Last week, Naspers listed its consumer internet unit Prosus in Amsterdam. Walt Disney unexpectedly launched its much anticipated Disney+ service in a single country, the Netherlands, for a free trial until the official launch date in November. Naspers, as a result of the partial spin-off of Prosus, lost 30 percent in week 37. Other than that, IAC was the biggest loser, down 7.1 percent. The winners included Salem Media (+22%), comScore (+16%) and ProSieben (+15%). Our Global Media index was up 0.5 percent for the week, against a gain of 1.0 percent for the S&P 500 index.
Naspers targeted a USD 105 billion valuation for Prosus, but the share went up considerably beyond that level (+30%) upon listing. The effect on Naspers was a drop of 30 percent.
Walt Disney (-1.1%) decided to do an early launch for the Disney+ SVOD service, solely in the Netherlands. The service will be free until the official launch on 12 November. The company further considered the sale of a mobile gaming company that it acquired as part of the recent Fox deal. The NENT Group (-2.5%) expanded its Viaplay service to Iceland, and Zee Entertainment (-3.1%) scored a distribution deal for Zee5 with Lebara in Australia.
Electronic Arts (-0.1%) did a beta launch for its streaming games service and Spotify (-4.0%) acquired a marketplace for audio professionals. M6 (+1.4%) talked up the importance of radio for the broader RTL group (+9.6%).
AT&T spoke at an investor conference, where it looked ahead to the current quarter an 2019. This came a day after Elliott Management, the hedge fund, called for sweeping changes at the company, ultimately aimed at raising AT&T's margins and dividend pay-out. It was rumoured that Elliott wants the company's CEO Randall Stephenson to step down.
Both Facebook and Alphabet's Google were subjected to broad antitrust and privacy investigations by the Attorneys General from almost all of the US states and territories. In other news, Google settled a tax claim with France, also agreeing to a large fine.
