Consolidation was driving the broadcast segment last week, but not the share prices. The Telecompaper Stock Index Global Media ended the week down 3.6 percent, versus a loss of 3.1 percent for the S&P 500. Several broadcasters were down sharply, including Zee Entertainment (-15%), TV Azteca (-15%), Nippon TV (-12%), Tokyo Broadcasting (-8.3%) and Atresmedia (-8.0%). Gannett ended up the week's winner, up 10 percent.
The broadcast segment had several M&A deals, or rumours thereof, to digest.
- CBS (-2.8% for the week) and Viacom (-3.8%) seemed to be coming ever closer to re-uniting, now with reports of a new management structure.
- Mediaset (-1.5%) accepted the Vivendi (-7.8%) vehicle Simon Fiducaria for carrying voting rights on its stake. Mediaset and Atresmedia (-8.0%) were hit with limited fines for exceeding the ad load limits for broadcasting. And Mediaset made clear that it wants its new holding Media For Europe, over which a shareholder vote will be given 4 September, to coordinate SVOD in Europe in order to provide Netflix with serious competition.
- Atresmedia bought a 20 percent stake in production company Vancouver Media, and ITV (-5.3%) acquired Armoza Formats.
- AMC Networks (+0.7%) reported on its Q2 results and predicted 5-7 million subscribers to its streaming services by 2024.
- Nexstar (-2.7%) and Tribune (+0.4%) were told to divest stations to obtain clearance for their planned merger.
- Comcast (-4.4%) and partners were rumoured to be acquiring a stake in Zee Entertainment.
More quarterly results were in from Sony (+0.3%), Electronic Arts (+3.8%), Spotify (-1.2%) and Publicis (-5.0%). Reports claimed that Facebook is developing new hardware, not unlike its existing Portal smart screen, but with access to streaming services including Netflix (-5.0%), Hulu and more.
Digital was the common theme in the publishing segment, in week 31:
- Lagardere (-7.9%) is selling several internet portals.
- Pearson (-10%) talked about the end of the paper textbook but was forced to report a data breach affecting 13,000 school and university accounts in the US.
- Axel Springer (+1.2%) was in the market for taking over a French real estate portal.
Year-to-date, Snap leads with a more than tripling of its share price (+209%). Sinclair Broadcast (+87%) is next, followed by The New York Times (+60%) and Twitter (+49%).
