Canal+Sa

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. This is Maxime Seyda, CEO of Canal+.

And I'm Amandine Ferret, CFO of Canal+.

We are delighted to be with you today. Together, we'll present the Canal+, results for the first half of 2025. Starting with our key strategic and financial priorities before I hand it over to Amandine Ferret, and she digs into our H1 financials and beyond. I would like to provide some detail on how we have made progress on each of our priorities with, of course, our key objective to generate profitable growth and cash on all activities by building the best global and local content value proposition, by extending our distribution through innovation and strategic partnerships, and by growing our scale. Let's start by focusing on how we are generating profitable growth and cash on all activities. As you will see, we are on track to deliver our upgraded guidance for the full year. In H1 2025, our organic revenue grew by 0.9%, reaching close to 3.1 billion euros, confirming our 2025 expectation to achieve organic growth. EBITDA is right where we expected it to be, 246 million euros before exceptionals, and we anticipate a much stronger second half of the year. Amandine will come back to this. And finally, cash flow is a real highlight. With 416 million euros in CFFO in H1, we are well on our way to hitting our full year guidance of over 500 million euros. To generate profitable growth and strong cash flow, we are making sure the group focuses on profitable contracts, activities, and retail customer segments. Second, we are taking real steps to improve the profitability of our European operations through cost reductions. Third, on the tax front, we are aiming to proactively resolve tax issues. Fourth, we are focused on materially improving cash generation. On the first part, profitable contracts, activities, and retail customer segments. We have ended, as you know, the Disney contract at the end of 2024. We are now closely assessing our Vietnam business. Amandine will come back to that. We have ended wholesale deals in a number of our geographies, in Poland, in Vietnam, and in M7 territories, when we felt these were not profitable enough. And this has enabled us to increase in H1 organic revenue, despite our overall decline, and to reach our EBITDA in-language expectation, with an increase that we expect in H2 2025. On the European segment, as you know, our focus is to reduce costs to improve profitability. I just mentioned the Disney contract. We saw the end of our League One contract at the mid-year 2024. We have exited our pay TV channels from DTT in France for Canal+, and we have ended the CA channel. We have launched a redundancy plan affecting 250 employees and 150 external contracts. uh we have renewed agreement our agreement with the french cinema organizations on more favorable terms than in the past and as you may have seen we have decided not to sign a new agreement with league one because we considered that the financial conditions were not uh up to our standards so with all of this we are on track to progressively deliver uh material improvement to our profitability in europe without a doubt on the tax issues We have finally reached an agreement with the CNC, the French National Center of Cinema, which has enabled us to avoid a negative cash outlay of close to 100 million euros. And we are in very active discussions with tax authorities on VAT. Our goal is to clear up all legacy items on tax. On cash generation, which is, of course, a key focus for us, we have implemented several structural initiatives. As I mentioned before, we, and by we, I don't just mean the management team, I refer to everyone at Canal+, are significantly reducing our spending without impacting our content value proposition. We are working on improving working capital, tax, and financing topics, And these initiatives have come a long way in helping us change the situation. As you know, I have decided to change the organization at the beginning of the year with all financial teams reporting directly to Amandine. She has put in place new processes in place, and we have had the results that you see here on the left-hand side of the slide, both on cash flow from operations and on free cash flow. Cash flow from operations has increased by 86% since H124, now reaching the 460 million I mentioned, enabling us to confirm our full year guidance of a number above 500 million euros. And free cash flow boomed by close to 200%, reaching 370 million euros, And we are now very proud to be able to give a guidance on this number and we expect the full year 25 number to be above 370 million euros compared to 29 million euros for the full year 24. now moving to the key part of our strategy and building the best global and local content value proposition you know our unique offering aggregates all the free-to-air channels all the pay tv essential pay tv channels both third party and in-house our premium canal plus channels all across geographies and finally our