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Transcript
OP
Operator
Operator
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Grupo Televisa's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Conference Call. Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to the press release, which explains the use of forward-looking statements and applies to everything we discuss in today's call and in the earnings release. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Alfonso de Angoitia, Co-Chief Executive Officer of Grupo Televisa. Please go ahead, sir.
AN
Alfonso de Angoitia Noriega
Management
Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. With me today are Francisco Valim, CEO of Cable and Sky and Carlos Phillips, CFO of Grupo Televisa. Last year was marked by several milestones, both at Grupo Televisa and TelevisaUnivision, which Bernardo and I are confident will allow us to keep creating value for our shareholders. At Grupo Televisa, let me touch on four major achievements. First, our strategy to focus on attracting and retaining value customers in cable allowed us to grow our Internet subscriber base by around 47,000 in 2025. This marks a full year turning point after losing Internet subscribers, both in 2023 and 2024, mainly driven by a strategy decision not to retain low-value subscribers. Second, we keep executing on the implementation of OpEx efficiencies and the integration between Izzi and Sky to extract further synergies. This contributed to expanding our 2025 consolidated operating segment income margin of 39.1%, by 200 basis points, driven by a year-on-year OpEx reduction of 8.3%. Third, we kept a disciplined CapEx deployment approach to focus on free cash flow generation. In 2025, we invested MXN 12.2 billion in CapEx, which is equivalent to 20.7% of sales. This CapEx is intended to deliver higher returns over the investment and has allowed us not only to have close to 1.4 million gross adds during the year, but also to upgrade 4.5 million homes to FTTH technology. This basically means that we ended 2025 with around 9 million homes or approximately 45% of our total footprint passed with FTTH technology. Valim will elaborate on our plan to keep upgrading our network later during the call. And fourth, in 2025, we generated around MXN 5.9 billion in free cash flow, allowing us to prepay bank loan due in 2026, with a…
FF
Francisco Valim Filho
Management
Thank you, Alfonso. Good morning, everyone. In 2025, consolidated revenue reached MXN 58.9 billion, representing a year-on-year decline of 5.5%, mainly driven by lower revenue at Sky. Operating segment income reached MXN 23 billion, equivalent to a slight decrease of only 0.6% year-on-year. Turning to our fourth quarter results. Consolidated revenue reached MXN 14.5 billion, representing a year-on-year decrease of 4.5%, while operating segment income reached MXN 5.9 billion, equivalent to a year-on-year expansion of 6.1%, driven by the efficiency measures that we have been implementing since the integration of Sky. Now let me walk you through the operating financial performance of our cable operations. We ended December with a network of 20 million homes after passing around 59,000 new homes during the quarter or over 118,000 new homes during the year. During the quarter, we continued to execute our strategy to focus on value customers rather than volume, while working on customer retention and satisfaction. This contributed to achieving a monthly churn rate below our historical averages of 2% for the third consecutive quarter. Our broadband gross adds remained solid, allowing us to deliver 25,000 net adds during the fourth quarter compared to net adds of around 22,000 in the third quarter and 6,000 in the second quarter and the disconnection of about 6,000 in the first quarter of 2025. In video, we also experienced stronger gross adds than in the first three quarters of the year and managed to reduce churn. Therefore, we lost about 31,000 video subscribers during the fourth quarter compared to 43,000 disconnections in the third quarter and 53,000 cancellations in the second quarter and a loss of 73,000 video subscribers in the first quarter of 2025. Moreover, we expect these improving trends to continue going forward, influenced by our multiyear partnership with Formula 1…
AN
Alfonso de Angoitia Noriega
Management
Thank you, Valim. You're doing a great job. Now let me walk you through TelevisaUnivision's 2025 results released on Tuesday morning. As expected, the company's full year revenue fell by 5% year-on-year to $4.8 billion, while adjusted EBITDA of $1.6 billion, increased by 2%. Excluding political advertising and FX volatility, adjusted EBITDA increased by a healthy 7% year-on-year, underscoring the scalability of a profitable DTC business and the sustained impact of the cost reduction initiatives launched at the end of 2024. Turning to the fourth quarter. Revenues of $1.3 billion declined by 2% year-on-year, while adjusted EBITDA of $396 million fell by 12%. Excluding political advertising, total revenue grew by 1% year-on-year, while adjusted EBITDA decreased by 5%, despite continued DTC profitability and continued cost management. Moving on to the details of our revenue performance. During the quarter, consolidated advertising revenue was flat year-on-year. In the U.S., advertising revenue was 11% lower as continued growth in ViX and higher pricing were more than offset by declines in linear advertising due to secular softness and political spending relative to the prior year due to the absence of U.S. presidential election cycle. Excluding political advertising, advertising revenue in the U.S. fell by 3%. In Mexico, advertising revenue increased by 15% year-on-year, driven by the strong ViX growth and a resilient linear business, including private sector advertising. In local currency, advertising revenue in Mexico grew by 6%. During the quarter, consolidated subscription and licensing revenue decreased by 4% year-on-year. Continued growth in ViX across both the United States and Mexico along with higher U.S. linear subscription and licensing revenue, including benefits from our new Hulu agreement and higher content licensing, more than offset the loss of Fubo, the temporary YouTube TV carriage dispute and ongoing net subscriber declines. However, these increases were more…
OP
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions] The first question today comes from Marcelo Santos with JPMorgan.
