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spk01: Good morning. My name is Lara, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Chorus Entertainment Q1 2024 Analyst and Investor Conference Call. 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, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then the number two. Thank you. As a reminder, this call is being recorded. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Doug Murphy, President and CEO of Chorus Entertainment. Mr. Murphy, you may begin your conference.
spk03: Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and happy new year. Welcome to Chorus Entertainment's fiscal 2024 first quarter earnings call. I'm Doug Murphy, and joining me this morning is John Gosling, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before I read the cautionary statement, I'd like to remind everyone that we have slides to accompany today's call. You can find them on our website at www.coruscant.com under the investor relations dash events and presentations section. Now let's move to the standard cautionary statement found on slide two. We note that forward-looking statements may be made during this call. Actual results could differ materially from forecast projections or conclusions in these statements. We'd like to remind those on our call today, in addition to disclosing results in accordance with IFRS, Corus also provides supplementary non-IFRS or non-GAAP measures as a method of evaluating the company's performance and to provide a better understanding of how management views the company's performance. Today we'll be referring to certain non-GAAP measures in our remarks. Additional information on these non-GAAP financial measures, the company's reported results, and factors and assumptions related to forward-looking information can be found in Cora's first quarter 2024 report to shareholders and the 2023 annual report, which can be found on CDAR plus or in the investor relations dash financial reports section of our website. I will start on slide three. It won't surprise anyone on today's call when I say we are excited to put 2023 behind us. The new year brings us the highly anticipated return of our full slate of hit scripted programming, and the long-awaited normalization of our regulatory spending obligations. The disciplined implementation of our strategic plan remains our priority. We are focused on executing two distinct but interconnected strategies. Video First is our audience strategy to position the company for the future as we move beyond being a television broadcaster towards becoming an aggregator of premium video content across all platforms, linear, streaming, and digital, while we concurrently build our cross-platform monetization capabilities. Fit for the Future furthers our efforts to capture operating efficiencies as we streamline our operating model and rationalize our asset base. We have implemented waves of cost reductions and cuts, including workforce restructuring, delivering significant operational efficiencies and a focus on core activities. These efficiency initiatives are reflected in our Q1 results and will be evident throughout the year. Our results for the quarter were as follows. Our consolidated revenue was $370 million for the quarter. Total consolidated segment profit was $121 million, and free cash flow was $24 million. Q1 revenue declines were partially offset by lower amortization of program rights and reduced operating expenses, which, when combined, total costs were down 17%. This spotlights the impressive results from our enterprise-wide cost review as we pursue fit for the future efficiencies to streamline our operating model. Leverage was 3.67 times pro forma net debt to segment profit at the end of the quarter. John will take you through the results for the first quarter in more detail during his remarks. It is too early to pinpoint the timing of a recovery in advertising demand and revenues. On the one hand, we expect the return of new scripted programming to catalyze primetime marketing investments by our advertisers. On the other hand, the macroeconomic environment remains uncertain, while distortions related to post-pandemic normalization of many advertising categories persist, resulting in continued low visibility. It is too early to provide any outlook on Q3. Here is what we are seeing now in the industry for the second quarter. Certain advertising categories are showing early signs of year-over-year improvement as we enter calendar 2024. The important automotive sector has returned to television with marketing investments in Canada and the U.S. as supply chain issues appear largely resolved. Theatrical entertainment advertising has also seen a recent rebound, encouraged by the breakout success of Barbie and Oppenheimer, as well as the resolution of the Hollywood strikes now that actors can participate in marketing stunts and junkets. Further, studios and streamers alike appreciate the importance of a strong box office performance to optimize the economics of their significant investments in feature films. Consumer packaged goods advertising remains in flux. as some industry players adjust their advertising spending to reflect weakening macroeconomic trends, while others step in to fill the void, seeking competitive advantage. As a result of the recent Hollywood strikes, we experienced declines in all ad categories in Q1, reflecting the broad impact of reduced advertiser demand given lower audience delivery. Certain categories were influenced by other factors. For example, financial services advertising declines, we