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

Welcome to the Banijay Group Full Year 2024 Results. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Caroline Cohen, Head of Investor Relations. Caroline, please go ahead.

Thank you, Nadia. Good morning, and welcome to Banijay Group's 2024 Full Year Results Webcast. This is Caroline Cohen, Head of Investor Relations. 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 recording of this call will be accessible in the coming days. Your speakers today are Francois Riahi, our CEO; and CFO, Sophie Kurinckx-Leclerc. First, Francois will present our key financial and business highlights for the full year. Sophie will then cover the results in more detail before Francois provides some concluding remarks. And then we'll open up the call for questions. Over to you, Francois.

Thank you, Caroline. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for this presentation. As you may have seen in our release, 2024 was a very strong year for Banijay Group with double-digit revenue and organic adjusted EBITDA growth beating guidance. Content production and distribution performance was solid in a challenging market with a strong finish to the year, thanks to major show deliveries in Q4 as expected. The contribution from streaming clients is improving every year and is now well over 20% in revenue terms. In live events, 2024 was very active in terms of acquisitions as we continue to consolidate the market and enrich our global offering. Online sports betting and gaming results were outstanding in 2024 with market share gains across all activities and geographies. Finally, our leverage is in line with our midterm guidance, while we also successfully repriced and refinanced much of our debt with maturities extended now from 2028 to 2032. We will also come back in this presentation on the results over the 3 years of public reporting, 2022, 2023, 2024, as we believe it illustrates the midterm performance of Banijay Group and demonstrate that 2024 was a great year for us but not an isolated one. So looking now at our key figures for the full year. We delivered record revenues and profitability in 2024 outperforming every metric. Group revenue is EUR 4.8 billion, up almost 11% year-on-year. Adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 900 million, while adjusted net income was up almost 30% to EUR 418 million, adjusted EBITDA, up by over 20%. We maintained a high level of cash conversion at 83% and reduced our leverage to under 3x, which I recall, it is our midterm outlook on this metric. In line with the previous years and our guidance of at least 1/3 of adjusted net income, we are proposing a dividend of EUR 0.35 per share, which is a 35% payout ratio. Let's move to business highlights for 2024, now starting with our content production business. In our content production business we are, as you know, the #1 TV producer in the world, but we are always moving forward and innovating. In 3 years, we doubled our revenues with global streamers, which makes us the #1 content provider for these platforms globally with 2024 the launch of 80, 8-0, original shows with streamers, which is ahead of anyone in the industry. Every year, our ability to create new shows is unmatched. Over 250 new non-scripted shows and 17,000 hours of content were produced in 2024. People usually think of us as the global leader for unscripted shows, which is of course true. But we are also the #1 European producer for scripted content, and 2024 has been a very successful year in terms of our audience and which is the most important for us, but also awards. Scripted content is becoming more and more central in our relationships with global streamers. Just a few examples, Culpa Tuya is Prime Video's biggest-ever international original launch. Like Water for Chocolate was the #1 Spanish language content on HBO MAX. And in Italy, we created three out of the top 5 global scripted titles on Netflix. The scripted business is also like, a scripted one, a repeat business with returning premium scripted titles, including second seasons for SAS Rogue Heroes and Marie-Antoinette, while their first seasons have already been sold to 180 and 149 territories, respectively. Our scripted activity can also rely, like the unscripted business, on long-lasting brands, like Peaky Blinders. And we are preparing for its come back as a movie on Netflix in 2025. We also -- we are also building new brands with, for example, House of Guinness also in preparation on Netflix. The quality of our scripted business is very strong, which is reflected in both record audience figures and recognition on the international awards circuits. These elements ultimately drive the distribution revenues like for SAS Rogue Heroes and Marie-Antoinette, for example, renewals and customer confidence in what we do and is also rewarded by many international awards. On the distribution side, we are also the #1 Studio Worldwide for Global Format Launches with 6 shows in the top 20 traveling TV formats and 6 in the top 20 new formats. I think it's important to underline that the number of traveling formats is increasing -- is always increasing, and it has increased by 33% in the past 4 years. So we continue to successfully capitalize on our iconic super brands through new adaptations and spinoffs. In parallel, we are also creating and nurturing the super brands of tomorrow like the Never Ever Met, the #1 original series on ad-supported cable in the U.S., and hopefully Building the Band, for example, on Netflix in the U.K., which should be an important launch in 2025. In terms of using technology in our production and distribution business, we are currently investing in AI tools to leverage and maximize value from our biggest assets, which is our content catalog. This is why we have started a cloud migration process in partnership with base and AWS, supported by the integration of new AI forward technology. This is the largest cloud migration in the industry. This will create a new unified global content hub that connects our worldwide