very close technical and commercial relationship with a number of platforms that i mentioned streaming streaming platforms that i mentioned here On our content value proposition, the way we see our strategy is with these three pillars that you can see here. First, enhancing our in-house production capabilities with StudioKanal. Second, providing the best premium rights on KanalPlus channels. And third, developing key strategic content partnerships. On our in-house production capabilities and StudioKanal, H125 was strong for StudioKanal on cinema. reminding you of the global box office hits with Paddington in Peru, Mad About the Boy, Bridget Jones, and We Live in Time, but also local box office hits like Runt, which was number one in Poland, Color of Time, and L'Amour C'est Sur Côté, which were in the top five in France, and I'm Still Here, which won the best Academy Award for foreign movie last year. We have four movies at the Festival de Cannes, selected at Festival de Cannes, and at half-year, Studio Canal ranked third in most of its European, sorry, in the top three in most of its European geographies, including France, and was number one both in Germany and in Australia in terms of distribution. On the series side, we have had a very strong H1 with the hits that I mentioned here. Widow's Game, which was number one on Netflix in 34 countries. High Tides in the top 10. Ladies Companion in the top 10 in 66 countries. And our flagship series, Paris Has Fallen, which had record viewership in France. was a smash hit on all our territories and worked very well for Hulu in the US and Amazon Prime in the UK, which both of them ordered season two as well as Canal+. We are now shooting the second season of this hit series. We are focused on developing IPs at Studio Canal, and these are just a few examples. Studio Canal Stories is all about adapting books into successful films or series. You have a few examples here, Sign Swept Away, The Beth O'Leary. Even before the book was published, we are developing this into a series. The next live action Asterix, generally the biggest movie of the year in France, will be produced by Studio Canal. We launched Studio Canal Kids and Family. We will be launching the Paddington musical come the end of the year in London. We are developing our next franchise that you can see here on the right hand side, Pippi Longstocking movie and animated series. And we will produce both of them with Hay Day, David Heyman, the famed producer of the Harry Potter movies of Barbie and of the Paddington movies with us and of the next James Bond. So he's a very popular and busy man, but he will be producing Pippi Longstocking with us. And we have launched a new label on horror movies horror films called six dimension and you have here a few examples of movies we are developing the first movie to come out of that will be a movie based on our movie that we own on our library on our catalog which is called silent night deadly night and of course it will come out at christmas um we have had a very strong season in terms of viewership on our platforms all across our geographies we have here a few examples uh which we had a 40 percent audience share that's a record in africa plain oriental did very very well that's a french series we had a record on canada plus poland with the series that you see here um Canal+, in H125, beat TF1 during one night and M6 during another night. So Canal+, as a cryptic channel, pay TV channel, beat free-to-air channels twice in H125 with the two movies that you see below, Monte Cristo and Un petit truc en plus, which were the two biggest movies of 2024 that were already broadcast on Canal+. We have a phenomenal year in terms of sports. You have a few examples on the right-hand side. Maybe I'll just mention the all-time record for Canal+, with more than 6 million viewers on the Champions League semi-finals PSG Arsenal. On the ultimate part of our value offering, the streaming platforms, two news here that I want to highlight. One is that we have integrated the content of Dailymotion, our leading European short-form video streaming platform with 400 million monthly active users, directly into the Canal+. So our subscribers can now stream hundreds of short-form videos which are refreshed several times a day through Dailymotion on the Canal+. Very proud of that. And last but not least, as you know, we now have agreements with these streamers that you see here in a number of geographies. And we announced a first-of-its-kind deal for Netflix and Canal+, and the extension of our partnership with Netflix to all of French-speaking Africa. So that's close to 25 French-speaking countries. And we just launched this offer a few days ago. um on the second pillar distribution and maybe walk you through the fact that we launched our new upgraded canal plus app experience which is really focused on mobile devices it is now available on all ios devices in france poland and africa it seems we have a technical problem Okay, and we will launch this.

