ITV must now be a bargain. The current team clearly are an issue but you'd think the big American companies would recognise the bargain.

The yield is also high and can be reinvested. That really does limit the down side. You can even win here if it drops further!

http://www.moneyam.com/action/news/showArticle?id=5083521

Adam Crozier, ITV plc Chief Executive, said:

"ITV made further strong progress in the first half of the year as we continued to grow and rebalance the company creatively and commercially. All parts of the business performed well with external revenue up 11% to £1.36bn and we delivered another period of double digit profit growth up 24% to £400m.

We continue to grow non advertising revenue with Online, Pay & Interactive revenue up 27% and ITV Studios revenue up 23%, driven by organic growth and through our acquired businesses.

More than half of ITV Studios revenue now comes from outside the UK and we further reinforced our position as a leading international producer with the acquisition of Talpa Media. We have also continued to strengthen our UK studios business with the acquisitions of Mammoth Screen and Twofour Group.

Our Broadcast & Online business remains strong with profit up 26% to £315m and revenue up 6% to £1.04bn, helped by 5% growth in advertising revenue and the launch of our pay channel ITV Encore.

ITV Family share of viewing was down 4% in H1 and improving SOV remains a key focus for the year. As previously stated we expect to see improvements in H2 when we have exclusive rights to the Rugby World Cup as well as a strong slate of high quality drama including Jekyll & Hyde, Unforgotten and The Trials of Jimmy Rose.

Looking ahead to 2016 we have now secured the joint rights to Six Nations Rugby to add to our strong schedule of sport, drama and entertainment including the European Football Championships, Beowulf, Britain's Got Talent and Seth MacFarlane's Family Guy and American Dad.

Our outlook for the remainder of this year is unchanged and we expect to deliver another strong performance in 2015."

28 Jul Investec N/A Hold
28 Jul Numis 300.00 Add

29 Jul Nomura 285.00 Buy
29 Jul Deutsche Bank 220.00 Sell
29 Jul Barclays... 270.00 Equal weight
29 Jul JP Morgan... 312.00 Overweight

Short term target 281p

Billionaire John Malone’s Liberty Global Plc increased its stake in U.K. broadcaster ITV Plc to just under 10 percent.

London-based Liberty Global acquired 138.7 million ITV shares, taking its holding to 9.9 percent, it said in a statement Friday. No financial details are given. At market price, the additional stake has a value of about 380 million pounds ($593 million). Liberty Global said it has no plans to make a full takeover offer.

“This investment remains an opportunistic one for us in our largest market,” Liberty Global Chief Executive Officer Mike Fries said in the statement.

Liberty Global said it had entered into a hedging transaction at the same time over the ITV shares and obtained further financing from its hedge counterparty. The deal would “result in net cash being released to Liberty Global,” it said.

Sold @ 281

Did exactly the same alders but not all :0)

Could ITV become a bid target?
Virgin Media owner Liberty Gold has increased its stake in broadcaster ITV (ITV) as speculation about a government sale of Channel 4 mounts.

Liberum analyst Ian Whittaker reiterated his ‘buy’ recommendation and target price of 330p on the shares as the prospect of the government allowing retransmission fees – fees to public service broadcasters from the pay-TV operators who show their channels - grows. Shares in ITV fell 0.6% to 279p yesterday.

‘The Financial Times has raised the possibility the government may sell Channel 4,’ he said. ‘One way to increase sale proceeds significantly would be to allow Channel 4 to charge retransmission revenues for its main channel.

‘The implications of this may explain why Liberty Global has increased its stake in ITV now…For any acquirer looking to purchase ITV, the optimal point is to buy ITV when retransmission revenues are looking increasingly likely but are not yet reflected in the share price or estimates.

‘In this regard, Liberty Global’s increase in its ITV stake from 6.4% to 9.9%, at the very least, suggests it thinks a bidder may be more likely.’

hxxp://citywire.co.uk/money/the-expert-view-hsbc-bg-and-itv/a830697?ref=citywire-money-latest-news-list#i=4

an interesting thought ...... intrinsically, it's not the most exciting of stocks, though i made an adequate turn on it back in april

Liberum note:
"ITV (TOP PICK, 330P TARGET PRICE, BUY): ITV down today on the read-across from US media names that have got smashed in recent days on advertising fears plus a negative spin being put on some of the data from the annual Ofcom Communications Report released yesterday. This is a good buying opportunity and would highlight several reasons why the negative read-acrosses are overdone:
(1) US TV market very different from UK / Europe – channels show a lot more advertising (greater than 20 mins per hr) giving consumers a big incentive to switch off especially given the high cable fees;
(2) the US broadcasters have been awful at developing affiliate channels to capture fragmentation – the UK / European broadcasters, on the other hand, have been very good
(3) greater degree of channel fragmentation in the US – in the UK, greater than 60% of viewing on Sky is still of the 5 main channels;
(4) Ofcom data shows TV still very strong and changes are incremental not sharp drops – TV would be the most missed product if unavailable (37%); minutes watching TV per day in 2014 barely below 2009 (220 vs. 225 – important as suggests TV viewing declines from 2010 more cyclical than structural in drivers i.e. people spending less time in the home); time-shifting is genre based not out of a desire to avoid adverts and gradual increase is driven by more penetration of time-shifted devices not more time-shifting watched per consumer."

Knee jerk reaction, mostly profit taking. Good opportunity to add which I did.

Chris

That's what i thought , got stopped out at 272 , back in @263, after reading the broker and city pages over the weekend punter's will rush back in.

ITV (TOP PICK, 330P TARGET PRICE, BUY): ITV down today on the read-across from US media names that have got smashed in recent days on advertising fears plus a negative spin being put on some of the data from the annual Ofcom Communications Report released yesterday. This is a good buying opportunity and would highlight several reasons why the negative read-acrosses are overdone:

(1) US TV market very different from UK / Europe – channels show a lot more advertising (greater than 20 mins per hr) giving consumers a big incentive to switch off especially given the high cable fees;
(2) the US broadcasters have been awful at developing affiliate channels to capture fragmentation – the UK / European broadcasters, on the other hand, have been very good
(3) greater degree of channel fragmentation in the US – in the UK, greater than 60% of viewing on Sky is still of the 5 main channels;
(4) Ofcom data shows TV still very strong and changes are incremental not sharp drops – TV would be the most missed product if unavailable (37%); minutes watching TV per day in 2014 barely below 2009 (220 vs. 225 – important as suggests TV viewing declines from 2010 more cyclical than structural in drivers i.e. people spending less time in the home); time-shifting is genre based not out of a desire to avoid adverts and gradual increase is driven by more penetration of time-shifted devices not more time-shifting watched per consumer."

ITV to open higher tomorrow

Got that wrong

Talk that Time Warner might be looking at ITV and Sky
Financial Times‎ - 18 hours ago
ITV rallied after Time Warner's finance officer said the US media group was considering overseas acquisitions.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2015-08-14/why-apple-wants-a-live-tv-service

Did he mention ITV ?

In part because of its focus on self-made content, HBO’s operating margin of 35 per cent is four times that of Netflix. After accounting for the cash costs of acquiring external content, Netflix is merely cash flow break even. Time Warner has been an excellent builder. But sometimes the only way to get on to a nice street is to buy.