Earnings Labs

Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (WBD)

Q3 2022 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 3, 2022

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thanks for standing by, and welcome to the Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Additionally, please be advised that today's conference call is being recorded. I would like to hand the conference over to Mr. Andrew Slabin, Executive Vice President, Global Investor Strategy. Sir, you may now begin.

Andrew Slabin

Analyst

Good afternoon, and welcome to Warner Bros. Discovery's Q3 earnings call. With me today is David Zaslav, President and CEO; Gunnar Wiedenfels, our CFO; and JB Perrette, CEO and President, Global Streaming and Games. Before we start, I'd like to remind you that today's conference call will include forward-looking statements that we make pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The forward-looking statements include comments regarding the company's future business plans, prospects and financial performance. These statements are made based on management's current knowledge and assumptions about future events and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from our expectations. In providing projections and other forward-looking statements, the company disclaims any intent or obligation to update them. For additional information on important factors that could affect these expectations, please see our Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021, and our quarterly Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2022, that we expect to file with the SEC today as well as our subsequent filings made with the SEC. A copy of our Q3 earnings release, trending schedule and accompanying slide deck is available on our website at ir.wbd.com. And with that, I'm pleased to turn the call over to David.

David Zaslav

Analyst

Hello, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Let me start by saying I am pleased with all that we have accomplished in just our first 6 months as a combined company. We have had to work through a number of really tough issues, some anticipated, some unexpected. And we continue to make the difficult decisions that we know are necessary to position our company for long-term growth and success. As you would expect with a deal of this magnitude, in a dynamic and changing industry and amidst a more challenging economic environment, a significant amount of change is required. In fact, we see this as presenting a meaningful opportunity, one that we have seized wholeheartedly. This is an opportunity to look inside each one of our businesses and really determine what's working, what's not working. Is it structured properly? Does it have the right assets, people and resources to be effective and the best of class in the environment we face today? None of this is easy, and nothing happens overnight. That said, we are fully committed and laser-focused. I believe we have the strongest hand in the industry in terms of the completeness and quality of our portfolio of assets and IP across sports, news, nonfiction and entertainment in virtually every region of the globe and in every language. 6 months in, we now have a full, strong and energized leadership team in place. And we are confident we have the right strategy and are making the structural and strategic changes to successfully achieve our goal of becoming the greatest media and entertainment company in the world, capable of generating significantly higher earnings and free cash flow than we are today and creating real long-term sustainable shareholder value. Last quarter, we laid out 3 strategic priorities that serve…

Gunnar Wiedenfels

Analyst

Thank you, David, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. I'd like to start out by building upon what David said earlier. We are very pleased with our overall synergy program and the broad canvas on which we are transforming this company. To that extent, I'm now confident to commit to a $3.5 billion synergy number as we have had an opportunity to further assess our operations in more detail and refine our work stream plans. That means we are now adding $500 million of incremental potential beyond the target of $3 billion, and we are still working on detailing out the financial impact of the list of further initiatives beyond what has already been quantified. As always, I will keep you updated as these plans reach the level of detail and certainty we require for them to be included in our total synergy estimate. Regarding the actual execution of our transformation program, we expect to have realized approximately $750 million in synergies by the end of this year and an incremental year-over-year $2 billion in 2023. From a high level, and as David said, the opportunity at hand goes well beyond just the synergy capture dollar value. This is a fundamental transformation across and throughout the organization, a refocusing on how WBD is organized, how it's managed, how the teams are incentivized and evaluated, all of which results in an ability to pivot and evolve in this dynamic media ecosystem. And we are starting to see the financial impact materialize. The 11% SG&A reduction ex FX in Q3 is an important early proof point, and we are on track for around 20% SG&A reduction in Q4. We've seen great traction on a number of fronts early on. First, in global marketing efforts such as with television and…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our first session comes from Kannan Venkateshwar with Barclays.

