Viaplay Group AB (publ)

STO:VPLAY B

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q1

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's Q1 2024 results conference call. My name is Matthew Hooper, and I'll be your host today. Joining me here on the call are our CEO, Jorgen Madsen Lindemann, and our CFO, Enrique Patrickson. As usual, our presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can find the presentation date for this meeting on the Investor Relations section of our website. If you are joining via the webcast link, you'll be able to follow the slides as we present them. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you are following the webcast, please post your questions on the Message Board at any time, and I will read them out. If you prefer to ask your questions directly, you are, of course, welcome to do so by using your phone keypad. More about that later. As we presented last quarter, and you will see from the fact sheet that we sent out with the results this morning, we have changed our segmental reporting structure so that it reflects our new operating structure. Our core operations comprise the Nordics, Netherlands and Viaplay Select, while the noncore operations comprise the international markets that we are exiting, Poland, the Baltics, and the U.K. The guidance we have given and which we are restating today was already provided according to this structure. The other change that we have made is to separate the revenue breakdown for the core operations into 4 lines rather than the previous 3. This then provides more granularity around linear channel subscription sales and our sublicensing sales. Given the scale of our sublicensing activities now, we hope that this is useful extra information for you. The fact sheet includes the segmental information for prior quarters too. I will now hand the call over to Jorgen to walk you through the Q1 highlights. So, over to you, Jorgen.

