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

Good morning to all here in this room or in live on the webcast. Thank you very much for joining us for this very important day for Banijay Group. I'm Francois Riahi, I'm the CEO of the group, and it's my pleasure and honor to welcome you today for our first Capital Markets Day since our listing in 2022. This morning, we are going to, first, with Stephane Courbit and Sophie Kurinckx-Leclerc, present to you our company, who we are, where we are coming from, our performance of the past years, our transformation over the years and where we are heading to. It should take less than 60 minutes. Then we will have -- you will have on stage 4 fantastic talented and successful entrepreneurs. They are not managers. They are entrepreneurs. They have built and are building businesses of an incredible strength and size. They will come to you and explain their businesses. We'll have Marco Bassetti, who is the leader of our content production business and live experiences. We'll have Nicolas Beraud, the founder and leader of our online sports betting and gaming business. And we'll have Isabelle and Olivier Chouve, the founders of the independents that are going to present the fantastic company they have created and grew. To start with, no one is better positioned than the Founder and the Chairman of the group, an entrepreneur himself, not the least successful to use another statement, Stephane Courbit. He will present to you who we are and where we come from. But I forgot to say, of course, after the presentation of our business leaders, the room will be opened for questions, both from the room but also from the webcast. Don't hesitate to write down your questions in the course of the morning, and we'll try to take as many questions as possible. So Stephane is going to introduce the group, who we are, where we are coming from. But as we are an entertainment company, we are going to start with images and music to show you who is Banijay Group. [Presentation]

Thank you. Thank you, Francois. Thank you to be here today. So I will let Francois to explain and to develop the business. But if I may, I would like to tell you a little bit about the genesis of Banijay. In France, the television was privatized for the first time in 1987. So the business of private producer was born at the end of the '80s at this period. I had just arrived in Paris. I didn't know anything, anyone, but everything had to be built in this industry if you were dead. That means 4 years later, I created my first production company. I was not 30 years old. That was the beginning of this adventure. If I tell you this, it's not to be arrogant, but it's to tell you that this profession has changed a lot since then. The same boy who arrived in Paris today with the same energy, the same desire, the same ambition could not retrace this path. This business has become a real industry now. To start with nothing, it's now not possible. Today, you need size, you need IP, you need diversification and global geographical presence. And to come back to the history of Banijay in 1994, I created the first company that would become Endemol France. We sold it in 2007 to start from scratch a second life with Banijay. Banijay was created in 2008 with the support of 3 family shareholders. They are no families, the Arnault family and the De Agostini family. We start with nothing, no teams, no format, no office, no name, but with the entrepreneurial spirit and the commitment we have made together to provide EUR 200 million in this business to build a new leader in the content production. At that time, we start and we're only making unscripted program, only for linear television and only in France. And at the same moment, the Internet was revolutioning the sports betting in England by moving it from offline to online. We immediately thought that this business was going to become entertainment and not gambling. So we also decided to go for it and invested in Betclic. Nicolas Beraud will develop the business a little bit later. Here again, in 2007, Betclic was a start-up with smaller offices, less than 50 employees, a few million of revenues and only dotcom. Since then, as you can see, we had 15 years of permanent growth. We multiplied our revenue by '24 from EUR 200 million to EUR 4.8 billion with a CAGR of 24%. This last 15 years, we have expanded into nonscripted program, but also to scripted programs from linear television, but also to streamers and digital, in sports betting, but also in sports documentary and sports ceremony and more recently, in content live production for brands and major events. The common factor in all this activity is DNA. All our businesses share the same DNA. When we are producing Asterix for Netflix, it's the same show we could have produced for BBC. When we are launching on YouTube or catalogue, it's the same business that's selling series to ITV. When we are producing the ceremonies for the Olympic games, we are producing shows. Even when we are producing a fashion show for Dior, we are selling to LVMH instead of TF1, but it's an entertainment show. And when people are playing on Betclic, they are not gambling, but gaming around sports. They are not looking to become rich, but looking for experiences and entertainment. Banijay is above all a know-how, a universe, it's to produce emotion. Banijay is also a people business, to name just a few, Alexandre de Betak, Marco Balich, Steven Knight, Cris Abrego, Bear Grylls. In their category, they are all immensely respected talents and with Isabelle, with Sophie, Francois, Marco and Olivier and Nicolas, we are only the conductor of a fantastic team of talent. This business is really a talent business. And we can say that Banijay talents are amongst the best in the industry. As you can see, Banijay is today the world's leading audiovisual producer, the world's leading producer of streamers, the world's biggest catalogue, the leading producer of major ceremony, the last 2 years, the biggest growth in the sports betting industry. But in fact, it doesn't matter. The most important thing is the quality and the volume of what we create. For instance, if one of you wants to look only at Banijay existing catalogue, just existing catalogue, you would have to look at your screen continuously 24 hours for more than 23 years. In addition, we are creating 50 new hours of program every day. That means more than 17,000 new hours every year. We are also creating 4 news event with the public every day. That means more than 1,500 every year. We also manage EUR 4 million to EUR 5 million of sports bet every day. That means EUR 1 billion bets are registered each month on the Betclic platform. Banijay is a huge factory of entertainment. It's a huge machine for creating emotion. Banijay is also M&A with proven experiences of 15 last year. The track record is more than 45 bolt-on acquisition, more than EUR 100 million of synergies, earn-out mechanism to align interest between sellers and Banijay and also a very strict discipline with an average multiple paid of 7x. For example, the story is funny. I have already explained Banijay was created in 2008 from scratch. And in fact, why did we start from scratch? Because we had just failed to buy Endemol, which was owen by Telefonica at this time. In 2007, Endemol was sold and we had failed because we are not ready to put on the table the multiple that our competitor had proposed. Ironically, for different reasons, in 2020, Endemol was back for sale. This time, we succeed, but at a price quite significantly lower than in 2008. So Banijay is, therefore, structurally a consolidator, but not at any price. And why not at any price? Because we all have skin in the game. Not only Marco, Nicolas, Olivier, Isabelle, Sophie or me, but more than 20 manager of Banijay are also shareholder of Banijay. We are all aligned on value creation. Banijay is also one of the most established entertainment groups in the world with over 150 active companies who produce in 33 countries, but we're delivering entertainment all over the world every day. For 2024, Banijay figures are EUR 4.8 billion of revenue, EUR 900 million of EBITDA, 30,000 employees. And since the listing over the last 3 years, we always overperformed our guidance. We had more than 50% growth of our catalogue. We doubled the number of our active using player, we had 50% growth of EBITDA, and we deleveraged the company. So you will have understood Banijay is a unique entertainment company. I leave the floor to Francois, who is going to develop the business model. Thank you.

