Viaplay Group AB (publ) ($VPLAYB)

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to today's Q1 2026 results conference call. [Operator Instructions] My name is Matthew Hooper, and I will be your host today. Joining me here on the call are our CEO, Jorgen Lindemann; and our CFO, Johan Johansson. Welcome, gentlemen. Our presentation will be followed by a Q&A session on the telephone dial-in line, and you can find our results materials, including the presentation deck and detailed fact sheet, on the Investor Relations section of our website. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I will now hand the call over to Jorgen to walk you through the Q1 results. Over to you, Jorgen.

Thank you, Matthew, and good morning, everyone. So, this is our first set of results to include a full-quarter contribution from Allente Group, which we consolidated 100% in November last year by buying the remaining 50% of the company that we know so well as a long-term owner, partner, and operator. The combination of Viaplay Group and Allente Group has created a much larger group with more customer contact points and even stronger offerings for our partners, more content monetization potential, and more cash-flow-generating capacity to deliver our strategic transformation and goals. To put this in context, the sales for our core operations are almost SEK 1.1 billion, or more than 25% higher in Q1 this year than last year. Our EBITDA before ACI and IAC has swung from a loss of SEK 175 million to a profit of just over SEK 100 million, and our group free cash flow has swung by over SEK 700 million from negative SEK 671 million to positive SEK 37 million, even when including the SEK 48 million negative cash flow from the non-core operations. There have been considerable currency impacts on these results, but the direction of travel is clear. The integration of Allente Group is running according to plan, and we continue to expect the resulting cash cost synergies to amount to between SEK 300 million to SEK 400 million on a full-year run-rate basis from the start of next year. There will also be sales synergies from putting our customer bases, our products and content offerings, our tech stack, CRM, and marketing activities together, and we are carefully exploring all of these opportunities. More broadly, we are making progress with our strategic transformation. On the sales side, we saw 7.9% organic growth in our streaming subscription sales. The year-on-year growth was driven by growth in our D2C subscriber base, as well as higher ARPU levels for both D2C and B2B offerings. The ARPU increase were not so much an effect of pricing, although we have raised prices for certain packages in certain countries, but more the fact that we have a higher proportion of D2C and B2B customers taking our premium sports offering and a lower proportion of lower-ARPU B2B customers now that we have new prolonged agreement in place. Our B2B subscriber base was down year-on-year, which reflected our focus on value over volume when it comes to extending our distribution agreements. As you know, we have been gradually prolonging these multiyear deals on commercial terms that benefit both parties and, where that is not possible, we find alternative options. Our B2B subscriber base has grown since the end of last year following changes in agreements that take effect this year. This value-over-volume strategy is an important part of our transformation strategy. More D2C and B2B customers are choosing our Sports offering because we have such a high-quality, wide range and year-round offering of the very best sports content. And we have more coverage of major sports this year than ever before. This quarter featured English Premier League and Championship football, the Best Nordic and Alpine skiing, live Darts action, the new Formula 1 season, the European Handball Championship, and the qualifiers for this year's Football World Cup. Our streaming revenue now comprise the Allente DTH business -- our non-streaming revenue now comprise the Allente DTH business as well as our own linear pay-TV channel sales to third-party networks. The number of linear platforms and channel subscriber is, in general, gradually declining as they move over to