| |
| |
 |
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
SINGAPORE: Shares of MobileOne rallied two per cent on Monday as the market reacted to news last week that pay TV providers must share exclusive content.
Analysts said with the playing field levelled, the door is open for smaller players like M1 to enter the pay TV market with little capital expenditure.
Shares of SingTel and StarHub, which dominate the market currently, were mixed.
Exclusive content like the English Premier League will now have to be shared between pay TV providers, according to a government announcement last Friday.
And M1 shares pulled ahead on the news, with the counter closing up two per cent at S$2.12 on Monday.
Analysts said there are expectations that M1 can move into the pay TV space without the hefty costs associated with acquiring exclusive content.
Ng Kian Teck, investment analyst, SIAS Research, said: "Because their market size is actually zero now, relative to StarHub which has about 500,000 subscribers, SingTel having about 155,000 subscribers, M1 actually has very good room to grow. We see potential improvement in their earnings per share going forward in 2010 and 2011."
SingTel shares slipped one per cent to S$3.11 while StarHub inched up half a percent to S$2.21.
But analysts said SingTel's diverse business will give it the muscle to outlast its competitors in the long term.
Foong King Yew, research director, Gartner Research, said: "SingTel clearly has a very strong cash flow. It has been able to reply on income from its mobile associates in India, Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia.
“SingTel will of course be able to sustain a bruising price war should it come to that in the market given the levelled playing field which we expect moving forward."
Analysts said StarHub has the biggest challenge ahead because its key market is Singapore, which is saturated, leaving it little room to grow.
But experts said non-exclusivity could work against M1.
With the barrier of entry so low, and with Singapore's next generation broadband network coming online by 2012, bringing with it new market entrants, these new players could end up squeezing M1 out of its slice of the already limited Singapore pie. - CNA/vm
|
