Banijay Group N.V. (BNJ) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

March 7, 2024

Euronext Amsterdam NL Communication Services earnings 55 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Caroline Cohen

executive
#1

Good evening. This is Caroline Cohen, Head of Investor Relations. Welcome to FL Entertainment’s 2023 Full Year Results Webcast. Before we start, let me draw your attention to the disclaimer on Slide 2. I also want to remind you that this presentation is available on the company's website, and a replay of this call will be accessible in the coming days. Your speakers today are Francois Riahi, CEO; and CFO, Sophie Kurinckx-Leclerc. First Francois will go through the financial highlights for the period followed by a brief business update. Sophie will then cover the results in more detail before Francois provides some concluding remarks. Over to you, Francois.

Francois Riahi

executive
#2

Thank you, Caroline. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us for this FL Entertainment results. 2023 has been another very successful year for FL Entertainment on many fields. First, financially, which is important; our business model has once again delivered strong performance across all our business fields despite a more challenging economic environment for TV production, but also, in terms of strategic evolution. In line with our strategy to identify and capitalize on fast-growing and fragmented segments of the global entertainment industry, we continue to expand and diversify our business through M&A. Notably, we expanded into life experiences throug investments in Balich Wonder Studio and The Independents. We strongly believe that this development will fuel our growth moving forward. We have also experienced success on balance sheet management in 2023. We refinanced and extended the vast majority of our debt, building on the trust granted to us by capital markets. Last but not least, we have progressed in the rollout of our ESG strategy to fully align with stakeholder expectations at group and business level. We are fully committed to the highest ESG standards as part of our focus on long-term value creation. But let's now look at the main figures illustrating our performance. Sophie will detail them in more details later. We delivered record revenues and profitability in 2023. At constant exchange rates and pro forma of acquisitions, which means as if the acquisitions had been done on January 1, group revenues were up 13.8% to over EUR 4.5 billion, which is a growth of 8.5% on a reported basis. Adjusted EBITDA was up 15%, leading to a margin of 16.7%. We eventually did better than our guidance on this adjusted EBITDA pro forma of acquisition with EUR 756 million despite a few postponements of experience production in the Middle East in the fourth quarter that we explained at the Q3 presentation. On a reported basis, our EBITDA is EUR 737 million, comparing to the EUR 710 million of our guidance, and 11.8% growth on a reported basis. Adjusted net income on a reported basis is up 6.8% in 2023. Importantly, we maintained both our high level of cash conversion at 82% and our financial leverage ratio at 3.1x as at December 2023. Thanks to this performance, we will propose to the General Assembly to renew the same level of dividend as last year, EUR 0.35 per share or EUR 148 million, representing a 46% payout ratio above our guidance of at least 1/3 of adjusted net income. This is the second time we present annual results at FL Entertainment, and it's interesting to look at the 2 years, 2022 and 2023. The strong group-wide performance in 2023 means we have delivered what I would call, using an MBA term, a double-double since our listing 2 years ago with double-digit annual growth in both revenue and adjusted EBITDA. We have added EUR 1 billion in revenue and EUR 155 million to our earnings. This is respectively a 30% increase and a 26% increase in 2 years. These figures reflect a strong organic growth as well as our capacity to process creating value M&A. We are a fast growing, agile and transforming company, developing strongly in the entertainment industry. A few operational figures to illustrate how much we can transform ourselves in only 2 years. During these 2 years, the size of our content catalog, which is the largest in the world, increased by 50%, 5-0. The revenues generated with streamers increased by 75%. The number of active unique players in our sports betting industry -- activities increased by 54%. In the last year only, we have become, through acquisitions, a global leader in the creation and production of large shows with Balich and in the creation and production of experiences for fashion and luxury markets with The Independents. We are confident that we will continue to deliver this level of performance moving forward, built on our effective combination of sustained organic growth and value-creating M&A. Let's move on our businesses, starting with content production and distribution. 