Now City brokers cheer on Love Island’s success
LOVE Island may have come to an end last night, but analysts at Liberum believe the dating show has given its broadcaster ITV the boost it really needed ahead of its first-half results on Wednesday.
Analysts said the show – which sees a group of scantily-clad 20somethings romance each other on a Spanish island – demonstrated that the young will still watch television if the right content is there.
With an average audience of 1.6m, Love Island has given ITV a much higher share of the allimportant 16-34 year old audience than rivals as that particular demographic increasingly moves towards services like Netflix.
Liberum said the show also offers good international content revenue opportunities as well as driving viewers to ITV’s on demand service.
‘ITV should be able to sell the Love Island format overseas, with Germany mentioned as the next market, so it should provide a boost for ITV’s content revenues, which grew 7pc in the first quar- ter,’ it said. It gave ITV a ‘ buy’ rating and said the broadcaster may now upgrade its outlook at its first-half results this week, after previously guiding towards a 9pc decline in advertising revenues. This would pave the way to a strong start for Carolyn McCall, when she joins as chief executive from EasyJet in January. Shares fell 1pc, or 1.7p, to 175.5p.
They say bad luck comes in threes, and this was truly the case for Acacia Mining yesterday.
First, the Tanzanian gold miner opened lower on the back of accusations over the weekend by UK charity Rights and Accountability in Development ( Raid) of human rights violations. It has accused Acacia of taking a ‘militarised’ approach to security since 2014, which has contributed to at least 22 being killed and 69 injured at its North Mara gold mine. Acacia denied allegations that any deaths had been caused by its security personnel over the stated time period.
Second, Acacia had its price target cut by JP Morgan, Citigroup and Jefferies in morning trading. The company warned last Friday it will be forced to close its flagship mine if it can’t soon reach a solution with the Tanzanian government.
Finally, Acacia was dealt another blow in afternoon trading after it revealed that Tanzania’s government is demanding it cough up around £138bn of unpaid taxes, penalties, and interest on its gold.
With Acacia’s market value now sitting just under £760m, the fines may prove difficult to pay.
The government claims Acacia has undervalued its gold concentrate by as much as ten times, but the firm denies this, pointing out that, if true, Acacia would be the third-biggest gold miner in the world. Shares fell 20.6pc, or 47.9p, to 184.5p. The FTSE 100 got off to a slow start this week, weighed down by falling airline stocks and poor results from consumer giant
Reckitt Benckiser (down 3.3pc, or 258p, to 7623p).
Luxury retailer Burberry was boosted after Albert Frère, the richest man in Belgium, upped his stake from 3pc to 4pc.
When Frère unveiled his 3pc stake in the group in February, shares rose almost 6pc. Yesterday, they rose a more moderate 0.6pc, or 9p, to 1652p.
Movement in the smaller indexes was dominated by rumours of M&A activity. B&M European Value Retail sat near the top of the FTSE 250, up 4.9pc, or 16.6p, to 357.5p, following rumours that supermarket Asda was mulling a £4.4bn bid. Likewise, Imagination Technolo
gies stormed ahead after Liberum gave credence to weekend rumours that the troubled chipmaker was being eyed by a Chinese private equity outfit. Shares rose 5.6pc, or 7.75p, to 146p.