Hollywood Reporter: Will Comcast Sell Off Parts of Sky?

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Brian Roberts, chairman and CEO of U.S. media giant Comcast, is traditionally a buyer and a builder, not a pump-and-dumper. Over the years, he has grown Comcast through bold M&A moves, snatching up NBCUniversal in 2011, DreamWorks Animation in 2016, and, in the company’s most recent mega-buy, paying around $39 billion for European pay-TV giant Sky, which operates three language divisions: English (for the U.K. and Ireland), German (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) and Italian.

With every deal, the goal was always to make Comcast bigger and better able to respond to or lead industry trends. Not all acquisition plans worked out. Roberts tried, unsuccessfully, to buy the Walt Disney Co. and, later, former Sky owner 21st Century Fox. Disney, of course, ended up snatching up large parts of Fox in 2018. In almost every case, Roberts and Comcast have preferred to hold and further build and grow businesses, trusting they will be able to find efficiencies in them and run them more effectively, and more profitably, than others.

While entertainment arm NBCU and its theme parks unit are often-cited examples of such success, Sky could prove the exception, some critics have said.

While Comcast’s management has touted deeper integration and increased cooperation across Comcast Cable, NBCU and Sky and the successful sharing of expertise, executives and technology between them, for example in the streaming space, chatter about the sale of one or the other part of Sky has kept creeping up.

Since late last year, there has particularly been widespread speculation that Comcast could sell off Sky’s German division, Sky Deutschland. Then, earlier this week, the Italian media reported that Serie A, Italy’s professional soccer league, was eyeing a bid for Sky Italia, with JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Barclays and Citi among the banks reported to be ready to help negotiate a possible deal.

Comcast’s takeover of Sky always looked pricey to various analysts — it paid a multiple of 15 times Sky’s earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) to seal the deal — and with the company under pressure in Europe from economic clouds and consumers looking to cut costs amid high inflation, selling or spinning off Sky could have a certain appeal. But selling at a time of challenges could also hurt the price tag any potential deal could reach, Comcast’s dealmakers, who have a reputation for being savvy, will know.

In the third quarter of 2022, Comcast recorded non-cash impairment charges of $8.6 billion related to goodwill and intangible assets in its Sky segment to reflect “reduced estimated future cash flows as a result of macroeconomic conditions in Sky’s territories.” And in its full-year results, Sky reported a lower number of customer relationships and a decrease in average revenue per customer. “The lower number of customer relationships was driven by a decrease in Italy, partially offset by increases in the United Kingdom and Germany,” Comcast said in a regulatory filing. “The decrease in average revenue per customer relationship reflects decreases in average rates in Italy and Germany, partially offset by an increase in average rates in the United Kingdom.”

Some synergies across Sky’s European operations may never emerge though. While Sky U.K., Deutschland and Italia share a brand, and a best-in-class technology platform, and, since 2019, an umbrella production and commissioning operation in Sky Studios, the group’s three divisions remain largely focused on their own markets and regionally siloed. Sky divisions often produce with U.S. partners — Gangs of London is made in co-production with AMC; Sky Italia’s The Young Pope was a HBO co-production, Sky Deutschland made Das Boot together with Sonar Entertainment — but rarely with each other. One of Sky U.K.’s upcoming highlights, the historic drama The Tattooist of Auschwitz, starring Jonah Hauer-King, Anna Próchniak and Melanie Lynskey, was set up with Comcast streamer Peacock.

While Sky productions regularly move across markets, true crossover success stories — a U.K. original hitting big in Italy or a German Sky series drawing huge audiences among British subscribers — are rare.

That could make the sale of Sky Deutschland or Sky Italia less difficult or painful for the rest of the company.

Still, few analysts expect Comcast to dump big parts of Sky anytime soon. In a securities filing Monday, Comcast said that beginning with its first quarter 2023 earnings, it would be reorganizing how it reports results from its Sky operations: Sky-branded entertainment TV channels would be assigned to the company’s connectivity and platform markets segment, which reports on key broadband and wireless businesses, and Sky’s sports channels — as well as its production and distribution operations — would be lumped in with Comcast’s content and experiences segment, the division that includes NBCUniversal’s TV and streaming platforms as well as Peacock, Comcast’s flagship streaming service. The shuffle is a sign of how deeply Comcast wants to embed Sky in its company-wide infrastructure and make it work together with other units instead of looking to hive it off.

Comcast and Sky have not commented on reports of possible suitors for Sky’s operations in Germany and Italy or possible divestitures.

“I think Comcast overpaid for Sky and fantasized on very thin pan-European synergies and growth potential [but] selling a continental unit would not bring much cash in but it would send a signal to the stock market that they are serious about restructuring,” Enders Analysis analyst Francois Godard tells The Hollywood Reporter. Pointing to Sky Italia’s largely successful rollout of broadband services in Italy, Godard called the division “a solid asset. [So] why sell it at a discounted price?….I have seen no indication that Sky Italy would be up for sale. They are investing in telecoms, a long-term growth strategy consistent with the Comcast approach in the US and with Sky in the U.K.”

Sky’s Germany unit, which does not have a strong telecom or broadband component, looks more vulnerable.

“Germany is different because there Sky does not have the scale it has in Italy, where it is head-to-head with [public broadcaster] Rai as the biggest media in the country,” Godard tells The Hollywood Reporter. “In Germany there is no prospects of entering the telecoms market. So if Comcast wants to play macho and sell a piece of Sky, Germany is clearly the one bit to think about. But, doing so, Comcast renounces any possible pan-European ambition, necessary if one day they want to join the global league of streamers.”

There can be little doubt, however, that Sky’s business model has been under pressure, just like other pay TV giants. The rollout of international streamers has undercut the pay-TV group and increased competition for top sports rights, still a cornerstone of the company’s subscription model. Sky’s basic subscription tier, which costs 14 pounds ($17) per month in the U.K. and 25 euros ($27) per month in Germany and Italy, is roughly double the cost of the standard Netflix subscription in the respective territories. And those standard Sky packages don’t include the premium sport that is, for many customers, Sky’s biggest draw. A British soccer fan who wants to catch the top-flight Premiere League on Sky would need to shell out 46 pounds ($54) a month.

Restrictions on how top soccer rights can be sold in Europe has meant Sky has to share the most valuable rights — for the English Premier League in the U.K., the Bundesliga in Germany and for Serie A in Italy — with online competitors. In Britain, it splits Premier League coverage with BT and Amazon and on the continent with sports streaming service DAZN.

“Sky is simply too expensive, especially as they have less and less premium sports on offer,” notes one industry observer with a background in rights acquisition for European pay TV. “The long-term goal under Comcast seems to be to transform these aging pay-TV companies into full-service telcos, but, at least in continental Europe, Sky still has a long way to go.”

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