Music companies, or those predominantly active in the music segment, did well last week on the stock market. Spotify's share price ended week 7 up 10.3 percent, slightly ahead of Tencent Music's 10.0 percent gain. Vivendi won 8.2 percent on rumours of planning to sell around 50 percent of Universal Music Group. Apple's name surfaced in the press as a candidate, as UMG's valuation would even eclipse Vivendi's. Stingray (+13%) was the week's winner, while worst in came Naver (-4.5%) and Lions Gate (-4.3%).
- Advertising: Omnicom (+0.4%), Publicis (+0.8%).
- Music: Vivendi (+8.2%),
- Broadcasting: TF1 (+5.5%), Bouygues (+4.6%), CBS (+2.2%). The latter also gave new targets for its OTT streaming services, CBS All Access and Showtime.
Broadcasting, games
Broadcasters may have been lifted on news of Amazon ordering a range of new original series. Atresmedia (+4.5%) was among the prodco's getting a piece of the action in that it will create the series 'La templanza'. Others doing well included Mediaset Espana (+6.0%), Prisa (+5.5%) and RTL (+4.6%).
Electronic Arts fared well on the success of Apex Legends, fending off some of the threat from the popular game Fortnite from Epic Games (unlisted). Activision Blizzard (+2.7%) reported on Q4 and announced 800 lay-offs. Take-Two Interactive was still down (-4.0%).
Regulation
The internet and social networking segments were hammered by regulatory actions. First of all, the EU came up with a new version of the Copyright Directive, including the contentious articles 11 (link tax) and 13 (upload filter). Alphabet (+1.7%) is potentially hit hardest, through both Google Search and YouTube. Next, the EU approved platform regulation, that has a much wider reach and targets no fewer than 7,000 platforms including Google Play, Google Shopping, Google Search, the Apple App Store, Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Instragram and Microsoft's Store and Bing. Add to this initiatives from Germany on taxation of advertising revenues. Facebook, also negotiating with the FTC over a fine related to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, ended the week down 2.9 percent.Stakes
Potential transactions, apart from Vivendi possibly selling a stake in UMG, included Vivendi buying a stake in Indonesian pay-TV and broadband operator MCN. Twitter (+4.1%) benefited from a disclosure from Morgan Stanley, revealing a 5.6 percent stake. Zee Entertainment (+7.6%) was up on rumours of plans to sell a stake to Comcast (+0.5%) or Sony (+3.4%). Lagardere (+1.9%) finalised the sale of its magazine unit in France, and Publicis was negotiating the sale of the Proximedia agency.
