(Barclays) Vivendi : Despite music

Alongside this report, we publish today our third annual in depth report on the music industry, Dancing days are here again. While the industry is now growing thanks to streaming, music remains an industry in transition with many layers of complexity (cannibalisation, spending skew towards big spenders, risk of disintermediation, appropriate level of royalties to develop a robust streaming ecosystem, emerging market opportunities and value gap among others). Taking all these elements into account, we now forecast the music market to experience a 6% CAGR over the next five years, a more constructive view than before (we had 3% last year). We also study margins in-depth and conclude that margin expansion should only come from operational gearing as opposed to expanding gross margins. While we are more positive on music, Vivendi currently trades at 13.7x 2016E EV/EBITDA, an 11% premium to the sector on 12.3x. This is hard to justify taking into account; (1) lack of visibility on strategy, (2) diversified nature of the assets, (3) cash flow generation characteristics, and (4) question marks on Canal+ turn around. We like UMG but investors are already paying 18x EV/EBITDA for the asset (see Figure 4, page 6). Re-iterate Underweight with unchanged €17.00 target.