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

Thank you, Matthew, and good morning, everyone. So, our results are in line with expectations, and we have made no changes to our forward-looking guidance. The recapitalization is done and the financing is secured. So all our full focus now is on making all of our operational improvements that are necessary for the group to achieve our plans, and to return to profitable growth and free cash flow generation. Our corporations generated 6% organic sales growth in Q1, which was driven by our linear sales -- channel sales and top licensing, which I will come on to in a minute. The losses for Q1 primarily reflected higher content expenses, which mainly come from the rise in our sports costs due to the inflation built into these contracts. The core subscriber base was slightly up quarter-on-quarter, and we raised our prices in both Sweden and in Denmark. 70% of our core revenues come from the sale of subscriptions to our on-demand streaming service and linear schedule channels, which subline accounting for an extraordinary 10% of our revenues. Sub licensing comprises the revenue that we get from Viaplay Select, as well as the sports and non-sports sublicensing deals we have done in our core markets as part of our self-help measures to bring down our committed cost base. Looking at the segments in more detail now, let's start with Viaplay. Our cost Viaplay subscriber base was slightly up since the end of last quarter due to the growth in the Dutch subscriber base as the new Formula 1 season started, and down year-on-year due to the termination of the unprofitable B2B campaigns last summer and the 1 million campaign subs that we cleaned up in Q2 last year. Our sales were down year-on-year on an organic basis due to the decline in the number of premium high ARPU D2C subscribers, and the growth in the number of lower ARPU B2B subscribers, which is a consequence of the historical volume or value agreement with our partners. This was offset to an extent by the D2C price adjustments that you can see on this slide. We adjusted our prices in Sweden, in Denmark, and Iceland for both our entry level and premium packages. The adjustments were between 11% to 27%, and reflect the content investments that we have been making and the value for money that our products offer according to recent research on customer content preferences. Churn level did increase temporarily and have now returned to normalized levels, so we do expect the price adjustments to have been an accretive initiative that will support growth moving forward. Next up with the Netherlands, where we will adjust the monthly price from 1,599 to EUR 1799 in May. The reality across our business is that our content costs have risen faster than our revenues. Our Nordic subscription revenues have grown by 43% when you compare Q1 this year with Q1 '21, while our Nordic content costs have grown by 83% over the same period. These numbers include the FX movements over the period and show that our content costs have been growing almost twice as fast as our subscription sales. This is clearly not sustainable and reflects the competition for sports-wise and investment in original programming, underlying inflation and ongoing adverse currency movements as the currencies in which we buy content has significantly strengthened against the SEK. We cannot expect our direct customers and distribution partners to carry 100% of these cost increases alone. So, as part of the self-help measures we have taken -- we have supplied and selected sports and non-sports content to other broadcasters and streamers, as you have seen with the deals announced in the last few months. We are in talks with our distribution partners in order to learn from what products have done well and delivered on our joint expectations and what products didn't do so well in the past few years in terms of value for our customers and as partners. We are discussing what we should jointly do to launch competitive products in our markets given the competition and consumer behavior that we see. These discussions will also address how we tackle account sharing together, which is a major issue for the industry and for us with high ARPU products. We estimate that approximately 1/3 of Viaplay subscribers including 1/3 of Viaplay prime subscribers have been sharing the account details for the subscriptions. This, of course, removes a significant proportion of our addressable market and is simply not fair. It is like buying a cinema ticket, and on the way out, once you have watched the movie, you give the ticket to another person who then can watch it for free, and who then also on the way out gives that ticket to another person who then also can watch it for free. It is difficult to make business when that is happening. We have, therefore, launched initiatives to limit the number of concurrent streams for live sports events in some markets as a test, and we'll ask any account shares to pay for a subscription and become a customer. These actions have proven successful and reduced sharing levels by up to 80% or more on an event basis. We will implement fair initiative this summer similar to what some of our peers have done so that we get paid properly for our products. These initiatives will address both premium and entry tiers across all our markets by establishing subscriber access on a principle of eligible home device, which will have to be pre-verified within the home, effectively blocking sharing upside the household. We're also working with our industry peers to combat piracy both through legal and technical actions, as well as education programs. But it's very clear that we do need much more help from the politicians and regulators to prevent and police all forms of illegal content distribution, which effectively amount to theft of the content in which creators, owners and distributors have invested substantial sums. I'll talk more about the various innovations and new product developments that we have engaged in. But one more to mention here is HVOD, a hybrid video-on-demand service where this summer -- where we will this summer add a competitively priced tier to our Viaplay offering that also includes advertising. Such initiatives have proved successful for our peers and our natural extension to our advertising video-on-demand products. Given our existing advertising business, we are, of course, very well placed to build price and sell substantive inventory to media buyers across our markets, and this will play well into our ambition to replace declining linear advertising revenue with growing digital advertising revenue. This product is expected to become competitive both in terms of ad sales and subscription sales, and on both the D2C customer and B2B partner site. More details will follow on both the account sharing initiatives and new age for our product, and both of these are already included in our plans and guidance. Now, let's move on to our linear tenant subscription sales business. Sales were up 3% on an organic basis after we extended some distribution agreements with more competitive terms, but the majority of our commercial agreements with our partners are still underperforming. We are discussing initiatives with our partners. And as I said, we are also innovating in this area to support our products and partners. The most recent example of this is our interesting linear TV channel partnership with Talpa Network in the Netherlands where Talpa's SBS9 channel, which is available in almost all homes has now been rebranded as Viaplay TV, and includes selection of our sports content. This one schedule includes the Premier League football and highlights from the Chinese brand pre, and we have already seen the channel