Quote:
Originally Posted by
mistaTea
Yes indeed. And that all sounds lovely Marilyn, except for the fact that the internet is still unreliable for live streaming. Clearly we are heading to a world that broadcasts more and more content online, and the technology is definitely improving - but, in the words of Mr Fellet, the satellite will still be 'doing the heavy lifting' for some time to come.
It reminds me of the lunatics who think the 'old school' electricity generators will be irrelevant shortly, because we will soon be running our homes and businesses off self-produced solar power since 'battery storage technology is the best thing since sliced bread nowadays'.
Sounds good, but does not stack up when we come back to the real world.
So far as I can tell, SKY TV is the only broadcaster that is able to stream all of their content online AND via satellite. That would virtually guarantee a seamless transmission of live sport, and could be positioned as a competitive advantage.
End of the day, SKY have had it their own way for so long - and with that they have become largely 'lazy'. There is now competition knocking at the door - which they have never really had, and it is how they respond to that. SKY is a company people love to hate, but you think Spark is going to be any better?? SKY
can stream, the internet doesn't belong to one person, and do all these other things, but if Spark get serious, they would have deeper pockets.
Having said that, SKY have been generating some pretty hefty free cashflows. Typically their depreciation/amortization has been $100-120m per year (except for last year where they wrote off a lot of goodwill). Even in past years, divvies would only be 40-50% of their net profit.
$1.1B of intangible assets sitting on the balance sheet....!