production companies and offers a huge range of new features and capabilities. These changes will transform workflow from -- for our talent, freeing up their time to focus on creative work. But we also see great potential in this project to maximize monetization of our global IP, reduce production costs, and create long-term value for the group. This year, the group continued, as I mentioned earlier, it's consolidation strategy, enriching its catalog of IP via targeted acquisitions. In content production and distribution, we acquired Caryn Mandabach Productions, which complements our rights on Peaky Blinders as well as Procidis, the French entertainment production company and producer of the animation franchise, Once Upon a Time. In these two cases, it's about IPs, brands that we can exploit in many ways. Through our Hyphenate Media Group, a JV with Eva Longoria, we also acquired the U.S. scripted production company, GloNation, which target the Latin American segment. In live events, the acquisition has been also very active. This January, just so in 2025, and in the first days of 2025, we acquired LOTCHI, the French producer of immersive life experiences and creator of LUMINISCENCE, which combines complex architecture with video mapping, light and classical music to create unforgettable out-of-home experiences in churches. LOTCHI sold 380,000 tickets in France in 2024. And with the support of Banijay teams on the ground in the different countries, it's extending its offering globally and currently to symbolic monuments in Spain and Germany. Finally, The Independents have been further consolidating its leadership in the events and communication market for the global fashion and luxury industry with six strategic bolt-on acquisitions in 2024 including, for example, Lucien Pagès, which is an iconic brand in the fashion industry. The Independents is more than ever perfectly positioned to help global luxury and fashion brands in their events and experiential marketing. And in July, we increased our stake in The Independents to 14%, 1-4%, and as you know, we have the option to become the majority shareholder next year. So the figures of the Independents are not reflected in the figures that I'm presenting. Moving now to Banijay Gaming, which had an outstanding year, once again, thanks to very proactive strategy. Enhancements to our offer drove a significant increase in unique active players. And if you come often to our presentation, you know that I always mentioned that this is the most important KPI. This is a KPI which is reflecting the commercial development and our goal to increase number of players. So UAPs are up 37% year-on-year. And if we look back in 3 years, the number of UAPs has doubled to reach 1.9 million users per month. Market share gains across all activities and geographies resulted in revenue growth of 45% was that in a fully regulated market and the best standout in responsible gaming. This year, we benefited from a very busy calendar of biannual and quadri-annual events like UEFA EURO 2024 and to a lesser extent, the Summer Olympics and Paralympic Games here in Paris, which drove record-breaking sports-betting volumes. But it was also a very active year for recurring events, boosted in particular by the new Champions League format, which is proving to be very exciting for the fans. Our sports betting business is very much linked to the growing appetite for sports content, and Betclic is an important partner for major sports leagues and associations in our different geographies. In 2025, there won't be any Euro World Cup, but there will be the first edition of the FIFA Club World Cup in June. So it's a new event that can be also interesting. And as I mentioned, the Champions League has been -- is very important for the football fans. As a reminder, online sports betting and gaming is a tech-driven business, and this is very important and this is also a very important commercial tool. To give you an example, which is a 2025 example, in January, during the final round of the Champions League first part, there were 18 simultaneous games. And this day was -- we saw the highest volume ever for our platform. It was also the case for the other platform. We exceeded the volumes of our previous record, which was the 2022 World Cup Finals. And among the different platforms, our platform was the only one to be available at any time for the players, which means that we attracted a lot of new players, actually just 19,000 new players in just 1 day, which is of course our record, because -- also, first because, of course, our brand is attractive, but also because our tech was the most efficient during this day. I think it's a very telling element to explain how the quality of our tech explains our overperformance and our capital -- our market share gains year-after-year, quarter-after-quarter. This day in January, we were the #2 free app downloaded in France, just after DeepSeek, and this was the week when DeepSeek was delivered. We were ahead of ChatGPT. So we have been very active and we are always very active on improving our tech. And we have delivered in 2024 a new version of Betclic sportsbook app, which proved to be very efficient and very attractive for our clients with a cutting-edge user interface, 250 innovative new bets as well as personalization tools for enhanced player experience. In December, an important milestone for us, the group also launched a new proprietary poker platform. We were using an external platform for poker, and we developed in-house a proprietary poker platform using the latest technologies with the aim of increasing player engagement through an enhanced offering and platform adaptability. So the figures are not so much in 2024, because we launched it in December, but we are very happy with the launch. And the benefits will be seen in 2025. And it's a new, I would say, a demonstration of our capacity to improve constantly our sales. That's all for me for now. I'll be back at the end with some closing remarks before we open the line for questions. Over to you, Sophie.