2023 has been a challenging year for many clients in this segment. Broadcasters have experienced a decrease in advertising revenues, and most streamers have had to convince markets about their path to profitability, cutting content spending. In this context, our superior business model has proven itself, thanks to the advantages we have as a market leader. Super brands, regular series renewals, the size of our catalog and the deepest creative firepower in the industry. First, we own unrevolved content super brands that are the guaranteed winners our clients are looking for, particularly in this tougher market context. I want to focus on 2 great examples in the UK and in France, but there are of course many others in from around our Banijay network. Big Brother, already present in 70 territories, made a major return to UK screens on ITV after 5 years away. More than 2.5 million viewers tuned in on a Sunday night to watch the launch show live on ITV. Many more watched via the ITVX streaming service, where it was also a big success. It is also note worthy that not only Big Brother came back on the screens in 2023 in the U.K., but also Survivor and Deal or No Deal, with big success. Star Academy returned to TF1 in France, recording 4.3 million prime time viewers during the season finale. More broadly, the show has incredible appeal across generations. So these super brands that have been powerful for decades, still are overperforming when they are on. Second, we can pitch our clients a wide range of shows with a demonstrated track record of success in other countries with traveling successful new IPs. As an illustration among many, The Fifty, first produced by Banijay France and now adapted for the U.S. Hispanic market on Telemundo, constantly ranking as a channel #1 show. It was also commissioned for the first time in Germany by Prime Video. Third, this is not just about unscripted content with high-quality scripted content renewed by both linear broadcasters and streamers. Many of our scripted shows are renewed through multiple seasons, which make it also a repeat business with our clients. As an example, the second season of Marie Antoinette, whose first season has been hitting almost 150 territories, has started to be short. It is an opportunity to recall that we are the European leader in scripted shows also. And thanks to our relentless creativity, we continue to innovate, creating original and scalable IP that will support our growth for years to come. In 2023, we delivered 71 new scripted shows and 201 new unscripted shows. So even in a tough context, we continue to innovate. This combination of recurring business and relentless creativity continually enriches our portfolio, growing our content catalog, which is already, I mentioned it earlier, the largest in the world. This content catalog increased by 16% in 2023 and is now 185,000 hours. Our business is well placed to capture growth from the continued evolution of our industry, which continues to be about the increased presence of streamers. I already mentioned this incredible figure that, in the past 2 years, our revenues with streamers have increased by 75%. Today, in 2023, streamers represented 19% of our revenues, and this proportion will continue to increase as their share of the market growth, creating more opportunities for us. If you listen to what the streamers say, and we put some examples on the slide, they say that they are going to expand they're spending in unscripted and on local content, and these 2 orientations meet our offer. It is clear that high-quality scripted content has a great value for money and is perfectly adapted to the further development of advertising for streamers. A great example in 2023 is Operacion Triunfo in Spain, which is a format very similar to Star Academy. It was aired by Prime Video in Spain. And of course, the prime times were live. This is very telling in terms of evolution of global streamers. Who would have said 2 or 3 years ago that such a show would be aired on Prime Video live? To give you a sense of the success of the show, it generated 5 billion of viewers on TikTok, I said billion, and 60 million plus streams on digital music platforms. No need to say that we are extremely well positioned to serve these global streamers in terms of unscripted shows, given our IP catalog and the capacity to create high-quality local content in 21 geographies. This trend of convergence between broadcasters and streamers will only increase as the broadcasters are developing their own streamers and streamers are developing advertisements. Our agnostic position of global independent leader is a good place to be in this context. Streamers are also looking to develop premium scripted in local languages, and we can call on a great track record of shows like Lidia Poet on Netflix as well as [indiscernible] on Amazon Prime Video. Even with this 75% increase in 2 years, we have not yet caught up as we should expect moving forward that the share of streamers in our revenues should progressively increase to their share outstanding in content. In addition to growing our market share with streamers, we have a number of other organic