Here are the lists for 2007 and 2008. Enjoy our Top 10 predictions for 2009, below:
1. Corporate Development: Shotgun Marriages
1.1. Consolidate or Liquidate: 90% of UGC and social media startups will shut down.
There are too many out there, so none will be able to charge for services. But excess supply of advertising inventory and questionable ad quality will make it impossible to finance. Combined with VCs having to “align” their own businesses… the combined effect is that they will be forced to consolidate or liquidate and the result will be simple: 99% of UGC and social media sites will shut down.
It won’t just be the startups: AOL is shutting down its UGC video site.
1.2. Microsoft’s Acquisition Binge
MSFT, whose $31/share offer for Yahoo! was rebuffed, will have to choose whether it will
- hoard cash
- pay out a dividend
- acquire other firms.
Considering that private companies like Facebook, Slide, Ning have raised massive money but won’t be able to generate the kind of returns investors want, I can see some selling for less than their last valuations. But few companies can pay such prices, and MSFT is one of a few.
There are also notable publicly traded firms who have seen their valuations take a tumble: Yahoo!, Time Warner’s AOL are just two examples.
1.3. Divestments
There are too may storylines here, but expect a pack of companies to be spun off, or sold, to raise funds and reduce debt loads.
- Will GE unloads NBC?
- Will eBay sells Skype to Google?
- Will News Corp.’s Fox Interactive Media spins off MySpace.com or sell IGN Entertainment?
1.4. Mergers
Companies don’t like to capitulate when their stocks are down, but with slower sales and the light at the end of the tunnel resembling an oncoming train, a lot of companies will try to hook up with one another to avoid…
Get ready for the Great Merger Movement II. Here is a brief recap of Part I, from Wikipedia.org:
The Great Merger Movement was a predominantly U.S. business phenomenon that happened from 1895 to 1905. During this time, small firms with little market share consolidated with similar firms to form large, powerful institutions that dominated their markets. The vehicle used were so-called trusts. To truly understand how large this movement was—in 1900 the value of firms acquired in mergers was 20% of GDP. In 1990 the value was only 3% and from 1998–2000 is was around 10–11% of GDP. Organizations that commanded the greatest share of the market in 1905 saw that command disintegrate by 1929 as smaller competitors joined forces with each other.
Viacom and CBS might merge back together, it can happen.
2. Chapter 11: the new Buzz word
Some of these companies will have no choice but to file for Chapter 11: we’ve heard about GM and New York Times, but expect many more. The main reason for this is that raising money will become very hard and as debt matures and comes up for renewal… a few companies will be swayed to file for protection.
3. Digital Media Mojo
3.1. Small Acquisitions Bring Liquidity to Few
The first wave of digital media and content companies will start to get acquired by media companies, who will have cash on hand and need to make up for the layoffs (and reduced headcount and resources) by acq-hiring firms. As consumers and marketers continue to shift to the Web, media companies will have no choice but to adapt, too. While this sounds surprising considering the fact that most layoffs in the media space have yet to come, just think back to Advertising.com’s $435M acquisition by Time Warner even after its disastrous merger with AOL. The writing was on the wall.
3.2. Taking a Negative and Turning it into a Positive
Seeing some of these exits will encourage VCs to invest in media and content, too. For two years now, I’ve been saying that VCs would be looking at investing in video content.
- Next Wave of VC Interest in Online Video: Content - August 2007
- Digital media content investments gain momentum - March 2008
- Rise of digital media content funds - April 2008
It failed to materialize to the extent I expected. Meanwhile, online video ads reduced in projections when eMarketer revised downwards its figures for 2008 online video advertising revenues down from $1.35B to a paltry $550M.
Do you see any connection? After all, if UGC was working with marketers, AOL would not be shutting down its service, would it? I’m just saying…
In this context, I see many of the victims of media company layoffs raise money from investors who finally realize the importance of backing content-based companies because that is what advertisers want, after having resoundingly rejected UGC. Yet video will be central to the Web for the decade to come, if not forever.