streaming services like Viaplay. The vast majority of Allente subscribers already have Viaplay bundled with their subscriptions. The Allente DTH subscriber base continued to decline in Q1, but less than in Q1 last year. Allente has also added new content such as Apple TV this quarter and has therefore also been able to strengthen the consumer offer and raise prices to partly offset volume declines. In total, then, our non-streaming subscription sales were down 4.6% on an organic basis. Our total advertising sales were down 1.3% on an organic basis, which again reflected the combination of strong digital sales through our AVOD and HVOD offerings and healthy radio-advertising sales, which were offset by the ongoing decline in linear-TV advertising markets. We have a clear focus and ambition to capitalize on the accelerating shift to digital advertising. The combination of local storytelling, international formats, and the best acquired content and Sports are what drives sustained audience and subscriber engagement on Viaplay and our linear channels. Our local production continued to perform well in Q1 with local versions of Paradise Hotel in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, alongside returning lifestyle category favorite Luxury Trap, and the factual show also remained as key strength. With season 2 of [ Sjukhuset ] Hospital supported by a successful launch of Swedish Farmers, as well as the consistency of crime titles such as Wanted and Swedish Cases. We have also expanded our local scripted offering with new additions, including Veronika and End of Summer, both classic Nordic Noir, alongside topical drama, Harald and Sonja about the Norwegian Royal family. This slate is complemented by a solid lineup of series and movies from leading global studios. Finally, the other sales line comprises of our sports sublicensing business, where we have sublicensed our sports rights to third-party broadcasters and streamers in our core markets, and our scripted content sales business, where we sell our portfolio of original scripted content to broadcasters and streamers around the world. Both categories were down in the quarter and jointly reported a 17% organic sales decline, as repeat and new sales were not at the same level as last year. Overall, our core operations sales were stable year-on-year on an organic basis in Q1, which is in line with our guidance for the current year and moving forward. When excluding the positive currency effects, our core operating costs were up 2%, or SEK 132 million, on a pro forma basis. The primary operating cost driver is content, which accounts for 3/4 of our total cost base. The largest part of this is sports content, where our costs have continued to rise due to inflation built into our multi-year agreements. As we prolong these agreements on market terms or find alternatives, the inflation will be less in the second half of the year, when then taper further next year. We made further savings in SG&A as we continue to become more fit-for-purpose. The ongoing negotiations and key extension of key content and distribution partner agreements on current and commercially competitive terms or the securing alternative option is a major driver of our longer-term ambition to deliver double-digit EBITDA margin in 2028, compared to the 5.3% that we delivered last year on a pro forma basis. Our Q1 EBITDA was up year-on-year when compared to the pro forma number, including Allente Group result from last year, and this included a significant SEK 140 million currency tailwind due to the strengthening of the Swedish krona reporting currency. Our EBITDA would have been down year-on-year when excluding these currency effects as a consequence of the content inflation that we have been facing. We are totally focused on relevance and resilience with commercial partnerships and competitive products so that we build on our position and fulfill our potential. There's still a lot for us to do to deliver our short- and long-term goals, and we are focused on making the transformation happen. That is for my comments for now, and I will now hand the call over to Johan for his comments on our financial performance and position before we take your questions. Over to you, Johan.