growth avenues, including the exciting area of sportainment. To be very clear, this is not about pursuing broadcast rights, but capitalizing on our existing production and distribution capabilities to create sports-based content, including documentaries, talk shows and digital sports content. We are already a major player, thanks to our 2021 acquisition of Southfields, the largest sports production company in The Netherlands, and several other partnerships in this field in other countries. In June last year, and I think it's note worthy, we signed a joint venture with Spanish Football League, La Liga, to create a new sports-related content production company. And in November, we created Banijay Sports as a platform to accelerate our efforts. So watch this space. The second opportunity is capitalizing on the growing demand for videos on social and digital platforms to reach next-generation audiences. As we have the largest TV content catalog in the world, this is, of course, a very important development for us. AI is creating new opportunities to grow the revenues coming from this digital videos on social media. We are using AI power tools to tag and scan every show through the process of context indexing, classifying every scene according to a mood or a moment. This will allow us to monetize more of our 185,000 hours of content on social media channels moving forward. Last but not least, we believe we can further monetize our strong brands through licensing and merchandising. One key opportunity is, for example, to leverage our IP in the life experiences field, creating natural synergies with our new business units. This is a good transition to talk about our entry into the life experiences market with our investments in Balich Wonder Studios and Independents. These are 2 businesses with strong positions in a fast-growing and fragmented segment of the entertainment industry. These additions are helping us become a true multidisciplinary creative heavy weight. As I said before, with Balich, we are now a leader in conceiving and producing major live shows. Examples in 2023 include the development of the Disney Castle Live music experience in Riyadh, illustrating the clear link with IP, or the opening and closing ceremonies of the Parapan American Games in Santiago. With The Independents, we are also becoming a key producer of life experiences in the luxury, fashion and lifestyle space. This business is accelerating its growth with 6 new acquisitions in 2023 alone. Let's move to online sports betting and gaming, which delivered an outstanding performance in 2023. We saw strong double-digit growth across all segments and total revenue grew by 19%. As I have regularly highlighted, the best KPI for this business is the number of unique active players, and it is up 23% in 2023. This demonstrates the success of our wider commercial activity, successfully retaining our players in the 2022 World Cup and growing our base since then. The core of our offer is in sports, but we are also effectively cross-selling our other products, such as online casino, poker and turf, wherever local regulation allows. This led to a particularly strong performance in non-sports book activities, with revenue growth of 39%. Indeed, our activity in 2023 has seen increased diversity in terms of revenues with growth in non-sports book activities as well as the development of new geographies. In addition to leading positions in France, Poland and Portugal and complementary positions in Italy, Germany and Austria, we also made strides in Africa, launching in Ivory Coast at the end of 2022. We are very pleased about this new development, a locally regulated market where we occupy a top 2 position. The recent Africa Cup of Nations football tournaments in January and February in Ivory Coast was also a good catalyst, and we are positive about our continued growth prospects in Africa. In 2023, we also demonstrated our total commitment to the highest standard in responsible gaming. We now generate 99% of our revenues from locally regulated markets and became the first non-U.K. betting operator to receive the GamCare certification. ESG, indeed, is an important topic, and I will tell you a few words about it before Sophie take you through the financials. 2023 has been an active year on the ESG front with a focus on governance, implementing business initiatives and close collaboration across the group. There are several initiatives, I'm not going to take you through all of them on the slide. But I wanted to assure you that we are taking ESG very seriously, particularly when it comes to topics that are at the heart of our businesses, I already mentioned responsible gaming, but it is also true, for example, for on-screen diversity. We will continue to update you on our progress, particularly in terms of the development of reporting tools, allowing all our stakeholders to have a clear understanding of what we do in the field. That's all for me for now. I'll be back at the end for some closing remarks on outlook before we open the line for questions. Over to you, Sophie.

