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THE SIGNAL FROM EUROPE: Q4 EARNINGS · The Media Odyssey

• Marion Ranchet: [00:00:00] Hey man, how are you? Evan Shapiro: Good, how are you? Good to see you. Marion Ranchet: It's good to see you too, right here. Evan Shapiro: We're live. Yeah. Marion Ranchet: And enough with America we're gonna talk about Europe, right? Evan Shapiro: Now we're gonna start in America and then we're gonna move to Europe. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. But quick stop. There's one American company, three European companies, so I'm happy. But yeah I get happy for little things about Europe. Evan Shapiro: Without further ado, let's welcome to the Media Odyssey Podcast live. That is Marion Ranchet. Marion Ranchet: and that is Evan Shapiro. Evan Shapiro: We are gonna jump into earnings on four different companies, all of whom are going through some sort of change at the current moment through mergers and acquisitions or spinouts or any number of different things. So let's jump right in it. Without further ado I will share my screen to bring on my former alma mater. Versant which used to be part of NBCUniversal slash Comcast slash Cable Town which got spun out on the [00:01:00] first of this year as its own standalone company with the cable holdings and a bunch of other weird little things that they've bought over the years. So this is the first earnings report from Versant as a standalone company, but what's important to understand is that these figures for 2025 are being compared to the full year of this bunch of holdings inside Comcast from the previous year. So this is year on year comparison of the same set of enterprises. What used to be parked inside of Comcast and now are standing out on their own. And what you can see here is the only growth in this entire company came from this weird collection of platforms. So there's some streaming stuff there, but it's mostly stuff like Fandango and Rotten Tomatoes and Golf Now. And some other new streaming stuff associated with CNBC, but where you can see everything else is really just in bad shape here. And this is probably the argument for [00:02:00] Comcast spinning this out is distribution is down, advertising is down, their licensing business is down, total revenue is down 5%, but even worse for them, net income down 32% year on year. This is not a futures based business when you look at it. Marion Ranchet: So a quick one for you. When you say, this is the reason why they're spinning this out. When I see this, I'm like, why take this out and make it so obvious that it's doing bad? Is it a way of protecting the rest of the group? Because clearly this thing, no one will wanna buy it. I don't know if they're planning on doing that in any shape or form, but it, that doesn't look good. I'm not sure about the rationale. Evan Shapiro: It's a great question. The strategy, if you can call it that. 'cause I don't know that Brian Roberts has ever had any strategy other than being born into that family and buying a whole lot of stuff. But the thesis is two things, you [00:03:00] separate this enterprise. So important to note, this enterprise version had $2 billion in free cash flow last year. So while the revenue and the net income are down, it's still a profitable enterprise. And if you separate it out from the debt that Comcast is carrying and allow it to reinvest its free cash flow, not in paying off debt, but into new streaming services around MSNBC or CNBC or something like that, that's the whole argument is you're allowing the free cash flow to go off and reinvest in a new enterprise. The problem with that, go ahead. Marion Ranchet: No, but so it means it's not a, we shouldn't judge this just right out of the gate. We need to give them a bit of time to design a strategy, execute on it, and see what those investments are doing. I'm being the good cop as always. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. As you usually are. 'Cause I'm always the bad cop.[00:04:00] The thing patients, okay, fine. But they've known this is coming for a year, so it's not develop the strategy. The question is where is the strategy? And I think what they're talking about is building out streaming services for these various brands. MSNBC is having a monster first quarter from a viewership standpoint after having some really bad months over the last year. So their viewership is really much higher than it was a year ago, which is interesting for a news network whose median age is. Methuselah. But it, there, there is growth there from a viewership standpoint, and their podcasting business is doing well. So the concept is give Mark Lazarus and team an opportunity to reinvest in the business. The problem with that is you've now saddled Comcast with a shit ton of debt and no free cash or not as much free cashflow. They've lost more than 10% of their entire free cashflow left with this set of holdings. And Peacock is not that great a service. The [00:05:00] broadband business is flat or down, and so the mainstay businesses at Comcast that's left over really aren't as vibrant without the free cash flow. If you look at what Disney's done, they're milking the dying cow for every penny it's worth as far as the cable networks go, and they're reinvesting it back into Hulu and Disney Plus and ESPN Plus and that, that's one way of going about it. And at least when you look at Ellison and company's plan, it seems