MS
Marcelo Santos
Analyst
I have two. The first is for Valim. Could you please walk us through the fiber plan, how many homes with fiber-to-the-home do you have today? I mean, is this goal -- what is the goal exactly, if you could repeat? And is it for the end of 2026? So just wanted to get a bit more color on this plan. And the second question is about the competitive environment. How has been like the room to increase prices? Could you make some comments on how the market is going?
AN
Alfonso de Angoitia Noriega
Management
Thank you, Marcelo. Valim, please.
FF
Francisco Valim Filho
Management
Thank you, Marcelo. So I think that the fiber deployment is we're already at 9 million homes with fiber today, and planning to get to 15 million, 16 million by the end of 2026. So that would mean 75% of our existing network would be fiber-based. So that is on plan and on target. Regarding the competitive environment in Mexico, I think it's important to emphasize that we have been increasing ARPU consistently over the last several quarters. So it's due to price increases, mostly is due to more products to more -- to our existing customers and better and better services. So that's what we decide. We see that our alternative players, their flat or declining ARPU as opposed to ours, which is increasing constantly. And that's the route we are taking, not so much on price increases, but enable to sell more to the existing clients. And so the competitive environment in Mexico has been very stable over the last 2, 3 years, basically. And what we have been doing also consistently is focusing on high-value clients that will churn less and value our services and be able to acquire more services from us. That's the strategy moving forward.
AN
Alfonso de Angoitia Noriega
Management
Pretty much a rational competitive environment.
MS
Marcelo Santos
Analyst
Great. Just a follow-up on the first answer. When you mentioned the 9 million today and to 15 million to 16 million, this is really like fiber-to-the-home where there's no cable involved anymore, like it's fiber box in the home? Or is it like more fiber to the curb, but there is still a cable.
AN
Alfonso de Angoitia Noriega
Management
No. Marcelo, fiber is still a cable. It's just a different cable.
MS
Marcelo Santos
Analyst
HFC, sorry.
AN
Alfonso de Angoitia Noriega
Management
Yes, I understand what you're saying. And just couldn't a point the joke. So it's just, yes, we will have fiber to the home on 15 million, 16 million homes by the end of the year. So if acquired, actually, nowadays, when the network is deployed, there are no deployments in HRC. So we still have a percentage of our deployments are in HRC because we are not with the full coverage. But as we grow our subscriber -- our fiber network, every new subscriber goes into fiber, and we migrate them as conditions are needed into fiber. So in a few years, all of our clients will not only be under a fiber network infrastructure, but also be connected to our fiber network.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from Matthew Harrigan with Benchmark.
MH
Matthew Harrigan
Analyst · Benchmark.
You're kind of almost uniquely exposed to AI positively on the telecom side, given all the repetitive processes and consumer-facing kind of customer journey experiences. And then on the media side with your JV, I think you're -- I know you're obviously the largest volume producer of Spanish programming in the world, and you may even be #1 overall. You had a lot of dislocation in the U.S. media names a few weeks ago on account of 20. And I was just curious, what's your broad perspective on how AI affects you both on the blocking and tackling side on telecom and then on the creative side on TelevisaUnivision, both with respect to your in-house content creation being even faster and more short form and then more competition you might face on people and companies aren't nearly as well funded as you.
AN
Alfonso de Angoitia Noriega
Management
Thank you, Matthew. A very interesting question. I'll answer the media side and then Valim can take the telecom side. On the media side, we're experimenting with AI and production through AI. It's a very important tool. So in terms of script driving in terms of production itself, it is very useful. So we're experimenting especially. We launched last year our micronovelas on the short form. We produced -- we started producing last year this type of content. This year, we will produce more than 300 micronovela. And some of them are produced 100% with AI. So we're moving in that direction, moving I mean, using AI more and more, which will become a very efficient way of producing content.