Sophie Kurinckx

executive
#3

Thank you, Francois. Let's start with group revenue for Q4, up 10.7% at constant FX rates. The period saw a very solid contribution from content production and distribution, up 10.1%. Online sports betting and gaming performance was also especially strong with revenue up 13.1%, thanks to strong unique active player growth, our high-quality tech platform and product offering as well as our diverse geographic footprint. Looking now at full year numbers. Group revenue is up 8.5%, reflecting solid growth across both businesses. Content production and distribution revenues grew 7%, a good result given challenging market conditions in the year and a high comparison basis due to the post-COVID catch-up in 2022. Online sports betting and gaming recorded strong growth of 18.9%, with double-digit growth across all divisions and main geographies, even with a high comparison basis in 2022 due to the busy sports event calendar. This positive performance was reflected in our adjusted EBITDA, which is up 11.8% at constant exchange rates. This leads to an adjusted EBITDA margin of 17.1%. At the group level, external expense rose by 12%, driven by 2 elements already reported in H1 2023. As you will recall, we had higher sports betting tax, in line with the increase in the revenue in this business. And in content production and distribution, a change in the allocation of costs related to freelances from staff cost to external expense. Looking next at our consolidated P&L. LTIP expense were up as new plants were granted in 2023. The highest figure also reflects IFRS accounting standards, which means that LTIP expense are higher during the first few years of the plant, regardless of the actual vesting period. However, over the duration of the plan, LTIP expense will average around 10% of adjusted EBITDA, as we always gave in our guidance. The decrease in other finance costs is mainly explained by the change in the fair value of financial instruments, including hedging, investment in securities, put and earn-out debt and currency losses. Our cost of net debt mainly increased due to one-off costs related to debt refinancing and also reflects the refinancing of higher interest rate on the renewed debt. As a result of the above, adjusted net income rose by 6.8% in the year compared to 2022. Let's go now to results by business, starting with content production and distribution. Revenue for the year was up 5.7% at constant exchange rates, a solid performance that reflects the delivery of new and returning scripted and non-scripted shows to our diversified client base. Linear broadcasters had a challenging year with lower advertising spend, but activity picked up again in H2 for many broadcasters, TF1 being one example. We saw solid performance in content production despite, as you remember, the comparison with a strong post-COVID catch-up in the first half of 2022. Production revenues were up 3.3% in the year and 1.9% in Q4, as seasonality was smoother in 2023 than in 2022. Distribution revenues were up 3.8% and up 0.5% in Q4, which is a solid result, thanks to our IP effectively traveling across multiple territories. In life experience and other activities, revenues were up 51%, mainly due to the consolidation of Balich Wonder Studios in Q4. Looking at content production and distribution earnings next, where there was a good level of profitability with a margin of almost 15%. Adjusted EBITDA was up 6.7% at constant exchange rates, resulting in an adjusted free cash flow conversion of 77%. Adjusted operating free cash flow was up 4.7% year-on-year. Next to online sports betting and gaming, where we had a record year with revenue up almost 19% thanks to our key positions in the fast-growing sports entertainment industry. As Francois highlighted, we have successfully retained and grown unique active player numbers since the 2022 FIFA World Cup. We are pleased to report that the adverse sports results experienced by Betclic in October, like the whole industry, fully reversed during the last 2 months of the year as we expected. All activities recorded double-digit growth in 2023, with sportsbook revenue up almost 14%, and online casino, poker and turf revenues up 39%, thanks to an enhanced user experience. Online sports betting and gaming adjusted EBITDA was up 23% at consistently high margins, while our adjusted free cash flow conversion was 94%. The increase in income tax seen here is due to our higher results. Adjusted free cash flow at group level reached EUR 606 million in the year. This was driven by the earnings generated during the period and supported by the tight control of cash expense and capital expenditure. This resulted in a cash conversion rate after CapEx and lease payments of 82%, which is in line with our guidance. Adjusted for changes in working cap and income tax paid, our operating free cash flow was EUR 513 million. The group's net debt stands at EUR 2.3 billion. The increase during the period is mainly due to value-accretive M&A, balanced by a solid cash generation. The EUR 196 million shown in the middle of the slide relates to acquisitions completed during the period, namely Balich Wonder Studios, but also includes EUR 63 million relating to the acquisition of the remaining shares in Endemol Shine India. We have a strong cash position and a significant undrawn secured credit line at the end of the year. During 2023, Banijay successfully refinanced the majority of its debt, extending maturities until '28 and '29, This demonstrates the group's financial strength and flexibility as a highly cash-generative business. Last month, we also successfully repriced Term Loan B, reducing the margin on the euro tranche by 75 basis points and the dollar tranche by 50 basis points. Overall, we have remained disciplined in our capital allocation with strong cash generation, controlled CapEx deployment and stable debt levels. Our focus going forward is on balancing our free cash flow with our financing costs, continued strategic M&A activity and our commitment to shareholder returns. That's all from me. I will now hand back to Francois for some concluding remarks.