believe, result from increases in interest rates. Advertising and communication services, we suspect, has been negatively affected by industry consolidation and agency changes. As expected, premium digital video is growing as a percentage of the total video advertising pie, validating our video first strategic ambitions. We are working with our agency partners to review their digital media mix in an attempt to reallocate other digital dollars to premium digital video. Finally, the relaunch of our scripted programming schedule in the winter and spring represents an exciting opportunity for our advertising partners as the return of many fan favorites is expected to result in strong audience delivery. Over to slide four. The writers and actors are back in action. Production is in full swing, promising a standout schedule with fresh, original scripted programming set to debut the week of February the 12th. Our programming lineup, with its top-performing returning hits replete with pre-existing fan affinity and new buzzworthy shows, is designed to bring viewers back to global this winter and into the spring. To set up the full launch of our scripted content in the months ahead, we have smartly crafted a schedule that begins in January, delivering 17 hours of new simulcast original programming to warm up the time slots, promoting the return of all scripted shows in February and March. For example, returning hits NCIS Sydney and Seal Team, reality series I Can See Your Voice and The Wall are part of the January lineup on Global. By March, We will have a full complement of simulcast programming on global, also with 17 hours of simulcast. Here is a quick overview. The neighborhood kicks off on Mondays, followed by our stellar lineup of NCIS and NCIS Hawaii. We're excited to welcome LL Cool J, reprising his role as Sam Hanna from NCIS LA. Tuesday, see the popular return of reality fan favorite Big Brother Canada. premiering March 5th, leading into our winning FBI franchise lineup, all simulcast with CBS. Mega hit series Survivor returns with season 46 in Mamanuka Island, Fiji, on Wednesdays, followed by Big Brother Canada and the award-winning comedy Abbott Elementary wrapping up the night. Thursdays, see the return of Ghosts in 9-1-1 on this new night and time. and the warm and hilarious dramedy So Help Me Todd, followed by the highly anticipated premiere of Elsbeth. Fridays are home to the final season of SWAT, fantastic hit series Fire Country, and a fresh new season of the top-performing chorus Canadian original, Crime Beat. And on Sunday nights, we kick off at 60 Minutes, then a new season of the equalizer and top-ranked series CSI Vegas. Chorus Specialty Services will deliver standout new and returning series, including the previously announced and highly anticipated live-action comedy series Ted, based on the blockbuster film franchise. Creator Seth MacFarlane is set to reprise the voice of the iconic, irreverent, and lovable foul-mouthed teddy bear, Ted. Fan-favorite Dr. Death makes its much-anticipated return, starring Edgar Ramirez and Mandy Moore. Dr. Death claimed the number three program across all specialty entertainment when it first debuted in 2021. Yesterday, we announced the green light for season two of Renovation Resort, starring HDTV Canada's Scott McGillivray and Brian Baumler. These stars will feature in our schedule later this spring with the return of Cora Studios' Scott's Vacation House Rules and Brian's All In. And on Stack TV, Cora Studios' HDTV's rock-solid builds and History's rough value restorers are driving audiences as we leverage our growing portfolio of original content across platforms. Moving to slide five. Our focus on growing premium digital video revenue remains front and center as we expand our streaming offerings to new audiences, platforms, and advertisers. This new platform revenue measure is an important metric that tracks our progress in advancing our video-first strategy as we transform into a premium video aggregator with cross-platform monetization capabilities. In Q1, new platform revenue was resilient as compared to our linear platforms, down only 4%, representing 12% or $38 million of our total TV advertising and subscriber revenue. Pluto TV, a global leader in free ad-supported streaming television, proudly celebrated its one-year anniversary in Canada as the largest fast platform in the country, streaming over 1 billion total viewing minutes monthly. Pluto TV was Paramount Global's largest worldwide launch with the most expansive content offering in its history. One year later, Pluto TV Canada now offers over 160 channels with 47 of those channels from Chorus. The service has doubled the hours of content available on the platform in the last year to more than 40,000 hours of hit movies, shows, documentaries, news, and music, all for free. Stream now and pay never. In December, we announced that our premium multi-channel streaming service, Stack TV, is now available for even more Canadians to enjoy through the Bell 5 TV app. Existing 5 TV app customers can now add Stack TV to their subscription and unlock access to content both live and on-demand. Stack TV is now recognized by Canadian BDUs as a must-have offering for their customers given its unique live and demand hybrid streaming offering, and vast library of exclusive premium video content. We are excited about the multiple initiatives underway as we build our inventory of premium digital video. This remains a key opportunity for us in 2024 and beyond. I'll now turn it over to John to take you through the results for the quarter.