double its share of viewing with some of this content. And we have a revenue share that secures a fine upside for us. Next up will be our sports news channel that we will roll out across most of our markets this summer. The new channel will be available to our D2C subscribers and have a wide focus on news across the world of sport, based on all of the relevant sports news and video footage that we have available, as well as magazine formats. It will include third-party content from both the Sky Sport News and Sky Sports Premier League channels in the U.K., which is great news to all our sports customers. This is a natural way to provide even more great coverage to sports fans, make our products even more relevant and monetize even better on our sports rights and production investments. We will discuss potential distribution deals with partners who can sell their channel to their customers, and the channel will also carry advertisement. We will also bring new denser products to our sports portfolio in order to ensure that we monetize our content investment as effectively as possible. Now, let's move on to our advertising business. This was a mixed quarter where we gained overall advertising market share as we continue to grow our digital inventory, which was up 67%. The linear TV advertising market has however, continued to be weak, especially in Sweden. We would like to see our total ad sales return to growth given our protected digital growth, improving linear markets and the HVOD and linear channel initiative that we have been launching. Q2 and the beginning of Q3, we'll be very competitive in the Nordics with European football championship and the Olympics on rival channels, and new HVOD products being launched by competitors. On our platforms, we will show every game of the Ice Hockey World Championship from the Czech Republic in May, combined with local shows and strong slate of Hollywood content. Finally, let's look at our sublicensing and other sales, which we have broken out as a separate sales segment for the first time. So, prior year's numbers includes our studio operations that we are now closing or have sold. The most recent deal being the sale of Paprika in Central and Eastern Europe. Our sublicensing sales have more than doubled as we grew the select business outside the Nordics, but also did financially necessary sublicense deals in the Nordics for some of our existing and new original titers, as well as selected sports content. These non-sports deals were with Netflix and Amazon, with whom we would like to cooperate even more. The deal with Amazon for 38 of the Premier League matches preseason kicks in from the summer where the new season starts. All of the above also reflect our focus on self-help measures on our content strategy shift away from high-cost original drama towards high-impact non-scripted content, acquired movies and series. We'll have a considerable amount of original dramas, both new and returning shows, but our focus on return on investment will see the volume decrease over time. Before we talk more about our content, a word or two about the progress in existing -- exiting sorry, the noncore international markets. We have now completed the sale of the U.K. operation just after the end of the quarter on 4th of April, and we have transferred our streaming subscribers and sublicense our entire sports content portfolio in the Baltics to tier 3 groups got streaming service. And we have shut down our D2C offering in the U.S. and Canada, where we will keep content available on third-party networks, inclusive Amazon, Rogers, Comcast and Ruko, as we get paid fees from these partners, which are included in the sublicensing revenue line. The only remaining operation then is Poland, which is planned to be closed down in the summer of next year, and reported stable subscriber volume compared to the end of Q4. Revenues for the non-corporations came in as expected, as did the EBIT given that the content costs have been written down. So, the EBIT for the rest of the year will effectively comprise the SG&A cost for the Polish operation. Q1 still included cost for the U.K. and the Baltic operations. If we then move to our content with the recapitalization done, we have now begun to commission new shows and adjust the schedule so that our commercial audience shares can get back into shape with better ROI. We aim to have the lineup we want in place for the spring 25 season. Our content offering is quite unique in spanning to many genres, which is live to local, acquired to commission, library to new releases, series to movies, and sports documentaries. The majority of hours of content is acquired from Hollywood and the majority of cost is related to our premium live sports package. We have a very strong portfolio of sports content across our markets. The Q2 schedule is very strong with the Ice Hockey World Championship, and the NHL Stanley Cup, Formula 1, IndyCar, NASCAR, Motor Racing. Sweden Ludvig Aberg, Norway Viktor Hovland, and Denmark's Nicolai Hojgaard, are looking to take their mark at the PGA and U.S. Open Golf Championship after 24-year-old Aberg was runner up at the Masters earlier this month. And the climate of the Premier League, the Champions League, the Euro League, the Super League and the Bundesliga, as well in the quarter. On the non-sports side, Q1 saw the return of established and successful local series, including MasterChef, Luxury Trap, And Efterlyst. This is core non-scripted commercial content, and it delivered again on both our TV channels and Viaplay. The latest area of our reality format, Paradise Hotel followed up with a huge success in Denmark by being the most watched non-sport tile in Norway in Q1, and Camp Kulinaris was back in Norway. Crime continues to be very popular amongst our viewers with the fourth series of hit crime drama Wisting breaking his own viewing records, and crime documentary, Under The Radar making a big impact in Sweden. The acquired Hollywood material also were well to drive retention with Good Doctor, Blue Bird, and Reagent all features on the top list across all markets. The state for Q2 also looks good with new seasons of successful local international series, great new movies releases and shows, including comedy, drama, All and EVA, and documentary Ace of Base, All That She Wants. Paradise Hotel will be back in Denmark for the summer. And on the acquired front, SWAT returns with a proven track record, as to Alert, Missing Persons unit, which was launched last year and the third season of Alex Rider. Our key focus areas remain, first is the top line revenue drivers of focusing on ARPU rather than subscriber volume, adjusting prices, enhancing our partnerships, increasing our digital ad inventory and introducing new products. Secondly, improve the return on our content investment, which I have just illustrated by focusing on commercial and relevant content, ensuring we have a disciplined KPI-driven approach and sublicensing content where we can and where it makes sense. And finally, improving the organization and operations by exiting the noncore markets, further improving the setup and functioning of our teams, and ensuring we have locally mandated and accountable teams with strict governance processes. All of this is critical to enable us to achieve our goals of low to mid-single-digit percentage revenue growth, double-digit operating profit margins in 5 years, free cash flow generation in 2025 for our corporations, and in 2025 for the group so that we can build our balance sheet and enable shareholder returns. That concludes my initial remarks, and I will now hand over to Enrique to comment on our financial performance and position before I come back to you to talk about our future plans.

