Universal Music Grp U/Adr

Good evening and welcome to Universal Music Group's second quarter and first half earnings call for the period ended June 30, 2025. My name is Drew and I will be your conference operator today. Your speakers for today's call will be Sir Lucian Grange, Chairman and CEO of Universal Music Group and Boyd Muir, Chief Operating Officer. They will be joined during Q&A by Michael Nash, Chief Digital Officer and Matt Ellis, Chief Financial Officer. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star followed by the number two. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. Please also let me remind you that management's commentary and responses to questions on today's call may include forward looking statements, which by their nature are uncertain and outside of the company's control. Although these forward looking statements are based on management's current expectations and beliefs, actual results may vary in a material way. For a discussion of some of the factors that could cause actual results to differ from expected results, Please see the Risk Factors section of UMG's 2024 Annual Report, which is available on the Investor Relations page of UMG's website at universalmusic.com. Management's commentary will also refer to non-IFRS measures on today's call. Reconciliations are available in the Interim Financial Review and Unaudited Condensed Consolidated Interim Financial Statements for the six-month period ended June 30, 2025. on the investor relations page of UMG's website. Thank you. Sir Lucian, you may begin your conference.

Thank you and greetings to everyone from us here in Hilversum. As you've now had an opportunity to see, UMG's string of strong financial results continued for both the second quarter and the first six months of the year. For the first half year, revenue is up 7% and adjusted EBITDA is up 8.5%. Before Boyd goes into the numbers in greater depth, I want to take a few minutes to walk you through a few achievements of which we're justifiably proud. Namely, the extraordinary commercial and creative successes that our artists and songwriters continue to achieve around the world, and the ongoing progress we're making on the strategic evolution of our company, driving growth, pursuing new opportunities, and creating greater efficiencies. I'll start with the artists' successes. Put very simply, we provide the global platform, the expertise, and the resources to support and deliver our artists' historic success. Everything we do is fueled by an entrepreneurial culture that is music driven and artist centric. It's a culture that is attuned to change and forever innovating artistically, commercially and technologically. Here are just a handful of examples of what that culture has recently achieved in partnership with our artists. In the US for the year so far, UMG had eight of the top ten best-selling albums, with Morgan Wallen at number one, and Universal Music Publishing Group songwriters were represented in all ten of these albums. Of the biggest selling album debuts this year, UMG represented the top six, with the top five being Morgan Wallen, The Weeknd, Playboi Carti, Drake, and Party Next Door, as well as Lady Gaga. We also had all of the top six most streamed tracks for the first half of the year, including three from Kendrick Lamar, who had the number one song, as well as tracks by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars, Drake and Morgan Wallen. UMPG had eight of the top 10 tracks on this same chart. Not only did Morgan Wallen have the number one album in the US for the first half of the year, But he also held the number one spot on the Billboard 200 for the entire first two months. In the history of the Billboard 200 chart, the only male artists who spent more weeks at number one than Morgan are Elvis Presley, Garth Brooks, Michael Jackson and Sir Elton John. Not a bad group to be immediately ahead of. Another exciting U.S. success for us so far this year, the soundtrack of the animated Netflix fantasy musical K-pop Demon Hunters. According to Netflix, the film has already achieved 80 million views, making it one of the biggest animated films ever. The soundtrack, released under a New Republic Records joint venture with Visva, is the highest charting soundtrack of the year. and the single recently hit number one on the global chart. Speaking of global, let me take you now on a brief spin around the globe. First, Japan, the world's second largest music market by revenue. The continued success there of the band Mrs. Green Apple is truly historic. Mrs. Green Apple is now the first J-pop act in history whose catalog has exceeded 10 billion total streams in Japan. For the first half of the year, they've held the number one spot on each of Billboard's Japan's Artist, Album, and Song Charts. With Seventeen and Team and Hyphen and King and Prince, Universal Music Japan also had four of the top 10 on the Oricon albums chart, the local key indicator. Moving over to Europe, in the UK, UMG had six of the top ten albums for the for the half year, with Sabrina Carpenter at number one and Sam Fender at number three. Sam's album is the UK's biggest new album of 2025, the fastest selling album by a British artist in the last three years. and the fastest selling vinyl album of the century. On the UK singles chart, UMG had seven of the top ten with the breakout Lola Young, Gracie Abrams and Chapel Roan all in the top five. In