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Formula One Group (FWONA)

Q4 2008 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 25, 2009

$79.78

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Liberty Media Corporation quarterly earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded. This presentation includes certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements about financial guidance, business strategies, market potential, future financial performance, new service and product launches, and other matters that are not historical facts. These forward-looking statements involve many risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such statements. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this presentation and Liberty expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to disseminate any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statement contained herein to reflect any change in Liberty's expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances under which any such statement is based. Please refer to the publicly filed documents of Liberty, including the most recent Form 10-K for additional information about Liberty and about the risks and uncertainties related to Liberty's business which may affect the statements made in this presentation. On today's call we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. The required definitions and reconciliations can be found at the end of this presentation, which is posted on our website. At this time for opening remarks and introductions I would like to turn the call over to the President and Chief Executive Officer, Greg Maffei. Please go ahead, sir.

Greg Maffei

Management

Thank you and thank you all for joining us this morning and your interest in Liberty Media. Today we're going to talk about the year overall and review the quarter by tracker. We're also going to discuss the operating performance at the subsidiaries we control. We'll cover some of the transactions we went through in Q4 and subsequent to the quarters' end and some other development that we've had ongoing. With me are our Controller, Chris Shean, who will discuss our attributed business's financial results and liquidity picture for each of the three trackers; QVC's CEO, Mike George, who will discuss the developments at QVC; Starz CEO Bob Clasen, who'll review recent events at Starz. Also on the call and available are QVC's CFO Dan O'Connell, Starz' President and COO, Bill Meyers, and Starz CFO Glenn Curtis, and several other senior Liberty executives. As I said, all will be available at the end to answer questions after the prepared remarks. No surprise that 2008 was a volatile year for Liberty as it was for literally all the businesses in the United States and perhaps the world. All of our equities were significantly affected, though some less than others. We are working on the factors that are under our control in terms of reducing risk, reducing costs, maintaining liquidity and maintaining flexibility, and I think we made good progress on several fronts, particularly in light of the financial environment, the retail environment, and we're happy with that progress. At Liberty Interactive we worked to increase liquidity. We drew down on our bank facility. We changed the attribution of the Viacom exchangeable debt, which added its fair value to that debt, $380 million in cash to Liberty Interactive. And we continued the process of selling some of our high basis non-high vote,…

Chris Shean

Management

Thanks, Greg. Liberty Interactive Group's revenue decreased 4% to $2.38 billion in the fourth quarter and increased 4% to $8.08 billion for the year, while adjusted OIBDA declined 21% to $432 million for the quarter and 8% to $1.56 billion for the year. QVC is the primary driver of results amongst the Liberty Interactive attributed assets. It continues to operate in a challenging retail environment, and its total revenue decreased 8% in the fourth quarter to $2.14 billion and 1% to $7.3 billion for the year, while adjusted OIBDA decreased 22% to $416 million in the fourth quarter and 9% to $1.5 billion for the year. Liberty Interactive's other ecommerce businesses, which include Provide Commerce, backcountry.com, BodyBuilding.com, and BuySeasons again posted strong financial results and continue to grow at a rapid pace. In total our ecommerce businesses experienced revenue growth of 65% in the fourth quarter and 92% for the year. Adjusted OIBDA grew 19% in the fourth quarter and 78% for the year. The increase in revenue for the quarter was primarily driven by the impact of the BodyBuilding.com acquisition, which happened at the end of 2007, and strong organic growth at the other ecommerce companies. The increase in revenue for the year was due to the same fourth quarter factors as well as the inclusion of a full year of results for backcountry.com. The increase in adjusted OIBDA for the quarter was due to organic growth at certain of the ecommerce companies and the BodyBuilding.com acquisition. The increase in the adjusted OIBDA for the year was due to the organic growth at most of the ecommerce companies and the backcountry.com and BodyBuilding.com acquisitions. Now turning to QVC, their 2008 results, its consolidated revenue declined 1% for the year to $7.3 billion while adjusted OIBDA declined 9% to $1.5…

