I would now like to end the conference. Over to the Head of Investor Relations, Sara Bassan. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the first half results of MFE-MediaForEurope. Let me introduce immediately the speakers of today. The presentation will be hosted by our Group CFO, Marco Giordani, and by Matteo Cardani, Managing Director of Publitalia. Let me hand over immediately to Matteo for the advertising and audience outlook. Matteo, please go ahead.
Thank you, Sara. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for your attendance. Today, we comment on H1 2022 results with an outlook of ongoing indicators for current trading on Q3. Starting from the economic scenario, we all know well the macroeconomic situation and the consequential advertising market deterioration that each European country, with no exception, is experiencing.
My purpose today is simply to remind, to share the key relevant elements for the advertising dynamics. Today, even if there are a lot of factors, the pandemic long tail, the war, the energy crisis, the raw material and commodity price increase, factors that have been putting the economy under pressure since mid-year 2021, we are not experiencing the sudden shock situation we had two years ago.
During the last two years in the industry, we all learned to act in a high uncertainty context, and now we are able to adapt our business strategies. This practically turns into a more gradual evolution of the economic indicators. In a few words, a slowdown in growth, but not a shock in the demand or a severe recession.
As we see in chart number three, we are witnessing a gradual decline in consumer confidence, not in business confidence, luckily. But again, we are not in a shock situation. Material proof of this is demonstrated by the following chart number four, where you can see that sales of services are still positive in the first part of the year, and sales of goods more impacted by the energy cost inflation are almost flat.
Having said that, now, we move from the macroeconomic indicators to the advertising market. As you can see in chart number five, the advertising market in the first half of the year is losing -2.9% with a Q2 performance at -5.5%. This is, honestly, mainly explained by the comparison with June 2021, where we had the Euro football championship.
If we take this component out of the baseline, the underlying trend is slightly negative, lower than -2.9%. In this context, MFE performance is on parity versus 2021 and almost on parity versus 2019. This should be considered a good performance considering the war outbreak, the energy crisis, and the inflation.
In fact, as you can see, from chart number six, we are on the same level of 2019 baseline. Most of all, we are showing a certain improvement of our market share from 41.9% last year, 2021, to 42.6. An improvement of 70 basis points year on year.
Now, the second part of my speech is dedicated to sector dynamics and audience trends. Talking about the sector dynamics, it's interesting to observe that the impact of the current situation is strongly asymmetrical between goods and services, as you can see, in chart number seven.
In fact, on the one hand, automotive and food are the sectors most affected by the energy cost and the shortage of raw materials and components, and they result in a decreasing level of advertising investment. On the other hand, e-commerce, the consumer telco sectors, and most of all, tourism and leisure, are maintaining or even increasing the level of advertising investment.
So counterbalancing the performance of the weaker sectors. As a general scheme, we can actually divide the market into three segments. We have growing sectors. They represent about 50% of the market and 50% of our revenue, and they brings a positive contribution on our performance.
Here you have services, housing, leisure that have a structural growth with positive mid-single-digit rates and reach high double-digit peaks in sectors such as personal care, media, publishing, and leisure and tourism. You have a stable or slightly declining sector. This worth about 40% of the market and also our revenue. In this cluster, you find sectors impacted by the inflation crisis, such as food, pharmaceuticals, banking and finance.
The performance of this sector is flat or down low single-digit. Declining sectors, they only worth 10, 12% of the market and our revenues. Most of all, auto sector represents about 60% of this segment, which despite incentives in the second half will have a better trend than the first half, will decline double-digit in fiscal year 2022.
That this group also includes the toiletries, household appliances, consumer durables, which are also affected by the shortage of raw materials and semi-components. Having said that, the conclusion is that in H1 2022, the growing sectors performance is offsetting negative trend of others.
Now, commenting on chart number eight, you see that the retail sales trend by sectors is mostly positive, and the positive sectors account for 90% of our business. You see that the only negative sector that is actually experiences material decline in retail sales is automotive, which, you know, it represents 10% of our revenues. Combining the weight of each sector with advertising trend, you come to chart number nine.
In chart number nine, you have the weight contribution by sectors on our revenue. You can appreciate the fact that the negative trend of some sectors as automotive has been more than compensated by the positive dynamics of other sectors such as pharma, telco, travel, leisure and clothing that are benefiting from the post-pandemic recovery.
