Spotify subscriber numbers
Spotify’s share price weakened today after it announced that it had added 8m subscribers in the latest quarter, which was at the lower end of its expected range.
The music streaming market leader actually did quite well in other areas such as total monthly users and it also made a smaller operating loss than expected.
Spotify also said that it had negotiated two new licensing deals with partners thought to be Sony and Universal.
It is also continuing to invest in areas outside music, as its relatively recent purchase of podcast start-ups Gimlet Media, Anchor and Parcast shows.
At this stage, it’s probably too early to tell whether this is a blip or a trend, but the best it can do at the moment in its existing markets is NOT to drop the ball on music whilst at the same time broadening the offering to give subscribers fresh new reasons to stay where they are.
The second thing I wanted to talk about today was shopping centre landlord Intu which owns, among other things, Manchester’s Trafford Centre.
Given the current nightmare landscape for retailers, the company said that it is considering raising fresh equity to keep on top of its debt.
Intu posted a loss of £830m in the six months to June – almost double what it was in the same period the year before – and said that it expected rental income to continue falling for the rest of this year and next.
The company says that it is keeping all options open including raising equity.
I personally think this would be disastrous for investors as I suspect the situation will continue to worsen given consumer trends and economic uncertainty.
The double whammy of falling rental income and retail property valuations could send Intu into a tailspin that they can’t get out of and this thing could just end up being a money pit in my opinion.