The Telecompaper Global Media index was up 1.3 percent in week 45, outperforming the S&P 500 (+0.9%). ComScore, up 31 percent, was the biggest winner, followed by Lions Gate (+14%) and Discovery (+13%). The weakest shares included Zee Entertainment (-7.1%), Snap (-6.5%) and News Corp (-6.3%). The main news, apart from earnings reports, came from Discovery, Disney and ITV, all launching or planning to launch streaming video services.
Alphabet and Facebook, the index heavyweights, were up 3.0 and down 1.4 percent, respectively. With this, Alphabet's market cap crossed the USD 900 billion mark (currently USD 904 billion) and passed Amazon (USD 885 billion). It closes in on the most valuable companies in the world: Microsoft (USD 1,114 billion) and Apple (USD 1,176 billion). Facebook trails behind somewhat with a USD 544 billion market cap.
Broadcasting and video
- Discovery (+13% for the week) reported quarterly earnings and forged plans to launch a new aggregator SVOD service for its range of video services in the US.
- Walt Disney (+3.9%) published strong quarterly results, albeit held back by the cost of expanding and launching its family of SVOD services. Disney+ will enter the main European markets in March 2020 and a Telecompaper report revealed that the soft-launch in the Netherlands was taken up by around 660,000 subscribers.
- ITV (+0.9%), with the BBC, launched its BritBox SVOD service in the UK.
- Lions Gate (+14%) had its Q3 report out, as did Nexstar (+8.4%) and Sinclair (-2.1%).
- In Europe, earnings were in from RTL (+0.5%) and ProSieben (+1.7%). The latter's Red Arrow production studio, which has been up for sale for some time, drew interest from Sony (-1.7%), All3 Media (owned by Discovery and Liberty Global) and others.
- Mediaset (+0.1%) was reported to seek peace with Vivendi (-0.5%) over the creation of a new European holding. Vivendi's Canal+ acquired a Polish distributor.
Advertising
- ComScore's (+31%) Q3 report was out and the company appointed a new CEO.
- Nielsen (-0.4%), pressured by an activist shareholder, will split into two listed companies (Global Media, the analytics business, and Global Connect, working mainly for the FMCG sector).
Snap, despite its loss last week (-6.5%), still leads the Global Media sector with a year-to-date gain of 158 percent. It is followed by NENT Group (up 51% since the end of 2018), Sinclair Broadcast (+49%) and Facebook (+46%).