Generally speaking, we have to take into account that the e-commerce and direct to consumer sectors are becoming more and more relevant, growing in terms of weight. They account for 10%-50% of total market on top of the traditional retail distribution, which is still growing. Finally, last chapter of my presentation, let's have a look at audience trend. I have three charts to comment.
The first one is number 10, and the comment is that, okay, despite all the talks around linear TV audience downturn, actually our linear TV audience is in a good health. We are +1.1 versus 2019. That I remark is the right comparable basis, not only for revenues but also for audiences. This is not a random outcome, but is the strength of our content offer.
On the solid ground of this linear baseline, we have the high double digit growth of the digital screens, so connected TVs, mobile, desktop, and this bring the total audience to +3.1% growth rate. This is a measure of total audience now available, thanks to Auditel, total audience release during this year.
The combination of good health on first screen linear plus the high double digit growth on digital screen is a positive sum scenario to protect our legacy business and to increase the revenue diversification towards a higher digital mix. We have under the introduction of total audience three different positive perspectives.
The first perspective is quantitative, because as you see in chart number 10, you see that total audience helps 2.0% to the audience trend performance. Before this, number was not available, was not tracked. But most of all, as you can appreciate in chart number 11, we have a qualitative net addition because total audience is adding a younger viewers profile from digital screens.
This is particularly appreciated because we have a more than proportionate incidence of light linear viewers, people under 44, target groups that naturally commands a higher price, a higher CPM in general. The CPM of digital is higher than the CPM of linear television.
Last but not the least, in chart number 12, you have this chart representing the migration from linear to digital that allows pricing upside. A few comment on this. We have a pricing upside opportunity on digital screens. If we measure with this synthetic measure that we call revenue per hour, so the revenue we get for each hour consumed on each single screen.
The comment is, to summarize, that linear TV inventory is structurally larger than the one on digital because of different viewing habits. But higher digital CPM more than compensates such a structural lower inventory. The good news is that the CPM of digital is still increasing year-on-year.
In normal times, the advertising fill rate of linear television is quite close saturation while connected TV and digital still have a lot of room for growth, so more user, more views, higher fill rate. That is why we see a significant high growth opportunity in the digital space for MEC. Generally speaking, the first lever is the growth of the digital advertising market in Italy that is going on.
Compared to Northern Europe, it is relatively behind, but it is growing a lot year on year. We do think we'll fill the gap in the short term. On top of it, we are confident on the expansion of our market share. Having said that, commenting on H1, I hand over to Marco. I thank you.
Thank you, Matteo. Good morning to everybody also on my side. Today I'm going to give you a quick summary of the first half performance and update on the full year guidance. In terms of revenue, we reached EUR 1,388 million in revenue in line with last year. We got EUR 112 million EBIT, and we closed the first half with a group net profit of EUR 84.6 million.
In these numbers, certainly in the comparison with the last year performance, you have to remember the one-off element that affected the 2021 first half that I briefly summarize in the gain coming from the disposal of TowerTel that and we accounted last year an extraordinary gain of EUR 86.7 million.
And also the positive financial impact we got last year of around EUR 20 million coming from financial instruments connected to Prosieben. In total, we have, let's say, some non-comparable items that affected positively 2021 of around or more than EUR 100 million.
Lastly, at the group level, we closed the first half with EUR 630 million debt, and the group cash generation improved to EUR 238 million, much more higher than the last year one. Moving to the Italian sector, to Italian geography in page 15, Matteo has already commented the advertising performance. The other revenue line, as you can see, was almost EUR 148 million in the first half, +13% compared to the first half 2021.
The main contribution to this growth has been the OTT platform performance, so the involved revenue coming from Infinity, the DAZN contract, clearly Medusa with the reopening of cinema. Clearly not yet at the full range of speed, but I mean, certainly better than 2021 was the main contributor to this growth.
In terms of full year guidance, we are confirming our EUR 229-300 million full year guidance for other revenues. Clearly there is a little bit of uncertainty on this line connected to cinema again. Clearly, cinemas have reopened, but we see what the winter will take.
Also, as Matteo was describing, everything related to the DAZN contract will be clearly affected by the macros and the advertising market trends. Now moving to cost. I mean, the first half result was a total cost line for EUR 957 million. But this number has to be explained and commented a little bit.
