Grupo Televisa, S.A.B. Q4 FY2025 Earnings Call

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Grupo Televisa's Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Conference Call. Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to the press release, which explains the use of forward-looking statements and applies to everything we discuss in today's call and in the earnings release. I will now turn the call over to Mr. Alfonso de Angoitia, Co-Chief Executive Officer of Grupo Televisa. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. With me today are Francisco Valim, CEO of Cable and Sky, and Carlos Phillips, CFO of Grupo Televisa. Last year was marked by several milestones, both at Grupo Televisa and TelevisaUnivision, which Bernardo and I are confident will allow us to keep creating value for our shareholders. At Grupo Televisa, let me touch on four major achievements. First, our strategy to focus on attracting and retaining value customers in cable allowed us to grow our Internet subscriber base by around 47,000 in 2025. This marks a full year turning point after losing Internet subscribers, both in 2023 and 2024, mainly driven by a strategy decision not to retain low-value subscribers. Second, we keep executing on the implementation of OpEx efficiencies and the integration between Izzi and Sky to extract further synergies. This contributed to expanding our 2025 consolidated operating segment income margin of 39.1%, by 200 basis points, driven by a year-on-year OpEx reduction of 8.3%. Third, we kept a disciplined CapEx deployment approach to focus on free cash flow generation. In 2025, we invested MXN 12.2 billion in CapEx, which is equivalent to 20.7% of sales. This CapEx is intended to deliver higher returns over the investment and has allowed us not only to have close to 1.4 million gross adds during the year but also to upgrade 4.5 million homes to FTTH technology. This basically means that we ended 2025 with around 9 million homes or approximately 45% of our total footprint passed with FTTH technology. Valim will elaborate on our plan to keep upgrading our network later during the call. And fourth, in 2025, we generated around MXN 5.9 billion in free cash flow, allowing us to prepay a bank loan due in 2026, with a principal amount of around MXN 2.7 billion. This debt repayment comes on top of the $220 million principal amount of our senior notes already paid on March 18. Additionally, at the end of 2025, Grupo Televisa's leverage ratio of 2x EBITDA compared to 2.5x at the end of last year, mainly driven by our free cash flow generation. And at TelevisaUnivision, I will mention three key milestones. First, 2025 was a breakthrough year for our direct-to-consumer business, as ViX delivered record revenue since it was launched, achieving profitability in every quarter and expanded operating margins throughout the year. For the full year, our DTC business represented nearly a quarter of the total company revenue, driven by robust advertising growth from our free tier and the continued expansion of our premium subscription offerings. Moreover, our DTC business is now a significant contributor to our adjusted EBITDA, accounting for approximately 20%, driven by its industry-leading margins. Second, the efficiency plan to reduce gross operating expenses at TelevisaUnivision by around $400 million in 2025 delivered outstanding results. During the year, our total operating expenses declined by around 8% year-on-year for total operating expenses of around $3.2 billion. This shows a disciplined execution of our cost savings initiative. These OpEx reductions have been fully realized in our 2025 results. And third, looking at TelevisaUnivision's leverage and debt profile, the company ended the year at 5.6x EBITDA, an improvement from 5.9x at the end of 2024, driven by growth. Moreover, in 2025, TelevisaUnivision successfully refinanced $2.3 billion of debt, which extended its credit facilities and eliminated all near-term maturities. Deleveraging remains a core strategic priority for TelevisaUnivision. Having said that, let me turn the call over to Valim, as he will discuss the operating and financial performance of our consolidated assets.

