Prosieben Sat 1 Media

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the full year 2021 results conference call of ProSieben Sat.1 Media SE. This conference is being recorded. Today's call is hosted by Mr. Dirk Vogtlander. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to ProSieben Sat.1's analyst and investor conference call on the occasion of the full year 2021 results published today. Our group CEO, Rainer Bujan, will start today's presentation with highlights of the financial year 2021. Ralf Gehrig, CFO of ProSiebenSat1, will then take you through the financials of the group and segments for both the fourth quarter as well as full year 2021. In the second part of the presentation, Rainer will provide an update on the group's strategy and what makes us confident to achieve our new mid- to long-term organic group revenue growth ambitions. Rainer will also present the dividend proposal for fiscal 2021 and our new outlook for 2022. As always, the presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. With these opening remarks, I now hand over to Rainer.

Thanks, Dirk. Good afternoon also from my side and welcome to our analyst and investor call on our financial results 2021. We are all looking with shock on what is happening in the Ukraine. Our thoughts are with all those who suffer from this war. Of course, we also ask ourselves what we can do at a time like this. Our answer is clear. We have to use our reach. The current events show once again how important it is to provide viewers with comprehensive and, above all, independent reporting. We are making our contribution to this and report intensively on our stations and platforms. At the same time, of course, our concern is for our employees. We have employees on the ground through two portfolio companies with whom we are in close contact. In times like this, it is challenging to announce record revenues and to come back to business as usual. But you are here today to talk about our results and our outlook, so let's start. In 2021, we have shown that ProSieben.Eins is on a successful path to becoming a globally operating digital group. Our strategic focus is on a diversified portfolio comprising three strong segments that complement each other, entertainment, dating and video, and commerce and ventures. Besides our full year 2021 results, we also want to present today our clear strategic path into our future, as well as our growth ambitions. Let's have a look at today's agenda. We will begin with a short overview of what shaped our path, followed by an update on our group financials. Afterwards, we will highlight our strategic priorities And we'll end the presentation with an outlook regarding the full year 2022. So let's start on slide number three. 2021 was a record year for us, and we saw our strategy succeed. We fully achieved our financial targets, which we had raised three times throughout the year. And that even despite the continued challenging market environment due to COVID-19. We significantly increased our group revenues by 11% to 4.5 billion euros. We substantially grew our adjusted EBITDA by 19% to 840 million euros. Both results hit right our target ranges. The main driver was our entertainment segment, which recorded a strong revenue and earnings performance. In this context, our advertising business recovered much faster from pandemic impacts than expected at the beginning of the year. We continue to focus on profitability and cash flow. That is why active portfolio management still plays an important role in our strategy. Next to divesting from companies we are no longer the best owner for, we also strengthen the position of assets with significant synergies to our entertainment business. The best example is Parship Meat Group, which forms our dating and video segment. Thanks to our strong operating performance, we substantially decreased our net financial debt with our financial leverage narrowing to 2.2 times. With this, we are back in our target range of 1.5 times to 2.5 times. Furthermore, we diversified the maturity of our debt profile after refinancing in 2021. We also increased our adjusted net income considerably by 64% to 362 million euros. Hence, we are happy to offer our shareholders a substantial higher dividend of 80 cents per share compared to 49 cents last year. We will later present to you our outlook and new financial targets for 2022. We also set our aspiration to grow revenues by an average of 4 to 5% originally We also set our aspiration to grow revenues by an average of 4% to 5% organically each year over the medium to long term. With this, let me now hand over to our group CFO, Ralf Gehrig, who will guide you through our group financials for the full year of 2021 and the fourth quarter.