Kannan Venkateshwar

Analyst

Maybe, Gunnar, to start off with the synergy guidance for next year. When we look at the $12 billion EBITDA number and the free cash flow number, obviously, as you mentioned, it's subject to a lot of macro variables as well as things like cord-cutting. So I know these are low visibility items. But could you help us with some kind of sensitivity in terms of how your EBITDA or free cash flow could get impacted if the macro environment was to get worse or better one way or the other? And then, David, from your perspective, when you think about the organization right now, it looks like structurally, it's mostly in place in terms of org structure as well as the people and different seats. And so as you go into next year and beyond strategically, as you roll out HBO in a bigger way in the new form in the U.S. as well as around the world, how big of a focus is pricing compared to where we are from an ARPU level right now? And how do you expect that to evolve going forward?

Gunnar Wiedenfels

Analyst

Kannan, let me start with your first question, and I'll take a bit of a broader perspective here. Let's start by the environment that we're seeing today because I think that's an important baseline. And as you know, we have been pointing to risks from the macro environment -- macroeconomic environment around us for quite some time. So we're not surprised. But the reality is, as you can see in our numbers, we came in at minus 11% for ad sales, which is the lower end of our guidance, and we see those trends continue into the fourth quarter. Now keep in mind, for us, specifically, as we had pointed out last quarter, there were some prior year comp impacts, most importantly from the Olympics. And also, obviously, we're talking about the networks segment separately now. And so there were some positive growth drivers in the DTC segment. If you take that all together, our number would have looked more like mid- to high single digits down. But the reality is, as I said, those trends continue into the fourth quarter. And I don't want to give any more specific guidance for next year. That's why I laid out what we have control over, and I'll go through that again. We're -- let's assume at the midpoint of our guidance range for 2022, call it, $9.2 billion, there will be a couple of hundred million of impact on the positive side in the first half of next year as the full effect gets realized of the decisions that we have made in the second half of this year. And then we have full visibility and full conviction of $2 billion of incremental synergy impact, right? So that takes you to the, call it, $11.5 billion range for next year. And…

David Zaslav

Analyst

On the pricing, JB, we've been doing a lot of work, our peers around the world. We've been experimenting outside the U.S. Maybe -- we're not going to talk specifically about our pricing, but you could talk specifically about how we're approaching it.

Jean-Briac Perrette

Analyst

Yes. Kannan, I'd say pricing is one of 4 things that makes us particularly optimistic about the products coming together. Obviously, the content aggregation and pooling all the content pieces together, the second being the broader positioning that allows us to -- moving from a product that may have been a slightly more tailored approach to a fewer number of people in a household to a product that actually appeals to everybody in the household, the product improvements, David mentioned one in his remarks earlier. But there's a whole myriad of other product improvements that we need to execute on the platform that will greatly enhance engagement and retention. And then pricing, we think, is one of the meaningful ones. Two data points on that, that I think are important. Number one is by 2023, HBO Max will not have raised price since its launch. So it'll have been 3 years since pricing has moved, which we think is an opportunity, particularly in this environment. And number two, when we look internationally, our wholesale and retail ARPUs are meaningfully lower than the market leaders. And for us, that spells opportunity and an ability as we think about the new product coming to market and even some initiatives before the new product comes to market for growth on ARPU internationally.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Doug Mitchelson with Credit Suisse.

Douglas Mitchelson

Analyst · Credit Suisse.

I guess a clarification on the advertising. How much of this is market? And is any of this ratings trends at the linear network? And anything specific about market color that, either Dave or Gunnar, you would give us in terms of what's driving the softness and as we try to all figure out whether it's going to sustain or get worse or get better? And David, you talk about the content that you're manufacturing. It's interesting reading articles every now and then about the concern that you're going to pull back from investing in big content, and you gave a pretty long list. Is there a better idea at this point how content spending will evolve in the next few years at this company? I mean, you've got probably more detailed plans around the relaunch of streaming, probably a better idea on linear. And the film slate is already cooking next year. So any help with understanding just how much content spend might grow in the next few years would be helpful.