As we said in the last call, 2022 will be affected by, let's say, seasonality in terms of cost performance. The first half, we have non-comparable cost increase due to Coppa rights acquisition of Coppa Italia and Supercoppa. Again, in terms of comparability, in 2021, we didn't have the DAZN contract in place.
These three elements, Coppa Italia, DAZN, and Supercoppa account in the first half for at least EUR 70 million. As you can imagine, we suffer from inflation and energy cost increase, as everybody. The first half has been affected by almost EUR 50 million, 50 million euros increase of cost related to energy cost and inflation.
If you exclude these one-off costs, clearly the performance of the first half has been pretty remarkable in terms of cost control with an implying -9% on a comparable level. Certainly, a -9% compared to the pre-COVID levels, the first half 2019. Something very remarkable.
Moving to the guidance, we are not moving our guidance for the time being. At this time, repeating is EUR 1.8 million for the full year. Clearly also, second half 2022 will be affected by inflation and energy costs, so we'll face savings to compensate and offset these costs.
While on the other end, the Coppa Italia and the Supercoppa costs are already in the comparable, let's say number of 2021, so will not represent a difference in the second half. Again, I'm confirming the EUR 1.8 billion target for the full year. Clearly, we are going to manage the next month in a very tactical way.
As Matteo was saying, the visibility on advertising is very short, and we are already put the company in a sort of COVID approach, in the sense that we are really acting on a fortnight basis, and we are adjusting our scheduling and grid and all the costs are related to the performance of the top line.
We will certainly be able, as always, to manage cost and following what the advertising revenue will give us. That's the best estimate we can give 1.8 is the guidance, but if the advertising revenue will move downwards, we will adjust cost base as much as possible. Moving below the EBIT line, financial charges were positive by...
Actually we have financial income, so positive for EUR 15.2 million. In this line, clearly we are accounting the dividends coming from Prosieben that we cashed in in the second quarter 2022, much more higher than the last year one. In terms of guidance for the full year, we are confirming EUR 10 million income.
I have to kind of remind that we are experiencing an increase of rates, interest rates on our debt, but luckily we were able to cover that risk already before the crisis. We are not going to suffer any big and material effect on rates on our financial charges. That's the reason for which we are confirming our EUR 10 million.
That was the guidance we gave in the previous call. Moving to page 17, total CapEx are declining by 3% in the first half. We are confirming EUR 270-280 million for the full year. Clearly that's something that to be seen also in relation to the reopening of cinemas.
Clearly, last year we had a very low number because cinemas were closed, and investments in the cinemas were almost zero, while now are back to normality. On the other end, in this line, you have also to take into account that the US dollar exchange rate is still different from one year ago.
We are getting more or less 10% higher cost in euros for U.S. rights. That's the target I gave you is also the result of additional savings to compensate these two elements. The cinema reopening and the let's say more expensive dollar we are getting in the second half 2022 compared to the second half 2021.
Lastly, completing my presentation with the cash flow statement. As I said before, the first half was very good in terms of cash flow. Almost EUR 23 million more than compared to first half 2021. Again, that's clearly the real metrics we are looking for.
In any case, that's the metrics that we are going to protect in case of negative, let's say outlook should come around during the next quarter. Clearly the first half has not been yet, I would say, affected by any of the extraordinary or one-off elements that are going to affect 2022. I mean, the dividend payment that has been paid one week ago, and also the financial cash out coming from the tender offer in Spain of around EUR 185 million.
These two elements will be clearly recorded and accounted in the third quarter 2022, but we are confirming that in any case at the full year, so at the year-end, our net debt to EBITDA ratio will remain around 1x, so in a pretty solid and safe position. I have completed my presentation and I leave room for a Q&A session. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, we now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. We are now taking the first question, so please stand by. The first question from Fabio Pavan, from Mediobanca. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. I would start, if I may, with an update on your pan-European ambitions. The Spanish deal has been completed. We have been reading recently
In the press about potential interest for France and SIS. My question is, could you tell us something about this potential interest? In particular, I would say, without any specific reference to SIS, how are you aiming to approach your pan-European expansion? Can we consider a preference for paper deals or you might be also considering cash offers for some specific assets? Thank you very much.
Thank you, Fabio. No, I mean, no big changes in that respect. I believe personally that what is happening on the macros, it's only, let's say, helping all the actors to do something. I believe that staying still in this period is probably more expensive, if I can say, than one or two year ago.