Thank you, Alfonso. Good morning, everyone. In 2025, consolidated revenue reached MXN 58.9 billion, representing a year-on-year decline of 5.5%, mainly driven by lower revenue at Sky. Operating segment income reached MXN 23 billion, equivalent to a slight decrease of only 0.6% year-on-year. Turning to our fourth quarter results. Consolidated revenue reached MXN 14.5 billion, representing a year-on-year decrease of 4.5%, while operating segment income reached MXN 5.9 billion, equivalent to a year-on-year expansion of 6.1%, driven by the efficiency measures that we have been implementing since the integration of Sky. Now let me walk you through the operating financial performance of our cable operations. We ended December with a network of 20 million homes after passing around 59,000 new homes during the quarter or over 118,000 new homes during the year. During the quarter, we continued to execute our strategy to focus on value customers rather than volume, while working on customer retention and satisfaction. This contributed to achieving a monthly churn rate below our historical averages of 2% for the third consecutive quarter. Our broadband gross adds remained solid, allowing us to deliver 25,000 net adds during the fourth quarter compared to net adds of around 22,000 in the third quarter and 6,000 in the second quarter and the disconnection of about 6,000 in the first quarter of 2025. In video, we also experienced stronger gross adds than in the first three quarters of the year and managed to reduce churn. Therefore, we lost about 31,000 video subscribers during the fourth quarter compared to 43,000 disconnections in the third quarter and 53,000 cancellations in the second quarter and a loss of 73,000 video subscribers in the first quarter of 2025. Moreover, we expect these improving trends to continue going forward, influenced by our multiyear partnership with Formula 1 to provide live coverage of all Grand Prix via Sky Sports channels available through Izzi and Sky, beginning in the fourth quarter of last year and through the 2028 season. Moving to mobile. Our net adds of 95,000 subscribers during the quarter showed sustained momentum as they were mostly in line with the 94,000 net adds in the third quarter. Our innovative MVNO services are already making our bundles more competitive, allowing us to increase the share of wallet of our existing customers and helping us to reduce significantly the churn of our existing customers. During the quarter, net revenue from our residential operations of MXN 10.6 billion, which accounted for around 90% of total cable revenue, decreased by only 0.6% year-on-year. This marked the best quarter of the last 2 years at our residential operations from a revenue growth performance standpoint and compares well to a decline of 1.8% in 2025. On a sequential basis, net revenue from our residential operations remained stable, potentially signaling a gradual recovery. During the quarter, net revenue from our enterprise operations of MXN 1.2 billion, which accounted for around 10% of our cable revenue, fell by 4.2% year-on-year, due to the timing of revenue recognition of an important contract signing in the fourth quarter of 2025 and because of tough comparisons. Moving on to Sky's operating and financial performance. During the fourth quarter, we lost 304,000 revenue-generating units, mostly coming from prepaid subscribers that had not been recharging their services. In addition, beginning in the second quarter, we started to charge an installation fee of MXN 1,250 to all new satellite pay-TV subscribers to increase the return on investments on this service. This translated into a slowdown of video gross additions for Sky that has been steady over the last three quarters. Sky's fourth quarter revenue of MXN 2.8 billion declined by 16.8% year-on-year, mainly driven by a lower subscriber base. To sum up, segment revenue of MXN 14.5 billion fell by 4.5% year-on-year, while operating segment income of MXN 5.9 billion increased by 6.1%, making it the best quarter of the year driven by efficiency measures that we have been implementing and synergies from the ongoing integration between Izzi and Sky. Our operating segment income margin of 40.9% expanded by 410 basis points year-on-year. Regarding CapEx deployment, our total investment of MXN 4.6 billion accounted for 31.8% of sales in the fourth quarter. During the year, our CapEx deployment of MXN 12 billion, equivalent to $645 million, or 20.7% of sales. The main reason behind having a higher total investment relative to our 2025 CapEx budget of around $600 million was the stronger-than-expected Mexican pesos, particularly during the second half of the year and the fact that around 50% of our CapEx budget is in local currency. Finally, operating cash flow for Cable and Sky, which is equivalent to EBITDA minus CapEx was MXN 1.3 billion in the fourth quarter, representing 9.1% of sales. For 2026, our CapEx to sales ratio should be close to 25% as we plan to upgrade 6 million homes to fiber-to-the-home technology, increase our subscriber base and support growth. This basically means that we expect to end 2026 with 75% of our total footprint passed with FTTH technology.