Thank you, Jorgen, and good morning, everyone. We have further simplified and shortened our quarterly report materials this quarter to reflect the integration of Allente into our numbers. This is to focus on the key business drivers and to provide relevant historical backup information in the fact sheet, which you will find on our website. We have provided the pro forma information for prior periods in 2025 to include Allente Group as if it had been consolidated from the beginning of last year. This is so you can see the organic development. The FX effects are shown as usual in the APMs in the back of the report. We have also focused our commentary on the key sales and EBITDA numbers for our core operations, as we discontinued the loss of our non-core operations last summer. And we have given you group numbers for cash flow as we still have a cash drag from legacy agreements that are yet to expire in these markets that we have already exited. The year-on-year currency movements had a big impact this quarter as the strength in our Swedish krona reported currency had a negative impact of SEK 125 million on the translation of our core operation sales from other currencies. Reported core operation costs, however, benefited from a net positive approximately SEK 270 million FX tailwind due to the relative strength of the Swedish krona against the Norwegian krona, the euro, and the dollar, in which we have the vast majority of our costs. The result was SEK 140 million positive year-on-year FX effect on our core operation EBITDA in Q1. For the full year, and based on where we are today, we would expect a positive FX tailwind of around SEK 300 million. This compares with the more than SEK 100 million estimate that we provided at the Q4 results 2 months ago. But we still have an exposure on NOK and euro. So, these numbers can still move materially in either direction over the year. D&A amounted to SEK 151 million for the quarter and included approximately SEK 100 million of PPA amortization charges, which we flagged previously and are the result of the consolidation of Allente Group. The SEK 184 million of items affecting comparability in Q1 primarily compromised SEK 161 million of redundancy and restructuring costs relating to the integration of Allente Group, as well as SEK 3 million of transaction and advisory costs and SEK 20 million of currency translation effects. We have previously guided for a total cash integration cost of SEK 270 million to SEK 330 million, with the vast majority being taken as IAC in the first half of this year. So, the Q1 result was well in line with this. We have almost no associated company income or dividends now that we have consolidated Allente Group. When looking at our interest costs, please remember that the cost for the EUR 646 million off-balance-sheet bank guarantee facility that we canceled in November last year were included in other financial items, not net interest. So, although the net-interest costs were up this quarter, other financial items were also significantly down. Moving on to the Group cash flow. We reported a positive working capital development this quarter, which partly reflected underlying improvements, but also some changes in timing of payments to later in the year. This translated into positive free cash flow of SEK 37 million, even when including the SEK 48 million cash drag from the non-core operations and SEK 112 million of cash interest cost. There is no change in the anticipated level of non-core cash drag moving forward, where we estimate this year to land at SEK 500 million, next year at SEK 400 million and 2028 at SEK 200 million. When looking at the remaining quarters of this year, we continue to expect the intra-quarter core operations working capital swings to be less volatile than in the past. This is due to improved terms for our commercial agreements. The positive change in working capital in Q1 reflected both these new terms and changes in timing of payments. This will reverse during the rest of the year, but we are constantly working to improve the working capital profile. And please remember that the non-core cash drag does flow through the working capital line as well. CapEx will be at or around about the same level for the combined Group, which was approximately SEK 150 million for 2025 on a pro forma basis. Cash tax payments will benefit from the carry-forward tax losses that we have, and our annual cash interest costs are now running at approximately SEK 450 million. Our long-term indebtedness, excluding the RCF is now SEK 5.9 billion, compared to SEK 6 billion at the end of last year. And you can see the usual debt maturity profile chart in the slide pack. We have scheduled repayments of SEK 420 million, both in 2026 and 2027, and all the rest of our debt facilities mature in 2028. Our financial net debt, when excluding leases, amounted to just under SEK 5.2 billion at the end of the quarter and compromised SEK 6.6 billion of borrowings and SEK 1.3 billion of cash. SEK 750 million of our SEK 2.8 billion RCF was drawn at the end of the quarter. The effective doubling of our EBITDA margin between 2025 and 2028 requires a lot of work and collaboration with suppliers and partners to agree on commercial market terms or find alternatives, as Jorgen said. The strengthening of the profitability profile, together with the ending of the cash drag for non-core operations in 2028, will enable us to gradually delever the balance sheet. Execution and efficiency remain our key focus areas. We have clear objectives, so we must continue to deliver on the sales growth and cost-reduction initiatives, constantly improve our working capital efficiency, and allocate capital with discipline and clear return requirements. We have made a lot of progress, and there is still much to do. That concludes my remarks. And now so back to you, Matthew.

