Promotora de Informaciones, S.A. (PRS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone. This is Pilar Gil speaking. Welcome to PRISA's first quarter results conference call. To explain in detail our result release, today's presentation will be led by Joseph Oughourlian, our Chairman. We will also have with us David Mesonero, Group CFO; Carlos Núñez, Executive Chairman of PRISA Media; Francisco Cuadrado, Executive Chairman of Education; and Julio Alonso, Chief Operating Officer of Education. Following our presentation, we will open the phone for Q&A, and the people on webcast will also have the chance to put their questions. With that, I will now hand it over to our Chairman, Joseph.

Thank you, Pilar. I'd like to thank you, everyone, for your attendance. I'm very happy to announce the results this morning. I think they're very good, and I think that they already reflect some of the actions that we've undertaken at the group in the past year -- the restructuring, the commitment to digital business. Obviously, they also reflect the recovery in the businesses, media with a cyclical recovery and the reopening of schools for education. And finally, they also reflect that [indiscernible] the new financial culture with more focus on cash generation that we're trying to promote here. So let me start with the headline, which is our EBITDA ex severance payments, has reached EUR 44 million in this quarter compared to EUR 17 million in the same period in 2021. And that's really supported by a very good performance of all our businesses. Education has shown a very strong recovery with growth in the subscriptions. But PRISA Media has also shown very positive results, thanks to the growth in advertising and a nice boost from our base subscription model. The efficiency measures that we implemented in 2021 have helped us, and it's worth highlighting that the adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 20.8%, which is 1,000 basis points higher than the margins achieved in the first quarter 2021. Cash generation, I mentioned the focus on cash. We received EUR 41 million. That's supported by operational improvement, by an active policy to improve cash generation. But obviously, you people, PRISA watchers, know that we've got a seasonal business. Q1 is usually a strong quarter for cash generation, so is Q4, and you should expect Q2 and Q3 to be weaker. The one thing I will say is that we keep our commitment to generating cash ex one-off for this year. Our commitment to accelerate digitalization continues. The main KPIs that we gave you during the CMD, I'm happy to report that the numbers are very, very good, a 38% increase in the number of subscriptions in the Edtech models. We're almost reaching 2.5 million subscribers there and a 55% increase in digital-only subscribers of EL PAÍS reaching over 156,000 subscribers, close to 200,000 in total, and finally, a strong increase in audio consumption in our podcast downloads. Finally, we closed the refinancing agreement. We've maintained favorable terms of the pre-agreement despite the volatility of the market. And that agreement, as you know, is absolutely key to allow the group to focus on business development, giving us medium-term financial stability, lengthening the debt maturities and reducing our cost of debt. Let me move to Slide 6, where you have a summary of the evolution of the main group's KPIs in the quarter. You see a positive evolution all around, the strong growth that we had in revenues has translated in a very important improvement at the EBITDA level, at the cash flow level, and that also includes a debt reduction. Turning to Slide 7, I'd like to go through some of the most relevant business unit highlights for the first quarter. Obviously, Carlos and Paco will go more into the details. But let me just say that PRISA Media continues to execute on its new business platform. We've maintained our leadership position across all our assets, both in Spain and Latin America. We've increased, I mentioned, really boosted the number of digital subscribers at EL PAÍS. We've launched video and audio platforms. And really, our Latin American units have had outstanding results. For Santillana, we've seen an acceleration of the growth of our subscription models during the quarter. And the organizational changes that we made last year to adapt the business structure towards transforming the didactic business to a more digital subscription-based model are clearly yielding results, with an amazing jump in our subscribers from 2 million to close to 2.5 million, the results of this quarter being supported by the return of normality of the education sector with the schools reopening in Latin America. But the good news is that we're really ready with the changes that we made last year to sort of benefit from the major digital shift that is taking place in that market. Finally, at the corporate level, we had our first Capital Markets Day in PRISA's history. We focused on business, we focused on guidelines, including financial targets for the next 4 years. We've presented a strategic plan with clear and defined objectives. And now it remains -- we need to execute on that plan to achieve those objectives. I strongly believe that the group is at a turning point, where all the changes that we've undertaken in the last 1.5 years allow us to approach the future with a focus on business growth and in the interest of all of our shareholders. I'll leave it to David to go into the financial details.