Thanks, Stephane. I will now present briefly our business model, starting with content production and distribution. As you may be aware, our content production and distribution business is the largest and the most global in the industry. It relies on 130 labels, producing content in 23 countries and supported by a distribution arm selling their content as well as third-party content in 250 territories. Since the acquisition of Endemol in 2020 that Stephane just recalled, this operation tripled the size of our operations. And since then, we lead the industry. But it's still a fragmented industry. There is still room for consolidation. Stephane said it, we have also the largest catalogue by far, more than 23 years of content. Every year, we are adding 2 more years of content to this catalogue. And this catalogue is clearly an unrivaled asset. The new AI tools give us new opportunities of monetization of this asset, and Marco will tell you more about this in its deep dive. These are some of our iconic IPs. The screen is not big enough to put all of our IPs, of course. But I will name just a few, Master Chef, Survivor, Big Brother, Peaky Blinders. It is true that you, like anybody else, have some special connections with some of our IPs. This is our treasure. We are not and we don't want to become a producer for hiring. IP is and will remain at the heart of our business model, and we keep on creating new IPs every year. Our business model in content production and distribution bears very little downside risk. We sell our products to distributors, mostly broadcasters and global streamers today on a cost-plus model. So we have 2 type of content, scripted and nonscripted. Scripted are the series and the fictions and nonscripted is all the rest, games, talent shows, documentaries, reality. For nonscripted content, which is 75% of what we produce, it is fully financed by the client. For scripted content, it is partly financed by the client, and it is complemented by distribution advances and tax credits. But for all what we do for both types of formats, the financing is agreed and clear before we start to spend. For these reasons, we are not active in U.S. scripted and neither on theatrical movies because these formats generally bear more risk, more financial risk. On top of our production revenue, we also benefit of distribution revenue, which have a higher margin, and this is really thanks to our IPs. This business model has been performing for decades. It is very resilient and has proven so, and Sophie will put figures on all this. On top of the very low risk of our business model, I would like to emphasize on 3 things: IP, recurrence and granularity. First, IP. I already mentioned that. It's very important. 80% of our catalogue is made of our own IPs, which is the base of our business and provides us the scale to be relevant also to distribute other people's content who do not benefit from the same size. The second is recurrence. 70% of our production every year is not a new product. It's a new season of one of our scripted or unscripted shows. And some of our shows stand at their 40th or more season. This provides a very high level of recurrence to our revenues and the other 30% come from new shows fueled by our creative people all around the world that Stephane mentioned some, and we have, of course, many more in the 23 countries where we are operating. Some of these new shows are going to perform very well and have other seasons and create new recurrent streams of revenue. This is the virtuous cycle of creativity and IP. The third is granularity. Granularity is about the scale we have reached by acquiring Endemol. Our geographies are very diversified. We are described as a French producer. France is a very important country, and I see h [ Alexandre ] here, but we have -- France accounts for 11% of what we produce. So very diversified in terms of geographies. We are very diversified in terms of genres. The top 20 shows only account for 20% of our revenues. No single show accounts for more than 2%. So we are not dependent on any show anywhere in the world. This is one illustration, among many others of why scale matters in this business. And indeed, scale matters not only in terms of financial performance, but it matters also in terms of creativity. And in this field, too, our leadership position in the industry is very clear when you look at these rankings. We are by far the most creative content company, both in unscripted and inscripted, which is a little bit least known. And if you combine scripted and non-scripted, our closest competitor is 50% below us. This is driven by all the talents Stephane mentioned earlier and many others in 22 countries. This is a talent business because it's a creative business. And if you are a talent in this industry, who do you want to work with? The leader. The last word I want to add to introduce our content production business is agnosticism. We have always been agnostic in terms of distribution. We sell our content to distributors that reach the public. Thanks to this agnosticism, we have been able to seize the opportunity of the development of the global streamers. In the past years, the Netflix and Amazon of the world have been fueling the growth of content spend. And in the past 4 years, as you can see on the chart, we have increased tremendously our revenues with global streamers, and we have become the largest provider globally as we are for linear television. The same can be replicated with other distribution players like YouTube, for example. And Marco will come back on that on the part of the distribution, which are going to fuel the growth in the years to come. Now let's move to online sports betting and gaming. Our business is sports betting. It is not gambling. 80% of our revenues come from sports betting and the rest is really cross-selling with sports betting. Our DNA is to provide entertainment for sports fan, and our business is mostly driven by passion for sports. In sports betting, our business is best-in-class as it is 100% online, which is the fastest-growing and the most profitable segment in the industry, 100% regulated, which means we don't have any legacy illegal business, and we are focused on responsible gaming. 100% top 3 position and even top 2 on our core markets. And these top position means more profitable business given the fact that this industry is largely a fixed cost business. And we are driven by a top-class proprietary platform, and Nicolas will come back on it, putting us in a good position to consolidate the business. The online sports betting market globally presents very attractive growth prospects, notably in Europe, where we have built strong positions and in Africa, where we have decided to expand more recently, but it's true for the rest of the world. It is an incredible opportunity to be well positioned in such a growing market. And this growth is first driven by demographics. In very simple terms, this is a new industry. And in majority, it is used by people below 35 years old. The penetration rate of online sports betting among the people below 35 years old is 4x higher than it is for the older generations. So the replacement of generations increases mechanically every year, our players' base. So the growth of this activity is driven by the increase in number of players, not the increase in the amount spent by player, which is very healthy. This demographic dynamic will continue to play for decades. Another very important trend of the industry is how the world is becoming regulated. When we started 15 years ago, it was mostly a green or black activity, except for the U.K., Australia. It is now mainstream in most markets, contributing importantly to public finance and with very large markets opening up today like Brazil, for instance, this provides us with great opportunities to extend our footprint with limited investments as we recently did in Africa and that we can replicate in other geographies, too. Our commitment and our know-how is to operate in highly regulated markets. This strategy has proven to be the right one and now the playing field is the world. In addition to the demographic growth I just mentioned, we are also benefiting from a shift from offline to online. The online market is deemed to double in the next years. And as a pure online business, 100%, we are among the ones benefiting the most from this effect. This trend too, is here to stay. We have built, and Nicolas will give you more color on it, strong positions organically in several European countries, namely France, Portugal, Poland, where we hold top 2 positions. We have also decided to expand in Africa, where there is a young population with many sports fan and have recorded a first success in Ivory Coast and are looking for others. Unlike other companies, we don't have a collection of small market shares in a lot of markets. We are very concentrated on our core markets. Why? Because we believe that in this industry, you need to be in the top 3. Why? Because I said it before, it's largely a fixed cost business. If you want to operate in online sports betting, you need a good IT platform. You need to have some marketing spend on the market to have your brand known. And if you have a 30% market share or if you have a 5% market share, it's not the same. It's not the same profitability. And you still -- if you are not competitive on your platform, then you're losing market share. That's why if you are in a top 3 position and if you have good products and good technology, you can invest in your products, you can ensure you have the best products, and this comes with gaining market share. That's why also when we will consider M&A in this industry, the question we will always have will be, can we be the top 3 player in this market? Because that's, for us, our mantra on combining commercial performance and financial performance. I was saying we have gained market share. We are enjoying very healthy growing markets. And on top of that, we have a track record of gaining market share in all our markets and all our products. I think these charts are telling. We are gaining market share everywhere because we have superior products and technology. And Nicolas will give you more color on that. And he will tell you also that in the same time, we have reduced the acquisition cost of our clients. So our overperformance in terms of market share is not explained by an overspending, but obtained, thanks to better user experience and superior technology, sorry. And because of this very good user experience, we have a strong capacity to keep our clients. Our customers are very loyal. As you can see on this chart, every year, we attract new players, but we also retain happy customers that like our products, which explains how we have been able to double our number of players in the past 3 years. It also demonstrates, as for our content business, a strong resilience of our revenues as around half of our revenues are generated with players acquired prior to 2022. And I was saying that these trends are here to stay. We are not at all at the end of the growth of this market, given the demographic effect, which will still be here for several decades, the shift from off-line to online and the relatively low level of penetration in the markets where we are operating compared to more mature geographies like the United Kingdom, for example. And as mentioned also, we could also add new markets to fuel the growth, and I'll come back on that. Finally, let's say a word about our most recent business, the production of live experiences. We decided to enter in this activity recently in 2023 for 3 reasons. One, it's a fast-growing business where people are ready to pay high prices for quality content. Two, it is very close to what we are already doing. As Stephane was mentioning, it's about producing creative content on a B2B basis with a cost-plus model. It's things we know well. Three, it is a very fragmented industry where we believe we can replicate the success we had in the TV production consolidation. In just 2 years, we managed to take leadership position in segments that we have identified where we want to position ourselves. There are 3. First, the ceremonies with the acquisition of Balich. We are already a global leader in this field. It is very close to what we are doing in TV production, producing creativity at scale for new clients that are also buyers of entertainment, FIFA, Olympic Committee, Cities. The 31st of May, around 9:00 p.m. I don't know what you are going to do. I'll be in front of my screen, watching Paris Saint Germain vs Inter Milan in the final of the Champions League. The ceremony of this, which will be watched by hundreds of millions all around the world will be produced by us. This is just an example among a lot. Second is the luxury brand events. I don't detail more. Isabelle and Olivier, who are the pops of this. I will present to you the [indiscernible] independents in detail. And finally, the scalable experiential entertainment, which is interesting because it's a part of the live experience production where -- which is driven by IP and where we can bring our know-how and expertise on building IP and distributing it globally. This is the most recent segment we are developing, and Marco will give you more details. But if you think of our IP catalogue and our capacity to deploy IP globally, it's clear that it will be an important growth engine for the years to come. As I said, we started in this field only 2 years ago, but we are already a leading player in this fragmented industry. If we had consolidated the independence in 2024, the live experience business would have accounted for 18% of our revenues, which is not insignificant at all. And as in our 2 other businesses, we are already very international and prominent in what we do. So we are quite happy with our development in this field so far, and we believe it's a very promising start and an activity we want to develop. Sophie is now going to come back on our strong financial performance, which is resulting from these good commercial developments. Sophie, please.