We are always more and more convinced about growth. We think that we need a scale to compete in the advertising digital market in Europe, not only in Italy and Spain. I believe that the traditional advertising market in Europe, also not only in Italy and Spain, we face probably not a very good time, but we think that we are poised to grow mainly in digital.
We need to change things and to change the approach to become a real alternative to the big global digital player. Having said that, in practical terms, as you can imagine, I mean, we cannot comment anything on what happened, on what has been disclosed by any newspaper.
Certainly, we will be on any dossier that will allow us to grow in terms of size, not only in the country we are, so Italy and Spain, but also mainly outside Italy and Spain. All the opportunity will be evaluated and certainly will be, let's say, our duty to challenge and to fight for getting assets that will allow us to complete our growth strategy.
Let's say in terms of currency, I think that the MFE structure of currency is giving the great flexibility in all terms, so we can really use everything. We are now with all the tools to complete our strategy. I have to say frankly that today, looking at where the beneficial side is, excluding any use of paper, also because the value of it is so low that frankly for us it would be more expensive if you want than cash.
Clearly without entering into any detail on any kind of project, I can tell you that as of today, cash paper or share is not an option because of the share value of Mediaset. That's also coherent with the fact that we, as you know, we are buying back shares for the same reason. It would be a little bit contradictory to use paper in the moment in which we are buying shares, you know. Currently, share for growth as of today is not an option.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking our next question, so please stand by. The next question from Sarah Simon from Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi. I've got two questions. The first one was on the audience growth. What are you measuring there? Is that share or people or minutes consumed? That's the first question. Second one is inflation. Obviously, you've talked about energy prices and so on.
I'm wondering what you're thinking or first of all, what you've done in terms of salary increases for this year and what you're thinking for next year. In terms of the impact on the top line, are you passing any of this on to your advertising customers in the form of higher rates? If you could talk about that would be helpful. Thanks.
Hi. Thank you. I mean, I'm starting from the easy part of the question, and then I'll leave to Matteo to answer to the rest. No, as far as cost is concerned, I mean, frankly, as of today, we are getting all the energy, let's say, cost increase. As you can imagine, it's pretty material.
As I told you, was EUR 15 million in the first half, and as you can imagine, will be more than double for the remaining part of the year. That's a certain, let's say, cost increase that we have to compensate somewhere else. As far as cost of labor is concerned, on the other hand for the time being, national and integrated Mediaset contract is not really granting any unique cost.
I believe that the pressure will increase not only to Mediaset, and I think not only to Italian and Spanish company, I believe everywhere in Europe. Even if it's not really affecting 2022, I can say that everything is completely manageable and we can compensate easily any kind of pressure in that respect. We are expecting pressure coming through in 2023 if inflation will not come down to the traditional level.
Lastly, there are some other costs, like for instance, rents that are maybe linked to CPI that is not affecting 2022, maybe could affect 2023, rightly, but again, it's our duty to manage from the commercial point of view this kind of increase, maybe renegotiating contracts and also compensating with other cost savings.
Broadly, I would say that out of the EUR 1.8 billion, the exposure to inflation is very limited because as you can imagine, content costs are more affected by competition than from CPI. In any case, these will affect our PNL in a very long term. It's not. Nothing really happened in a few months. We are expecting probably a way back to normality not so far away from here. Matteo can answer you on the, let's say, revenue side.
Marco, can I just ask one extra thing, which is, how much of your programming costs are you buying in dollars at the moment?
150, probably.
Dollars or euros? I mean, I know that's the same number now, but it's probably not the same number when you bought them.
Yeah, they're euro. In their main investment in the CapEx, you have a rights acquisition, and rights acquisition are currently in the range of EUR 150 yearly from U.S.
Those will be amortized over the next kind of multiple years, obviously.
Yeah, at least five years. Currently, these effects are not yet in the PNL. The effect of the movement of the dollar-euro exchange rate is not yet in the PNL because by policy, we are committing ourselves to cover all the currency risk at the time of the commitment.
Currently, we are accounting things that we have committed ourselves to buy at least one year ago. The dollar euro rate has been fixed at that time, and we are not really experiencing any cost in the present PNL. Clearly, going forward for the new commitment, we are now accounting dollar at one euro, roughly, and that clearly will affect our PNL in the next five to six years.