Germany, we had seven of the top ten albums with Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga and The Weeknd all in the top five, and our local artist Oymara had the number one single. Here in the Netherlands, where we are today, UMG had three of the top five albums and five of the top 10 singles, including two from local artists, Frenna and Lustrum UBSV. In France, UMG had the two biggest breakout artists of the year so far, with Theodora and L2B Gang. And finally, China. Our continued strategic investment in our frontline business in that country continues to bear fruit. Universal Music Greater China signed a new partnership with Mando pop artist David Tao and his company Great Entertainment. Over the past three decades, David, who is considered the godfather of Mandarin R&B, has played a key role in redefining the sound of Mandarin pop. Also in China, we took a meaningful step to forward in growing our multi-label operations there with the launch of Deutsche Grammophon China and Blue Note Records China, the latest expansion of two of the most iconic and influential labels in classics and jazz. You can see the breadth, the blend throughout the world of our international artists, our global artists, as well as the domestic talents that we've invested in over the years and most recently. I'd like to shift now to the second topic I want to cover, the steps we keep taking to advance our long term strategy. First, health and wellness. Increasingly, scientific research supports what we've intuitively known all along, that music is a powerful force for healing and well-being. For nearly a decade, our company has been a leader in promoting health and wellness advancements in the music space, whether that's FDA-approved prescription digital therapeutics or employing music to support treatments for dementia, anxiety, and more. But when I say UMG is a leader, I'd like to be clear about two things. First, because music's presence in the health and wellness space is still in its embryonic stage, we see a great deal of upside in tapping into music's potential in the growing field. And secondly, while we, of course, license our artist music, we've also been developing our own health and wellness related technology as well. Just over two months ago, that homegrown technology of ours was validated in a very big way. In May, one of the largest and most innovative technology companies in the world, Apple, in a first of its kind partnership, introduced Sound Therapy, an innovative audio wellness collection designed to help listeners attain clearer focus, deeper relaxation, and better sleep. Available exclusively on Apple Music, Sound Therapy blends songs as a subscriber already knows and loves with scientifically calibrated sound waves designed to enhance the listener's daily routines whilst retaining the artist's original vision. Powered by UMG's proprietary audio technologies, including our own ethically developed patented gen AI system, the collection has been crafted by a team of producers, scientists, and audio engineers at Solace, a groundbreaking music wellness venture incubated, developed, and owned by UMG. The technology that is serving as the underpinning of sound therapy is not the only technological innovation we've built in-house, but harness AI. Since 2020, we've been hard at work to bring our expertise to bear on numerous applications that employ artificial intelligence to support artist marketing, analytics, and obviously distribution. And to accelerate and scale the development of our patents, We recently partnered with Liquidax Capital, an IP asset management investing advisory firm. Under the partnership, they will support UMG's efforts filing patent applications and licensing our technological inventions. Our greatly expanded patent portfolio can then become a catalyst to accelerate introduction of products to the marketplace. Liquid Axe, on our behalf, has already filed 15 patents in the fields of musical collaboration, multimedia content, and campaign creation, AI threat protection, music administration, and rights management. With our industry-leading track record of consistently developing the most successful artists in the world, quarter after quarter, year after year, we're also taking advantage of some of the many opportunities around extending our label and artist brands into new realms. Take, for example, our investment in virtual artist experiences such as ABBA Voyage or our experiential hospitality venture, You Music Hotels. These are capital investments that expand our artists and label brands, support our e-commerce and DTC strategies, and create powerful commercial ecosystems around our artists, as well as deeper experiences for fans. That strategy of brand extension is at the heart of our recently announced venture with WTSL, the Silverlake-backed investment firm founded by longtime entertainment leader Patrick Whitesell. The venture will accelerate our ability to unlock opportunities that extend music's value across film, television, fashion, consumer brands, branded experiences, and other emerging growth areas. Combining our strategic expertise and networks, the two companies will capitalize on how cultural influence is leveraged, making artists and their music the foundation for building scalable, multidimensional businesses that connect with audiences in a new, lasting way. But of course, even as we grow and expand, we always remain laser