Thank you, Francois. So let's start with group revenue for the full year, where we delivered 10.9% growth at constant exchange rates to reach EUR 4.8 billion. There was further acceleration in Q4 with 14.8% revenue growth, as we already mentioned in the previous calls. Thanks to this growth in revenues and our content expense, we can note a positive scissor effect leading to adjusted EBITDA growth of 21.8% -- 21.6%, sorry, at constant exchange rates. We also saw a 160 basis point improvement in our adjusted EBITDA margin to 18.7%, which can also be explained by the greater contribution from Banijay Gaming, which has a higher margin. At the group level, total external and personnel expense rose by 8.2%, driven by higher sports betting taxes and marketing expense at Banijay Gaming that were proportionally less than revenue growth. Personnel expense decreased slightly at Banijay Entertainment level, thanks to an improvement in margins in both production and distribution driven by the cost-saving efforts in selected geographies. Looking next at our P&L. LTIP expense were down slightly and are in line with the group's trajectory that this will average around 10% of adjusted EBITDA over the duration of the incentive plan. The increase in depreciation and amortization is driven by greater recruitment of third-party distribution advance in our content production and distribution business. The other finance costs mainly include the change in the fair value of financial instruments, including hedging or mainly Put and Earn-out debt and currency losses and gains. Increase in income tax expense is driven by Betclic's strong results over the period. As a result of the above, adjusted net income rose by 29.3% to EUR 418 million. Let's go now to results by business. Starting with content production, distribution and live events, where revenue was up slightly at constant exchange rates. The traditional seasonality pattern and bias towards H2 was amplified in 2024, as already underlined in recent quarters on both content production and distribution, which resulted in 6.7% growth for the last quarter. The significant number of major scripted show deliveries in Q4 resulted in 6.2% growth in Content production for the last quarter. This seasonality was also strong in our distribution business, and this grew by 33.2% in Q4, driven by higher sales of third-party finished tapes and sales of in-house scripted productions. In Live events, the jump in revenues reflects robust growth from brand licensing and the full year contribution from Balich Wonder Studio, which has been included in our financial statements since Q4 2023. Let's look at Content production and distribution earnings and cash flow next. Adjusted EBITDA was up 6.6% at constant exchange rates, a good result in a challenging market environment and despite softer demand for live shows in Saudi Arabia. This was driven by our solid revenue performance as well as our continued efforts to optimize our cost structure by implementing more lean structures in countries such as the U.S., U.K. and Germany. CapEx increased slightly due to an increase in distribution advances at Banijay Rights. The change in working capital is attributable primarily to a higher level of scripted productions that remain in development and will be delivered in 2025. Increase in income tax paid reflects the Banijay consolidation as 100% of income tax due in Saudi Arabia relating to fiscal year 2023 has been paid early 2024. Adjusted free cash flow conversion was 77%. Next, let's look at online sports betting and gaming, where we had a record year, thanks to the busy sports calendar that Francois has already mentioned. Revenue was up 45.4% at constant exchange rates with strong growth across all divisions. Sportsbooks' strong performance was driven by continued unique active player growth of 37% compared to 2023 as well as a new version of the Betclic app, which enriched the user experience. In online casino, poker and turf, there was also strong momentum in all geographies, thanks to new games, products and features. And in December, we launched a new proprietary poker platform, as Francois already mentioned. Banijay Gaming continues to deliver very high profitability and free cash flow. As you can see, adjusted EBITDA was up 49.6% at constant exchange rates to EUR 380 million, and adjusted free cash flow conversion remain high at 91%. Adjusted EBITDA margin was up 80 basis points, thanks to favorable sports results, combined with an increase in betting volumes as well as a limited increase of personnel costs compared to revenues. The increase in CapEx is mainly due to a higher proportion of IT costs that were capitalized, linked to the release of the last version of the Sportsbook app and the launch of the new poker platform. Looking at cash flow generation. Adjusted free cash flow at group level reached EUR 745 million. This resulted in a cash conversion rate after CapEx and lease payments of 83%, in line with our guidance for the year. The group's net debt stands at just under EUR 2.6 billion. The increase in net financial debt mainly reflects acquisitions, including the increased stake in The Independents as well as dividends paid and interest. Exceptional items this year include VAT payments by Betclic for the years 2018 to 2023 for an amount of EUR 138 million, and there were also additional FX impact on cash and debt. Overall, we continue to have a very strong cash position and significant undrawn secured credit lines. This year, we also successfully refinanced much of our debt and maturities are now evenly spread out between 2028 and 2032. Our activity is shown on the slide. Overall, our average cost of debt in 2024 was 6.5%. That's all from me. I will now hand back to Francois for some concluding remarks.

