Metropole Television SA

PAR:MMT

Q2-2025 Earnings Call

[Operator]

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the first half of 2025 Group M6 Results Presentation. [Operator Instructions] I will now give the floor to Mr. David Larramendy, Chairman of the Executive Board. Over to you, sir.

[David Larramendy, executive]

[Interpreted] Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for being with us for this conference call on the results of the first half of 2025. Maybe a word on the context before we start. Of course, this is a complex context. Geopolitically, also with political and tax uncertainty regarding advertising, the first half had 2 phases. The beginning of the year was rather positive and then a slowdown observed since April, which has been continuing.

Looking at the highlights of the first half of 2025, starting with ratings. Momentum was good regarding ratings, both for TV and radio. For TV, that was the best season since the last 3 years for the full season 2024, 2025, especially on the commercial targets. And we can see an acceleration since the beginning of the year, which is a good omen for good figures in the latter part of the year that we'll see you about. That was for television.

For radio, RTL is clawing back its growth. That was the third wave. April, June is a major wave because that's the basis for commercial activity in the whole of the second half. So it's a good wave. That's the third consecutive wave of growth for RTL, very good in terms of commercial audiences, and these are the highest -- the most important for us because they allow us to monetize these audiences. The last thing about audiences is, of course, M6+. We launched M6+ 14 months ago now. It was in May. The momentum is still very good in terms of unique users, plus 35% and good growth in hours viewed, plus 17% growth and revenues are also increasing by over 30%. We'll get back to that also.

And the last thing that I wanted to talk about and not the least before I get into the details is very good performance for so-called legacy activities for the group, both video and audio with profitability that was maintained at a very good level. The margin rate of these 2 activities is overall 17.2%. So a slight increase of 0.3 points in the margin rate and the absolute level is 99.4%, close to 101.5% of the first half of 2024. Of course, we're still careful about costs, especially programming costs. And regarding the market, we slightly outperformed the advertising market because of our good audiences.

Here, you've got the operational figures for the second quarter with margins still at a high level, 18.2% 57.8% EBITDA -- EUR 57.8 million EBITDA, sorry. For the whole of H1, revenues declined slightly. Advertising revenues fared slightly better in spite of a fairly negative base effect because last year, as you know, we had over half of the euro games that were broadcast in June, and that were, therefore, tallied in H1. But for advertising revenues, they held up well in spite of the absence of the euro and in spite of the context that I talked about earlier. EBITDA is at a good level with a margin of 16.7%, EUR 105.9 million with very good performance of the video and audio segments that were almost flat, both in overall amounts and operating margin percentages, as you can see on the table in front of your eyes.

Now going into the details, you've got what I was saying a minute ago. For video EBITDA, EUR 84.4 million versus EUR 86.5 million last year, a margin percentage that increased slightly from 16.5% to 16.7%. And of course, streaming revenues up 35%. Streaming revenues include advertising revenues and subscription options for M6+ Max. And we are particularly careful about our programming costs for that, which declined substantially in H1, programming costs.

A word maybe on television overall. Messages are mixed. Monthly coverage of television is still at a very high level, 62 million French people over 4 years of age. So roughly every citizen view, watch TV. What's less positive is the decline in consumption, especially for the commercial target, 25 to 49-year-olds, 1 hour, 47 minutes for the first half. TV accounts for over 2/3 of content consumed in terms of video, the rest being both SVOD platforms or AVOD and other video segments that exist.

Regarding audiences, as I was saying in my introduction, you've got good momentum for the season, especially for H1 compared to our main competitor. Our main commercial competitor momentum is good. For the 25 to 49, we gained 0.3 percentage points, so 1.1 point caught up. And for the other main commercial target, women responsible for purchases under 50. The decline in the gap is even higher because it's 1.5 percentage points. So we need to keep our efforts up in H2, but it's rather positive because it will then reflect in our advertising investments.