The new Canal Plus Player. More legible, more fluid, more interactive, more intuitive. You can pinch to zoom in and remove letterboxes. You can double-click left or right to travel through time. Swipe from one channel to the other. Control the live feed timeline. Open the TV guide to view previous or upcoming programs, or discover every episode of a series. All these features are at your fingertips. With the new Canal Plus Player, navigating through contents has never been so easy.

So this experience is available on all iOS devices in France, Poland, and Africa, and will be rolled out on all Android devices by the end of summer. second we've signed deals with every leader of connected television on the planet especially samsung and lg that's more than 70 million connected televisions where canal plus will be one of the main apps available when people connect their television to internet we've also signed really first of their kind deals with renault alpine and bmw to be available uh at the start at the ignition of the car uh on uh bmws minis renault alpines all connected cars that's a new territory for us and i'm very excited about that also signed a deal which is the first of its kind again with air france to be for canal plus to be available on all long haul flights so that's 117 aircraft and it's more it's close to 1.5 million travelers rich every month Finally, on the tech side, I'm proud to announce that we are the first third-party producer of content for the Apple Vision Pro. Before that, everything was produced by Apple. This is the first of its kind deal. And we are producing, we will be releasing a new MotoGP documentary by fall. On scale, quickly, our growth ambition is clear, reach 50 to 100 million subscribers. As you know, this growth is being driven by strategic investments in platforms like Viaplay and Vue. of which we now respectively own 29.3% for Viaplay and 37.2% for Vue. On Viaplay, the management is progressing well on the turnaround of the company, and we continue to be supportive of their plan. On Vue, the management continues its growth strategy. We like their market position in Asia. We like their hybrid SVOD and AVOD model. We will consider our options regarding our path to control in due course. Of course, we have the ongoing mandatory tender offer on MultiChoice, the English-speaking African pay TV leader, of which we already own 45.2%. You notice the incredible opportunity given, provided by the booming market in Africa, booming demographics, booming economics, and the so far quite low electrification rate, which is bound to increase. And the fact that CanalPlus and MultiChoice are very complementary in terms of geographies, it would give us a position in 70 countries worldwide with 40 of them in Africa. We have cleared all major regulatory hurdles. You see here a selection of countries. The last key one, of course, was South Africa. Just before that, we completed both regulatory hurdles with Nigeria. I mentioned two hurdles because for almost every one of these countries, there is the television authority to be able to broadcast, and then there is the antitrust authority to be able to exercise activities over there. And we cleared all of those in all of those countries. The process now, just to give you a view of the next steps, mostly administrative next steps. We need to carve out the company, so to split the company in South Africa, so that one of the companies will control the licensed television and the other will do the rest. And for that, we need to have an agreement from the minority shareholder of multi-choice in South Africa, Putumanati, which is the Black Empowerment Fund. This is taking place on August 26 at the General Assembly of Putumanati. Then we will proceed to actually comply and put in place the licensed entity carve out. Then we plan to appoint the management of the company. Of course, after having consulted with employee representative bodies, we intend to complete the mandatory takeover offer as announced by October 8th. And we will start the implementation of the synergy plan on which we are now ready. And just to give you a few little color on the synergy plan itself, this is how we see things to be ready by day one and to start implementing those synergies. You can see here the streams, the working streams we have put in place together with MultiChoice. So a number of our managers have been working for weeks on all of these topics. Of course, without exchanging any privileged information, because we don't want to be in a situation where we have privileged information at Canal+, concerning multi-choice or the opposite. um and we have identified already every area you see that on the left hand side where we expect high synergy potential doesn't mean that the others won't provide synergy but it means that this will be our key areas of focus and we are now sizing exactly the potential and we are very clear on the action plan to put these synergies into to turn them into a reality thank you maxime and good morning everyone