spk08: Great. Thanks. Good morning, everyone. I'll start on slide six. Ongoing challenges in the economic landscape and the lack of new scripted programming on our prime time schedule, given the strikes, had a significant impact on television advertising demand in the first quarter, as we expected. This, combined with lower subscription revenue and the sale of Toon Boom in Q4 last year, contributed to lower consolidated revenue of $370 million, and that was a 14% decrease from the prior year. Consolidated segment profit was $121 million for the quarter, and that's a decrease of 8%. This reflects the lower revenue partially offset by decreased amortization of program rights due to the strike-related program supply disruptions, as well as the strong benefits of our cost savings initiatives, which helped to drive total expense reductions of $50 million for the quarter. Consolidated segment profit margins were 33% for the quarter, and that's up from 31% last year. We delivered free cash flow of $24 million in the quarter, an increase of 14% from the prior year. And pro forma net debt to segment profit, excluding tune boom, was 3.67 times at the end of the first quarter compared to 3.62 times at the end of August 2023, and that reflects the impact of lower segment profit. Now, let's turn to our TV results for the first quarter as detailed on slide 7. Overall, TV segment revenues were $342 million for the quarter, and that's down 15%. This was mainly driven by lower TV advertising revenue, which declined 17% in Q1 and was within the expected 15% to 20% range we outlined on our call last quarter. Subscriber revenue of $118 million per quarter was down 7%, and that reflects declines in the traditional distribution system and the impact of scripted program supply disruptions on what is typically a strong season of new content launches that drive subscriber acquisition activity. Towards the end of Q1, Streaming subscriber levels showed strong growth, but did not offset declines within the traditional paid fee distribution system. Distribution production and other revenue was lower for the quarter, driven by the Toon Boom disposition last August. Pro forma for Toon Boom, this revenue line was up 2% in Q1. Effective this quarter, we will no longer provide the supplementary optimized advertising revenue metric, as we do not believe it will change in a meaningful manner moving forward from its current level of just under 60%. We remain intensely focused on building our advanced advertising capabilities as we change how television and how premium video is sold. As Doug mentioned, we will continue to provide the new platform revenue metric to help you measure our progress in driving incremental revenue as we expand our digital and streaming offerings. Direct cost of sales for TV was down a significant 21% for the quarter, and that was slightly better than expected, driven mainly by a 22% decrease in the amortization of program rights. due to the strikes that halted our original scripted programming deliveries. TV employee costs were down 5%. That's mainly as a result of headcount reduction initiatives over the past few quarters. Other G&A expenses were down 27%, reflecting cost efficiency measures and reduced advertising and marketing spend as a result of the programming delivery hiatus from the strikes. Overall, TV segment profit was down 8% in the first quarter, primarily as a result of the contraction in advertising demand and lower subscription revenue, but partially offset by lower optimization of program rights and the benefit of G&A expense savings from our numerous cost reduction initiatives. TV segment profit margins were 36% in the current year quarter, and that compares to 33% in the prior year. Looking ahead to the second quarter of fiscal 2024, visibility on macroeconomic conditions remains low at this early stage in the new calendar year. Labor actions by the Hollywood Writers and Actors Unions are now resolved. and our HIP programming is set to return late in the second quarter. The delayed delivery of scripted programming is expected to result in a Q2 television advertising revenue decline in a high single to low double-digit percentage range compared to last year. We continue to expect improvement in advertising demand as we approach the launch of our winter-spring 2024 schedule. Programming costs for Q2 are expected to decline in a similar range, with new scripted programming delivery starting in mid-February and into March. This long-awaited return to a normal schedule represents an important step on our road to recovery. Now let's turn to the radio results on slide eight. Radio results reflect lower advertising revenue with growth in automotive and retail categories, more than offset by declines in the professional services, restaurant, and entertainment categories. Radio segment revenue of $27 million decreased 7% for the quarter, and that was mainly due to the impact of broader macro conditions on national sales. Radio segment profit decreased $5 million in the quarter as a result of the lower revenue. Radio segment profit margin was 17% in Q1 compared to 20% in the prior year period. Over to slide 9, as we outlined last quarter, we are prudently focused on streamlining our operations, lowering our costs, and prioritizing deleveraging as we await improved visibility on advertising recovery in the medium term. At November 30th, 2023, we were in compliance with all loan covenants and had a cash and cash equivalents balance of $59 million with approximately $250 million available to be drawn under our revolver. Importantly, we have turned the corner on two significant headwinds. First, as I outlined earlier, the end of the Hollywood strikes brings the return of our hit programming starting next month. We're actively engaging with advertisers on the cross-platform rollout of our content lineup to drive advertised demand. Second, we will finally revert back to normal levels of required Canadian programming spending after two challenging years with last year's obligation topping out at a whopping 36% of regulated revenue. We are diligently executing our long-term strategic plan as we position course to benefit from a lower cost base and prioritize deleveraging to strengthen the balance sheet. With that, I'll turn it back to you, Doug.