[Enrique Patrickson, executive]

Thank you so much, Jorgen, and good morning, everyone. Our total group sales growth was lower than our organic growth and due to a number of divestments since last year, and they continued into play of our currency mix in this quarter. When looking at our core operations, 4.2% reported growth was 5.6% on an organic growth basis with a marginal negative FX of approximately SEK 10 million. The currency effects did, however, continue to inflate our costs by about SEK 25 million due to the effect that Jorgen mentioned earlier where the currencies that we buy or corner U.S. dollars and euros strengthened against local currencies. With a weaker second NOK in the quarter, we saw total EBIT impact of around SEK 35 million in the quarter year-over-year. Based on current rates, and our more limited ability to hedge currencies, we expect the transactional FX headwinds to impact the EBIT line of approximately SEK 300 million to SEK 400 million for the full year compared to SEK 300 million in our previous assumption. We are currently exploring new hedging options for this ongoing exposure following the recapitalization. The increase in our sales was outstripped by the 9% reported currency rate in our COGS, which primarily comprise content costs, specifically the risings content costs. Our content costs made up 80% of our overall OpEx in Q1, which will not change that much moving forward as the cost of sales impact from the previous content write-downs will be offset by the overall content cost inflation. And sports will continue to comprise approximately 2/3 of our total content cost. SG&A costs were reduced significantly compared to a year ago, down 12% after the reduction in the workforce last summer, and also reduction in marketing spend. Our core segment SG&A was up as we now allocate all central overheads to the core segment. It is also worth noting that the 3.6% drop in both our core bioplate products and advertising sales passes almost entirely to the bottom line. So it's a big swing factor in the quarter. And to elaborate more on the bridge items, so focusing on our core EBIT loss of SEK 270 million, this is approximately a reduction of SEK 370 million versus a year ago. And the key drivers behind this is at SEK 226 million higher sales and SEK 64 million higher SG&A, and the balance of about SEK 500 million is higher content cost. For the noncore markets, our losses were SEK 47 million, which reflected essentially the SG&A costs, as we have sales of almost SEK 300 million and a slight loss on gross profit level, it means that SG&A is the rest. And this reflects the write-down that we made last year. So, it makes more sense to focus on cash flows when talking about our international exit market. The free cash flow was negative SEK 376 million in the quarter. And at the latest FX rates, we expect to land in the upper end of our guidance that we provided for the full year, so close to SEK 800 million on cash returns. In the quarter, we had SEK 188 million of items effecting comparability, which primarily comprised unrealized noncash FX translation effects related to the previous content provisions that we have named. These effects will continue to move up and down each quarter. The IC in this quarter also included costs related to the recapitalization that we could not take against equity. Our interest in other financial items in line and would normally have primarily reflected the increase in our borrowing costs after the recapitalization, where we are paying a blended rate of 7.7% in our borrowings at the end of Q1 and earning about 3.4% on cash deposits compared to 5.6% and 3.7%, respectively, at the end of last year. However, this quarter, our other financial items in the finance net amounted to a positive SEK 1.18 billion and mainly comprised of the one-off impact due to the SEK 2 billion debt right in that was made in connection to the recapitalization in February, where $500 million of that of SEK500 million equity portion is valued at the data which debt was canceled. Our share price at the time was about 160 at the date of the recapitalization. So, the SEK 500 million was revalued to SEK 810 million in our equity. And the difference between the SEK 2 billion and the EUR 810 million is recognized as other financial income in our net financial line. Our associated company income amounted to SEK 32 million in the quarter, and almost entirely comprised the income of our 50% share in the earnings on Allente. The company has made a solid start to the year and is seeing the effects on the efficiency initiatives that it has made. Revenues were stable as price increases offset the gradual decline in its DTH subscriber base. We expect our share of Allente's full year 2024 earnings to be in the range of $100 million to $150 million. We also received SEK 100 million dividend from Allente in Q1, reflecting the quite strong cash flow in the beginning of the year. Moving on then to our cash flow. Our operating cash flow was a negative SEK 1.53 billion and comprised the core EBIT losses of SEK 270 million, higher payments and costs of approximately SEK 900 million for the core segment, and that included about SEK 300 million related to the IACs reported last year. And then we have the SEK 376 million cash drag from our noncore operations, and that includes both the working capital swing as well as the SEK 47 million in negative EBIT for the noncore statement. The other cash flow items, including the length dividend, CapEx, depreciation, amortization, interest and tax, all of those broadly offset each other. Our cash flow statement shows the working capital build up to SEK 757 million, which reflected the usual seasonal patent when it comes to payment for sports and non-sports content. You need to add about SEK 440 million from the SEK 1.52 billion line that is just above on this chart to arrive to underlying SEK 1.2 billion buildup in working capital. The EUR 440 million represents the changes in provisions, and the balance of that line is mainly the reversal of the debt revaluation that went into the finance net line that I commented just a moment ago. We expect our total working capital build for 2024 to be between SEK 1.8 billion to SEK 1.9 billion for the year, with Q2 being positive and Q3 being the other quarter when working capital builds up the boast. In terms of the proceeds on the recapitalization, we used the net proceeds from the recent share issue to repay the fully drawn RCF, which has been reduced to SEK 3.4 billion and extended until 2028. Our debt maturity profiles have all been extended until 2028, both for our SEK824 million of privately-placed debt and NOK1.03 billion of debt in the MTN program. Our financial net debt, when excluding the net lease liabilities was SEK 273 million at the end of Q1 with cash and cash equivalents of $1.34 billion and total borrowings of SEK 1.86 billion. From a free cash flow perspective, this slide is the same as the one that we showed last quarter, and we still expect to deliver in the same range of a negative EUR 1.7 billion to EUR 2.2 billion for 2024 of free cash flow, of which $0.6 billion to $0.8 million relates to the noncore exit markets, and we now expect that number to be in the upper end of that interval. These expectations are included in our financial targets as set out on this slide, which is the same as the one that we had at the rights issue prospectus and then reiterated in our Q4 report. In addition to these sales and EBIT targets for our core business, meaning the Nordics, Netherlands, and Viaplay Select, the noncore exit markets operations will deliver an additional approximately $0.8 billion to DKK 1 billion of revenues, and NOK 100 million of negative EBIT in 2024, as indicated earlier. In conclusion, 2024 is a transition year. We're making many changes across the operations in terms of how we allocate capital and require returns on it, but it will take time for the impact of these actions to be seen in our results. The counter strategy changes that Jorgen outlined also mean that we have faster cash conversion cycles, especially in non-sports content. However, we still sit with large content commitments in our core and noncore markets that we have to monetize through as many means as possible. The focus on cash flow and cash ROI is very clear in how we make and follow-up investment decisions in all our businesses. These are very important steps to make Viaplay Group a much more competitive business. That's all for me. So, over back to you, Matthew now.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