Thank you, Joseph. Good morning, everybody. This is David Mesonero, CFO speaking. Let's move to explain group's financial highlights on Slide 9. Cash generation in the quarter was positively supported by operational improvements, CapEx control and working capital management. Cash generation, excluding one-offs, amounted to EUR 50 million, an increase of EUR 16 million compared to the same period last year. I would like to highlight first that CapEx remained in line with Q1 2021 despite the strong growth achieved in Q1 this year. Second, the focus on working capital management has led to an increase in cash generation of EUR 28 million. Together with seasonality of the working capital explained by Joseph, please do consider that interest payment and the impact of refinancing costs will occur during second quarter. Finally, thanks to the renegotiation of lease agreements carried out in 2021, the IFRS 16 cash outflow was reduced by EUR 1.1 million. The group at the end of March '22 presents a strong liquidity position with EUR 216 million of cash on balance sheet plus additional undrawn liquidity lines for a total amount of EUR 99 million. Improvement of our cash generation profile and liquidity remain our main priority. And to this end, we keep on analyzing additional improvements that could be implemented to optimize liquidity and cash management. Net financial debt at the end of the period was reduced to EUR 723 million from EUR 756 million as of December '21, which can be mainly explained by the improvement in cash flow generation during the quarter. Including IFRS 16 liabilities, total net debt stood at EUR 796 million versus EUR 825 million at the end of the year, resulting in a reduction of the net financial debt to last 12 months' EBITDA ratio to 6x from 8x as of December '21. With the signing of refinancing, S&P has upgraded the company rating and has given a positive outlook, which opens the door to a further rating upgrade within the next 12 to 18 months. Now let's move to Slide 10 to explain in detail the key figures for the group. Total revenues in the quarter amounted to EUR 211 million compared to [ EUR 219 million ] (sic) [ EUR 159 million ] in 2021. This represents a 33% increase. Adjusted EBITDA grows by 156% compared to the same period last year, supported by revenue growth and enhanced by cost control and efficiency. Adjusted EBITDA reached EUR 44 million compared to EUR 17 million in Q1 '21. Reported EBITDA amounted to EUR 41 million and compared to EUR 12 million during the same period in 2021. This is 236% higher than -- due to operational improvements and lower severance payments. On Slide 11, we have a bridge from EBIT to net profit. EBIT was $28 million better than during the first quarter '21, reaching EUR 24 million, which can be explained by operational improvements. The financial result comparison is affected by a EUR 7 million positive impact in 2021 related to a favorable VAT ruling. And finally, net profit during the period was positive, reaching EUR 0.1 million compared to the negative EUR 14 million recorded in '21. We have now a positive result in Q1 since 2018. Let's move on to Slide 12 to review in detail Q1 cash flow generation. Cash flow, ex one-offs, during the first quarter of 2022 improved by EUR 15.7 million compared to Q1 2021, driven by operational improvement since across 2 businesses, working capital management and CapEx control. Cash flow for the period amounted to EUR 40.8 million, 88% higher than the figure reported for the same period last year. On Slide 13, we see the net debt evolution. Net financial debt declined to EUR 723 million compared to EUR 756 million as of December '21 as a consequence of improved cash flow generation. On the right-hand side of the slide, we have the maturity profile of the debt following the new refinancing. Under the new refinancing agreement, maturities are extended throughout tranches with no maturity events during the next 5 years. It is important to reinforce that liquidity is maintained, with a cash position at the end of the period standing at EUR 216 million and additional undrawn liquidity lines amounting to EUR 99 million. Let's now move to PRISA Media review. Please, Carlos, continue.