to be, they plan to do the same thing. They're not gonna spin out the Warner Brothers Discovery, disco brothers cable networks in order to, to separate themselves from the dying businesses. Comcast went this spin out way. I it, you're, yes. I think we have to give them at least this year to see if they can turn this around. But, remember this is a company that, that, the distribution business is shrinking every single month and if your ad business can't go up it's a real problem. Marion Ranchet: So the thing is [00:06:00] that we're looking at revenue growth or decrease, right? But if you look at their total pie, it seems that it's a 80 20 split between what's coming from cable and what, what's coming from what they call digital streaming, et cetera. They have a goal to, they don't share how, but they're aiming to go at a 50 50, right? So clearly this platform portion that has grown by 4%, it's gonna be interesting to see how they can use the tech. I'm hoping from the rest of the group, if that's possible. And then to your point, build assets and get those distributed within the streaming ecosystem. The only thing is, and I don't know those linear assets well enough, is how appealing are those? As a standalone app. I'm, that's a bit of a question mark. Except for the news the news linear channel. That's a strong brand. Evan Shapiro: I honestly think the only thing that's [00:07:00] worth anything is 'cause remember, this is where the lack of strategy really becomes incredibly evident, right? They didn't take Bravo with them. Marion Ranchet: Where did that go? Evan Shapiro: That stays at the mothership with Comcast, NBC, universal Cable Town Peacock. And so the one channel that is a really powerful programming brand out in the marketplace for general consumers, Bravo and Andy Cohen and all the Housewives and all that, that stays with Comcast. If there was a real strategy here, you'd spin Bravo out with this and make it the main hook of their new streaming business. The only brands that are worth anything within this and this is all due respect to the people who work at USA, that's one of the, when was the last time you talked about the USA channel? You have to go back a long time to when Suits was on, frankly. So the only brands that mean anything in the marketplace with any kind of desirability are MSNBC and CNBC. And so [00:08:00] my assessment is, or my sense is that they're gonna build a good deal of the paid services around their news and financial news products. And CNBC actually has a growing subscription business for financial information and things like that. So I think that's what they're gonna build it around, but I can't see, USA has no meaning in the marketplace. None whatsoever. Sci-fi hasn't meant sci-fi in years. Sharknato is like their show. And Oxygen has, I don't even know if it exists anymore to be blunt. It is a good question. I think they're gonna, I think they're gonna really hammer it around news and other lives. They have some wrestling on there as well, but they share that with Netflix, so I think it's gonna really be built around their news products, which is an aging demographic. I don't know that's gonna necessarily work. Marion Ranchet: Okay. Good. Evan Shapiro: We move on. Marion Ranchet: Let's move on. Evan Shapiro: So now we're in Europe. This is your home court. I'm gonna let you take lead. I don't know if you dug into the [00:09:00] earnings how much you've dug into the earnings, but I'm really curious when you look at this one chart, you can see where the future of this business is and where the past of this business is. And then you put on top of this, Comcast is actively pursuing the ITV network as an acquisition. Now, what was your takeaway? Marion Ranchet: One thing I would've liked to see is the ITV ad streaming business. Because here we're seeing that minus five, but I don't think that speaks to to, to the revenue generated by ITVX. And I think right now we should not separate the linear ecosystem from the BVOD within a broadcaster. We've spoken about this at length. At the top of the year, I said that it would be a tough year for commercial broadcasters because the equation is for pretty much everyone that linear advertising revenues are decreasing and they're not yet compensated by digital or streaming advertising revenues. But I [00:10:00] would've liked to see this here because otherwise it feels like they're not putting in the work to push for that transition. Evan Shapiro: Yeah and that's the Marion Ranchet: number one thing. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, there was a really telling stat in the earnings, which is subscriptions are flat year on year, no growth. Marion Ranchet: They're not in the business of subscription, so that's the thing, right? They historically had Brit Box, then they folded it into ITVX. ITVX Premium is the, a free version of ITVX. A lot of the podcasters are doing that because they wanna mitigate their reliance on advertising and they wanna be hybrid as they should, except that, they are, those are, historical companies who have an advertising DNA. It's not easy to move to premium. So here, yeah, I would've said, 'cause it's plus 12 percent year on year, I believe, on on digital. Digital ad revenue. Ad revenue, which makes four minus five. Meaning that it would've been worth [00:11:00] without it. So that shows that, yeah. Evan Shapiro: Imagine what would've happened if they didn't have that digital revenue growth. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Yeah. So that shows that, that transformation was a must have. But again, that compensation is not there yet. And the other thing and I'm keen to hear your thoughts on this, is. ITV Studios, so they're gonna spin out ITV the network from ITB studios. And I'm like, why are you letting this green thing go is the first thing that comes to mind Evan Shapiro: that is the same exact question I had, which is, it's not it's not like Universal television is this monster hit making machine. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: So really, NBCUniversal they're very good at nonfiction content. But they're terrible at scripted content. They really have not had a tremendous amount, NBCUniversal. I worked there and I started a streaming service for them. They own very little content compared to Warner Brothers or Paramount or Disney because there was this thesis again, showing how little strategy the Roberts family has that we don't need to [00:12:00] own our own content. We'll license predominantly they don't own Friends, they don't own Seinfeld, they don't own this, they don't own most of their biggest hits over. The only thing they own is the Office. Which is a big hit. And they own a lot of their nonfiction stuff, but they have not really been a hit making machine, and they don't really have a great studio television business. They're a good movie studio. ITV, on the other hand has the biggest hit. In the world with Love Island, they've got Hell's Kitchen, they've got all this great content there and their scripted stuff is beginning to click into. And the US arm of ITT V Studios is a really powerful hit making machine. They're in, they're on fire right now. And so why wouldn't you also buy ITV Studios? It doesn't make any sense to me at all. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, no, absolutely. And it makes me wonder about the case. So it's interesting, right? If you look at Comcast, so Sky, we haven't mentioned that, but we spoke about Versant doing, spinning the linear out and Sky, which belongs to Comcast, is making a [00:13:00] move to get that red asset from from ITV. So that makes you wonder what what the hell Comcast is doing. Very surprising. Evan Shapiro: I think I can actually, I think, explain that. So when you look at the combination of Sky and ITV. And Sky is very heavily invested in sports, so very expensive rights package. When you combine Sky and ITV, they become the, basically the number two television outlet in Yeah, in the UK. So they jump over YouTube, they far surpass Netflix, and they're second only to the BBC who doesn't sell ads. So they become the largest ad platform in the uk. And they become a must buy you. You can't avoid them at that point. And if you were allowed to take the sports off of Sky and distribute some of it across ITV, your reach is that much larger at that point. So I think that's the rationale. But you have to go back in time and remember that when Comcast bought Sky, they got into a bidding war [00:14:00] with, they were in the midst of the bidding war over Fox with Disney. And they bid up the price of Fox to a ridiculous $72 billion, which Disney then bought and still hasn't paid for. And then they were left saying, oh, what do we buy now? So they paid $39 billion for Sky, and then two years later had a write down 9 billion dollars of that 30 billion, 39 billion. So again, the acquisition strategy of the Comcast conglomerate. Hasn't had a great track record. Yeah. So one wonders what they're thinking here. Just, which reminds me put your put your questions in the chat. Robert Godwin just didn't a offer a question, you offered a comment. The advantage of licensing as you acquire the known value IP creation holds great risk. Yeah. I get that. These businesses are gonna wind up operating on the basis of how the strength of their distinguished IP or not, they fail based on that. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: And daily touch [00:15:00] points are incredibly important on that. And I don't understand why you'd leave. The powerhouse, profitable powerhouse of ITV Studios behind Simon. Yeah, and Go ahead. Sorry. Marion Ranchet: There's one thing on that. If you look at licensing, if you start to be in a renting mode where wherever you are, right and right in terms of the distribution, you have a gatekeeper. If you have, if you don't control the pipes nor the content, what do you have? Not much. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. The difference is Sky actually has pipes, right? So they are a distributor aggregator in across Europe, and they also own mobile businesses. And as we know, we've, in our conversations with Bango over the years the number one source of bundling now is Telcos. And so the idea that Sky would be able to offer this package, but it, you're so over leveraged at that point. It just, it's a good question. I think it makes it a lot of sense to combine the networks from an [00:16:00] advertising standpoint. I just don't just swallow the whole thing, bite the bullet. It's not that much more money to get the studios business and really, Peacock is really at beholden to ITV studios right now. Love Island, which was the number one season, number one show last year on streaming on Peacock, which doesn't even have 40 million subscribers in the US. They're gonna have a tough negotiation on that show when that contract goes up. Imagine if you own the studio. And by the way, Love Island has tons of spinoffs all around the world now, based on the success of this last year, you can imagine they're gonna spin off a thousand different iterations of this. Peacock doesn't have a guaranteed right to those spinoffs. So imagine if Love Island, starts popping up on Netflix or starts popping up on Apple or starts popping up on Paramount Plus, like that, deleverages peacock in a great way. You own the studio, you don't have that problem. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. And one [00:17:00] thing though is, there's been little in the press, although on the earnings call the CEO of ITV confirmed discussions were in progress, but a lot has happened since those initial discussions happened. Could it be that's seeing, we're gonna be talking about Banijay buying All3Media. Could it be that Sky reconsiders and goes for the whole thing? Evan Shapiro: Yeah, who, it's a great question. I, my understanding based on conversations I've had with people inside many different companies is that it's got installed over this question in particular is the valuation of the network without the studio, the valuation of the studio on its own, to me at least. Things I've heard in my dms and over drinks with executives inside many of these companies. I won't say who or where that's where it stuck. Yeah. And but on their earnings call, they said, talks continue. So I would say watch this space 'cause there's gonna be news here and I imagine the news will come relatively soon. I think by [00:18:00] the end of second quarter we're gonna have clarity of where this winds up one way or another. But you mentioned alliance. Yeah. Yeah exactly. Right around Alliance. So let's talk about Banijay another business that I think you probably have a better handle on than I do. Although I did have some great conversations with them at MIPCOM this past year. So Banijay had a great year from a net income standpoint, but I'm meh. From a total revenue standpoint and they're in the midst of acquiring that, that the deal has been struck, although it's gonna need European regulatory approval to buy All3. So what's your take on this company writ large? I don't think we've ever dug into you and I your take on Banijay as a major roll up holdCo. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, it's it's initially at the core it was this, small company that has grown by buying others. Like they have 120 labels underneath Banijay. Wow. I think we don't really realize the [00:19:00] size, of that organization. Stéphane Courbit, French entrepreneur, started. Initially a TV production company then became CEO of Endemol, then Endemol bought Shine, then Zodiask Media, they bought the competition. They are in a habit of buying competition and buying either direct competitors or folks who are complimentary. And before we went on a call, you had a great point on that, which is, it's not necessarily a big catalog when it comes to English speaking markets. That's right. And so All3Media just does just just that. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And so you're right, it's important to understand that a hundred plus studios, it's not all in one location, right? It's a German studio, it's a Swiss studio, it's a French studio. And so they went around buying a lot of nonfiction and kids studios in different regions to become the biggest provider of content to the networks in these places. They haven't really [00:20:00] done a whole lot around pure digital, direct to consumer. They're starting to now, they're rebooting some of their biggest franchise with creators on YouTube in a cool deal that they made last year. And those are gonna come out later this year. But to your point, All3 is a monster in English language, UK, US Aussie content. The complimentary nature of these two is really interesting. But Banijay has a lot of debt and this is gonna increase that. I found also something interesting, and I'd love to hear your thought on this. We have friends at a, at a digital studio that lives inside All3 called Little Dot. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: So they have this, really one of the first pure digital pure play digital studios in the marketplace in Little Dot. And they got way out ahead of this. And they've invented the space. They run FAST channels. They were on a ton of different YouTube channels. They do a lot of digital direct content. Banijay has nothing like that. To me. Part Marion Ranchet: [00:21:00] They do. They do they, yeah, they do. Initially they were very much a content powerhouse, but they were in the licensing business, but they've grown their digital arm to, to grow on social. They have a massive fast channel portfolio. It's very IP first, but this is actually channels. Performing the best because perform, it's leading with ip. It's, easy to recognize, very easy to program. No they've made that move. But the only thing is because it's a very fragmented company, because of all of those labels, the question is, perhaps you need to boost that digital factory and then Little Dot could be just that for them, right? They would keep doing that for clients. I'd be surprised if they were only serving the Banijay group, although it could happen. Who knows? But yeah no. Evan Shapiro: I think the biggest, one of the biggest opportunities there is you take the Little Dot expertise