Thank you very much, Johan and Jorgen, and we are now ready to take your questions. [Operator Instructions] So, we'll take the first question today from Kristoffer from Kepler Cheuvreux. So over to you, Kristoffer.

I have a few, so maybe go one by one here. If we start with streaming revenue, that was quite impressive to see you move to an 8% organic growth, a clear step-up from Q4. I believe you mentioned there were some price increases in there. Can you remind me what these are and what you have in the pipe for '26?

Yes. I think what we also said in connection to that growth, it was not just price increase. It was also related to the blend and the fact that we have a higher proportion of high-ARPU premium sports subs and then subsequently a lower number of lower-ARPU B2B subs. So, we have increased prices where we feel that we want to rightsize the pricing given the competitiveness of the market and that we have done in different shape and form in our different markets that being Norway and some other packages in some other markets also introduced new packages. So, it is not simply just to point at one price increase [indiscernible] that. So, it comes from the combination of more premium subs and then subsequently also some higher-ARPU and then lower -- less lower-ARPU subs.

And the product mix that we've talked about before, Kristoffer, but what we'll do is we'll come back to you on the individual price-points because there's quite a lot of different things in different markets. So, we'll come back to you on that offline, if that's okay.

Understood. Maybe a bit more technical one. I read that you have a net intake of streaming subscribers of roughly 90,000 in Q1. How much of those are Allente streaming subscribers?

I don't think we have split it up, to be fair, but Allente is also growing their subscriber base in Q1, as we are as well in Viaplay. So, the combination is the growth, yes.

Understood. And may I just go back to what you talked about maybe a year ago, so the crackdown on password sharing and piracy efforts. What have you seen so far? And how can we -- what can we expect incrementally over the next year or so?

What we have seen is there's a bigger focus, which is great from a range of key ISPs as well, and so forth. So, there is legislation coming as well, and also the fact that we see more motivated parties who is actually blocking as well these pirates. So, it is an ongoing battle. As you know, we have different forums where we are discussing this, where also rights-owners like Premier League is part of it. We are clearly utilizing best-practice also from our shareholders in CANAL+, who also experienced that in some of their markets. So, they also have a quite refined set -- a refined way of dealing with that. So, it is something where also the industry comes together because, clearly, it is not sustainable long-term that we continue to invest in these products and people are not paying for it. So, I think it is much higher on the agenda for all parties, and I think that's good news. And clearly, if we can eliminate some of that, that should benefit us all that goes without saying. So, it's a joint effort from peers, from content partners, and from ISPs.

One on linear or should I call it, non-streaming revenue, you call it these days. We saw at the end of '25 at Allente, the decline in sales really accelerated to roughly 7% year-on-year in Q3 and Q4. Can you help us understand how this trend has developed in the first quarter of '26?

Yes. I think as we said, we have increased one of the price-increases has been in Allente, and that is due to increased product value as well. We have added Apple to the offering. And I don't think we can be specific, to be honest, on Allente quarterly development. I don't think we have that guidance specifically. But clearly, it do help, but it does help the fact that we are enhancing the offering, as you can imagine. And that price-increase we also had will -- should also mitigate the effect of the declining-base to some extent. I cannot recall [indiscernible].

Understood. Maybe one on sublicensing and other. We saw that revenue drop to roughly SEK 180 million. Can you please talk about if this is a fair proxy for like underlying revenue trends? And also, I think you mentioned that you're expanding your scripted content. Please correct me if I was wrong there. But maybe you can talk about your strategy around scripted content versus the non-scripted, and if there has been any change recently?

Yes, there's been no change, you can say, in our approach to storytelling per se. And that is whether it is scripted or non-scripted or whatever sport, it is about relevance and it is also about return of investment, which we have a great focus on. So, the content that we are producing, we want to make sure that it has a very broad commercial appeal. And if it has that, then clearly the chances of getting a good ROI on that specific content is larger. So, that has not changed. I think that the decline in sublicenses is many things. First of all, as you know, we have sold out quite a lot historically of the product that we couldn't use ourselves. And that, of course, we can't sell it twice per se. So once you have sold it, you -- clearly, there's less to sell, and that is also impacting the figures that you see in terms of the scripted content that we have sold a lot so far. And then secondly, the Sport part, which also is part of that, the Sports sublicense part of that revenue line has not sold as much in Q1 as it did last year in Q1. There might have been some one-offs last year Q1, which we don't have this year. But it is an area where we want to continue to offload content that we can't use. So, it is still a focus area for us, and we just also want to make sure we sell it at the right price. And that might then result in some quarters will go down and some quarters it will be a little bit better.

If I may have a few on the free cash flow as well. It was great to see you move into positive territory already in Q1. A bit surprising to me, the working capital development, of course, as Johan mentioned already. But maybe you can help us understand what you're expecting in terms of working capital effect for the full-year and how to think about the phasing over the course of '26?