As Maxime outlined, we have made significant progress during our first half of the year as a listed business, and we are continuing to build a strong platform for profitable growth. Let's start with the headline number, then I will go into more detail. As you will see from our results and the full year guidance, our focus on our strategic and financial priorities is working. We are on track for a first good full year. While revenue is down 3.3% on a reported basis, this is in line with our expectation following the end of our Disney deal, the end of the Champions League sublicensing contract and the closure of C8. Importantly, we are delivering organic growth and we are expecting that to continue over the full year. On EBITDA, our half year is in line with expectation and we are expecting a significant year-on-year EBITDA increase in H2 2025. I will shortly take you through the driver for this. Taken together, this has enabled us to confirm our full year guidance of 515 million EBITDA. We are already seeing the benefit of our cash focus and have delivered a record 416 million CFFO. We recently upgraded our guidance and expect CFFO to be over 500 million at full year. We have also published today our free cash flow for the first time at 370 million for the half year. We have significantly improved our net debt position. Last December it was 355 million and it's now down to only 24 million. This gives us a high degree of financial flexibility ahead of the proposed MCG acquisition. Regarding our subscriber base, our objective is to create value rather than volume and so to build a scaled and loyal retail subscriber base in each of our markets. Overall, the total subscriber base is slightly down as we focused on retail subscriber and shift toward enhanced profitability. The retail base has continued to slightly grow thanks to our targeting of lower penetrated segments and our high level of customer loyalty. This includes France, where our retail subscriber base continues to grow following five years of consecutive growth. Our wholesale base decreased due to the end of some wholesale deals, especially in Poland, M7 and Vietnam. The light growth in retail segment is mainly due to Africa and Asia. We have seen a decline in subscribers in this segment, driven by Asia and specifically Vietnam, as Maxime mentioned. The market environment has been difficult and subscriber and revenues has been declining. As we have said, we are closely assessing the performance of the Vietnamese business. Looking more closely at Africa Pay TV, the growth has been slowing down in H1. As we are a content business, seasonality will always affect our results, especially in prepaid markets like Africa, where subscribers have to decide each month if they want to renew their subscription or not. We had a very strong slate in the first half year of 24, including AFCON, and we didn't have the same level of content in H1 2025, and this results in a lower renewal rate of our base. Nevertheless, excluding January when AFCON happened in 2024, the commercial dynamic is good. We are plus 19% acquisition versus 2024 and this confirms a significant opportunity of the African market and our appeal of Canal Plus here to build a more profitable company and this is due to the fact that we've been here for 30 years and we know how to operate. The good news is we expect the content situation to improve in H2. As you can see, we have a wide variety of great content coming up and we are reducing our dependency on sport by broadcasting local series and local TV shows. Our portfolio in H2 will benefit from this a content slate with major sports events like AFCON in December, but also local series like the season two of Chaka'i Lambe, and some local TV shows like Real Housewives of Lagos or our French-speaking Secret Story. And of course, as Maxime mentioned, we have this new partnership with Netflix that we've launched beginning of July. On to revenue, our half year revenue is in line with our expectation and we are delivering 0.9% growth on an organic basis. We expect our full year revenue to deliver in line with expectation and we expect organic growth to continue in the second half of the year. In Europe, the end of the Disney contract and of the Champions League licensing as well as the closure of SEAT have impacted our top line as expected. However, you will see from our organic growth that momentum is building, plus 0.9 growth. Again, this is driven by our focus on our more profitable retail subscriber base. In our African Asian segment, revenue is stable, driven by GBA strong growth. This is despite the situation in Vietnam and the lower advertising revenues in Africa due to no AFCON. Moving on to the content production and distribution segment. Revenue in this segment has decreased in H1-25 due to studio canal activity periodicity. This is the results of delivery phasing of international sales and the strength of our H1-24, which include Back to Black, The Black Jaguar and Wicked Little Tailor Letters. And also the international sales for Paddington in Peru, even if it was released in some countries in H1-25, was realized in H2-24. Nevertheless, Studio Canal has a strong slate for H2, including Dog 51. This is Studio Canal's biggest investment in French cinema in 25, and one of the most anticipated French films for the year. We are expecting strong international sales for Dog 51, as it has been selected for the upcoming Venice International Film Festival, as well as Toronto. And of course, we have many other movies coming, including Kangaroo, our first Australian production, And of course, the season two of Paris has fallen. And finally, looking at Dailymotion, we are happy with the double digit growth we are seeing. This is the result of effort to expand Dailymotion's commercial footprint and fueled by continuing innovation and strategic investment in AI. One example among many is We have signed advertising deals with strong international brands like ASICS or Toyota, from which we created activation campaigns that combine predictive targeting, contextual activation, and AI-optimized creative, and this delivered outstanding results. Now, let's look at our main priority, which is profitability. We confirm our upgrade full year EBITDA guidance of 515 million for 2025 versus 503 in 2024. It's important to note that EBITDA in H1-24 was inflated by non-comparable effect versus 25. First, one-off effect related to the OCS acquisition, and second, of course, the end of the Champions League sub-licensing deal that ended in June 25 and throughout that was creating a significant margin. Besides this effect, H125 would exceed H124. We expect H2 EBITDA to be significantly higher than last year. This is the result of ongoing rationalization and the ramp up of operational efficiency initiatives. Now to give you more detail on EBITDA on each of the three segments. For Europe, we have already referred to changes that impact EBITDA, OCS and the sublicensing contract. This is only in France and it's only an H1 impact. The decline in Africa and Asia EBITDA reflects higher content costs, particularly related to sports rights in Africa, which we have signed