Viaplay Group AB (publ)

Good morning everyone and welcome to today's Q1 2024 Results Conference Call. My name is Matthew Hooper and I'll be your host today. Joining me here on the call are our CEO Jürgen Madsen-Lindemann and our CFO Enrique Patricson. As usual our presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can find the presentation deck for this meeting on the Investor Relations section of our website. If you are joining via the webcast link you'll be able to follow the slides as we present them. please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you are following the webcast, please post your questions on the message board at any time and I will read them out. If you prefer to ask your questions directly, you are of course welcome to do so by using your phone keypad. More about that later. As we presented last quarter, and you will see from the fact sheet that we sent out with the results this morning, we have changed our segmental reporting structure so that it reflects our new operating structure. Our core operations comprise the Nordics, Netherlands and Bioplace Select, while the non-core operations comprise the international markets that we are exiting, Poland, the Baltics and the UK. The guidance we have given and which we are restating today was already provided according to this structure. The other change that we have made is to separate the revenue breakdown for the core operations into four lines rather than the previous three. This then provides more granularity around linear channel subscription cells and our sub-licensing cells. Given the scale of our sub-licensing activities now, we hope that this is useful extra information for you. The fact sheet includes the segmental information for prior quarters too. I will now hand the call over to Juergen to walk you through the Q1 highlights. So over to you, Juergen.

Thank you, Matthew, and good morning, everyone. So our results are in line with expectation and we have made no changes to our forward-looking guidance. The recapitalization is done and the financing is secured, so our full focus now is on making all of our operational improvements that are necessary for the group to achieve our plans and to return to profitable growth and free cash flow generation. Our cooperation generated 6% organic sales growth in Q1, which was driven by our linear channel sales and sub-licensing, which I will come on to in a minute. The losses for Q1 primary reflected higher content expenses, which mainly come from the rise in our sports costs due to the inflation built into these contracts. The core subscriber base was slightly up quarter on quarter, and we raised our prices in both Sweden and in Denmark. 70% of our core revenues come from the sale of subscriptions to our on-demand streaming service and linear scheduled channels, with sub-licensing accounting for an extraordinary 10% of our revenues. Sub-licensing comprises the revenue that we get from Viaplay Select as well as the sports and non-sports sub-licensing deals we have done in our core markets as part of our self-help measures to bring down our committed cost base. Looking at the segments in more detail now, let's start with Viaplay. Our cost via pay subscriber base was slightly up since the end of last quarter due to the growth in the Dutch subscriber base as the new Formula One season started. And down year and year due to the termination of the unprofitable B2B campaigns last summer and the one million campaign subs that we cleaned up in Q2 last year. Our sales were down year and year on an organic basis due to decline in the number of premium high ARPU D2C subscribers and the growth in the number of lower ARPU B2B subscribers, which is a consequence of the historical volume over value agreement with our partners. This was offset to an extent by the D2C price adjustments that you can see on this slide. We adjusted our prices in Sweden, Denmark and Iceland for both our entry level and premium packages. The adjustments were between 11% to 27% and reflect the content investments that we have been making and the value for money that our products offer according to recent research on customer content preferences. Churn level did increase temporarily and have now returned to normalized levels. So we do expect the price adjustments to have been an accretive initiative that will support growth moving forward. Next up is the Netherlands, where we will adjust the monthly price from 1599 to 1799 euros in May. The reality across our business is that our content costs have risen faster than our revenues. Our Nordic subscription revenues have grown by 43% when you compare Q1 this year with Q1 2021, while our Nordic content costs have grown by 83% over the same period. These numbers include the FX movements over the period and show that our content costs have been growing almost twice as fast as our subscription sales. This is clearly not sustainable and reflects the competition for sportswise and investment in original programming, underlying inflation and ongoing adverse currency movements as the currencies in which we buy content have significantly strengthened against the SEC. We cannot expect our direct customers and distribution partners to carry 100% of these cost increases alone. So as part of the self-help measures we have taken, we have sub-licensed selected sports and non-sports content to other broadcasters and streamers, as you have seen with the deals announced in the last few months. We are in talks with our distribution partners in order to learn from what products have done well and delivered on our joint expectations and what products didn't do so well in the past few years in terms of value for our customers and us as partners. We are discussing what we should jointly do to launch competitive products in our markets given the competition and consumer behavior that we see. This discussion will also address how we tackle account sharing together. which is a major issue for the industry and for us with high ARPU products. We estimate that approximately a third of Viaplay subscribers, including a third of Viaplay premium subscribers, have been sharing the account details for their subscriptions. This, of course, removes a significant proportion of our addressable margin and is simply not fair. It is like buying a cinema ticket and on the way out, once you have watched the movie, you give