Word on the Street: Global VC deal activity rebounds in Q2: PWC and NBC's peacock streaming services launches tomorrow

Yahoo Finance's On the Move panel discuss the latest headline making news stories.

Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: Want to move to Word on the Street now. That's where we check in with our panelists on what they are watching because there's a lot of other things going on as well. Melody, you've got a new report showing that Global Venture Capital deal activity is rebounding.

MELODY HAHM: Yeah, it's actually rebounded over the last couple of quarters. We did see an all-time high in terms of deal flow back in 2018. And it's been sort of a steady decline since. And, of course, coronavirus really threw a wrench in all of that for any kind of hope to see a real true kind of bounce back from that.

Some numbers here. This is according to a new PwC CBN's report BC firms backed 1,374 deals in the second quarter. That's up 3% from the previous one. It's still down 18% year over year. And as I mentioned, Q4 of 2018 remains a historical milestone in terms of dollars raised. But Julie, I think the actual spectrum has only-- the chasm has widened, right?

So we're looking at the stripes, the Palantir's, the DoorDash's of the world, of course, successful exits, like Grubhub, as well as Uber Eats acquiring Postmates. Those are on one end of the spectrum. And then we're seeing more seed-stage investments into biotech, of course, as coronavirus takes center stage.

JULIE HYMAN: Thanks, Melody. And Dan, we've got yet another streaming option that's coming online this week. Peacock is this one. Tell us about it.

DAN HOWLEY: Yeah, well, it's NBC's offering. It's funny when the name was first announced, a lot of people were ridiculing it. But it's no weirder than Hulu or VUDU or Quibi or Roku. So I think it makes some sense because it is NBC's logo after all. Yeah, yet, another student service. And the pricing tier is $5 a month with some ads or $10 a month for ad free.

And, of course, when you first sign up, there's a little bit of a free trial period. It's going to be interesting because every time one of these comes out, the sort of default thinking has become, ah, another one? Are people really going to pay for another one? And my favorite field to that to explain is always, well, yes, if there's a show or two shows on this offering that aren't on any other offering that people feel they must watch, then they'll pay.

I mean, you know, there are people who paid for Hulu just to watch "Handmaid's Tale." So time will tell. Now, I do think Quibi's an exception to that where, no, people are not paying. And it might actually be our first real failure offering. But I think a lot of people will sign up for Peacock if they are big fans of NBC's programming.

JULIE HYMAN: And also, we have to consider that a lot of these people are cutting the cord too. So that's an expense that they won't have that, you know, even if all of these sort of add up, eventually would they add up to what cable had been? Maybe, eventually.

DAN HOWLEY: Well, they are adding up to equal what cable would have been. But the key difference is people are happy. They'd rather pay for the things they want rather than when you had cable, you were paying for something you didn't want.

JULIE HYMAN: Is there any-- sorry, go ahead, Melody.

MELODY HAHM: Yeah, I was just going to say, I mean, I'm getting pitches left and right already, right? You can find Tastemate on Peacock. I had no idea that Tastemate was only available on Peacock now. I thought it was purely a social play.

When you think about the kind of confusion, I think, from the consumer side of things, I think this will only continue to create more of this chaos theory, I guess, where people don't know actually which platform is original content, which is licensed content. And I think Netflix has been the master of that, right, being able to house everything all in one. I'm curious to see if NBC will continue to invest in original programming here. Or they'll rely on a lot of their existing IP.

DAN HOWLEY: Right, and quickly, guys. I mean, all these platforms now, they may be the platform of one specific network, content creator channel, whatever. And so most of the content on it is their existing content. But then we're also seeing them right away pay to buy and acquire content that was made by someone else. Look at "Hamilton" with Disney+. So yeah, they're adding up. And we'll see. But it is getting hard to know when you want to watch a show. What app is that show on?

JULIE HYMAN: Yeah, well, that's where the Roku search function comes in handy.