mid-2024, and the difficult situation in Vietnam. These are partially offset by the improving margin of GVA. On margin is up in content and distribution segment. This is driven by daily motion, which is now close to break even on a full year basis. On cost now. As we have said previously, we are very focused on cost on our entire business, and this shift is supported by our new organizational structure. Looking at the table, you will see that our content costs have decreased. This is mainly due to the termination of the contract with Disney and Ligue 1. The increase in overcost is a result of the one-off positive item related to the OCS acquisition last year, which I mentioned previously. We also had some additional costs from the LSE listing and some variable costs at GVA to support our commercial growth. Given the scale of our major structural saving initiatives, we wanted to provide you some more detail on the timing impact of each of them. The end of the League One and Disney contract will both have impact positive starting this year. However, this year, we will see a ramp up in the closure impact of C8 and from the exit of the Pay TV DTT channel in France. In 2026, we will see a positive impact on profitability from both the residency plan in France and from our renegotiated agreement with the French cinema organization, the latter of which will start showing a positive impact in 2026. Finally, we expect to see improved contribution from both GBA and Dailymotion on an ongoing basis in the future. As Maxime mentioned, we have concluded the TST litigation generating around 80 million exceptional costs with no cash impact. This will avoid generating 100 million potential cash spending. And we are, of course, continuing to clean up all of our tax legacy items. More important point on this slide is that we have successfully implemented our financial integration. This is the result of a much more normal tax effective rate on H1 2025, our effective tax rate, which is 35%, and we expect it to be between 35% and 40% in full year. Earnings reached 91 million plus 37 million compared to 24. Now on cash, I'm sure that you will have noticed our exceptional cash level at the half-year, as well as our guidance. I am pleased on how quickly our cash optimization plan is paying off. Looking at the bridge, you will see that we have a 188 million impact from net content investment, and this is mainly due to the rehearsal effect of prepayment that we've been doing in H224. Working capital is down 29 million, mainly due to remaining Disney payments. After working capital, that led to the record CFFO of 416 million, an 86% increase compared to last year. Even if some of this is one-off, a significant part is structural. And finally, on cash, you will have seen that for the first time, we have added the free cash flow as a KPI at 370 million for half year, which is a record for Canal+. As I mentioned earlier, our net debt has been reduced from 355 million in December to 24 million, which is a huge improvement in only six months. We virtually have no debt at the close of the half-year and so we have ample capacity to implement our strategy while keeping a sound balance sheet. Speaking about financing, I'm sure that you have read the announcement that we have done this morning about our inaugural and very successful ShulShine insurance at 285 million. I wanted to draw your attention to this for three reasons. The first one, it was highly oversubscribed, more than double actually. We planned 125 million and we have an order book consisting with high quality French and international investors. Second, the high quality and the high level of demand improved the pricing and enabled us to increase the total package. As a result of the attractive pricing and scale of overall cost of fund has significantly improved. And first, it sets a positive precedent in the credit market for Canal+, putting up in a very strong position ahead of the multi-choice group acquisition. Before we go to the outlook, I'm pleased to take a moment to update you on our new ESG strategy. ESG is a business imperative. Of course, a clear ESG framework helps manage risk, but more importantly, when well done, creates long-term value. The framework is firmly anchored in our business model, and it has been designed with flexibility in mind so we can seamlessly integrate multi-choice. And after the acquisition, we will be able to begin target settings. Let's take a closer look at the framework. Starting with the environmental pillar, we've made progress in reducing our carbon footprint over the past years, and we are committed to continue this path. But we also need to look beyond Canal+, and encourage multi-stakeholder initiatives to create the right infrastructure. At the same time, we must recognize that not all of the European solutions are applicable or even feasible in every market. And this is especially true for Africa, where we see the greatest potential for carbon emission reduction, even now, before the acquisition of multi-choice. On the social front, our focus is on nurturing the next generation of creative talent because they are the future of our business. As a producer and a distributor of content, we have a significant role to play. With a footprint that covers Europe, Africa, and Asia, we are uniquely positioned to share culture and creativity across continents. And this is one of our core social mission. As a technology company, we are committed to enhancing digital accessibility, We are therefore dedicated to increase the accessibility of our platform, both Canal+, and Dailymotion. We also recognize our responsibility in addressing screen addiction, which will be another of our focus moving forward. And last but not least, strong governance will be implemented, not only to support our free pillar, but also to protect our business. Now, let's look ahead in our outlook for 2025 and beyond. On revenue, we expect organic growth to continue for the full year. However, this will be more than offset by the closure of C8 and the termination of the Disney and the Champions League sublicensing contracts. And in the medium term, we expect moderate revenue growth. Then over to EBITDA, here we have confirmed our guidance of 515 million for the full year. And for EBITDA in medium term, we expect to see moderate margin growth. This will be driven by cost optimization, operational improvement, as well as greater contribution from GBA and Dailymotion. Over to cash, the most positive news for today. We expect an exceptional run-off improvement in 2025 with a CFF expected to reach over 500 million euros. Three drivers for this. One, the optimization of the phasing of payment terms on various contracts. Two, restructuring disbursement will be lower than expected. And three, the progressive ramp-up of structural enhancements related to our cash initiative. As you can see, this exceptional level of CFFO will lead to the delivery of a record free cash flow at the end of the year. We are proud to provide today our first guidance on free cash flow, expecting over 370 million. And this is a positive note for me to end on, so I will hand back to Maxime to summarize.