focused on our cost base, exploring and instituting new ways to improve efficiency. To that end, I'm pleased to report that after having achieved 125 million euros in cost savings from the phase one of our strategic redesign, we are on track on the second phase of our plan. Amongst a number of strategic areas, this phase has included reorganization of one, our UK company, which subsequently has had its best domestic artist success in many years with Sam Fender, Lola Young and Olivia Dean, to name just a few. Our D2C in e-commerce functions, which now have greater integration with our frontline labels to achieve more streamlined decision making and impactful artists and catalog campaign. And thirdly, our IT organization to leverage AI and other technologies to drive greater efficiencies and improved support of all our business units and we are working at a tilt to integrate all of this within all areas and all structures and all markets of the company worldwide how we integrate our ai how we use it and how we we adapt alongside our artists to something that we see is a great opportunity and very positively. Our long-term strategy continues to be remarkably effective. UMG has evolved far beyond the old definition of a music company. We've become a dynamic global enterprise, constantly evolving and reinventing itself. Whether in our core businesses of recorded music and music publishing or in emerging fields such as health and wellness, AI or brand extensions, umg is a hub of creative innovation and that's how we have to be and all our efforts they share the same purpose and goal to help support our artists their music and their brands one last thing i'd like to add last week we received notice that we've entered phase two of the european commission's review of virgin's acquisition of downtime Because the combined company will help support the growth and success of independent labels and their artists everywhere in what is a very highly competitive artist services space with more than 100 companies, we remain confident that the transaction will pass that review and will be completed before the end of the year. I think now I'd like to turn things over to Boyd. who after today will be handing over to Matt Ellis, our new CFO, the responsibility for reporting the financials on our next earnings calls. For today, Matt will be joining us for the Q&A and is here with us in Amsterdam. So if you will, for this one last time, please savour the dulcet tones of Boyd's Scottish accent and his brogue as he walks us through the financials. And also please welcome Matt Ellis as he joins our band. Thank you.

Listen, thank you very much. Here is the dulcet tones about to go. The second quarter marked another quarter of solid constant currency revenue growth, adjusted EBITDA growth and margin expansion for UMG. We are pleased with the strong growth and subscription. ad supported, and music publishing revenue, which more than offset particularly difficult comparisons in physical and merchandising revenue. This quarter's revenue composition once again reflects the breadth of our business and supports our conviction about our ability to deliver constant, healthy growth. In the quarter, revenue grew 4.5%. Adjusted EBITDA grew 7.3%, and adjusted EBITDA margins expanded 60 basis points, 22.7%. In terms of the difference between EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA, we had 53 million euros in non-cash share-based compensation expense for the quarter, as well as 12 million euros in US listing preparation costs and certain M&A advisory costs. compared to 69 million euros in non-cash share-based compensation expense in the prior year quarter. For the half year, revenue was up 6.9% and adjusted EBITDA grew 8.5%, driving margin expansion of 30 basis points to 22.7%. Total adjusted EBITDA margin reflects 70 basis points of margin expansion in recorded music and a decline in corporate overhead, partially offset by margin contraction in music publishing and merchandising, which I will come to when I discuss each segment. The first half of the year had a total of 110 million euros in non-cash share-based compensation expense, compared to 171 million euros in the first half of 2024. We continue to expect about 230 million euros in non-cash share-based compensation expense this year. Earnings per share for the first half of 2025 grew to 78 euro cents, up from 50 euro cents, and adjusted diluted earnings per share grew to 48 euro cents up from 44 euro cents in the first half of 2024. Now let me turn to the segments. Recorded music revenue grew 3.9% for the quarter and 7% for the half year. This revenue growth drove adjusted EBITDA up 9.9% for the first half and adjusted EBITDA margin expanded 70 basis points to 26.1% for the half year. The margin expansion was driven by a combination of cost savings, revenue mix, and operating leverage. Looking further at recorded music revenue, subscription revenue grew 8.5% in the quarter, largely similar to our results for the last several quarters. This growth continues to be driven primarily by growth in the number of subscribers and to a much lesser extent, certain price increases, with a small drag this quarter from a decline in fitness platform revenue. Similar to last year, this quarter's subscription growth was supported by solid growth in high ARPU established markets, including the US and Japan. The quarter's performance was also driven by double digit