Last week, Naspers took the next step toward listing its Prosus unit in Amsterdam, while Mediaset moved forward with its plan to combine its Italian and Spanish businesses. Walt Disney succeeded in offloading its last remaining sports network. The TPSI Global Media index ended week 35 up 2.9 percent, in step with the S&P 500's 2.8 percent gain. Year to date, the media sector maintained its lead over the general market, with a gain of 18.3 percent, ahead of 16.7 percent for the S&P 500.
Naspers's split, Mediaset's combination
Naspers published the prospectus for Prosus, valuing the unit at around USD 100 billion. Mediaset's efforts to combine its listed Italian and Spanish units looks to be progressing, even though Vivendi won a battle in court to save its voting power as a major shareholder of Mediaset. If all goes well for Mediaset, the new holding company Media For Europe will be 48 percent controlled by Fininvest, the holding company of the Berlusconi familiy. Vivendi could be controlling 21 percent.In other news, Mediaset is cooperating with Amazon on original content. Vivendi's Canal+ is expanding its originals budget and is nearing a distribution deal with Netflix.
Disney sells YES
Walt Disney sold its 80 percent stake in the YES Network, its last remaining sports network that it had to sell after acquiring the 21st Century Fox businesses. The buyers include Sinclair Broadcast as well as Amazon. Further, a survey showed that a large number of US households, some 43 percent, is considering taking the upcoming Disney+ SVOD service, to be launched 12 November. Quarterly reports were published by RTL, Bilibili and Tamedia. Tencent Music came under a Chinese antitrust investigation.
Largest holdings up, Snap still tripling YTD
Last week's best performers included E.W. Scripps (+8.5%) and Activision Blizzard (+6.9%). Lions Gate (-13%) and Salem Media (-7.6%) were the weakest shares. The largest holdings in our index mostly performed very well, from Facebook (+4.5%) and Comcast (+4.3%) to Walt Disney (+4.2%) and Alphabet (+3.2%).
Year to date, Snap still leads as it has nearly tripled its year-end 2018 share price. Next is Sinclair Broadcast (+69%), followed by Adevinta (+54%). The worst performers are ComScore (-87%), McClatchy (-68%) and TV Azteca (-52%).
