Kuala Lumpur, Jan 7 – The 20th edition of the FIFA World Cup final in Brazil this year and the Visit Malaysia Year 2014 campaign could boost the media sector this year in providing a positive lift to consumer sentiment.
Beside the two “feel good” factors, the traditional Chinese New Year festival may also provide a short-term lift to the ads spend, Kenanga Research said in a note Monday.
“While we are projecting total gross adex growth of +6.8 per cent on a year-on-year basis in the calendar year 2014, there is a potential downward revision, should the negative impact come in worse than our expectation,” it added.
Kenanga Research downgraded the sector to “underweight” this year in view of the challenging adex outlook and lack of a key re-rating catalyst.
Meanwhile, the research house expects the first quarter of 2014 to be lacklustre in view of the absence of key events and the seasonality factor.
Most advertisers tend to conserve their advertising and promotion budget for the first two months of a new year and renegotiate new advertisement rates, it said.
In addition, the newsprint anti-dumping policy by Canada, Indonesia, South Korea, the Philippines and the US, is due for a review.
“Should there be any reduction or termination of the anti-dumping policy, it could provide some downward pressure on the domestic newsprint price and thus benefit the incumbents,” said Kenanga Research.
For the TV segment, the research house opined that any solid progress on the upcoming announcement of the digital terrestrial television broadcasting project could move the segment into a new era, especially for pay-TV.
-Bernama