Thank you, Francois. So as Stephane and Francois just gave you insight on who we are and what we do. Let's take a few minutes on the financial model and performance of Banijay Group. So things to remember are summarized on this page. First, we are at scale and grow at double-digit pace. Second, we present high margins and cash flow conversion, thanks to this scale. As mentioned by Francois, our business model is a derisked business model across our activities as content production and distribution is a cost-plus business when Betclic is 100% in regulated and online market with leadership positions. We are very focused on long-term value creation from the beginning of Betclic and Banijay. And of course, we want to be active in consolidation in a fragmented market, and we proved we know how to succeed in such consolidation movements. So first, the scale. As shown by Stephane in his introduction, we are now almost a EUR 5 billion company in top line. Our track record speaks for itself. We have been delivering double-digit revenue growth since 2021, and we always delivered what we promised despite evolving market conditions. This is still the case for the first quarter 2025, as you will see a little bit later. This growth is underpinned by a strong organic performance. First, with a growing catalogue of IP and broadening monetization on the entertainment and life businesses, as Marco will show you with Black Mirror, for instance. And secondly, with continuous market share gains on the gaming activities as previously demonstrated by Francois. In terms of profitability, our adjusted EBITDA comes at EUR 900 million with faster growth than top line at 14% on average annually since listing, which makes almost 50% of EBITDA growth in 3 years. We have been able to consistently beat our financial guidance in the past. As you can see here, we exceeded our guidance in 2022 and 2023 for all the key metrics. And in 2024, again, we exceeded the top range of our EBITDA target by 6% and delivered on our free cash flow conversion, payout ratio and leverage guidance. One thing to note is that our leverage would have even been better if we exclude the VAT payment done for EUR 138 million in 2024 on sports betting activity in France that, of course, we are still disputing in court, and we remain confident in claiming back this amount. Just for you to know, to be conservative, we have not assumed recovering this VAT in our projections, even if we believe it is not due. So we grew from EUR 3.5 billion revenue in 2021 to EUR 4.8 billion in 2024. This translated into a double-digit growth with an 11% CAGR from 2021 to 2024, of which our organic growth was 8% CAGR. We have been able to achieve such a high growth, thanks to: first, a sustained growth in content production and distribution, notably following our acquisition of Endemol in 2020, which gave us the scale required to absorb downturn and uncertain market environment, allowed, of course, by a relentless creativity of this group as well as our growing business with streamers. Second, an exceptional growth in online sports betting and gaming, almost doubling revenue in 3 years, fully organic as we have the best technology and platform, allowing us to gain market shares every year in all our markets. Nicolas, of course, will present you later how this technology allows us to achieve this tremendous growth. This growth is, of course, also reflected at EBITDA level, combined with a higher profitability, which led to a CAGR of approximately 14% over the last 4 years. As you can see here, we are highly profitable and our robust EBITDA margin has increased in recent years from 15% in 2019 to 19% in 2024. This highlights the strength of Banijay Group's business model and its scale. This high profitability is indeed the #1 unmatched industry-leading adjusted EBITDA margins across Banijay Entertainment and Banijay Gaming. Our superior margins are testimony to our superior operational efficiency and highly successful business model. It is also the result of our leading positions in all our markets. This high profitability means also, of course, a high cash generation with a free cash flow conversion rate around 80% every year and an operating free cash flow conversion rate, including working capital and income tax around 70%. Three key items explain this high cash generation. First, our model is characterized by limited CapEx requirements, which are mainly purchase of third-party formats and shows and some IT capitalization for our gaming platform. We have limit -- secondly, we have limited capital -- working capital requirements at Banijay Entertainment as our shows are always fully financed and largely prepaid before going on production and of course, a structurally negative working capital at Banijay Gaming level. To keep these high metrics, this is the third item, we invest in our people, implementing incentivization and retention plans, which are correlated to value creation and align the interest of our key people and talent on shareholders' ones. And regarding this last point, we have a long-term approach when it comes to investing in our people. A key priority for us, as underlined by Francois, is to attract and retain key managers and talent. Therefore, we have put in place 5 to 8-year long-term incentive plans involving around 250 people around the group. The main principle of this is to share the value creation of the group. Consequently, our long-term incentive plans are all value creation driven and aligned with the scope of responsibility of employees so that they can be fully responsible for their compensation. Let's come back quickly on our first quarter results that confirms a very good momentum. So for the first quarter of 2025, we reached a global revenue of EUR 1.84 billion, which represents -- and an EBITDA of EUR 191 million, which represents a growth of respectively, 7.8% and 16.8% compared to the same quarter last year. Here again, a very good performance. This allows us to present an adjusted net income of EUR 81 million and an adjusted free cash flow of EUR 150 million, meaning a 79% cash conversion rate. As far as the leverage is concerned, it amounts to 2.9x at the end of March 2025, stable compared to December 2024, which is a very good result, as you know, the seasonality of the business. As you can see here, again, we are well on track to realize our guidance 2025 as we present a double-digit adjusted EBITDA growth in all activities. The content production and distribution business grew by a mid-single digit in Q1 2025, thanks to a solid commercial performance. The first quarter has been very active on life business as we created Banijay Life Studio to leverage on our IPs. And we acquired LOTCHI in January to make it grow, thanks to our international platform. The seasonality is unfavorable to Balich as show deliveries will be more important in the last part of the year, but we are very confident in the robustness of this business. The online sports betting and gaming business still new very strong growth in the first quarter with a mid- to high double-digit growth, thanks to favorable sports results and a very good outcome of the poker platform that has been launched in the last quarter of 2024. All this momentum in the first quarter and of course, our growth over the past years enable us to confirm our 2025 guidance we announced during our full year 2024 results. We expect to continue to deliver strong growth in 2025 and still expect a mid-single-digit revenue growth in Entertainment Live and a mid-teens growth in gaming, in line with our recent track record. We expect also a mid- to high single adjusted EBITDA growth for the group, including the tax impacts arising from the increase of betting tax at Banijay Gaming in France. We will continue to deliver strong free cash flow of around 80%. Now I will give you an update on our extra financial performance. As you know, ESG is important for all of us. First, let's start with governance. Let me highlight how we designed it to satisfy the highest standards. Our philosophy in terms of governance is to promote long-term value creation as we always have been doing -- as we always have been doing, sorry, since Betclic and Banijay creation 15 years ago by leveraging on the diversity of knowledge and experience of our Board members. To do so, we have a Board of Directors that follow the industry standards and even beyond. First, a significant presence of independent members as they represent 45% of our members, gender diversity well represented with 5 women at our Board, a split between Chairman and CEO and 2 Board committees shared by independent members. The controlling shareholder does not have the majority of directors in the Board and several significant other shareholders are sitting at this Board, like, for example, Vivendi, SBM or Fimalac. As far as ESG is concerned, we go beyond the governance code as the Board supervises the ESG initiatives of the company, first, through its HR and ESG Committee; and secondly, with the Audit Committee for the CSRD rules. Now let's focus on our sustainability and environment initiatives. We are committed to develop best sustainability practice in all what we do. In content production and distribution and life, we implement sustainable initiatives such as avoiding waste, encouraging reusable materials in our productions, using sustainable transports, et cetera. These initiatives are encouraged by the fact that some subsidies are now granted if we satisfy some environmental criteria in our productions, but also by our clients that require more and more productions, including these initiatives. In online gaming, we make sure we do not waste energy and IT energy costs, mainly thanks to our cloud optimization. These initiatives have been recently rewarded as, for example, in 2024, Marie-Antoinette was won Ecoprod label for Season 2 and Balich obtained a certification ISO for its event. Last but not least, we want to emphasize that our gaming platform is responsible, and we encourage for all players awareness, prevention and make all our efforts to protect gamers. For that, of course, we are more and more supported by AI, data and external partnerships. Our strong results also all come down to our core strategic positioning of acting in regulated markets, which means not gray or black and online where we can better track activity, frequency or intensity and profile. But of course, I will let Nicolas explain to you later how the culture of responsible gaming is into the core -- is built into the core of our business. With that, I'm now leaving the floor to Francois to give you more insights on our strategy for the years to come. Francois?