FF
Francisco Valim Filho
Management
In telecom, AI is mostly useful in how we handle our customer and how we operate our network. And as we speak, we are in very challenging and deep changes into the organization, making sure we have AI all over, meaning from the network usage to the client interface. So in the next few months, we're seeing significant impacts on how we interact with customers focusing on basically 100% AI. So 2026 will be the year we'll flip from a typical call center kind of a thing to full AI, everything AI in terms of customer relationship. So this is the year that will go from a typical telephone to an AI-based telecom operator.
MH
Matthew Harrigan
Analyst · Benchmark.
Great. It feels like even with some pretty straightforward kind of enterprise AI applications, you're in a great place without being too fans on the value LM models.
FF
Francisco Valim Filho
Management
And sorry, just to complement on that, we are operating with the large guys, which is the typical Oracle, Salesforce, AWS kind of guys. So we have a clear path and we're working with the right guys to be able to achieve it.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from Ernesto Gonzalez with Morgan Stanley.
EG
Ernesto Gonzalez
Analyst · Morgan Stanley.
It's on the opportunities you're exploring in Mexico Telecom. Just wanted to see if you can comment a little bit on whether these opportunities are in the fixed market or on the mobile market or any additional color you can give? And on the residential or your operations in Mexico, operating segment income was really strong in the fourth quarter. How sustainable is this margin level?
AN
Alfonso de Angoitia Noriega
Management
Well, yes, we are actively exploring opportunities in the telecommunications sector. But unfortunately, we cannot comment on specifics or at this point, share more information. Hopefully, we can get those to materialize. There's no guarantee, of course, that they will we'll be in touch as those -- as we make progress as to those. And as to your second question, Valim?
FF
Francisco Valim Filho
Management
We keep on optimizing our operations like we were just discussing a few moments ago, try to make sure our systems are more AI-oriented in order to make our processes more efficient, not only from a customer facing perspective, in other words, the clients see and understand that we are closer to them and providing better service, but also the flip side to that discussion is that it would allow us to have a lower cost base. All in all in the service of our clients. So yes, we keep on pursuing increasing operating cash flow.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question comes from Alejandro Azar with GBM.
AW
Alejandro Azar Wabi
Analyst · GBM.
Third one is on your comment, Valim, of the 25% CapEx to sales for 2026. Is that on the telecom service or it's telecom enterprise or it's the full telecom enterprise satellite? Should we think 25% of consolidated Televisa? And my second question is also on -- relative to Sky. With the rate of the connections that we have had in the last couple of years. And if this continue, it becomes really tough for Televisa at the consolidated level, at least on the EBITDA side to show growth. I'm just wondering if you guys can give us more color of how you see Sky going forward, if there is a level where you see these connections or your total clients might normalize?
FF
Francisco Valim Filho
Management
Okay. That's a great question. I think that the CapEx discussion is up to 25%. It comprises everything. Izzi Sky and Bestel, our B2B, our DTH and our cable fiber business. So that comprises it all. With regards to Sky, I think there is just misperception of what Sky really is. used to be a great business, all over the world, DTH represented a great business. But in all markets, what has happened is with the advancement of the networks, the FIC networks, Obviously, the connections are better and a lot of the streaming are also competing with that. So you see Internet plus the first streaming that doesn't allow much room for a DTH platform to keep on growing. So our plan is basically to make sure that we have the lowest possible cost at the Sky, meaning it's revenues minus variable cost, programming costs, minus the satellite and conditional access. Other than that, it's a cash flow generating business. So we don't expect it to stop or to normalize or level at any point. And I don't think that's something that people have seen anywhere else given the conditions that I have just described. So as you segregate that segment, Sky and its direct costs, which is -- which are the only costs that they basically have. And so everything else is our B2B and our B2C business. So I think that's the way you should approach this market as opposed to this is an overall thing and our revenue was declining. Yes, our DTH revenue is declining as expected. And what we did is streamline the DTH business. So keeps on generating cash and will be generating cash for the foreseeable future. And we have a business that is long lasting, which is our direct-to-consumer and B2B businesses.
AW
Alejandro Azar Wabi
Analyst · GBM.
One more, if I may, and this is just to remind us all, when do you have to pay the transaction of Sky?
AN
Alfonso de Angoitia Noriega
Management
It's 2027 or 2028.
OP
Operator
Operator
This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Angoitia for any closing remarks.
AN
Alfonso de Angoitia Noriega
Management
Well, thank you very much for participating. Give us a call if you have any additional questions. Have a great weekend.
OP
Operator
Operator
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.