Mike George

Management

Thanks, Chris. QVC was obviously impacted by the same economic challenges all the other retailers faced in Q4, so it was a tough quarter for us. However, we feel good that we responded early and aggressively to the consumer spending slowdown, and we do feel that we're well positioned to ride out this economic storm and emerge in a stronger competitive position. In the U.S. our sales declined 12%. Jewelry and apparel were our most challenged categories, as they were all year. Although we saw generally soft results across most categories, beauty was the one exception. That business continues to be very strong for us. Most of this decline, if you look at it from a customer perspective, was driven by core customers purchasing at a slightly lower frequency, which I think reflects their caution in this environment. It was not primarily driven by a reduction in new customers or by customer defections, so we do think that our customer purchasing funnel remains fundamentally healthy. Our adjusted OIBDA declined by 29%. That decline was driven by several factors. The reduced mix of higher-margin categories like jewelry, coupled with the somewhat higher take rate on our more promotional offers like the Today's Special Value, drove 170 basis point decline in initial product margins. We also saw an increase in markdowns in the quarter as we tried to keep our inventories clean, but that increase in markdowns had a relatively modest impact on the total margin. Our gross margins were also hampered by a 65 basis point increase in obsolescence rates as our liquidation activity increased. That said, we're pleased with how we ended the quarter on inventory. We were able to reduce inventory levels from their September peak at twice the rate of reduction that we experienced in the prior Q4.…

Chris Shean

Management

Thanks, Mike. Now let's take a quick look at the Liberty Interactive liquidity picture. At the end of 2008 the group had attributed cash and public investments of $2.5 billion and $7.6 billion in attributed debt. During the fourth quarter, as we had mentioned earlier, we changed the attribution of the long-term exchangeable Viacom debt in cash from Liberty Entertainment to LINTA. This change in attribution provided $380 million of cash while adding $551 million face amount of debt to LINTA. We further increased cash through our sales of IEC shares; however, the fair value of our public holdings did decline by $827 million with the overall declines in the market. During the quarter we successfully completed two tender offers, which reduced the balance of our senior notes at LINTA by $1.4 billion. Moving on to Liberty Entertainment, attributed revenue grew 26% in the fourth quarter to $360 million and 22% to $1.39 billion for the year, while adjusted OIBDA increased 143% to $107 million for the quarter and 27% to $324 million for the year. The increase in revenue and adjusted OIBDA for both periods was due to the addition of the Liberty Sports Group, which was acquired in February of 2008 as part of the News Corp. exchange and organic growth at Starz Entertainment. Taking a closer look at Liberty Entertainment's principal consolidated subsidiary, Starz Entertainment, its revenue increased 8% in the fourth quarter to $285 million and 4% for the year to $1.11 billion. The increase in revenue for both periods resulted from an increase in rates and the growth in the average number of subscription units. Starz and Encore's average subscribers increased 7% and 8% respectively during the year. Starz adjusted OIBDA increased 69% during the fourth quarter to $81 million and increased 14% for the…

Bob Clasen

Management

Thanks, Chris. No company can claim to be immune to the economic downturn, but the fourth quarter results for Starz Entertainment demonstrate that at least so far subscription television, providing lowcost entertainment for the family, has held up reasonably well. Our home video business has been more vulnerable to the worsening economic conditions, however, and we have seen announcements by other media companies of negative results and in particular the decline in DVD sales. On the theatrical front, Overture Films in its first year released eight films with three actors earning Oscar or Golden Globe nominations and finished 11th among all studios in terms of box office for the year. However, the overall performance of Overture Films for the year fell short of our projections, and at Anchor Bay Entertainment strong sales of the Overture Films movies partially offset weakened sales of catalog products. Starz Entertainment enjoyed another quarter of solid growth. Subscriptions to our Starz service increased by 1.4 million in 2008 and perhaps more importantly in this time of economic decline added 300,000 subscribers in the fourth quarter. Encore also continued to grow, adding a million subscribers in 2008 and 100,000 in the fourth quarter. Much of this growth came with the continued rollout of video services by the telephone companies, where the penetration for our networks, particularly Starz, is considerably higher than it is with cable or satellite. For the year we generated revenue of $1.11 billion versus $1.07 billion for the prior year. Adjusted OIBDA for the year improved to $301 million from $264 million in 2007, largely driven by the decline in the cost for films. For the quarter we generated $285 million in revenue, up from $265 million in the fourth quarter of 2007 and $278 million in the third quarter of 2008. In…

