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Analyst explains interesting growth dynamics at British Sky Broadcasting Group Full article published: 08/17/2000     MARC MCFADDEN is an Analyst with Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette


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TWST: If we turn now perhaps to British Sky Broadcasting Group (BSY.L) and the satellite business, what do you see to be the growth drivers there?

Mr. McFadden: Sky is growing in a couple of dimensions. One, Sky is actually one of the largest owners of channels; sports channels, movie channels, news channels, in addition to being a satellite company. They actually sell those channels to the cable industry - their competitors interestingly enough. With cable and satellite both growing, that's a big source of growth. As those channels expand, so does advertising and the people that they reach. That is one dimension. Then, the other dimension is that they are upgrading the number of channels they can offer, pay-per-view services and more, so they're raising their rate per home at the same time that they're raising the number of homes that they sell to. Right now, they're in a fairly interesting growth dynamic. That's a stock that we think is a little more expensive. That more of the good news of what's going on there is in the stock, but we think it's a very good franchise.

TWST: Would you see this as a buying opportunity in the medium term, or do you really think it’s only a long-term investment?

Mr. McFadden: I think it’s definitely a long term one. We wrote a piece on them a while ago, and we called it, "Great Franchise, Pricey Stock." I think that kind of goes to the heart of it, that we think it's a great company and they've done a very good job, but that you pay a fair amount for the privilege of being in there. Whereas, we would argue that with NTL, particularly since it's performed not very well of late from a stock market perspective, that there's better value there in terms of the gap between what the company can do and what the stock markets really like.

TWST: So, if you apply a six to twelve-month time horizon do you think that there are attractive stocks in the satellite or cable industry?

Mr. McFadden: Yes. For NTL for example, we have price targets that are just about double where it's at. Whereas, we would expect a more flatish performance out of Sky.

TWST: What do you see to be the valuations in the sector?

Mr. McFadden: The cable industry as of late, the market as recently as sort of February here in Europe was very, very hot on the cable sector, and the stocks reached all-time highs. Since then, with some corrections that we've seen in the Internet and whatnot, the cable companies have come down really hard and, frankly, without really negative news-flow from an operating perspective, and my feeling is that we've way overshot on the downside and, that generally speaking, the cable industry is a sector that we think has a lot of upside for investors here in Europe. We think that for the cable industry, the fall along with Internet companies didn't make a lot of sense given that cable companies typically are producing EBIDTA and that they have high-barriers to entry having built systems. We think that their systems are going to have good growth going forward. We think the collapse in the stock prices has created a pretty interesting opportunities.

Tickers included in this excerpt: BSY.L

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This interview is a small excerpt from a comprehensive interview published in The Wall Street Transcript on 08/16/00. For more information call (212) 952 7400. The Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does not make stock recommendations.

Copyright 2000, Wall Street Transcript Corp.

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