Just one word on that. Thanks to our repricing, the average cost of debt will be lower in 2025, lower than 6%, I think, Sophie?

Yes.

So thank you. Let's talk about our guidance and outlook for 2025. So in 2024, we improved once again everything that makes Banijay Group a global leader in the entertainment space. We delivered a double-digit growth with high level of profitability and high cash generation. We strengthened our leadership positions in all of what we do, production, distribution, live online betting, and we demonstrated once again our capacity to act as a consolidator in fast-growing segments of the market. We have now delivered 3 years of financial results trajectory since our listing back in 2022, and I want to take a moment to look back on what we have achieved. We have consistently delivered results ahead of guidance, and this year is not different. Our asset-light business model, characterized by a high level of cash generation, has enabled us to achieve a high level of organic earnings growth to invest in M&A and reward our investors by beating our dividend payout targets. Additionally, we have lowered our level of leverage and benefited from repeated demonstration of confidence from the credit market through refinancing and repricing. This consistent performance means that we have delivered strong growth as a group since 2021, both in revenues and earnings. In the past 3 years, revenue is up 37% while adjusted EBITDA, our preferred metric, is up 50%, which means a CAGR over 3 years above 14%. So yes, 2024 is a strong year, ahead of the average, but not so far from the average. This growth reflects consistent profitability across both of our business lines. And I think, it's good to take this step back because, for example, in our production business, the margins are evolving a little bit in the year depending on the mix between distribution, production, et cetera. But if we look on the past 3 years, the content production, distribution and live events business has delivered a CAGR of 7% in both revenues and earnings, so with a stable margin. Thanks to our capacity to sell our high-quality content to all distributors. In online sports betting and gaming, revenues have seen a CAGR of 25% over the past 3 years, while for earnings, this stands at 29%, a fantastic result. I also wanted to highlight the group profile as it stands today and will stand tomorrow. Since listing, our profile has evolved, notably by adding a significant Live production business with strong potential. So here, the figure includes for the demonstration, the revenues of The Independents to show that if we consolidate next year The Independents, we are talking about the Live business, which accounts for almost 20% of our revenues for a business we started 2 years ago, 2023. Looking ahead, our priorities for 2025 are to continue pursuing our growth strategy centered around three key pillars: first, driving growth and deeper synergies between our businesses by creating opportunities from our vast portfolio of intellectual property, technology and talent. This means continuing to deliver high-performing comebacks, adaptations and spinoffs as well as further increasing our penetration with streamers and completing our ambitious digital transformation project. This means also tapping into our world-leading IP to create new events through the recent launch of Banijay Live Studio, a new level dedicated to creating cutting-edge out-of-home entertainment experiences. We are currently working on two of our IPs, Black Mirror and Once Upon a Time, to produce live shows. And this is for 2025, and this is just the beginning of using our IPs for the Live business. It is also about leveraging on our growing pace of unique active players and our new poker platform that we mentioned. The second pillar is nurturing creativity to produce innovative and engaging content that resonates with diverse audiences. This means continuing to craft the next generation of iconic super brands and continuing to leverage our platform to engage our players through new product features and gamification. We are constantly innovating. And this is, of course, a very important element for the future. The final pillar is our ability to seize opportunities in the fast-growing, fragmented global entertainment market to consolidate our businesses. We believe that our track record in terms of performance and our capacity to integrate acquisitions, to generate synergies positions us