Warner Bros Discovery Inc

NASDAQ:WBD

Earnings Call Transcript 2019-Q1

[Operator]

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Discovery Communications First Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded.

I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Andrew Slabin, Executive Vice President, Global Investor Strategy. Mr. Slabin, you may begin.

[Andrew Slabin, executive]

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for Discovery's First Quarter 2019 Earnings Call. Joining me today are David Zaslav, our President and Chief Executive Officer; Gunnar Wiedenfels, our Chief Financial Officer; and JB Perrette, President and CEO, Discovery Networks International. You should have received our earnings release, but if not, feel free to access it on our website at www.corporate.discovery.com. On today's call, we will begin with some opening comments from David and Gunnar, and then we will open the call up for questions with David, Gunnar and JB.

Before we start, I'd like to remind you that comments today regarding the company's future business plans, prospects and financial performance are forward-looking statements that we make pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are made based on management's current knowledge and assumptions about future events, and they involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations. In providing projections and other forward-looking statements, the company disclaims any intent or obligation to update them. For additional information on important factors that could affect these expectations, please see our annual report for the year ended December 31, 2018, and our subsequent filings made with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

And with that, I will turn the call over to David.

[David Zaslav, executive]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our first quarter 2019 earnings call. We've started the year with very strong operating momentum across the company with positive financial results domestically and internationally as we continue to create, develop and acquire the highest-quality content with broad consumer appeal in every market around the globe.

I have made it clear, Discovery's strategy is different than any other media company. While everyone else is focused on big and expensive movies and scripted series, a very crowded space, we have a different approach. We have brands people identify with and love. We are gaining distribution in all key bundles in the United States and around the world and enjoy a unique global footprint. We have a proven management team, best in the business. We have a delevered balance sheet and capital structure that gives us great optionality.

I believe we are the leading global IP company, and we have important, entertaining and useful content in categories that are loved, trusted and safe. Our content has the broadest multigenerational consumer appeal and high-perceived value among advertisers and distributors. We are powering people's passions in genres that are central to their lives, and we have niche channels, quality brands and talent that people around the world trust, respect and believe in.

And we are now starting to see the results. From revenue to adjusted OIBDA to free cash flow and across virtually all operating metrics, we are seeing healthy momentum. We are benefiting from continued merger synergies from the Scripps acquisition, from strong consumer demand that is driving our adoption in multiple distribution packages and bundles in the U.S. and around the world and progress we are making in building out our suite of direct-to-consumer products with best-in-class IP in passionate entertainment and sports categories.

Discovery looks different. Our strategy is different, and different is really starting to pay off. And what a difference a year makes. This time last year, we had just closed on Scripps, and there were questions about the future of our businesses, our lack of inclusion on virtual MVPDs, our ability to leverage home and food around the world and the amount of debt we had taken on to close the transaction.

A year later, while we don't have all the answers yet, we have made remarkable progress. We have proven the durability of our core business, the value of our beloved brands in an OTT world and the opportunities made possible by our global reach to consumers in nearly every country. We have reduced our net leverage to below 3.5x, and we are seeing a healthy acceleration of our core businesses across-the-board. We are excited about our growing portfolio of new global direct-to-consumer services and the management and engineering leadership we are recruiting to Discovery to continue driving a strategic advantage we have in our own technology infrastructure.

Domestically, we've continued to make great headway toward near ubiquitous distribution of our key channels across the virtual MVPD landscape, most recently with an agreement to launch 9 of our brands on YouTube TV. We now have the most widely distributed cable network group across all key OTT players. Our team has done a terrific job advancing our position, and we are thrilled to partner with YouTube, Hulu and Sling, ensuring that we are well positioned to grow as consumers migrate to new bundles and platforms. Additionally, our U.S. rating trends across many of our key networks continue to improve. In the first quarter, we had the top 4 cable networks on commercial delivery for women in prime from 8 to 12 with ID, HGTV, Food and TLC, pretty remarkable and a first-ever in the cable industry, helping us to drive domestic advertising at the top end of our peer group for a couple of quarters in a row now.

I am pleased with our performance and the trendlines we are seeing of our domestic advertising business. But as I said, last quarter, I think we have some real productivity headroom and we have a number of initiatives in place that I think will advance our return. The team has really dug in, and we continue to innovate through our targeted cross-platform marketing capabilities with 4% domestic advertising growth in Q1. And once again feel great heading into this year's upfront, our second as a combined company, and we'll keep you posted on our progress.

We are also pleased with our progress and outlook for our international segment as the Scripps content is beginning to gain real traction in key international markets. Building upon the heavy lift we detailed last quarter with regards to layering in Scripps content across our networks, we have also been hard at work launching new pay, free-to-air and digital-branded services. We recently announced we will be launching HGTV as a new free-to-air channel in the large advertising market of Germany. We also have secured healthy subscriber commitments throughout Latin America for new HGTV channel launches across all key countries while, at the same time, nearly doubling the distribution presence for the existing Food Network channel across the Latin America region.

We continued to assess demands in the market and what opportunities exist to fill those holes, both in the linear and digital ecosystems. We're gaining real traction in securing some truly premium IP programming and talent across a number of initiatives. We believe our 10-year global relationship with the BBC will be a key milestone for Discovery as we created a stronger and more efficient U.K. business with a soon-to-be rationalized UKTV portfolio; secured some of the highest-quality blue-chip series for our linear networks, such as SERENGETI, which may be one of the most visually stunning pieces of programming I have ever seen coming to Discovery channel this summer, produced by Simon Fuller, and PERFECT PLANET, which was produced by Alastair Fothergill, who did Planet Earth for us, which is coming in the fourth quarter; and with the new co-development team at the BBC hard at work creating a pipeline of high profile landmark factual programming over the next several years that we will harvest for Discovery in the U.S. and around the world.

The most strategic element of our BBC deal was securing all of the SVOD rights to the BBC library, a factual landmark series and specials, a marble-like library for the factual, natural history genre. Our ambition is to take that library, along with the best of the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet and science libraries, together with additional exclusive original content, brands and IP in the genres of natural history, science, adventure, exploration, history, space and technology, package it together into the definitive natural history and factual streaming platform in the world and take that above the globe.

