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 reading

France 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 reading

Reed 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 reading

BSkyB – 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 reading

BSkyB 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 […]

Continue reading