Thank you, David, and good morning to everyone. This is Carlos Núñez speaking. As you have seen, PRISA Media has significantly improved its operational and financial performance during first quarter, executing on our strategy as it was defined and explained in our CMD. This set of results indicate that the efforts we are making in all business areas are yielding results and motivating us to continue moving forward to implement our plans. In this sense, we have had a very good performance of our main value drivers. First of all, advertising has shown good behavior in the quarter despite Ukraine war since end of February and despite the worsening of macro variables and the challenging situation of some key sectors in the advertising space as automotive. We have grown by 11%, reaching EUR 62 million with some key elements. First, our outstanding performance in America with more than 30% growth. Second, our performance in local markets in Spain, driven mainly by radio. Bear in mind that in Spain, the advertising market is heavily growing in local versus national during this quarter. And third, our very good performance in programmatic, leveraging on the quality of our digital audience and the introduction of compelling new digital products. This drives us to have a preeminent position in advertising space in the current core markets where we operate. Second, audiences. Our outlets' key positions as market leaders in terms of audience in all our markets in on and off audiences. According to latest new wave of the Estudio General de Medios in Spain released last week, we continue to lead in both general radio stations with Cadena SER achieving a daily average of more than 4.4 million listeners, daily listeners, and in music radio with Los40 with a daily average of 3 million daily listeners that coupled with almost 2 million daily listeners at Cadena DIAL reinforce our leadership in the radio music scene. This gives us a total market share of more than 40% in Spain. EL PAÍS maintained its leading position in the Spanish press, being the bestselling daily newspaper in Spain and the one with the largest audience. And our sport newspaper ads is the one with higher growth in audience in paper and in digital among the main Spanish sport titles. In Latin America, I want to highlight the strong performance in Colombia and Chile, where we continue to be the #1 radio stations with improved market positions. In the digital audiences, according to the new audience entity, GfK, in Spain, PRISA Media has a total average of more than 4.2 million daily users, maintaining its leadership position among other Spanish media groups. And even more important, we are discovering new nonlinear audiences, coupling audio and press as disclosed in our CMD. For instance, our daily of EL PAÍS, that is a complete success as it has reached more than 2 million downloads in less than 2 months since its launch. This provides us very interesting new commercial approaches. Third, subscribers. It is very important to highlight the strength and continuous growth of EL PAÍS subscription model evolution after we changed our metered model to a freemium model. The first quarter of 2022 closed with a total of more than 196,000 subscribers, 49% more than in the same period last year. Compared to the end of 2021, the increase was higher than other quarters, reaching almost 20,000 net subscribers or 11% more than December 2021. Key levers for that are the continuous enhancement of our editorial products, our industrial approach to the process and third, the increasing matureness of the market towards payment models. And we are keeping momentum. As of today, I can say we have more than 200,000 subscribers. Let's go to review a short summary of our main KPIs in Slide 19. As you see, I would like to highlight the operational improvement of PRISA Media compared to first quarter 2021. Revenues in the period have increased by 7% with digital revenues mix in line with previous year. Bear in mind the high weight of the radio advertising in our mix. In revenue distribution by geography, it is worth highlighting the increase in America contribution, supported by the outstanding growth achieved especially in Colombia in line with our long-term view of geo diversification with growth. This, coupled with a tight cost control of our fixed cost base, despite the current macro situation and the worsening of some of our key variable costs as paper and energy, drive us to a significant improvement of our EBITDA. That is excluding severance payments, which is breakeven compared to almost minus EUR 5 million in first quarter 2021. Regarding the operational KPIs, we can see the continuous improvement in our digital KPIs. In our streaming hours, we have reached an average of 77 million per month, 19% more than in the first quarter 2021. And we have had 46 million monthly podcast downloads, 48% more. The growth responds to PRISA Media's commitment to the creation of new digital products, creating an audio transversal [ transmission ] which integrates all of the group's nonlinear audio content. As mentioned previously, we have an outstanding performance in capturing subscribers with a total of 196,000 subscribers, out of which 156,000 are only digital as of March 2022. Finally, I would like to say that unique browsers remain in line at around 241 million. That compares with some historical maximums achieved last year and that registered users, that are key to our approach of qualifying better our audience, have increased from 5.5 million to 6.6 million compared to the same quarter last year. All in all, the first quarter has been a very positive 1 and shows how we are moving forward in the journey we presented 1 month ago in our CMD, that is delivering with this quick pace in building and growing the largest media platform for the Spanish-speaking markets. Now let's hear about our educational business, Santillana.