Thank you very much, Sophie. As you can see, we have strong foundations and dynamic tailwinds. What's next? In a few slides, I would like to share with you how we see the next years. Our ambition for Banijay Group is to become the unrivaled pure-player content powerhouse across the entertainment industry. And we believe our financial performance, our capacity to combine growth and profitability and our track record in terms of M&A put us in a great position to achieve this. Our growth will rely on 3 pillars: a strong level of organic growth in the markets where we are operating with the capacity to overperform the market as we usually do; two, the development of synergies between the businesses, which will reinforce organic growth; and three, the capacity to consolidate our industry in all our businesses. Let's start with the organic growth. In content production and distribution and live events, we upgrade our midterm guidance to mid- to high single-digit organic CAGR. How are we going to achieve this? First, the trend of the past years will continue. The demand for content from broadcasters to us should remain stable. But the one from streamers will continue to grow, and we plan that from 22% today, the streamers -- revenues coming from streamers will represent around 30% of our revenues in 2028. Second element is an increase in the monetization with social media, especially YouTube, which is today a nascent business for us. And third, the live events should grow faster than the TV production business, and so it's going to boost the growth of our content business, notably fueled by using our own IP. Marco is going to give you more color on all these growth pillars in a few minutes. In online sports betting, we are also upgrading our midterm organic CAGR guidance to low to mid-teens. This reflects the healthy growth we are expecting from our core markets and our capacity to continue to gain market shares, thanks to our superior tech. We also want to expand to geographical footprint by expanding greenfield into newly regulated markets. And this greenfield development is not taken into account in this organic growth figures. Still the same people than in the past 4 years that prepared these projections. I think you have been able to measure their conservatism. So we are very confident in the organic growth of our business for the next 4 years. And we can also leverage more synergies in our group by 2028. We expect to generate EUR 200 million annual revenue synergies across the group. This comes by generalizing the experiments that we have started, which are to use IP content to produce live shows. We gave the example of Black Mirror and Marco will come back to it to a larger extent and also using the content IP in gaming and in online casino. It would also come by collaborating more with the Independent as Isabelle and Olivier will present it. The potential for synergies within our group is far bigger than this amount, but we believe it's already a good target to start with. I would like also to add that we are very confident in the organic growth of our business also because we are not directly exposed to macroeconomic, geopolitical uncertainty or far less than other industries. And I think it's important also to underline today. Third pillar, I have insisted already on consolidation. We believe we are at a special time for our industry. As other industry, the entertainment industry is consolidating, and we clearly want to be part of it. Stephane illustrated that we have a strong track record of creating value through M&A. Let me share with you how we see the potential in M&A in our different businesses. In the content production and distribution, we are not looking anymore at buying small producing companies to expand our capabilities as we did in the past. We have already the right setup and are able to produce any type of format in any geography where we want to do it. We could consider still acquisition of IPs like what we did in 2024 in acquiring the Peaky Blinders right, we did not own already or acquisition of catalogue for the same reason. But the big topic today for this business is large consolidation. Of course, this is not something you can predict and put in your plan or figures, but we believe that all the players in this industry see the merits of the consolidation and for a very simple reason. 10 years ago or 15 years ago, all the clients of this industry were local clients, national broadcasters. Today and even more tomorrow, our clients are global giants like Netflix, Amazon, Google, Apple. So there is a real advantage to being the biggest player to serve better these clients and also to be able to resist them. Disadvantage to be the bigger, biggest is ours today, and we have no intention of releasing it. On the contrary, we would like to increase it. So we are very keen to look at large consolidation if the opportunity occurs. This would come with significant cost and revenue synergies that we know how to extract because we have done that in the past. As far as live events are concerned, we see ourselves as a consolidator of the sector through bolt-on acquisitions, notably by the independents, and they will give a view on what they have achieved these past years or directly by Banijay Live Studio as we just did with LOTCHI. And not to mention the most obvious one, the call option we have on the independents in 2026. Again, on live events, I say it again, we believe there's a golden opportunity to consolidate the fragmented industry as we did in the TV production. When it comes to online sports betting, in the past years, we have really focused on our core markets and making it right on our core markets. But today and by 2028, we want to also expand by M&A. Of course, we could consider small acquisitions in new regulating countries to access quickly one market. But we would also be ready to acquire a large market share, good quality business in a country where we are not present to diversify our geographical footprint and leverage on our tech capabilities. There is no doubt that M&A is an intrinsic part of our story. It is how the group has been constituted, how a large part of the value has been created, and we see tremendous opportunities in this field in the year to come. Stephane said it, we'll always be disciplined when it comes to the acquisition price and as importantly, to the quality of the business we acquire, and we will be only driven by value creation. So I mentioned the 3 pillars: organic growth, synergies, external growth, but the figures I'm presenting here as our midterm financial targets are only based on organic growth. Of course, M&A is not something you can include in a plan. As already mentioned, we are revising upward our midterm outlook on our businesses, which allows us to target a high single-digit to low double-digit EBITDA CAGR for the group on the next years. It was 16% on the first quarter, only on organic means. Our cash flow conversion will remain at the same high level over 80%. We are adding a new metric, operating free cash flow, which includes not only CapEx and leases, but also working cap and taxes at the level of 65%. We keep unchanged our generous dividend policy of distributing at least 1/3 of our adjusted net income, given our high cash generation, which allows us to distribute while still being able to invest in M&A. In the medium term, we target to continue the decrease of our leverage to 2x. The time line of this decrease will depend on the M&A opportunities that will occur. If we were not doing any M&A by 2028, which I doubt would be the case, our leverage would be far less than 2x in 2028. Our LTIP is a very important element of the model, Sophie told it already. We will remain an entrepreneurial group and will always prefer to empower talented people rather than imposing a bureaucracy on them. On the next years, based on the midterm projections I just shared with you, this will result as a 7% of adjusted EBITDA cash out in average on the next 4 years, which means an average of EUR 80 million a year. If you think of a long-term normative guidance, for example, if you're an analyst and for the sake of your models, based on a 3% normative long-term growth rate, it would be reduced to 5%. But the spirit of the group is we hope to pay as much as possible as our LTIP is completely aligned with value creation for all our shareholders. With all this only on organic development in 2028 with no M&A whatsoever, we plan to add more than EUR 2 billion revenues in 4 years, leading the group to EUR 7 billion revenues and to add more than EUR 300 million EBITDA with an EBITDA superior to EUR 1.2 billion. Of course, you can count on us to be more ambitious and accretive additional revenues and EBITDA through M&A. As an illustration, it is important to remember that we have an option to become the majority shareholder of the Independent in 2026. In a few minutes, you will know more about it as Isabelle and Olivier, the founders of the group will introduce to you the company they are leading. Exercising this option would add EUR 1 billion additional revenues in 2028, so up to EUR 8 billion revenues for the group. It would be accretive for the pace of growth of the content production business and with the same type of margin. If we raise from the market the amount of equity needed to exercise this option, which is between EUR 300 million and EUR 400 million in primary, this acquisition would come with no impact on our leverage in 2026. Now I've spoken too much. I leave you with, I said, 4 incredibly talented and successful entrepreneurs. It's my privilege to work with them in this group. And I'm very happy that they come to present to you. And I'll tell you, as I see, and this is my genuine view, they are really the best in the world at what they do. So I'm sure you will have a very interesting presentation. Thank you very much, and I leave the floor to Marco.

Marco will tell you, Marco will explain big stars for me. So let's see. I'm Marco Bassetti. I'm Banijay Group CEO. And I started like Stephane and I set up my company -- first company in early '90. We know each other since the early Endemol days. He created the company in French, Endemol France, and I did the same in Italy. Then my -- after my experience in Endemol, we started to work together in 2013. Since we started the industry has drastically changed, many times, but some remain the same. The consumption of the content has only increased over the year and same the time spent on the screen. In Banijay, we have always outperformed the market with a constant growth, so -- which is the key factor of our success. We have always adapt our business model, and we shift to be a TV production company to a big global entertainment media company. I will explain more in detail about our growth drivers for the coming years, but before, let's play a movie about us. [Presentation]

So it's a market that continue to grow, fueled by a combination of linear TV, 5 billion viewers, more than 1.8 billion streaming subscription and an audience of over 5 billion on the social media platform. The landscape is fast evolving, but the appetite for content across all the formal platform has never been so great. Our historic partner, linear broadcaster remained a very solid client. Contrary to the popular belief, their content spending has remained very strong. Why? Because they have successfully embraced local streaming platform European leader like ITVX, RTL+, TF1 have reported very strong performance, showing their ability to stay relevant on a competitive environment. On top of this, Europe benefit from a favorable regulatory protect local law that can allow us, let's say, to be protected from retaining our IP from either commercial broadcaster and public broadcast. We have identified 4 main streams to drive our future growth. The first one is the global streamers. Today, we are proud to be the world's #1 independent supplier to global streamers. In '24 alone, we launched 80 titles across scripted and unscripted genre. Our scale make us as a natural partner for this platform. They are looking for a producer who can deliver premium adaptable content on a global scale, and that's exactly what we do. Here are just a few examples. Amazon Prime Culpa Tuya became their biggest ever international launch. Ripley earned 30 Emmy nomination and 4 wins. Peaky Blinders [indiscernible] film. And we have just launched Asterix animated series on Netflix. And as scripted, we have Temptation Island in U.S., Bear Hunt in U.K. and LOL in 11 countries. The segment is far from to be mature for us. In '21, streamer made up just 30% of our revenues. In '34, that figure rose to 22%. And by '28, we expect it to reach more than 30%, aligned with their growing share of global spending, which is projected to hit EUR 78 million by then. To help us to reach this goal, we are doubling down on the English-speaking market. We have a unique presence across our 4 key English-speaking countries, and we have leveraged that to meet the demand of global streamers in order to deliver higher quality content to this platform. Our second driver of growth is the opportunity to increase our position in social media and [ IVOD ] players. Let's take YouTube, for instance. He has become the world's leader largest broadcaster by audience and now demand same quality of content as traditional player, long-term premium production and more and more in demand. We have already built a strong digital engagement with global brands like Big Brother, Survivor and Master Chef. And we have a unique position in [indiscernible], operating with 32 channels and 550 stream syndicated. So we aim to triple our digital revenue in the next 4 years, but how we can make it? Artificial intelligence. We see AI not as a threat, but as a power of opportunity both to reduce cost and to boost creativity in postproduction. We are already using AI in editing, subtitling and dubbing and the creative side, AI tools help writers and producers to develop story faster and more efficiently. Our partnership with AWS and Adobe allow us to build a best-in-class infrastructure. This is a competitive advantage. Only player of our size can effort and successfully implement it. We will also provide support and asset to this platform to third-party producer. Third, we are expanding our IP into live entertainment, organic and not organic. Our IP are globally known that give us the chance to develop immersive experience with limited capital investment. We have launched a dedicated live studio division to build and manage this project. One exciting launch is the VR experience based on Black Mirror, premiering in London soon and then rolling out internationally. We have also -- we are also creating Survivor Adventure camp, Master Chef branded Cafe restaurant, M&A play a role here, too. Our recent acquisition of LOTCHI, which produced large-scale line liked and music show in cathedral is a great example, creating synergy in our entertainment operational footprint with our local company. This year, we are expanding to Spain and Germany with more country coming in the next year. Our fourth growth driver is sport, a booming market. In 2025, global spending on sports rights on sport is projected to reach EUR 64 billion. We have already a presence, very strong through documentaries, sport team and content. We have already produced documentary with star like Sergio Ramos, Peter Crouch, Max Verstappen. We have partnered with LALIGA in Spain and collaborated with the top cricket in India and U.S., we just launched a dedicated sport documentary label. To expand our ambition, we acquired Balich Wonder Studio, a global leader in live ceremony that deliver unforgettable opening ceremony at the last FIFA World Cup, and they are preparing the 26th Winter Olympic ceremony in Italy. To tell you more about this exciting intercession of sport entertainment, let me now hand over to Nicolas Beraud from Betclic.