growth in other top 10 markets, including Mexico and Brazil. Given that Luminate's mid-year data shows that these two markets are now the third and fourth largest markets globally for total streaming consumption, we're particularly pleased to see double digit paid subscription growth. For the half year, subscription revenue grew 8.9%. We've now reported four consecutive quarters of high single digit subscription revenue growth, the last three quarters of growth being primarily volume driven. And we have posted these results prior to realizing the impact of improved monetization from our streaming 2.0 partnerships. Ad-supported streaming revenue growth accelerated this quarter, increasing 9.1% as comps eased and we saw modest incremental improvements in account performance and monetisation across most of our major partnerships. The sequential improvement in year-over-year growth was substantially supported by an easier comp as we partially anniversaried the loss of our premium music video licence with Meta and also comped against a month of being off platform with TikTok in the second quarter of 2024. For the half year, ad supported streaming revenue grew 4.6%, which should give you a more normalized view of how our ad revenue is performing. Going forward, we expect this revenue to remain challenged in the near term by the shift to short form consumption, which is not yet adequately monetized. And then there's continued uncertainty in the overall macro environment. Downloads and other digital revenue grew 50%, thanks to a settlement with an internet service provider. As you know, these smaller settlements happen regularly in our normal course of business, and in this instance, amounted to 31 million euros of revenue and 15 million euros of EBITDA. For the half year, downloads and other digital revenue was up 17.2%. Moving now to physical. As expected, physical revenue declined 12.4% in the quarter, with the US and Europe down against last year's release of Taylor Swift's The Tortured Poets Department. Physical sales in Japan grew strongly in the quarter, driven by several local releases. For the half year, physical revenues were largely flat, and we continue to expect physical sales for the year to be relatively flat given the difficult comp. Beyond that, we remain excited about the physical revenue opportunity driven by vinyl and other collectibles and reflecting an important component of the opportunity around superfandom. Licensing and other revenue had a timing related decline 6.5% in the quarter. also as a result of a difficult comp, as last year included improvements in live and audiovisual revenues. For the half year, licensing and other revenue grew 8.6%. Now turning to music publishing. Revenue grew 14.5% in the quarter, with strength across digital, performance, and sync revenues, thanks to the remarkable performance of our songwriters. The strong growth also reflects the court administration business, as well as our continued success in growing our film and TV administration business. For the half year, music publishing revenue grew 12.1% and music publishing adjusted EBITDA grew 7.9% as margin declined 90 basis points as a result of revenue and repertoire mix. Turning now to merchandising. As expected, merchandising revenue declined against last year's extremely strong growth, which was helped by direct-to-consumer sales tied to Taylor Swift's album release and tour. This quarter, merchandising revenue declined 12.7%. For the half year, merchandising revenue fell 10%, or €36 million, year over year. while adjusted EBITDA declined €21 million to €-3 million. The loss is a result of lower revenue and higher manufacturing and freight costs. The higher manufacturing and freight costs were due to partly product mix as well as higher tariffs, which drove a need to find quick solutions for alternative manufacturing. We're taking several steps to improve the profitability of our merchandising business, including investing in our DTC business and working on ways to reconfigure our manufacturing supply chain. As we previously mentioned, this is the only area of our business impacted by tariffs. Net profit for the first half of 2025 amounted to 1.4 billion euros compared to 914 million euros in the first half of 2024, resulting in earnings per share of 78 euro cents compared to 50 euro cents in the first half of 2024. The increase in net profit includes a 1.1 billion euro increase in the valuation of investments in listed companies compared to an increase of 565 million euros in the first half of 2024. which was partly offset by the related increase in deferred tax expense. Net profit also included the 110 million euros of share-based compensation expense in the first half of 2025, compared to 171 million euros in the first half of 2024. In addition, net profit reflects restructuring costs of 49 million euros in the first half of 2025, related to our strategic organisational redesign, as well as €12 million of costs related to our planned US listing certain M&A advisory costs, compared to €113 million of restructuring costs in the first half of 2024. Adjusted net profit, which adjusts for, amongst other items, the revaluation of investments, the share-based compensation expense, restructuring costs and the listing and M&A costs I just mentioned grew 9% to €882 million in the first half of 2025, resulting in adjusted earnings per share of €0.48 compared to €0.44 in the first