Few of these companies will actually take off; the DNA of a career media guy is very different from that of a startup, but the Dark Ages of traditional media - which we are very much in the beginning of - will produce a few successes in the next decade.
As the Web continues to grow long-term thanks to strong secular trends, more and more media and content companies will pop up.
3.3. Print’s Last Stand
The Web’s early adopters might turn less and less to print - or tangible - media… but there will be takers, for sure. So while print media won’t die, it will clearly continue to shrink, even amongst more mainstream users who have hitherto maintained subscriptions and found digital media challenging to consume. This all changes, as products like the Kindle, iPod et al. continue to shift consumers’ behavior and companies’ product lines.
The fact remains that the economic slowdown, or full blown recession come 2009, will adversely affect all traditional media. TV will survive, radio will hobble on forward, but print will be forced to slash its own ambitions. Newspaper companies will lay off at least 50% more headcount as revenues fall by 50% by end of year 2009.
3.4. Digitization of Industry Accelerates
All companies will be forced to adapt, case study: the UPS/DHL/Fedex firms will go digital.
Companies like Rapidshare, Megaupload, Filefactory, YouSendIt, etc. will consolidate, some of which will be acquired by the likes of UPS, DHL and Fedex, who in the middle of a recession and reduced volume will look at repositioning themselves for the digital era.
4 - Home Entertainment
4.1. Digital Entertainment Becomes a Cash Cow
The mere notion of paying $15 for a movie ticket at the local theater becomes unheard of. Firms like Netflix and Amazon.com continue to offer more options to consumers at a time when rising unemployment and reduced discretionary income forces consumers to reduce their own spending.
As we’ve seen with the resiliency of video game title and console sales, anything that pertains to the consumption of entertainment at home will take off. This is probably why I am so bullish for our own company’s prospects at WatchMojo.com.
4.2. Apple as Media Company
This also explains why Apple moves more and more into connecting and serving users at home with digital and mobile entertainment.
Sitting on $25B of cash and seeing the iPhone continue to generate massive sales, Apple will move more and more into media. By year’s end, it will have started development or launched: a portal (Me.com?), a Web/media browser and something resembling a search engine. In fact, this is not that much of a stretch, considering the success of iTunes. Over time, the iPhone will become the mobile computing platform and international adoption will propel Apple into a web media company as much as it will be seen as a technology company.
4.3. Microsoft’s New Front
Microsoft becomes a bit less obsessed with Google and more obsessed with Apple.
5. Open Source Godzilla
5.1. Mozilla Begins to Worry MSFT
Mozilla crosses 25% market share by mid-year and edges close to 30% by the fall. Open source continues to make inroads as people look to save setup costs and reduce ongoing fees related to IT.
5.2. Investors Back Open Source Projects
Seeing this adoption and the fact that early open source companies are trying to develop commercial revenue streams, new open source projects begin to pop up.
6. Less is More
6.1. Fundraising
As liquidity and credit tighten, cash becomes a scarce commodity; meanwhile, equity prices continue to fall. As a result, companies want to sell less equity and financiers want to part with less cash.
Financing rounds become less massive. Blip.tv raised $10M in Series A last year, its Series B was smaller, at $5.6M. Historically, the amount of money companies raised rose as the letters got further and further away from A.
6.2. Free Don’t Pay the Bills
Companies giving away free services will start to push paid services, preferring less paid users than more unpaid users. We sort of did this ourselves: turning away from some unpaid,speculative revenue share distribution deals and opting for less, paid licensing deals. Had we not done that, we might have very well been kiboshed ourselves. But having done that, we rode out our early years and now have enough business across enough partnerships to survive (hopefully).
Google will unceremoniously begin to shutter some of their free services that failed to make a dent.
6.3. Low Burn Rates
Companies with low burn rates will command a premium. Sure, the cost of capital will be dirt cheap, but access to it will be harder than ever.