Thank you very much, Amandine. So in summary, I'm satisfied with what we have achieved since our listing. Revenue and EBITDA are fully in line with expectations, confirming our full year 2025 outlook. Our discipline focus on cash is already bearing fruit and will continue to do so throughout the year for this year and the years to come. We've extended our super aggregation value proposition to Africa with the world leader, Netflix, which is definitely our partner. We've enhanced our user experience and we've extended the reach of our app with very significant industrial partnerships. We have delivered, as promised, an ambitious ESG strategy that reflects our responsibility as a media player. And most importantly, we're poised for a major step change with the acquisition of MultiChoice. We will become a global media leader with 40 million subscribers ready to compete and partner on the world stage. Thank you very much. Yes, we can move to Q&A.

So maybe reading some questions.

Sylvia Cuneo from Deutsche Bank. Subscriber trends and initiatives. Can AdPlus experience a slight decrease in overall subscriber this half? Could you elaborate on the key factors driving subscriber churn in both Europe and Africa-Asia at the specific initiatives to revitalize growth, focusing on the D2C segment and the expected impact of the Netflix in the future? um we so first of all everything is as expected uh europe is more dynamic than uh africa asia is negative to summarize um as amandine mentioned the reasons for uh africa flattish h1 is with content and mostly with the renewal rate and activity rate of our existing subscriber base as you have seen Gross ads of new customers is very strong with the 20% increase when we exclude the month of January, which was which was exceptional with the in terms of content. As to the Netflix partnership, it's a little early to estimate the potential. We think it is, of course, it will be very significant in the future. But as you know, broadband penetration is relatively low in French-speaking Africa. So we need to be cautious on the immediate potential of that offer. We do think it is a very significant step for the future as it demonstrates not only our ability to sign, extend our super aggregation strategy to a whole other continent, but also to bring the best value proposition to our customers wherever they are. Another question from Sylvia Cuneo is the underlying advertising trends, excluding the impact of the CA channel closure and any other scope changes. What are the underlying trends in advertising revenue growth, particularly for CNews, which has a higher audience level? How do these underlying trends compare to the broader advertising market in your key geographies? Underlying trends are positive on advertising in almost all our geographies. We are a relatively small player compared to other bigger player. As you know, this is still a relatively low percentage of our revenues since we are growing in our geographies and we are growing as a as an advertising player, not only with Canal+, but with Dailymotion, the trend is very positive. Amandine mentioned the double-digit growth of Topline at Dailymotion, but the trend is very good on Canal+, as well. CNews is growing not only in audience, but in terms of revenues, very, very significantly, so the news is very positive. There is a question finally from Sylvia Cuneo as well on macro trends in the content segment. Have we observed any shifting demands for different types of content across our various territories such as cinema series or live sports events? How is Studio Canal positioned in this context and are there any adjustments to your content investment strategy or production slate in response to these trends? I would say no major shift as far as we're concerned. We have this model where we combine the best of cinema, the best of sports, the best of TV series and documentaries, and basically an aggregation of content from all types to satisfy all members of our household. As you have seen, left sports have been doing very well, but cinema, I mentioned a few records in France, historical records is also a very important contributing factor. I would say the one trend is the IP that I mentioned on Stukana. This is how we're shifting our strategy. We're really focused now on leveraging our catalog and leveraging the relationship with Hachette to identify and maybe even create new intellectual property that we can then leverage across a number of activities. I mentioned Paddington the musical, merchandising, and franchises over cinema and series. Adrien de Saint-Hilaire from Bank of America, you've gathered on 370 million euros free cash flow for the year, having delivered just that number in H1 already. I know H2 24 free cash flow was minus 100, but why wouldn't you generate any free cash flow in H2 if indeed EBITDA is stated to be to 70 million euros? I will let Amandine specify. I just want to clarify one thing. We have announced a 370 million free cash flow for H1, and we have announced that H2 would be above that number, not 370, but above that number. Amandine, do you want to elaborate?

Yes. To compare the free cash flow to the CFFO rather than EBITDA, as you might have seen, we generate in H1 25 already more than 400 CFFO and we have a guidance at 500, meaning that we won't generate a lot of free cash flow during the second half of the year. And so this low free cash flow generation in H2 is due to this low CFFO. And this low CFFO is due to the fact that this is very usual for Canal+. We have a lot of payments to be done in summertime, especially regarding the content cost. And so it has always been the case our cash generation is lower in H2 than in H1. And I think we missed one of your questions also, Adrien. on the implied guidance of EBITDA at 270 million in H2 versus 188 in 2024. And so what is the driver of growth? There are several ones. The first one, as we have been saying for H1, is that we reduced our content cost, especially due to the end of Disney. We still had the Disney last year. We won't have it, of course, for H2. And the second main driver is the improved profitability of GVA and Delibotion. They used to be negative, and they are now very close from breakeven, generating EBITDA.

