The new Telecompaper Stock Index Global Consumer Media gained 2.7 percent during week 3, a little behind the Dow Jones Industrial index, which was up 3.0 percent. The best performing stock was Australian broadcaster Nine Entertainment (+14%), followed by two music companies: Tencent Music Entertainment (+11%) and Spotify (+11%). The worst performers were several European broadcasters: Atresmedia (-8.5%), ProSiebenSat.1 (-5.8%), Mediaset Espana (-5.7%), RTL (-5.2%) and M6 (-5.2%). This can easily be related to Netflix reporting on Q4 2018, which included high subscriber growth.
The heavy-weights did well, both Facebook (+4.3%) and Alphabet (+3.9%). A number of Alphabet companies hit the headlines, including Loon, Verily and Niantic. Google acquired smartwatch technology and raised its G Suite prices. Google further set up a new publishing platform (Newspack) for small publishers. Facebook also made an effort of supporting the news industry by devoting 300 million US dollar to the development of local news. This could not prevent a story from appearing in the Washington Post, claiming that the FTC is considering giving the company a substantial fine for allowing the Cambridge Analytica scandal to happen.
Spotify and Tencent Music possibly did well on news of Vivendi planning to sell a large minority stake in its Universal Music Group division.
Global Consumer Media
Our new index covers public companies in the global media sector, with the exception of cable companies (some of which are included in our TP Stock Index European Telecoms) and B2B publishers (the likes of Reed Elsevier). The index currently contains 58 shares, with just over half from the US and the rest from Europe, Canada, Japan and Australia. The segments represented are:
- Advertising, such as WPP, Dentsu and Nielsen
- Broadcasting, from RTL and Stingray to CBS and Nippon Television
- Conglomerates, with non- media activities, such as Alphabet and Vivendi
- Games, such as Electronic Arts
- Movies, which includes Walt Disney, Netflix and Lions Gate
- Music, represented by Spotify, Pandora and more
- Publishing, including for instance Sanoma and Roularta
- Social networking, incl. Facebook, Twitter and Snap
- Theatres, such as AMC
- Tier 1 (more than 10% index weight): Alphabet and Facebook
- Tier 2 (weight between 1 and 10 percent): for instance Walt Disney and Electronic Arts
- Tier 3 (weight betrween 0.1 and 1.0 percent): includes Discovery
- Tier 4 (weight less than 0.1%): EW Scripps and others