as a clear consolidator. We are ready to seize opportunities as they occur. Now a word on a topic which is more painful, the French tax changes that will affect our sports betting business starting in 2025. In 2025, as part of the increases in public levies in France, the social security financing app provides for higher social security contributions applicable as of July 1, 2025. The tax increase applies to gaming activities in France, and the impact in H2 2025 on Banijay Group's 2025 adjusted EBITDA is expected to be EUR 20 million, roughly 2% of full year adjusted EBITDA in 2025. As a group, we deem the new taxes as anti-competitive and will contest them with the relevant authorities. In fact, they are creating a tax regime with a huge gap between off-line sports betting operated as a monopoly and online sports betting. Nothing justifies such a gap, which is only benefiting one company. And this company is the company where the French state is the largest shareholder. We believe this is unfair. It is likely that this tax increase will be partly mitigated by the fact that it reduces the competitiveness of the market, because that's what it does, it reduces the competitiveness of the market, which may allow a reduction in marketing expenses and an increase in market share if small operators exit the market, as we think some will. But we have taken the conservative approach of not factoring in this effect in our figures. Thanks to the quality of our business model and the geographical diversity of our revenue, France being just one of our markets, we can absorb the negative impact of the tax and still deliver double-digit adjusted EBITDA growth in online sports betting and gaming in 2025 and beyond. Let's now look at guidance for 2025. For revenue growth, we expect mid-single-digit growth for Banijay Entertainment, and we believe that 2025 will be a stronger year in terms of demand from our clients. I think that's the general feeling in the market that you can see from our clients and from our competitors, and we share this feeling. And for -- and mid-teens for our gaming business. As a group, we are targeting mid- to high single-digit adjusted EBITDA growth, which includes the 6 months impact of the new betting tax increase in France and which was also our guidance at the beginning of 2024. And we expect free cash flow conversion to remain around 80%. Finally, I want to finish by announcing that Banijay Group will present group strategy and ambitions for 2025-2027 at our first Capital Markets Day on 16th of May. It is very important to us as our top priority remains to improve the liquidity of our stock to allow all our shareholders to benefit from the value creation of their company. We look forward to seeing you there. That's all from me. Thank you for your attention. Back to you, Caroline.

Thank you, Francois. So it's now time for questions. Please, Nadia, operator, can I ask you to open up the line?

[Operator Instructions] We're going to take our first question, and it comes from the line of Conor O'Shea from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Congratulations on the good results. Just a few questions from my side. First question on the gaming side in Q4, on the margins. They seem to shift up a lot. Were there any unusual factors in that? Or is it the new -- the launch of the new app that is driving higher margins? That's the first question. Second question on the live events, I saw a double-digit decrease in Q4. I think you mentioned -- Francois, on the call, softer demand in Saudi Arabia. Is that a factor of sort of timing events driving that decline? What could we see in 2025? And then last question, just on consolidation in the Content production space. Obviously, been some speculation about ITV and All3Media and so on. What's your own stance with regard to potential further consolidation in European content production?

On your first question, yes, we have a good margin in Q4. It's two elements. First, Q4 has been a very, very good quarter commercially with the Champions League that I mentioned, especially very -- we really, were not surprised but positively surprised by the reception of the new format by the fans. It's clearly a success. We also had some positive sports results. So I would say the overperformance of the Q4, it's probably evenly with these two element spread between the two, a better performance and also sports margin. On your second question, I don't know, Sophie, if you want to...