Why are we seeing that? Why is that the case? But it's mostly to 2 slots that perform well. First, the afternoon slot and access prime time, as you can see. On the picture, you've got Éric Antoine hosting the Wheel of Fortune, which is performing very well on all targets, including the 4+ group. And what is the core advertising demand and advertising investment in our programming cost, prime time programs, especially with big flow franchises, Married at First Sight that performs very well and news magazines and news bulletins that overperformed the overall performance of the channel. Also, I'd like to note sports events. We didn't have the Euro games, but the UEFA Champions League finals with PSG, 8.7 million viewers for the game. That match is a very good omen compared to the competitors and the 2026 World Cup that will have on our channels at the end of next season.

A quick word about DTT channels that still perform well. W9 is stable at a good level. 6ter had its best 6 months ever and Gulli changed channels on the 6th of June. We went from Channel 18 to Channel 12. That had a very positive effect on what we call Gulli Prime. So prime time programs and also all the pre 8:00 p.m. slots that still performed very well at the same level as before the channel shift that mostly had a good impact on Gulli Prime audiences and revenues.

A very quick word on our 3 pay TV channels, Paris Première Premiere, Teva and Série Club that worked extremely well because Paris Première had its best performance ever on the over 4 target. For Teva, we hadn't had such a high level on the WRP over 50 target in 7 years. And Série Club performed very well against a difficult commercial backdrop for pay TV channels, but they overperformed and stood out of the crowd in terms of ratings.

A few words now about M6+. Of course, it's key to our digital transformation. I'll remind you of the figures that we shared with you to reach EUR 200 million in revenues, 20% of overall revenues in 2028 with 1 billion -- 1 billion videos viewed, the interpreter, correct. So streaming revenues for H1, we had EUR 59 million, EUR 58.6 million. That's 80% growth over 2 years, 35% compared to the same half year last year. So we're still ahead of our plan. For the moment, we are still keeping 2028 as our goal for EUR 200 million, but we're hoping to get there a year early. We'll see whether our performance is maintained at that pace. And this is the same for hours viewed. We are fully in line with the business plan, and we are making a lot of efforts to reach as many people as possible. We have a very good coverage because our coverage increased by 70% in 2 years. So very positive indicators about our video attractiveness.

For audio, that was a good 6 months, almost stable, both in terms of revenues and EBITDA. You can see the margin of our audio cluster is maintained at a high level, 20.4%. That's 0.3 percentage points higher than last year. It's working very well, but with a lot of changes ongoing that I'll explain, but it's been very profitable for the group ever since radio joined the group 7 or 8 years ago.

Ratings, a word about radio overall. Coverage, daily listeners declined slightly compared to last year, minus 1%, 38 million French people listen to radio every day. The listening time is on average, increasing slightly by 2 minutes, 167 minutes and radio accounts for 54% of the audio market in France. And so over 2/3 of French people listen to the radio or even watch it because we have streaming. We stream our radio shows every day.

For the season 2024, 2025, it was decent. RTL's audiences were okay, especially the music stations. RTL2 and Fun helped us overall. 16.8% audience share. We are by far the leading private radio group. We had very good success on our morning shows, both on Fun Radio and Double Espresso on RTL2, what's more interesting are the figures for the full season showing the momentum. The momentum was good because for the last wave, April, June, which helps market the end of the year, growth is important and high. We went from 16.3% audience share to 17.2% in April, June 2025.

Regarding the commercial audience shares on the right of the slide, there was a major gain of 2.2 percentage points from 18.7% to 20.9% when our main commercial competitor plummeted by 1.6 percentage points. So we caught up on the gap by 3.8%. So that's useful overperformance to market the second half of the year, which is a very important phase for us.

Similar to television, digitalization in radio consumption is high. Now we've got audiences over 36.4 million listeners per month with our podcast. Podcasts with Les Grosses Têtes are now the #1 podcast in France and 36.4 million. That's almost 29% growth compared to what we had every month for the full year 2024. So there too, very good momentum in terms of digital audio consumption, and that's also reflected in additional revenues, which is something that we quite like.

