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- [00:01]
A
Hey, man, how are you?
- [00:03]
B
Good. How are you? Good to see you.
- [00:05]
A
It's good to see you too.
- [00:08]
B
Right, here we are live. Yeah.
- [00:11]
A
And enough with America. We're going to talk about Europe, right?
- [00:16]
B
Well, now we're going to start in America and then we're going to move to Europe.
- [00:20]
A
Yeah, but quick stop. There's like one American company, three European companies, so I'm happy. But yeah, I get happy for little things about Europe. So.
- [00:29]
B
So cool. Without further ado, let's welcome to the Media Odyssey podcast live.
- [00:34]
A
That is Marian Rete and that is Ivan Chaparro.
- [00:39]
B
We are going to jump into earnings on four different companies, all of whom are going through some sort of change at the current moment through mergers and acquisitions or spin outs or any number of different things. So let's jump right in it. Without further ado, I will share my screen to bring on my former alma mater, Versant, which used to be part of NBCUniversal Comcast Cabletown, which got spun out on the first of this year as its own standalone company with the cable holdings and a bunch of other weird little things that they've bought over the years. So this is the first earnings report from Versant as a standalone company. But what's important to understand is that These figures for 2025 are being compared to the full year of this, this bunch of holdings inside Comcast from the previous year. So this is year on year comparison of the same set of enterprises what used to be parked inside of Comcast and now are standing out on their own. And what you can see here is the only growth in this entire company came from this weird collection of platforms. So there's some streaming stuff. There's. But it's mostly stuff like Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes and Golf now and some other new streaming stuff associated with cnbc. But where you can see everything else is really just in bad shape here. And this is probably the argument for Comcast spinning this out is distribution is down, advertising is down, their licensing business is down, total revenue is down 5%. But even worse for them, net income down 32% year on year. This is not a futures based business.
- [02:26]
A
When you look at it so quick, one for you, when you say this is the reason why they're spinning this out, when I see this, I'm like, why take this out and make it so obvious that it's doing bad, right? Is it a way of protecting the rest of the group? Because clearly this thing, no one will want to buy it. I don't know if they're planning on doing that in, you know, any shape or form, but it. That doesn't look good.
- [02:55]
B
I'm not sure it's a great question, the strategy, if you can call it that, because I don't know that Brian Roberts has ever had any strategy other than being born into that family and buying a whole lot of stuff. But this, the thesis is two things. You separate this enterprise. So important to note, this Enterprise, Versant had $2 billion in free cash flow last year. So while the revenue and the net income are down, it's still a profitable enterprise. And if you separate it out from the debt that Comcast is carrying and allow it to reinvest its free cash flow, not in paying off debt, but into new streaming services around MSNBC or CNBC or, or something like that. That's the whole argument is you're. You're allowing the free cash flow to go off and reinvest in a new enterprise. The problem with that. Go ahead.
- [03:53]
A
No, no, but. So it means it's not a. We shouldn't judge this just right out of the gate. Right. We need to give them a bit of time to design a strategy, execute on it, and see what those investments are doing. I'm being the, the. The good cop, as always.