Yes. So you're right on the Q4, the part on the live events was a little bit lower. But first, the comparison basis in 2023 was strong, also coming from Balich. As we mentioned, we have a softer demand in events coming from Saudi Arabia, as we already noted during the call for Q3. We expect this to come -- well, this demand to come back in the future. We are confident that this business will go back to the previous level of activity that they had before in the future.

Is that a significant part of your -- of Balich's business, Saudi Arabia, in terms of proportion of revenue?

I mean, in terms -- well, for the global group...

In normalized, let's say.

Yes. In the -- for the global group, for Banijay Group, this part is not very significant. So that's why we are not very worried about this. And clearly, we are very confident in the future.

Clearly, it's an important market for Balich. It's probably the first market for Balich. And of course -- and it was the most booming market in terms of demand for the industry. So it's a very positive element that Balich is a very leader in this market, because we expect it to come back. For example, you have the 2030 a global exhibition in Saudi Arabia, et cetera. So we believe it's a hiccup, what happened in Saudi Arabia. But of course, during 2024, the effort has been to diversify Balich's activity from Saudi Arabia, so it will be less dependent on Saudi Arabia, and that's why we expect in 2025, a good growth for the Balich activity. On your last question, we are not going to comment rumors or market speculations. But what we believe is that there's a real trend on the consolidation of this business, which makes a lot of sense. And in a way, we are the demonstrator of the relevance of the consolidation. Because clearly, the consolidation that we have led with on demand in 2020, which made us the leader in the market, is a success. And we see that the scale matters in this industry more and more, because we are working more and more with global clients like Netflix, Amazon, et cetera, which are giants. And if you want to work well with giants, you have to be big. You cannot be small. So there's clearly a trend which makes sense. And of course, as mentioned in our presentation, we believe we are a natural consolidator and we want to be part of this consolidation, of course.

And the next question comes from the line of Annick Maas from Bernstein.

So my first question is, can you give us an idea of the phasing of growth for the Content segment in light of your full year guidance? My second one is, you have this line in your press release which says that you have increased demand from streamers. There's a strong pipeline of new shows. And then in your presentation, you showed that you have 250 new and non-scripted shows, but there are some from the old format adoptions. So my key question is really, can you give us an idea of how much of your growth is driven from your existing library in content? And how much is driven by these new formats that have been launched over the last year? And then my last question is on the Capital Markets Day. Should we take that as a signal that a liquidity event is coming very soon rather than not?

I must say, I haven't understood your first question. So Sophie, if you understood the question, please. But I didn't get it fully.

In fact, we gave the guidance of mid-single digit regarding the revenue growth on Banijay Entertainment and Live.

No, I understood that, but typically, your quarters are quite volatile. So I was wondering, do we expect most of the growth coming in Q4? Or how do you expect this growth to develop over the year?

What we expect is to have the -- well, as we had in the future, we always had a seasonality of our revenue in this business. We still expect to have such a seasonality. However, what is important to notice that in 2024, the seasonality was stronger than the previous years, and we don't expect such a strong seasonality. We expect to come back to a kind of normal seasonality.

Yes. But still with more -- in our business, we will deliver more shows in the second half than in the first half year. So that will not change. On your second question, I think, clearly, our business, we have a part of repeating the shows and we have part of new shows. I think the breakdown in our figures is that 2/3 of what we do is recurring and 1/3 is coming from new shows. That's really the pattern every year. So the creativity is always fueling. So sometimes what we create, you don't have repeat. It stops after the first season, being a scripted show or an unscripted show. Or it's successful and come back. And then, it's something where we have -- at the same time, a very good view on our revenues, because of this recurring shows. And we are also -- we are always adding which is, of course, part of our growth. In your question, depending on the years, the mix between production and distribution is a little bit different because, in fact, it's true to say, and it was the case this year, that when our clients reduce their investments in acquiring new shows, then we sell more finished tapes and the distribution business is higher. So that's also one reason why our EBITDA growth has been better than our revenue growth. We have -- as Sophie was saying, part of it comes from [ savings ], cost, but part of it is also the mix between production and distribution, where the distribution has a better margin. And that's what we saw also in previous years where the demand is softer, then the distribution is higher. But for 2025, as mentioned, we expect a demand which would be higher. Your third question on the CMD, we -- to organize a CMD will not really makes sense if it was not in the context of increasing our liquidity, because the number of our existing investors is not that important. So the link that you are mentioning, of course, is natural. So yes, there's a link between the fact that we set up a Capital Markets Day and the fact that we want our liquidity to increase, and to increase, it will require some events.