David Zaslav

Analyst · Credit Suisse.

Thanks, Doug. Look, we're a content company. That's the business we're in. It's our advantage. The fact that we have these tentpoles, the strength of HBO right now by people domestically and around the world where we do have HBO in a few markets as being the highest quality, best curated service as well as the production of content coming out of Warner Bros., that's really our strength. We intentionally referenced the content coming up because we're leaning in. We're spending more money this year than we've ever spent historically. And when -- there's been a lot of view of what's going on and the remix of this company coming back -- coming together, and it is messy. It's challenging, but it's taken real courage to restructure this company. It hasn't been restructured and reimagined for the future in a decade and a half. And so putting -- having this company work as one company and putting it all together and having -- looking at content across the platform, promoting it across the platform. But as part of that, we had the luxury, because of the spend across each platform, to take a look at how it's working. And so Casey Bloys was able to look at all the content on HBO. And when 37 series went away, he was able to look over the last 1.5 years what are people watching and what are they not watching. Where are people spending time? Where are they being nourished? We had the ability to look at -- across our cable channels. What are we spending on shows? And where are they working? And where are we getting a good return? And all those write-offs that we took shows off these platforms, we didn't take one show off a platform that was going to help us in any way. It's going to help us to get it off the platform so that we could now invest in with the knowledge of what is working and replace those shows with content that has a chance to be more successful, have larger audience, and we're reallocating the capital. How much should we be spending on HBO? How much more investment should we be making at Warner Bros. Television? And in the end, we're fully committed to content. You'll see that. We're committed to sport. We're committed to news, and we're focused now on how do we deploy that capital in a way to generate real value and get the content that's not working off.

Gunnar Wiedenfels

Analyst · Credit Suisse.

And we're in the process of developing one lens through which we look at it. It's one company, one view on returns. And I see a lot of opportunity there from the perspective of reallocating the capital. Doug, on the advertising market, look, the truth is delivery, obviously, across the ecosystem is down. But that said, we have been able to grow advertising in a meaningful way with exactly that level of delivery. So my view is this is, first and foremost, a market issue. Now as I said, the sports schedule did have an impact and put us at a little bit of a disadvantage in the quarter. For the fourth quarter as well, there is some additional tailwind in local, which, obviously, as you know, we're less well positioned to participate in. But the reality is that the scatter market has been pretty dry right now. So it is what it is as we know from experience these periods past, but it's not a very constructive environment right now as you have heard from a number of other players, peers and across the broader advertising market over the past 3, 4 weeks.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Jessica Reif with Bank of America Securities.

Jessica Reif Cohen

Analyst · Bank of America Securities.

I guess just to start, you have these cyclical and secular challenges, as we all know, but you also have more tools and assets than most companies to combat or to meet this challenge. I was just wondering how you can -- if you could talk a little bit about how you'll use your scale, what are the levers you have. You mentioned FAST coming next year, which is -- should be upside. Like how should we think about that? How are you thinking about potentially asset sales? And then a second question, I guess, more for JB. Can you just address some of the challenges and opportunities in launching the combined service? Like how are you thinking about TAM? What are you thinking of the mix of AVOD versus SVOD? I mean, with discovery+, we saw that the ARPU was higher on the ad-light product. So any color you can give us on how you're thinking about that.

David Zaslav

Analyst · Bank of America Securities.