spk03: Thank you, John. Moving to slide 10. Before I wrap up, I want to take a moment to acknowledge a significant milestone in our company's history. Global television celebrates its 50th anniversary this month. The network began as a fledgling upstart where it struggled with unsustainable Canadian content obligations against more established competitors and U.S. border stations. Adoption of cable and a pivot to a schedule featuring quality news and primetime content licensed from major U.S. studios eventually led Global to expand across the country and take its place as the number one network in the 90s and early 2000s. Our industry has undergone profound changes since then, and we begin Global's 50th year managing some of those very same issues from 1974, unfair U.S. competition and unrealistic license obligations. The one thing that hasn't changed is our commitment to quality news programming. From Peter Truman to Donna Friesen, we are enormously proud of the work we do to fulfill our societal obligation to provide accurate, timely news across all platforms on a local, regional, and national basis. We are the only broadcaster in Canada with a streaming fast news service in every market that we have a licensed television station. As of last month, Global News is now the largest Canadian news provider on YouTube with more than 4 million subscribers. We are proud to lead the Canadian news space on this platform. This speaks to the quality of the stories we tell, the dedication of our teams, and the clear payoff of our strategy to invest in aggregating our premium video across all platforms. Much has changed in the years that followed the dawn of global TV, and Chorus has changed too, pursuing new audiences on new platforms. Chorus, Our world leader with the launch of Stack TV was the first to feature a bundle of linear and on-demand content streamed direct to consumer on Amazon Prime Video. Other platforms have taken note as evidenced by Stack TV's recent launch on Bell 5 TV. This addition represents an important increase to Stack TV's footprint with the service now available to subscribers through six distribution platforms in Canada. Chorus was also an early mover to aggressively pursue the fast channel opportunity in Canada with the launch of Pluto TV, now Canada's largest free ad-supported streaming service. This is yet another example of how our company innovates to advance our video-first audience strategy. We are doing all the things to devolve our business. But as I've said before, our regulatory environment has not kept pace and now holds us back While we have seen some encouraging progress over the last 12 months, after years of inaction, there remains much ground to cover. Chorus will do us our part to build a brighter future. We call on Ottawa to do theirs by moving quickly to update decades-old broadcasting rules. It's long past time for a fair and equitable regulatory framework in Canada. Finally, over to slide 11. It's a new year and a new chapter for chorus entertainment. These last 18 months, have presented us with numerous challenges, including a post-pandemic-influenced advertising recession, elevated required Canadian programming costs, Hollywood labor strife, and macroeconomic uncertainty, resulting in a significant deterioration of our financial results. Of course, we are back in business with new content as we prepare to launch a winning schedule backed by smart marketing investments to drive viewers across our Video First portfolio. The steady progress we are making expanding our digital and streaming platforms while concurrently building our advanced advertising and cross-platform monetization capabilities is the right plan for Chorus, the right plan for our audiences, and the right plan for our advertisers. We have made notable progress streamlining our operating model, and we are not done yet. We have reduced our workforce by almost 15% and revised our capital allocation policy. We sold Toon Boom with the net proceeds of $141 million used to reduce our leverage. We have an intense discipline focus to execute our strategic plan to be video first and to achieve ongoing efficiencies getting fit for the future and reduce debt to improve our financial flexibility. Our expectation is for modest sequential improvement in revenues for the second quarter with ongoing efficiencies and savings. We have a very strong schedule and a much improved cost structure that will benefit from an eventual return of advertising revenues as new content deliveries catalyze demand. I would like to thank the entire team of chorus people for their hard work, dedication, and commitment. And with that, I will now turn it over to you, operator.
spk01: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question and answer session. Should you have a question, please press star, followed by the number one on your touchstone phone. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request. Should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star, followed by the number two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift your hands up before pressing any keys. We have our first question coming from the line of Adam Schein from National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.
spk11: Thanks a lot. Good morning and Happy New Year. Doug, you mentioned, obviously, that there's some temporary cost reductions associated to the nature of the product flow in the context of the Hollywood strikes. You've also alluded to some permanence in some of the cost reduction initiatives. Can you help us a little bit, notwithstanding minus 15% workforce reduction, can you help a little bit around potential quantum of cost savings that are permanent and then a follow-up thereafter?
spk03: I'll start and John might want to jump in here. So here's how I would encourage everybody on the call to think about this. Yes, there's evident savings in foreign programming in the first quarter, but that was also what resulted in our meaningful revenue decline. So with the return of foreign programming costs will come advertising and subscriber revenue growth, and those two are linked. And that's a good thing to see the foreign programming costs return because that's going to help get revenue growth back on the horizon. The headcount savings are permanent costs, and the meaningful savings is the normalization of our Canadian programming expenditures. And as you know, we've been burdened with sort of a double whammy of not only having to be compliant with the prior year's higher revenue base that drove the 30% expenditure in this year, which resulted in an effective CPE rate of 36%, We've also had to catch up to the pandemic underspend. That Python that swallowed the pig is done. That's behind us now. So we're going to have a permanent savings on CPE, which will basically going forward be a function of what the regulated revenue is in this year. So those two are permanent, the headcount and the CPE piece.
