Pay-TV Companies Tank As Subscriber Losses Surge To Record Highs In 2017

As the broader markets casually melt-up to new record highs with each passing day, one small corner of the equity market is in full on meltdown mode: cable and satellite pay-tv providers.  Down anywhere from 3-10% on the week, investors in this space seem to be finally admitting that record subscriber losses, quarter after quarter, just may end up being a bad thing.

As Bloomberg points out this morning, pay-tv subscriber losses are expected to set a new record in 2017, surpassing the 1.7mm homes that "cut the cord" in 2016, as industry analyst Craig Moffet warns "it is becoming increasingly clear that the wheels are falling off..."

Barring a major fourth-quarter comeback, 2017 is on course to be the worst year for conventional pay-TV subscriber losses in history, surpassing last year’s 1.7 million, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. That figure doesn’t include online services like DirecTV Now. Even including those digital plans, the five biggest TV providers are projected to have lost 469,000 customers in the third quarter.

AT&T sank 6.1 percent, the biggest one-day loss since November 2008. Dish, which also provides satellite service, declined 5.1 percent. Viacom dropped 2.5 percent while AMC Networks Inc. fell 6.8 percent after Guggenheim Securities LLC downgraded the two stocks to neutral from buy.

Dallas-based AT&T is pushing headlong into TV programming by acquiring HBO and CNN owner Time Warner Inc. in an $85.4 billion deal. Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson has argued that the acquisition will let AT&T create compelling video packages for mobile subscribers and provide valuable targeting information for advertisers.

“It is becoming increasingly clear that the wheels are falling off of satellite TV,” said Craig Moffett, an analyst at MoffettNathanson LLC, in a research note.

AT&T set off the selling panic earlier this week when they announced they would lose 390,000 pay-tv customers in 3Q 2017 alone.  As a reminder, AT&T purchased DirectTV for $48.5 billion just 3 years ago...something tells us shareholders might like a "do-over" on that colossal misallocation of capital.

AT&T, whose ownership of the DirecTV satellite service makes it the biggest U.S. pay-television provider, said late Wednesday it will report a third-quarter loss of 390,000 satellite and cable customers, echoing a similar warning weeks earlier from Comcast Corp. The same night, Viacom cautioned that its distribution deal with Charter Communications Inc., the second-biggest cable U.S. company, may lead to a blackout, potentially testing whether millions of viewers are willing to go without MTV and Nickelodeon.

Shares of both companies retreated Thursday, contributing to a broader selloff in the sector. The S&P 500 Media Index, which includes Comcast and ESPN owner Walt Disney Co., slid 2.3 percent to the lowest level since December.

Meanwhile, the bigger question that remains to be answered is whether cable providers will finally use this customer backlash to push back on content providers who have managed to force ridiculous annual price increases down the throats of American consumers for decades...Citi analyst Jason Bazinet seems to think so...

After decades of steadily increasing bills and ever-bigger packages of channels, the pay-TV ecosystem is in full-blown crisis mode. AT&T, Dish Network Inc. and others are offering cheaper, online-only versions of cable to lure customers back, but that means having to accept thinner profit margins.

“Those salad days of fat bundles, automatic carriage renewals and customary affiliate steps ups are long gone,” Citigroup Inc. analyst Jason Bazinet wrote in a note this week. “Today, every media and cable firm is jockeying for self-preservation. And we suspect the next chapter in this new era means Charter will drop -- or significantly curtail -- distribution of Viacom’s content.”

Of course, some of these content owners are making the decision to drop the cable bundle much easier all on their own...

Cord-Cutting Accelerates, Sends Shock Wave Across Traditional TV

By Stock Board Asset

According to eMarketer, digital video consumption is on the rise leading to a seismic shift in the industry. Traditional TV viewers are expected to shrink nearly 10% by 2021 with the expectation of a sharp decrease of total media ad spending upwards of -30% reduction. Even in 2017, the trend is accelerating with eMarketer expecting a slowdown in ad spending, after 2016 benefited from the Olympics and U.S. presidential election.

As eMarketer explains, traditional TV advertising is slowing even more than expected as viewers cut cable and transition to digital video platforms. The estimates for ‘cord-cutters’ is expected to explode this year through 2021. The timeframe provided could explain cable-apocalypse is here. Per eMarketer,

In fact, by 2021, the number of cord-cutters will nearly equal the number of people who have never had pay TV (“cord-nevers”).

This year, there will be 22.2 million cord-cutters ages 18 and older, a figure up 33.2% over 2016. The overall tally is much higher than the 15.4 million eMarketer previously predicted. Meanwhile, the number of US adult cord-nevers will grow 5.8% this year to 34.4 million.

“Younger audiences continue to switch to either exclusively watching Over-The-Top video or watching them in combination with free TV options,” said Chris Bendtsen, senior forecasting analyst at eMarketer. “Last year, even the Olympics and presidential elections could not prevent younger audiences from abandoning pay TV.”

The hemorrhaging of traditional TV viewers will only accelerate. Overall, there are 196.3 million Americans that watch traditional TV, down 2.4% over 2016. By 2021, Emarketer thinks the total will fall nearly 10% compared to five years earlier. TV views over the age of 55 will continue to watch conventional TV, because that is tradition in their generation. The cord-cutting revolution is mainly impacting younger generations, as the old system is dismantled and the new system is ushered in.

