UMG’s buoyant stock debut is a new chapter for the music business

Universal Music Group (UMG) had an extremely positive first day of trading as a standalone entity, with shares at one stage trading 35% up from their reference point and making the market cap leap to $55 billion, while former-parent, Vivendi, saw a drop of two thirds in its value. Prior to the first day of trading, there were questions over whether Vivendi had pushed the indicative value of UMG shares too high, due to, in part, a series of UMG equity sell offs – but day one suggests that pent-up demand was sufficiently high to negate those concerns. Meanwhile, Warner Music Group’s (WMG) stock also surged, showing that investors see this as a market dynamic rather than a pure company dynamic. So, what is going on? Why is there so much investor enthusiasm in the music industry? The answers lie in the two-tier narrative that is building around today’s music business.

If the UMG listing had happened as recently as two years ago, we probably would not be talking about such a stellar trading debut. The fact that we are doing so now is because the music market has moved on a lot since then – and I mean a lot. This is what the music market looked like in September 2019:

·      Spotify had only just closed down its direct artists platform – the first to blink in its contest against the labels to decide who would be the future of the music business

·      Hipgnosis had not yet moved to the premium segment of the London Stock Exchange (it did so in November). 2019 was the year in which catalogue M+A first truly lifted off, with $4.2 billion of deals compared to $2.6 billion in 2018

·      Article 13 had only just been put into the legislative process in April

·      Downtown Music Holdings had only recently acquired AVL (CD Baby etc) in March 2019

·      Marshmello had kicked off the music / games cross over boom with his Fortnite event in February 2019

·      TikTok passed 500 million global users and had just 4% US penetration in Q2 19, compared to 44% in Q2 21

For those deep in the music business, it is sometimes hard to appreciate just how much change has happened in such a short period of time. As CS Lewis once wrote: Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back everything is different? Crucially for UMG’s listing, these changes have contributed to a major shift in the music industry’s metanarrative for investors:

·      2019: The Spotify vs the labels narrative was in full swing. Investors viewed the market through the lens of ‘rights vs distribution’. They were backing Spotify against UMG, vice versa or simply backing both horses in the race as a sector hedge. Record labels looked vulnerable in a market which was dominated by digital service provider (DSP) growth, which, in turn, was dominated by Spotify. Streaming’s future was bright, but there was a risk that as streaming got bigger, the labels would get weaker.

·      2020: Streaming revenues continue to grow strongly, up 18.3% in 2020 with 467 million subscribers, and up a further 25.9% in H1 21 in the US. But, crucially, the market is diversifying beyond DSPs. New growth drivers (social, short-form video, games, fitness, and mindfulness) are now making a truly meaningful contribution to label revenues (around $1.5bn in 2020). Music is becoming the soundtrack to the new digital entertainment universe. Vitally, unlike the traditional approach of sync (an ad hoc model that struggles to be agile and to scale), the labels are applying scalable licenses, born out of the DSP model, to ensure music rights can be agile enough to grow with the fast-changing digital entertainment marketplace. On top of this, a) the catalogue M+A boom has established music as an investor asset class, b) recorded music grew during the pandemic while live declined, thus demonstrating it to be the most resilient component of the wider music industry. The outlook for music is now a multi-layered narrative, with DSPs still centre stage but no longer the only game in town.

What this all means is that music rights are a compelling investment proposition for bigger institutional investors. However, the thing about bigger institutional investors is that they typically like to invest in big established companies. So, looking at the marketplace, unless an investor wants to build a catalogue investment fund (which is a highly specialised approach), there are not many big companies to invest in. WMG is the smallest major, Sony Music is just one smallish part of the Sony Corporation, and Believe is an indie label. So, while those are still interesting options for investors, the opportunity to invest into the world’s largest music company was previously the exclusive domain of a few large investors. Now, finally, everyone can have a part of UMG. 

So, what we have is the confluence of two factors:

·      Pent-up investor demand

·      A compelling and diversified industry narrative

The timing for UMG is perfect, but, of course, it has not been a neutral player simply watching the sands shift. It has actively driven this narrative, not just through what Sir Lucian Grainge and other executives have been telling the market, but also through its succession of equity transactions which helped build demand and value recognition. Part of the reason UMG is the world’s biggest music group is because it is the world’s biggest music group. It uses its scale and influence to help shape the market and its future trajectory. This is arguably one of UMG’s most valuable assets: it exercises control over its own destiny.

Whether UMG’s share price falls or whether it grows in the coming weeks, the listing represents a high water mark for the music business as an asset class and may well be reflected upon as a useful bookend for one phase of the music business as another emerges.