Dish CEO Charlie Ergen was interviewed by former FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell yesterday at the wireless industry’s Connect (X) conference. His message did not differ from what was outlined on Dish’s recent earnings call, but it has triggered some investor questions that we wanted to briefly address.
Just shy of three years ago, we initiated on WWE with a BUY rating and a $25 PT. Our initiation report (link) was about a company that took a risk at self-disruption and was navigating the inevitable bumps that go along with entering uncharted territory. The company had, a year prior, seen its share price…
Reading the CBS special committee lawsuit seeking a temporary restraining order against its controlling shareholder, National Amusements, one would think the CBS Board of Directors had been locked in a closet for the past five years where the only information they were given was from CBS Chairman and CEO Les Moonves. The walls of the legacy…
We simply never thought Rupert Murdoch would become a seller. Yet, he and his two sons Lachlan and James, who own and run Fox day-to-day, astutely recognize that the media industry headwinds are growing stiffer with legacy media companies unprepared and effectively incapable of transforming into global direct-to-consumer entertainment providers. Legacy media companies are now…
EBITDA of R$1.47 billion topped our estimate and consensus on better than expected revenue and upside to gross margins, which were partially offset by higher bad debt. EBITDA margin of 36.9% was 70 basis points higher than expected and was up 320 basis points versus last year.
Disney reported fiscal (March) Q2 2018 earnings after the close yesterday evening. Given that we were once again not chosen from the conference call queue during Disney’s earnings call, we thought investors would find the questions we hoped to ask management useful: 1) Sky’s Importance to Disney: Given that Disney Chairman and CEO, Bob Iger has…
EBITDA of $722 million topped our estimate and consensus on lower subscriber acquisition costs. Dish lost 94k total Pay TV subs, which was 15k higher than our estimate, but 1k less than consensus.
Last night, Reuters broke the news (link) that Comcast was lining up financing to make a renewed attempt at buying the Fox assets that Disney agreed to buy in December 2017. In our April 27th blog (link), we stated our belief that Comcast could offer a 25% premium to Disney’s bid for Fox’s assets and that…
At last week’s Milken Conference, Variety’s Cynthia Littleton moderated a panel of five media industry executives: Kevin Beggs, Chairman, Lionsgate Television Group Mark Burnett, President, MGM Television and Digital Group Susanne Daniels, Global Head, Original Content, YouTube Jim Gianopulos, Chairman and CEO, Paramount Pictures Robert Greenblatt, Chairman, NBC Entertainment We have embedded the entire one…
It has been a “golden age” for Match Group, which has destroyed our original MTCH thesis that Tinder’s success would cannibalize “core” Match, with Tinder having trouble monetizing in an age of low barriers to entry for dating apps. While core Match has had its issues, the monetization of Tinder has been well beyond our imagination, especially…
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