Who are these disrupting digital streaming video services?

Back in August, WPP, the world’s largest advertising company cut full-year revenue forecasts and offered “terrible guidance”, which sent shares lower -13%.  Goldman Sachs reports:

• Results confirm weak trends seen across advertising companies/TV, with ad spending cuts in fast-moving consumer goods being the common driver


• Key question whether pick-up in organic growth from 2H is credible


• Goldman sees new organic growth guidance as “achievable,” based on comments by several consumer goods companies on higher ad spending in 2H, easier comparables, recent improvement in WPP’s new business performance

Paul Verna, a principle analyst at eMarketer listed several factors in the acceleration of cord-cutting trend:

• First, traditional pay TV operators are increasingly developing streaming platforms, such as Dish Network’s Sling TV.


• Second, networks such as HBO and ESPN have launched standalone subscription services that allow users to tap those channels without a cable subscription.


• Third, digital players like Hulu and YouTube are now delivering live TV channels over the internet at reasonable prices—including sports properties that were previously available only through traditional distribution.”

Average time spent per day with video by US Adults, by device, 2015-2017

While the end of legacy cable may not be here, it is approaching. America is currently in a transitional period and is increasingly gravitating to the cheapest possible option away from cable, and unless cable providers drastically change their cost structure and pivot their business models, the revolution in America"s viewership habits will be televized for all to see.

Netflix Now Has More Subscribers Than Cable

Despite going all-in on Adam Sandler content – a bizarre choice - Netflix has managed to continue growing its subscriber base, recently reaching a new milestone: It now has more paying customers than Comcast Corp., Charter Communications and all other US cable companies combined.

As Forbes reports, Netflix now has 50.85 million subscribers, surpassing cable"s 48.61 million. There is one caveat, though: Cable’s total doesn’t include minor cable networks, which could amount to 5% of total customers.

Over the past five years, Netflix has managed to more than double its subscriber base from 23.4 million in the first quarter of 2012. But growth has slowed recently due to intensifying competition from a host of rival streaming services, causing Netflix to miss both its domestic and foreign subscriber targets for the first quarter.

Here’s a summary of Netflix"s Q1 results:

1Q revenue $2.64b vs est. $2.65b

1Q GAAP EPS 40c vs 37c

1Q domestic streaming net adds 1.42 million, vs consensus est. 1.59MM vs company forecast 1.5MM

1Q international streaming net adds 3.53MM consensus est. 3.90m vs company forecast 3.7MM

2Q GAAP EPS forecast 15c vs est. 23c

2Q revenue forecast 2.755BN  vs est. $2.76BN

Luckily for American cable companies, the battle for subscribers isn’t a zero-sum game. Here"s Forbes:

While cable subs are down by 4 million in the same five years that Netflix has seen huge growth, that"s not a massive drop off. It"s also worth bearing in mind that cable TV makes up only 50% of total TV viewership in pay TV. That said, Q1 2017 shows a net loss in subscriptions while Q1 2016 saw cable grow a little.

Satellite TV is doing okay, with around 38 million subscribers. Dish Network added 318,000 customers in Q1 with Direct TV stalling with gains that didn"t outpace customer loses. Satellite is still growing faster than cable though.

Faster still though are the internet-delivered services like Sling TV and Direct TV now which have added 350,000 in Q1. These services now have 1.7 million customers between them, and it"s likely that this segment will continue to see growth as customers move away from cable TV.

Cable, satellite and internet streaming services in the US have a combined 93.3 million subscribers. Even as Netflix expands into more foreign markets, it likely won’t match that total any time.

To be sure, the Netflix to cable comparison isn’t really fair to the cable companies: While the exact cost depends on the specific package, monthly fees associated with cable are typically many times more expensive than Netflix"s $10 fee.

Which brings us to our next, and final topic: Slowing subscriber growth isn’t the only metric that makes Netflix"s critics uncomfortable. The company’s unprecedented cash burn is another major red flag. In Q1, the company burned $422 million, which while less than the record $640 million burned in Q4 (over $1 billion in the last 6 months) was $160 million than its cash burn from a year ago. The company still expects to burn a total of $2 billion for the full year.

Here’s how the company explains it:

Free cash flow in Q1’17 was -$423 million vs. -$261 million in the year ago quarter and an improvement from -$639 million in Q4’16. The growth in our original content means we continue to plan to have around $2B in negative FCF this year.

We have a large market opportunity ahead of us and we’re optimizing long-term FCF by growing our original content aggressively. Negative near-term FCF is the result of the big increases in our original content, combined with small but growing operating margins. Since we want our operating margins to grow slowly so we can spend enough to quickly grow revenue and original content, we anticipate negative FCF to accompany our rapid growth for many years.

Our operating margins are our key indicator of improving global profitability; they are already growing and we plan to keep them growing for many years ahead. Eventually, at a much larger revenue base, original content and revenue growth will be slower, and we anticipate substantial positive FCF, like our media peers.

It remains to be seen if the transition from massive cash burn to cash flow positive is as simple as the company expects it to be.