Thank you, Marco. Who would have thought that one day a French man would simplify betting in England, the birth place of bookmakers. Yet that's exactly what Betclic set out to do when it was founded in 2005. Good morning. I'm Nicolas Beraud, Founder and CEO of Betclic. As a passionate sports and tech enthusiast, I launched Betclic 20 years ago with a clear mission to simplify and modernize sports betting making it more accessible, more intuitive and more engaging for all the sports fan. Today, that same vision continues to fuel our growth and innovation across Europe and beyond. Our DNA is deeply embedded in sports. From day 1, our goal has been to create a platform that makes it more fun for sports fan to follow the survivor teams and events. One of our favorite mantra is be the player. What does it mean? Each time we are building a product, a new feature, we put ourselves in the shoes of the player. We want to create the best user experience, something seamless and groundbreaking. That's also why we quickly made the strategic choice to go mobile first with a simple intuitive interface where placing a bet is quick and easy. To support this ambition, we choose to fully own our tech platform, building it on agile and scalable infrastructure. Before continuing, let's dive into the Betclic world. [Presentation]

As you have seen in this video, we are already a leader in tech and gaming, recognized as the leading partner in sports, and we have many assets to tackle our next growth challenges. Our small tip for this morning, if you want really to understand Betclic, you should download the app on all the app store and try the experience. More seriously, it's by trying our experience on the app that you will understand everything we are building and why today, we have one of the best product. And thanks to this tech and design choices, Betclic became a leader in the European sportsbook market, driven by bold pricing and a reliable, well-calibrated product offer. This philosophy extends to our poker and casino product, too, of course. And because we build our own tools in-house, our platform now offer an unmatched level of personalization tailored for each customer expectation. Of course, we are also investing in AI. Artificial intelligence powers real-time hyper-personalized promotional features delivered right in the product flow. To deliver this level of service, you need more than just ambition. You need cutting-edge technology platform and a top talent. At Betclic, we have both and more. At first, we have unparalleled proprietary platform. Over the past 5 years, we have rebuilt our platform from the ground up, leveraging the latest tech and a full cloud-based architecture to ensure high scalability and availability. We also have a culture of innovation. Our tech team based in Bordeaux works hand-in-hand with product, enabling fast implementation, continuous upgrades and a strong customer focus. The results speaks for themselves, 0 breaches, record high transaction, instant money deposit and a complete stable tech platform. Today, our architecture can support all our activities across brands, markets, regulation and continents with 0 downtime. We have maintained our leadership through constant innovation. In 2024 alone, we added 250 new sports betting market types and 350 new casino games. Innovation is in our DNA from the beginning. We were the first to launch several game-changing features, many of which were very quickly copied across the industry. We have here 3 examples. The first one, Player Props, but not just on the match outcome, which was in the past, the main bet where the players love to bet. Now they love to bet on individual player performances and even live. We propose -- we were the first to propose player props in live. It was really a global first. Insurance, get your stake back as another industry first, now used by 25% of our customers every month. Super Sub, so you bet on a gold score. And if it's a substitute, the bet carries over to the replacement. Launched in 2024, already used by 1.2 million of our players. So again, do not hesitate to test our new features. Our iGaming potential is still largely untapped. And yet we are already gaining market share and attracting crossover players from sports betting. As Marco mentioned, the monetization of the group IPs, Betclic can be one of the levers. We are developing original games based on the Banijay IPs, creating synergies with the group. Already, 20% of our iGaming revenue comes from exclusive content. Thanks to tech leadership, constant innovation and operational excellence, Betclic is now #1 in product across all its core markets, #1 in terms of download and #1 in terms of ratings. A perfect illustration about that is on the night of the January 29 for the football fan, you know which night it was. It was the last round of the Champions League group phase with a large multiplex with all the teams playing together. And we were the only platform with 100% uptime because it was a huge peak, a big amount of players try to bet during this night. We settled 35 million in bet in only 20 seconds with 0 issue. We have chosen from the beginning to develop all our tech platform and in particular, what we call ROX which is really the engine of our system, deeply integrated into our products, and it gives us an incredible advantage. First, we acquire customers more efficiently at lower cost. Secondly, we retain them longer, thanks to a laser focus on the customer journey. And third, we grow their value through strong cross-sell between sports betting, horse racing, casino and poker. I talked earlier about AI. AI is really in the center of what we are building today. AI help us to accelerate our performance across the board. And today, AI help us really first to optimize all the promotion and the user journey, but now we are going much further. We've built an in-house AI team with 100 people, experts dedicated to that, embedding intelligence at every layer of our operations. This will further boost our productivity, enable smarter feature or very innovative feature and drive the next wave of personalization. AI is also a major asset in our safer gaming policy. Entertainment is core to our mission, but always in a responsible way. That's why we only operate in locally regulated markets, as Francois mentioned earlier. And we combine human care with tech to protect our players. I will mention 3 things. The first one, once supported high-risk users reduced their spending by 57% within 30 days, thanks to all the action and all the processes we put in place. Outside the U.K., Betclic was the first international operator certified by GamCare. And third point, in France, our safer gaming plan has been validated every year by the regulator, [ ANG ] for the last 5 consecutive years. This is a key differentiator and a core part of our long-term strategy. As you've seen, we are leading in France, Portugal, Poland and Ivory Coast with a tech and product-driven strategy built for scale and resilience. So the question now is what's next? We have 3 pillars for the future. First, a massive potential growth in our existing markets, fueled by new features and higher penetration. Due to demographic changes, the gradual digitalization of leisure activities and the potential regulation of new games like online casino in France or in Poland, we could acquire 4 to 6x more new customers in our current markets. Second point, you've seen in the previous slide, we are gaining market share for the last 6 years on every market, on every product. And we believe that we will continue to do that, thanks to our superior product and our incredible customer experience. And last point, we are now ready to enter new territories. Thanks to our tech platform, thanks to all the expertise and the foundation we have built during the last years, we see clear opportunities in Europe, Latin America and Africa, both organically as we have proven in the past, we can do like we did in Poland or Ivory Coast and also, as Francois mentioned, via M&A. Over the past 20 years, Betclic has reinvented itself time and again and accelerated at the key moments. We are now fully equipped to take on what's next with bold ambition and strong foundation. Thank you for your attention. I now hand over to Isabelle and Olivier to present The Independents in more detail.

Thank you very much, Nicolas. Good morning.

Hi, everyone. It's a pleasure to meet you. We are Isabelle and Olivier Chouvet , 2 of the co-founders of The Independents. So the story began in Tokyo 23 years ago in 2002. We moved with Isabelle and our 2 children to Japan to launch our first event production agency. Two years later, we moved to Shanghai, where we have been staying almost 13 years, and we then expanded all over Asia. In 2017, we decided to do a buildup to expand globally and create the independent boutique agency network. We now like to show you a short film that gives you a glimpse of what we do, and we will deep dive after that. [Presentation]

So we began in 2017 with the acquisition of Karla Otto, a leading communication agency serving luxury and fashion clients worldwide. At the time, they were nearly 6x larger than our team in Asia with offices across Europe as well as in New York and Los Angeles. It was a perfect platform to scale our operation globally. From there, we were ready to scale. We acquired the Qode to enter the Middle East market and partnered with Lefty to gain access data and become fully data-driven in all our RFP. During COVID, we joined forces with Bureau Betak, the world-leading fashion shop producer, and that momentum led to an investment from Banijay. And over the past 2 years, we've completed 13 acquisitions, always best-in-class agencies without exception. And when considering new partners, we look at the size, reputation and a minimum of 70% shared clients. This ensure we can scale efficiently into new territories by leveraging our global network. And today, we now have 19 members in our collection.

As Olivier just explained, we started in 2017 with agency. Today, we are an ecosystem of 19 agencies and soon to be 20. As you saw, we started the group in Asia, but we understood very quickly the need for us to develop globally, first in Europe, but quickly in the Middle East and also in the U.S. Now our global footprint that you can see here is 1,200 experts in 16 offices, but we are operating on all key markets for our clients. What we are offering to them, our clients, is what is key for them. First, a global reach; second, a clear local understanding and extended capabilities. We present ourselves as an orchestra of specialist. We say that because as a collective, we have developed a system of complementary specialists with expertise across global markets while delivering the agility, consistency and efficiency brands need to operate today. We are the only one to bring globally end-to-end concept to life with support from brand strategy to design, to content creation, to experience, to entertainment, up to analyzing the impact on an ROI-based approach. This is a clear competitive advantage. Our model has no competitors. So you must be wondering how does it work? Well, while each of our company, the 19th company, they all remain independent. This is the name of our group, very important for us, but there are many best practices and ideas shared across the different agency. This is key, and this is why synergies works naturally. First, because, as we explained already, the interest of all our partners and founders are aligned. And also because they understood and they see very quickly the benefits of being stronger and more relevant together. Cross-collaboration between agency not only creates synergies, they not only contribute significantly to our growth, which I know is very important, but it also opens the door to lots of diverse projects that would have never happened. It provides also our creative talents with valuable opportunities to expand their horizon and stay engaged within the group. Maybe an example for you to better visualize what we do. Our consolidation of the best creative experts we just presented has enabled us to create synergies for all our clients. An example here, H&M. Last year and again this year, we are supporting their global relaunch. Six of our agencies have been working together to deliver a consistent and global series of events, but also pop-ups, also pop-ins, celebration across 8 different cities, aiming to release a new spirit. Some example of celebration. Last year, we did a complete takeover of Times Square in New York. And recently, we did a giant concert in L.A. Maybe you want to give a few numbers?