- [04:11]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. As you usually are, because I'm always the bad cop. So the, the, the. I think the, I think the, the thing. Patience, I guess. Okay, fine. But they've known this is coming for a year, so it's not like develop the strategy. The question is, where is the strategy? Right. And I think what they're talking about is building out streaming services for these various brands. MSNBC is having a monster first quarter from a viewership standpoint after having some really bad months over the last year. So their viewership is really much higher than it was a year ago, which is interesting for a news network whose median age is Methuselah. But there is growth there from a viewership standpoint, and their podcasting business is doing well. So the concept is give Mark Lazarus and team an opportunity to reinvest in the business. The problem with that is you've now saddled Comcast with a shit ton of debt and no free cash or not as much free cash flow. They've lost more than 10% of their entire free cash flow left with this set of holdings. And Peacock is not that great a service. The broadband business is flat or down. And so the, the mainstay businesses at Comcast that's left over really aren't as vibrant without the free Cash flow. If you look at what Disney's done, they're milking the dying cow for every penny it's worth as far as the cable networks go. And they're reinvesting it back into Hulu and Disney plus and ESPN plus and that, you know, that's one way of going about it. And at least when you look at Ellison and company's plan, it seems to be they plan to do the same thing. They're not going to spit out the, the Warner Brothers, Discovery, Disco Brothers cable networks in order to, to, to separate themselves from the, the dying businesses. So Comcast went this spin out way. Yes, I think we have to give them at least this year to see if they can turn this around. But you know, remember this is, this is a company that, that I mean the distribution business is shrinking every single month and if your ad business can't go up, it's a real problem.
- [06:27]
A
So the thing is that we're looking at revenue growth or decrease. Right. But if you look at their total pie, it seems that it's 80, 20 split between what's coming from cable and what's coming from what they call digital streaming, etc. They have a goal to, they don't share how but they're aiming to go at a 50 50. Right. So clearly this platform portion that has grown by 4% it's going to be interesting to see how they can use the tech I'm hoping from the rest of the group if that's possible. And then to your point, build assets and get those distributed within the streaming ecosystem. The only thing is, and I don't know those linear assets which well enough is how appealing are those as a standalone app? That's a bit of a question mark. That's a great for the news, the news linear channel. That's a strong brand.
- [07:32]
B
I honestly think the only thing that's worth anything is because remember this is where the lack of strategy really becomes incredibly evident. Right. They didn't take Bravo with them.
- [07:45]
A
Where did that go?
- [07:46]
B
That stays at the mothership with Comcast, NBC Universal, Cabletown, Peacock and so the one channel that is a really powerful programming brand out in the marketplace for general consumers. Bravo and Andy Cohen and all and all the housewives and all that, that stays with Comcast. If there was a real strategy here, you'd spin Bravo out with this and make it kind of the main hook of their new streaming business. The only brands that are worth anything within this. And, and this is all due respect to the people who work at usa that's One of the, when was the last time you talked about the USA Channel? Right. You know, you have to go back a long time to when Suits was on, frankly. So the only brands that mean anything in the marketplace with any kind of desirability are MSNBC and cnbc. And so my, my assessment is, or my sense is that they're going to build a good deal of the paid services around their news and financial news products. And CNBC actually has a growing subscription business for financial information and things like that. So I think that's what they're going to build it around. But I can't see. I mean, USA has no meaning in the marketplace. None whatsoever. Sci Fi hasn't meant Sci Fi in years. Sharknado is like their show and, and, and Oxygen has. I don't even know if it exists anymore, to be blunt. So it is a good question. I think they're gonna, I think they're gonna really hammer it around. News and, and other life. They have some wrestling on there as well, but they share that with Netflix. So I think it's gonna really be built around their news products, which is an aging demographic. I, I don't know that that's gonna necessarily work.
- [09:32]
A
Work. Okay, good.
- [09:34]
B
We move on.
- [09:36]
A
Let's move on.
- [09:37]
B
So now we're in Europe. This is your home court. I'm going to let you take lead. I don't know if you dug into the earnings, how much you've dug into the earnings, but I'm really curious. When you look at this one chart, I mean, you can see where the future of this business is and where the past of this business is. And then you put on top of this. Comcast is actively pursuing the ITV network as an acquisition. Now what was your takeaway?
- [10:02]
A
One thing I would have liked to see is the, the ITV ad streaming business because here we're seeing that minus five. But I don't think that speaks to, to, to the revenue generated by, you know, itbx. Right. And I think right now we should not separate the linear ecosystem from the BVOD within a broadcaster. We've spoken about this at length. At the top of the year, I said that it would be a tough year for commercial broadcasters because the equation is for pretty much everyone, that linear advertising revenues are decreasing and they're not yet compensated by, you know, digital or streaming advertising revenues. But I would have liked to see this here because otherwise it feels like they're not putting in the work to push for that transition.
