Grupo Televisa, S.A.B. (NYSE:TV) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Grupo Televisa, S.A.B. (NYSE:TV) Q4 2023 Earnings Call Transcript February 23, 2024

Grupo Televisa, S.A.B. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Grupo Televisa Fourth Quarter and Full-Year 2023 Conference Call. Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to the press release, which explains the use of forward-looking statements and applies to everything we discuss in today's call and in the earnings release. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Alfonso de Angoitia, Co-Chief Executive Officer of Grupo Televisa. Please go ahead, sir.

Alfonso de Angoitia Noriega: Thank you, Elsa. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. With me today are Francisco Valim, CEO of Cable; Luis Malvido, CEO of Sky; and Carlos Phillips, CFO of Grupo Televisa. Last year was marked by a more challenging global macro backdrop than initially expected. We also faced some operating issues, but achieved several milestones both at Grupo Televisa and TelevisaUnivision, which Bernardo and I are confident will allow us to improve free cash flow generation in 2024. At Grupo Televisa, we reorganized Izzi's management structure, appointing new hires to our senior leadership team with extensive experience in our industry, including Francisco Valim, our CEO; Juan Vico, our CFO; Nina Mason as CMO; and Ricardo Hinojosa as Head of our Enterprise Operations.

We also implemented a corporate restructuring process at Issi, including a headcount reduction with savings of around 14% of our payroll. We redefined our business strategy, prioritizing free cash flow over an ongoing aggressive cable footprint expansion, particularly considering that we have the largest network in Mexico excluding the incumbent. Ending last year with almost 20 million homes passed or a coverage of over 55% of total homes in the country. Under this new strategy, we intend to improve the quality and lifecycle of our subscriber base, enhance profitability, optimize CapEx deployment, expand free cash flow generation and as such increase returns on invested capital. At Sky, we launched an array of disruptive new products including Sky Plus that we are gradually gaining traction in the market.

This innovative portfolio not only underscores our commitment to innovation and our efforts to enhance our competitiveness, but also reflect our dedication to deliver the best to our customers. Our digital transformation strategy is underway and is intended to help us gradually stabilize our revenue base at Sky. In addition, we achieved significant progress in spinning off our other businesses, including the Soccer Team America, the Azteca Stadium, the gaming operations and the publishing and distribution of magazines. This allowed us to conclude the listing of a new controlling company called Ollamani under the ticker symbol AGUILAS on the Mexican Stock Exchange on February 20th. We also delivered progress on our corporate optimization process, including savings in corporate expenses of almost Ps.280 million for the full-year, contributing to a year-on-year decline in corporate expenses of around 18%.