It is the perfect moment to create this type of service, high in both entertainment value and global impact and relevancy. Blue Planet II, for example, not only ranks among the all-time top shows ever aired in the U.K., it ignited a major global call to action after an episode on the effects of plastics in the oceans led to a ban on plastics in the U.K. and now adapted across the E.U. It is this kind of wonderful content in IP we can aggregate around the globe.

As we continue to build out our portfolio of brands and world-class content, we are thrilled to be back in business with Chip and Joanna Gaines. They are true singular talents with great creative vision and an authentic ability to connect with audiences. Millions of fans followed their storytelling through the home, the kitchen, the garden, and they incorporate strong family values more seamlessly than anyone else. We really want to win together, and we are excited to help showcase the Gaines' passion and talent. Discovery will launch a multiplatform global media business around their Magnolia brand by rebranding DIY next summer alongside an authenticated GO app, and we'll then launch a streaming OTT platform service in 2021.

GOLFTV is another example of where we have strengthened our content offerings with the best talent, most valuable IP and strong global programming. We're off to a terrific start. The sport of golf is on fire globally, and our timing couldn't be better. Though still early and in beta, we are seeing real signs of traction in users on GOLFTV, both paid and registered, especially in countries with local heroes, like Japan and Italy, and in markets where we've taken advantage of Discovery's local presence. And in Asia Pac specifically, we are seeing a nice boost across our portfolio, given the local must-see nature of golf, in places like Japan where we had put together a great partnership with J:COM.

It's a great template as we look over the next 3 to 4 years for when we will have the full global rights of the PGA Tour outside of the U.S. and be able to offer PGA, Tiger as well as all of our golf product everywhere in the world in a full-on ecosystem. We've successfully streamed over 35 tournaments across 5 tours, with healthy user engagement, particularly for our Tiger content. Tiger's Master's victory was clearly one of the all-time great sport moments, and it's brought a welcome and powerful storyline to golf. We'll be rolling out the exclusive Tiger Woods instructional master class series later this year, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. I couldn't be more excited about where this partnership with Tiger can take the platform over the coming years.

Finally, the Global Cycling Network, which brings together entertainment, functional content, deep engagement and mobile commerce into an immersive, lean-forward experience, a great example of what we mean when we say view and do. And this is beginning to gain some meaningful traction. Every month, millions of cycling enthusiasts not only visit the site, they immerse themselves in the site and with its community. They're checking out the Maintenance Monday repair videos, seeking help with how to and ask GCN through the platform and other social media. And they're training along with our pros on famous terrain videos, and they're coming to our live forums, races and training camps. It's a full 360-degree cycling experience.

We believe all these initiatives make Discovery a stronger company. Being consumer-obsessed is our mission and guide to everything we do. And last year, we reached outside of our industry to bring in a top executive from Amazon, Peter Faricy, who ran Marketplace, to further guide us in this mission. Peter has already added enormous depth to our senior team, has opened up a new office in Bellevue, Washington with a growing product development and engineering team with great depths of differentiated experience and perspective in building leading digital consumer products. Our office in Bellevue, Washington will be a new hub, driving platform excellence to support our strong global IP.

While our eyes are very much focused on the path that Peter and team will lead us on in the future, what is supporting that pivot is an underlying core business that is still very healthy and growing. And there's perhaps no stronger reflection of our underlying operating momentum than having achieved the upper end of our leverage target nearly one year ahead of schedule. At under 3.5x net debt to adjusted OIBDA, down from over 4.7x a year ago, we are finally in the position of being more opportunistic with our excess capital. As you have seen new, our Board has authorized a $1 billion share buyback, which with our strong free cash flow, which over the trailing 12-month basis was over $2.8 billion, or about $3.1 billion excluding cash severance, secures our ability to continue to reinvest in our growth strategy as well as further reduce our financial leverage to align our capital structure to accommodate both the cyclicality of our industry and requisite investment demands.

We are in a great, great position, and this optionality affords us the flexibility to intelligently and judiciously allocate our large and growing free cash flow to further enhance our existing portfolio. We enjoy a uniquely deep level of engagement with our viewers and consumers, and they look to us to nurture their passions. It's a completely different strategy than most of our peers are pursuing. We are playing at a different sandbox than anybody else. We have a different look, feel and appeal than almost all other network groups. And as I said earlier, we really see that different is paying off.

And against the backdrop of continued disruption across our industry, I feel confident with our strategic response of balancing industry headwinds by refocusing and repositioning our portfolio of recognized global brands into immersive, passion-driven experiences. We are supported by a strong and delevered balance sheet throwing off a lot of cash, providing us with great runway and real optionality. And we are confident in our ability to continue to execute during this time of disruption and great opportunity.

Thank you, and I'll turn the call over to Gunnar to take you through the financials and the outlook.

[Gunnar Wiedenfels, executive]

Thank you, David, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I'm extremely pleased with our very strong first quarter operational and financial performance and with the strategic progress we have already made in 2019 as we continue to transform Discovery, and I remain very optimistic about our company's outlook.

Let me first share some financial highlights from our first quarter, which cast off the first full 12-month period since closing the Scripps transaction. My commentary will again focus on our pro forma results and will be in constant currency terms for the international and total company commentary, unless otherwise stated. Please refer to our earnings release filed earlier this morning for all of the detailed cuts and drivers of our first quarter financial results.

In the first quarter, Discovery achieved or exceeded all of our revenue guidance metrics with 4% U.S. advertising growth, 4% U.S. affiliate growth, negative 6% international ad growth due to the tough comp versus the Olympics last year with growth ex-Olympics accelerating slightly versus the fourth quarter and, finally, 1% international affiliate growth. We also grew total company AOIBDA by 21% due to continued strong synergy realization and due to the Olympics comp internationally. Total operating comps were down significantly with declines in both cost of revenues and SG&A in the U.S. and abroad. This led to 43% total company margins, up 900 basis points year-over-year with U.S. margins expanding 700 basis points and international margins up 1,000 basis points.

