Good evening, one and all. Let's begin this presentation of the results for the M6 Group for the fiscal year 2022. As usual, I suggest that I first give you a summary of our TV, audio and digital business via a short video, then with my colleagues, we shall comment on these results, then we'll have a Q&A.
In 2023, M6 is seeing far based on its success built over 35 years. In video content with our TV channels with record ratings in 2022. In audio content as the biggest private group in France. In digital with 6play and its exclusive content offering. Movies, music, and live shows. The group is constantly reinventing itself and is a major player in the changes of the audiovisual landscape in France.
With 30 million loyal viewers, our group is unifying young and not so young around entertainment and news. It caters to all passions. Analyzes the news and is offering major news events. Strong investigation, unique documentaries with moments to share and... feel emotions about with drama, humor, talent. In 2022, for the 8th year running, M6 was voted favorite channel of the nation, and 5 of its hosts are amongst the top 10 most liked VIPs. M6 is life.
That's thanks to the skills and know-how of our team with more bold and exclusive content that's always more captivating, funny or moving. Big moments have been part of our DNA with our free educational and unifying media, with clear and quality news, and also with our awareness-raising about environmental challenges. In 2023, we're investing for you once again to keep growing together.
Well, the 2022 results, you saw the release about the accounts. Jérôme will comment on them. I simply wanted to dwell on a few items in this presentation about the strategic aspects. I'm sorry. The traditional television market, of course, is undergoing a deep-seated change. We started working on that as early as 2008 with the arrival of streaming with 6play.
The transformation accelerated, especially in 2022, with a significant drop in viewing time for our linear channels. This decline in viewing time should be offset and complemented with the development of our streaming activities. I'll come back in my conclusion to this presentation. In this environment, we are redefining a strategic roadmap for the group's business.
In the group's business, we shall continue on with our strategies. Régis Ravanas will explain the development of audio, especially radio and digital activities in connection with the group. Guillaume Charles will explain what we'll do with TV and replay activities for the group. As you know, we've changed our executive board. The supervisory board has changed the executive board around myself.
We'll have Guillaume Charles in charge of content activities. He will be able to rely on Thomas Valentin, in particular, who is still in the company to take care of the content activities for the TV e-business. Mr. Larramendy will still deal with commercial activities, especially the advertising brokerage, but in particular, the transformation of all our resource activities, especially in order to maximize advertising revenues.
We'll have Henri de Fontaines, who's in charge of strategic activities and who will be in charge of the group's transformation, especially in the distribution and streaming business. Sorry, I should have started with Karine Blouët, who's in charge of public relations and who's the corporate Chief Operating Officer for the group. Of course, we can leverage the skills of Jérôme Lefébure for all finance and support activities for the group.
Of course, Régis, who's in charge, as I said, of all audio and radio activities for the group. You'll see that the year 2022 was an extremely satisfactory year. That's it for the group's organization. A new generation is coming on to gradually transform and change our company. Regarding the highlights of the year 2022, the context in advertising terms was uncertain.
Jérôme will explain it with the international crisis and inflation. I'll say that from the get-go, there was a two-fold base effect for M6 Group. On the one hand, in 2021, we had the 2020 Euro that was postponed by a year, we benefited from the Euro 2021 in terms of revenues in the previous year, an unfavorable base effect.
With another negative base effect, which was the FIFA World Cup, which was very successful, which was broadcast on during the last quarter. We revisited a number of our diversification activities. In particular, we consolidated Stéphane Plaza's business, which is a big success within the group, we disposed of our Best of TV business because it was now mature, we were in a negative cycle for this home shopping activity.
Overall, consolidated EBITDA for the group stood at EUR 336.2 million in margin from occurring operations 24.6%. If you compare that to the highest level of the group when restated for state subsidies in previous years, we'll come back to that in detail. For net income, it stood at EUR 166 million .
Keeping in mind that there are several effects, the biggest of which are the share of the losses of Salto and the provision that we booked at the end of the year to expect the end of Salto and in particular, the wind up charges for the company. That was all provisioned in 2022, that led to a decline in taxes, something that will be explained by Jérôme.
We had a capital gain in 2021 due to Plaza Immobilier that was consolidated, that was no longer accounted for by the equity method in the accounts. That explains the gap in net income between 2021 and 2022. In 2023, I'm anticipating a bit, but we'll have a positive effect. In principle, we'll no longer have any losses for Salto in our net income, and we'll benefit from a capital gain on the accounts of our GSG, Global Savings Group, our affiliates, as Jérôme will explain. Regarding The key figures for 2022, I'll throw it over to Jérôme, who will explain.
We had revenues of EUR 1.357 and EBITDA EUR 336.2 million. On the slide you can see that our revenues declined by about EUR 100 million compared to 2019, but EBITDA was up by a bit more than EUR 50 million when compared to 2019 and 2022. Operating margin, as Nicolas said, we reached 24.6%, especially thanks to positive contribution from diversification, as we'll see later.
