WeekWatch for 18th November 2019
Balina Rai (Dhesi)
Wealth Management Consultant at Lawrence Neil Wealth Management Limited
Back in 2004, Blockbuster Video boasted 9,000 stores worldwide. Today, a single franchise in Bend, Oregon is all that remains. As the company’s longstanding advertising jingle had it ... what a difference.
Among the reasons for its demise, the rise of Netflix must surely rankle the most with Blockbuster’s former top brass. In 2000, Blockbuster turned down the chance to buy the fledgling video streamer, then just three years old, for $50 million. But Netflix has everyone’s attention now. It has a market capitalisation of $124 billion and its customers watch, in aggregate, 165 million hours of Netflix content a day.
If you can’t join ’em, beat ’em. Last week saw a new streaming service go live: Disney+; Disney’s share price rose following the announcement. (In response, Netflix announced a new partnership with Nickelodeon.) Disney was just one of the reasons that the S&P 500 struck another all-time high last week, clocking its sixth consecutive week of gains – the longest run of weekly gains since 2017.