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December 12, 2019Australia fixed broadband pricing trends – price differentials [...]
Focus Report, ReportsBroadband services are critical enablers for access to information, employment, markets and key services. Consumer demand for broadband services has grown rapidly in the last decade with household penetration increasing to 85% in 2017 compared to 64% in 2009. This report analyses the competitive environment in the fixed broadband market and focuses on consumer price trends in the fixed broadband market for the NBN. In particular, we analyse the major RSPs – Telstra, Optus, TPG and Aussie Broadband to evaluate their broadband offerings in the retail market.
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December 2, 2019Telstra FY19 Investor Day – InfraCo, Enterprise and 5G to remai [...]
Flash Report, ReportsTelstra held is annual Investor Day event on 27th November 2019. Telstra CEO Andy Penn and senior management covered off progress on its T22 strategy, financial and earnings outlook, changing dynamics in the Enterprise market, progress on the 5G rollout, entry into gaming and changes to InfraCo. In this report, we have analysed some of the key announcements from the event and provided our take on the same. -
November 27, 2019Australia Out-of-Home Market Outlook
Market Outlook, ReportsThe Australian Out-of-Home (OoH) market has been growing continuously for the past eight years at a CAGR of about 9%. Going forward, we expect the OoH market to grow at a 5.4% CAGR through to 2023. This growth will be primarily driven by growth of Digital Out-of-Home, which will be further driven by improving programmatic advertising and new and innovative audience targeting solutions. We forecast that Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) will grow at a 14.3% CAGR from 2018 to 2023, reaching A$869mn by 2023 and representing 76.5% of the overall OOH advertising expenditure, while Physical OOH will decline at a -9.2% CAGR from 2018 to 2023, reaching A$275mn by 2023 and representing only 23.5% of overall OOH revenues.
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November 21, 2019UBS Australasia Conference 2019: AI, Cyber Security, Digital Heal [...]
Flash Report, Free Sample, ReportsUBS held its annual Australasia investors conference over 18th and 19th November in Sydney, with a number of interesting panels across the two days. Venture Insights moderated the Cyber Security panel and attended a number of sessions over the two days. The sessions covered a variety of topical themes that included - China: trade, tech and capital flows, Artificial Intelligence, Clean Energy policy settings, Robotics, Autonomous vehicles, Cyber threat to Australian businesses, the limitations of monetary policy, cell and gene therapy, digital healthcare, sustainability trends, millennials, fintech investment trends and how tech giants are dealing with the techlash. In this report we highlight the key takeaways from the sessions on artificial intelligence, cyber security, digital health and fintech investment trends. -
November 19, 2019Health tech making big inroads in Australia’s health sector
Focus Report, ReportsVenture Insights believes that increases in Australian health costs are unsustainable into the medium term. Health costs are on the rise, with the FY17 real rate of growth for health spending increasing to 4.7%, relative to the 5-year average of 3.1%. Given that health costs exceed inflation and growth in GDP, it is only natural that Federal and State governments will either need to restrict their services or find substantial productivity gains to maintain health services over the medium and longer term. In this report we explore the roll of health platforms to deliver productivity gains. Telstra Health having invested around $235 million on various platforms and software is arguably the largest of any such players in the Australia market. Is Telstra the natural party to own Telstra Health or is it time that a new owner steps up and takes it to the next phase of its evolution? -
November 14, 2019Webscale Playbook: Baidu
Focus Report, ReportsBaidu, often referred to as “China’s Google”, is embarking on a new journey to pursue growth outside its core search and advertising business. That’s vital as the online advertising business is maturing, yet Baidu continues to rely heavily on it (80% of 2017 revenues). -
November 13, 2019NEXTDC FY19 update: growing fast with the market
Flash Report, ReportsOn 30th October 2019, NEXTDC had its 9th Annual General Meeting. The Australian DC market remains competitive and given the demand most of the DC providers are expected to grow fast. NEXTDC is counting on high growth rate of demand for hyperscale data centres and is clear about its trajectory -
November 8, 2019Streaming wars and the future of Foxtel
Focus Report, ReportsUp until a few years ago, Foxtel has enjoyed an uninterrupted run as the monopoly premium Pay TV provider in Australia. But the arrival of international SVOD players and the rise of local challengers has made a dent in Foxtel’s business.We believe the challenges that Foxtel faces are structural in nature and Foxtel could find it tough to recover lost ground.