- [10:59]
B
Yeah, and there was a number one thing. Yeah, there was A really telling stat in the earnings, which is subscriptions are flat year on year, no growth.
- [11:10]
A
Yeah, they're not in the business of subscription. So that's the thing. Right. So they historically had Breadbox, then they folded it into itvx. I itvx Premium is the ad free version of itvx. A lot of the broadcasters are doing that because they want to mitigate their reliance on advertising and they want to be hybrids, as they should. Except that, you know, they are. Those are, you know, you know, historical companies who have an advertising DNA. It's not easy to move to premium. So here. Yeah, I would have said because it's plus 12 premium percent year on year, I believe on. On digital ad revenue, which makes four, minus five. Right. Meaning that it would have been worth without it. So that shows that.
- [11:59]
B
Imagine what would have happened if they didn't have that digital revenue growth.
- [12:03]
A
Yeah, yeah. So that shows that, you know, that transformation was a must have. But again, you know, that compensation is not there yet. And the other thing, and I'm keen to hear your thoughts on this is, you know, ITV studios. So they're gonna spun out itv, the network from ITV Studios. And I'm like, why are you letting this green thing go? Is kind of the first thing that comes to mind.
- [12:27]
B
That is the same exact question I had, which is, it's not like Universal Television is this monster hit making machine, right? So really, NBCUniversal, they're very good at nonfiction content, but they're terrible at scripted content. They really have not had a tremendous amount NBCUniversal, I worked there and I started a streaming service for them. They own very little content compared to, you know, Warner Brothers or Paramount or Disney. Because there was this thesis again showing how little strategy the Roberts family has that we don't need to own our own content. We'll license predominantly. They don't own Friends, they don't own Seinfeld, they don't own this. They don't own most of their biggest hits over. The only thing they own is the Office, which is a big hit and they own a lot of their nonfiction stuff. But they have not really been a hit making machine. And they don't really have a great studio television business. They're a good movie studio. Itv, on the other hand, has the biggest hit in the world with Love Island. They've got Hell's Kitchen, they've got all this great content there. And their scripted stuff is beginning to click in too. And the US arm of ITV Studios is a really powerful hit making machine. They're in there and they're on fire right now. And so why wouldn't you also buy ITV studios? It doesn't make any sense to me at all.
- [13:54]
A
Yeah, yeah, no, absolutely. And it makes me wonder about the case. So it's interesting, right, if you look at Comcast, so Sky, we haven't mentioned that, but we spoke about versa doing, you know, spinning the linear out. And sky, which belongs to Comcast, is making a move to get that red asset from, from, from itv. So that makes you wonder what, what the hell Comcast is doing. Very surprising, I think.
- [14:21]
B
I can actually, I think explain that. So when you look at the combination of sky and itv, and sky is very heavily invested in sports, so very expensive rights package. When you combine sky and ITV, they become the, basically the number two television outlet in the UK. So they jump over YouTube, they far surpass Netflix and they're second only to the BBC, who doesn't sell ads. So they become the largest ad platform in the UK and they become a must buy. You can't avoid them at that point. And if you were allowed to take the sports off of sky and distribute some of it across itb, your reach is that much larger at that point. So I think that's the rationale. But you have to go back in time and remember that when Comcast bought Sky, they got into a bidding war with, with. They were in the midst of the bidding war over Fox with Disney and they bid up the price of Fox to a ridiculous $72 billion, which Disney then bought and still hasn't paid for. And then they were left saying, oh, what do we buy now? So they paid $39 billion for sky and then two years later had a $9 billion of that 30 new billion. $39 billion. So again, the acquisition strategy of the Comcast conglomerate hasn't had a great track record. One wonders what they're thinking here. Just. Which reminds me, you know, put your, put your questions in the chat. Robert Godwin just didn't offer a question, he offered a comment. The advantage of licensing is you acquire the known value. IP creation holds great risk. Yeah, I get that. But these businesses are going to wind up operating on the basis of the strength of their distinguished IP or not. They fail based on that. And daily touch points are incredibly important on that. And, you know, I don't understand why you'd leave the powerhouse, profitable powerhouse of ITV studios behind. Simon, go ahead. Sorry.