the ticket to another person who then can watch it for free and who then also on the way out gives that ticket to another person who then also can watch it for free. It is difficult to make business when that is happening. We have therefore launched initiatives to limit the number of concurrent streams for live sports events in some markets as a test, and we'll ask any account shares to pay for a subscription and become a customer. These actions have proven successful and reduced sharing levels by up to 80% or more on an event basis. We will implement fair initiative this summer, similar to what some of our peers have done, so that we get paid properly for our products. These initiatives will address both premium and entry tiers across all our markets by establishing subscriber access on a principle of eligible home device, which will have to be pre-verified within the home, effectively blocking sharing outside the household. We're also working with our industry peers to combat piracy, both through legal and technical actions, as well as education programs. But it's very clear that we do need much more help from the politicians and regulators to prevent and police all forms of illegal content distribution, which effectively amount to theft of the content in which creators, owners, and distributors have invested substantial sums. I'll talk more about the various innovations and new product developments that we have engaged in. But one more to mention here is HWAD, a hybrid video and demand service, where we will this summer add a competitively priced tier to our Viaplay offering that also includes advertisement. Such initiatives have proved successful for our peers. and our natural extension to our advertising video on demand products. Given our existing advertising business, we are of course very well placed to build price and sell such digital inventory to media buyers across our markets. And this will play well into our ambition to replace declining linear advertising revenue with growing digital advertising revenue. This product is expected to become competitive both in terms of ad sales and subscription sales and on both the D2C customer and B2B partner side. More details will follow on both the account sharing initiatives and new age for our product, and both of these are already included in our plans and guidance. Now let's move on to our linear tenant subscription sales business. Sales were up 3% on an organic basis after we extended some distribution agreements with more competitive terms, but the majority of our commercial agreements with our partners are still underperforming. We are discussing initiatives with our partners, and as I said, we are also innovating in this area to support our products and partners. The most recent example of this is our interesting linear TV channel partnership with Talba Network in the Netherlands, where Talba's SBS9 channel, which is available in almost all homes, has now been rebranded as Viaplay TV and includes selection of our sports content. This month's schedule includes the Premier League football and highlights from the Chinese Grand Prix. And we have already seen the channel double its share of viewing with some of this content. And we have a revenue share that secures a fine upside for us. Next up will be our new sport news channel that we will roll out across most of our market this summer. The new channel will be available to our D2C subscribers and have a wide focus on news across the world of sport. based on all of the relevant sports news and video footage that we have available, as well as magazine formats. It would include third-party content from both the Sky Sport News and Sky Sport Premier League channels in the UK, which is great news to all our sports customers. This is a natural way to provide even more great coverage to sports fans, make our products even more relevant, and monetize even better on our sports rights and production investments. We will discuss potential distribution deals with partners who can sell the channel to their customers, and the channel will also carry advertisement. We will also bring new deals or products to our sports portfolio in order to ensure that we monetize our content investment as effectively as possible. Now let's move on to our advertising business. This was a mixed quarter where we gained all advertising market share as we continue to grow our digital inventory, which was up 67%. The linear TV advertising market has, however, continued to be weak, especially in Sweden. We would like to see our total ad sales return to growth, giving our projected digital growth, improving linear markets and the HWAT and linear challenge initiative that we have been launching. Q2 and the beginning of Q3 will be very competitive in the Nordics with European Football Championship and the Olympics on rival channels and new HWAT products being launched by competitors. On our platforms, we will show every game of the ice hockey world championship from the Czech Republic in May, combined with local shows and strong slate of Hollywood content. Finally, let's look at our sub-licensing and other sales, which we have broken out as a separate sales segment for the first time. So prior years numbers includes our studio operations that we are now closing or have sold. The most recent deal being the sale of Paprika in Central and Eastern Europe. Our sublicensing sales have more than doubled as we grew the selected business outside the Nordics, but also did financially necessary sublicensing deals in the Nordics for some of our existing and new original titles, as well as selected sports content. These non-sports deals were with Netflix and Amazon, with whom we would like to cooperate even more. The deal with Amazon for 38 of the Premier League matches per season kicks in from the summer when the new season starts. All of the above also reflect our focus on self-help measures on our content strategy shift away from high-cost original drama towards high-impact non-scripted content, acquired movies, and series. We'll have a considerable amount of original dramas, both new and returning shows, but our focus on return on investment will see the volume decrease over time. Before we talk more about our content, a word or two about the progress in existing in exiting, sorry, the non-core international markets. We have now completed the sale of the UK