Yep. Okay, thanks.
Okay.
Okay. It's my turn, and I address the audience metrics question. I really thank you for the questions, for this question because it gives me the opportunity to clarify on this point. Our standard metrics regarding audience, of course, is share, and this is the standard metrics with regard to linear TV audience.
With regard to this, we don't have a chart in the presentation, but I mentioned the fact that we are around 41%. We are growing +2.8 points year-over-year. I'd like to give you a technical note for all of you that are analyzing the audience share trend on linear television.
Take care, pay attention because Auditel in the total audience development has restructured the basis of linear TV measurement. Following more or less the same path of Barb, U.K., they took out all the unmatched viewing. Viewing that is not related to TV broadcaster, they took it out.
Now you have a new time series. If you do comparison year-on-year, you have to take the new time series into account. Otherwise, you compare the new metrics with the previous one, and you may get wrong results. The real trend +2.8 points year-on-year.
This is, let's say, a competitive metric that gives you the idea of the power of your content offer on television. In the total video age, the most relevant metrics are AMR, so average minute ratings, including both linear and non-linear viewing. That is why we remarked +3.1% in audience growth.
Coming back to chart number 18, the other key metric the market is looking for is additional reach. I did not comment on the additional audience contribution, but if you come back to chart number 18, you see that mainly on live viewers, connected TV and digital screens are adding from +2% to +5% in average minute ratings.
This is a good proxy of the average contribution of additional reach, the digital screens are adding to our plan. There's the law in media planning that, for the extra mile, for the extra reach, there is an incremental CPM you are willing to pay to reach these precious live TV viewers. So, let's say that we use the full set of metrics. Share on linear, AMR on the total video combined, and the next metric we are waiting for Auditel to release is the total reach metric. I hope to have fully address your question. I understand-
Yeah. Sorry, can I just clarify? On slide 10, the 1.1% is share of linear audience.
No, no.
The total audience. No?
No, it's the average minute rating. I thank you for this note. We should write it down in the footnote of the final version of this presentation because actually it is missing. This is average minute ratings. It means that in an average minute you have +1% people watching our linear channels compared to 2019. That is our North Star for any comparison. Because this is what the market is looking for and this is what the market is paying for, okay? They are interested-
Yeah.
in share, you know, we all are experiencing the decline in total audience in linear television. What the market is willing to pay for is the absolute value of eyeballs you are delivering. We are plus 1.1% on linear screens and then adding another additional 2.0% on-
2% from the extra.
Yeah.
Okay.
Thank you.
The slide 11, the individuals plus 1.4%, that's the extra reach?
Yes, could be. It is a proxy of extra reach.
Okay.
....additional AMR coming out from the total audience. The point is that for the time being, we are able to deliver our own total reach measure to clients. The last mile of the total audience project by Auditel is to release these metrics to the market from the end of this year or at the very latest, beginning of 2023.
Okay, perfect. Sorry, the final question is on inflation and pricing.
Sorry. Could you remind me? Because I got lost, sorry.
I was with a media owner yesterday who were talking about price increases, where they are passing higher CPM rates to reflect inflation, that they are passing some of that on. Are you passing on higher cost inflation in the form of higher CPM pricing to your customers?
Generally speaking, the inflation that we are, let's say, delivering to the market, the media inflation, is not related of course to the general cost inflation. It's mainly related to main drivers. The first thing is that we as Mediaset, but all the Italian TV broadcaster over the past two years gradually recover the CPM level they had before the COVID outbreak in 2020.
On the other end, of course, generally speaking, having linear audiences declining or not growing, a good part of our revenue growth is of course linked to rate card increase. One could ask, okay, but why the market is willing to pay an increase in rate card.
Mainly because we still are the building block, the milestone to build the first level of reach in any media plan. The reach linear television or total video delivered by broadcaster is the higher, the highest reach you can buy on the market. For the sake of that, we are able for the time being.
I'm crossing my fingers, to deliver this gradual, on our end, moderate low single digit rate card increase on our offer, linear offer. On top of that, the fact that our inventory in digital is growing more and more, mainly driven by connected television that command a higher CPM and the market is willing to pay for that because it's highly valuable and very well live TV viewers.
On top of that, the user experience on connected television, as you know, is a lower cluttering. To some extent is a better advertising experiences with pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll or. That's it. Hope to have
Okay. That's helpful.