Thank you, Jorgen and Enrique. We are now ready to take your questions. If you would like to ask a question and you have joined the conference call via the web link, you can post questions on the Message Board by kicking on the Ask Question tab at the top right-hand corner of the window, and I'll read them out for you. Please don't forget to write your name and your company name. Or if you would rather ask the question yourself, please press star one and then one again on your telephone keypad and you will enter the queue. To cancel your questions simply for a star on and on again. So the first question we have comes from the message board, and this is for you, Jorgen. It's a question for Martin Arnell at DNB. And the first question from him is, what is your estimation of the churn effects from the new key sublicensing deals particularly when the Amazon deal for the Premiership comes on stream in the summer?

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

Yes. I think the way that we have looked at it is, of course, to make sure that our product stays super relevant and competitive. And so, the sublicense that you do, you would not expect to see massive churn or churn from that. So we do expect a very, if any, impact on churn.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

Okay. And just following on from the questions from Martin, could you expand on the collaboration with Amazon to include sharing of other key sports prices? I mean, i.e., will there be other key sports trying to share with them?

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

Yes. I think that is not specific, Amazon. That is a general observation is, of course, that we would like to see opportunities to make even stronger products also for our customers and partner with relevant parties, and then can be the likes of Amazon or whatever, local partners we are having right now. We have historically strong partnership with a lot of our B2B partners. We have also historically launched TV channels, which, as an example, TV2 in Denmark, where we had a sports channel, we are launching now channels with the Talpa in the Netherlands. So definitely, we would like to see more partnership where we can make stronger offerings and be more competitive in the market.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

Okay. And the other part of that question is the interest from the globals, by which I think Martin is referring to the big streaming companies to add premium sports to their office in the Nordics is a big structural change to the market. How does this impact Viaplay's growth ambitions, margins and long-term financial targets?

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

Yes. But I think, again, I think we are very well positioned in our core markets, which is exactly why we decided also to allocate capture in those markets. And that is the fact that we have been here for many years, we have long-term relationship with the partners. We have strong partnerships around our content as well. So to disrupt that, it will take quite something to be fair. So definitely, it will be more competition, but that is the name of the game in all fairness. I think we have seen that in other markets as well. But definitely post recapitalization as well, we are very well positioned to make sure that we can keep on being competitive and capitalize on the content that we have.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

Okay. So next, we're going to take a question from the telephone lines. And the question is coming from Rasmus Engberg at Handelsbanken. So over to you, Rasmus.

[Rasmus Engberg, analyst]

Can you hear me? Wonderful. I was also on the matter of sort of inviting the international clients to your backyard. Is that mainly relating to content that you plan not renewing going forward? It seems like a rather dangerous strategy to me.

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

I don't think is dangerous, meaning the international, they would like -- if they want to enter the market, they will try to get in there anyway. We went into Holland as an example. So definitely, that can be done. So, we would like to see them as opportunities for us to capitalize even better on our content and also future partnerships. So that is how we view the interest of these international players.

