Sharewatch: New Year’s Optimism Lifts Media Stocks

The media market got off to a positive start in 2003 with WPP seeing shares increase by 2.57% over the festive break. The world’s third largest communications group recently announced that revenues exceeded £1 billion in the third quarter as the global advertising recovery gathered momentum (see WPP Enjoys Healthy Third Quarter).

Carlton and Granada also performed well with shares rising by 2.21% and 1.45% over the same period. The ITV partners recently announced rising profits and the hope to realise cost savings of £100 million from their imminent merger (see Granada And Carlton Reveal New Savings Target).

BSkyB was seen in the spotlight up 0.85% on the end of last year, despite reports the satellite broadcaster is preparing for a boardroom shake-up that could result in a number of non-executive directors being cut in favour of increasing the level of executives on its board.

At the other end of the scale, Kelvin MacKenzie’s Wireless Group dipped by 0.97% despite an increase in publicity surrounding its support of GfK’s contentious electronic audience measurement survey (see MacKenzie Sets Date For RAJAR Court Battle).

The closing prices of media company shares on Friday were: