly condensed his pwer, elevating loyal employees into more powerful roles along with requiring the Time Warner board to grant him the additional title of Chairman by year-end 2008. With that power, Bewkes has moved swiftly to end long-standing mistakes at TWX, such as duplicative film divisions, a bloated corporate…
An Orlando Sentinel article (click here) quotes Gary Sain, President and Chief Executive of the Orlando/Orange County Convention Visitors Bureau stating, in regards to tourist activity in Orlando, that “April did not look very positive in January, but April turned out to be very strong…May’s a question mark.” The comments on April’s strength foot with…
While size certainly has its advantages in the cable industry, we believe the 80/20 or 90/10 rule certainly applies to most cable companies. While the value realized from selling less strategic systems (small, orphaned clusters or weaker demographic clusters) may not be accretive to a company’s overall valuation, it can improve the overall growth profile…
China Mobile reported strong net subscriber additions of 7.411 million (+40.5% y/y) that topped our estimate by 417,000. China Mobile’s growth in total subscribers accelerated for the 12th consecutive month to 24.3% which is truly impressive given the subscriber base is now at 400 million. China Mobile’s market share of net additions rose to 87.4%…
Anatel, the Brazilian telecom regulator, released wireless market share data for April. All the operators delivered better than expected net additions because industry growth was better expected but America Movil’s market share weakened, TIM Part bounced back and Vivo remained strong. We note that operator market share can vary significantly from month to month. Total…
Despite the backdrop of an increasingly challenging economy, Disney’s stock price continues to benefit from continued positive earnings revisions. We are raising our 2008/2009 EPS estimates to $2.31/$2.52 from $2.23/$2.45. Despite yet another upward revision to our EPS forecasts, we are reducing our rating to NEUTRAL from BUY, as we believe the risk/reward has diminished…
Following the strength of Discovery’s Q1 2008, we are raising our full-year 2008 revenue growth to 13% from 11% and EBITDA growth to 24% from 18%, with full-year margins expected to expand 300 bps compared to our prior estimate of 200 bps. While we believe the potential exists for Discovery to exceed our upwardly revised…
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