half of 2024. In line with our commitment to pay a dividend of at least 50% of our net profits, the interim dividend for 2025 will be 440 million euros or 24 euro cents per share. As Lucien discussed, we have begun to implement phase two of our strategic organisational redesign, which we first introduced to you in early 2024. We continue to remodel our organisation to enhance our capabilities in the areas most critical to our future growth and success. These changes are strengthening our leadership team, fostering innovation and creating efficiencies across our business. As a reminder, the overall plan will generate 250 million euros in run rate cost savings and will be implemented by the end of 2026 as expected. We completed phase one of the program in 2024, which resulted in 125 million euros of run rate cost savings. 75 million of which was realized in 2024, with the incremental 50 million realized in the first half of 2025. In late 2024 and early 2025, we commenced our work on implementing phase two of the program. You heard Lucien speak about some of the areas which we are improving our operations. The key areas that we have been addressing as part of phase two of the plan include our direct to consumer business, our catalogue business, activities in our international operating companies, including the UK and Europe, and central corporate functions such as technology, supply chain and data and analytics. I'm pleased to announce that phase two is on track and is expected to lead to an additional 40 million euros of realized cost savings in the back half of 2025, bringing the total 2025 realized cost savings to 90 million euros. The phase two actions already taken during 2025, combined with additional actions to be taken in 2025 and 2026, are expected to generate an incremental 85 million euros of realized savings over 2026 and 2027. In 2025, we expect to incur total restructuring charges of about 95 million euros, of which 49 million euros fell into the first half of the year. Now let me turn to cash flow. Our net cash provided by operating activities before income taxes paid for the first half of 2025 increased 11.9% to 488 million euros. This improvement is driven by the strong growth in operating profit, partially offset by an increase in net royalty advance payments, which amounted to 377 million euros, up from 315 million euros in the first half of 2024. This increase was due to the timing of certain major artist deal renewals and extensions, including in music publishing. In addition, the increase in net cash provided by operating activities was also offset by the 61 million euros in cash restructuring related to the organisational redesign. Net cash provided by operating activities also reflected 95 million euros that we paid to settle employee tax liabilities arising from equity plan grants and associated obligations. You will recall that for the past three years, we've opted to fund the taxes with cash rather than issue shares, which reduces the dilutive impact of the grants. In total, we have used 420 million euros in cash to fund these taxes over the past three years, which has lessened shareholder dilution by just under 1%. Even with the increase in royalty advances and the payments made to cover employee tax obligations, free cash flow before investing activities was 143 million euros in the first half of 2025. Let me remind you, the second half of the year is a consistently stronger cash generating period for our business. We also continued our long-term strategic investment into the business. We paid €149 million for catalogue acquisitions in the period, although about half of which are catalogues that will be moved into the CORD vehicle in the coming months. CORD is successfully raising capital and building a strong deal pipeline. The structure is working exactly as we envisaged. enabling us to move quickly to acquire high-quality catalogues without significant capital allocation over time. To maintain our share of ownership in the vehicle, we also made a €30 million incremental equity investment into the business in the first half of the year. This is included in our other investing activities, which totalled €173 million and also included a number of additional strategic investments such as our majority stake in A-Sketch in Japan. Free cash flow in the first half improved to an outflow of 179 million euros compared to an outflow of 460 million euros in the first half of 2024. We encourage you to look at cash generation on a full year basis rather than for a half year. as working capital movements and the timing of investments can vary considerably during a shorter timeframe. We remain excited and encouraged by the path ahead of us. With an expanding ecosystem and market opportunity, we continue to be an invaluable partner to our artists, whose music is an ever more vital component of a growing number of platforms and businesses. Before I close, let me note that on July 21st, we announced that we had confidentially submitted a draft registration statement to the SEC relating to a proposed US public offering of our ordinary shares held by certain shareholders. Due to US securities rules, we're unable to provide any further details at this time, but we look forward to sharing additional information when we are able to. So thank you. And with that, Lucien, Michael Nash, Matt Ellis and I will now take your questions. So operator, please open the line for Q&A.