Thanks, Jessica. Just quickly on FAST, we have HBO Max as -- and we'll relaunch that product in the spring as a premium product and as an ad-light product. And we'll begin to roll that out globally. As JB said, we've begun to experiment with moving some of the discovery+ content in there. We also have a platform that is really deficient right now. And so we're holding on and we're growing. The fact that we were able to grow almost 3 million subs outside the U.S. without a lot of promotion and with a platform that's not that great, we really think, is encouraging as we begin to look at rolling out more broadly. But we also see FAST is a real opportunity for us. And I think it's unique for us. We have the largest TV and motion picture library. And so this content that belongs on HBO Max when that product launches, whatever it's called, as well as the AVOD service, but we could see now what are people consuming on those platforms. There's also a huge amount of content that's not even on that platform that's sitting with us that hasn't been put to monetize in the marketplace. Some of that we will sell, which we've talked about, and we've started to sell. Some of it we'll sell nonexclusively, some of it. But we have the ability on the FAST side to build a service without buying content. Most of the players in that space are out buying content and then looking to sell that content and create a vig effectively where they get a return on that content based on what they spent on it. We can take content we already own, a lot of it where we have no participants, some of it where we have participants but it's at a fraction, and get ourselves into an AVOD service, which I think makes us full service. And most of that has been fully amortized or almost all of those have been fully amortized. And it gives us effectively a full service, which you'll see as we come into the end of '23, which is a premium service that we're driving globally with no ads, an ad-light service, which will have a robust and attractive advertising opportunity where, even in a difficult market, we're getting very good pricing. And then finally, there's always a huge number of people that do not want to pay, and we'll be able to have them spending time with us, we think, with an economic model that's much advantaged versus our peers. And then as we learn more, we can move the content through that ecosystem.

Gunnar Wiedenfels

Analyst · Bank of America Securities.

Yes. That's actually -- I think that's -- in terms of scale, Jessica, that's one of the most exciting points, the way we're now able to look at content decision-making with people providing a perspective from the various business units, providing data and the ability to make these decisions on a group level in the best interest of the Warner Bros. Discovery as opposed to optimizing individual business units. The other more recent point I would like to highlight where we're really in the first inning is just the marketing power of this company. If you look at the Black Adam campaign that David mentioned in his opening remarks, this is as broad, as comprehensive as we've ever seen it, and we're just getting started. Now we're going to be able to gather all the data and drive all the insights from executing a campaign like that. We can already see what the impact on ticket sales has been, what's worked, what hasn't worked. As I said, we are able to tackle this in a way that I don't think anyone has done. And again, we're just getting started. And on the ad sales side, again, it's early days. But if you look at what Kathleen has been able to do after Scripps and what JB back in the day did at Discovery on the international side, I have no doubt that Kathleen and Luis and Chris and Gerhard are going to drive this network portfolio hard. And it just makes so much sense that optimizing this combined comprehensive portfolio with one centralized approach is going to drive enormous delivery and...

David Zaslav

Analyst · Bank of America Securities.

And remember, there are -- on average, we might be 25% of viewership on any given night. But when -- during the NBA, we could be up to 40% of viewership, live sports, live news, entertainment, nonfiction. During March Madness, our numbers will be even higher. And so the ability to use live news, use -- particularly live sports, which others did with the NFL and college football in -- during a difficult market, but the fact that we're such a big part, an effective part of the overall viewership in America gives us a chance to go to advertisers on digital news, sports, entertainment. And so that opportunity, I think, should give us a huge advantage if and when the market comes back, and we expect it will. We just can't predict when. Finally, on the distribution side, we did very well at Discovery with our traditional nonfiction package. Turner did very well with their new sports and entertainment. Together, we make up most of the high quality and valuable piece of the basic cable bundle. And so together, we're really aligned with the distributors. They want the bundle to remain robust. We want it to remain robust. And with all the discussion of the decline of the traditional bundle, and we could see that it is in secular decline, but the real optimistic point here is that almost all of the sports, all of the sports are on free-to-air and cable. And the numbers for sports have gone up dramatically. March Madness was up 40%. The NBA is up 25%, 30%. And so it is the platform where people are watching sports, and that sports is going to be on cable for the next 10 years. And so there are certain trends you see. On the other hand, you see a very big uptick on sport and long-term commitment to sport on the platform, which I think will provide a steadying force. And it'll likely -- when there was some discussion by Rutledge this morning, a great operator, of some challenges ahead, I think one of the things that the operators are concerned about is when it comes to the big 12 and the increase in sports rights that they're going to have to pay the lion's share of that. It increases.

