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Warner losses up
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 18 November 2010
Warner Music’s losses for the last quarter were higher than expected, with good performance in the UK set off by a bad few months in the US, Japan and mainland Europe. A recent cut in headcount, and the redundancy costs associated with it, also didn’t help.
Losses for the fourth quarter of the major’s current financial year were $46 million, up from $18 million in the same quarter last year. Analysts had been expecting losses to be more than this time last year, but not much more. For the year losses were $143 million, also up from $100 million the previous year.
In an investor call, Warner boss Edgar Bronfman Jr would not be drawn on whether he is plotting a bid for EMI’s recordings business. His company’s continued financial struggles arguably provide a justification for merging the Warner and EMI record labels (economies of scale and all that) though arguably throw some doubt on Warner’s abilities to raise the money to bid.
Bronfman was also a bit vague about his knowledge of and opinions on the arrival of a Google Music service and a US launch of Spotify, though that in itself is a shift, given he previously vowed to not licence a free Spotify service in America. Plus, he confirmed that his company had renewed its licence with Spotify in Europe.
