Yahoo Finance AMC Networks Inc. (NASDAQ:AMCX) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
AMC Networks Inc. (NASDAQ:AMCX) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 10, 2024
AMC Networks Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $1.16 EPS, expectations were $1.79. AMC Networks Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).
Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the AMC Networks First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker, Nicholas Seibert, VP of Corporate Development and Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Nicholas Seibert: Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to the AMC Networks first quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Joining us this morning are Kristin Dolan, Chief Executive Officer; Patrick O'Connell, Chief Financial Officer; Kim Kelleher, Chief Commercial Officer; and Dan McDermott, President of Entertainment and AMC Studios. Today's press release is available on our website at amcnetworks.com. We will begin with prepared remarks and then we'll open the call for questions. Today's call may include certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance or results and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ.
Please refer to AMC Networks SEC filings for a discussion of risks and uncertainties. The company disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements made on this call today. We will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. The require definitions and reconciliations can be found in today's press release. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to Kristin.
Kristin Dolan: Thanks, Nick, and good morning, everyone. In the first quarter, we continue to execute on our strategic priorities, including the ongoing delivery of healthy free cash flow. New technologies are transforming the media industry, providing consumers with more entertainment options than ever before. For AMC networks, taking advantage of these new opportunities, addressing how, when, and where consumers watch our programming is at the heart of our strategy. Last month we joined with our most important commercial and creative partners for our 2024 upfront. I'd like to spend a few minutes on some of the key messages we delivered to our commercial partners, which underscore our strengths and how these strengths connect to our strategy, which is to produce great content and make it available to viewers whenever and wherever they want to watch.
We engage with viewers through a wide variety of endpoints and monetize our content wherever possible. We serve an aggregated audience of more than 91 million across our linear networks, targeted streaming services, and more than 100 channel feeds on third party CTV and FAST platforms. As an independent programmer not tied to a broadcast network or distribution platform, AMC Networks has the freedom to present our content in all of these places in whatever format our partners and viewers enjoy. Our options are not limited or constrained in this fast-changing world. In fact, we're seeing them grow. Our partners understand that we have the ability to be everywhere and importantly that we add value wherever we are. In addition to our priority of engaging viewers with premium content, we also focus heavily on nurturing and expanding our commercial relationships.
We aim to create content that resonates in the marketplace and we work hard to ensure that our partners also benefit from that success. As part of our upfront, we announced that we plan to launch ad supported versions of our targeted streaming services by the end of next year. Our popular streaming brands such as Acorn TV, Shudder, ALLBLK and HIDIVE will, for the first time, have ad-supported versions available on a standalone basis. This will allow us to deliver entire genres and highly engaged fan communities to our advertising partners, with a greater level of targeting and performance outcomes than ever before. We've often spoken about our technological leadership position in advertising and we're proud to continue to be at the forefront in this space.
To give you a sense of what this means in practice, 70% of our linear footprint today is enabled for addressable advertising. This includes addressable slots in every single hour of programming on each and every one of our networks. 40% of that addressable linear footprint can be bought programmatically, which is by far the largest percentage of programmatic linear inventory in the industry. Obviously, 100% of our digital inventory is also programmatic. As media plans increasingly include sophisticated targeting utilizing both linear and digital inventory, this is a meaningful point of differentiation for us. While we're meeting viewers across our brands, networks, and streaming services, we're also strategically windowing our content across dozens of endpoints, enabling us to optimize our programming investments.
At the same time, we're aggressively pursuing attractive international content licensing arrangements in parts of the world beyond our own distribution footprints. These opportunities continue to be available to us because AMC Networks is upholding and delivering on its commitment to quality content. I'll touch on a few of our first quarter programming highlights and provide a brief look at the strong slate we have for the year ahead. On AMC and AMC+, we brought viewers the latest series in our expanding Walking Dead universe and it was the biggest one yet. The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live became the most viewed series in the history of AMC+, driving the biggest single day of direct-to-consumer signups in the history of the service. It was a hit on linear cable as well with 3 million viewers tuning in for the premiere night telecast.
The series was critically acclaimed and attracted significant social media attention during each Sunday night premiere. This success reflects the continued strength of the Walking Dead Universe and the ability of its characters and stories to command attention and engage fans. It also underscores our ability to build and grow franchise driven fandoms, which we think we do as well as anyone. This core competency will again be on display this Sunday night with the highly anticipated premiere of the second season of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire on AMC and AMC+. And next month, we're excited to introduce a new series in the popular Orphan Black Universe, Orphan Black: Echoes, on AMC, AMC+, and BBC America. Our film business has the rights to more than 1,500 titles across our portfolio and continues to carve out a leadership position in the horror genre.