[Rasmus Engberg, analyst]

But isn't there a difference in sublicensing Premier League to sort of forgoing European Conference League, for example. Isn't there a big difference in those two?

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

Yes. How should I answer that? Yes, there's practical difference that you are not -- and I reckon you alluding to the rumors that Disney has -- to announcement that Disney has prolonged or has taken the Euro League at the Conference League. That is, of course, different than selling off content to different parties. It is something we always do, Rasmus, as you know. We are sublicensing on a Nordic basis. So in Finland, we are sublicensing hockey and NHL, and in Norway, some skiing, and Denmark on handball and FA Cup, and so forth so forth. So it is part of the business where you are acquiring content and then you understand that if you have opportunities to get something even more interesting, then you might offload some content in order to afford the new content. And as Enrique pointed out, this is with an ROI focus as well now. It is not just to have everything because we want everything. It is to understand how we can capitalize on it. So that is those lenses.

[Rasmus Engberg, analyst]

Fair. With regards to your sports content portfolio, are you happy with the way it is? Or do you think that there are things that you might be adding by sacrificing other stuff, or how do you think about that?

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

That is a constant analysis and that is -- we have just conducted an extreme -- a very big customer analysis, partner analysis, how is our content perceived by the Viaplay customers alone. How is the content perceived by our partners, customers and so forth. So it is a massive amount of analysis in order to take some fact-based decision on what content is right, given the range of circumstances. I think you take the Formula 1, as an example, has been quite interesting to see the global development of that right, which is more female viewers now than it had in the past. And of course, that makes it eventually more interesting commercially as well. So that is a constant journey, it's not static. Then you have local participants as well. We are very happy that we have Odegaard and Haaland in the Premier League when you look at the Norwegian business. And so, there's a lot of things which will make you invest in the content of load content. So it is not static, as you know. But it is given that the content we are having the big rights like the Danish League, like the Premier League and so forth. They are very relevant and highly regarded in our customer base.

[Rasmus Engberg, analyst]

And just a final question. Can you remind me, with regards to the cash flow from the core operation next year here, is it actually for the full year that it's detected positive, or is it during the year?

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

It's for the full year that we're looking for that to be positive, Rasmus.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

Thank you, Rasmus. So next, from the Message Board. We have a couple of questions from Emil at Mediawatch. First one, again for you, Jorgen. How much sublicensing of sports content? Do you expect the D2C customers and distribution partners will tolerate?

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

It's not a question about tolerating. It is a question about making sure that we have a competitive product. So obviously, if you're letting go of a range of content now, what we have sublicensed so far is very minor to be fair. But in Denmark, we have sub license handful to TV2, and we have sub license on FA Cup, to Discovery as well and so forth. So it is part of the business. But you, of course, always want the strongest product and the most relevant price product for the customer. So, it is part of the game that you optimize your portfolio constantly in order also to make sure you can afford new things coming up.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

Okay. And then the second half of the question is what will the initiatives to combat account sharing include more specifically, will you choose a Netflix-style model with a discounted premium price for account shares, for example?

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

Yes. The data is still what we're looking at. I think in all fairness, we would probably caught with a little bit surprised, once we dig into the numbers and we got more and more intel on actual account sharing is quite big. It's plus 30% of the premium base sharing account. So that is, of course, initially something we just need to stop. It is not fair, in all fairness. And that is something that we do by making sure that you cannot share your account. Then secondly, we, of course, need to understand what interesting commercial offers should we then provide for people to be incentivized as well to subscribe to the product more than one account. And that is something still we are looking at. And learning to your point about also -- to your question about what others are doing. That is something we can learn. Netflix is a good peer here. They have been investing quite heavily into it and are quite sophisticated as we can see. So we can learn a lot from our peers globally.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

Okay. And then next up, we have some questions from Aaron, who's a private investor. First, in the Netherlands, subscribers get the total package, including Premier League and Formula 1 for about EUR 18 per month, or will do. This is significantly less than the Premier League add-on costs in Norway by upgrading from medium to total subscription. Is there a potential to further monetize the Premier League rights or introduce differentiated subscription packages in the Netherlands, similar to what is done in the Nordics?

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

Yes. I can ensure the person asking the question that we are constantly looking at how to make sure that we are right priced and competitive priced in the different markets and what our content can do. So without going into specific, what we want to do in the different markets, that is, of course, an ongoing discussion if we are priced the right way and if we have the right content, the right packaging and so forth. So that is something we are constantly monitoring. So yes, it's ongoing.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

Okay. And the other question for Aaron, is the European Champions League and Europa League have been taken over by competing streaming services. Was this a result of increased competition in prices for sports rights? Or is this a strategic choice not to bid for these sports rights? And secondly, with less content and the same or increased price level, how do you expect this will impact the volume of subscribers to churn?

