Media stocks tank after analyst says TV business is broken

by  

Mathew Ingram

 TV-related stocks went through another massive selloff, after an analyst said the entire industry is “structurally impaired”

Just a couple of weeks ago, any media company with significant TV-related assets — including Disney, Comcast, 21st Century Fox and Time Warner — got hammered by investors, after a loss of subscribers at ESPN (which is owned by Disney) triggered fears about cord-cutting and the rise of streaming services. On Thursday it happened again, and this time the spark appeared to be some skeptical comments from a prominent industry analyst, who said that the entire industry is “structurally impaired.”

Disney  DIS -6.25%  alone lost 6% of its value, ending at its lowest level in six months, and has now lost more than $30 billion in market cap in a little over two weeks. Time Warner  TWX -5.04%  was also down about 5%, to its lowest level in 2015, and 21st Century Fox  FOX -3.79%  was down a little over 4%. CBS  CBS -5.13%  and Discovery Communications  DISCA -5.07%  were both down by about 5%, and Viacom  VIA -5.67%  dropped by more than 6%.

If the results from ESPN (which is traditionally seen as almost immune to market forces, because of its hold on sports programming) got the market nervous about cord-cutting and the loss of traditional TV subscribers, Thursday’s comments from Sanford Bernstein analyst Todd Juengerpoured gasoline on those fears. In a market research note, Juenger essentially said that the traditional TV industry needs to be re-evaluated, and that its business model is in jeopardy as a result of digital competition.

“The market is now valuing U.S. ad-supported TV businesses as structurally impaired assets,” Juenger said. “We believe this is fair and warranted, because: a) we believe TV advertising is undeniably in secular decline; and b) affiliate fees are now also being put at increased risk. When an industry is undergoing a massive structural upheaval, one major revenue stream is already impaired — and now there are signs the second one may be as well — investors won’t wait for final conclusive evidence to reevaluate how much they are willing to pay for the existing status quo cash flow streams.”

In a nutshell, this means that TV-related companies who rely on advertising revenue to support their businesses need to be re-valued by investors, and that even those who depend primarily on affiliate fees from cable distributors — a group that would include ESPN — have likely been over-valued. What the Sanford Bernstein analyst seemed to be saying is that the billions that have been wiped from the market value of TV-related stocks over the past few weeks are totally justified.

Until recently, executives at companies like 21st Century Fox and Disney have been down-playing the risks posed by cord-cutting and digital streaming services like Netflix  NFLX -7.84%  or YouTube  GOOG -2.13% , saying the loss of subscribers is manageable. But the movement in TV stocks over the past couple of weeks suggests that investors aren’t buying that argument. A chart this week from Pacific Crest showed thatcord-cutting continues to pick up speed.

One interesting aspect to the Thursday sell-off is that Netflix — one of the main beneficiaries of the cord-cutting movement by millennial audiences —also lost altitude, dropping by almost 8%. It seems the market is concerned about the prospects for any form of TV-style entertainment, digital or otherwise, as the landscape underneath the industry continues to shift.