Additionally, we reported $498 million of free cash flow in the first quarter of 2019, which brings our trailing 12-month free cash flow to roughly $2.8 billion for the first full 12 months of the combined entity, which is after more than $300 million of cash severance and restructuring costs as well as higher digital spending in the same 12-month period. Our laser focus on cash flow and cost management has allowed us to end the quarter with a net leverage ratio below 3.5x, inside the top end of our target net leverage range, well ahead of our original stated goal to be back within our target range of 3 to 3.5x by early 2020.

Against the backdrop of this strong improvement in our financial footing, I am pleased to announce that our Board has authorized share repurchases of up to $1 billion. We continue to feel very comfortable with the company's outstanding ability to generate cash. This authorization increases our optionality and gives us yet another lever to create shareholder value. Regarding capital allocation, our priorities stay the same: number one, optimize leverage, and within our 3 to 3.5x net leverage range, we currently plan to prudently delever towards the lower end of this range; number two, at the same time, we will continue to evaluate value-enhancing investments back into our business and strategic M&A; and number three, returning excess capital to shareholders.

Before I move on to our forward guidance, I would like to comment on our recently announced UKTV transaction that resolved our 50-50 joint venture and the formation of our new SVOD partnership with the BBC. As part of the JV resolution, Discovery will take full ownership of 3 lifestyle channels in the U.K. The transaction is currently expected to close by early June with the following financial impact. Discovery will consolidate the 3 networks post close so we will no longer be including the small amount of earnings from our 50% share of UKTV earnings in our equity earnings line, and we will receive cash payments of around $240 million in total over the next 2 years. All of the 3 lifestyle networks revenues currently come from advertising and will be consolidated postclosing and will provide a couple hundred basis points uplift to international advertising growth, assuming a full year of contribution. From an adjusted OIBDA perspective, the expected 2019 impact will be minimal, but ultimately, we would expect more meaningful impact over the next 6 to 12 months as we integrate the network and capture additional synergy. We are also extremely excited about the new 10-year SVOD agreement, which will showcase iconic BBC natural history content, and I will note that any costs associated with this had already been baked into our digital investment guidance that we gave during last quarter's earnings call.

And now let me share some forward-looking commentary. First, I will start with our 4 key revenue drivers on a pro forma constant currency basis for the second quarter 2019. First, for U.S. advertising, growth is expected to be in a similar range as the first quarter, up 3% to 5%, driven by similar dynamics, continued pricing increases and the continued monetization of our digital and golf products partially offset by lower linear ratings on a year-over-year basis. Our ratings performance for the quarter, as always, will be a key determinant of where we will fall within our guidance range. We would note, we expect continued outperformance versus the market, helped by our recently announced YouTube deal in addition to the uplift from now having additional mix on Sling and Hulu.

Second, U.S. affiliate growth is expected to accelerate versus the 4% in the first quarter primarily given additional virtual MVPD carriage. As noted, the first quarter should see the lowest growth of the year. So as always, this assumes no major change in subscriber trends. And while there are a lot of moving pieces, both headwinds and tailwinds, we should still feel very comfortable with our full year guidance of U.S. affiliate revenue growth in the mid-single-digit range, especially with our recently announced YouTube deal and now best-in-industry representation across domestic, traditional and virtual distribution platform.

Third, international advertising growth is expected to be up mid-single digits. We expect sequential improvement across all regions and further continued monetization of our digital products. Note this also assumes around 1 month of contributions from the 3 new UKTV networks.

And finally, international affiliate growth is expected to be up low single digits. Underlying trends remain relatively consistent with last quarter across our markets, and we also continue to drive monetization of our digital subscription product.

Turning to total company guidance. As noted, we still expect another year of healthy free cash flow growth in 2019, and we will continue to be laser-focused on driving free cash flow growth even after making the investments necessary to build out our direct-to-consumer portfolio. Our view on the puts and takes behind our ultimate full year free cash flow results has not changed versus what we laid out last quarter. As we had outlined, growth will be based on adjusted OIBDA growth and lower cash restructuring expenses partially offset by increasing investments in direct-to-consumer, higher CapEx and higher cash taxes.

I continue to expect an incremental $200 million to $300 million of direct-to-consumer investments over last year, and the negative impact of the full year 2019 adjusted OIBDA is still expected to total around $300 million to $400 million on an absolute basis. Please note that a vast majority of the spending is still to come and will be back-half loaded, given the timing of rollout. Given this cadence as well as the fact that we have now completed the full 4 quarters of initial comp synergy capture post the Scripps deal closing, full year margin expansion will primarily be driven by the upside from the first quarter versus additional year-over-year margin expansion in the second to fourth quarter.

Moving on to taxes. Please note there's a onetime accounting driven and noncash structural impact that will significantly lower our book tax rate in the second quarter and in the full year 2019 that I want to draw your attention to. As part of the integration of Scripps, we are in the process of streamlining and rationalizing our global legal entity footprint. The most significant accounting implication from these internal restructurings will be a onetime $450 million to $500 million tax benefit in the second quarter as we are recording a deferred tax asset which will make our second quarter book tax rate a negative one. With that, we now expect our 2019 full year book tax rate to be in the low to mid-single-digit range. Again, this is a noncash benefit, and there's no impact to our cash taxes or to our free cash flow.

Before I close, let me quantify the expected foreign exchange impact on our 2019 results. At current spot rates, FX is now expected to negatively impact revenue by approximately $180 million to $190 million and adjusted OIBDA by $70 million to $80 million versus our 2018 reported results.

In closing, I remain extremely satisfied with the financial footing of Discovery and optimistic about our outlook. Our strong balance sheet and financial performance will allow us to accelerate the transformation of our business, drive free cash flow and ultimately generate significant long-term value for our shareholders.

Thank you again for your time this morning, and now David, JB and I will be happy to answer any questions you may have.

[Operator]

[Operator Instructions] Our first question or comment comes from the line of Alexia Quadrani from JPMorgan.

[Alexia Quadrani, analyst]

I guess my question for David maybe is on the international side. It looks like you guys are making a big push internationally. You've had such great success, obviously, in your legacy Discovery business, and now you're making a bigger effort on the Scripps side as well. Can you talk about how big the opportunity is for the Scripps assets and when we might begin to see some of these newer initiatives you just talked about earlier in the call benefit results? And then I have a follow-up for Gunnar.

