Grupo Televisa S.A.B.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Grupo Televisa's first quarter 2020 conference call. Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to the press release, which explains the use of forward-looking statements and applies to everything we discuss in today's call and in the earnings release. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Alfonso de Angoitia, Co-Chief Executive Officer of Grupo Televisa. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, Elisita. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. With me, either present here at our offices or remotely, are the heads of our three key business segments, Salvi Polk, CEO of Cable, Alex Pena, CEO of Sky, Patricio Wills, Head of Televisa Studios, and also Carlos Ferreiro, Antonio Lara, Corporate Vice President of Finance and Administration, respectively. Let me start with the obvious. I hope that you and your loved ones are safe and healthy in these very challenging times. I will now walk you through the steps we have taken in response to COVID on a company-wide basis. Then I will address our first quarter financial results and turn it over to Saldi, Alex, and Patricio for their review of key operating metrics and the measures they have taken to protect our people and our businesses. Before taking your questions, I will close by discussing the recent announcement of the sale of Univision and our outlook under this very challenging macroeconomic environment. Starting with COVID and its impact in Mexico, the first case was reported on February 29th. On March 18th, Mexico established a social distancing program which is now in effect until May 30th. Last week, on April 21st, The federal government declared the start of the Phase 3 the most serious phase of the coronavirus pandemic. The number of COVID cases continues to grow and is expected to spread rapidly in the first half of May. The focus of Phase 3 is to go beyond the social distancing measures and further reduce movement of people in public spaces to prevent the country's health system from being overwhelmed. As of yesterday, the number of official numbers indicate that there have been around 15,000 confirmed cases and very sadly close to 1,400 deaths in Mexico. We took many measures early on and are continuing to do everything we can to protect our people. This has been our number one priority. Across the company, more than 80% of them are working from home. A relevant percentage of our labor force is in vulnerable groups and is now on paid leave. Our call center personnel is being rotated regularly and our sales and field service personnel are operating at full capacity under strict sanitary conditions. We have an ongoing communications campaign with all employees and we are closely following all suspected cases and vulnerable groups. In addition, we have taken steps to ensure the continuity in the delivery of our video and telecom services, our news programming, and our general entertainment content, all of which are particularly important to our audiences and our customers during these difficult times. Some of our businesses will be more affected than others, and we're preparing accordingly. For example, at this moment, we have stopped production of new content except for certain shows such as our daily newscasts, sports news, and other selected general entertainment content, all of which are being produced under strict sanitary conditions. In the case of Sky and Cable, we have closed some branches and points of sale, and we have been promoting self-service channels to avoid interruptions in the payment of services. In our other business segment, our soccer team is not playing, our casinos and Azteca Stadium is closed, our publishing business has been severely affected on the distribution end, and our movie distribution business is on hold due to the closure of movie theaters. To protect our profitability, we have implemented an aggressive cost reduction plan across the company, which includes a freeze of new hires, and a comprehensive renegotiation of all agreements with our suppliers. Also, we have implemented a temporary reduction of executive level compensation. Bernardo and I will cut our salary by 50%.

We lost the line of our speaker. Stay on the line. And we have the line of Mr. Angoitia. Please proceed, sir.