spk08: Adam, just to give you some specific numbers. So on programming, as Doug mentioned, the CPE is a big item for us. If you look at The total programming spend, and we've probably underplayed it a little bit. It wasn't as much in the first quarter, but total programming spend for 24, you know, compared to 23, 23 was just under $600 million. 24 is probably going to be just over $500 million. And half of that decline of almost $900 million is Canadian. So that's a real permanent savings, you know, subject, of course, to revenue. And then on the G&A side, if you look at the quarter, you know, obviously we have to pro forma tune boom out. There's a small impact of that. So if I look at G&A reductions of about $12 million for the quarter, about two-thirds of those were permanent, headcount, CRTC Part 2 fees, et cetera. And then the other third is things like marketing and any kind of revenue-related costs. So I think there's good news in both of those in that those are real reductions that we're going to be able to continue to flow through as we go forward.
spk11: Okay. No, I appreciate the added color. And then, you know, Doug, in the context of what transpired in Q1, some of the color you gave around, you know, certain categories percolating and others still await and see. What are the learnings of post-COVID? You go back to the TV season, which was delayed into 2021. By the time you get into February, let alone March, you probably will have been in a TV ad recession of 19, 20 months. At some point, you would think that with a look ahead, advertisers will indeed start coming back. Any additional color, not so much on visibility, which you alluded to, but on the nature of some of those discussions that are currently evolving with advertisers going into, let's call it Q3, but at the same time, you know, what was learned, if at all similar, back in the winter, spring of 21?
spk03: Thank you, Adam. A couple of comments, and it's a fun question to reply to. So I think the... The pandemic distortions we've discussed at length previously, you know, the swings back and forth between a goods-based demand, high demand goods economy during the pandemic when services were zero. And then after the pandemic, high demand for services and very, very low demand for goods. You know, those things are beginning to stabilize from the demand side. Consumers have kind of, we think, for the most part, completed their revenge spending. Their savings have been, you know, eaten into to some degree. Certainly in Canada they're expecting mortgage increases in the coming years. And so we think the kind of revenge spending piece is, I think, almost behind us for the most part. So that's consumer related. On a CMO basis, when a lot of the investments during the pandemic were redirected towards digital because the bottom of the funnel was where conversion happened, right? So if you're shopping for a new computer or a new television online, you want to get the conversion. So that kind of moved dollars down the funnel into conversion. What we're hearing now generally is from CMOs is they need to get back to the top of the funnel to do brand marketing. That part of their marketing sort of mix needs to be reweighted. And we are working extremely hard with our agency partners and clients to basically help them appreciate that the marketplace for digital advertising has changed significantly. And I've talked about this before. In the last two or three years, we have moved from a digital video SVOD for most part only world to an ad-supported premium video on digital world. There are a lot of impressions available to buy around high-quality scripted content, not cat videos, not unmoderated or lightly moderated social media. And the task at hand is is for those of us with premium digital video, whether that's Discovery Plus or Disney Plus or Crave's Lair or Netflix's Lair or Course Entertainment, is to move dollars from those agency line items out of social or out of display or out of SEO over to premium video. And that, I think, is the task at hand for our sales team and for every sales team in Canada because the one thing that people understand is that ad-supported video is a good deal. And so that's another kind of high-level comment, Adam, that might be of interest to the group on the call.
spk11: Okay. No, thanks for that, and I'll queue up again. Appreciate it. Thank you.
spk01: We have our next question coming from the line of Maher Yagi from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
spk07: Yes. Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I wanted to ask you related to the strike, you know, if you can, Doug, Sorry, John, help us understand how should we model the cost recovery increase in content cost for Q2 and Q3? I understand that Q2, there's still not a full slate of content that is coming at you, but how should we think about Q3 year on year in terms of content cost now that you're going to start getting new episodes from Hollywood. In terms of the subscribers on TV, we have seen a little bit of an increase in recent quarters in the decline rate of subscription revenues. Can you talk a little bit about the drivers for that? Is this a new sustainable level of decline or should we go back to the plus one, minus one type range that we've been accustomed to.
spk08: Yeah, I'll take that one first. No, the minus seven and change for the quarter is not the run rate. So what happened in the quarter, a couple of things. There was a small one-time item a year ago that was positive. So that it was under a million dollars, but that obviously hurts the trend. There's, you know, as Doug mentioned in his remarks, there's not the normal kind of back to school kind of fall bump in the subscriptions that we typically see given the programming. And that also applied to Stack TV, although as Doug also mentioned, Stack did start to really pick up towards the end of the quarter and we're at record levels now of streaming subs, so that's great. The other thing is we did lose carriage on one distributor that we're still working on getting that back. So I think going forward, you don't need to be panicked by a minus seven number. I think You know, in the near term, it could be minus 3 to minus 5, and then getting stack going again will get us into that range that you're talking about. So that's the plan. On programming costs, I guess, you know, given what I said to Adam, you know, if you think of $500 million for the full year, you've seen Q1, you've seen our guidance for Q2, half the decline year-over-year is Canadian. Hopefully that, you know, gives you enough to kind of get to what the back half looks like. And it's, you know, it's always subject to a little bit of volatility just depending on timing. But, you know, I would think that, you know, we're still going to be down for the rest of the year just because of the Canadian impact, really. It's not obviously going to be as much as what we saw in Q1. But, you know, it'll still be pretty significant to get us to that almost $100 million decline for the year.