- [16:31]
A
There's one thing on that, if you look at licensing, if you start to be in a renting mode, wherever you are, Right. And in terms of the distribution, you have a gatekeeper. If you have, you know, if you don't control the pipes nor the content, I mean, what do you have? Not much.
- [16:51]
B
Yeah. The difference is if is sky actually has pipes. Right. So they are a distributor aggregator in across Europe and they also own mobile businesses. And as we know we've in our conversations with Bango over the years, you know, the number one source of bundling now is tel telcos. And so the idea that sky would be able to offer this package, but you're so over leveraged at that point. Point. It just, it is a good question. I think it makes it a lot of sense to combine the networks from an advertising standpoint. I just don't just swallow the whole thing, you know, bite the bullet. It's not that much more money to get the studios business. And really, you know, Peacock is, is kind of really beholden to ITV students studios right now. Love island, which was the number one season, number one show last year on streaming on Peacock, which doesn't even have 40 million subscribers in the U.S. they're going to have a tough negotiation on that show when that, when that contract. Imagine if you own the studio. And by the way, Love island has tons of spin offs all around the world now based on the success of this last year, you can imagine they're going to spin off a thousand different iterations of this. Peacock doesn't have a guaranteed right to those spinoffs. So imagine if Love island starts popping up on Netflix or starts popping up on Apple or starts popping up on Paramount. Plus like that deleverages Peacock in a great way. You own the studio, you don't have that problem.
- [18:28]
A
Yeah, and one thing though is, you know, there's been little in the press, although on the earnings call the CEO of ITV confirmed discussion were in progress. But. But a lot has happened since those initial discussions happened. Could it be that seeing, you know, we're going to be talking about BaniJet buying all three media, Paramount, Parnas Bros. Could it be that, you know, sky reconsiders and goes for the whole thing?
- [18:57]
B
Yeah, it's a great question. My understanding, based on conversations I've had with people inside many different companies, is that it's gotten stalled over. This question in particular is the valuation of the network without the studio, the valuation of the studio on its own. To me, at least things I've heard in my DMs and over drinks with executives inside many of these companies, I won't say who or where that, that's where it's stuck. And, but on their earnings call they said talks continue. So I, I would say watch this space because there's going to be news here and I imagine the news will come relatively soon. I think by the end of second quarter we're going to have clarity of where this winds up one way or another. But you mentioned. Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. Right around. So let's talk about Ban and J. Another business that I think you probably have a better handle on than I do. Although I, I did have some great conversations with them at mipcom this past year. So Banerjay had a great year from a net income standpoint, but a kind of meh year from a total revenue standpoint. And they're in the midst of acquiring that, that the deal has been struck, although it's going to need European regulatory approval to buy all three. So what's your take on this company writ large? I don't think we've ever kind of dug into you and I, your, your, your take on Banaj as a, as a major roll up. Holdco.
- [20:26]
A
Yeah, it's, it's initially. Well you know, at the core it was, it was this, you know, small company that has grown by buying others. Like they have 120 labels underneath Banejet. I think we don't really realize the size, you know, of, of that organization. So Stephane Corby, French entrepreneur, you know, started initially a TV production company, then became CEO of Andemal, then Andemal Boatschein, then Zodiac Media. They bought the competition. They in a habit of buying competition and buying either direct competitors or folks who are complementary. Right. And before we went on a call you had a great point on that which is, you know, it's not necessarily a big catalog when it comes to English speaking markets. And so all three media just does just that. Yeah.