and you light it on fire [00:22:00] across the Banijay set of holding. Yeah. And you start more YouTube channels, you start more, even more FAST. To me that felt like one of the key elements of this acquisition, at least from my, yeah, Marion Ranchet: I hadn't thought of that. But yeah. Yeah, that, that makes a lot of sense. LDS could help them, industrialize that part and go potentially deeper than what they've done right now. On Banijay, we're very focused on the content side, but when you look at the earnings, it's fascinating to see that they're into gaming, which, yeah, that's honestly, I had no clue. Evan Shapiro: Me either. Marion Ranchet: So they own Betclic for those who know Betclic and who are potentially annoyed by some of those advertising popping up during games, especially when kids are around. But anyway, that's me. But, so it's interesting because it's a growth engine for them. So you look at the growth we're talking Betclic, 1.6 billion, 10% growth. They have a live experience segment that is, it grew 20% and I [00:23:00] love those because that is flywheel, that is diversification. The live experience piece. When you have IPs that are that strong, what are you waiting to, bring that to life like creators do. So that was something that was quite surprising. I had little clue. And a friend of ours put it on the map for me. They bought another company that's, I'm assuming smaller than All3Media also, which is called Typical, which is a gaming while gaming or a betting solution as well. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, you're right. So their experiential business grew 18 plus percent. So the highest letter, it's still relatively small, still less than 400 million Euro. But. You're right, their gaming section, which is gaming like we think about, but also a sports book, like you said. But there's casino stuff. Betting, poker stuff. Marion Ranchet: Yep. Evan Shapiro: A lot of betting. 1.6, billion euro last year growth of 9.5%. Another kind of leading indicator, it is interesting to see that they're diversifying their revenue set and [00:24:00] it's a meaningful number. When I, when someone said to me, gaming is a big part of this. I'm like, how big could it possibly be? It was a huge part of their overall Marion Ranchet: It is. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah. Marion Ranchet: 1.6 out of 4.9 total revenue. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's Marion Ranchet: That's fascinating. I had no clue. Could be that was again, through acquisition. I'm not sure they started this gaming business from scratch. But again, interesting interesting buying. Yeah. So a few things that they need to do, they do need to, so they're looking to do cost synergies, which is the hot new term right now, 50 million. So that's the thing, right? Is again, the time it's gonna take to cutting, integrate, et cetera. There's gonna be some more cutting. Evan Shapiro: Lemme ask you a question about that 'cause that you socialists in Europe, you love to regulate the shit out of everything. You know when I hear cost savings that, that's at the heart of it, that means layoffs. And the European Union is very sensitive, especially right now. 'cause it, it's not a great employment market across [00:25:00] a lot of regions. No. Do you think this gets through the regulators? Marion Ranchet: This deal? Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Marion Ranchet: I don't know, I'm not enough in the weeds of of that, but this is a company who knows how to, pass regulation and move on. The last big thing they bought was Shine in 2020, and that was their direct competitor. Yeah I would say so. The only thing is that it, those deals take. Time and the layoff won't be like you guys where it happens overnight. Because essentially when those companies are bought, especially on markets like France or the Netherlands, there are steps that you need to respect, right? And it's not like you can say to people, take your box like we see in your movies, take your box and then you are out the door, within an hour. That doesn't happen like that. So it's gonna be a slow burn. We won't see that effect right away in some key European territories. I'm thinking. But again, don't quote me on this. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Fascinating. Alright, so now let's move to your native country Canal+. [00:26:00] Did I say that correctly? Marion Ranchet: I love, so can I please? It's the first plus. Evan Shapiro: Wait. You pronounced Marion Ranchet: it. We don't say. It's it's Canal plus. So when we say I don't wanna do something anymore, then you say ppl. But here it's always been canal. Evan Shapiro: Why? Marion Ranchet: And it's the first plus because in this instance it's not the word. It's a thing. PLUS. It's a thing. Exactly. It's the plus one. Plus one. So it's Canal Plus. Every time you say that, I think it's too cute. So I never corrected you. Evan Shapiro: Thanks. So you're it's only in front of the French who hate me anyway Marion Ranchet: yeah, but no, it's, no, it's, it goes beyond the French. No, but, i'm not making fun. You are making fun of my accent every time. When I said Audi, et cetera. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Marion Ranchet: That's, it's, I think it's just for a game Evan Shapiro: You can feel free to make fun of my, I say would. So you can always [00:27:00] make fun of my Philadelphia accent anytime you want. Marion Ranchet: Okay. Evan Shapiro: So I'm not even gonna comment on this 'cause you understand this business substantially better than I do and this company Canal Plus yeah, also made a major, they spun out, they made a major acquisition. So talk to us about, where this company is, and by the way, remind everybody, add your questions or comments into the chat. But what's your take on these earnings and where this company is headed? Marion Ranchet: Okay French company, it was it's the initial, the OG Pay TV company, right? Pay TV network initially on television, and then of course when everywhere, right? Satellites internets, you name it. And what's interesting there, it's a 40-year-old company. And so to your point, they spun out. They were spun out of the Vivendi group, Vivendi looked at assets and they spun out different different segments that they have books, et cetera. So they've been a standalone company for a year and a [00:28:00] half. And I think what's interesting with this, these guys, is that, so historically it's a French company. Through pure, growth or acquisition. So both organic and merger and acquisition, they've grown outside of the French market, right? They're in close to 50 countries. They're in Africa, in Asia they're in many European territories thinking. The Netherlands Austria, Germany, Poland, you name it, they took a stake in Viaplay or there in the Nordics, et cetera. So the reason why I like that company, I'm a subscriber. And, so that's the only thing, and I will explain why. I think it's one of those companies. So it's fairly expensive, right? So it's our French HBO, it's fairly expensive, but the products, the app is amazing. The content offering is amazing depending on the markets you have, all of the premium movies from the studios coming. You have amazing TV shows. They buy amazing TV shows. They [00:29:00] produce, et cetera, et cetera. They are the ones for Americans. You've seen Spirals amazing cop show. This is them. This is gonna help us. And so what I love about that is that they've grown out of France, they've been able to embrace the different changes, and right now they're very active when it comes to direct to consumer, right? Historically, they were over reliant on wholesale, on selling through call centers, et cetera. They've made a point of being very CTV first. They're pretty everywhere you can look. And I think this is why despite the revenues being a bit shaky in Europe they've managed to not see what the Americans have seen on the cable side, which is just down. Evan Shapiro: No. In fact, they had a really good growth year in, in subs last year. They grew total subs by about 8% year on year. That's pretty impressive actually, given the marketplace right now. Marion Ranchet: It's a market where it's hard to grow, right? They've had growth. They were going down up until [00:30:00] 2019, then since 2020 went back up. That's when I think they've made that change, that transition to be like, okay, we're not just legacy Pay TV guys. We can transform, we can be streaming first, et cetera. They've done one thing I was saying at the top that they were fairly, expensive. And something that they've done that I think, a lot of other companies should take notice is that in 2019 they had minuscular number of subscribers under the age of 26. And one of the reasons why it was too expensive and, within these last six years they were, it grew by 17 times. Because they were able to build a package that was like just 20, 20 euros a month. So half what we all people would typically pay, no commitment, et cetera, et cetera. So they're doing a lot of stuff to embrace streaming. And I think, yeah, it's it's a very interesting case study. Not everything is lost. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And Nicholas asked, and I wanted your opinion on this as well. They bought [00:31:00] Multichoice last year, right? Marion Ranchet: Yes. So they were in this move of growing in Africa. They had taken shares in Muiltichoice years ago, and there's a moment where the, it tipped over, meaning that they had too many shares and were legally bound to take over the entire company. Evan Shapiro: So do you think that, do you think Nicholas's question and mine is, how do you think that's. How do you think that's all gonna work out? Do you think this is gonna turn into a net plus for them, or is this gonna weigh them down? Marion Ranchet: I think it's gonna be tricky because Multichoice was in a downward trend. So we were saying that Cannel Plus was pretty stable. I think Multichoice. I need to check, but I think they've lost like two, 3 million subs, within the last two years. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. So it's been and their performance in particular weigh down the whole P and L last year. It should be noted also by the way that the net income is down 108%, but those are two, what they call exceptional [00:32:00] costs built in there, which is, and you can explain this better than I do for VAT and TST tax on television services. Yeah. I don't even know what that means, but Marion Ranchet: I think. I don't, let's not get into the tax thing, but yeah it, but Evan Shapiro: they were big two, two big tax bills that are not gonna be recurring. So it's likely, especially since their revenue was up year on year, that this is a one time thing for them. Because it's, close to seven, over 700 million euro. And I'm, am I saying Euro correctly or is it Euro? Marion Ranchet: I would say Euro. It's just you works. Evan Shapiro: I'm taking a break. So yeah, it's it's a, it's, this is gonna be one of those. And you said this a year ago, you said watch the French market for innovation and change that's gonna lead the market. And you were right last year. Last year. The, this deal happened last year with Multichoice. The spin happened last year, but also the Netflix TF1 deal happened last year. The France [00:33:00] Television Amazon deal happened last year. How do you, has the TF1 thing launched in Netflix yet? Marion Ranchet: No, it's launching in June, just ahead of the summer. So excited about that. I think we're gonna be able to talk extensively about, I will say mostly the UX because we won't be knowing much else in the background. I think what's interesting with Canal Plus, and you were saying, guys, just a heads up, but next week we're doing, an episode on the Paramount investment deck and the lack of strategy in that deck. It was very interesting to review the earnings presentation from Canal Plus they lay out exactly the strategy for Multichoice. Like you have 10 slides, it's very open. They know exactly what needs to be done, and they're gonna make sure it's being done. So to Nicolas's point I do have some hope that they're gonna be able to make this work. One number we haven't given. They have 42.3 million [00:34:00] subscribers with this new combined company. So it's, they're really, working and thriving to be a must have global player, not just a French player. Evan Shapiro: Interesting. Yeah we're gonna that episode, so we got hold of the paramount investor deck and we dug into it and we were able to analyze the projections that the Ellison family is making to justify this $110 billion acquisition. It's bonkers. So we go into that in next week's episode on the podcast. And we were able to get hold of a copy of another report. The stream tv report that Tubi puts out every year. And we're gonna be go diving into that in next week's episode as well. So that's next Thursday the 19th. Look for, it's not a live episode next week, it's a recorded episode, but it's gonna have a lot of incredibly rich information and data on where this market. We had a really good crowd here again today live. We love doing these [00:35:00] live shows. I do. You do too. Yeah, Marion Ranchet: I do too. We need to figure out we're not, we're gonna do that again for earning season. But we wanna find a way to show up live as much as we can guys. Just if you have any ideas, just reach out. We're keen to hear your thoughts. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And whether you were on Substack Live or LinkedIn thank you so much for showing up. We really enjoy. The crowds have been amazing. The feedback has been really good. We love talking to you live, getting questions live. Speaking of live, we're both gonna be in Lisbon one month from now for Stream TV Europe, and breaking news. We are interviewing Bogden, the founder of who, one of the founders of Holy Water and my drama, the micro drama site and app on stage live as part of Media Odyssey podcast. We're also gonna be you're hosting a whole day at Stream TV Europe. Yeah. Marion Ranchet: Whole morning on Monday. You guys should come on Sunday nights, cooking something for [00:36:00] networking purposes. Cool. To get us, nice for Monday. Evan Shapiro: And I'll be on stage all three days. And we've got a case study from Banijay on their transformation. We've got a case study on Eurovision. They've got some big news to break about their transformation. Got a case study on Love Island with ITV, which will be interesting post this conversation. We've got a case study with our friend Linette Zaulich from ZDF and their OTT strategy around factual entertainment. YouTube's gonna be doing a whole case study on the digitization of news on video. It's gonna be an amazing thing if you use, I'm gonna use my code this week, Shapiro10. Shapiro, and it's not Shapiro, it's Shapiro10 on the Stream TV site. You can, get a 10% discount on prices. I'm gonna be there. You're gonna be there. Alan Wolk is gonna be there. Shira Lazar is gonna be there. Linette Zaulich gonna be there. A lot of our friends will all be there hanging out, really talking about where the transformation is headed. I'm gonna be [00:37:00] giving another barn burner rip roaring keynote presentation, yelling at the world to change. This live stream is gonna be posted later today Marion Ranchet: On Substack Mine. Yours. Yeah. Media War and Peace. Streaming Made Easy. Yeah, check it out and share it around. And a a comment on Substack goes a long way. Just do take a minute. It lands in your inbox, but either, a reply, a comment, a like on Substack, it's it's nice because there's life outside of LinkedIn. Evan Shapiro: And if people hate video, you'll be able to listen to it on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts coming out. But this will also be posted on YouTube as well. So thanks again, Marion for coming to us. It's six o'clock, almost seven o'clock there. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, exactly. Time for whatever. I was about to see drinks, but no, it's Thursday. Just you family time. Evan Shapiro: Cool. And I'm gonna go have lunch because I'm starving. So thanks everybody for showing up. Great to see you again. Cheer. We'll see you next week. Marion Ranchet: Bye guys.