Thank you, Valim. You're doing a great job. Now let me walk you through TelevisaUnivision's 2025 results released on Tuesday morning. As expected, the company's full year revenue fell by 5% year-on-year to $4.8 billion, while adjusted EBITDA of $1.6 billion increased by 2%. Excluding political advertising and FX volatility, adjusted EBITDA increased by a healthy 7% year-on-year, underscoring the scalability of a profitable DTC business and the sustained impact of the cost reduction initiatives launched at the end of 2024. Turning to the fourth quarter. Revenues of $1.3 billion declined by 2% year-on-year, while adjusted EBITDA of $396 million fell by 12%. Excluding political advertising, total revenue grew by 1% year-on-year, while adjusted EBITDA decreased by 5%, despite continued DTC profitability and continued cost management. Moving on to the details of our revenue performance. During the quarter, consolidated advertising revenue was flat year-on-year. In the U.S., advertising revenue was 11% lower as continued growth in ViX and higher pricing were more than offset by declines in linear advertising due to secular softness and political spending relative to the prior year due to the absence of the U.S. presidential election cycle. Excluding political advertising, advertising revenue in the U.S. fell by 3%. In Mexico, advertising revenue increased by 15% year-on-year, driven by the strong ViX growth and a resilient linear business, including private sector advertising. In local currency, advertising revenue in Mexico grew by 6%. During the quarter, consolidated subscription and licensing revenue decreased by 4% year-on-year. Continued growth in ViX across both the United States and Mexico, along with higher U.S. linear subscription and licensing revenue, including benefits from our new Hulu agreement and higher content licensing, more than offset the loss of Fubo, the temporary YouTube TV carriage dispute and ongoing net subscriber declines. However, these increases were more than offset by lower linear subscription revenue in Mexico due to the renewal cycle with Izzi Sky and the cancellation of another distribution company, which we have already lapped. Moving on to the balance sheet. TelevisaUnivision ended 2025 with $440 million in cash, an increase of 33% compared to the previous year. Total CapEx investments were $119 million for the full year or a year-on-year increase of 4%. We expect CapEx deployment to remain at similar levels in 2026. Speaking about the 2026 World Cup, it represents a great opportunity both for Grupo Televisa and TelevisaUnivision, and we are approaching it with a fully integrated strategy across broadcast, streaming, digital and social. Our goal is to deliver comprehensive coverage with flawless execution, while maximizing the commercial impact across platforms. In Mexico, ViX will become the official home of the World Cup, making ViX the exclusive streaming destination for all 104 matches available at a preferential price for customers of Izzi and Sky. ViX premium annual subscribers will get access included while ViX's monthly subscribers and the customers of Izzi and Sky will have the option to add on World Cup coverage. Finally, considering several opportunities in the telecom sector in Mexico that we're currently exploring, our Board of Directors approved suspending the payment of our regular dividend in 2026. This will be presented for approval at our Annual Shareholders' Meeting. To wrap up, Bernardo and I are confident that our focus on value customers, efficiencies and ongoing integration between Izzi and Sky at Grupo Televisa and further integration and operational optimization at TelevisaUnivision, now that our DTC business represents over 20% of consolidated revenue and adjusted EBITDA, will allow us to create greater value for our shareholders in 2026. Now we're ready to take your questions. Elsa, could you please provide instructions for the Q&A?

The first question today comes from Marcelo Santos with JPMorgan.

I have two questions. First, for Valim, could you explain the fiber plan and how many homes currently have fiber-to-the-home? What exactly is the goal, and can you confirm if it's aimed for the end of 2026? I would like to understand this plan better. The second question is regarding the competitive landscape. How has the room to increase prices been, and can you share some insights on how the market is performing?

Thank you, Marcelo. Valim, please.

Thank you, Marcelo. So I think that the fiber deployment is we're already at 9 million homes with fiber today, and planning to get to 15 million to 16 million by the end of 2026. So that would mean 75% of our existing network would be fiber-based. So that is on plan and on target. Regarding the competitive environment in Mexico, I think it's important to emphasize that we have been increasing ARPU consistently over the last several quarters. So it's due to price increases, mostly due to more products for our existing customers and better services. So that's what we decide. We see that our alternative players have flat or declining ARPU as opposed to ours, which is increasing constantly. And that's the route we are taking, not so much on price increases, but being able to sell more to the existing clients. And so the competitive environment in Mexico has been very stable over the last 2-3 years, basically. And what we have been doing also consistently is focusing on high-value clients that will churn less and value our services and be able to acquire more services from us. That's the strategy moving forward.

Pretty much a rational competitive environment.

Great. Just a follow-up on the first answer. When you mentioned the 9 million today and to 15 million to 16 million, is this really like fiber-to-the-home where there's no cable involved anymore, like it's fiber box in the home? Or is it more fiber to the curb, but there is still a cable.

No. Marcelo, fiber is still a cable. It's just a different cable.

HFC, sorry.

Yes, I understand what you're saying. Just to make a point about the joke. Yes, we will have fiber to the home on 15 million to 16 million homes by the end of the year. Currently, when the network is deployed, there are no deployments in HFC. We still have a percentage of our deployments in HFC because we are not at full coverage. But as we grow our subscriber base, every new subscriber goes into fiber, and we migrate them as conditions are needed into fiber. So in a few years, all of our clients will not only be under a fiber network infrastructure but also be connected to our fiber network.

The next question comes from Matthew Harrigan with Benchmark.