- [21:26]
B
And so you're right. It's important to understand that that hundred plus studios, it's not all in one location. Right. It's a German studio, it's a Swiss studio, it's a French studio. And so they, they went around buying a lot of nonfiction and kids studios in different regions to become the biggest provider of content to the networks in these places. They haven't really done a whole lot around pure digital direct to consumer. They're starting to now they're rebooting some of their biggest franchise with creators on YouTube in a cool deal that they made last year and those are going to come out later this year. But to your point, all three is a monster in English language uk, US Aussie content. So the complimentary nature of these two is really interesting. But Banaj has a lot of debt and this is going to increase that. I found also something interesting and I'd love to hear your thought on this. You know, we have friends at a. At a digital studio that lives inside all three called Little Dot.
- [22:34]
A
Yep.
- [22:35]
B
So they have this, you know, kind of really one of the first pure digital. Pure play digital studios in the marketplace in Little Dot. And they got way out ahead of this and they've kind of invented the space. They run fast channels, they run a ton of different YouTube channels. They do a lot of digital direct content. Banja has nothing like that to me.
- [22:57]
A
No, no, they do.
- [22:58]
B
They do.
- [22:59]
A
They do. They do. Yeah, they do. Initially they were very much a content powerhouse, but they were in the licensing business. But they've grown their digital arm to grow on social. They have a massive fast channel portfolio. It's very IP first, but this is actually channels who are performing the best because it's leading with ip, it's easy to recognize, very easy to program. So, no, no, they've made that move. But the only thing is, because it's a very fragmented company because of all of those labels, the question is, perhaps you need to boost that digital factory and then Little Dots could be just that for them. Right. They would keep doing that for clients. I'd be surprised if they were only serving, you know, the Banijet group. Although it could happen, who knows? But, yeah, no, no.
- [23:59]
B
One of the biggest opportunities there is you take the Little Dot expertise and you light it on fire across the Banijet set of holdings and you start more YouTube channels, you start more. Even more fast. To me, that felt like one of the key elements of this acquisition, at least for my.
- [24:16]
A
Yeah, I hadn't thought of that. But yeah, that. That makes a lot of sense. Lds could help them, you know, industrialize that part and go potentially deeper than what they've done right now. The one thing I will say on. On Ban, we're very focused on the content side, but when you look at the earnings, it's fascinating to see that they're into gaming. Honestly, I had no clue.
- [24:40]
B
Me either.
- [24:41]
A
So they own Betclick. For those who know Betclick and who are potentially annoyed by some of those advertising popping up during games, especially when kids are around. But anyway, that's me. But so it's interesting because it's a growth engine for them, right? So you look at the growth, we're talking betclick 1.6 billion, 10% growth. They have a live experience segment that is, it grew 20% and I love those because that is flywheel, that is diversification, the live experience piece. I mean when you have IPs that are that strong, I mean what are you waiting to, you know, bring that to life like creators do. So that was something that was quite surprising. I, I had little clue and a friend of ours put it on the map for me. They bought another company that you know, I'm assuming smaller than all three media also which is called typical, which is a gaming while gaming or betting solution as well.
- [25:45]
B
Yeah, you're right. So their experiential business grew 18 plus percent. So the highest letter, it's still relatively small, still less than 400 million euro. But you're right, their gaming section which is, is big gaming like, like we think about but also sportsbook like you said. But there's casino stuff, poker stuff, a lot of betting, 1.6, you know, billion euro last year, growth of 9.5% another kind of leading indicator. So it is interesting to see that they're diversifying their, their revenue set and it's a meaningful number. When, when I, when someone said to me gaming is a big part of this, I'm like how big could it possibly be? It was, it was a huge part of their overall. It is, yeah, yeah.
