View Tim Porter's profile
Friday, November 14, 2008
Credit Crunching
Expomedia's announcement on the 10th November came as a timely reminder - if anyone needed it - that things are getting tough out there. However it contrasted sharply with Reed Elsevier's announcement a few days later saying they expected their exhibitions division to be on track.
From these two, short announcements it's impossible - of course - to draw clear conclusions about the fundamentals of either business, and I wouldn't want to. What it does highlight however is that the economy as it relates to events (or as it relates to confidence in events) has got sharply worse in the last 6 weeks (since Expomedia's last trading statement on the 22nd September) and this decline has hit some parts of our industry very hard indeed.
If you look for clear and obvious differences between the two businesses Expomedia of course has its UK-based Homebuyer consumer events - but whilst that sector has of course taken a big hit, that happened months ago, and also the 2008 events all took place before the end of September anyway, so this is probably not where to look for reasons or conclusions.
Two other areas of difference are that Expomedia has a proportionally greater exposure to emerging markets and also a proportionally greater exposure to conferences than Reed. Would it make sense to look to these to try to explain the differences in the two statements ?
Well, if a marked decline in confidence has been seen very recently you could expect it to hit hardest in events where revenues and bookings are secured late in the event cycle, or where there is a short event cycle.
The first may well apply to Expomedia's emerging market events, and the latter would apply to their conference business.
Established B2B events with a long cycles operated in more established markets tend to have more advance bookings than those in emerging markets - and find it easier to get the cash in well in advance. Such events may well have had the momentum to make it over the (budgetary) finish line even though confidence has dipped - and this model sounds more like a typical Reed show.
So, some pointers, but too little data for any clear indicators for the sector as a whole.
The next milestones will be when some of the big conference companies start to report, and we start to get updates, forecasts and statements from some of the expo-led companies with year ends sometime in 2009.
From these two, short announcements it's impossible - of course - to draw clear conclusions about the fundamentals of either business, and I wouldn't want to. What it does highlight however is that the economy as it relates to events (or as it relates to confidence in events) has got sharply worse in the last 6 weeks (since Expomedia's last trading statement on the 22nd September) and this decline has hit some parts of our industry very hard indeed.
If you look for clear and obvious differences between the two businesses Expomedia of course has its UK-based Homebuyer consumer events - but whilst that sector has of course taken a big hit, that happened months ago, and also the 2008 events all took place before the end of September anyway, so this is probably not where to look for reasons or conclusions.
Two other areas of difference are that Expomedia has a proportionally greater exposure to emerging markets and also a proportionally greater exposure to conferences than Reed. Would it make sense to look to these to try to explain the differences in the two statements ?
Well, if a marked decline in confidence has been seen very recently you could expect it to hit hardest in events where revenues and bookings are secured late in the event cycle, or where there is a short event cycle.
The first may well apply to Expomedia's emerging market events, and the latter would apply to their conference business.
Established B2B events with a long cycles operated in more established markets tend to have more advance bookings than those in emerging markets - and find it easier to get the cash in well in advance. Such events may well have had the momentum to make it over the (budgetary) finish line even though confidence has dipped - and this model sounds more like a typical Reed show.
So, some pointers, but too little data for any clear indicators for the sector as a whole.
The next milestones will be when some of the big conference companies start to report, and we start to get updates, forecasts and statements from some of the expo-led companies with year ends sometime in 2009.
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]
Post a Comment