If you look at the main aggregates beyond revenues in consolidated revenues, advertising revenues were down by -4.7% over the year because of strong pressure in Q4, especially because of the impact of the FIFA World Cup, which concentrated advertisers on our main competitor. That sort of dried up the markets in Q4. Operating expenses were managed throughout the year to adjust to the revenues context. They were down by -2.2%.
Here you can see the change in EBITDA with 2019 EUR 284.4, EUR 326.7, excluding state support, and EUR 334.4 this year. You see the net margin. The key figures per business segment. There's a decline in revenues and EBITDA for television. Radio slightly improved its revenues and improved its earnings, thanks to continued efforts that Régis will comment on.
Production and audiovisual rights line up and a smaller number of movies released. Fewer admissions, but good proceeds from other activities other than theaters. There's a decline in EBITDA from one year to the next. Diversification, less revenue, but a strong increase in EBITDA. You'll understand the levers of that with Henri a bit later. Those are the key figures for the year. In total, EUR 33.5 million in revenues lost plus EUR 7.7 million in EBITDA. Good change over the year in terms of performance.
Regarding the CSR strategy in the plan, like all groups, we made progress this year. We worked on it so that we started working on the main goals, the carbon footprint and sustainable production. Sustainable production is how can we produce in a more eco-responsible way in our audiovisual business.
We identified media literacy as a strong goal because that's the impact that the media can have on society and its development. Issues of digital and energy frugality are core to our CSR strategy, like developing, reduce, waste reduction and also equal opportunities that will be central to our CSR policy.
In 2022, we had our first carbon balance. We'll explain that in our non-financial statement, we'll have a second carbon balance, which is being calculated. With 2 data points, we'll be able to determine, and we'll shed light on that in the course of 2023. We'll be able to determine our non-financial goals for CSR. That's it for this main goal, you'll have a lot of information in the universal registration document 2022.
Good evening, one and all. To introduce my comments on the results from the television business, we wanted to take stock of changes in fundamentals. What you can see is that, of course, you can't deny it, there's a decline in viewing times for television, there's also less equipment in terms of TV sets per house, a slight erosion for the whole audience.
Sales of TV sets were good because of the World Cup. That's a traditional phenomenon, but you can see that the equipment rate is down slightly. We started from a high base. For the younger population, 15-49, the decline in equipment is also high, - 3.5 percentage points versus 2019, but it's not a stronger acceleration than for the overall population.
What is interesting, though, is to see that what TV sets are used for, and what you can observe is that there's an erosion in TV consumption, especially because of competition from other users. Here you've got all users for TV sets, for the whole audience, and you can see that the weight of other users went from 15%-20% in 3 years.
Four other users, there's SVOD that we hear a lot about with big American platforms, but there's also video games and other types of consumption. For the youngest population, this is where the transition was more marked. In terms of subscriptions, you can see the beginning of a plateau for major SVOD subscriptions. Does that indicate a stabilization? We don't know, but that's a major competitor for television.
However, sometimes you need to put things into context and highlight other users for French people. Here you've got statistics for everything that people do on internet screens and TV screens. Here you can see in blue the share of television in the people's users of their screens. Here you can see that without challenge, that's TV's strength. We are 2.7 times higher than the aggregated use of YouTube and SVOD.
Of course, television is declining, but it's still an essential medium. That's what you can see here. In purple, these are all the other users, including the Internet. You can see that this is where the competition comes from, competition for attention, as it's called sometimes, because there's an increase in these users.
We're talking about other social media and other types of users. For the 15 to 49 age group, of course, television remains essential and much more powerful than YouTube and SVOD combined. However, we're not resting on our laurels there, and we are relying on the media assets in the group, in particular in the area of video. Linear TV channels are, of course, key assets, but as Nicolas said, VOD with 6play, we now have 24 million members, millions of monthly users.
We have a lever to grow nonlinear users via the 6play platform. Very often we are pioneers in new modes of consumption of m-media. For a very long time, we've fully embraced social media. This year, over 5 billion videos were viewed on social media. This is virtuous on two counts. We can promote what we do to a younger audience. Sometimes they can discover our programs.
It's also financial vector because we get advertising revenues from these operations. This is a major aspect that's going to accelerate in the next few years, and we will invest massively, at least in even stronger digitalization of our contents. For television, for the TV business, it was a slightly specific year. The war in Ukraine, the World Cup, the major events and the base effect with the Euro the previous year.
We held up well on the commercial target, which is what matters. We can see that all group channels on the commercial target had maintained their performance. The performance for the whole population, which is an indicator that we track a bit less in financial terms. part of the decline is explained by this aging phenomenon. That's for the ad-absolute audience share. In Europe, public broadcasting with an older audience are see their audience share growing because of the older population.
We often say that prime time is very important for a group of TV channels. I'd like to insist on a very important element, the performance of all of our channels during prime time. You see it here on this graph.
It is the best historic year on the target for prime time in the M6 Group. We've had a lot of launches. It's very important to be able to regenerate brands. You'll see it later brand by brand, what has happened. Today, if we add the 8 and 9 o'clock, 60% of the advertising performance indicators are very good, and we have had problems elsewhere.
Here you see the same thing for prime time, you see that M6 is the only historic channel to have progress at a record level in the last 10 years. Fundamentals on the target, commercial target in prime time are very promising. How is it that we've been able to maintain and increase our prime time audience?