Chris Shean

Management

Thanks, Bob. Let's take a look at Liberty Capital. During the quarter Liberty Capital revenue increased 44% to $131 million while adjusted OIBDA deficit decreased 20% to $106 million. For the year revenue increased 27% to $617 million and the adjusted OIBDA deficit increased 40% to $294 million. The increase in revenue for both periods was primarily due to revenue growth at Starz Media from theatrical releases and the inclusion of a full year of operation of the Atlanta Braves. The increase in the adjusted OIBDA deficit for the year was due to marketing and advertising costs associated with these film releases and the full year inclusion of the Atlanta Braves. From October 30, 2008 through February 24, 2009, Liberty repurchased 1.6 million shares of Series A Liberty Capital common stock at an average price of $11.51 for total cash consideration of $18 million. Now, I'd point out that the majority of these repurchases were through physical settlements of put options that were written in mid-2008. Cumulative for 2008, Liberty has repurchased 33.2 million shares at an average cost per share of $14.37 for total cash consideration of $478 million, which represent 25.7% of the shares outstanding. Now let's take a look at Liberty Capital's liquidity. The Liberty Capital Group has attributed cash and public investments of $5.4 billion and attributed debt of $4.95 billion. This cash and public investments figure excludes $104 million of Liberty holdings in the Reserve Primary Fund. Last week we received a $35 million distribution from the fund and the current balance outstanding is approximately $69 million. We believe we will receive additional distributions from the fund, but timing is uncertain. As such, we have reclassified this amount from cash into short-term investments. All that said, I'll now turn the call back over to Greg.

Greg Maffei

Management

Thanks, Chris, and thank you, Mike and Bob, for your updates on your businesses. Well, looking at 2008, no surprise. For us as many others it was extremely challenging in light of the unpredictable economic environment. Nonetheless, we continued to focus on, as Mike outlined, cutting costs at QVC and growing in the face of that environment our ecommerce businesses which, like our other subscription businesses, continued to perform well. It's certainly hard to know when economic conditions will improve. We're not betting on that. We're trying to manage for the long haul in the face of difficult conditions. At Entertainment, as you know, we announced the split off of the vast majority of [LVI.] We hope to get that done in the coming months. We increased our stake in DIRECT, as noted, and we had good operating performance at those subscription businesses. At Liberty Capital we focused on shrink and to rationalization as we will ahead. Looking at 2009, at Interactive we're obviously focusing on the operations first and foremost, running the business efficiently, thinking about creative ways to maintain and grow revenue, looking at Internet and digital expansion in a cost-effective manner. We will be opportunistic on small acquisitions as we were in 2008 with Red Envelope and Celebrate, and we think more of those may become available. We are focused on liquidity and our capital structure. We note the covenants that we have at the QVC bank debt and we are working on the 2011 maturities and plan to make sure, even in light of the fact that they're more than two years away, that we're prepared to handle them and we believe we will be. At Liberty Entertainment we're going to focus getting the split off done and other ways to maximize shareholder value, in particular reducing the discount to NAV at Liberty Entertainment. At Liberty Capital we'll continue to try and monetize our non-core holdings in a tax-efficient manner. Frankly, taxes have become less of an issue given the relatively low prices that they are at today. We will look to effectively deploy capital in situations like SIRIUS XM if we see them, but we'll also look to reduce our debt, shrink our equity, and in other ways maximize our NAV. We also trade at enormous discount to NAV at Liberty Capital, and we are focused on ways to reduce that. So thank you for your support and interest in Liberty Media, and with that, Operator, we'd be happy to turn it over for [calls].

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Your first question comes from Douglas Mitchelson - Deutsche Bank Securities.

Douglas Mitchelson - Deutsche Bank Securities

Analyst

Any chance you can give us what the RSNs EBITDA might have been for the full year '08 if you'd owned them the whole year? Second, I'm curious what you wrote the value of Starz down to? What do you think Starz is worth right now? And lastly, any chance you can fine-tune the split off timing? You've been saying May June. Are we sort of still on track for that? Any closer on timing would be helpful.