operation just after the end of the quarter on 4th of April. And we have transferred our streaming subscribers and sub-licensed our entire sports, the content portfolio in the Baltics to TV3 Group's Go3 streaming service. And we have shut down our D2C offering in the US and Canada, where we will keep content available on third-party networks, inclusive Amazon, Rogers, Comcast, and Roku, as we get paid fees from these partners, which are included in the sub-licensing revenue line. The only remaining operation then is Poland, which is planned to be closed down in the summer of next year and reported stable subscriber volume compared to the end of Q4. Revenues for the non-corporations came in as expected, as did the EBIT, given that the content costs have been written down. So the EBIT for the rest of the year would effectively comprise The SG&A cost for the Polish operation. Q1 still included costs for the UK and the Portugal operations. If we then move to our content with the recapitalization done, we have now begun to commission new shows and adjust the schedule so that our commercial audience shares can get back into shape with better ROI. We aim to have the lineup we want in place for the spring 25 season. Our content offering is quite unique in spanning to many genres, which is live to local, acquired to commission, library to new releases, series to movies, and sports to documentaries. The majority of hours of content is acquired from Hollywood, and the majority of cost is related to our premium live sports package. We have a very strong portfolio of sports content across our markets, The Q2 schedule is very strong with the Ice Hockey World Championship and the NSL Stanley Cup, Formula One, IndyCar, NASCAR, Motor Racing, Sweden's Ludwig Oberg, Norway's Viktor Haaland and Denmark's Nikolaj Høygaard all looking to take their mark at the PGA and US Open Golf Championship after 24-year-old Oberg was runner-up at the Masters earlier this month. and the climax of the Premier League, the Champions League, the Euro League, the Super League, and the Bundesliga as well in the quarter. On the non-sport side, Q1 saw the return of established and successful local series, including Masterchef, Luxury Trap, and Eftelys. This is core non-scripted commercial content, and it delivered again on both our TV channels and Viaplay. The latest series of our reality format Paradise Hotel followed up in a huge success in Denmark by being the most watched non-sport title in Norway in Q1. and Kam Kulunaris was back in Norway. Crime continues to be a very popular genre amongst our viewers with the fourth series of hit crime drama visiting breaking its own viewing records and crime documentary Under the Radar making a big impact in Sweden. The acquired Hollywood material also worked well to drive retention with Good Doctor, Blue Bloods and Re-Engine, all features on the top list across all markets. The state for Q2 also looks good with new seasons of successful local international series, great new movies, releases and shows, including comedy, drama, all and Eva and documentary Ace of Base, All That She Wants. Prada's hotel will be back in Denmark for the summer. And on the acquired front, SWAT returns with a proven track record as does Alert Missing Persons Unit, which was launched last year and the third season of Alex Ryder. Our key focus areas remain firstly the top-line revenue drivers of focusing on ARPU rather than subscriber volume, adjusting prices, enhancing our partnerships, increasing our digital ad inventory, and introducing new products. Secondly, improve the return on our content investment, which I have just illustrated by focusing on commercial and relevant content, ensuring we have a disciplined KPI-driven approach, and sub-licensing content where we can and where it makes sense. And finally, improving the organization and operations by exiting the non-core markets, further improving the setup and functioning of our teams, and ensuring we have locally mandated and accountable teams with strict governance processes. All of this is critical to enable us to achieve our goals of low to mid single digit percentage revenue growth, double digit operating profit margins in five years, free cash flow generation in 2025 for our corporations and 2025 for the group so that we can build our balance sheet and enable shareholder returns. That concludes my initial remarks and I will now hand over to Enrique to comment on our financial performance and position before I come back to you to talk about our future plans.

Thank you so much Jørgen and good morning everyone. Our total group sales growth was lower than our organic growth due to a number of divestments since last year, and they continued into play of our currency mix in this quarter. When looking at our core operations, 4.2% reported growth was 5.6% on organic growth basis. with a marginal negative FX of approximately 10 million SEK. The currency effects did, however, continue to inflate our costs by about 25 million due to the effects that Georgi mentioned earlier, where the currencies that we buy our content in, primarily US dollars and euros, strengthened against local currencies. With a weaker second knock in the quarter, we saw total EBIT impact of around 35 million SEK in the quarter year over year. Based on current rates and our more limited ability to hedge currencies, we expect a transactional FX headwind to impact the EBIT line of approximately 300 to 400 million SEC for the full year compared to 300 million in our previous assumption. We are currently exploring new hedging options for this ongoing exposure following the recapitalization. The increase in our sales was outstripped by the 9% reporting currency raise in our COGS. which primarily comprise content costs specifically derived in sports content costs. Our content cost made up 80% of our overall OPEX in Q1, which will not change that much moving forward as the cost of sales impact from the previous content breakdowns will be offset by the overall content cost inflation. And sports will continue to comprise approximately two-thirds of our total content costs. SG&A costs were reduced significantly compared to a year ago, down 12% after the reduction in the workforce last summer and also reduction in marketing spend. Our core segment SG&A was up as we now allocate all central overheads to the core segment. It is also worth