We have a question from Adrian Santillero again on multi-choice. When do you expect providing financial and strategic guidance to the market? around closing of the deal or later and the answer to that is later uh we as you know we have no privilege information on multi-choice we have been very very uh clear about that and so as soon as we close the deal we will have finally access to privilege information and we'll be able to confirm uh and within a few i guess within a few weeks or months to confirm what we estimate are the potential synergies and what is the uh clear situation at MultiChoice. When we understand that, we will be able to confirm our strategy and synergy plan, and I hope to be able to do that by the beginning of next year. But we will not wait for the beginning of next year to change a number of things. We intend to provide benefits to consumers across all African geographies as soon as the end of the year if we close when we expect it to close. And we will launch the synergy plan as soon as we, as I mentioned, as soon as we take control, we are ready for that. So not only do we expect to have a clear idea with access to confidential information, but by the beginning of next year, if everything goes to plan, we will have already launched some actions to generate some synergies. So that's from Ben Shelley at UBS. What would a full year 25 CFFO guidance be if we were to exclude one of positive impacts? How should we think about the bridge to 26 CFFO in light of cost saving initiatives before handing it to Amandine? I will say that, of course, the 26 should be completely transformed by the multi-choice acquisition. So that's not an easy one to bridge, to be honest. And I think that Amandine said that the majority of the improvement of the CFFO was coming from structural changes.

Yeah, it's really a mix between the structural and the one-off initiatives. we won't be as this uh at it's a very high level above uh 500 million cffo probably in 26 but still we will have a significant improvement compared to what we had even in 2023 because you remember 24 was not comparable uh content costs sorry ben chile from ubs again content costs are down year on year how should we think about content costs in the coming years do you expect them to remain stable in the coming years that's

i think we've been clear on the fact that to improve profitability in europe and in particular in france we need to lower cost and that our main cost line is content so they expect content cost to be reduced in particular in europe and we will continue investing everywhere and especially in africa on local content so i cannot really hinting at where the content cost will evolve, we are very cautious of our margins. And we are also cautious of being the most attractive value proposition content value proposition everywhere. So we need to we need to we are we have these two objectives in mind. Again, from Ben Shelley, can you talk us through in more detail the thinking behind the new loan issuance? What's cost of debt going to be on the debt taken out to finance the multi choice acquisition?

For multi-choice acquisition, we have a bridge that would enable us to cover 100% of the share if we were to buy 100%, so 1.9 million euros. We launched Schulstein because we wanted to anticipate the bridge recovering. The bridge is going until June 2022. but we wanted to have a lower weight and this shulchain will load down our debt level by more than 50 BPS. So it's very significant for us. And so it will be used to refinance the bridge and it will help optimizing our cost of financing.

Christophe Cherblanc from Bernstein. When you mention a goal of cleaning the tax issues, does that mean you are more optimistic than previously? So there were two issues, tax issues. There's one left. It's a big one. It's VAT. I wouldn't say I'm more or less optimistic. I would only say we are very, very focused on that topic. We spend a lot of time on that topic with Amandine and the team, and we intend to resolve it, hopefully by negotiation, if not by law. That's what I would say on that one. What is the timeline to renew the Champions League contract? Fair to say that there is no visible competition on the French market for these rights. Will you aim for a flat cost at expiration of the current contract? That's, of course, something I cannot answer. I would say that there is no visible competition. Almost every time that a competitor emerged, it emerged from... the unknown. You know, so I'm very cautious on that one. Amazon was not a competitor before it became a competitor. DAZN was not a competitor before it became a competitor. Be In Sport was not a competitor, not even talking about Mediapro. All of them lost some money. None of them did well, none of them renewed their contracts. But I'm very, very wary of no visible competition. I would say this is not the most competitive environment that we have experienced in the last few years. That's true. The timeline to renew the Champions League contract, I would say probably end of year, before the end of the year, sometime around the end of the year, I imagine. That doesn't depend on us, as you know. It depends on the UEFA and relevant, the agency selected to sell those rights. We have a question from Adrian Santiller. Can you please provide some KPIs and financials on Vietnam? Even though you say please, the answer is no. We are now at a stage where we believe that the loss is significant enough for us. and the solutions are not obvious, that we have to make probably a decision to either really restructure significantly the operation or maybe even exit the operation. That's all we would say. Does that review, we have Jérôme Bonin from Odo, question in Asian Vietnam. So we have the same question on Vietnam. So I'm sorry, I cannot answer more. Does that review concern also Myanmar, which is much smaller? You're right to point that out. No, it does not. Myanmar is doing a lot better. The competitive environment is very different over there. And the performance of Canal Plus is very different over there. So not today.