Greg Maffei

Management

I'll handle the second one first, and I'll come back on the first - the second and third, then the first. Starz, let's be clear. What we wrote down has not any implication per se to what we think the business is worth. There are a strict series of rules and tests which are triggered based on market multiples, projected cash flows and the like which don't necessarily suggest what we think the business is worth. So I'll make that point and I'll let Chris, if he wants to add anything on that, Chris Shean, our Controller, if he wants to add anything, I'll come back to that. On LMDA timing, we are May - June affirming, and that's about as precise as we think we can be. Obviously, there are factors which are in our control and other ones in which we're relying on estimates of third parties and those seem like reasonable estimates. Do you want to comment on Starz?

Chris Shean

Management

Yes, and the RSNs as well. I guess the RSNs sort of on a pro forma basis, EBITDA would be about $33 million for 2008. On the Starz thing, the biggest part of the charge actually is the second part of the test. The first part of the test is you compare estimates of fair value of equity to your carrying value of your equity, and if you fail that test by $1 then you go to the second part of the test, which is you take that fair value that you just came up with and you do a hypothetical purchase allocation as if you had bought the company at that price. And you go through this purchase allocation. You allocate to all of the assets and liabilities of the company, including intangibles, other intangibles, and in this case all of Starz's legacy intangible balances, affiliation agreements, had been fully amortized through the years, so when you go through this hypothetical exercise and you allocate to these other intangibles, there's very little left over to allocate to goodwill. So then you compare this implied goodwill balance to what you actually have on the books, which in our case was $1.3 billion, and thus you end up with a very large charge. So that's a little bit more color and probably more accounting speak than anybody wanted to hear, but that's what drove the charge.

Douglas Mitchelson - Deutsche Bank Securities

Analyst

The bottom line, Greg, is your future view on the cash flows at Starz can produce haven't changed?

Greg Maffei

Management

No. Starz's cash flows have been very strong. I think we bottomed out at 175 post our Comcast renegotiation or even below 150 - 175 in my tenure; Bob Clasen is rightly pointing out before I got here it actually was 150 - and we did 301 on our way to double-digit 20% type growth we project this coming year. We think those businesses are growing well in Entertainment and we're excited about them, and these accounting tests have relatively little to do with that.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from [James Raco] - Barclays Capital.

James Raco - Barclays Capital

Analyst

I had two on LMDIA and one on LCAPA. On LMDIA, after ELI spins what are your thoughts on the stub? Does it make sense for it to be stand-alone or should we really roll back in? And secondly, is there any tax or regulatory restriction on announcing the terms of an LMDIADTV deal before the Entertainment spin actually takes place? And on LCAPA, with a lot of liquidity now, the Sprint hedge is maturing in 2009 - 2010. You mentioned sort of a number of possible options. Can you talk about how you think about using that liquidity among acquisitions, share repurchase or maybe buying back some of the exchangeable debt?

Greg Maffei

Management

On the LEI spin what happens to what effectively will be Starz, cash and the wild blue equity, we will see where it trades. We have no announced plan. It will be a relatively small public company. It will be relatively hard to know what its strategic direction is. We think there's a lot of positive things that are happening in Starz, but we'll see whether that should ultimately be a publicly traded tracker or whether it more appropriately belong recombined in some way. Stay tuned. No decision. On a question of could you announce merger terms with DIRECTV prior to completing the spin, I believe you could. You would be subject to ensure non-taxability, a whole bunch of [inaudible], probably the most important of which is Morris Trust, which would say that our shareholders have 51% of vote and value in any post-spin merge combination. Albert Rosenthal is giving me the nod that I've got that right, and we're very cognizant of that. But frankly, if you look at the economic value in any kind of combination, we probably would not accept any deal that had less than 51% of vote and value, so that probably is not a restraining factor as a practical matter. Last question on Starz, we will have a fair amount of liquidity at Starz. We have a fair amount of liquidity now - excuse me, LCAPA. We do at Starz as well, but at LCAPA - thank you; I meant LCAPA - and the Sprint collar's maturing will only further enhance that. We will look for deals like SIRIUS XM. We will consider debt repurchase. We are noteworthy of the five and five deal that got approved in the stimulus bill that for five years you will not recognize any COD income on a debt repurchase, and then you will recognize it ratably over the next five years. On a present value basis that's quite attractive in terms of changing the dynamics of debt repurchase for Liberty. And there frankly may be some other things that happen in how that bill is interpreted that make it more opportunistic for us or more realistic for us to look at even attacking some of our exchangeables. We are working through that. Stay tuned on that as well. And lastly, as I noted, we shrunk about 26% of the equity of LCAPA. We consider that equity undervalued. The potential to repurchase more of that is also on the table. So all three things, to answer, are things we have already executed on in the way to debt repurchase that gets better in a post-stimulus bill through attractive and, in this case debt, focused with warrant kicker investment in the case of SIRIUS XM or a share repurchase in the case of the shrink we've already done. All three could potentially be attractive.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from David Goldberg - Morgan Stanley.