spk03: If I can just add a comment. If I can add a comment, Myra, that... On Stack TV, I want to make sure everybody heard the comment that, you know, we've actually back on, we're back trending up and breaking out, you know, in terms of printing new highs on subscribers. And it's been quite interesting to us what's been happening. And we do see a meaningful trend when we have acquisition type content. It really drives pickup. So Rick and Morty, of course, is one of the biggest ones. based on a true story, which is a Peacock title, was another one in the fall. Both of those drove some nice growth towards the end of the first quarter that doesn't show up on the subscriber line. And now we've got Ted, you know, and you're going to see lots of Ted marketing out there. And that's going to, I think, be a very powerful catalyst for continued acquisition, as would be, you know, Dr. Death. The other thing I'll note, is the value proposition of Stack TV has never been better. Why? Because every other streaming service has raised prices in the last six to nine months. And we think we're in a great spot. We've expanded our distribution footprint, as I noted on my remarks. We've got new content returning. We've done smart acquisitions of content deals. So we have modern library stacks on demand there. So you can watch back seasons of NCIS, FBI, Saturday Night Live, So the value proposition has never been better, and so we're quite enthusiastic about this next chapter of Stack TV.
spk07: And Doug, I wanted to just go back to your comment related to the interlinkage happening between the strike and your advertising revenues that you saw in the quarter. So as content comes back, why is Q2 still declining into the high single digit to the low double digit? Is it because the content is going to take a bit longer going into Q3 before the advertisers come back?
spk03: Precisely. Our first delivery of new content isn't until January the 12th, so that's halfway through the quarter.
spk10: most of the new contents in march yeah okay got it thank you yeah yeah thanks we have our next question coming from the line of drew mcreynolds from rbc please go ahead yeah thanks very much uh good morning happy new year um maybe i'll take the radio question here um and appreciate the comments on uh the business uh i think we've known for a couple quarters nationals continues to be weak. Just what are you seeing on the local front? Because I think often this is a little bit of the tip of the spear on macro in terms of immediate impacts. Are you seeing anything there that you can kind of conclude as to the macro impact overall on the ad market? And then secondly, just a regulatory question maybe for you, Doug. You, I think, sought immediate kind of relief from the CRTC on some of your obligations and then obviously the longer-term backdrop here, the kind of bills that were passed and the longer-term kind of CD impacts there. Where are you on kind of the near-term relief side? Thank you.
spk03: Thanks, Drew, and happy new year as well. So on radio, local has been consistently resilient for us for the last, you know, 18 months, quite honestly. I mean, it's kind of balanced between single-digit growth to single-digit declines. The local radio relationships, you know, we do have, you know, big stations and big markets and their heritage stations that sell as much on relationship as they do on ratings. And so local has been pretty solid, I would characterize. National has been a little weaker because we've had some ratings challenges in our rankers. So if we're not in the top five in any given market, you have a more difficult time securing national ad dollars. But local has been good, and local has been good in television, too. So that's been sort of a revenue diversification piece I'd note. On the regulatory file, yeah, we're, you know, there's still a few open switches we're waiting on. We've got a number of applications in there, you know, for relief on our CPE effective rate from 30 to 25, our P&I from 8.5 to 5. We have an application for the independent local news fund that's still pending. We're awaiting the final decision on the recent notice of October 19th that gives us sort of an ongoing 10% underspend. As far as the C11 and C18 is concerned, C11, you know, those proceedings are now in flight. They just concluded the first wave where they're trying to determine under what mechanisms the foreign internet broadcasters will contribute to the Canadian system. As far as trying to handicap timing, that won't even go there. But the wheels are turning, and I know there's always folks listening on the calls, which is why I'm encouraging the wheels to keep turning and turn more quickly because, you know, our unregulated trillion dollar market cap competitors are not sitting there waiting for new rules. They're just investing like mad. And, you know, the industry in Canada is in desperate need of the reset of our regulatory regime. And leveling the playing field means having, you know, contributions from the international players and reductions and more flexibility from the domestic players. And it's great to keep saying it, but it's time to see some action.
spk10: Yeah, I would agree. Thanks for that comment there.
spk02: Yep. Thank you.
spk01: Our next question comes from the line of Scott Fletcher from CIBC. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hi, good morning. I wanted to ask a question on debt repayment and the pace of that. Is the amount we saw in the quarter something we should expect going forward just as sort of a baseline, or is there any potential to take that a little higher?