Gunnar Wiedenfels

Analyst · Bank of America Securities.

And then Jessica, maybe just to close on your ad-light and TAM question, we see -- if you exclude the nonaccessible markets of China and Russia and India for a second, just given the scale and different ARPU dynamics of that market, we think there's about around 2 billion people around the world that are consumers of free ad-supported entertainment. And we look at about 20% to 30% of that group being addressable on the subscription side. And in the subscription side, we ultimately do see the ad-light offering that now, obviously, everyone is leaning towards as an incredibly important growth initiative for us. We're frankly a little surprised in the HBO Max ad-light offering that more people have not moved to that offering, and I think it says 2 things which are both positive for us. Number one is we believe there's actually some pricing advantage for us on the ad-free service that we can probably move north of where the prices are today. And secondarily, that we can drive, particularly as we bring the products together, a lot more adoption of that ad-light tier as we saw with the legacy discovery+ product. And lastly, on monetization of that tier, today, we have about 2 to 3 minutes of ads in HBO Max ad-light. That's about half of what we have on discovery+. So we think we have, as we roll the 2 combined products, almost 100% growth in the inventory available to us as we look to combine the ad loads of those 2 products.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Philip Cusick with JPMorgan.

Philip Cusick

Analyst · JPMorgan.

One clarification, and this sounds silly. But there's been some debate about the definition of notwithstanding. I think it's pretty clear. But just to be so, you're guiding toward a headline number of about $9.2 billion in EBITDA this year? Is that fair? And then what's the impact from the accelerated HBO amortization in that? And then if I can ask a real question, maybe help us with -- outline the changes in what market should be sort of DTC versus wholesale or partner markets as you look at going internationally, both with new markets and then potentially with some of the ones that are already out there.

Gunnar Wiedenfels

Analyst · JPMorgan.

So let me quickly knock out that clarification question, and then I'll pass it to JB. So what we're saying is $9.2 billion is the best estimate pretty much in the middle of that guidance range that we've given. So essentially, on a year-over-year basis, sequentially, another improvement after Q3, now Q4 better. And then as I've said, I expect much more improvement as we go into next year. And this is net of the headwinds that we have digested to get to that number. Most importantly, FX has been a pretty significant headwind this year, as you know. We're expecting that to be roughly $160 million for the full year. The amortization policy change for HBO content is in a similar ballpark, a little more for the full year, but was roughly $150 million in the third quarter as we had some catch-up effects. So that's all baked into the $9.2 billion number.

Jean-Briac Perrette

Analyst · JPMorgan.

And on the international wholesale and partnerships angle, obviously, the rollout we laid out in the -- in August assumed essentially a rollout of the new product over the next 2 years in the existing HBO Max markets other than a handful of additional ones that we talked about launching in Europe in 2024. Next year, it's really focused on U.S., Lat Am, which are all existing HBO Max markets. And so there is no incremental launches in that number. As David mentioned earlier, we really were focusing on getting the product to market, getting launched and then reassessing as we get the product launched whether there's any opportunities to do more and more markets in the years to come. But that's not something obviously we have any visibility at this moment. Lastly, on the partnership side, we do view, as we have in the legacy Discovery side, that there are a number of different partnership opportunities. And in fact, in the last few months, as we've been out in the market talking to partners, a long list of partners eager to engage on conversations about how they can help us accelerate the rollout of the future product as we come to market across all the markets we're coming into. So we're excited to work with the existing partners and some new partners to figure out there's ways to accelerate the rollout and potentially lessen our marketing costs and SAC through those kind of partnerships that we've done historically.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Steven Cahall with Wells Fargo.