I thank you.
Thanks a lot.
You're welcome.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking our next question, so please stand by. The next question from Thomas Singlehurst from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning. Thomas here from Citi. Hopefully, you can hear me. First question is on advertising again. I suppose we would normally expect advertising to be a lead indicator of economic pressure, and you explained why you think that's maybe not coming through in exactly the same way as we would have expected.
I'm just interested whether sort of upstream, if that's the right way of putting it, you think there are any sort of shifts in ad budgets that are driving that sort of extra element of resilience in advertising. For example, you know, are traditional advertising budgets, based on your conversations, pulling share from promotional activity or other areas of sort of traditional marketing activity?
As I say, just trying to get a sense of whether there's any other sort of shifts in the marketplace that are driving this sort of surprising level of resilience in the context of what appears to be a very, very uncertain macro environment. That was the first question. Then the second question was on the cost side. You're very clear about, I think it was EUR 1.8 billion of operating costs for the full year.
Firstly, I just wanted to double-check what level of revenue that was predicated on. Then just more broadly, how much flex in revenue could you just offset via short-term cost actions? Or put another way, you know, what movement in revenue is too much for you to actually offset in terms of by. You know, is too much to offset via tactical sort of cost reductions? Thank you very much.
I'm starting from the last part. I mean, first of all, you have to consider that we never work for the next quarter. It's hard today to see the future and certainly in terms of trends, so negative or non-negative. It's also very difficult to foresee how long the possible negative cycle will last.
Because as I tried to explain before, I mean, media is made by, let's say, relevancy. For instance, just cutting all the programming for the next quarter would be certainly help the results of next quarter, but probably would jeopardize our strategic position for the long run. It's always a balanced decision, the one that you have to take.
There are costs that you can cut without any impact on your strategic positioning for the medium term, and there are other that maybe you can cut, but you don't want to cut because otherwise when the market will recover, you will not be in the same position where you are now. All in all, trying to be very practical.
Our base case scenario is a scenario where the full year total advertising revenue will be negative by a couple of points. That's our base scenario. We are clearly having also on the 1.8 some 2-3% flexibility in that respect. As I told you before, we are really acting in the short term. We don't want. I mean, Matteo explained how good our audience are.
Frankly, very remarkable because and I'm repeating what Matteo was saying, we are able to deliver more eyeballs than in 2019, in 2022, after having seen throughout Europe the decline of linear audience. That, in my opinion, is a great result of our editorial people and also, it's a great result also coming from a decision we took in terms of technological and digital part.
We don't want to lose that leadership. We certainly don't want to lose the leadership in terms of eyeballs in Italy just to save one quarter. 2022, frankly, it's almost over. I don't think that EUR 10 million more or less in EBIT will really change our history.
We need to be careful to project in 2023, because 2023 will be a very important year, because we hope that any negative part of the cycle will end, and it will be important to be set in the right way to benefit from the growth. Because again, if you look at what happened during COVID, we were very good in managing COVID time, fair enough, but I believe we were even better in managing the recovery.
Because do not forget that in 2021, our revenue, advertising revenue, was already more than pre-COVID level. Our intention is to protect cash during the negative part of the cycle, but more than that, we want to be stronger when the cycle will revert in order to capture the growth that in many cases will come.
That's, sorry, a pretty long answer, but we are not really targeting the best performance in the next quarter. We are trying to plan and to set Mediaset and Mediaset Spain in the best way to capture the growth at the end of negative cycle we face. I hope that I answered you.
Yeah, that's perfect. Any views on sort of upstream share? You know, are we seeing a shift from promotion to advertising? Is there anything else that would explain this pricing resistance?
Thank you, Thomas, and I'll try to answer this question. Okay. Honestly, it's quite difficult because it depends from sector to sector. I mean, just to give an idea, the food sector is definitely under pressure. They have cost pressure and margin pressure. They are not able to fully transfer this to the retail price. For sure this has contributed to a downweight in advertising expenditure in that sector.
For example, on the other hand, coming to the automotive sector, we see that, anyway, despite the fact that the sector is still not recovering, all the major manufacturer and all the major brands are present on advertising, and we can fully get these.