October 31, 2019Australian MVNO Market Overview
Focus Report, ReportsOn 29th October 2019, Venture Insights presented their views on the Australian MVNO market at Telstra Wholesale’s Business Connect conference in Sydney.Global MVNO market size is expected to nearly double between 2018 to 2025, growing at CAGR of about 8%.The Australian MVNO market has grown from 1.5m subscribers in 2010 to 3.2m subscribers in 2018. MVNO subscribers have grown at a CAGR of 10% (2011-18) compared with MNO handset subscribers which have grown at a CAGR of 0.9%. However, MVNOs have over 20% in metro areas – demonstrating continued market focus on pricing. In addition, our survey results showed strong future demand for MVNOs. ~40% of metro respondents who were considering shifting, indicating they would select a MVNO. As such, we expect MVNO subscriber market share to continue to rise especially in metro areas. With a focus on niche segments or linkages to strong brands, the test of most MVNOs is (i) how well they know their target customers, (ii) what other services could be bundled and (iii) are there new market segments to target.Sector Telecom.
October 30, 2019Webscale Playbook: Alphabet
Focus Report, ReportsAlphabet is out to prove that it is more than just an advertising business. That’s important as the company remains heavily exposed to ads, which accounted for about 86% of 2017 revenues. Yet, Alphabet is facing new competition in ads from Amazon, plus ongoing regulatory scrutiny in Europe. Fortunately the company is generating incredible amounts of cash each quarter, and now has just under $102B in cash & stocks on hand. That has allowed the company to invest heavily in its network, with capex amounting to a telco-like 17.2% of revenues over the last four quarters. Alphabet also spends another ~15% of revenues on R&D. The goal of these investments is help the company enter (or create) new markets, with less ad-dependent business models. Alphabet’s vast network infra supports the company’s cloud computing and device portfolio, as well as AI-based projects in transportation (Waymo), logistics (Project Wing), and healthcare (Verily). As a result, Alphabet’s network, IT & software capex has soared, to $8.2B over the 4Q17-3Q18 period (from $4.1B the year prior).
October 24, 2019Webscale Playbook: Alibaba
Focus Report, ReportsAlibaba, once viewed as China’s answer to Amazon, has grown into a giant since its inception in 1999. Though still just about a fifth of Amazon’s size (by revenues), Alibaba has grown rapidly and outshines Amazon in some areas. Its scale in e-commerce is impressive: (i) Alibaba ships 12 million packages a day, 4x of Amazon; and, (ii) Alibaba’s “Singles Day” has become the world’s biggest shopping event. Alibaba has invested heavily in network infrastructure to support its businesses, not just e-commerce but also cloud computing, audio/video streaming, and devices. As a result, Alibaba’s network-related demand has soared in the recent times. It now accounts for over 5% of global webscale network/IT capex, from about 1% in 2012. Alibaba’s network spend share will continue to grow, but will be reshaped by the ongoing US-China trade war.
October 22, 2019Programmatic OOH: Coming soon to a billboard near you?
Focus Report, ReportsProgrammatic advertising in OOH is still a new concept in Australia and the groundwork in terms of digitisation and audience measurement is still being laid. While, many OOH players have introduced their version of programmatic advertising, the risk of having a fragmented market with multiple proprietary systems means that programmatic OOH may fail to take off. Outdoor, or out-of-home, advertising is distinct from other forms of advertising. It is highly visible, often very large, and placed in heavily trafficked areas in order to attract as many viewers as possible. Moreover, unlike television, radio, print, internet, and mail advertising, outdoor advertising cannot be turned off, put away or easily avoided. Traditionally OOH was mostly a real estate or location play but with digitisation, it’s now becoming increasingly focused on audience targeting and improving engagement. Industry players are looking to bring additional functionality, formatting and effectiveness to advertisers beyond just digitising existing sites, along with investing in improving measurement technology to help build further advertiser confidence in out-of-home. In particular, programmatic advertising which has transformed the online advertising space could play an important role in the growth of the OOH market going forward. In this report, we explore what programmatic advertising is and the impact it could have on the OOH market. We also look at the key challenges that OOH players face and the risk of Google, a global leader in programmatic advertising, making an entry into the OOH market.Sector Media.
October 17, 2019Global & Australian gaming market trends – mobile, cloud a [...]