David Goldberg - Morgan Stanley

Analyst

Just had two on LCAPA, one for Greg kind of following up on James's question there. In terms of the Sprint collar unwind, I just want to clarify, I mean, it seems like there is going to be a relatively large taxable gain there. Should we assume that the cash is, indeed, coming in or are there any strategies that you guys might take to kind of delay the maturity of those or should we just assume that the cash is coming in and you're paying taxes on the gain?

Greg Maffei

Management

Well, I think you should be assured that the cash is coming in, okay? And I could talk more about that in a moment. On the question of whether the taxes are going out, Liberty is always focused, as you may have heard, on tax efficiency. We have some ideas and strategies around that. I'm not going to tip all of those ideas out today, but we're working that problem.

David Goldberg - Morgan Stanley

Analyst

And then on the Starz side, I guess this one's more for Bob. You guys obviously sit in an interesting kind of part of the home video market and I was wondering what you guys are seeing there given what seems like a 10% to 15% decline in home video sell through and whether or not that changes your view of investment in film and entities like Anchor Bay?

Bob Clasen

Management

The primary decline and it's probably more than 10% to 15% is in the catalog side. Anchor Bay, when we acquired it, was essentially a catalog company, holding Season 7 of Third Rock From the Sun and a lot of older children's titles. So what we've been doing at Anchor Bay is shifting that mix to be first run movies, and if you come back to our comments about Overture, eight to 10 from Overture a year, eight to 10 from Anchor Bay Films, our view is that we will offset our getting out of the catalog business by being much more focused on first run motion pictures which still have a great life. What we've been seeing and I think some other studios have seen that if you have the right movie for home video and other ways to monetize it, it holds up very well. It's the catalog business that we think is in decline, and that's why this is an awkward year for us as we are not renewing rights for a lot of our catalog product and replacing it with movies that are first run and that generate much higher unit sales Another data point - many of the big box retailers who have a lot of play in home video like WalMart and Best Buy and Target are going through the process of deciding how much space they're going to allocate and also how many people they're going to deal with, and so the more we have focus on first run titles, which they market around to bring people into their stores, I think the better opportunity we have to save our spots in our space, and so far we've suffered no decline from the big box retail people with regard to home video. So it's a challenged space, but our strategy of exiting the catalog business for the most part and replacing that with a fewer number but higher quality titles probably gives us some window to continue to evaluate it while we continue to look for ways to move some of that to digital revenue as well, which is another part of our strategy that's just starting to unfold.

David Goldberg - Morgan Stanley

Analyst

And just one follow up for Mike - sorry to tack on here - but I think your previous commentary on QVC's domestic business has been that it kind of bottomed out in terms of sales in September October. Does that still seem to be the case or is there any incremental weakness in 1Q?

Mike George

Management

I think that's still a fair statement. Definitely the sort of last half of September, first half of October were the toughest spot in the quarter, then came off of those lows and somewhat stabilized for the balance of the quarter. You know, I said in our Morgan Stanley call in November, I did say that the unknown was what would happen when we turned the clock on the New Year and got past the Christmas selling season, and so far we feel pretty good that we are off those bottoms and the trend has picked up modestly from those levels.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Jason Bazinet - Citigroup.