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

Yes. So I think a very boring answer in general, we will not comment on the right negotiations as such or outcomes. But obviously, again, we do want to make sure that we have a very competitive product in the market, and just looking at our football offering in the different markets, it is extremely strong. And the Sweden market is particularly strong also with national team matches and so forth. So we want to make sure that we keep on being relevant in the markets that we are in, but we will not comment on price negotiation.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

And fair to note, Aaron, that quite a few of the UEFA rights are still open. So it's not as if they can conclude it as it stands. I think then just one question on the cash flow for Enrique, just to understand the working capital, because you mentioned two numbers. Obviously, there's a number, GBP 700 million is in the number of EUR 1.2 billion. How should we understand those two things together and what do we expect for the full year?

[Enrique Patrickson, executive]

Yes. So we'll need to look at the two numbers combined on those two lines. So obviously, in this quarter, that line that had a EUR 1.52 million or whatever the number was in the cash flow statement, is essentially reversing out that financial net number. But normally then going forward, one should be a look at the 2, where the change in provisions is also very important because that's where the cash flow impact comes from the IACs that we already took. And then looking at for the full year, we're looking then at about SEK 1.8 billion to SEK 1.9 billion for combined working capital swing for the full year. Q1 and Q3, on the quarter has the biggest impact. And then Q3 and Q4 are kind of working capital release quarters. So, that's roughly how much one should understand that.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

So fair to assume then that Q2 is a positive change rather than negative.

[Enrique Patrickson, executive]

Yes, yes. Q2, we should be cash flow positive, infact.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

Right. Okay. Another question here is, when it comes to the discussions with partners, just one for Jorgen, what is the status of those discussions and when do those contracts come up for renewal? Is that something that's happening right now or something takes longer-term?

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

No, that is happening ongoing, yes. And what we have done, as I said, is that each of the partners make sure that we have made good research to understand the impact, what is our customer -- what is our product actually doing with the partners. And based on that, also discussed with the partners, what have we learned the last 3 years. It has been very much focused on volume from which we want to get away from to more value-driven partnership. And also, a discussion we're having, of course, is also here the account sharing in the TV Everywhere products and so forth to make sure that we jointly fight these customers who are sharing their accounts, in order to make sure also we get a better commercial outcome of the partnership. So that is to have discussion with the partners as a road as well. As we said as well, we have been investing so much more due to competition, whatever, then we have managed to get from the partnership. So a range of the partnerships are underperforming commercially, that goes without saying, and that is, of course, the discussions we are having. And it is up to us and then to innovate to make sure that we are getting out on a more attractive for both parties, commercial terms. So that is an ongoing discussion, which is now focused on value and is focused on also, particularly, what we can do on account sharing as well.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

Okay. Then we have a question from [ Ossi ] who's a private investor as well. Jorgen mentioned the following key initiatives: password sharing, piracy, sports news channels, and sublicensing content partners. Except for the sports news channel, the strategic initiatives presented seem to be more extrinsic than intrinsic, i.e., they rely more on sticks than carrots. Are there pure customer-centric initiatives the management would like to mention that would increase demand towards the product through an intrinsic carrot point of view?

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

I think the carrot is what we would like to focus the most on, of course, is to deserve the customers is to make sure that they would like to engage with us. And that you do by offering the right content. And that, of course, is something that we have spent quite a lot of time on and also understand how do we produce more commercial content. And now post the recapitalization, we can actually now start to commission again. So, we do want to find the relevant shows to make sure that we are becoming an even stronger entertainment product today. And that's, of course, the carrot stick is, of course, that people should stop sharing, because if we want to be able to invest in all that content, it is very difficult. People are not paying for it. Obviously, it's a little bit unfair to want it all and not pay. So, we certainly need to reverse that and appeal to customers come up. This is a civilized Nordic countries and you normally pay for what you consume in all fairness, and the same goes with us. So the carrot is much more charming than the stick. And I don't know if it's comp sharing is a stake. It is just to be fair, I would say. And the carrot is then that we can continue to invest. So those will go hand in that.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

And then a question from Mikael, which is regarding the advertising market. And the question I think here is focused on what we can expect to see from the advertising revenues for the rest of this year?