Focus Report, Free Sample, ReportsMobile gaming is now the dominant driver in the global gaming market accounting for more revenue than console and PC combined and the majority of all growth. This shift has been enabled by improvements to internet infrastructure, from stronger mobile networks to faster wireline bandwidth to better cloud-based delivery models; however, there hasn’t been a significant amount of direct monetisation by telcos, as they have only dipped their toes, at best, into this new source of demand.Sector Media.
October 16, 2019Webscale Playbook: Amazon
Flash Report, ReportsAmazon has evolved leaps and bounds since its creation. From an online bookstore more than two decades ago, it has become a global internet giant that relies heavily on scale and network infrastructure for its diverse businesses. At present, the company’s businesses beyond e-commerce include physical stores, cloud computing, audio/video streaming, advertising, and devices – all of which have millions of customers/users serviced by a strong network infrastructure. The sheer growth across its businesses in the recent years has primed Amazon as one of the leading operators in the network space. Naturally, to cope up with its ever increasing network-related demand, the company is not just spending massively to shore up its infrastructure through vendor partnerships but could be mulling to build some on its own, especially on the hardware side. Below are a few key highlights from the report: As a percentage of revenues, Amazon spends more on R&D than capex, which is typical of WNOs. The gap between the two spending, however, is somewhat shrinking which goes to show Amazon’s greater efforts in building datacenters and warehouses in the recent years. Amazon also emerged as the top R&D spender among WNOs over the past two years, due to Prime Video. Amazon currently manufactures some of the network components such as routers, chips, network interface cards, and network gears to meet the growing needs of its cloud business (AWS). The internet giant, known for disruption, could foray into the enterprise networking market and sell its own custom-made hardware by 2020, taking the incumbent network vendors head-on. However, Amazon is also creating a host of new opportunities for network vendors, as it looks to disrupt different industries such as automotive (driverless cars) and healthcare (online pharmacy and heart-rate detection device), both requiring a strong network infrastructure to enable data transfers and communication between sensors and components.October 15, 2019Shared Infrastructure Models and O-RAN Vendor Disruption
Focus Report, ReportsWith mobile network operators facing increased network spend and still defining incremental 5G revenue opportunities, Venture Insights believes it is time to look again at network sharing models. In particular we believe a focus on regional RAN sharing and small cells may be targets for either joint venture or neutral host players. Venture estimates that Government (States/Federal) and Industry spend at the end of round 6 of the blackspot program could be as high as $1.2B. Plus there is additional regional connectivity spending from states around Australia. Examples of blackspot funding for regional rail projects highlight the lack of benefits for all end customers from non-shared network projects versus shared. If Governments continue to heavily subsidise regional network coverage then they should consider the customer benefits of active RAN infrastructure sharing and the use of train repeaters to maximise investment outcomes. In addition, since these networks are capable of wireless and fixed wireless solutions, these network models should also consider the role of NBN.Sector Telecom.
October 8, 2019Australian Data Centres and Submarine Cables Report
Market Outlook, ReportsThe Australian data centre (DC) market is rapidly expanding, forecast to reach over A$3bn by 2026 with nearly 1,200 MW of capacity. Current revenues are A$1.5bn with 530 MW capacity. Currently, a majority of data stored in outsourced DCs are from enterprise and government clients. However, the market is moving towards the hyperscale segment, due to ongoing shift to cloud-based computing. We predict hyperscale to generate 35% of total DC revenue in 2026, occupying 50% of total supply. The major providers of DC capacity in Australia are a mix of international players and Australian based DC specialists. We predict that relative market shares of these players will converge over time due to relatively small areas of product and service differentiation.Driving the DC market is the submarine cable industry with four new cables planned. Perth and Brisbane are key growth areas, while Sydney will continue to remain the market leader by a large margin. A cable landing station was completed in Sunshine Coast in September 2019.
October 4, 2019Follow the Money – Australian VC in Tech
Focus Report, ReportsVenture Capital funding continues to offer potential for growth in Australia, despite reaching new peaks in aggregate capital in 2018. Overseas funds continue to maintain their contribution levels to total funding, while local institutions have also joined the fray. Australian has a thriving startup ecosystem which is driving growth across all parameters such as funds raised, funds deployed, revenue metrices and exits.
