Legacy Media Outlook Dims While valuation multiples have expanded as a result of massive financial stimulus, we are estimating that the pay TV ecosystem (MVPDs/vMVPDs) shrinks by a record 2.5 million subscribers in Q2 2020. The 2.5 million drop follows a previous record drop of 2 million subscribers in Q1 2020. In the past 12…
Last Monday, we highlighted the DOJ’s role in mitigating any drama between Dish and T-Mobile. (Link) In the days that followed, media reports had warned of a possible complete collapse of the sale of Boost to Dish. Here’s a quick update. We expect a July 1st closing of Boost and do not see a reasonable…
TikTok usage is simply exploding. The platform is aging up rapidly beyond its youthful origins and the content verticals/genres are expanding well beyond its roots in lip sync, dance and comedy; it even became an important source for real-time videos from protests in the past few weeks. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought in new users…
It’s now up to the DOJ to decide on the lease terms for T-Mobile’s use of Dish’s 600 MHz spectrum. The DOJ might also need to play a role in resolving whatever outstanding issues have delayed the closing of Dish’s $1.4 billion purchase of Boost. We make recommendations on both and question whether the DOJ…
The global movie exhibition industry came to a screeching halt by mid-March, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Hollywood studios with feature films in the middle of release or whose marketing dollars had already been spent leading up to release scrambled to shift titles into Premium Video-on-Demand (PVOD) and/or Subscription Video-on-Demand (SVOD) as we saw with…
So much has changed since our last quotes review published on March 7th (link), before shelter-in-place orders took effect. Q1 2020 earnings calls were filled with commentary around managing through the pandemic, liquidity and the uncertainty that lies ahead. Below are the most impactful takeaways from Q1 2020 earnings in streaming video, gaming, television, movies,…
In 2019, as legacy media companies finally came to the realization (albeit, more forced than realized) that they had to pivot away from the dying multichannel video bundle, we highlighted the risk that Amazon, Apple and Roku could be the real winners, as legacy media did not appear to have the “guts” to really go…
There has been a surprising focus/obsession among investors and the industry press over the relative subscriber base size/growth of SVOD platforms and not enough focus on relative SVOD revenues and revenue growth. We highlighted this issue in our Six Issues Disney Did Not Address Last Night That Need to be Answered (link), which centered on…
We are downgrading Cogent to Neutral from Buy on disappointing revenue growth in Q1 and new questions about the company’s ability to sustain dividend growth. The massive slowdown in the normally predictable Corporate customer base was particularly troubling. Dating back to 2018, we expected Q2 2019 to be the trough quarter for Cogent’s revenue growth…
We walked away from Disney’s fiscal Q2 (March) earnings conference call even more convinced that investor expectations for fiscal 2021 and 2022 are far too high (see yesterday’s downgrade to SELL, link). But what really upset us was that there were several important issues that were never addressed by the company or even asked about…
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