So in 2024, our revenue exceeded EUR 700 million. We've grown sevenfold since 2019 before COVID, a clear sign of how much the world came to value being together during the pandemic. Live experiences have never been more in demand between 2021 and 2024, we increased our revenue by 4x, driven both organically, 45% of our growth and through strategic mergers and acquisition. We have a proven and solid business model. A single fashion show can generate up to 300 million views at just a fraction of traditional advertising cost. Our clients also rely on us to create very important client events and best book experiences that build strong brand engagement. So our model is highly resilient. We have long-term relationship with our clients, managed in every market by local entrepreneurs who have joined our network. There are also extremely high barriers to entrance in our industry. Luxury clients can't entrust their major shows to newcomers. It's simply too strategic, too high stakes. In that sense, we are to luxury like brand -- live brand experiences, what KPMG is to the finance world. You need the signature. It's about trust, reputation and proven excellence. We operate on a cost-plus basis with stable and well-understood margins, and we are geographically very diversified. From Japan to Brazil, we've produced events across the world, supported by strong embedded local teams.

And with the best clients. As Olivier was saying, we have long-term relationships with clients. Our business is highly recurring, thanks to retainers and repeated events like Fashion Weeks that you see in Paris, for example. And as the collective has grown, we now work with all the large group in the fashion and luxury space from LVMH to Kering, Richemont, Hermes, Chanel, to only name a few. Here on this board, you can see Cartier, which is a great example of how a client initially handled by a specific agency in one region has been expanded to the rest of the group and across geographies to deliver larger projects, transforming a local market relationship into a global collaboration. We started working with them with Cartier in the early 2000 in Japan and then in China. Now we group with independent partners and key agency to offer the most current and consistent offer to them worldwide.

We are the only global consolidator in our field. We've brought together the very best agency into one group. And while we may face local competitors in individual markets, we have no true global competitors. And that matters because our clients increasingly need global solution to meet their global challenges. Just as the major advertising groups consolidated in the '80s, we are now doing the same within our vertical.

So I hope this has given you a clearer picture of what we do at The Independents. I hope you understand our venture that we started in Tokyo in 2002. But now we would like to share with you a few more words about our strategic relationship with Banijay as we feel this is only the beginning.

We recently announced the acquisition of Terminal 9, the producer behind several successful IPs like Inside the Dream, documentaries created for brands such as Bulgari, Dior and Mugler, with many more currently in production. We are committed to continue to invest in this space, expanding our capabilities globally in documentaries, long-form content and series. This move will also unlock powerful new synergies, allowing us to launch formats and activate them all across markets through our unique blend of content and live experience expertise. We believe there is an enormous potential in this space. And with Banijay, we are the most legitimate platform to create it, develop it and lead it.

Thank you very much for your attention. We would like now to hand over to Stephane for some concluding words. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Isabelle. Thank you, Olivier. Sorry, we were a little bit long, but to conclude in some words before the Q&A session. So what is the future of Banijay. So people are going to consume more and more entertainment, more screens, more events, more sports, more live. In content production, there is a strong demand, 230 billion spent expected this year. Content will remain king, but Banijay is the leader in this world covering all genres, scripted, nonscripted animation and documentary. In live experiences, every day, there is more and more demand for big live events. The brands now wants to address directly content to their customer. The market is usually fragmented. It will happen on the live experience industry, what happened in TV production 20 years ago. In sports, sport is everywhere, game but also ceremonies, documentaries, shows, bets, sport is now an integral part of the world entertainment offers. The sports betting market is going to double in the next 5 years. If you have a good tech, a good team, a good market share in your territories, you will win. So why are we here today? We face an industry change and consolidation will never happened before in the history. As you have seen, Banijay is a solid and resilient company with very good asset, IP, technology talent, entrepreneurial spirit, huge catalog, M&A, year-on-year growth, level of profitability, cash conversion and all the key manager are incentivized and aligned to the company's performance. There is also a full alignment between all shareholders, including me. For instance, Banijay Group represents the majority of the asset of financial of my personal company. So we want to keep growing, and this is the very reason why we listed the company, and we want to leave the second phase of Banijay this time as a public company. Thank you very much.

So we're going to receive a question. So maybe just 2 first things to introduce. Isabelle and Olivier have a hard stop at noon as they have to fly in one country where they are -- and so if you have some questions for them, please, if you can prioritize them. And the second thing is we will take -- we will first take the questions from the room, but we will take also some questions from the webcast. So don't hesitate to address your questions to one of the participants. Otherwise, I will allocate the questions that you have. Thank you very much.

My name is Annick Maas from Bernstein. I have 3 questions. The first one is on Life. You've mentioned you don't have a competitor, a direct competitor. So who do you think is your closest competitor? And a second one for you straight away. I think one of the way forward is doing bolt-on M&A in your space. So maybe also for Sophie. Are the multiples you pay in your space the same ones as you pay for content bolt-ons? That's my first question. My second one is on content specifically. Your guidance is changing today from mid-single-digit growth to mid-single digit to high single-digit growth. Can I expect the high single-digit growth is majorly driven by the introduction of Life in the segment? And the last one is you've spoken about transformational M&A in content. I guess some of the best content assets in Europe are attached to broadcaster, which if you buy that today, you sometimes get that as a free add-on on top of the content business. Would you be willing to enter the free-to-air business as well as you acquire something big in content?

Thank you, Annick. So maybe I start yes. So there is no one today doing a buildup in our field as we are doing. So our competition is local. We have 2, 3 competitors. And we have 3 different business units within The Independent. So we have local competition in Paris for Fashion Week in Milan also in Tokyo, we have one major competitor. In China, we have one large competitor in the U.S., too. But no one is today able to answer a global need to a client. And that's where we are doing extremely well is being able to consolidate and do it worldwide.

What you need to understand is that for our clients, what is important is to offer them consistency, but with a real local understanding. So that's what we offer them, global with very local understanding. That's the specificity of The Independents.

Regarding the acquisitions made by The Independent, yes, they are -- they have the same kind of business model that we have on the entertainment side with the same kind of metrics.

Yes, for the content, I will stay current with my presentation as a ranking, okay? First, let's say, opportunity to grow in the streamer space, second of all, in digital, then live and then also sport. There is a part that maybe was not mentioned there. It's more a little bit complex. But today, small producer and a medium producer, for them, let's say, the environment is getting more and more difficult because they don't have distribution, they don't have resources, they don't have IP. They don't have good [ demonstration ] with the streamers. So more and more, they are coming to us and working with us. And that was also something that was not present there, but could be part of, let's say, the high single-digit growth as well. Yes, the second question, yes, transformation deal is something that we are always looking for, and we demonstrated a strong ability to create, let's say, value through cost synergy and commercial synergies. So if there are opportunity in the future, we will take it. And today, I think that production is getting -- if you look, let's say, our sites compared to the size of some commercial channel in Europe, we are pretty much, let's say, at the same level or even sometimes higher. So if there is an opportunity, we will take a look. But so far, there is nothing that we could say at this moment in time.

But clearly, we -- as you saw, we are a content company. Our M&A will be driven by content, content production. We are not specifically -- we are agnostic also. So we are not specifically looking at acquiring broadcasters, if it's your question. Of course, we'll always have an open mind on how to best address our goals and strategic goals that we described today.

If I may, we strongly believe in the live experience business. There is a bridge between the traditional TV business and experiences, but -- The Independent, they are the first to start the consolidation and this area is very fragmented now. And they are the #1. They will succeed because now if you are a talent -- a single talent in this business, in the live business, today, if you want to join a company, you want to go to The Independent. If we can make a parallel, if you are a football or soccer player in France and you have the choice to go to Paris Saint-Germain, you prefer to go to Paris Saint-Germain. Same for The Independent for sure. If you're independent, this is why they attract a lot of small company now very talented, but isolated before. Now they really are building a big group.

Nothing against a [indiscernible].

Good morning, everyone. It's [indiscernible] from Deutsche Bank. I have a couple of questions on the production business and then one on the gaming side. So the first one, I just wanted to understand a little better the production cycle in the funnel. Like how many of your content scripted or non-scripted ideas do actually convert in the end? Like is it -- I mean, how long does it take typically to move to full production after an idea is generated? Then the second question is to really understand better your relationship with streamers given this is a key driver of midterm growth. Just want to understand how to think about how your relationship is getting stronger with existing streamers? And do you see your content perhaps in terms of her as becoming a bigger share of the total for them since many also have their own content arms? And then on the gaming side, just if you could tell us more about the [ CAC ] evolution over time, maybe in absolute or in comparison to what is the average betting spend for a customer? How long does it take to make a customer like a new customer profitable?

Thank you very much it Marco -- I hope, let's say, to answer to your question because I have no time to write down. Yes, scripted and scripted, there is a basic difference, let's say, from where you start from a basic idea and to develop. And then as you know, we are pretty much, let's say, a business where when we have a contract signed, we start to spend money, and we have also cash in the bank for producing the show. Unscripted could take maybe 6 months generally. I'm saying something on average, okay, but could be even longer. While scripted could be from 1.5 to 2 years from -- you start from the beginning, I mean, from the beginning of the year or the acquisition of the IP. And this is quite simple because before, let's say, scripted, there is a scripted to be written, okay? It takes time. And then you need to be approved, you need to understand, you need to create -- you need to do a budget based on scripted. And that's the reason why it's quite long. We are -- our DNA is to try to create as much as possible recurring show, either unscripted and unscripted. So we are very much looking, let's say, to do this kind of thing. I present some documentary. It's nice to have, but it's not, let's say, what really we are looking. Regarding streamers, yes, there is sometimes different term of trade. But for instance, just to give an example, they are getting closer and closer, let's say, to the one that we have the commercial and the public broadcaster. So for instance, I present -- in my presentation before, I present [ LOL ] is produced by us in 11 countries and it's produced also in another 8 or 9 countries where we are not operating. So more and more the streamer, they are using the same model that they are used to be by the commercial channel. One of the reasons why we were a little bit longer in order, let's say, to catch up with the spending of streamers, it's exactly because we could not reach the thermal trade that allowed us, let's say, to adapt our business model. Our business model is to create an IP and to adapt the IP in all the countries that we are in. So in the streamers, it's difficult for a big show. So for instance, we just produced [ O Jardineiro ] that it was #1 show in 46 countries. It's just -- it was released just 1 month ago, and it's going to be maybe a unique model. And maybe we are looking also to do an English version. While in a script, when you produce a show, the streamer, they are used to do the same commercial broadcaster they used to do to adapt in many single countries. So we will produce the first big singing show for Netflix will be released in a few months called Making the band. And if we will be successful in U.S., we will produce in all our footprint where we are operating.