Steven Cahall

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Maybe first to kind of pick up on Doug's question on content and ask it a slightly different way. David, between the content write-down and a lot of the changes to personnel you've made, I'm just wondering how you could characterize the content strategy now. It seems like it was a little bit broken under WarnerMedia before. And when you think about what content is going to look like in the future, I was just wondering if you could kind of say how it's going to be different under Warner Bros. Discovery than what it is under WarnerMedia. And then, Gunnar, maybe just a follow-up on the free cash flow impact from the synergy. When we talk about the incremental synergy guidance, I know that next year, there's probably a cash headwind from a cost to achieve. So in 2023, specifically, is the increased synergy guidance going to be helpful to free cash flow? Is it going to be neutral to free cash flow? Could it be a drag on free cash flow? Would just love to understand how we think about the free cash flow dynamic for 2023.

David Zaslav

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

A couple of things. One, we're going to have a real focus on franchises. We haven't had a Superman movie in 13 years. We haven't done a Harry Potter movie in 15 years. One of -- the DC movies and the Harry Potter movies provided a lot of the profits of Warner Bros. Motion Pictures over the last 25 years. So focused on the -- one of the big advantages that we have, House of the Dragon is an example of that, Game of Thrones, taking advantage of Sex and the City. Lord of the Rings, we still have the right to do Lord of the Rings movies. What are the movies that have brands that are understood and loved everywhere in the world? In the -- outside the U.S., most -- in the aggregate, Europe, Latin America, Asia, it's about 40% of the theaters that we have here in the U.S. And there's local content. And so when you have a franchise movie, you can often make 2 to 3x the amount of money you make in the U.S. because you get a slot. And a focus on the big movies that are loved, that are tentpole, that people are going to leave home, leave early from dinner to go to see, and we have a lot of them, Batman, Superman, Aquaman, if we can do something with J.K. on Harry Potter going forward, Lord of the Rings. What are we doing with Game of Thrones? What are we doing with a lot of the big franchises that we have? We're focused on franchises. Two, we've learned what doesn't work. And this is what doesn't work for us based on everything that we've seen and we've looked at it hard. One is direct-to-streaming movies, so spending $1 billion or…

Gunnar Wiedenfels

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

And Steve, the -- obviously, one of the big drivers for free cash flow as well is the relationship between content cash investments and amortization. But just to go through a couple of puts and takes, as you read in our release, $650 million year-to-date charges related to the merger, some of that cost to achieve. There's going to be a little more in the fourth quarter. And so against that baseline, next year is going to be a little higher, but it's not very significantly higher. We are going to see a little bit of a closing of the gap between content amort and content cash as amortization steps up. I do believe there is significant flow-through from the synergies, again, $2 billion year-over-year, assuming a tax rate against that and flow the rest through. And then 2 more points to point out. One is, if you think about sort of WarnerMedia as a very siloed, business unit-driven setup pre combination with Discovery, I believe there is enormous potential on the CapEx, working capital side. Those are all things we can manage much differently. That's going to take a little longer, but we're going to start chipping away at it. And then the last point I want to just be transparent about, on a year-over-year basis, one of the drags on free cash flow in the third quarter was the fact that we paid about $700 million of interest for merger-related debt or bonds that's on a semiannual cycle. So you will get another half a year impact of that for 2023 as well. So those are the things I think we can call out right now, and that's why I reiterated that 1/3 to 50% of EBITDA flow-through guidance for free cash flow.