Francois Riahi

executive
#4

Thank you, Sophie. I will now talk a little bit about our outlook for the medium term. We are confident in achieving our target as per the midterm outlook for the group, given the opportunities and market tailwinds across our activities and our unique positioning. In content production and distribution, IP is king, and FL Entertainment is a preferred home for innovative and creative talents. We will continuously improve and expand our diverse offer, focusing on multi-genre local programming that has universal appeal. We expect our clients, broadcasters and streamers to spend more in content in the year to come, and we believe we are well positioned to benefit from this increase and to continue to raise the share of revenues coming from streamers for the reasons I explained earlier. And we are leveraging our leadership to access new clients, new agencies and new channels and create additional ways to monetize our content and our brands. I'm referring here only to organic development, but we continue to see Banijay as a natural consolidator in the industry, and we will obviously pursue opportunities, keeping a disciplined approach on value creation. When it comes to life experiences, we stand to benefit from this fast-growing and fragmented market, which still offers many opportunities for consolidation. Finally, in online sports betting and gaming, we will continue to benefit from a strong organic growth and will further expand our geographical footprint in Africa after our successful start in Ivory Coast. Thanks to all these factors, we have strong confidence in our ability to deliver sustained profitable growth and are therefore expecting high single-digit adjusted EBITDA organic growth in 2024. I said organic growth, and we expect that external growth will add to this as it did in the past years. But of course, we don't quantify it and we'll be opportunistic as well as disciplined as we have constantly been. As a conclusion, I would say that our operational performance we listed has exceeded our promises, and we are confident about what lies ahead. Hence, one of our top priorities for 2024 will be to explore, expanding our float and store liquidity, in order for all our shareholders to be able to fully benefit from this strong performance. That's all from me. Thank you for your attention, and back to you, Caroline.

Caroline Cohen

executive
#5

Thank you, Francois. It's now time for questions. So please, can I just ask you to state your name and your company. Thank you. So I open up the line to the operator, please.

Operator

operator
#6

[Operator Instructions] We are now going to proceed with our first question. And the questions come from the line of Annick Maas from Societe General.

Annick Maas

analyst
#7

My first question is I noticed you reiterated your midterm revenue guidance, but didn't provide any revenue guidance for next year -- for 2024. Shall we read into this that 2024 will be another transition year? Or is there a reason why you stopped doing -- giving year-by-year guidance? The second one is life experiences within Banijay was doing very, very well. How shall we think about the development of that segment organically going into 2024? And then the final one is Vivendi has announced quite a big reshuffle I would say. As part of that, have you had any discussions with them over the last couple of months just to potentially them selling their stake?

Francois Riahi

executive
#8

Thank you, Annick. On your first question, we have focused our guidance on adjusted EBITDA, which is really our main KPI and how we see our businesses. The fact that we are not giving a specific guidance for revenues in 2024 is not -- it doesn't mean that we expect evolution of revenues in 2024 to be different from our outlook guidance. We have given an outlook -- our midterm guidance about what we think is the growth of revenues in the years to come. And this has not changed. But we focused our guidance on what we are focusing in terms of management of the company, which is first EBITDA. On your second question, life experiences, it's a very interesting market. We have, I think, already some very good positions. We expect some growth in 2024, both organic and in terms of M&A. And this will contribute to the guidance we gave, where we give specific figures on life experience yet. On Vivendi reshuffle, no, we have not had specific discussions with Vivendi's split. This is their business in a way and we don't have specific discussions with them on that.