A word about transfers now. We are changing the programming for RTL and Fun Radio to make it more dense, to make it more intense with more highlights with not just a news. So all that was announced in the press a while ago. I won't name everyone, but just Marc-Olivier Fogiel will host a morning interview at 8:15 every morning. Augustin Trapenard will be there on the weekends with a culture show. Faustine Bollaert will get more exposure. She was at 8:00 p.m. She will be shifted to 9:30 a.m. And then a game show hosted by Alex Vizorek, Amandine Bégot will host the major slot for the news and the talk show, the call-in shows around noon.

And 2 big names that we are happy to welcome Anne Sophie Lapix between 60 and 80 p.m., a big slot for news and André Dussollier, well-known French actor, who will tell stories every evening between 8 and 9. And on the other station on Fun Radio, we'll host Cyril Hanouna with a 3-hour show every day from the 2nd of September onwards. And on the 1st of September, will be on W9 to host his very first talk show on W9 starting at 6:49.

So for audio also, good figures in the context we know. Regarding the rest of our activities, it is slightly not as positive regarding production, it's a question of comparison because we're leaving a year '24, which was not a standard year. Now we're back to usual levels of profitability and activity. We have an EBITDA on the first half of EUR 9 million, minus EUR 6.3 million versus last year and an operating margin, 26.7%. You see on the right-hand side for our distribution activity, we have a number of admissions that is lower than in '24. But if you compare with '23, the activity is doing rather well. And once again, the margins of this activity are extremely healthy.

Regarding diversifications now, we're still in deep real estate crisis, often mentioned, we will get out of it eventually, but we know we have to be patient. So we keep investing in SPF, our real estate activity. We have launched a second brand, CGM Avenue. We're very happy with the development of CGM Avenue. We're paying attention to costs. But of course, we have a number of real estate deals that is much lower, explaining the drop in EBITDA, EUR 3.3 million. We also have acquired last year, [indiscernible] that has added some revenue with a decent profitability over the first half of the year to 2025.

Now Jérôme Lefébure is going to take the floor to tell you about our other participations and the account.

[Jérôme Lefébure, executive]

[Interpreted] Thank you, David. Just a few words about the companies under the equity method. The only negative contribution is Bedrock with an important information about Bedrock. For those who don't know it, Bedrock is, in fact, onboarding RTL+ Germany. That is a big volume of streamers and stream. So a fantastic opportunity for Bedrock. Thanks to this basis of revenue and thanks to this enlargement, '26 should provide us with positive figures. So we're going to enter profitability for Bedrock in '26.

Regarding the digital marketing now, you know that this is our participation in Atolls, a digital -- international digital marketing company. That is a company that has made major acquisition in the last few years. It has a lot of expenditures -- so we've put on the right-hand side, the '25 performance with stable revenue in the first half, but an EBITDA that has a growth announced of EUR 17.6 million, plus 53%, beginning to reflect the true profitability about the same BPA expenditure canceling that result. All of our other activities and sometimes our list of future product is positive. So we're following this portfolio with attention.

Now just to conclude on the profit and loss statement, we've talked about the operational results. The financial result is down mainly because of the volume of cash compared with the first half of '24. And you have to say that the first half of '24, there was the problem of the dividend. Now we have a second year with the losses of '24 regarding the position -- the cash position of the beginning of the year. But in total, regarding the cash situation, the quarter is okay. The other major variation element all companies have at the moment is the exceptional contribution on profits, representing almost EUR 12 million in the net results. And you find it at the bottom of the profit and loss statement.

Regarding the balance sheet, most of the variation is related to equity. It related to the distribution -- the payout of dividends and the performance of the half year. And regarding the cash statement, next slide, you see the main figures for '25, the slight drop in the ability to finance variation in working capital requirements, payment of advanced payments and control investments. So we find most of the variation in the amount of the dividend. So much for the accounts.

And finally, it's important to tell you a little bit about the CSR commitments. Here, you have a few major elements regarding the [ Javier ]. We have been the best French employer in the media communication category, 15 years for the M6 Foundation, 288 associations supported EUR 7.5 million invested, close to 900 employees having contributed and recognized actions in prisons. We're working to improve the integration of prisoners when they come out of prison.

Finally, CSR. Regarding Ecoprod, the group is continuing the enlargement of its label. Even our new series started June 30 has had the Ecoprod label right after its first production. Finally, we have 150 employees engaged in internal action during our Green Week in February.