noting that the 3.6% drop in both our core Viaplay products and advertising sales passes almost entirely to the bottom line, so it's a big swing factor in the quarter. And to elaborate more on the bridge items, so focusing on our core EBIT loss of 270 million, this is approximately a reduction of 370 million versus a year ago. And the key drivers behind this is that 226 million higher sales and 64 million higher SG&A and the balance of about 500 million is higher content cost. For the non-core markets, our losses were 47 million, which reflected essentially the SG&A cost. As we have sales of almost 300 million and a slight loss on gross profit level, it means that SG&A is the rest. And this reflects the write-up that we made last year, so it makes more sense to focus on cash flows when talking about our international exit markets. The free cash flow was negative 376 in the quarter, and at the latest FX rates we expect to land in the upper end of our guidance that we provided for the full year, so close to 800 million SEK on cash returns. In the quarter we had 188 million of items affecting comparability, which primarily comprise unrealized non-cash FX translation effects related to the previous content provisions that we had named. These effects will continue to move up and down each quarter. The ISC in this quarter also included costs related to the recatalysation that we could not take against equity. Our interest in other financial items would normally have primarily reflected the increase in our borrowing costs after the recatalysation, where we are paying a blended rate of 7.7% in our borrowings at the end of Q1 and earning about 3.4% on cash deposits. compared to 5.6% and 3.7% respectively at the end of last year. However, this quarter, our other financial items in the finance net amounted to a positive 1.18 billion, and mainly comprised of one of impact due to the 2 billion debt right fund that was made in connection to the recapitalization in February, where 500 million equity portion is valued at the date to which debt was canceled. Our share price at the time was about 160 at the date of the recatalysation, so the 500 million was revalued to 810 million in our equity. And the difference between the 2 billion and the 810 is recognized as other financial income in our net financial line. Our associated company income amounted to 32 million in the quarter and almost entirely comprised the income from our 50% share in the earnings of Alente. The company has made a solid start to the year and is seeing the effects on the efficiency initiatives that it has made. Revenues were stable as price increases offset the gradual decline in its DTH subscriber base. We expect our share of Alente's full year 2024 earnings to be in the range of 100 to 150 million. We also received 100 million dividends from Alente in Q1, reflecting the quite strong cash flow in the beginning of the year. Moving on then to our cash flow, our operating cash flow was negative $1.53 billion and comprised the core EDIT losses of $270 million, higher payments and costs of approximately $900 million for the core segments, and that included about $300 million related to the ISCs reported last year. And then we have the $376 million cash drive from our non-core operations, and that includes both the working capital swing as well as the $47 million in negative EDIT for the non-core segments. The other cash flow items, including the un-lented dividend, capex, depreciation and amortization, interest and tax, all of those broadly offset each other. Our cash flow statement shows the working capital build up 757 million, which reflected the usual seasonal patterns when it comes to payments for sports and non-sports content. You need to add about 440 million from the 1.52 billion line that is just above on this chart to arrive to underlying 1.2 billion build up in working capital. The 440 million represents the changes in provisions, and the balance of that line is mainly the reversal of the debt devaluation that went into the finance net line that I commented just a moment ago. We expect our total working capital buildup for 2024 to be between 1.8 to 1.9 billion for the year, with Q2 being positive and Q3 being the other quarter where working capital builds up the most. In terms of the proceeds from the recapitalization, we used the net proceeds from the recent share issue to repay the fully drawn RCF, which has been reduced to 3.4 billion and extended until 2028. Our debt maturity profiles have all been extended till 2028, both for our $834 million of privately placed debt and the $1.03 billion of debt in the MTN program. Our financial net debt, when excluding the net lease liabilities, was $273 million at the end of Q1, with cash and cash equivalents of $1.34 billion and total borrowings of $1.86 billion. From a free cash flow perspective, this slide is the same as the one that we showed last quarter, and we still expect to deliver in the same range of negative 1.7 to 2.2 billion for 2024 on free cash flow, of which 0.6 to 0.8 relates to the non-core exit markets, and we now expect that number to be in the upper end of that interval. These expectations are included in our financial targets as about on this slide, which is the same as the one that we had at the right issue prospectus, and then reiterated in our Q4 report. In addition to these sales and EBIT targets for our core business, meaning the Nordics, Netherlands, and , the non-core exit market operations will deliver an additional approximately 0.8 to 1 billion of revenues and 100 million of negative EBIT in 2024, as indicated earlier. In conclusion, 2024 is a transition year. We're making many changes across the operations in terms of how we allocate capital and require returns on it. But it will take time for the impact of these actions to be seen in our results. The content strategy changes that during an outline also mean that we have faster cash conversion cycles, especially non-sports content. However, we still sit with large content commitments in our core and non-core markets that we have to monetize through as many means as possible. The focus on cash flow and cash ROI is very clear in how we make and follow up investment decisions in all our businesses. These are very important steps to make MyPlay Group a much more competitive business. That's all for me, so over back to you, Matthew, now.