- [26:30]
A
1.6 out of 4.9 total revenues. Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, you know, so that's fascinating. I had no clue could be that that was again through acquisition. I'm not sure they started this gaming business from, from scratch. But again interesting, interesting buying. So a few things that they need to do, they do need to, so they, they're looking to do cost synergies, which is the, the hot new term right now. 50 million. So that's the thing, right is again the time it's going to take to integrate, etc, there's going to be some more cutting.
- [27:09]
B
Well let me ask you a question about that because that, so you know, you socialists in Europe, you know, you love to regulate the, out of everything. So you know, when, when I hear cost savings that, that, that's kind of at the heart of it. That means layoffs, right. And the European Union is very sensitive, especially right now because it's not a great employment market across a lot of regions. Do you think this gets through the regulators, this deal?
- [27:38]
A
Yeah, I, I, I don't know. I'm not enough in the weeds of, of that. But this is a company who knows how to, you know, pass regulation and move on the last big thing they bought was shine in 2020, and that was their direct competitor. So, yeah, I would say so. The only thing is that those deals take time, and the layoff won't be like you guys, where it happens overnight, because essentially when those companies are bought, especially on markets like France or the Netherlands, you know, there are steps that you need to respect. Right. And it's not like you can say to people, take your bucks, like we see in your movies, Take your bucks, and then you're out the door within an hour. That doesn't happen. Like, so it's going to be a slow burn. We won't see that effect right away in some key European territories, I'm thinking. But again, don't quote me on this.
- [28:31]
B
Yeah, fascinating. All right, so now let's move to your native country. Canal Plus. Did I say that correctly?
- [28:38]
A
I love. I love. So Canal Plus. It's the first plus.
- [28:43]
B
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. You pronounce it.
- [28:46]
A
We don't say Canal plus. So it's Canal plus pl. So when we say je ne veux plus, I don't want to do something anymore. Then you say plus. But here it's always been Canal plus. Why? And it's the first plus. Because in this instance, it's not the word plus, it's a thing. Exactly. It's the plus one plus one. So it's Canal plus. Every time you say that, I think it's too cute. So I never corrected you.
- [29:19]
B
Thanks. So you're embarrassing me. Of course, it's only in front of the French, who hate me anyway, so. Yeah, but.
- [29:26]
A
No, no, it's. No, it's. It goes beyond the French. No, but I'm not making fun. You are making fun of my accent every time, Right. When I said Audi, etc. So.
- [29:38]
B
Yeah, right.
- [29:38]
A
I think it's just for a game
- [29:40]
B
once in a while. Feel free to make fun of my. I say water, so you can. You can always make fun of my Philadelphia accent anytime you want. Okay, so I want. I. I'm not even going to comment on this because you understand this business substantially better than I do. And this company, Canal Plus.
- [29:59]
A
Yeah.
- [30:00]
B
Also made a major. They spun out. They made a major acquisition. So talk to us about, you know, where this company is. And by the way, remind everybody, add your questions or comments into the chat, but what's your take on these earnings and where this company is headed?
- [30:16]
A
Okay, so French company, it was. It's the initial. The OG Pay TV company. Right. So pay TV network initially on television, and then of course, when everywhere, right? Satellites, Internet, you name it. And what's interesting there, it's a 40 year old company and so to your point, they spun out while they were spun out of the Vivend Group. Vivendi looked at assets and they spun out different segments that they have. Books, etc. Can help us. So they've been a standalone company for a year or a year and a half. And I think what's interesting with these guys is that so historically it's a French company, but through pure growth or acquisition, so both organic and merger and acquisition, they've grown outside of the French market. Market, right. So they're in close to 50 countries, they're in Africa, in Asia, they're in you know, many European territories. Thinking the Netherlands, you know, Austria, Germany, Poland, you name it, they took a stake in via place or they're in the Nordics, et cetera. So the reason why I like that company, I'm a subscriber and you know, so that's the only thing and I will explain why I think it's one of those companies. So it's fairly expensive, right? So it's kind of our French hbo. It's fairly expensive. But the product, the app is amazing, the content offering is amazing depending on the market. You have, you know, all of the premium movies from the studios coming, you have amazing TV shows, they buy amazing TV shows, they produce, etc. Etc. They are the ones for Americans. You've seen Spirals, amazing cop show, this is them, this is Canalpas. And so what I love about that is that they've grown out of France. They've been able to embrace the different changes and right now they're very active when it comes to direct to consumer. Right. Historically they were over reliant on wholesale, on selling through call centers, et cetera. They've made a point of being very CTV first and they're pretty everywhere you can look. And I think this is why despite the revenues being a bit shaky in Europe, they've managed to not see what the Americans have seen on the cable side, which is just like down, down, down, down, down.