[David Zaslav, executive]

Sure. Historically, we've gotten most of our growth by gaining market share. And when you take a look at our international results now and as we look going forward, we think we've really turned the corner and are accelerating. Our market share is growing broadly. And now on the advertising side, we see mid-single, which is a real acceleration. On the affiliate, we see low single. So we're back to being a growth business again. The Scripps content is starting to work in some markets really quite well. But I'm going to pass it on to JB as we talk about how we think we've made this turn. It's been a lot of hard work, and JB is on the ground running that business.

[Jean-Briac Perrette, executive]

Yes. We -- look, as David said, when you look back a couple of years ago, it's a great -- the growth rates of D&I, the international business was really driven by share growth, as David mentioned. And after a while, having utilized a lot of the Discovery legacy content to its max, that began to slow in part. And then what's happened over the last 6 to 9 months as we've gotten the Scripps library adjusted and started to take more advantage of it, we've really seen content driving better audience share performance in a major way. And that's really began to turn the story around for us. And so as an example, in the U.K., we had our best quarter ever from a share perspective. Unfortunately, the markets, obviously from an advertising perspective, are little bit of a mixed bag. So the advertising market in the U.K. we're still down mid-single, but our shares were way up.

And so while we're not expecting a major turnaround in the marketplaces in some of the more challenged international markets, what makes us feel particularly optimistic and positive about what's coming is that our shares are growing, the Scripps content is working better and better at helping, and we're also launching new networks. As for example, the launch of our free-to-air HGTV in June in Germany, the biggest ad market in Europe; the doubling of our footprint from a penetration and the subscriber perspective on Food in Latin America; the launch of HG in Latin America. And so we're seeing the theory that we had talked to you about a year go of utilizing the Scripps content working better across Europe and Latin America, in particular.

And then as David referenced in his comments, in Asia, which had been a trouble spot for us, candidly, where our content had been performing less well and maybe a little less relevant, the great news is things like golf have completely changed the game for us.

Where we weren't having conversations or people weren't engaging with us in the same way, now all of a sudden, with golf, we're having conversations, active conversations in market like Korea, which have been underrepresented by Discovery historically, about launching new channels and new opportunities in that business. A lot of it driven by that, the golf product, as well as the coming BBC product, which also has enormous appeal, particularly in Asia, which has a -- an overemphasis, obviously, on sort of education and sort of smart programming.

[Alexia Quadrani, analyst]

And just a quick follow-up, Gunnar, on your comments on the use of cash. I just wanted to clarify, can we assume that you can balance being active in the new buyback authorization while still prioritizing investments in business and M&A?

[Gunnar Wiedenfels, executive]

I think that's a good summary, Alexia. We'll -- as I said, we'll -- for the time being also focus on bringing down leverage a little further to the lower end, around 3x rather than 3.5x, given where we are in the transformation. And other than that, our priorities haven't changed. We will continue to make all the necessary investments in the business, drive future growth. We've talked about all the organic investments that we're making, and we'll continue to balance that.

And it was [indiscernible] -- I'm very, very happy with where we are. Keep in mind, it's been 12 months. We're down 1.2 turns in leverage, $2.8 billion cash flow generated in the first 12 months after closing the deal. So I think we're in pretty good shape and have a very, very strong balance sheet at this point.

[David Zaslav, executive]

This team is really impressive. The Scripps transaction has really worked. We're now free and clear of that. We have some more synergies coming through. But we were at about $1.4 billion of free cash flow. They were at $700,000. And I have been saying for a long time that this transaction, if we could really execute, makes us a free cash flow machine and set out a target of $3 billion, that we would more than double our free cash flow.

And the execution, to be in a position now where, a year ahead, we're below 3.5x levered, $2.8 billion in cash, $300 million on transactional-related costs and being in a position now to have full flexibility of investing in our business, of looking at acquisitions -- there's loads of companies now that don't have the flexibility to be looking at strategic assets that are sustained -- that provide sustainable growth, buyback and delevering a little bit more. We're going to be generating a lot of cash, and so we don't see anything major. We love where we are right now. We don't see any major M&A. But the idea that we have all this cash, and we have an ability to use it strategically in an unencumbered way around the world is just an exciting moment for the company.

[Operator]

Our next question or comment comes from the line of Brett Harriss from Gabelli Research.

[Brett Harriss, analyst]

I wanted to ask about the competitive landscape for nonfiction programming. It seems that nonfiction would fit naturally into an SVOD service. But most major services are really focused on general entertainment. You characterized that as crowded in your opening remarks. Hulu made an announcement about some cooking-themed shows. Any sense that SVOD services are moving into nonfiction? And I guess the broader question is how should we think about your advantages as an incumbent nonfiction provider.

[David Zaslav, executive]

Thanks, Brett. Look, when we look at IP, we've worked very hard over the last 5 years to transition into really compelling IP and our -- what will people pay for before they'll pay for dinner is kind of our mantra. And that's been a guidepost for us. The excitement for us is that Netflix getting to 150 million subscribers is they created a road and a path where people getting used to paying for content.

And 50% of what people watch on TV is scripted series and scripted movies, and there's -- they're going to be able to gorge on that stuff. There's loads of opportunities from $7 to $15, and it will go up over the next couple of years. And people will probably have 1, 2, 3 of those, and they're going to love them. And maybe they'll churn between them based on who has a great series and who has some great movies. But that's 50% of what people love.

There's another 50% of what people love, and that's what we have. And there's really nobody in our space. Yes, Hulu is doing a few food shows and Netflix does some stuff, a little bit of natural history. But all of the BBC content is coming off of Netflix. And the ability to create series and new big event programming -- Planet Earth III is coming to us globally everywhere in the world. Blue -- the next Blue Planet is coming to us. Our ability to use all that IP. But in addition to that, the fact -- those brands stand for big entertainment. That's why people buy them. They want to see the great series, Mrs. Maisel, Game of Thrones. That's the business that they're in.