And the question comes line of Priya Viswanathan from Societe Generale.

Hope you can hear me well this morning.

Yes.

Okay. I just want to check in terms of Banijay Entertainment, more specifically, how comfortable do you feel in terms of getting the leverage under 4x by September 2025, as you had specified before at the time of the initial things -- set of notes. Is that something that you're comfortable with? And more generally in the context of content M&A, I know my colleague asked the ITV question earlier. But how do you view, leverage and in the context of having to grow in size and the consolidation trajectory that you think is the right way to go. And do you feel like a temporary disruption to the leverage strategically is bearable in the context of longer-term growth targets?

Thank you. Sophie, the first question.

So on Banijay Entertainment, if I understood well, your question is how much we are comfortable to deleverage below 4x after -- well, in 2025, by the end of 2025. So as you could see, we generate -- we have a very good cash generation and we plan to have still a very good level of cash generation in the next year. So we feel quite comfortable to deleverage below this target that we gave previously.

And for your second question, of course, our high level of cash generation is an asset to be able to maneuver in case of interesting M&A. We are not refraining us from M&A for financial results because we have today the financial flexibility. So during the Capital Markets Day, we'll give more perspective on the outlook, how our guidance of midterm outlook could evolve. But today, our midterm outlook is that we aim at below 3x. It doesn't mean that we would restrict ourselves to go beyond 3x temporarily because of M&A, if it makes sense, if it's creating value, et cetera. So we feel today that we are ready to seize opportunities also in terms of financial flexibility.

[Operator Instructions] Dear speakers, there are no further questions from the audio lines. Now we will proceed with annual written questions. Caroline, please go ahead.

Thank you, Nadia. Yes. We have a few questions. The first one is on Betclic, whether we can elaborate on conversation with the French government over betting taxes and whether we expect this to be the norm in France, in which we anticipate any further tax increases.

Thank you. Well, so yes, we had conversations with the French government about the taxes, because we try to convince them that we could understand that they wanted to increase the taxes, and that's their power and their monopoly of legitimate violence. But the point is that we were advocating for increasing taxes evenly on the different types of gaming and gambling, which has not been the case. So -- and there were different versions in the parliament, et cetera. So the parliament at the point in time agreed on increasing the taxes evenly and then it was changed. We don't know really why. And in this change, the increase for online sports betting is 4.4 points, and for off-line sports betting, it's 1 point. So it doesn't make sense. It's completely unfair. And so for us, it's a state and to -- partly state-owned monopoly. And so we are going to Brussels and use all the legal levers we can have, clearly also to Brussels, because we believe that's it's a state-owned. Given the level of French taxes is, by very far, the highest in Europe and the world on this. And clearly, the increase is significant. So it will have an impact on the market. As I mentioned, some operators are going to leave the market. So we cannot predict that there will be no additional taxes. But today, it's not discussed and we don't think there will be additional taxes. On the other hand, the previous government opened discussions around online casino. Because today, people are playing on the illegal platforms. The discussion has not been at this stage reopened by the new government, which is of course, busy on a lot of different fronts. And we see if this discussion is reopened in 2025, and we hope it will be the case.

And then there is a last question regarding our dividend, '24 about the timing of the payments and the speed between Banijay Entertainment and Betclic.

I don't understand the question about the split. Banijay Group is a company which pays the dividend. But Sophie, for the timing...

The timing, we expect the same kind of timing in 2024, which means before the end of June 2025, this dividend should be paid by Banijay Group N.V.

Thank you. So that's it from the web. So I would like to hand it to Francois. Is there other questions, Nadia?

Yes, there are no further questions on the audio lines. [Operator Instructions] Dear speakers, there are on no further questions from audio lines. Please proceed.

Thank you. So I would like to hand the conference over to Francois Riahi for any closing remarks.

No. Thank you very much for attending, and we hope you all come to our Capital Markets Day, where we will give you some more views on the future and the outlook of our company.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. Have a nice day.