While investors in the media sector are increasingly concerned with investing in any company with advertising exposure (given growing economic uncertainty), we believe the two cable network (focused) stocks we cover, Viacom and Discovery, offer compelling upside at current levels; we are maintaining BUY ratings on both stocks. As the broadcast networks (collectively) underperformed in…
We were pleased to see Sprint’s new CEO Dan Hesse make some management moves but note that it will take more than firing people to turn around the business. We believe there are others in management that should also be targeted in order to complete a remaking of the team including technology, handset development and…
Investors have been somewhat concerned that American Idol ratings are down double digits year-over-year. While Idol was down about 13% year-over-year last night (10.8/28 vs. 12.4/33), the ratings are still far larger than other shows on television (across all networks) and we believe that FOX has continued to budget for Idol ratings to decline y-o-y,…
Earlier this week, DirecTV announced the launch of a remote DVR scheduling feature (for subs with DirecTV Plus or DirecTV Plus HD DVR boxes). While certain cable operators offer this service as well (including Comcast and Time Warner Cable), it currently requires a consumer to sign-up for Pivot wireless service (the failed/”going nowhere” joint venture…
While Universal, Paramount and Dreamworks are still only supporting HD DVD, we believe consumers are increasingly aware that Blu ray has won the next-gen DVD format war (with Blu ray comprising 93% of next-gen DVD players sold in the week after CES compared to 51% the week before; chart via Gizmodo.com) . In turn, it…
Dreamworks Animation, last weekend, announced an agreement to license its content/brands to Tatweer to build yet another Dubai-based theme park (the DWA park will be part of a larger complex in Dubailand). We find yet another theme park in Dubai relatively unexciting (Dubai has recently announced a Universal Studios Dubailand, Warner Bros. in Abu Dubai,…
The Warner Music acquisition “spree” continues with Warner Music France acquiring Jean-Claude Camus Productions, a concert tour promoter/producer in France and Warner Music UK acquiring 679 Recordings (an independent UK label). While we have no financials to judge either transaction, we presume the French acquisition was likely significant as Warner issued a formal press release…
We do not live in a cave and are aware of the volatility in the markets but it bears stating that NIHD has reached very low valuation levels on estimates that we believe in and the company has already pre-announced strong subscriber growth for Q4. While the company might be in the quiet period now,…
China Mobile reported very strong December net subscriber additions of 6.556 million (+35.9% y/y) that topped our estimate by 736,000 subscribers. This was the second strongest month of net additions in the company’s history, slightly below the record 6.603 million in October and slightly above the 6.517 million in November. For Q4, the China Mobile…
While TWC has not yet reported 2007 results, we believe a more cautious approach to forecasting 2008 is warranted given the increasingly difficult operating environment for cable MSOs. We are now forecasting a 5% year-over-year decline in RGUs for TWC in 2008, as we have reduced our 2008 RGU forecast by 8% (see our estimate…
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