CBS’ Earnings Projections Take Big Hit As Network’s NFL Sunday Ratings Crash 17% from Last Year

AP Richard Drew
AP Photo/Richard Drew

The NFL is scheduled to have a meeting on Tuesday to discuss, as Commissioner Goodell puts it, moving “past the anthem controversy.” For CBS, the NFL couldn’t move past the anthem controversy fast enough.

According to Credit Suisse, CBS’ plummeting NFL television ratings will have a direct impact on the company’s earnings.

Credit Suisse cut CBS’ third quarter EPS estimates by 5 percent, due to the network’s struggling Sunday NFL ratings.

According to Credit Suisse analyst Omar Sheikh, “We expect third-quarter network advertising to decline 3 percent (previously +1 percent), driven by soft ratings for both the summer schedule and for the start of the NFL season. With only one of the three content licensing deals we expected for the second half announced in third quarter, we also expect content licensing revenue growth to be skewed to the fourth quarter.”

According to CNBC, “Sheikh maintained his outperform rating and price target on CBS shares, which remains at $75, or 32 percent upside from Friday’s close. He cut his third-quarter EPS estimate to $1.08, below Street consensus estimate of $1.12 from FactSet.

“The analyst said CBS’ Sunday NFL ratings are down 17 percent year over year during the first several weeks of the football season, according to the report. Sheikh released a similar report last week on Twenty-First Century Fox’s earnings, which he also expects to disappoint thanks to weaker ratings by the NFL.”

With earnings projections like these, it’s no wonder that networks recently stopped broadcasting the anthem protests. Of course, these same networks were only too happy to show the anthem protests when they first began. Primarily due to the fact that something newsworthy was happening, and, of course, they agreed with Colin Kaepernick. Now the Frankenstein they’ve created has turned on them.

If only someone had warned them…

 

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