David Zaslav

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

One last point on content. The audience will tell you what they love. They'll spend time with it. They'll watch it and rewatch it, and you could see it. You could see it on cable and free-to-air in terms of the ratings. And you -- we could see it on Max and seeing exactly what people spend time with. And we look at it. And we look at it hard if we have a scripted show that $7.5 million, and it's getting 0.03, then that tells us that we -- somehow it's been written that we're not committed to scripted on TNT. We're very committed to scripted, but we want to measure what people are watching and what they're not. If a repeat of Two and a Half Men or Big Bang does 3x the rating of a brand-new show that was spending another season that we greenlit of a show that's costing us $7.5 million, we're going to cancel that show. And we're going to try and get another scripted series that has a chance to really deliver and delight and engage an audience. But we are being deliberate about measuring how are the shows doing. As I said, let me be very clear, we did not get rid of any show that is helping us. And we got rid of those shows that we could focus on producing new content that will and using everything we learned on each platform to make new choices. It's a business of failure, but we'd rather take that money and spend it again and have a chance of having to show that will engage and delight on either our traditional platforms or our subscription platforms.

Gunnar Wiedenfels

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Actually, Steve, before we move on, I did want to mention one thing because you were quoted a lot and got a lot of mileage out of your statement earlier this week, I think, or end of last week that Warner Bros. Discovery has the greatest assets with the highest leverage in the industry or something like that.

Steven Cahall

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

And that balance sheet.

Gunnar Wiedenfels

Analyst · Wells Fargo.

Yes. So I just want to comment on that while we're on the topic of free cash flow. I really view our capital structure as a huge asset. We put the structure in place with a purpose. It's cheap, largely fixed and long-dated debt. And so from that perspective, I feel very, very good about it. Very limited maturity coming up over the next couple of years. We run scenarios, obviously. And there is -- even in the most dire scenarios, no requirement for us to come back to the debt markets to refinance anything. So it really is a bit of an asset. It's not lost on us where the debt is trading. And as we're rolling in that free cash flow that I described over the next 2, 3, 4 years, I think there is enormous opportunity for us, which is going to be in the best interest of not only the equity holders, but also the debt holders. So this is a real, real asset. And I just saw -- it made me laugh when your quote was picked up by The Wall Street Journal, I think, this morning.

Operator

Operator

Our final question comes from Rich Greenfield with LightShed Partners.

Richard Greenfield

Analyst

David, you've been pretty clear about how many mistakes the AT&T management team made and sort of put you in sort of the situation that you're now in. I guess is abandoning Amazon's channels one of those mistakes that you see? And is revisiting that decision and the subs and cash flow tied to it, is it tied to the relaunch of HBO Max sometime next year? And then second, I was just sort of thinking about your comments at the very beginning about sort of the difficult decisions you have to make ahead. And I'm curious, is NBA rights one of those just given sort of the challenges? Like do you need NBA rights given the -- kind of where the TV world is headed right now? Just how -- I'm sort of just interested in like what you meant by difficult decisions or what you're thinking about in those difficult decisions would be great.

David Zaslav

Analyst

Thanks, Rich. Look, we got the -- in some ways, as hard as this has been, to restructure this company and make a lot of changes in terms of people and how we approach the business, we've really seized the moment. And I think it's -- I'm very proud of the leadership team. It's taken real courage to sit down and say, we have a chance to start over here. What is the business -- how do we want to structure this business? What content should we have? With the ability to look at what's working and what's not working, what do we need to be a successful business for the future, as if it was a family business? We took our wallet out, put it on the table and said, what do we want to spend our money on in order to have a best chance of succeeding? Casey did. Channing did it. Mike and Pam did it. Chris has done it. And now we have a vision for what we believe is going to make this company strong and the most effective media company to take advantage of our diverse assets. We're not going to be right about everything. But when -- in 4 or 5 months, as we make the turn into next year and we're about in the seventh or eighth inning here of getting this through, that we'll find over the next year that a lot of what we thought maybe was a little bit wrong, but we have conviction. We have a clear vision for the future and where we're going and what we want to do. And we have the courage. Over the last 7 months, and as you see this through of what's going to -- people are looking at it, and…

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the conference call for today. Thank you for participating, and we ask that you disconnect your lines.