We're really much more in the -- in 2 different businesses. We think natural history can be massive. Every family everywhere in the world should want to have this. And as I said, it will be less than $5. But it's a product. More and more it's about learning, being smarter, being aware of the planet. This young generation cares deeply about what's going on, and we're going to be documenting the planet. And we've gotten huge feedback from lots of players that say they want to be part of this, in front of the screen and behind the screen. But then when you look at some of these subgroups, whether it's food or home, we have a tremendous amount of talent that are affiliated with this, and we think we could build real ecosystems. What we're doing with cycling now, we're doing it with golf. We think we can do it with food. We think we could do it with home design. And so we -- it's great that they want to play a little bit in this space, but we feel very comfortable.

We also know how hard this is. Loads of people are playing in the crime space, loads of people have tried to play in the food space. We, ourselves, tried it at TLC. We -- after several years, we ended up with one show. And Ken Lowe and the Scripps team, they know the best producers in food and they know -- they've worked through all the best talent. They have a farm team online that they build up. And so in each of these areas, we have a real expert team working with great producers. Many of those producers only work with us because our production in each of these areas are so strong.

So I think it's a wide-open field for us. And ultimately, we should be able to build significant businesses around all of them. I think the biggest one being natural history and factual as a global initiative that has -- really driven by family values. And then whether it's the games or Oprah or food or home or crime, I think we have a real, real opportunity. And it's exciting because everybody is chasing that same ball. And we like the rest of the field, and we're seeing, with golf and cycling already, that it's meaningful. So...

[Operator]

Our next question or comment comes from the line of Jessica Reif Ehrlich from Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

[Jessica Reif Cohen, analyst]

I have a couple. I lost count of how many direct-to-consumer services you're launching over the next 2 to 3 years, but interested in how you're approaching the revenue model. Can you just talk about how you -- subscription versus advertising in both U.S. and non-U.S. markets?

Next or second question is on advertising. You guys have done some of your upfront presentations. How different do you think this selling approach or process will be this year? And can you talk about expectations for the market?

And then finally -- sorry for all the questions. But finally, you're in a unique position. As you mentioned earlier, you're on every virtual MVPD and of course on every distributor, traditional distributor. Given the loss of subs in the traditional universe, what are you seeing on the other side? Just overall, where do see the market going for pay-TV subs in the bundle?

[David Zaslav, executive]

Okay. Why don't I just start off with the bundle point. I mean the smaller bundles, I've been saying this for a while, we've seen it outside the U.S. where if we can get up -- if we're 8 or 40, we tend to do much better on the advertising side. Our brands get stronger. Our content is more aggressively viewed. And if we can capture 85% of our revenue to 90% or between 80% and 90%, we end up with a net positive and in some markets, very positive. So it's very hard for us to project where things are going. But we are on all the bundles now, and we're rooting for all of them. And the skinnier bundles, in many cases, may be much better for us because people will spend more time with our channels. And it's a younger audience, and we'll be able to monetize them with better CPMs.

And so the good news about us right now is whatever happens -- Malone said to me 4 years ago, the key to long-term sustainable growth in a business that has challenge is be on every platform. If you're on every platform, you have a real gain. And if you could be on every platform and have top services on those platforms, then you could find significant growth even in a business that's in long-term secular decline. And so that's the position we're in. We worked hard to get there. And on those new platforms, we also get a lot more data and analytics that give us a superior CPM. So it's really kind of additive in that regard.

On the pay and free. We're already in the market with Motor Trend, and it's doing very nicely for us. We have the Eurosport Player which we've been at for 4.5 years. We've learned a ton, and it's what led us to golf and cycling as individual sports. And not just being sport, but being transactional and providing a full social ecosystem as well as information every day that people can get up and read like you'd read a daily magazine. We talked about natural history.

But in each of these, there are really 2 pieces. There's the funnel, where you can go and see stuff for free. So eventually, golf might be -- 100 million people are playing around in the free funnel. And then that's sort of -- yes, we can promote in every country everywhere in the world what we have, funnel number one, which almost nobody else has in every language. Funnel number two is the free funnel where you don't have to give us your credit card, and you could just hang around and see some Tiger or see some of the golf or play around with the cycling and hear people talk about what else is going on behind the paywall. And we can monetize that from an advertising perspective, which we are, and then that leads into the pay. And so each one will be the triple funnel.

And I think one of the reasons why we got the PGA and one of the reasons why we're so confident about our ability to aggregate and scale in this business is we have these affinity groups globally in every language spending time with us. And we did this with Eurosport. We built the Eurosport player for free, I mean the eurosport.com, and 30 million to 40 million people across Europe come to us. We're the #1 place people come for free. And then we get to say to those people, "Well, here's what we have behind the wall." And so there is no other company that can do affinity groups in every country.

[Audio Gap]

and then you get the credit card.

And so we're at the very beginning of this, but we're -- we think this could be quite compelling. And then we'll deploy our capital as we see it. If golf looks like it's accelerating in a meaningful way, we'll accelerate it a lot harder. Cycling is a very big global business, an opportunity for us. We'll spend more money there. On natural history, we're ready to spend a significant amount of money. Because we think that everyone that has Netflix or has Disney's products or HBO, what family shouldn't also have this companion product, and their kids can see the greatest science and the greatest natural history and learn all about space. And so it's -- that's the funnel environment that we have. Gunnar?

[Gunnar Wiedenfels, executive]

Yes. No, I agree with all of that. And then Jessica, I think one additional point is what you may see is that this evolves over time. I mean we have that very unique position of having that global footprint in place with linear networks across the world. So for some of the deals there may be sublicensing elements in individual territories, that's the benefit that we have, combining the total rights that we're buying over long deal terms and owning our content and having an international complete global footprint in place. So from a -- from the perspective of our ability to exploit this content and contain the risk with -- associated with some of the investments, I think it's the best position we could be in.

[Jessica Reif Cohen, analyst]

And advertising?