7. “Web 2.0″ is the new “dot com”
A couple of years ago, VCs were only looking for web 2.0 projects and revenues were for losers. It was all about growth, adoption and eyeballs. Sounds familiar? Yep. In 2009, web 2.0 will be mocked and ridiculed just as dot com is today. Why this is so, well, this fellow has already covered it.
8. Shakedown in VC Space
We’ve already seen how VCs are now taking in more money than they are creating. We’ve also seen that many of these funds are being shopped around for 50% of their value. As VC firms themselves start to lay off staff and their own investors (limited partners) fail to meet investment commitments, you will see a considerable shakedown in the VC space that will force a domino effect in many industries including the Web.
Some VCs will be taken over by Private Equity (PE) firms, outright. More on this below.
9. It Will Get Worst, Much Worst, Before It Stabilizes
It might sound impossible, but we’re going to see far more layoffs in 2009 than we are seeing in 2008. Just tomorrow, Citi is expected to announce 40,000 more cuts.
What I’ve seen from my own dealings is that companies are only as bullish as their stock prices let them be. While stock prices have taken a haircut, the worst is yet to come. I sold all of my shares in May 2008 and don’t dare tread back in. I do not see anything changing any time soon.
The housing market in the US really only crumbled in late 2007 - early 2008.
When Bear Stearns was “allowed” to fail in Spring 2008, the stock market did not even blink. It was only in mid-September, when Lehman Bros. was allowed to go under, that the markets began to undergo massive volatility and acommensurate decline.
Until that time, the stock market was still in denial. No more.
The stock market has tanked some 40% but most people expect a floor at around 7,000-7,500 for the DJIA. But selloffs always overshoot, so it can go lower throughout 2009. As impossible as this sounds, the reality is that most investors are levered so they will be forced to sell off to meet margin calls. It becomes a vicious cycle.
However, consumer spending is only starting to slow down: Best Buy said this is the most challenging economic times ever. Circuit City filed for Chapter 11. GM is selling 35% less cars.
Since a stock price is a reflection of future earnings, I have some bad news for you: most stock prices and earnings estimates don’t yet account for the massive slowdown we’re seeing. Once consumers in the US buy less and economists and analysts update their models, at that point will their earnings really be adjusted downwards and only then will stock prices fall to adjust for this reduced growth.
I know: information is already baked in the stock. Not sure. This is why those in industry are adjusting far more quickly than investors. The reason why media is announcing layoffs right and left is because they’re seeing a drastic reduction in advertising (Conde Nast unit Wired.com announced “unexpected layoffs”, for example) which comes as a result of drastic and sudden loss of business from retailers, etc. So yes, the impact from marketers in finance is baked into media stocks, but not from advertisers in other industries that are just now feeling the heat.
All of a sudden, the specter of Dow dipping below 7,000 does not seem so preposterous. At that point, the index might be oversold and perhaps, just perhaps, we can talk about recovery and bargains. Dow last hit 7,000 in the 1990s. Then again, MSFT is trading where it was last decade, too. Do the math and expect a worse case scenario and suddenly I am being bullish.
As a former investor whose idea of a hobby was to plunk down five-digit bets on stocks before their earnings were announced, let me tell you: if you can allow yourself to avoid the stock market, do so. Stocks will get cheaper, far cheaper, before they get better.
The problem is that with so much wealth being tied up in paper assets, the vicious spiral really gets deadly, especially when real estate provides no safe haven either.
10. Return of Private Equity
As interest rates continune to get slashed, then the cost of capital becomes lower. Combined with the fact that valuations are at an all-time low, then I suspect that private equity will come back stronger than ever. Now there is a nuance here: some PE firms have made bets that will be hard to profit from. Indeed if a PE firm invested at the peak - be it in real estate, retail or especially finance - that PE firm might go down under. But in a macro, market or systematic sense, the private equity approach of leveraging cheap credit, buying low and sellingin the long term will be stronger than ever.
What do you think?
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