- [32:49]
B
No, in fact they had a really good growth year in subs last year. They grew total subs by about 8% year on year. That's pretty impressive actually given the marketplace right now.
- [33:03]
A
It's a market where it's hard to grow, right. So they've had growth. They were going down up until 2019, then since 2020 went back up. That's when I think they've made that change that transition to be like, okay, we're not just legacy pay TV guys, we can transform, we can be streaming first, et cetera. They've done one thing I was saying at the top that they were fairly expensive and something that they've done that I think a lot of other companies should take notice is that in 2019 they had minuscular number of subscribers under the age of 26. And one of the reasons why it was too expensive and within these last six years it grew by 17 times because they were able to build a package that was like just €20, €20amonth. So half what we old people would typically pay. No commitment, et cetera, et cetera. So they're doing a lot of stuff to embrace streaming. And I think, yeah, it's a very interesting case study. Not everything is lost.
- [34:12]
B
And Nicholas asked, and I wanted your opinion on this as well, they bought multichoice last year, right?
- [34:18]
A
Yes. So they were in this move of growing in Africa. They had taken shares in Multi Choice years ago and there's a moment where the it tipped over, meaning that they had too many shares and were legally bound to take over the entire company.
- [34:35]
B
So do you think that last, do you think Nicholas's question in mind is how do you think that's, how do you think that's all going to work out? Do you think this is going to turn into a net plus for them or is this going to weigh them down?
- [34:47]
A
I think it's, it's, it's going to be tricky because multichoice was in a downward trend. Right. So we were saying that Canal plus was pretty stable. I think multichoice I need to check but I think they've lost like 2,3 million subs within the last two years
- [35:09]
B
and their performance in particular weighed down the whole P and L last year. It should be noted also by the way that the net income is down 108. But those are two what they call exceptional costs built in there, which is, and you can explain this better than I do for VAT and TST tax on television services. I don't even know what that means, but I think I don't.
- [35:33]
A
Let's not get into the tax thing. But yeah, but they were big, two
- [35:38]
B
big tax bills that are not going to be recurring. So it's likely, especially since their revenue was up year on year, that this is a one time thing for them because it's, you know, close to 7, over 700 million euro. And am I saying euro correctly or is it euro?
- [35:55]
A
I would say euro but it's just
- [35:58]
B
Euro works, taking a break. So yeah, it's, it's a, it's a, it's. I mean this is going to be one of those. And, and you said this a year ago, you said watch the French market for innovation and change that's going to lead the market. And you were right. Last year, last year the, the, this deal happened last year with multichoice. The spin out happened last year. But Also the Netflix TF1 deal happened last year. The France Television Amazon deal happened last year. How do you. Has the TF1 thing launched in Netflix yet?