And maybe, Nicolas, on the average spend.

So on the profitability and how we monetize the players, it varies enormously depending on which country. Obviously, the spending in Ivory Coast is not the same than in France or in Poland or in [indiscernible] -- in average, to answer to your last question, but it's really an average, again, because the different markets are very different. It took -- it will take 6 months to recover the marketing investment to the acquisition cost to be at the breakeven. And after that, of course, the customer start to be profitable. But again, it's average because it depends really on -- and in terms of spending, it's the same. It depends on which product and which market. But depending on the type of product you have, it's around EUR 40 to EUR 70 per month.

And which is a maximum because marketing spend is also -- it's also useful to keep the clients and to retain clients. So it's not only for new clients. So if there's a last question for Isabelle and Olivier before they leave us.

Two last questions

Two last questions. I leave the hostess choose because I don't want to choose.

Jerome Bodin from ODDO BHF. So I have 2 questions. So I will start with the first one on marketing. So when we listen to you, the vocabulary that you use like brand experience strategy is very close to the one used by the ad agencies. So where do you see the -- your limit in terms of market versus the ad agencies? That would be my first question. And the second one is on the production. So the production market is currently very fragmented with a lot of local player. If we look to other content like music, like book publishing, there is a kind of oligopoly with just 3 to 4 players. So where do you see the market structure in the long term for the production market? And where do you see yourself in this market?

Maybe first, so Isabelle and Olivier.

Yes. So I think in our specificity working for fashion, luxury in experiences, we've never been competing with one of the ad agency in the past 20 years. They are not in our pitch. It's not people who are working against. So it's a totally different market. And ourselves, we don't see really interest to enter ad. We don't want to do media buying, and we are very happy in the niche. We have developed and consolidate. And there is so much to do that I think we have enough to grow for the next 5 to 10 years.

And on the view on the industry, Stephane, you want to take this one?

Yes, you're right. But you have also to consider, you mentioned the music market and the music consolidation. Production market, I mean, independent and national production market is much younger compared to the music market. So the consolidation is just started, let's say, a few years ago, and there is much more to be done. And I should say also just, let's say, on this context that I think that Europe can take -- I'm talking about, let's say, peers like us in Europe can take an advantage compared to the American market, first of all, because we were the first one consolidated independent production company, creating a network of different production company, adopting IP in different country that was not really the DNA of the American one. And I think that today, there is a big chance to create a big -- big production, media entertainment production company in Europe. And as Stephane was saying before, I think that Banijay is a clear consolidator on this space, and we want, let's say, there is an opportunity for us in the coming year.

And this is also one reason why we are here today is because we listed the company to be able to grow. We want to be part of the consolidation and wants to be 1 of the 2 or 3 remaining consolidator. We are in a very good position, but we need to continue for sure.

And you are right. So for instance, just to give another example, there are just in France, 2,000 small producer. I don't think that they will stay in the coming year, 2,000. Maybe they dramatically go down. And all this, let's say, market share can be acquired by a big independent production -- large international independent company like us.

Conor, maybe if you have a question on The Independents, we take it.

Conor O'Shea from Kepler Cheuvreux,. Just one last question for the independents. You mentioned that you don't compete directly with the ad agencies, but you mentioned the process of consolidation was similar. Just wondering beyond what you said about cross-selling and the 70% crossover of common clients and so on. What else do you do to create value? Do you have a centralized cost? Do you take out the cost of the acquisition? What is the process for driving value from the bolt-ons?

So first of all, totally decentralized. We really want to keep entrepreneurs running their business as they have been always doing, and we want to bring the less constraints possible. So on top of sharing clients, we expand new territories. We've been living together like 17 years in Asia. We are super strong in China, in Japan, in Korea. It's a good example. Most of the business we have acquired are between Europe and the U.S., just to bring them to the U.S. market and to open the capabilities, and we are at scale. So we have more than 200 people in Shanghai. We are like 30 people in Japan and Korea. We are 80 in Middle East. We are 250 in New York. So we have a scale that give us the opportunity for all the new partners joining to expand globally very quickly. And that's how we are really growing the business.

And a couple of other questions. On the betting, you mentioned 6 months to make the subscriber acquisition cost profitable and an increase also in the retention rate over the last 10 years. What is the average retention rate, let's say, in broad terms in the main markets, in the French market?

It's complicated to give you an answer on that because it depends on the product. It depends on the market. It depends when you recruit a customer. Like many online services or mobile game, you lose more than half of your new customers in the first month. And the goal is really to keep the next one, which will become very loyal. So -- but difficult to give you an answer because...

You can refer to the slide we shared with the court to see that the retention rate is quite significant, and it's really building on the.

Once they are on our apps after 12 months, they are extremely loyal and they continue to play.

And 2 last questions. One on the content. I think the new U.S. administration has been talking about many for the movie industry, I think, tariffs to reshore production to access the U.S. market. Is there any risk about the streamers model offshoring outside the U.S. to access the U.S.? Do you see any change in the model?

At this stage, we are not worried, but I'll let Marco elaborate.

Yes. We are -- for us, -- we are not worried. And whatsoever could be, we have a very strong presence in U.S. and we have 6 operating company in L.A. and New York, fully dedicated in all the general that could be done. So just to give a little bit more on this. First of all, we don't have a lot of, let's say, from U.S., let's say, outside, let's say, mainly in U.K. is 5%, 10% that can concern us. The tariff that was mentioned was about good, was about movie. We are not producing movie in U.S. And then as I told you before, there is a strong presence for us. I think that the main issues between Canada and U.S. because it's the proximity of the 2 countries. So I don't think that there is any risk for us on this subject.

Okay. And very last question, just in terms of the call option on The Independents. You may want to say for this... Okay. On the primary raise that you mentioned EUR 300 million, EUR 400 million. I guess the call option is 2026. Maybe I missed the timing of the primary raise. Is there anything -- any kind of -- I guess, it will be well in advance of that? And could it be supplemented by some secondary sales from existing shareholders to boost liquidity further?

As you saw and you wrote down, we have not given the start of an operation in this Capital Markets Day. Of course, this Capital Markets Day is an important step for us in this direction, and it remains on top of our priority, but we will give more information on it on due time. What we gave on The Independents is an illustration of what would mean a primary capital increase in this case.

It's Lisa Yang from Goldman Sachs. Maybe the first question is just on the macro environment. I think you mentioned you're not directly exposed to any macro weakness. But just still curious, are you seeing any change in demand from especially the U.S. broadcasters? And I think in an environment where maybe some of your clients might suffer a bit more, do you see an opportunity to take share from maybe more expensive productions? That's the first question. Secondly, on AI, you talked a lot about cost efficiencies in terms of reducing dubbing costs, for instance, and increasing the speed to market. How do you think that will impact over time your revenues? Do you think there's a risk that this could be deflationary because you're mainly a cost-plus model? That's the second question. And thirdly, just on the transformation M&A, could you talk about maybe examples in the past of how much revenue and cost synergies you have been able to generate just to give us a sense of, yes, how value accretive this could be?

Thank you very much. Just a few words on the first question, and then Marco, maybe after that can elaborate on the 2 other questions. On the macroeconomics, you saw our Q1 results are quite good. For the moment, we are not seeing any impact on us. And I think the demand is, as you said, more complex than just the macroeconomic impact on us. That's -- you also -- I think Sophie also showed how much we have been resilient. The COVID, you cannot imagine a stronger impact on our business. We could not shoot any production almost during a few months. And you saw that the resilience of our revenues and our EBITDA is really a testimony to the capacity to really absorb even the largest macroeconomic shocks. So I think it's a very important element to have in mind when you look at our company. But I leave the floor to Marco on the 2 other questions.

Yes. So broadcaster U.S. Just to contest a little bit, let's say, our production by general. We are the biggest scripted company in Europe today. The biggest producer in Europe for us. But our huge part of our -- the big part of our activity is unscripted. And just to frame on this, elaborating on this, in U.S., we are not producing scripted so far. And yes, maybe there will be -- there is a pressure in the commercial channel in U.S. So they are shifting more and more into unscripted, where we are. So for us, it's just an opportunity. The fact that there is pressure on scripted because they are too expensive and the cost of digital scripted continue to raise. So they are producing more and more scripted in U.S. market, and that's where we are. Second question, yes, we create a lot of value. And just to give the last example, when we merged with Endemol, we forecast to do EUR 60 million of synergy, and we did in 2 years, and we did, let's say, EUR 67 million in less than 12 -- 18 months. So -- and we did, let's say, a significant cost synergy even before with Zodiac. And I don't even count here the commercial synergy that we create because we were able to expand the Endemol IP in many other territories where they were not. And we did the same with Survival with [indiscernible]. When we bought [indiscernible] was nowhere, and now it's in 13 territory. Survival, we doubled the territory where we are in. To have a large operation in many countries with the strongest producer in the country, as soon as you have an [indiscernible] that can create value, we can create value with them. And that is our model.