David, regarding the prospects for the second half of the year, what's clear is that advertising visibility is still low with a lot of wait and see on the part of our customers and signals sent that are not clear for the moment. So we have very little visibility, but I think it has been the case for a while, and we're kind of used to that situation. In the meantime, we keep investing in our program. We think our contents are fundamental for our development, both for linear and for streaming. We have confirmed all of our growth objectives for streaming. And of course, we're going to keep investing both in linear content and for streaming content.

Thank you very much for having listened to us, and we're available if you have any questions.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

[Unknown Executive]

[Interpreted] I don't know whether we have been so clear or if there are no other additional questions, we are going to close the call. We would like to thank you for having taken part -- yes, there's one question.

[Operator]

We now have a question from Eric Ravary from CIC.

[Eric Ravary, analyst]

[Interpreted] Can you tell us more information about the advertising trends you see at the beginning of the third quarter? And what about the quality visibility for September? And another question on the cost of programs, which was down in the first half with a comparison basis with the euro, I guess that you want to reinvest in September. Do you have any indications on the second half of the year?

[Unknown Executive]

[Interpreted] Thank you for those two questions. Regarding the advertising trend, I would love to be clear, but it's difficult in July, we will be down because of the euro effect. We have tried to amortize this drop by a reduction in the programming cost that will have no impact on profitability in July. Regarding August, we should be growing to compare with the Olympic Games. Yes, last year was a very exceptional year. So frankly, end of July, it's too early to have visibility about September.

Regarding the programming cost, we will have less savings in the second half of the year than in the first semester. We will reassess that on a frequent basis depending on the audiences and the advertising market. In order to invest more, we will steer that in a very reactive way depending on how the advertising market evolves. But of course, the reductions will be lower since we have major investments in terms of medium and long term, notably regarding the talk.

[Operator]

Another question in English from Deutsche Bank.

[Unknown Analyst]

I hope you could hear me. I hope you could hear me okay.

[Unknown Executive]

[Interpreted] Yes, we can.

[Unknown Analyst]

Okay. Great. I just have one question on the competitive environment. We recently saw one of your peers in France entering into an agreement with the global streamer to share their live content from what we understand. How do you view that development? Is that something that you think you could also pursue going forward? Would that be beneficial to both parties? Maybe some color on how you view that development would be great. And my second question is on additional M&A opportunity that you see in terms of how you'd want to expand your operations into other parts outside of TV broadcasting. Any color that you can give us on how you're thinking about future M&A would also be great.

[Unknown Executive]

Between TF1 and Netflix, I think -- and also France Television and Amazon, I think it offers an interesting perspective. We have a viewing time decline, as you know, and we need to be where our audience or potential audiences and hence, they go on SVOD platform. So we shall be there. So I think it makes sense for free-to-air TV players. And it's also very beneficial for our streamers at least in the French market, don't see their audience growing anymore. So they will have access to new audience and obviously, hopefully to lower churn rates.

So I think it makes sense for both of them. Of course, they are complex contracts. So they are extremely aggressive and powerful players. So we should be careful and the discussions are long, but we are well advanced with one of the streamers as well. We will move forward during 2025. And regarding additional opportunities, M&A opportunities, I'm not sure I understood correctly if you were asking if we were pursuing acquisitions of TVs or radio stations or other businesses.

[Unknown Analyst]

It could be either, but I was thinking of -- you acquired the kids parks business recently as well, and you're sort of venturing into adjacencies like that. So I was thinking, is there a strategy in place to look at opportunities to find further avenues of growth? Or is it more opportunistic, how you think about it?

[Unknown Executive]

So we've reviewed opportunity at the macro level for quite some time, and we're we will be more opportunistic. So we are looking at targets now. Nothing is close to any announcement, but we are looking for opportunities that can bring long-term EBITDA potential, significant long-term.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions]

[Unknown Executive]

I think there are no more questions. So thank you very much all for listening to us.

[Interpreted] And of course, we are available if you have any further questions, we can take them with pleasure. Thank you very much.

[Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]