Actually, we've just signed the EPL in Myanmar. So we're launching a new offer in August that should even boost our subscriber base.

What is Connor Oshie from Kepler? What is your guidance on the likely full year 25 group income tax charge?

We expect it to be between 35 and 40 percent, much lower than 2024. If you remember, it was above 70 percent.

Julien Hog from Barclays. VAT update timing, likely outcome. I think I mentioned that. Timing is uncertain. This is, we're talking about French government and administration. If anyone can give me a clue on that, I would love it. Tax 35, 40% remains, which is what Amandine just said, basically. It remains very high. If you do weighted average tax of all your countries, you should be less than that. Can you give us some guidance on what normalized tax rate is once you have finished working your tax rate?

We cannot provide guidance yet. Our issue is that in some African countries, there is no more tax convention with France. And this is specifically true for some of the sale countries and the RDC. And so we will not be considering this new convention at the normal French tax level. But of course, we are working with authorities to try to find a solution on that.

A question also from Julia from Barclays about synergies on multi choice if we take operating costs of 43 billions are normal level of synergies 10% of acquired costs, ie 4.3 billion. Does that make sense? Can you do more? I won't comment that too early to do to comment that. Sorry about that. Connor she from Kepler, how much was the positive one off from OCS in H 124? We don't give that one. Do we give that one?

We don't get that one. It was seven-tenths of a million, so it's really significant.

Christophe Cherblanc from Bernstein, what was the contribution of CA to 1H EBITDA, a significant loss, a still running cost before reorg implementation?

Close to double digit, I would say. Loss. H1, loss, yes.

jerome from odo quick follow-up on champions league free cash flow for 2025 or what should we expect in 26 sorry sorry quick follow-up on champions league if you renew these rights should we expect cash out in advance i.e in 26 as upfront payments are usual uh we've discussed we've changed so much the uh the the the payments on sports rights and i think it's a little early But you are right, generally they are upfront. That's what I would say. Anna Patrice from Berenberg. What would be normalized free cash flow for 25 or what should we expect in 26 decline versus 25? as 25 is exceptionally high thank you um i i i think if it were standalone if canal plus was pro forma you could expect a decline in 26 from 25 because it is exceptionally high but you could expect a much higher number than in the past years as amandine said but as i mentioned in any case there should the free cash flow should be significantly impacted by the multi-choice acquisition Mike Stier from Avior, multi-choice transaction, what other regulatory approvals are required? Those outside. We have two left, but none of them are blocking. We have Comesa and we have CDO for like Mauritius Island and this kind of territories, but none of them are significant. Are there any multi-choice businesses that are not core to Canal+, and could be disposed of following the combination of multi-choice and Canal+, too early? You may have seen in my slide previously the adjacencies. This is too early for us to call. We need to dig into this. We haven't had time to do that. We prefer to focus on core business, pay television. We will do that probably as soon as we take control, we will take greater attention to this. Does Canal+, view the Showmax and Kingmakers businesses as core assets to the group? Too early, I'm sorry. That's a little early to call. Do you see potential for the multi-choice rest of Africa segment to get to the same 20% margin as the Canada plus Africa segment? Are there structural differences between these businesses? Sorry again, too early for us to call. if possible please provide the value of the estimated synergies and no not possible where the majorities come from i think i did mention that in my uh in my presentation i mentioned the high synergy potential there were nine categories in there uh headcount by the way is not one of them content and transporters are among them for sure Laurence Aglio from Sanigam, the synergies in multi-truss are expecting between, sorry, you okay with that? I won't comment the number, which is between 100 and 200 million euros. I won't comment that. Ampere analysis. What will be the key factors in deciding to take control of Vue? Are you thinking synergy between Vue and other existing, especially in South Africa? So you are right. There are potential synergies with the Vue in South Africa. Vue is actually present in South Africa, but this will not be among the deciding factors. I think the deciding factor on Vue is its ability to grow, to generate profitability with reasonable cash burn. These are the deciding factors. I think I'm done on the questions. We are done on the questions. We have no more questions. That's what I mean.

Sorry. It's okay. Thank you everyone for attending. Thank you for joining us. Thank you.