Operator

operator
#9

We are now going to proceed with our next question. And the questions come from the line of Aaron Watts from Deutsche Bank.

Aaron Watts

analyst
#10

First, just given some of the challenges your customers have been facing, whether secular in nature, perhaps, or some of your legacy clients or due to a renewed focus on profitability for some of the newer ones like the streamers, can you talk a bit more about the pipeline of business now and the demand levels across both unscripted and scripted compared to, perhaps, a year ago? And then related to that, number two, are you able to share whether the content and production unit EBITDA growth in 2024 should be in the same context as the high single-digit EBITDA growth you're aiming for the whole group in 2024? And then finally, for Sophie, perhaps, as this report is kicking off a new year, it would be great to hear your refreshed thoughts around a leverage target for the Banijay silo. And I think that leverage now stands at a little under 5x. Where would you like to see that leverage live and when do you see getting to that level? And curious if your desire to increase the float and liquidity of your stock have any impact on that on Banijay's leverage.

Francois Riahi

executive
#11

Thank you for your questions. On your first question, clearly, we see 2024 as more positive than 2023. When we look back and if you listen to all our clients' presentations and results and so on, they all expect a better outlook in 2024 compared to 2023. And we see a good demand for our shows, I explained earlier that we have also a catch-up effect with the streamers. So we are quite positive. And we believe maybe you use the term legacy clients, so I suppose you refer to broadcasters. But if you look at broadcaster results and outlook, Depending on countries, there are some countries where it's more tough, for example, in the U.S., but in Europe, it's very -- it's -- they have some very consistent results and their streaming developments are also quite successful. So I think we are in a better trend, clearly, in 2024, but what we have seen in 2023 for content production and distribution. Your second question was about, yes, the level of revenues. I answered already to Annick, we gave some outlook, midterm outlook on our businesses, saying that we expect the level of organic growth for content production and distribution to be mid-single digit and for sports betting and gaming to be double digit. So again, this outlook is unchanged. On -- so you asked specifically for Sophie to answer to your question on leverage. So I defer the floor. Of course, I don't want to be rude.

Sophie Kurinckx

executive
#12

So the -- as we already mentioned in the past, the target for the leverage within Banijay still remain the same, which is to deleverage Banijay below 4x within 2 years. So this is still our target. Regarding the liquidity, do you want to say something, Francois?

Francois Riahi

executive
#13

Yes. So no big surprise that we -- one of our top priorities is to increase our float as today it's almost 0. And this is -- it's very important for our shareholders to have the capacity to see the stock reflecting sort of the value of the company. So that's why -- that's what we want to achieve. So on -- we -- there could be an impact, positive, of course, on our leverage, but this is not really the goal. It can be something that comes a little bit with it in, I would say, not a large extent, but the role is really to extend the float and we'll tell you more when we have precise plans for that.

Operator

operator
#14

We're now going to proceed with our next questions, and the questions come from the line of Thomas Singlehurst from Citi.

Thomas Singlehurst

analyst
#15

Yes. I'm going to ask about the guidance as well. So I apologize. I suppose the reason it's a topic of interest is because it is a change. We're trying to work out why you've changed that formulation of it, whether you're signaling some sort of disconnect between revenue and profitability. So I would say, I'm conscious, it's the third time you've been asked, but at the same time, it would be great to sort of understand what the logic is or the rationale and whether you're trying to intimate that there'll be any change of the margin profile, either at the group level or for the group -- for the divisions? That was the first question.