So the larger the transformative deal, the more synergies there are. Maybe again, just still a few questions from the room, and maybe we'll take some questions from the webcast.

Sabrina Blanc Bernstein. I have 3 questions from my part. I think it's more for Nicolas. The first one is regarding the regulation in the new implementation that we are expecting in France. Do you see further pressure in other countries? That's my first question. The second one is regarding the cross-selling. We know that the sports betting in the bulk of your activity. But you have mentioned the Poker, the casino online and why not casino online in France? Just to understand your strategy and how you expect to develop on that part. And the third one is regarding the M&A. Usually, you said that on this division was not -- you didn't have M&A in your mind. So you have changed your mind. I'm surprised to see that you would like to go out of French usual African countries. So we would like to have more your views regarding the European market and also the LatAm market.

Thank you, Sabrina.

Okay. So about the French regulation, I think we -- in France, and I will talk about the other markets. In France, we have reached a threshold in terms of tax level. For example, in sports betting, if you add the betting tax, the VAT and what we call [indiscernible], all the type of tax, we are almost at 70% of tax on the revenue on sportsbook. So it's massive on the other countries in average, it's between 20% and 30%. So we are at a level where more taxes on sports betting will kill the legal market and will boost the illegal market. So in France, we don't expect any new changes. Otherwise, it would be a huge mistake. When it comes to the other markets, it's a possibility. I don't know what the governments of the different countries want to do. The only thing is that it's why our strategy is to be a leader when possible or at least #2. It's -- when you have a high tax, it's also a big barrier to entry. And at the end, it's the leader that will beneficiate of this situation. So that's why we are not stressed about that. Of course, we follow what is happening. For sure, we are -- it's a new business. Things are changing, and we'll adjust -- so we expect probably to have some changes. But I think one of the strengths of Betclic during the last 10 years is our capacity to adapt. We have proven that on every market where we had the big changes in France to start in France. So we don't expect any impact even if things evolve in other markets.

Other question was on cross-selling strategy.

So as you understood, our strategy at Betclic, and it's really on the DNA when I founded Betclic 20 years ago, it's to build the best user experience. We did that in betting. with a lot of success. Our app is the most preferred app in the markets where we are operating by our players. And we now started really to invest in other products because we see a lot of potential. First, because we believe we can create one of the best user experience. We launched our poker platform in December, last December, and the results are just incredible. Our players love our new app, and we think it's one of the more entertaining poker app available today in Europe. And we will continue to do that. We are also improving the experience of online casino in the countries where we are operating online casino. I think one other strength of Betclic, it's what I presented to you earlier is that we own all the tech platform. We control everything, including the engine Rocks, which help us to optimize the cross-sell. And thanks to this technology fueled by AI, by the way, we're really improving month after month, year after year, our cross-sell, and we have every year better results than the year before. So it makes a lot of sense for Betclic to have a wide range of products, and we will continue to invest in other products than sportsbook and continue to build the best sportsbook experience. And really what the ambition at Betclic is to build the next betting -- online betting experience.

And maybe what Nicolas just said about the platform is also explaining our change in M&A because we have now a very strong platform, very strong product that are fully scalable. And Nicolas mentioned that during his presentation, we can add new territories very easily with a low cost and our platform would support it. So that's why we have a very strong advantage, and we believe we can create value by going to M&A. We have been always, I would say, prudent. And also, that's why we haven't been doing M&A in the past years. But now we see opportunities. You are mentioning French-speaking African countries. Of course, it has been a natural focus for us, but we are not only French. We are the leader in Portugal, for example. So makes sense to look at also Portuguese-speaking countries. And I don't know if you want to a word about LatAm.

No, just to add on M&A. For those of you who know our industry, the online gaming industry, in the past, a lot of M&As have failed to create value. We believe we are now in a position where we can create value, thanks to M&A, as Francois mentioned, because of our tech platform. And it was really the problem of big companies that have made in the past a lot of M&As. They finished with 10, 20 different tech platform where it was impossible to put synergy. And on top of that, created a lot of operational problems. At Betclic, we are ready to accelerate to integrate different product markets, regulation, brands, new brands and operate them seamless. So that's why we changed and why we didn't want to do that earlier because we -- our tech platform was not completely finished and not completely ready to accelerate. When it comes to new territories, yes, Latin America is a very interesting continent. They love sports, they love football. And so we are working on it to see how we can expand in these territories. And we know that we can be successful, thanks to our great user experience.

We take the last question from the room.

Just because you mentioned the casino online in France. It's not if now, it's when for many reasons. First, because there is more than 4 million people who are playing every day irregularly and legally in casino online in France. Second probably is because there is -- we have a huge debt at the level of the French government, unfortunately. And you can miss EUR 1.5 billion or EUR 2 billion revenue coming from this tax if the casino line is day regulated. So it will happen with the prior government of Michel Barnet start the process. It was stopped because they didn't stay enough time, but it's not a question of if, it's when.

[ Adrian Desantiler ] from Bank of America. So I've got a few questions. Maybe, Stephane, to follow up on what you just said. Is the legalization of iGaming in France or maybe Poland included in the guidance for Betclic?

No.

Okay. And then maybe some harder questions. Given your leverage is about 3x net debt to EBITDA, is it fair to assume that most of the acquisitions that you would do would be made in shares? And if so, how would you reconcile that with the fact that today, the multiple is maybe below what we see for transactions in that space? And would you, at any point, consider separating the 2 entities to give them more freedom, let's say, to issue shares in their respective domain.

Thank you, Adrian. On your first question, so first, we have a strong cash flow, which allow us to deleverage every year. So it gives us also some flexibility to do M&A. And as I mentioned in my presentation, we have a midterm target to decrease our leverage to 2x, but we don't have a timing for that. If we have the right opportunities in M&A, it will take more time. And we feel comfortable at the leverage we have today, and we believe we have the financial flexibility to do M&A. On your second question, we are here to present to you the Banijay Group. We have a plan to achieve synergies. We believe that this group, and I hope we transmitted to you this belief, has the power to really make the difference and to build further an entertainment champion and the complementarity and the financial strength of our different businesses, which all share the same DNA like Stephane underlined, is a strength today, we believe, in this market. Maybe -- thank you, Adrian. So maybe let's take some questions from the webcast before closing the...

Yes, we've got one remaining question from the webcast from [ Joanna Nicola ]. Could you comment on how the U.S. tariff might affect your business?

I think we did already that. We mentioned that already that...

I think we already answered.

We already answered this question. You don't have another question.

No other question on the webcast.

So maybe we can take a last question then.

[ Steve ] [indiscernible] from Deutsche Bank. Just you kind of talked about the short-term macros and the trends there. But I guess in the longer term, the structural question might be, you've been through maybe 5, 10 years of the golden age of TV. You've seen this arms race in terms of streaming coming along and the linear broadcasters having to spend more on production. We've seen trends before the macros went more negative in terms of cutting the programming series and stuff like that quite briefly, certainly in the U.S. I guess my question is, longer term, let's say, on a 5-year view, do you fear that, that kind of golden age of TV and content production is coming to an end? And is that linked to your moves into live experience and stuff like that at all?

First of all, I think that as we mentioned before, there is so far an increase of investment in content. Then the business model has changed. So linear, sure, it's under pressure, stronger under pressure and streamer, they are growing. We always grow because in the past year, because the streamer, they are not there today. There are a few years that they are there. if you could see, let's say, the specific general of production, not business model where they are dedicating, you see clearly that there is a huge investment in scripted streamers. And today, linear is difficult for them to reach certain investments. So we produce a series called [ Buccaneer's ] 10 million per episode. There is no one linear broadcaster today in the world that can afford to spend the amount of money for 8 episode 3 series. While linear, they are much more focusing, let's say, into unscripted, where it is, by the way, our DNA to launch their own, let's say, nonlinear platform. And so far, they are very successful. So if you ask me, let's say, in 3 years' time, I don't think that nothing is changing. 5 years, I don't know. But for sure, there is still a very strong demand of consumption on content. maybe with different business model. Maybe there will be more integration in Europe for broadcaster because more broadcasters is difficult for them, let's say, to resist to stay alone. But I -- on my -- on our point of view, I don't think that in 5 years' time, there will be the end of the linear -- the local linear broadcaster. It's not the space where streamers they want to be now. So there is still a lot of room for them. And today, this linear broadcasters, there are more and more in demand of big IP, big show that there are the big pillar where they can build all their greed. So if you look, let's say, the consumption of our big show, even there are quite aged like Temptation Islands, Survivor, Master Chef, they keep growing every year because there are more on demand. And -- and that's one of the reasons also we are here because we believe that there will be more consolidation, more content means to have more AP, so more must-have for the linear channel.

And the volume of video watched every day is growing. The big issue for us is probably to change our clients. But when we start with Marco 30 years ago, there were only public television in Europe that private channels, pay channel, pay TV, streamers, now digital television, okay, we have to always find the new way to sell our program, but we are a producer. We are not a retailer of programs.

So I think this concludes our morning. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming. Thank you very much for watching on webcast. And for the one who are in the room, please, we have a cocktail for you. Thank you.