BIA Advisory Services reduced its Q2 forecast for local TV advertising by about $1 billion because of COVID-19, said a news release Thursday. The new revenue estimate is $18.5 billion -- $17 billion for over-the-air and $1.5 billion for digital -- down from the $19.4 billion BIA forecast earlier in 2020. “Overall, the numbers still reflect the election year and a slight increase over 2019,” the researcher said. TV stations will have ad decreases from many businesses, but some of those losses will be offset by jumps in political commercials in battleground states, said Chief Economist Mark Fratrik. Local political ad spending will be $7.1 billion through Q4. OTA will get 45.8% of political ad spending. Continued growth in over the top and digital “will help to soften the impact of the pandemic on advertising revenue,” Fratrik said. Retransmissions will generate $10.4 billion of station revenue in 2020, BIA said: “On a market-by-market basis, retransmission fees will continue to rise.”
The Transportation Security Administration is urging but not requiring passengers to wear face masks when they pass through airport security checkpoints, said the agency Thursday in updating COVID-19 protocols. TSA began requiring screening agents to wear face masks earlier this month (see 2005070018). All major U.S. airlines now require passengers to wear masks onboard the aircraft. TSA is partially relaxing limits on what liquids can be carried through the checkpoints to allow each passenger a 12-ounce bottle of hand sanitizer, it said. Other changes include requiring passengers to scan their own boarding passes when going through the screening instead of handing paper or electronic documents to the agent. Missing from the list of new procedures are passenger temperature scans, which TSA previously said were under discussion.
There are “definitely unknowns” about Las Vegas' future, post-pandemic, said Red Rock Resorts CEO Frank Fertitta on a Q1 call Tuesday evening. The hotel-casino owner expects the COVID-19 safeguards all hotels and casinos will put in place “definitely will have friction in terms of the customer experience,” he said. The company canvassed customers, “and I can tell you that about 80% of them were very positive about returning to visit our properties within two weeks of reopening,” he said. “But we also learned that they're very concerned about safety and health.” Red Rock is having all employees tested for COVID-19 and is installing thermal cameras at all entrances, he said. “As we get more testing and information, we'll see that the disease is under control, and slowly but surely, be able to return to a normal operating environment.” Red Rock casinos will reopen with 50% “capacity constraints” in their slots operations, the company’s biggest “profit generator,” he said. “For the most part on slot machines, you typically have people social distancing anyway.” Table games will be “a little bit more challenged,” he said. Having 50% capacity limits in restaurants and bars also “is not going to be helpful,” he said.
Lenovo’s PC manufacturing in China was one of the first in the industry to “resume full production” after the COVID-19 pandemic and achieved “daily, weekly and monthly production records in March,” said CEO Yang Yuanqing on a quarterly call Tuesday. “This helped us meet the strong PC demand, driven by work from home and study at home due to the lockdown.” Lenovo’s PC volume for the year “outgrew the market” by more than 4 percentage points, helped by an 18% sales volume increase in North America, he said. The “clear trend” during global shelter-in-place orders is toward “one PC per person” from one or two per family, said Chief Operating Officer Gianfranco Lanci. “This is going to last,” because people “will continue to work from home even after the crisis,” he said.
Though the tech sector is “not immune to the turbulent operating environment” of COVID-19, technology will be “what modifies the current weakness and drives new demand and business models post-pandemic,” said Analog Devices CEO Vincent Roche on a quarterly call Wednesday. Capacity was reduced at the chipmaker’s “back-end test and assembly sites” in the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore when shelter-in-place mandates were ordered in mid-March, he said. “Once granted essential status, we acted quickly, yet responsibly, to ensure employee safety and improve our capacity.” The factories are running at “normal capacity levels” again, said Roche. “Post-pandemic supply chains will be reimagined and new ones will be built” that are more “flexible” and automated, he said. The stock closed up 7.8% at $114.57.
Dialog Semiconductor pitched its new Wireless Ranging software development kit as a way for companies to ensure safe distances during “controlled reopening” of workplaces as COVID-19 restrictions ease. The DA1469x family of Bluetooth low-energy SoCs have accurate and reliable distance measurement capabilities, said the company, which can help ensure safe distances between employees, along with improved contact tracing capabilities. Dialog’s WiRA SDK improves over current technology, that can experience blocked or reflected signals, by using a “radar-like implementation” that's said to improve distance measurement accuracy between BLE connected devices.
COVID-19 forced cancellation of the Sept. 11-14 IBC2020 in Amsterdam, said event CEO Michael Crimp Monday. “A return to (a new) normal is unlikely to be achieved by September.” The “still many unknowns” make it impossible to “guarantee that we will be able to deliver a safe and valuable event,” he said. “Important aspects of a large-scale event such as IBC will be greatly altered by social distancing, travel restrictions, masks etc. so much so that the spirit of IBC will be compromised.”
Wedbush is expecting a 35% drop in Best Buy revenue when the company reports fiscal Q1 results Thursday, Michael Pachter emailed investors Monday. The analyst expects a 20% falloff in a coming quarter, which could be “too rosy” if a second wave of COVID-19 infections stretches out quarantines, or unemployment causes even more consumers to scale back on discretionary purchases this year. Best Buy has the “right formula for long-term growth,” but negative near-term impact from COVID-19 is "largely unavoidable,” said Pachter. Crediting the retailer for reaching “difficult financial targets it has set for itself year after year,” Pachter referenced various upcoming tech innovations it had positioned itself to benefit from that “will be delayed by supply chain disruptions and muted by a looming recession.” The company likely benefited from home office and gaming equipment demand arising from quarantine orders, said Pachter, who expects store locations to continue the curbside pickup strategy. Restrictions will ease “broadly” in Q3, the analyst forecast, “before rebounding in Q4.” Q1 ended May 2.
LCD fab closures in Korea will “dramatically tighten” the LCD TV supply/demand balance, said Display Supply Chain Consultants in its quarterly capital expenditures report. It’s projecting LCD TV panel oversupplies will decline to 5.9% in 2021 and 3.2% in 2022, from 17.8% this year. COVID-19 will delay the “move-in and install timing” of display production equipment by about six months at LCD fabs in Wuhan, China, the pandemic’s original global epicenter, said DSCC. Most installs at fabs in other parts of China will be delayed about three months because the pandemic forced engineers to return to Japan and Korea in Q1, it said Monday. “It has been challenging to get them to return to China.” They're forced into 14-day quarantines once arriving in China, and then must self-isolate again for two weeks upon returning to their home countries, said DSCC. This affected the last phase of equipment installations at BOE’s “B17" LCD fab in Wuhan, pushing it from 2020 to 2021 and reducing the panel maker’s equipment spending this year by $1.1 billion, it said. With COVID-19 forcing the delay of “tool deliveries” to Q4, DSCC estimates 66% of “equipment revenues on a move-in basis” will occur in 2020's second half.