Francois Riahi

executive
#16

So maybe I'll start with that and then -- so on that, what -- there's no signal in that. It's just that we thought that now that you know us a little bit better quarter after quarter, we could have, I would say, more, I would say, yes, some guidance which was simpler and just with one figure. But again, I clearly stated that all our outlook targets were unchanged, which means that we still expect the EBITDA margin to remain stable. As you can see in our results it's marginally up, it's marginally down, but it's really very stable in terms of level, and we expect it to continue. So there's no signal at all in terms of the connection of revenues and EBITDA. As I said before, really, we manage the company very much on EBITDA. We could expand the revenues far more, but with less profitability, et cetera. We are focused on the EBITDA and the value creation, but we don't expect any disconnection between revenues and EBITDA. Did you have second one?

Thomas Singlehurst

analyst
#17

Yes, yes. A couple actually. The second one, I mean, I think I know the answer because I think we've asked you before. But I'm surprised that you aren't seeing any impact at all from the sort of writers' and actors' strike in the U.S. last year, at least a hangover in terms of delays in negotiation and financing. Can we -- is it just because you've got very low exposure to the U.S. and that isn't a massive feature of the outlook?

Francois Riahi

executive
#18

So, actually, we are a little bit disappointed not to have any impact from the strike because we thought that could have a positive impact on us because we have a business in the U.S., but we are focusing only on unscripted. Actually, in content production and distribution, the U.S. is our largest country in terms of revenues, but it is also one of our smallest market share because the market is huge. But we are focusing on unscripted because the scripted market in the U.S. as a business model that we don't like, which is not the same as what we do in all our geographies, which is a risky business model with a high level of CapEx and high risk on the success of the show. Of course, high reward when the show is great and so on, but that's not the type of financial profile we like. So we have 0 activity on the scripted in the U.S., which explains why we haven't been impacted by the strike in the U.S. and we don't expect any impact in 2024 result on our business in the U.S. But again, we are quite active in the U.S. on the unscripted part, which has not been impacted. So that's why I was saying at a point, we hope a little bit that there could be a high increase in demand for unscripted because of the strikes. But as the market was not good globally on that, we had no impact at all, neither positive or negative.

Thomas Singlehurst

analyst
#19

Perfect. I've got -- I probably already got 2 more, but that's the final 2. I'll do them one after the other. So on a more positive note, the Olympics, I mean, is there -- should we expect anything specific associated with that on the life experience side? I presume it's probably less of a focal point for the betting businesses. I suspect more difficult to bet on Olympics sort of related sports. But the -- and then the -- yes, the final one was on consolidation. I mean, obviously, you chose to pass on All3Media. I don't know whether you feel comfortable giving us some sort of insights into why you weren't interested in that asset and whether that tells us about which direction you're going in terms of bolt-on M&A and M&A more broadly.

Francois Riahi

executive
#20

Okay. Thank you so much for this questions. On the Olympics, yes, we will be active on the closing ceremony of the Olympics through Balich, but it shouldn't move the needle of the whole group. It's just one show and it's not a big element financially. But of course, what is interesting for Betclic is it's very busy year with sports events. So we had the African Cup Nations in January and February, which has been for us a larger even than usually because now we are in Africa, and especially in Ivory Coast where it was -- where it happened. We have the Euro 2024 in June and then the Olympics in July and August. So, clearly, Euro is a larger -- it's a bigger event for Betclic, but the Olympics shouldn't be neglected because, first, you also have some sports that can work with sports betting, like football. NBA, maybe will play with France and some other stars will pay with other countries. Tennis, a little bit, maybe rugby or things like that. But it's not the full Olympic, but we are a company that accompany sports, our clients are sports fans. So the fact that there are the Olympics in a country where we have a strong presence, which is France, should be a good momentum. Maybe it will prevent us from being able to move because of the traffic, but that shouldn't be reflected in the figures. So the Olympics would be a positive element in 2024. About All3Media, as I said, we are a natural consolidator, so when an asset is for sale in our industries, we look at it, and it was the case for All3Media. I would say that it's positive to see that this sector is seen as very attractive. There were a lot of bidders, and we understand that the price paid for it has been quite high, which is good. It shows that content has a lot of value. After that, I would not give details why we are not, I would say, why we haven't pushed further on this acquisition.