- [36:33]
A
No, it's launching in June just ahead of the summer. So excited about that. I think we're going to be able to talk extensively about, I will say mostly the UX because we won't be knowing much else in the background. I think what's interesting with Canal and you were saying, guys, just a heads up, next week we're doing an episode on the Paramount tournament investment deck and the lack of strategy in that deck. Well, it was very interesting to review the earnings presentation from Canal plus they lay out exactly the strategy for multichoice. Like you have 10 slides, it's very open, they know exactly what needs to be done and they're going to make sure it's being done. So to Nicolas point, I do have some hope that they're going to be able to make this work. One number we haven't given, they have 42, 0.3 million subscribers with this new combined company. So it's, they're really, you know, working and thriving to be a must have global player, not just a French player.
- [37:46]
B
Interesting. Yeah, so we're going to that, that episode. So we, we got hold of the Paramount investor deck and we dug into it and we were able to analyse, analyze the projections that the Elson family is making to justify this $110 billion acquisition. It's bonkers. So we go into that in next week's episode on the podcast and we were able to get hold of a copy of another report, the Stream TV report that Tubi puts out every year and we're going to be diving into that in next week's episode as well. So that's next Thursday, the 19th. Look for it's not a live episode next week, it's a recorded episode but it's going to have a lot of incredibly rich information and data on where this market is going. We had a really good crowd here again today live. We love doing these live shows. I do. You do too?
- [38:43]
A
Yeah, I do too. We need to figure out, you know, we're not, we're going to do that again for earnings season. But, but we, we want to find a way to show up live as much as we can, guys. So just like, if you have any ideas, just like, you know, reach out. We're keen to hear your thoughts.
- [39:02]
B
Yeah. And whether you were on substack live or LinkedIn, thank you so much for showing up. We really, really enjoy. The crowds have been amazing. The feedback has been really good. We love talking to you live, getting questions live. Speaking of live, we're both going to be in Lisbon one month from now for Stream TV Europe and breaking news. We are interviewing Bogdan, the founder of one of the founders of Holy Water and My Drama, the microdrama site and app on Stage Live as part of Media Odyssey Podcast. We're also gonna be. You're hosting a whole day at Stream TV Europe.
- [39:45]
A
Yeah, a whole morning on Monday. You guys should come on Sunday nights, you know, cooking something for networking purposes to get us, you know, nice for Monday.
- [39:57]
B
And I'll be on stage all three days. And we've got, we've got a case study from Banajay on their transformation. We've got a case study on Eurovision and they've got some big news to break about their transformation. Got a case study on Lava island with ITV which will be interesting. Post this conversation. We've got a case study with our, our friend Lynette Zalek from ZDF and their OTT strategy around factual entertainment. YouTube's going to be doing a whole case study on the digi digitization of news on on video. It's going to be an amazing thing if you use. I'm going to use my code this week. Shapiro 10. Shapiro. And it's not Shapiro, it's Shapiro 10. On the Stream TV site you can get a 10% discount on prices. I'm going to be there. You're going to be there. Alan Woke is going to be there. Shira Lazar is going to be there. Lynette Solick's going to be there. A lot of our friends all be there, hanging out, really talking about where the transformation is headed. I'm going to be giving another barn burner rip roaring keynote presentation yelling at the world to change. This live stream is going to be posted later today on Substack.
- [41:09]
A
Mine yours. Mediawar NPS Streaming made easy. Yeah, check it out and share it around. And a like a comment on Substack goes a long, long way. So you know, just do take a minute. It lands in your inbox, but either, you know, a reply, a comment, a, like on Substack. It's nice because there's life outside of LinkedIn.
- [41:32]
B
And if people hate video, you'll be able to listen to it on Spotify, on Apple podcasts. But this will also be posted on YouTube as well. So thanks again, Marianne, for coming to us. You know, it's. It's six o'. Clock. Almost seven o' clock there.
- [41:45]
A
Yeah, exactly. Time for. Whatever I was about to say drinks. But no, it's Thursday, so just, you know, family time.
- [41:54]
B
Cool. And I'm gonna go have lunch because I'm starving. So thanks everybody, for showing up. Great to see you again, Marianne. We'll see you next week.
- [42:02]
A
Bye, guys.