You have a unique positive exposure to AI in the telecom sector due to the repetitive processes and consumer-facing customer journey experiences. Additionally, regarding your joint venture in media, you are likely the largest producer of Spanish programming globally, possibly even the top producer overall. Recently, there was significant disruption in U.S. media related to AI. I would like to know your overall view on how AI impacts both your operational aspects in telecom and the creative side of TelevisaUnivision, particularly concerning faster and shorter in-house content creation and the increased competition from less-funded companies.

Thank you, Matthew. A very interesting question. I'll answer the media side, and then Valim can take the telecom side. On the media side, we're experimenting with AI in production. It's a very important tool. So in terms of script writing and production itself, it is very useful. So we're experimenting especially. We launched last year our micronovelas in the short form. We started producing last year this type of content. This year, we will produce more than 300 micronovelas. Some of them are produced 100% with AI. So we're moving in that direction, using AI more and more, which will become a very efficient way of producing content.

In telecom, AI is mostly useful in how we handle our customer and how we operate our network. As we speak, we are undergoing very challenging and deep changes within the organization, making sure we have AI implemented throughout, meaning from network usage to client interface. In the next few months, we're seeing significant impacts on how we interact with customers, focusing on basically 100% AI. So 2026 will be the year we'll transition from a typical call center to a fully AI-based operation in terms of customer relationship. This is the year that we will go from typical telephone interactions to an AI-driven telecom operator.

Great. It feels like even with some pretty straightforward kind of enterprise AI applications, you're in a great place without being too fanatical about the value of language models.

The next question comes from Ernesto Gonzalez with Morgan Stanley.

It's on the opportunities you're exploring in Mexico Telecom. Just wanted to see if you can comment a little bit on whether these opportunities are in the fixed market or the mobile market or any additional color you can give? And on the residential side, your operations in Mexico, operating segment income was really strong in the fourth quarter. How sustainable is this margin level?

Well, yes, we are actively exploring opportunities in the telecommunications sector. But unfortunately, we cannot comment on specifics or at this point, share more information. Hopefully, we can get those to materialize. There's no guarantee, of course, that they will. We'll be in touch as we make progress. As to your second question, Valim?

We keep optimizing our operations like we were just discussing a few moments ago, trying to make sure our systems are more AI-oriented in order to make our processes more efficient, not only from a customer-facing perspective, in other words, the clients see and understand that we are closer to them and providing better service, but also the flip side to that discussion is that it would allow us to have a lower cost base. All in all, in the service of our clients. So yes, we keep pursuing increasing operating cash flow.

The next question comes from Alejandro Azar with GBM.

The third one is on your comment, Valim, of the 25% CapEx to sales for 2026. Is that on the telecom service, or it's telecom enterprise, or is it the full telecom, enterprise satellite? Should we think of 25% of consolidated Televisa? And my second question is also on relative to Sky. With the rate of the connections that we have had in the last couple of years, and if this continues, it becomes really tough for Televisa at the consolidated level, at least on the EBITDA side, to show growth. I'm just wondering if you guys can give us more color on how you see Sky going forward, if there is a level where you see these connections or your total clients might normalize?

Okay. That's a great question. I think that the CapEx discussion of up to 25% comprises everything—Izzi, Sky, Bestel, our B2B, and our DTH and cable fiber businesses. So that covers it all. Regarding Sky, I think there is just a misperception of what Sky really is. It used to be a great business; all over the world, DTH represented a fantastic business. In all markets, what has happened is with the advancement of the networks and the FTTx networks, obviously, the connections are better, and a lot of the streaming services are also competing with that. Therefore, you see Internet plus the first streaming, which doesn't allow much room for a DTH platform to keep growing. So our plan is basically to make sure that we have the lowest possible cost at Sky, meaning it's revenues minus variable costs, programming costs, minus the satellite and conditional access. Other than that, it's a cash flow generating business. So we don't expect it to stop or to normalize or level off at any point. I don't think that's something that people have seen anywhere else given the conditions I have just described. So as you segregate that segment, Sky and its direct costs, which are the only costs they basically have, the remaining aspects are our B2B and our B2C business. So I think that's the way you should approach this market, as opposed to an overall decline in revenue. Yes, our DTH revenue is declining as expected, and what we did is streamline the DTH business. So it keeps on generating cash and will continue generating cash for the foreseeable future. We also have a business that is long-lasting, which is our direct-to-consumer and B2B businesses.

One more, if I may, and this is just to remind us, when do you have to pay the transaction of Sky?

It's 2027 or 2028.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Angoitia for any closing remarks.

Well, thank you very much for participating. Give us a call if you have any additional questions. Have a great weekend.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.