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UBM (UBM LN): Take profits
Valuation recovery running ahead of trading momentum Stock: UBM Plc (UBM LN) Price: 634p Target: 595p Upside: -6% Recommendation: Trading Sell Investment summary UBM was or top pick in our “Telecom & Media Dividend Watch†review at the beginning of the year (4 Jan 2012) and after a +29% share price appreciation since then (+24% […]
Continue readingFrance Telecom (FTE-FR): Growth rater update post FY11 results – still a value trap
France Telecom (FTE-FR) Share Price: €11.6 Target Price: €9.9 Upside: -15% Recommendation: SELL EVENT: FY11 results released today. Revenues were in line with consensus at €45.3bn (-1.6% underlying; -1.7% in Q4), but with near misses for EBIT (€7.9bn vs €8.3bn consensus) and EPS (€1.46 vs €1.53 consensus). EBITDA declined by an underlying -4.8% to €15.1bn […]
Continue readingReed Elsevier (REL-LN, REN-AE): Journal pricing – the issue that refuses to die
Reed Elsevier Price: 530p/€9.1 Recommendation: HOLD Target Price: 543p/€10.2 Upside: +2%/+12% Next event: FY11 results – Thurs 16th Feb “Boycott Elsevier campaign” The issue of Journal pricing is one that refuses to die. Normally, the rhetoric gets fired up in the run up the year-end subscription renewal season. This time however, those negotiations passed relatively […]
Continue readingAMAZON (AMZN-US) – Opportunity as group loses growth rating (WYT valuation perspective)
AMAZON (AMZN-US) Price: $177 Target: $158 Recommendation; HOLD – Long term over-weight (seek entry at around our $158 TP) Amazon – You can deliver growth, or margins, but woe betide a ‘go go’ growth stock disappointing on both metrics. In our analysis of the relationship between revenue growth and growth ratings of what we called […]
Continue readingYell – haircut for debt holders, but implications for the equity?
When debt holders are prepared to sell out at only 35% of face value, what does this say about the value of the equity? Aptly timed for Friday 13th, Yell announced the first tranche of its £159m debt re-purchase programme with the purchase of debt with a face value equivalent to £137.5m for consideration of only […]
Continue readingECJ’s guidance on FAPL and Karen Murphy and the law on unintended consequences
Once upon a time, small and impoverished countries could still enjoy top quality TV programmes, even if it meant having to acquire most of them from abroad. This was because the value of these secondary rights reflected these countries capacity to pay and the basis on which the programme rights were sold and bought; by country. To […]
Continue readingBSkyB – look beyond the lynch mob
So the lynch mob is out and led by such political worthies as Keith Vaz. How can David Cameron do anything else but embrace the ‘popular’ frenzy that has been whipped up by Murdoch’s media rivals and fickle Westminster toadies. The BSkyB bid is of course now dead, or so we are reliably informed by Roland […]
Continue readingBSkyB valuation trade off between growth and margins
Rebekah Brooks may have described the News of the World as being toxic, although one might well ask under whose watch this originated. Murdoch’s desperate attempts to distance himself and News Corps bid for BSkyB from the phone tapping (and worse) scandal by discarding the offending title, but retaining her however risks all of this. Not only […]
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