Sophie Kurinckx

executive
#21

Except that we always had a very disciplined financial approach, and we kept this.

Operator

operator
#22

[Operator Instructions]

Caroline Cohen

executive
#23

Adiya, we have a couple of questions from the Internet. Can we take them?

Operator

operator
#24

We just have another questions from phone line that just registered.

Caroline Cohen

executive
#25

Yes, sure.

Operator

operator
#26

And the questions come from the line of Sabrina Blanc from Societe General.

Sabrina Blanc

analyst
#27

I have 2 questions from my part. The first one is mainly on Betclic. The first one is regarding the evolution of your market share. You mentioned in your press release that you have a -- you are quite happy with that. But can you come back in more detail by country or by type of games? And the second question is regarding the evolution of the market. And do you see any acceleration of the M&A in this gaming market following the Kindred acquisition, for example?

Francois Riahi

executive
#28

Thank you, Sabrina. So we are not disclosing our market shares, but our positions in the different countries, we are a leader in France, we a leader in Portugal in sports betting. For example, we are leaders in sports betting in France, but we are not leader in poker and definitely not in turf, for example. So -- and in Portugal, we are leader in sports betting and we are a leader also in online casino. In Poland, we are #3 in sports betting. That's the only thing which is authorized there. I said that we are #2 in Ivory Coast. We are in the top 10 in Germany, in Austria. So when we say in the top 10, it's not in the top 5. And Italy, we are a small player. So that's our positioning. For your question about the market acceleration, I don't know that there is a large deal which could happen, which is the acquisition of Kindred by [indiscernible], but we will wait and see what antitrust authorities are going to say about it because we don't think it's granted that monopoly on a large part of the market can buy a company doubling its market share on online sports betting in the country where it has its monopoly without being an issue in terms of antitrust. But that's for the antitrust authority to say if it can go through.

Caroline Cohen

executive
#29

Adiya, if there is no other question on the line, we have one question on the Internet.

Operator

operator
#30

Yes. Please go ahead and take the webcast questions. We have no further questions on the phone line.

Francois Riahi

executive
#31

Sorry, just another comment about the deal you mentioned. We note with interest that the French state could become the main shareholder of the European leader in online casino, while still not authorizing online casino in France. We think it's an interesting development.

Caroline Cohen

executive
#32

Adiya, can we take the question from the Internet now?

Operator

operator
#33

Yes, please. You can go ahead and take your webcast question. We have no more on the phone lines.

Caroline Cohen

executive
#34

Okay. Sure. So we've got one question regarding content production and distribution. So Banijay saw sizable growth in life experiences and other revenue in Q4. Could you please explain what the source of this growth? Should investors view this revenue growth as a onetime or recurring?

Francois Riahi

executive
#35

Actually, it's linked with the Balich acquisition in Q4. So the Balich acquisition is recurring, it will stay. But of course, there will not be the same increase after that. But this is the integration of Balich revenues in FL Entertainment.

Caroline Cohen

executive
#36

And then the other question was still regarding content production and distribution, do we give an outlook for '24 organic growth at Banijay?

Francois Riahi

executive
#37

Again, we gave an organic growth guidance on adjusted EBITDA entertainment level, but we keep our view and our outlook on how our 2 businesses should evolve in the next years.

Caroline Cohen

executive
#38

Thank you. Adiya, I think that there is no other questions, so we can conclude the call.

Operator

operator
#39

Yes, please. We have no further questions from the phone line either. I hand back to you for closing remarks.

Francois Riahi

executive
#40

Okay. So thank you very much for your attention, and see you soon or talk to you soon. Thank you.

Caroline Cohen

executive
#41

Thank you.

Francois Riahi

executive
#42

Bye-bye.

Caroline Cohen

executive
#43

Bye.

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