[David Zaslav, executive]

Okay. Jessica, you got all the questions. You covered -- you're covering the gamut. Look, the upfront looks -- we've -- we finished our kind of 5-city tour. We hit the upfront as strong or stronger than we've ever been. We have top -- the top 4 channels for women. We were the #2 TV company in America in terms of reach. Now we're #3, but only by a smidgen; with Disney pulling in Fox they're a little bit bigger than us. But we are 1 of the 3 big scale players in the marketplace. And we have -- so the upfront feels pretty good. Scatter is strong. It's accelerated. We feel stronger probably in all ways than it has. We don't know how long it's going to last. But the last few weeks have been very, very good. Some of it may be that there's a lot of underperformance at the broadcast and some other places in the cable industry, and so there's not a lot of inventory out there. A lot of people have a lot of make-goods. So I don't know whether we've been getting a unique advantage or whether that's the current situation.

But we also have -- as we go into the upfront, we think we have a unique advantage, which is -- it's not a -- it's a baddie for us, but it's a goody if we can turn it. And that's that if you look at the 2 guys in front of us, their prime CPM is $55 plus. CBS's prime CPM is $55 plus and so is Fox. So we got the 4 players around us in prime at $55 plus. We're aggregating audience in prime across our networks as big or bigger than all of them. And we're at a fraction of that. And so that's always been the case with cable.

But now I went myself and met with every major agency. And I've been meeting with clients saying, "Broadcast is terrific. And you can do the $55 and the $55 plus, whatever the increase is in the upfront, whether it's $7, $8, $9, $10, but you could also move some money that -- where you're paying $56, $58 and we can give you a spot where you reach everybody at once across all of our -- across our top 6 networks. And we can deliver 20% of women in America. We can deliver 20% of persons, and we could do unique things with our advertising." And so how quickly that all happen remains to be seen. I've been all over it. I've been all over the city. We're starting to get some traction.

And the final thing is that the broadcast inventory in general, as you go between the rating the client that they're on, together with the fact that there's more sports in broadcast, broadcast prime is shrinking. So that's a real goody for us. And then we have DGO, which -- our authenticated apps, where we're doing better than anyone else because we have passionate affinity groups that have downloaded those apps and are spending -- young generation spending a lot of time. So I think we're probably as well positioned as anybody right now, and we'll just have to see how the market plays out.

[Operator]

Our next question or comment comes from the line of Drew Borst from Goldman Sachs.

[Drew Borst, analyst]

I just want to go back to the U.S. affiliate guidance, the mid-single-digit you guys have. And I was wondering if you could comment on what assumption is baked into that number with respect to subscribers. And you probably should pull out the virtuals, right, because you guys have picked up a whole bunch of incremental carriers. I'm just trying to understand how you guys are thinking about the traditional facility based subaccounts for the balance of the year.

[Gunnar Wiedenfels, executive]

Sure, Drew. So again as I said earlier in the call, we're very confident in our mid-single-digit guidance.

In terms of assumptions, this guidance is always a probabilized estimate of all the various individual drivers that we're seeing. Clearly, YouTube is helpful. You pointed out virtual MVPDs in general. That's clearly helper this year. You've also seen and mentioned the traditional subscriber numbers that have come out in the first quarter. That's certainly working against the trend to some extent.

But again, we have a lot of confidence. Our core networks in the first quarter have been down. One, obviously, continue to see larger numbers for the digital smaller networks. You can expect a little more support starting from the second quarter with YouTube rolling in, and that's -- and we'll take it from there.

[Drew Borst, analyst]

Okay. And then another question on free cash flow. You guys mentioned that when you look at the trailing 12 months, you've done $3.1 billion excluding restructuring charges to a reported really impressive number. TheStreet is sort of sitting at -- for this year, sitting at about $2.8 billion, $2.9 billion of free cash. Can you help sort of bridge that? I know the quarter was quite strong. But can you help sort of bridge that? TheStreet's basically not forecasting much growth. Is -- are we being too conservative on sort of the outlook for free cash flow in '19?

[Gunnar Wiedenfels, executive]

Look, Drew, I mean 2 months ago when we reported fourth quarter earnings, I said that we feel very strongly about our ability to generate cash flow, very happy with the first quarter numbers.

A couple of points just to remember that I pointed out when we reported 2018. We are going to see some more CapEx, and we are going to make those additional incremental investments in digital. And for what it's worth, we haven't -- the incremental investment hasn't been huge in the first quarter, and there's a lot coming through towards the second half of the year. I continue to see a total absolute dollar amount of $300 million to $400 million of negative impact on our P&L when we ramp-up all the initiatives that we're working on.

But that being said, I also see a lot of opportunity. The restructuring expenses, as you know, are going to come down very significantly. So I feel very good about it. But as I said when we spoke the last time, we want to maintain the flexibility because some of those investments are going to be on different timing and there are some variability. So I don't want to put out any specific guidance at this point. But I'm very, very confident.

[Operator]

Our next question or comment comes from the line of Doug Mitchelson from Crédit Suisse.

[Douglas Mitchelson, analyst]

A couple of questions. David, on the natural history and factual OTT service, which hopefully you'll give a name to relatively soon, so we know what to call it, but any thoughts on -- at what point is there a tradeoff between building these OTT services and your affiliate negotiations with pay-TV providers, even it's for the digital channels that already have sort of bigger declines?

And Gunnar, as these services get launched, is there any sort of rule of thumb that we could use in terms of how many sets for breakeven? David talked about the TAM being fairly large for the natural history and factual OTT service. Is there sort of any kind of target that we all should keep in mind as we think about the growth prospects for those businesses?

[David Zaslav, executive]

Thanks, Doug. Well, first, Discovery is a primarily series-driven product. It's -- tends to be the #1 channel for men around the world. And as you look at our audience, the majority of our audience right now is coming from series. We're going to put in some -- we think we can get some meaningful upside on Discovery around the world and really super nourish the brand by bringing in some more meaningful blue chip content with this BBC relationship as well as some other blue chip that we've had in the works. And so we'll put that on Discovery. And whether that blend is 90-10 or 80-20, it's mostly series with big tentpole content.