Santillana has closed a very satisfactory first quarter of 2022 in all business lines [indiscernible]. We ended the quarter with 2,480,000 subbed students, which represent an increase of 38% over the previous year. This increase is 100% organic without any acquisition having taken place. Of our students, 1,901,000 have core systems and 579,000, 23% of total, take our English and supplemental systems. The overlap between 1 group and another is about 50%, which gives us 2 avenues for rapid growth through gross selling. The most significant growth has been produced by an accelerating transformation of our didactic clients as foreseen in our plan. With a satisfactory behavior of our commercial network of hunters and also farmers who reached 89% rotation compared to an 88% in 2021. Our product catalog is well established in the core business and continues to be developed in the supplemental, with the [ constant update ] of our contents, a matter in which the markets recognize a high prestige for our brand. Move to the next slide. The ACV grew by 34% compared to the previous year, total organic growth, in line with the behavior of the students despite the significant increase in the weight of supplemental or English systems with a lower unit price. The first quarter presented an increase in revenues of 57%, with growth in all our lines of business, both private and public. The reopened schools has brought a punctual but very significant recovery in the level of purchase of the didactic business, which in 2021 was especially low in the first quarter, severely affected by the lack of persons in schools, although the underlying trend of this business continues to be its massive transformation to subscriptions. Thanks to the company's leverage and its digital transformation, the EBITDA margin has been improved by 53 basis points, reaching 35.2% in the first quarter compared to the 29.9% the previous year. [ The sale of things ] despite the strong cost pressure in the paper and printing market, around 30%. The impact of the outstanding exchange rate is positive in EUR 5 million in revenues and 0.8% in EBITDA. [ Although, ] if we consider the annual effect of the inflation in Argentina, 55%, we have a positive exchange rate effect of EUR 3.5 million in EBITDA. In summary, Santillana today is a company transformed towards digital subscription models, demonstrating its post-COVID strength and an excellent position to achieve the objectives set in the strategic plan. Let me now pass it on to Joseph.

Thank you, Julio. Before I conclude, let me show some developments on our ESG efforts. As you may know, the sustainability is one of our pillars of the group's growth and future development. The company has recently appointed Rosa Junquera as Director of Sustainability after the company announced the creation of a Sustainability Committee within the Board of Directors with the aim of resolutely promoting the company's strategy by aligning all of the organization's management with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. And then finally, to conclude this call, we continue to execute, we continue to deliver. It's 3 quarters in a row that our numbers beat expectations and show a strong growth with cash generation. I'm very happy with those recent developments. And I think they show that this management team is completely focused on executing on the business plan that we outlined to the financial community on March 21 in our CMD and also on generating cash. I'm also fully aware that this is a very difficult macro environment. Between the Ukrainian war and some of the issues we've seen in China, we're seeing inflation skyrocket across all of our geographies. And for that reason, we want to keep the guidance and stay prudent for the rest of the year and again, keep our focus on generating cash. Now let's move to the Q&A session. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] We have the first question. It comes from the line of Manuel Lorente from Mirabaud.

My first question is on Brazil and mainly on inflationary pressures on the educational business in Brazil or in the country as a whole. Yesterday, we saw a company like Banco Santander with a massive exposure to Brazil reporting a relatively good set of results on that area, mainly because of labor inflation. Do you have any comments about the exceptional inflationary constraints in the Brazilian market or any other update about the situation in the country?

Let me pass the mic onto Julio.

Well, at this moment, Brazil has a situation of inflation. But I think that is the same -- that in all countries, including the European countries. But we have the opportunity to increase the price for the next campaign, and we think that it's also an opportunity that [ works ] for us.