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

Yes, I think as we have said, we would like to aggregate it or combined grow them. So we would like to do more on the digital advertising side on our AVOD products, and also now with the HVOD product, also with the linear channel now in Holland. So we would like to grow the digital products more than we are losing on the analog advertising, that goes without saying. I think the region markets look fairly okay, to be fair. Still the TV markets look to decline in all fairness when we're looking at this year. So we do need to do better, which we are doing. We have a strong increase so far in Q1 on our digital advertising versus last year. So that is a great effort from the team to make that transformation.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

Okay. And two questions from Doug Robert at Campania. When can we expect to see the launch of the new sports news channel? And will this channel be made available for major TV distributors or strictly through the Viaplay app?

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

Yes. It will launch gradually during the fall and summer during -- and fall, begin it. And it will be both on B2C. And of course, we will have discussion with some partners on being able to distribute the channel as well. So it would be both for the Viaplay B2C customers, but also for some of our partners who will be able to distribute.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

Okay. And then the second part of the question from Doug Robert is you mentioned the collaboration with Sky Sports with the sports news channel. Are you also in talks with other TV channels and Nordics or elsewhere that content for the new channel?

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

Yes, we have already existing agreement with some of the partners actually in the Nordics, where we will be able to utilize the content as well for a sports and news channel. So obviously, there's also new partnerships, which we also would encourage people to step forward and make sure that they can offer even more footage from sports content or relevant stories for around the world. So for all journalists in the Nordic, there's great outlet here as well, if they have the ideas and if they can cover relevant sport events, which would be relevant for our customers. So, it's quite an interesting opportunity to be fair and very relevant since, obviously, our sports offering we should be the right storyteller, the new story seller, of course, with the insights and the amount of video we're having.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

And another question from Campania, this time from Canute, is are the sales of Premier League matches to Amazon and drama series to Netflix included in the SEK 472 million in sublicensing and other. If so, what portion of this amount is related to these sales? So I'll pass this one over to Enrique, but remember, Canute, that the Premier League deal kicks in, in the summer. So that's not something for Q1, but just passing out to Enrique.

[Enrique Patrickson, executive]

Yes. Yes, correct. So the Premier League portion with Amazon starts in Q3. So, what you have then in the Q1 is, predominantly is content sales that we've done to the likes of Netflix and Amazon and others. The vast majority of that.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

Okay. One question from Floris on the HBO Tier. Will this be also coming to the Netherlands?

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

Yes. We are understanding right now, and also in what order to launch it. But there's no reason why we shouldn't make a broad offering of the HBO product. The benefit, of course, we have in the Nordics as well is that we have a very big subscriber base in all fairness like in Holland, you can argue. So, there is an opportunity for us to see, first of all, how also it will develop in the Nordics in some of the markets and then export it to other areas. Generally, we would like to have as many revenue streams to our content as possible, and obviously, HBO is being one of them or advertising to subscription pro would be one.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

There are a number of questions here regarding the UEFA rights and Formula 1 rights, but I think we've already been clear that we can't comment on those process. I think there's also some questions here around the share price. Again, we don't typically comment on share price. So, I think hopefully, you'll respect that. Other than that, I think if anyone has any other questions, please do post them. One question from [ Josar ]. Will the Premier League say it is okay to sublicense more premier league matches? I guess the implication here is do you need their approval in order to be able to do sublicensing?

[Jorgen Lindemann, executive]

Yeah. But then you can argue, you are always consulting your partners to make sure that they have sold rights that could be whatever, golf or whatever it could be to us. And if we decide to find another home for it, of course, you're consulting your partner to discuss that. Amazon is a very big global content player. So they have a very strong reputation around the world as well as being a professional player. So that is not a problem at all.

[Matthew Hooper, executive]

Okay. There are some questions here around the subscriber breakdown, but I'm afraid we don't break down between direct-to-consumer and B2B in our reporting. We did make some comments around the growth of each during Jorgen's comments earlier in the call. So hopefully, that helped you with an explanation of the trend lines that we're seeing there, both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter. And just remember that year-on-year, we had the cleaning of the base in the summer of last year, which is really more the quarter-on-quarter development that's relevant for looking at this. But I think I will just pause there for a moment to see if there's any more questions coming in. We have no more on the telephone line, and we have no more in the message board. So, I think on that basis, I'll say that, that concludes the question-and-answer session. Thank you as ever for your time and your questions today. We really appreciate your interest, and we welcome your feedback on the format and the content of this session. We're available for follow-up meetings. So, please don't hesitate to reach out to my colleague, Anna or me if you would like to schedule a meeting or have any further questions. So that is it for today. Thank you, again. Goodbye for now, and see you soon.