Jason Bazinet - Citigroup

Analyst

I just have one question on Liberty Capital. I think historically you guys said you've been buying back the LCAPA shares sort of in the low double-digit range, and maybe my math is wrong but I sort of have full liquidation value at something in the high teens. And I guess my question is it seems like while you're buying back shares, it seems like the pace is relatively slow given the cash that still sits as LCAPA, even pro forma, for the SIRIUS investment. And so I guess my question is is that a liquidity issue, that there aren't enough shares trading, or is that more a function of you think that there are other things you can do with that cash to create more value related to the debt or other investments outside of Liberty?

Greg Maffei

Management

Jason, I think it's first and foremost not a liquidity issue. If you look at the cash at LCAPA relative to the market cap, I agree the cash and potential near cash looks considerably higher.

Jason Bazinet - Citigroup

Analyst

I don't mean liquidity in terms of what you have. I just mean in terms of how many shares.

Greg Maffei

Management

No, I got that. I think there is a relatively thin market. There's no need to chase this stock. It's frankly going to, you know, it's unlikely to be a double-digit stock just because of the way the stock market is acting anytime soon, not related to what - we agree with your fundamental point that the NAV is considerably higher than market. So I think you'll see us - we have some other constraints we're working through and as we get that, we'll evaluate what liquidity in terms of share liquidity, to your point, is out there and look to adjust our pace.

Jason Bazinet - Citigroup

Analyst

And can I just go back and just clarify because I heard rumblings about the stimulus provision regarding debt. That rule essentially says if you tender for debt you don't pay capital gains on the difference between market value and par for five years. Is that the right way to think about it?

Greg Maffei

Management

Well, it's not necessarily tender. If you repurchase debt, the COV income is not recognized for five years and then is recognized ratably for the next five. So on a present value basis you're looking at something like 7.5 years out. With a reasonable discount rate, that's pretty attractive in terms of reducing that present value of that liability.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Thomas Eagan - Collins Stewart LLC.

Thomas Eagan - Collins Stewart LLC

Analyst

First on Starz, the programming costs were lower than we had thought and therefore margin was higher. I was wondering, Greg, if you could just give us an outlook on programming costs for 2009 and therefore the margin?

Greg Maffei

Management

Bob, do you want to comment on that?

Bob Clasen

Management

I think we don't give guidance. Programming is so material to our results that I think that would be the right thing to do. I think we've cautioned you that in 2010 we could see the decline stop. And remember, we are increasing our original programming and as that comes to market and we amortize that it's an additional cost. So I think the right thing to comment on is that there could be an increase in 2010; we'll just have to monitor it. But for the time being we're certainly pretty well in a flat position.

Thomas Eagan - Collins Stewart LLC

Analyst

More broadly, I guess, for Greg or for John, is with the declining Q4 fundamentals we've seen across content companies, entertainment companies, and cable and satellite companies all except for DIRECTV - I was wondering if you guys could comment on these days what you think about the relative strength of content versus cable and satellite?

Greg Maffei

Management

Well, no John today. He's not even hiding in the shadows. He's not on the call. So you'll have to take my answer. I think you've seen the case where a lot of people who have ad-based businesses have suffered and particularly those who have local ad-based businesses rather than national have suffered more dramatically. And probably the most suffering in that group when you look at who their advertisers are is obviously newspapers and local television stations because an enormous percentage of their ad revenue is based on car dealers, particularly domestic car dealers given the number of domestic car dealers per dollar of sales as well as the foreign car dealers and people like department stores and you can go through the list, financials, etc., though they're more national as well. So that's been the most suffering. Then you look at, say, subscription businesses have had a relative strength compared to them. And then within that someone like DIRECTV, who's carved out a niche among the most attractive of those potential subscribers, sort of the iron triangle that they were able to execute on with HD, sports content, other kinds of unique content, large screen TVs, that's all worked very well. DVRs, that has worked very well for them. Will that continue through 2009? They certainly look to have a good tailwind and it does not appear to be abating. We'll see. It's been less true for others, who've seen some substitution both on video subscribers and now slowdowns in data services as that's gotten more competitive and competition with wireless potentially slowing VoIP, the VoIP transition. So for the moment we've been lucky. When you go to content in terms of what does that look like, it seems to me that the rich will get richer and the poor will be hurt, meaning if your content is very valuable and your content is very strong and you're able to in effect have A level, A plus content, which has the leverage against the distributor, your hand will strengthen because you now have only further means of distributing that content, which over time will give you more strength. If you have weaker content and maybe there's demand for it online, maybe not, you may be more reliant upon the packager, and the packager may decide that they - or the distributor may decide that they need to hold their margins flat. For what they have to give the A level content, they need to take it out of the D and C level content. And I think that trend only gets exacerbated in an environment where dollars are tight.