Thanks also to our very extended football offer because they need to communicate it because we are in the middle of the electric hybrid transition, so they must communicate. What I can tell you that, generally speaking, just yesterday, the president of the union of the Italian advertisers said that they have a moderate expectation for this year, so something like -1%, -2% in general trend.
All the advertisers are aware of the importance of maintaining a certain baseline in advertising. Coming back to inflation, those advertisers that are obliged to increase their retail prices, their consumer prices, are fully aware that they need the advertising to allow for these price increases.
Advertising is a sort of smooth lever in order to make price increases acceptable on the consumer side and not to be, let's say, hostage of distribution. This is my view, my understanding of the market. Not a general answer, but you should consider from sector to sector. That's it, I hope. Thank you.
That's very clear. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking our next question, so please stand by. The next question from Harry Read from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi. I actually had the same question on the cost base, so, all good from my side. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We are now taking our next question. Please stand by. The next question from Stefano Gamberini from Equita.
Good morning, everybody, and thank you for taking my questions. First of all, regarding your strategy, what could we expect about Mediaset España integration, the next steps that you have in front of you on this, with the integration with this company, and if the integration could help for some savings during 2023 or not?
The second, you said you are all on all the dossier in the sector, but considering that you can't use your paper, what is the firepower that you have? Also on this topic, if you can spend a few words about your other commitment, the first you are moving in a buyback, but the second, most importantly, your payout policy.
You said you will distribute at least 50% of the consolidated adjusted result, but also taking into account the level of leverage. What is a level of leverage that is reasonable in your view? As a consequence, what is this firepower that you have? The second question, regarding the slide number 18, you underline that the cash generation was relevant.
But there is the change in net working capital, which account for around EUR 144 million. Is this a one-off? This figure will be reabsorbed during the second part of the year or not? What is the main driver of this positive result? Lastly, as usual, as I got EI Towers, now there is a new majority. Probably something could happen also on this dossier. You already said in the past that this is not a strategic stake. What is, in your view, the best way to extract maximum value from the stake in EI Towers? Many thanks.
We should need another hour to answer your question. No, in case, Stefano-
No, very briefly. Very briefly.
No. Clearly, I try to answer everything if I forgot something there.
I mean, as far as Mediaset España is concerned, I mean, I believe that everything is written in the info memo. As it is written in the info memo, we are in a cooling down period, if you want. We cannot do anything because we committed ourselves to do it. We are in a period in which we cannot do almost anything on shares. We are very happy with our 83% controlling shares.
That is, in any case, already pretty advanced. We have not decided. We will see. Once the cooling down period will end, in January, we will decide depending on everything that is happening around us. As far as synergies, I remember that in the info memo, EUR 55 million synergy was the target.
We also wrote and declared there that clearly without the delisting, the process of getting the synergy would be lower, as you can imagine, because the integration cannot be done fully. You cannot really carry out full integration with the organization.
We are already working with our Spanish colleagues to see mainly the revenue side, whether we can really enhance the performance applying everything we always said regarding the opportunity on the digital advertising market that the two teams are already in place, and they are really studying what they can really extract more with a supranational and integrated digital offer. As we wrote in the prospectus, clearly things will progress in parallel with the integration on the possible integration with the shares.
Payout, again, as is written in the info memo, we have committed ourselves to pay out at least 50% of our net profits. That's our statement. As far as numbers, clearly we have to wait, but I repeat our commitment of 50% payout for the future. In terms of firepower, I mean, we are pretty solid in terms of net debt, as we said.
We are also pretty solid in terms of tenure and duration of our financing facility. Our covenants in the facility, in the committed facilities are allowing us more or less EUR 1 billion of firepower, without, let's say, taking into account any EBITDA of the target.
To say if we are buying an asset that is producing EUR 100 million EBITDA, clearly it's giving us additional firepower because our covenants are EBITDA related. Regarding change in working capital, I mean, that's part of seasonality on one side, and also advertising market trend, in the sense that last year we were in a pretty, let's say, high growth scenario.
When revenues are going up strongly, clearly we are absorbing some cash in working capital, as you can imagine, because we are cashing our advertising investment after. Now we are exactly in the opposite scenario. We are decelerating.
A decelerating scenario is clearly producing cash, because clearly we are cashing turnover in a growth period, while the present period is decelerating a little bit. The comparison of the two years is affected by a completely different revenue trend. That will be clearly re-stabilized as soon as trends are becoming homogeneous between the two exercises.
