We are upgrading Sprint to Neutral from Sell based on price and the rapid reduction in consensus EBITDA estimates. We also believe the current valuation could attract an acquirer. While tempting, we do not believe that it is appropriate to move to a BUY rating at this point because fundamentals continue to worsen, there is…
China Unicom reported December net subscriber additions of 1.362 million, which were below our estimate by 158,000 and down sequentially. This is the second month in a row that China Unicom’s subscriber growth has been below our estimates since we started tracking their numbers in January 2007.
The regulator in Colombia reported subscriber growth in Colombia that likely indicates strong growth for America Movil. The data that the regulator reports does not match what America Movil reports because in the fourth quarter of last year it changed the method by which it considers someone a customer. Nevertheless, there is correlation with what…
Anatel, the Brazilian telecom regulator, released wireless market share data for December. It also revised its report of monthly net additions by 363,000 to 4.7 million, which was double our latest public estimate. Q4 net additions were 8.227 million, resulting in upside of 4.292 million to our latest public estimate.
Chieftain Capital recently sent a letter to the Comcast board (click here for a copy of the letter) that is highly critical of Comcast’s senior management. Since we wrote our Comcast Conundrum note on 7/24/07 (click here for our note), the strategic issues we highlighted have only become more tangible/pressing. The last thing we believe…
Dreamworks Animation’s plans for a Shrek musical appear to be materializing. The Seattle Times (click here) is reporting that Shrek the Musical will open on August 14th in Seattle (for a 5 week run), before shifting to Broadway in NYC in November 2008. While the financial terms of the musical have not been disclosed, upfront…
Guy Hands’ internal staff memo highlights that (note: we have seen the entire memo): EMI currently has 14,425 artists on its roster EMI tried to break 1,300 artists globally in 2007 Only 3% of the 14,425 artists are currently profitable
Preliminary wireless industry subscriber data from Brazil indicates a blow-out month of subscriber net additions in December 2007 and could lead to several hundred thousand upside to the Q4 subscriber estimates of TIM Part, Vivo and America Movil’s Claro. These estimates are sometimes slightly revised when the final numbers are released. Monthly industry net additions…
Discovery’s founder John Hendricks and prior CEO Judith McHale were successful in capturing cable network shelf space across multichannel operators (launching channels and maximizing subscribers per network), however, they were far less successful in building a broad portfolio of well-branded/programmed and profitable channels. Discovery is extremely lopsided with 80% or more of its cash flow…
While Comcast is a communications/distribution company first and foremost, we believe management increasingly believes it has the opportunity to do more with its broadband assets and customer relationships (we estimate Comcast now has over 13 mm broadband subscribers). Nowhere was that more clear than on stage at CES 2008 (the video below is the third…
You must be logged in to post a comment.