Thomas Eagan - Collins Stewart LLC

Analyst

Do you think it means anything in terms of the affiliation fees that the cable and satellite companies, again, maybe more specifically on DIRECTV, do you think it will help them to not incur the same kind of increases that we'll see elsewhere?

Greg Maffei

Management

I think DIRECTV's relative growth and strength will help them in all of their negotiations, that they are able to talk about increases is subscribers is more positive for their ability to negotiate with content providers than people who do not have increases in subscribers. That having been said, they will be doing what I suspect all our distributors are doing trying to get the best deal possible, but frankly they will take more of that best deal out of the hides of Tier 2 content than out of Tier 1 content.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from [Matthew Harrigan - Wonderlit Securities].

Matthew Harrigan - Wonderlit Securities

Analyst

I had a couple questions. Firstly, I was curious if Greg would be comfortable commenting more on how they view SIRIUS strategically in light of what's happening with the OEMs right now and maybe even the prospects for bundling with DIRECTV at some point or maybe even using some of the repeaters for some other purposes, which I suspect isn't very likely, but I thought I'd still ask. And then secondly, I guess another really good swap you made was the IDT shares for the entertainment assets. They talked a lot about their animation engines. They had a couple of small theatrical releases that didn't do much. I'm curious if you could talk more about what happens prospectively with animation. Is there some interstitial programming possibilities for Starz? Would you ever do another theatrical release? And then lastly, you've commented on the possibilities for more ecommerce deals. I was curious if you could do some interesting things at QVC as well, either taking more equity interest in products than you've done in the past. I know there's some restrictions with HSN as to what you could do, but I was curious also if you could do anything on the M&A side with somebody like [Carl Shockvella] in Germany or someplace else?

Greg Maffei

Management

Okay, a couple of different topics there. So on SIRIUS, I'm not sure it's strategic. Obviously, a lot of these OEM deals, just like a lot of these content deals, were cut in an environment where two players - SIRIUS and XM - were bidding and there's certainly more than anecdotal evidence that in many cases they overpaid because of the prospects of the two people bidding aggressively. Some have suggested that a bankruptcy would be positive for that company in terms of re-cutting those OEM deals, recutting some of those content deals, and obviously resetting the capital structure. We believe that SIRIUS has a very good chance to grow its way in and renegotiate those contracts, as they are doing in many cases, and, as certain contracts mature, reset those contracts at attractive levels such that it will be able to build equity value for its shareholders. Obviously in the event that it does not happen and some of those things are not successful - and it could be in part related to how the domestic car market grows or does not grow - we took a position in the senior debt which we believe is relatively secure against the downside possibility. We're rooting for the upside; we're hoping Mel is as successful as he can be at doing some of these things, but we are positioned okay, we believe, if that does not come to pass. In terms of the bundling, we certainly see those as opportunities down the road. One can talk about or imagine bundles, particularly probably the $80-plus DIRECTV product offering free trials of the $11 SIRIUS XM product more likely than the other way around, just given the dollar value of the customers and the subscriber value. I certainly think those are things that…

Matthew Harrigan - Wonderlit Securities

Analyst

Great. Thank you so much.

Greg Maffei

Management

Thank you very much, everybody, for being on the call today, and I look forward to talking to you next quarter.

Operator

Operator

This concludes the Liberty Media Corporation's quarterly earnings conference call. Thank you for attending and have a great day.