Earnings season kicked off in a negative way with Netflix reporting disappointing net additions, although its Scandinavian peer the NENT Group faired much better after reporting. The Telecompaper Stock Index Global Media ended week 29 down 2.9 percent, versus a loss of 1.2 percent for the S&P 500. Most stocks in our index were down for the week, but there were two double-digit winners: publisher Gannett (+16%) on merger talk and theatre chain AMC Entertainment (+11%) apparently on a bullish analyst report. ComScore (-17%), Netflix (-16%) and Snap (-10%) should have been avoided last week.
Walt Disney (-3.5% for the week) once again benefitted from success at the box office. The new Lion King film took in over USD 530 million in its first weekend, and Avengers: Endgame became the most successful movie in history, bringing in almost USD 3 billion since launch.
VOD
In the VOD segment, Netflix's negative earnings report was hardly offset by a good report from the NENT Group (+6.4%) or Sinclair's (-5.4%) advertising-funded OTT service Stirr reaching 1 million downloads. ITV's (-0.9%) upcoming 90/10 British venture with the BBC, BritBox, revealed its pricing and launch date for Q4. Its French peer Salto, owned by M6 (-2.9%), TF1 (-0.1%) and France Télévisions (unlisted), made concessions to get regulatory approval.
Broadcasting
The long expected re-merger of CBS (-4.7%) and Viacom (-3.8%) could be happening in August, according to rumours. At the same time, CBS was in a battle with AT&T (-2.6%) over carriage fees, which actually resulted in CBS going into a black-out, including through its distribution partners such as Sinclair (-5.4%), Tribune (-0.1%) and Nexstar (-4.9%).
Mediaset (-2.9%) saw its copyright conflicts with Dailymotion, a unit of Vivendi (-0.2%), as well as Vimeo, owned by IAC (+2.6%), resolved. Both will need to pay a settlement in the order of USD 5 million. Another Vivendi unit, Canal+, acquired the Mezzo classical music channels from Lagardere (-2.3%), while M6 (-2.9%) closed its takeover of a Lagardere division.
All3Media, a 50/50 joint venture of Discovery (-2.9%) and Liberty Global, was rumoured to be in the market for production studio Endemol Shine, itself a 50/50 joint venture of Walt Disney (-3.5%) and Apollo Global.
Advertising
The advertising segment was particularly weak, last week, with Nielsen one of very few exceptions. Omnicom (-5.8%) and Publicis (-8.0%) both had their Q2 reports out. Nielsen (+2.8%) could be an acquisition target, whereas its peer comScore (-17%) kept suffering from its weak financials. The latter is down 73 percent year-to-date.