Yes, sure. I think as we have said also in Q4 and also this time, we expect the working capital to be less lumpy between the quarters this year compared to what it was last year. So that's one thing, and that is because of the -- all the improvements that we have made to a range of commercial agreements. So less lumpy. And then how you should look at that, I mean, we hope and we will try to be more neutral on the working capital development for the full-year when excluding the cash drag component of it. But in Q1, there are some timing effects that will unwind during the rest of the year.

And may I just follow up then on the -- I guess, you referred to the non-core cash drag. I guess that was not too burdensome in Q1. Is there any quarter like Q2 and Q4 or Q3, for example, is that going to be more heavy cash outflow?

I don't think that we have been specific about that profile between the quarters. But the combination of the working capital, as I said, will be less lumpy, less volatile between the quarters during this year compared to last year.

Yes. And you can see, Kristoffer, that the -- I mean, what the residual is for the estimated non-cash drag for the rest of the year is pretty clear. So, you know that now. So, you can figure that for the remaining 3 quarters, right?

Absolutely. And then just to the content agreement. You mentioned in the CEO that renegotiating the content agreements are key to your EBITDA growth and in particular, to reach double-digit margins in '28. So, can you remind us of the key upcoming sports broadcasting rights auctions here in the near term? I guess, the Champions League rights from '27 onwards is one to watch.

Yes. I think that -- I think they come ongoing, and you have seen us prolonging the rights that we -- as we said, on market terms that we wanted to continue and also on conditions that we felt was the right in the market. So, that is ongoing. I don't think there's any specific deadlines for all the rights coming out to be fair. But it is a matter for us when these rights are coming, we look at them. We understand the impact of the subscriber base. We understand what it can do to our product, how it can enhance the value of our product and the consumer experience. And then we would clearly attribute the right investments to that. And if that is not happening and the same goes for the prolongation of rights, then we need them. And then we find luckily new options. So, that is an ongoing, which we have done for many, many years. As you know, we have a lot. We have bought a lot, we have too much. And that is why a lot of the things that we have will not prolong if it is not on terms that we are comfortable with that we can capitalize on. So, that is a discipline we'll keep on having.

Maybe a last one. You mentioned that you actually -- that you do cooperate with one of your key shareholders in CANAL+ when it comes to, for example, piracy and crackdown on password sharing. Can you please elaborate a bit more how much are you working with the CANAL+?

Yes. No, but it's not only CANAL+, it is also PPF. Clearly, both of them are strategic investors. So, they are in markets, and, of course, we would be more than normal stupid not to share those on developments that we are seeing when it comes to tech development, or piracy, and so forth. And also CANAL+ is a very big DTH operator as well, from whom we can learn a lot. Now we used to run Viasat. So, clearly, DTH is also familiar area, familiar space of product for us. But of course, there is definitely things that we want to learn. We want to stay curious on opportunities we're having and super thankful of the generosity that we see from CANAL+ and PPF in supporting us on our transformation journey and also helping us understand the trends that they see globally. And a lot of things are happening. So, I think it is always helpful to have investors who understand those trends and to have good discussions in the boardroom as well with the people. So, I'm very thankful for that.

Thank you very much, Kris. And just to clarify again, the subscriber number we give in the Q reports is just for Viaplay subscribers. So, any commentary around Allente, as we've said in the past, that subscriber base continues to decline, structural decline over time. But when you look at Viaplay, you can see the growth that's there. And as we highlighted, that's coming primarily from the D2C side. So Kris, you were our Q&A session today. So thank you very much for that. And that really concludes the question-and-answer session for today's call. Thank you all for your time and for your questions. We really appreciate your interest and always welcome your feedback. We're available for follow-up questions and meetings, so please don't hesitate to reach out if you would like to schedule a meeting or have any further questions. So, that's it for today. Thank you again, and goodbye for now.