The natural history and factual product is a little bit different or a lot different. It's -- we have the entire BBC library. We have all of their titles. We have our blue-chip library. We have all of our space content, all of our STEM content. We have the best, the largest science library in the world. And so -- and you have 5G coming into the home and the ability to see -- we did a series When We Left Earth, which is a -- an 8-part series where we took all of the NASA family library, converted it to HD, put together a comprehensive great documentary. If you like that, you're then going to get recommended into another 150 different things that -- series that you can learn -- where you could learn more about space or podcasts. And so we see this as both entertainment and life learning, and it's going to be really driven by -- and there's going to be a whole piece of this.

There's a generation that has reached out to us about helping with this idea of understanding what's going on around the planet. And this stuff -- if you look at Blue Planet II in the U.K., it was the #1 series, #1 series for the entire year in the U.K. And these -- this content, we think, is very different because it's -- people aren't going to be watching it as streaming product, like they're watching Gold Rush and Deadliest Catch and Naked and Afraid. We have -- MythBusters. We have great, great content on Discovery, and we think we can grow it.

But we think this is a different kind of an ecosystem, which will be nourished by families that'll want to see the -- some of the greatest IP out there in terms of blue chip, but then really do a dig -- a real deep dig down on history and science and space and create a place that people can hang out, like you would with Netflix, very different than Discovery or Animal Planet or Science. But we will promote. We have those affinity groups that are spending time with us, and we'll be pushing back and forth. But one is not a replacement for the other.

[Gunnar Wiedenfels, executive]

And Doug, on your breakeven question, I totally understand the desire to sort of get some supportive modeling that's out. The truth is obviously we have our business cases. We have discussion scenarios. We're looking at all those questions from a management perspective, but we're also realistic enough to know that we don't have all the answers yet. And some of those assumptions are going to change as we go through the rollout, either because we're learning or because we're actively making different decisions. If we find something that's really starting to work really well, we might want to get behind it with additional content investments, additional platforms, whatever. So I don't want to have any sort of expectation out there, so this is the number of subs we need to get to. That's why we're actually not at the point to communicate anything there yet.

Operationally, that's the second point. With Peter Faricy's arrival, I mean he is -- he and the team are very focused on operating metrics, on the consumer experience, on engagement, et cetera, much more, at this point, than financial metrics and thinking about revenue growth and breakeven. We are seeing some first growth contributions, but that's actually not a priority right now.

And from a purely financial perspective, that is perfectly fine for me. The way I look at this is we have a portfolio of very, very attractive initiatives. I think we have all the ingredients in terms of the content, the global footprint and, most importantly, a very, very credible team for these kind of offerings. And I look at the overall financial envelope. I've given you guidance on how much of P&L loss we're absorbing in 2019. And I look at this and I see that the number is small enough to be absolutely acceptable from a risk perspective and large enough to allow some of those initiatives to really start having a positive impact a year, 2 years, 3 years from now.

[David Zaslav, executive]

Yes. The key is -- before, we were looking to drive scale. It's a big mistake. First, create a great product that people love, create a golf product that people say and we -- that -- you don't -- if you love golf, you don't have this, are you crazy? This is the greatest thing. And that's what we're finding now with cycling. We have an ecosystem where people are telling each other, "You're not on this? This has everything you want around cycling."

Then we can apply an aggressive subscriber acquisition program. But JB has been -- is on the ground around the world looking at the interest in golf and balancing that with Peter on -- as well as cycling and now the BBC piece, which JB was a driver on with me, because we both think it could be quite big.

[Jean-Briac Perrette, executive]

Well I think the exciting thing we see from a global opportunity is that these opportunities right now are still very early and very -- and we're at the beginning.

But it's a playbook that we know extremely well. If you think about the Discovery playbook of taking product out of the U.S. and taking it around the world, which has been our marquee for 30-plus years, the GC and the cycling example. We have an English language product today that is working incredibly well, where we are then doing exactly the same playbook we had where we're launching in German, in Spanish, in Japanese and taking that same product around the world, utilizing the Discovery infrastructure to help localize it.

And so I think the growth opportunity when you do that across these different opportunities, we're just beginning to tap into what we think is going to be a very big and robust global scaling of those products as we take them around the world.

[Operator]

Our next question or comment comes from the line of Rich Greenfield from BTIG.

[Richard Greenfield, analyst]

David, you called out digital as a tailwind to ad spend. I think you mentioned some of the watch stuff earlier on in this conversation. But just when I look at the billion dollars of advertising that you're now reporting on a quarterly basis, how big is digital? Can you give us some sense of like how significant it now is that it's actually providing a tailwind for the whole number? And what are the key pieces within digital that are really driving growth?

And then just a quick follow-up for Gunnar. When you looked at the Q4 results, you talked about your core networks were flat. This quarter, you said they were down 1%, which sort of surprised me just because you brought on Hulu late in the quarter and you had Sling. Is that just a fall-off in the traditional players? Or is that actually some of the vMVPDs losing subs as they raised price in Q1? I'm just trying to square the sequential deceleration that you saw there.

[Gunnar Wiedenfels, executive]

Rich, I think one -- I mean number one, you've seen the numbers that have come out on the traditional side. One technical point is when we talk about sub losses on a quarter-by-quarter basis, we're looking at the end of the quarter number. So you've essentially had Sling and Hulu in the number for the fourth quarter. So you wouldn't expect any incremental subs outside of the growth of those platforms. And then clearly, YouTube has not come on yet. I think that's the -- that's sort of the explanation for that discrepancy that you're seeing there.

And then regarding the size of the digital businesses, again, we don't carve that out. It's part of our reporting segments, and it's safe to say that it's still very small in terms of absolute numbers. But given the contributions to growth and probably the most important point here is TV Everywhere, our Discovery GO platforms, which we're selling sort of on an integrated basis with the linear traditional advertising, that's been contributing to our growth quite nicely for about 1.5 years, almost 2 years now. So on a relative basis, meaningful.

And then -- I mean JB, I think you also saw some very nice contributions in the Nordics from...

[Jean-Briac Perrette, executive]

Yes. I mean Rich, you've heard us -- we talked for a while about some of the challenges we faced in the Nordics and Northern Europe, which have been some of the markets that have been most aggressively -- globally hit by top-level declines over the last several years. And we've been obviously fighting that hard with the pricing growth on ad sales and trying to get our digital products in better shape.