September 25, 2019eSports and 5G – can telcos cash in…
Focus Report, ReportsThe value of the eSports market is growing rapidly with both viewers and the prize money at stake beginning to rival that of traditional sports. With 5G’s ultra-fast data speeds and minimal latencies, there is an opportunity for telcos to carve a piece of this growing market. eSports could therefore emerge as an important use case as telcos look at extracting a revenue premium from their 5G networks. eSports or electronic sports commonly refers to multi-player video games played competitively. Fans can watch professional gamers compete or play themselves. Professional level gamers compete in tournaments, which are hosted at arenas or stadiums in front of a live audience. Games are often broadcast live and many more global eSports fans watch these tournaments remotely by streaming them online. Some of the most notable tournaments include League of Legends, The International, Evolution Championship Series and the Intel Extreme Masters. Most major competitions are generally held in South Korea, Europe, USA and China however eSports tournaments are starting to gain traction across the globe. In the past few years, eSports has seen significant changes from being played in small groups, to occupying world-class stadiums which accommodate tens of thousands of fans, with many more viewers online. The value of the eSports market is growing rapidly with both viewers and the prize money at stake rivalling that of traditional sports. As the first digitally-native sport, eSports is primarily streamed online and is most popular with younger male audiences. With similar properties to traditional sport, the opportunity to engage with these hard-to-reach millennials is appealing to advertisers, traditional broadcasters and traditional sports teams alike. But while eSports viewership is growing, Australian broadcasters have had limited success which has left the door open for Australian telcos to enter this space. Furthermore, the rise of 5G could alter the eSports landscape with higher data speeds, lower latencies and next gen AR and VR gaming platforms. Venture Insights conducted a mobile consumer survey focused on consumers and their eSports viewing and playing habits. In this report, we look at the results from our survey, why and how 5G could play a role in the rise of eSports, the role that telcos could play and global trends on 5G and eSports.
September 19, 2019Use cases for AI in Telco: An era of mainstream adoption
Focus Report, ReportsMany tier 1 telcos have begun to implement AI initiatives to build and operate their network, sell more efficiently and improve the customer support experience. Based on our industry interviews, we expect increasing competitive intensity in the telco market to drive increased adoption of AI beyond the largest incumbents and into RSPs
September 18, 2019The pre-order market has taken off, is consolidation next?
Flash Report, ReportsAustralia’s pre-order market, serviced by players like UberEats, Deliveroo and MenuLog, has grown quickly and is highly competitive. We anticipate the market will experience strong, ongoing growth, market concentration via consolidation as well as horizontal integration. Over the next three years we anticipate that the key players will seek to expand both organically and via acquisition, which will increase the scale and scope of the remaining players. This is likely to be a global phenomenon, though it’s recognised that Australia is an attractive market given its early adoption status.
September 12, 2019Stakeholder management – where to from here?
Focus Report, ReportsThe Business Roundtable (United States), has recently revised its ‘Statement on the Purpose of a Corporation’ and walks away from the age old ‘shareholder primacy’ mantra. This new Statement re-positions the purpose of the corporation to include a focus on all stakeholders, rather than placing shareholders above all others. We believe this represents a significant symbolic turning point and will commence the process towards a new dissertation for the ‘Modern Corporation,’ apt for living in the post-industrial age. Our report revisits this age-old debate and provides insights for technology companies living in the 21st century.
September 11, 2019In Pod we trust? The rise and rise of podcasts, and where to next
Flash Report, ReportsPodcasts have come a long way from being the pet project of some hobbyist with a handful of listeners directly proportional to the number of family members they have. But while podcasts are big news, how many people do they really reach? And how can they be monetised?
September 6, 2019TPG FY19 update – there’s a lot riding on the merger…
Flash Report, ReportsOn 5th September, TPG released its FY19 results. Reported profits plunged 56% to A$174mn in FY19 from A$396mn in FY18, with majority of the drop driven a write down of its spectrum assets. FY20 guidance indicates that TPG is preparing for further earnings pain with EBITDA expected to be in the A$735mn to A$750mn range, about 10% lower than FY19 EBITDA.
September 5, 2019AI in ANZ: Our coolest homegrown startups
Focus Report, ReportsAI is expected to be the next revolution in computing with broad commercial applications. This has resulted in a significant amount of private investment flowing into the industry with funding in ANZ growing by 70% CAGR to reach $48mn.