The latest example of this is a film called Late Night with the Devil, which had the biggest opening weekend in IFC Films' history on 1,400 screens and significantly outperformed box office projections. The film recently moved to our Shudder Horror Service, where it quickly became the number one film in Shudder history, while achieving 1 million streamers faster than any other title on the service. We continue to super serve passionate anime audiences with our streaming service, HIDIVE, which recently wants to a new and improved consumer app, and this summer will premiere a new season of the biggest series in its history, Oshi no Ko. Our popular Acorn TV streaming service just unveiled a smart and expansive brand refresh and has a great lineup of shows coming over the next few months.
As is the case with all our targeted streaming services, we see a real opportunity to lean aggressively into the unique experience and a feeling of community that Acorn’s offers its fans. Over the next few months, Acorn subscribers will have access to new seasons of Harry Wilde starring Jane Seymour. My Life is Murder starring Lucy Lawless, as well as perennial favorite Signora Volpe and Under the [Binds] (ph). WE tv is strategically focusing its original strategy on Friday nights with new series like Deb's House and the [indiscernible] and a new season of the popular Love After Lockup franchise. Friday is our strongest night of the week, particularly with women viewers. We think this represents a real opportunity that will be aided even further by the highly anticipated return of the Braxton Family this summer.
Our programming defines our company and our relationships with viewers, but it also drives the engaged audiences and value we're able to deliver to our commercial partners. We continue to see strength in our affiliate relationships driven by the low wholesale price of our networks compared to the value we bring with our popular content. We continue to bring high quality scripted dramas on Sunday nights on AMC and to test and innovate with our distribution partners. We recently renewed the carriage of our portfolio of linear networks, as well as our streaming services, with one of our long-standing partners, Verizon. During the quarter, we successfully launched BBC News on leading CTV and FAST platforms at a time when reliable and impartial news is more important than ever.
We're also pleased to see momentum continue to build with new internet delivered skinny bundles, including Charter's new Spectrum TV stream package. And Comcast Now TV, both of which include all five of our linear networks, as well as BBC News. In terms of our international business, last month in the UK, we launched a new streaming offering on ITVX, the British ad-supported streaming service operated by ITV called AMC Stories. A second branded offering, AMC Reality, will launch later this month. In the quarter, we saw strong audience performance in our southern, central, and northern European divisions. The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live, became the number one show in the history of AMC+ in Spain, and just recently premiered in Latin America as well.
As we continue to focus on building our brands, expanding our partner relationships and serving viewers, we're very confident in our ability to weather the changes that are happening in what remains a dynamic operating environment. While Patrick will discuss our financials in detail in just a moment, I'll note that we recently strengthened our balance sheet by completing a series of financing transactions that meaningfully extended our debt maturities. This allows us to continue to leverage our core strengths. We're generating significant free cash flow and have a strong balance sheet that allows us to focus on deliberate execution of our multi-year strategies. We're taking advantage of our unique position and strengths and we continue to produce and curate quality content and make it available to viewers across a range of platforms.
As the world changes around us, we're successfully reorienting our business and our prospects around the consumer-driven changes that are happening across the industry. With that, I'll turn the call over to Patrick.
Patrick O'Connell: Thank you, Kristin. We are pleased with our first quarter results, and we remain on track to achieve our financial outlook for the year. This includes year-over-year free cash flow growth for 2024 and approximately $0.5 billion of cumulative free cash flow by the end of 2025. I'll start with a high-level review of our results for the quarter, and then I'll provide a summary of the recent actions we took to strengthen our balance sheet, then I'll briefly discuss our outlook, and then we'll move to Q&A. We've made significant progress in reorienting our business in a tough environment. Our endemic strengths have allowed us to act quickly and decisively to achieve an equilibrium, balancing investment in our most important asset, our content, with the generation of significant free cash flow to maintain our healthy balance sheet.
While we remain vigilant, we are pleased with the results we see today. This is more than just the strong performance of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live or the diverse and exciting slate we have teed up for the rest of the year, which Kristin just highlighted, but also the meaningful free cash flow we delivered in the first quarter and our expectation of continued cash generation going forward. On to our first quarter consolidated results. Consolidated revenue decreased 17% to $596 million in the quarter. Excluding nonrecurring revenue from Silo, the AMC Studio series we produced for Apple TV and 25/7 Media in the prior period, revenue decreased 6%. Adjusted operating income was $149 million, representing a 25% margin and we generated $144 million of free cash flow in the quarter.
