David Levin’s long term re-structuring of UBM to exit its declining legacy print businesses continues. Yesterday UBM announced that it is selling its UK entertainment and technology portfolio (including Music Week and Pro Sound News) to Intent Media. In itself, there is little of surprise as UBM exits this small segment which represented less than 4% […]
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Unless one wants to lend to one of the PIIGS, cash returns are currently too low to tempt corporates to sit on excess cash. But what to do with it? For Thomson Reuters this issue will become increasingly pertinent following its announcement to divest its healthcare operations (c. $500m of sales and $100m of EBITA) which […]
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The bottom line is that investors will have to take a massive leap of faith to get anywhere near the $20-25bn MV estimates that seem to floating around. And this doesn’t even include their aim to disenfranchise new equity by offering non-voting shares or the potential bad debt problem that could emerge from the explosive […]
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Good to see that markets have a handle on valuing the current batch of internet IPO’s. Having initially more than doubled from its listing price, Linkedin’s subsequent -35% share price retrenchment means that it is now only 47% ahead on its original offer price last month. Pandora meanwhile also seemed be getting off to a good start […]
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The City narrative on the Q1 results seems predictable enough; a positive underlying revenue momentum which is encouraging managements to raise full year trading expectations and return to acquisition led expansion – a big hurrah for the bankers! Equity markets however are proving a tougher nut to convince, given its broader macro focus and as a consequence consensus forecasts for revenues […]
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The narrative the markets will focus on will remain the group’s ability to translate its digital and emerging market investments into premium revenue growth and further margin progress. From this perspective, Publicis’s Q1 revenue performance should be well received. A +6.5% rise in organic revenues pipped Omnicom’s +5.2%, reflecting continued progress in digital (+12.6% to 28.2% of revenues) and […]
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Revenues on track, but FV adjustments flatter margin and EPS beat Delivering Q1 EPS of $0.69 vs a consensus expectation of $0.59 ($0.56-$0.63 ranged vs $0.52 for Q1 FY10) seemed like a fairly convincing beat, although the market had not been expecting the $123.4m of book gain from the remeasurement of the fair value of […]
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Today’s Q1 results from Google provides a prelude to Q1 reporting season for the marketing services groups which kick-off next week (18-22 Apr) with Omnicom which reports on Tues 19th and Publicis on Thurs 21st. The following week IPSOS reports on Tues 27th with WPP and Interpublic on Thurs 28th. With Q4 recovery momentum already reported to have […]
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