After the Disney Plus and Apple TV Plus launches, Wall Street analysts sketch out how the market will judge success for streaming services
- Success in streaming video is going to look very different as more companies, including legacy media giants Disney and WarnerMedia, and tech giant Apple, enter the streaming wars.
- There will be at least three different versions of "success," analysts at Wall Street firm Cowen wrote, in a note on November 20.
- Streaming products with high valuations, like Netflix and Disney, will be judged by whether they can build scaled and profitable businesses.
- Legacy media companies like AT&T's WarnerMedia and Comcast's NBCUniversal will have to prove their streaming efforts can make up for other losing parts of their businesses.
- And tech players Apple and Amazon will be assessed by how much value their streaming efforts add to their existing ecosystems.
- "We don't believe that everyone can win," the analysts wrote.
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Disney showed it could hold its own against Netflix last week when it launched Disney Plus and garnered 10 million sign ups practically overnight.
But success in streaming video is going to look very different in 2020 and beyond than it did when Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu first dominated the landscape, analysts at Cowen wrote in a note on November 20.
There will be many winners - and even more losers - in the streaming wars, as competition for wallet share intensifies and content costs climb.
"We don't believe that everyone can win," the analysts said.
Generally speaking, global streaming platforms will have an advantage over local offerings because they can spread their content expenses out over a larger pool of subscribers, the analysts said.
Quality of programming will also be more important than quantity. "We think services with a reasonable number of high quality shows are inherently more attractive than services with a large number of mediocre shows," the note said.
But streaming companies with high valuations like Netflix will also be judged on different values and metrics than traditional media companies entering the streaming fray, like AT&T and Discovery; and tech companies like Apple that use streaming to draw people into their broader ecosystems.
Netflix and Disney will face a different set of problems than other streaming companies
Netflix and Disney both have huge market valuations today - $134 billion and $267 billion respectively - thanks to their streaming initiatives.
As such, the bar for success at Netflix and Disney will be very different than most of their competitors, the Cowen analysts said.
The firm grouped these two companies together in a category of "OTT-first platforms," whose primary drivers are streaming.
These companies will need to prove that they can build scaled and profitable business that continue to satisfy investors' desire for subscriber growth - while their pricing power and content spending is threatened by new rivals.
"For OTT-first companies, we believe we are entering a new period where there will be increased risk around financial performance as competition increases," Cowen wrote.
Legacy media companies will have to prove their streaming bets can hide other losses
Traditional media companies, like AT&T, Comcast, the soon-to-be ViacomCBS, and Discovery will have a tougher task of proving that their streaming bets can make up for losses elsewhere in the business, particularly declines in linear TV.
These companies will face pressure on pricing and content spending, just like Netflix and Disney, but will also have to address:
- whether they have the right mix and quality of content to compete
- whether their tech and user experience can live up to the expectations already set by other streaming companies like Netflix
"Those media companies unable to successfully address those issues may have to seek a partner or get squeezed out of the ecosystem entirely," Cowen wrote.
The fact that Disney wasn't included in this group suggests it is already considered a winner in Cowen's book.
Tech giants like Apple and Amazon need to show that their streaming plays meaningful add to their ecosystems
Lastly, we have tech companies like Apple and Amazon Prime Video, for which streaming is merely a tool to lure people into their broader device and services ecosystems.
TV shows like "Jack Ryan" and "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" help drive people to sign up for and keep subscribing to Amazon's Prime program, where members are thought to spend more overall at Amazon. Similarly, Apple is using TV Plus to sell more iPhones and other devices, and potentially upsell people on iCloud, Apple Music, Apple News, and other subscriptions.
Apple and Amazon have seemingly limited resources to spend on programming, which Cowen estimates will each total $4 billion in cash next year.
But shareholders will want to see that those investments are paying off in equal measure, by reducing subscriber cancellations elsewhere within the company, or otherwise making the tech ecosystems more valuable.
It doesn't really matter if Apple or Amazon ultimately win in streaming, because it is a small part of their businesses. Yet, their efforts, even if only moderately successful, could hurt the other two groups.
"Given the scale of these companies relative to their investments in [over the top], it's perhaps less of question of whether or not they will be winners, and more about how much of a spoiler role they might play against the two groups above," the note said.