spk08: Scott, it's John. So, you know, we made the mandatory repayment on the bank lines in the quarter. There was also some production financing that we were able to reduce on the receipts and tax credits. So, You know, I mean, I think your question is really, what's the free cash flow look like for the year? And there's always seasonality in the free cash flow. Q1 tends to be lower because we're, you know, it's a bigger revenue quarter, although this year was different, obviously, with the strike. So it's a bit early to say on the free cash flow for the year. I mean, last year we were just over 100. That would certainly be where we'd like to get to for this year as well. And, you know, in that case, if you think of the use of the free cash flow... you've got some minority dividends, you've got some lease payments, and then basically you've got the rest of it is available for debt repayment. So that's how we're looking at it. Yes, we'd like to repay more bank debt, I think is the answer. But it will depend, of course, what the free cash flow for any given quarter looks like.
spk06: Okay, thanks. That's helpful. And then maybe a bigger picture question, but there's been some rumors of additional consolidation in the U.S. with some of your content partners. I understand you can't comment on specifics, but wondering if there's anything you can add on sort of what the impact of consolidation maybe broadly would look like on some of the output deals, maybe the current deals and then the future deals. Is there an impact on rates, on pricing, if we do see some of the names consolidate there?
spk03: Yeah, we've already witnessed consolidation over the last three or four years in our output deals, whether or not it was Discovery buying Scripps or Disney buying Fox. And it has had no effect effectively on the relationships of the content supply. I've spoken before about the kind of four corners model and increasingly the desire and need for our Hollywood studio major partners to maintain their high-margin content licensing business as a funding mechanism as they invest in their money-losing streaming businesses and stabilize their linear networks around the world all around a significant investment in production. So we think that we have content security for the utmost of time. We're not worried about that at all. And I would argue that, generally speaking, from where we sit, consolidation in this industry globally is inevitable. And because you've got the traditional players up against the big platform players that are way more capitalized than the big studios. And so I think you're going to see that happen. And I also think that we're kind of in the middle of a bit of a silly season right now in terms of what's happening in the States. I mean, the fact that that you can only get the Kansas City Chiefs and the Dolphins game on Peacock in the U.S. is creating quite an uproar from consumers alike. And I think things need to get settled down out there. So, you know, the sports piece has been a very important part of the resiliency of the pay TV bundle, and it will remain so for some time. I mean, the NFL is locked in until 2034. But I think there needs to be sort of more of a sane approach to how people are doing things. And consolidation is one way to do that because it gives you a clean line of sight to savings to cost efficiencies. And it kind of precludes you from doing sort of silly things on the revenue side. But that's just an editorial comment. It's speculative.
spk06: Okay. Thanks.
spk02: I appreciate all that. Yeah. Yeah.
spk01: We have our next question coming from the line of Vince Valentini from TD Securities. Please go ahead.
spk05: Yeah, thanks very much. Thanks for the good color on the cost breakdown between amortization and G&A. Just one tie-up on that is when you say about half of the $100 million reduction in amortization this year will be related to Canadian spend, I just want to clarify, that does not include any incremental CRTC benefits, I assume, like the hearing we're supposed to have a decision in November?
spk08: No, it assumes status quo. Status quo, yeah.
spk05: Good. Secondly, I just want to make sure I understand the subscriber revenue trends a bit better. I thought you didn't name it, so I won't name it. We'll leave the unnamed carrier that... that you're no longer carrying your channels. I thought you were seeing either customers switch to the other distributor in that region or that the carrier that canceled you was actively pushing people to Stack TV saying, hey, you want these channels? Just get them in streaming form. That didn't seem to show up this quarter. Are you saying that the loss from the distributor was still much greater than what you got back on Stack and perhaps the writer's strike had some impact on that and You think that'll get back to normal in Q2 and beyond?
spk08: Yeah, I think so. I mean, it's hard to know exactly where all the customers have gone, right? We try as best we can to figure out if they've gone to another distributor, if they've gone to SAC, but there's no easy way to trace them. So, look, I think with, as Doug mentioned, and I also mentioned with SAC, really picking up towards the end of Q1. That is probably part of it, you know, as people have kind of settled back into their TV watching routines as the weather gets colder. I think that's obviously helpful to stack. And, you know, it's just really hard to kind of divine that through all the various numbers that we have. But, you know, I think that the important point, Vince, is we're not likely to run, we're not expecting to run at negative 7.3% as we go forward here.
spk05: And my final question is, I'll leave it general, but is there any update? I mean, everybody was quite impressed and surprised, I think, by the Toon Boom sale and the multiple you got for it. Any update on the other potential non-core assets? There's still discussions potentially happening, but they're complicated. Is there any hope of seeing something this calendar year?