And the exciting thing for us in that market is we're finally seeing, over the last few months, a return to growth largely driven by digital, both ad and the fact that, through Peter's work and his team's work, we've gotten our product in much better shape, from a 2-star rating to a 4-plus. And we're starting to see subscriber growth really turn around and turn that region back into a growth story, which has been the -- not the case for the last couple of years.

[David Zaslav, executive]

So 2 points there. JB just said it. But we bring in Peter and he brings in a team, including one of the top technology people from Amazon, and they created an attack team of look, we got to make the products we have better. And so we de-play a lot of great content because we're the major scale player in Northern Europe with free-to-air on cable, improve the product from a 2-star product to better than a 4-star product. And we're starting to see an acceleration with time people spend on it and with the number of people and the number of people that are recommending it. So I think our products are getting better. It's a process.

The other piece on digital is it's just encouraging from a consumption standpoint. As I talk to my peers, they don't have Discovery. They don't have these DGO products. You can't have DGO for a general entertainment service. You have DGO because people love food and they'll authenticate and take a few minutes, it's cumbersome to get it on their device, so they can watch all their favorite food shows or all their favorite Discovery shows or favorite home shows. And it's scaling in a meaningful way. We get a lot of data. They're spending more time on it.

And the most important thing is that the average age is in the 20s. So what is says about us is yes, the people that are watching HG and food and some of those channels are older. But by putting ourselves -- by having this authenticated platform, we're seeing that a lot of young people really, really like our content, and the advertisers are seeing it. So it's a real plus for us.

[Operator]

We have time for one more question. Our final question for the Q&A session comes from the line of Ben Swinburne from Morgan Stanley.

[Benjamin Swinburne, analyst]

Two questions, David. One, you talked earlier about productivity headroom and ad sales. I think you meant in the U.S., and that is your largest revenue stream. I wonder if you could talk about what you guys are doing there. You mentioned some initiatives to try to drive that even higher. And any kind of timeline we should be expecting?

And secondly, you mentioned that now that you've delevered, you've got a lot of flexibility to look at strategic assets to help sustain growth. And I know you don't want to be specific nor should you be. But when you think about Discovery, historically, international was sort of the driver of growth pre-Scripps. And Scripps has made you a much more U.S.-based business from an EBITDA perspective. I'm just wondering if adding international depth and breadth is something that you think would be interesting for the company longer term.

[David Zaslav, executive]

Sure. Look, we look at everything, but we're -- we really like the company we have right now. There's nobody -- the only thing in our way is ourselves and satisfying the consumer with something they love. And if we do that, this global IP company is going to take off, because we now have a traditional business. You look at this -- you look at this quarter coming, we're mid-single. When you look at our affiliate domestic and international and our ad domestic and international, 4 major metrics, 4 are up mid and 1 is up low. We've got a growth business. And on top of that, we got a lot of great content. And so we feel good about that.

The piece about advertising, we're just way under -- we're just punching way under our weight here. We're the third biggest TV company in America. And unlike tuning in for a series, people are watching HG and Food like they watch Fox News or more. The length of view is higher. The length of view -- the largest length of view in America and the #1 channel for women is ID. We have -- and with networks like Food and Motor Trend and HGTV, there are advertisers that actually need to be on. So we are outperforming the marketplace with a great, great sales team.

And so on traditional metrics, I believe we will continue to outperform significantly in a meaningful way because we got a great team. We also have -- the second piece that we have is I think we've got a great trend. Broadcast is going to decline much faster than us. I think the broad interest cable channels are going to decline faster, and people are still loving spending time with us.

But even though we have a great team and we're outperforming the market, I look at it and say, "We have real meaningful opportunity." The average CPM for broadcast is $55-plus. And for us, it's $20 or less. And we can provide you -- so you can go to a broadcaster and buy a 0.8 for $55 or $58, and you come to us and buy a 4 for 40% of that. So how do we capture that? We put together a program that I'm going hand-to-hand with Steinlauf and fighting for to say, "Hey! Don't do this as a favor to us. This is great for your clients. And here's the program that we can provide for you." And we're massaging that. We've already gotten some money at much higher rates, but we want it to be more scale.

In addition, we're not sold out anywhere close on all of our digital products. And we have a team that's great at selling linear, and we've been doing -- we were in on the weekends working on this DGO product. It's hell of a product, and we're not sold out enough on it. It's great, and people that are on it are doing very well. So how do we drive sell-out on digital? And then how do we -- we have to use the fact that we have these incredible audiences and the ability to put a spot across 5 or 6 of our networks and get a 4, 5 or 6. And so I expect we will outperform the market in the traditional sense. Then we're going to get better at doing our digital products and selling them out, which will give us some incremental growth. We have DGO, which nobody else has, which is accelerating.

And then we have this value proposition of, "Hey, if 8% or 9% more on a $55 for a 0.8 on a broadcast network, if that's making you queasy, we got a great home for you here. And we've got a great deal, and we think we could over-deliver for you." So I think you're going to -- we see that acceleration already. But we're going to the upfront really in a collaborative way this time. We're already in deep conversations with a lot of people about these initiatives. And they're listening because they -- the decline of broadcast is a big concern, and we could be the answer to that, which could be a win-win.

[Gunnar Wiedenfels, executive]

Can I -- Ben, can I add one point to that question about the locale of our investments? Given that a lot of the stuff that we're working on in the direct-to-consumer space, a lot of -- what's driving those $300 million, $400 million investments that I discussed, all of those are global in nature. So by that very nature, those are going to be internationally focused. Because the U.S. is one market in 220 territories, so you should assume that a lot of that is going to hit the D&I P&L, both regarding initial startup losses, but also in the case of success, obviously, regarding growth rates.

And then I also just want to be clear that -- we talked about those investments. We feel very strong about what we have. There's no need for making any further investments. There's nothing sort of coming through the pipeline that's visible right now. So I just wanted to clarify that as well.

[Operator]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes our Q&A portion and also the call. Thank you for participating in today's conference. You may now disconnect. Everyone, have a wonderful day.