Free cash flow in the quarter increased meaningfully as compared to the prior year period and reflected our prudent content investment strategy as well as the timing of production and certain tax items. Touching on our segment financials, domestic operations revenue decreased 14% to $524 million in the first quarter. Excluding Silo, revenue decreased 6%. Content licensing revenue decreased 40% to $62 million due to revenue related to the delivery of episodes of Silo in the prior year period, which was partly offset by the sale of Killing Eve, as well as the timing and availability of deliveries in the current period. Excluding the impact of Silo, licensing revenue increased 31% year-over-year. On our last call, I discussed how The Walking Dead and Fear of The Walking Dead have historically been top performers.
Thankfully, for us, our studio produces a broad array of high-quality content for us to monetize across windows and territories. So while those two titles may be important to us, in 2024 we expect those titles to represent a modest fraction less than 20% of our domestic operations content licensing revenue. Moving to subscription revenue. Subscription revenue decreased 7% due to a 14% decline in affiliate revenue, which was primarily driven by linear subscriber declines and was partially offset by streaming revenue growth of 3%. The result of a rate event at Shudder, strong growth at HIDIVE and an increase in total subscribers to $11.5 million at the end of the quarter. Advertising revenue declined 13% due to lower Vimeo ratings with acquired programming underperforming relative to our original programming, as well as a difficult ad environment, which was partially offset by continued digital growth.
In terms of marketplace dynamics, we've seen scatter show signs of improvement across linear and digital as the year progresses. As we look forward to this year's upfront, one thing we hear consistently is that buyers want more flexibility in how they transact. And we feel well positioned to meet their needs as a market leader with robust buying capabilities to support this market need. Domestic operations AOI was $162 million for the quarter with a healthy margin of 31%. The year-over-year decrease in AOI was largely driven by the revenue decline. It was partially offset by continued cost discipline. Moving on to our International segment, which, as a reminder, no longer includes the results of 25/7 Media. First quarter revenue was $76 million, representing a decrease of 3%, excluding the contribution from 25/7 Media in the prior year period.
Adjusted operating income was $13 million for the quarter with a margin of 18%. Moving to the balance sheet. In April, we completed a series of financing transactions to proactively address upcoming maturities. This included tapping the market to issue $875 million of new 2029 senior secured notes, retiring all $775 million of our existing senior unsecured notes due 2025 and extending the maturity of our credit facility to 2028. Adjusted for the closing of these transactions, we ended the quarter with net debt of approximately $1.7 billion and a consolidated net leverage ratio of 2.8 times. Adjust for the closing of these transactions, we currently have approximately $775 million of total liquidity, including approximately $600 million of cash on the balance sheet and our undrawn $175 million revolver.
Since the third quarter of 2023, we have paid down more than $500 million of gross debt. The proactive and prudent management of our balance sheet affords us valuable flexibility as well as the ability to fully focus on the evolution of our business as the new video landscape continues to take shape. We appreciate the flexibility and optionality that our current cash balance affords us. Additionally, we believe that our current capital structure present potential opportunities for us to deploy our cash flow in a value-accretive manner over time. On the topic of capital allocation, our philosophy remains prudent and opportunistic. First, we look to support the business by creating and acquiring compelling programming that resonates with our audiences while maintaining healthy levels of profitability and cash flow generation.
Second, we look to improve our balance sheet by reducing gross debt and optimizing our capital structure. Third, strategic M&A and returning capital to shareholders remain further down our current priority list. I'll now summarize and reiterate our outlook. We are pleased to reiterate that we expect to grow free cash flow year-over-year in 2024, and that by 2025, we expect to have generated cumulative free cash flow of approximately $0.5 billion. Regarding revenue, we continue to expect total revenue of approximately $2.4 billion for the full year. Moving to AOI. For 2024, we continue to expect consolidated AOI of $550 million to $575 million. Continued streaming and digital advertising growth, as well as disciplined expense management remain a focus despite revenue headwinds in the New Year business.
We also continue to expect programming amortization to be similar to 2023 levels and cash programming spend to be approximately $1 billion in 2024. Before we open it up for Q&A, I would like to reiterate what I've said before in the past regarding our overarching financial approach. AMC Networks is employing a back-to-basics approach that emphasizes broad distribution of our content across platforms and prioritizes near-term monetization, while at the same time, taking advantage of our unique position as a nimble and innovative premium programmer. We'll continue to allocate our capital wisely to ensure we maintain a healthy balance sheet, remain extremely disciplined on expenses and balance appropriate levels of programming investment against available monetization opportunities.
We are pleased with the progress we've made on these fronts and look forward to delivering one of the strongest content slates AMC Networks has had in recent memory. Operator, please open the line for questions.
See also
10 Dividend Stocks Insiders are Buying in May and
50 Digital Nomad Visa Countries in 2024.
To continue reading the Q&A session, please click here.