As far as Eight Towers is concerned, I mean, sorry, but I mean, clearly I cannot answer in the sense that I believe it's a question to pose more in the RAI slash government slash Ministry of Finance area, in the sense that you know our position that has always been the same, and I believe it's also the same position that S2I has in respect to everybody.
Clearly, election has taken a sort of a cool down period in which clearly everything has been a little bit freeze. I believe that things can restart or in one way or the other, we don't know, as soon as the new government will be in place. For the time, in the short term, I'm not expecting anything.
We will see what the government and RAI will want to do in that respect. Even if clearly the structural problem of RAI are the one that we all know they need money, so either they finance their budget through some sales of assets, or the government should put more money in RAI, in other ways. That's structurally the choice they have. You know, clearly you have to ask to say what will be the decision. I believe I answered everything. I don't know, Stefano.
Yeah. Yes, many thanks. Just a quick clarification. As regards your stake in Eight Towers and if the consolidation will go ahead, your stake in the new Rai Way EI Towers , you can say, are you still interested to dispose of this asset, this stake in order to monetize? Also, this could be a sort of financing for you or otherwise, you are changing your mind on this topic?
Clearly, we are very interested and focused on maximizing the value of our stake. When the value is there, monetizing it or not, we see it's also depending on the opportunity to reinvest the cash or there are many things we have to consider in that event.
We are really focused on synergies. We think that, let's say, combining the two assets, we all shareholders can generate a huge amount of synergies and clearly value. That's the main target we are aiming. Once this target will be achieved, we will see what to do with this stake.
Many thanks again.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking our next question, so please stand by. The next question from Andrea Randone, from Intermonte. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. My questions have been partly answered, so just a quick comment if you may provide on the current trading, especially advertising. Thank you.
I thank you, Andrea. I'll try to address your question. With regard to current trading, we are mainly talking about Q3 year-on-year performance. We knew in advance at the beginning of the year before the war outbreak that the Q3 year-on-year comparison would have been a tough comparison with the two previous year.
I'm saying this because Q3 2020 and Q3 2021 for us as Mediaset, but let me say for the whole market and mainly for television, were two exceptional quarters in terms of revenue collection. I underline, I remark exceptional because I may be wrong, but probably out of the last eight, 10 years, probably they were the highest Q3.
This was due to a unique combination because you had for two years in a row the positive rebound effects after spring lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. In the summer, you had the additional effect of sport events. In Q3 2020, you had Serie A moving to summer and we had the Champions League in August.
Again, in Q3 2021, we had the Euro and Olympics that create let's say an exceptional situation accelerating advertising expenditure. We knew it in advance that it was a tough comparison, and that is why I said remark two times the fact that for us the North Star, the benchmark is 2019.
That said, despite the deteriorating macroeconomic condition, we expect to close Q3 2022, not so far from pre-COVID level Q3 2019 in terms of advertising collection. The positive note is that after a negative comparison year-on-year in July and in August, extending also to the first part of September.
In the last 10 days of September, the trend is improving and we have a positive performance year-on-year. Luckily, regarding the outlook for the last part of the year, at this stage, we don't have a clear visibility on Q4. With us, probably no one in the market for the time being, because companies, advertisers are continuously reallocating their budget from weeks to weeks.
I can say that we are quite cool and not concerned because what is going on is that the sector dynamics we commented before are going higher. The growing sectors in the nine months are still growing around 10%, the slightly declining sectors are low single-digit and probably automotive has stopped its climb.
We are not concerned also because our offer is strong. The autumn TV programming has started, and the season has started quite well. Again, not only in terms of share, but in terms of absolute values of eyeballs, as commented before.
We are quite, let's say, again, cool with regard to the last World Cup event because unfortunately we will be spectators of other countries, missing our national football team. This of course we expect that the commercial appeal of the competition will be significantly lower.
While on the other end, we are still keeping all our offer in November and December very well aligned in terms of TV programs. We do expect to prepare a very good, let's say, baseline level for the last part of the year. This is the picture we have now in front of us. I hope you have answered, and I thank you.
Thank you. Thank you, Matteo.
Thank you, Matteo, and thank you, Marco. Thank you guys for all the questions and for taking the time for the conference call today, and for taking the time for the conference call for any question, information you would like to ask. Have a good day. Bye.
That concludes the conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.