The latest Investing Matters Podcast episode featuring Jeremy Skillington, CEO of Poolbeg Pharma has just been released. Listen here.
The Dame doesn't sound keen on mergers on acquisitions:
"Scale for scale's sake will never create shareholder value. If you are talking about consolidation, it really has to be for the right reason.”
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/itv-first-earnings-ad-revenue-drop-brexit-uncertainty-1226336?utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
Thank goodness Adam Crozier did, otherwise the share price would be much, much lower.
Wolfwatch is probably right. There is nothing on the horizon to lift the share price. Britbox isn't going to be the saviour of ITV - over 100 million being put into it and looks doomed to failure. If that happens there's surely no way the Dame can stay. I see Netflix are hiring most of Shepperton where many ITV shows have been shot since they closed there own studios last April, Studio space is going to be harder to come by in London - shame the South Bank studios were torn apart and stand empty and have cost ITV £6 million to look after in the year they've been empty.
Dalio, where are you getting 250million from? It's 150 million:
https://www.knightfrank.co.uk/blog/2019/01/23/former-itv-studios-launched-to-market-for-ps150m
The fact they paid 56 million to buy it, have spent 40 million on the office/studio moves, have to pay £10 million to Coal Board for redeveloping site and spend millions a year on rent means that profit will soon go.
Probably the worst time to strip the company of all its London assets. Another bad decision by Dame Carolyn.
Today it was announce that Julian Ashworth, the Director for Group Strategy and Direct To Consumer will leave at the end of June. He was recruited to develop The Dame's More Than TV Strategy and leaves after 18 months in the job.
At a recent ITV internal event the Dame was asked what plans she has to give investors some confidence? She said that at the moment we have to "ignore the share price" and went on...
"it is not about investor confidence in ITV, it's about UK owned stocks. It's a very specific thing. If you look down the FTSE list any stock that is a British company at it's core is having a really torrid time as far as the share price is concerned. The catalyst for the market are NAR, so ad revenue, that's spot advertising, that's an incredibly important barometer, because if NAR is going up it means the economy is doing quite well and if NAR is flat that is better for us than it going down. So there are predictions for it for next year going down so you know that will be a catalyst either positive or negative. SVOD will be a catalyst. Once we tell the market how much we are spending they will know we're investing and know what to expect over 5 years. And if we start tracking well that will be a catalyst for post growth. Solve Brexit, solve SVOD and we're laughing. " Simples!
Everytime McCall speaks the share price goes down :-). Here's today's offering from the "seasoned" Dame:
https://www.broadcastnow.co.uk/itv/mccall-we-want-britbox-on-sky-and-virgin/5137463.article
Bids have to be in by today. However they've already spent 50 million on property costs relating to the moves, 50 million will probably go into the pension scheme as the South Bank is currently asset security on it and they've got to pay the Coal Board £7-8 million for redeveloping the site within 10 years of purchasing it. Going ahead they've got to pay rent for 3 London offices and studios which aren't cheap. Doesn't seem great long term when they owned the South Bank and the plan was that all staff would be located there.
Depends whether you have any confidence in McCall's 80 million pound investment in a SVOD service to stream old ITV shows. Since Capital Markets Day in September when she went into more detail the share price has been in a downward trend so the market doesn't seem convinced. They've only just advertised for developers for the service so it's a way off still.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=py_mSpRtf-o&t=1139s
The proposed new SVOD service will just be old content. AS you say Solley, people can only watch so much tv. Are people really going to pay a subscription to watch old shows?
ITV now doesn't have a flagship HQ. It's split across 3 sites paying millions in rent for office and studio space when before it owned the South Bank building. Everything the Board said last year - getting all London staff under one roof, building a terrific new home to be proud off, and that the South bank was ITv's home - has all changed under the new CEO.
in the live Q&A with the market this morning Dame Carolyn said that the Head Of Analytics and Head Of technology that are going to implement this strategy haven't even been appointed yet so it does seem it'll be a while to anything it will be implemented.