spk03: I would say we're always exploring opportunities to focus. but to the extent to which any non-core asset is a regulated asset, it's got a lot of hair on it. And, you know, we're really intensely focused on the two interconnected strategies, video first and fit for the future. And we still have work to do on costs, and we still have work to do on building our premium digital video inventory and audiences. So focusing on what we can control, I think, is the easiest thing to do. And to the extent to which we have an appealing opportunity to divest of a non-core asset, of course, we'll look at it. but there's nothing that we have to update you on at this time.
spk02: Thank you. Thank you, Vance.
spk01: We have our next question coming from the line of David McFadgen from Cormark Securities. Please go ahead.
spk09: Oh, yeah, hi. So, yeah, a couple questions. First of all, so are you guys basically done on the cost counting, or can we expect some more going forward?
spk03: We're doing more work, David, and... You know, there's an intense focus on continuing the momentum that we've shown thus far, so it will carry on throughout the year.
spk09: Okay. And then just on the content business, I think on the last conference call you indicated that you thought, you know, on a pro forma basis for the sale of Toon Boom, I think you indicated that you thought the revenue outlook would probably be something flat. I was just wondering if you can give us an update on that.
spk03: I'll make a general comment and let John give you some more specific quantums. Keep in mind now that our whole own content strategy was derivative of a required CPE spending, and we spent as much as we were allowed to spend on ourselves. And given the wholesale decline in our regulated revenue, you're going to see a commensurate decline in our investment on our own production slate. So you will see declines in our content business. Keep in mind, though, also that's a much lower business rate. And, um, in terms of a cash on cash return, the content, the content investment is a lot less attractive than acquiring new content and converting that to earnings and cash the year that you get it. Right. So, so I, I would not in any way suggest that we're going to be growing our content line in the, in the coming year. Don, you want to give me more? No, I think that's good. Okay.
spk08: But the good news is it's not a huge, uh, impact. Yeah. Okay.
spk09: And then, um, I don't know if you can answer this. I'll try it, but, uh, Any idea how much the TV ad decline is structural?
spk03: You know, clearly there's probably some pieces in there, but I'll come back to my comment I made earlier about ad-supported premium digital video. That's a structural change. That's a structural change in the business. That's why I'm talking about we're no longer discussing ourselves as a broadcaster. We're a premium digital video platform. And so... So the whole structural linear conversation is self-evident, right? You can extrapolate from, you know, pay TV penetration. But the piece around dollars moving, you know, over to ad-supported video is really important. I mean, you might have heard, you know, Netflix announcing at CES a couple days ago that their ad-supported layers got quite significant uptick. You know, those are things that I think are positive for our company because we'll be able to go collectively to the agencies and say, you know, You've got to move dollars out of search, out of social, into premium digital video. And so that, to me, is a favorable structural change that, if we can get the unlock, could be significantly impactful.
spk02: Okay. All right. Thank you. Thanks, David.
spk01: Just a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, should you have a question, please press star, followed by the number one on your touchstone phone. We have our next question coming from the line of Tim Casey from BMO. Please go ahead.
spk04: Thanks. Good morning. Doug, could you talk a little bit about your Fast Channel portfolio and Pluto? Is it a meaningful contributor to revenue and EBITDA yet? And also, Do you have any plans to do anything outside of the country with fast? I mean, it seems to be an attractive growth market in some international markets. Is there anything to do there? Thanks.
spk03: Tim, nice to hear from you and happy new year. So yeah, Pluto is, I would say it's not meaningful yet, but you know, because what's happening is audiences always lead revenues, right? So, I mentioned on my remarks that we have a billion minutes streaming per month. I mean, that is a huge amount of eyeballs. And we're contending, as I just mentioned, trying to unlock some of this digital money to move over to video out of the agency side. We're contending with a general digital and linear advertising recession. So we're in a bit of a trough around the whole kind of video advertising marketplace at the moment. But But having that much audience is a real opportunity. And the thing I would just also maybe share is the 160 channels, 47 of them are chorus channels. And we participate as an advertising partner across all 160, but we also have a content share of the 47. And this doesn't require, you know, a significant capital investment. So it's part of this partner-led capital light strategy we've discussed with you before. And so, you know, I think it's just a matter of time until we're able to better monetize those audiences. So that's just a comment on domestic. International, that's a good question, and we've been looking at it. For the moment, our preference has been to license our content to other platforms internationally. and let them monetize it, sort of the arms dealer approach as opposed to being the principal. And that's been the smart play thus far because there's costs that come with trying to go direct yourself outside of your own home marketplace. But we're going to continue to explore those opportunities to send to which they're sensible and profitable. We might test and learn.
spk02: Thank you. Thank you.
spk01: There are no further questions at this time. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Doug Murphy, President and CEO, for closing remarks.
spk03: Thank you, Operator, and thank you, everybody, for your time on today's call. I hope you have a great weekend, and as ever, feel free to follow up with any questions. Take care now.
spk01: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating and ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a lovely day.
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