Through the brands, historic brands, a lot of work that we're doing with Thomas consists in renewing those brands. You see that Mariés au premier regard has had its best season. L'amour est dans le pré, Top Chef, second best season. Incroyable Talent. We also are able to launch novelties. Les Traîtres, I hope you've seen, that is a new game. It's the best launch in the last 20, 21 years for women responsible for purchases.
We've also renewed our portfolio with games, magazines, life magazines. Last point, we also insist M6 remains a reference in terms of news. Capital, Zone Interdite, we have had very good performance and even record performance for Zone Interdite and Capital. Zone Interdite and Capital are the two information magazines that are most watched on French TV, especially in access, prime time.
All of our performance is also based on DTT channels. Here you see W9, 3.6 versus 3.8. 6ter has made a very interesting progression with a new prime and daytime offer and the mutation of Gulli. It's an hybrid model. Children during the day and Gulli Prime is the new program for prime time.
Here again, this has been successful because we've had the best historic audience on the target for the channel. In a few words, on each of the channels, for W9, it is the favorite DTT channels for the French. It is the best prime year in the last four years. We've had an excellent launch. For TV reality, for reality shows, we still have a very good offer of magazines and cinema.
6ter is the second-best historic year, leader in DTT HD, the best year in prime time. A very good season done by 6ter that allows us to have very strong performance. Gulli, as I said, it is a real mutation towards an hybrid model that has allowed us to have a good performance. Pay channel Paris Première and Téva are doing very well.
Paris Première is doing its best historic year for the minus 20, the under 50, and Téva has had also among the top 3. Regarding the on-demand audience, on-demand TV, as you say, is very important. Here again, we have to adapt to the change in the environment. We said, it is a real opportunity because it is by far our youngest media.
56% of the audience is under 50. We have younger viewers who discover our program on 6play. We have to take advantage of that to propose even more content. The other important point is that people watching 6play remain on it. We're leaders on free platforms in terms of time spent. The contents are interesting.
We can, in fact, have an average use time of 1 hour and 3 minutes, which is huge. As I said, also 17 million of monthly coverage, 17 million French who come and see our content every month. It's up to us to keep that figure. Today, how is it that we intend to increase 6play's ability to attract faithful viewers? The first thing we've done is to invest in specific contents. Today, we have bought catalogs. We've produced our own production.
We have a specific and proprietary content. 6play is becoming a platform that proposes specific contents, often for a younger public. What you see is that those proprietary unique programs have increased by 38%. That has increased by 38% the time spent watching those program. The second novelty is 6play Max in 2022.
That is more for the viewing experience, more than a pay offer like Salto. It's a new use we can propose for those people who want more viewing experience. One last point. As we said, in the digital, you have the linear, the nonlinear, our own platforms, and the third thing is the social media and the reinforced collaboration.
The anticipate collaboration with the major social media is such that today, with our teams, we can have a phenomenal performance, 5.1 billion videos seen, 48 million subscribers or followers and a lot of accounts and publication. There's a distinction to be made. Our platforms and our channels is for contents.
Social media is for short contents. Viewers and the market understand that difference. We now have an approach with the social media that is very complementary. Hello to all. I'd like to say a word about radio. We have a market that is shrinking a little, -1% in 2022 in the number of listeners and also of the listening time, as you can see. Still, 72% of the French listen to radio every day, which mean it's still very powerful media.
If you look at what's going on in terms of digital consumption, it is increasing in a very dynamic fashion. 19% of people listen to the radio on their smartphone or other digital devices. What's the situation between the different private groups? M6 is still leader among private groups. We have increased in 2022 by 2 points, 0.2 points.
NRJ is also well-positioned. In fact, we have also Lagardère that is going through a difficult time and TF1 Publicité. If we zoom on the different radio stations, we realize that RTL is doing its fourth best performance historically, so a very good 2022. RTL2, it is a historic record. RTL2 has never had such a score, Fun Radio, minus 0.3 points. The public service is doing very well, especially France Inter and France Info.
Whereas, Europe 1 is in a critical situation. There's a new rating measurement that has been implemented very recently, which is equivalent to what we have in TV. If we believe the results of that study that is more reliable, RTL is the number 1 channel in France. Small focus on the digital activities.
As Nicolas was saying, the activities are growing. The French people are listening to an increasing number of podcasts. 17 million French people listen to podcasts, +17% versus last year. We see that, in fact, the M6 Group is the 1st private operator in the area of podcasts in France with the highest dynamic compared to its competitors, so well-positioned for this translation of the market from the linear towards nonlinear or on-demand.
Good evening to all. The year has been quite special in terms of advertising revenue, minus 4.7%. The market has slowed down after Q2. The second part, as Nicolas was saying, we've had a dual negative effect, a base effect, because we had broadcast Euro last year and 100% of the advertising revenue of the FIFA World Cup was for TF1 and beIN SPORTS.
Those two negative effects explain this delay, which means that we have a difference with 2029. If you look now at the more positive aspects, all of the digital sales have been doing very well. We have a double-digit growth driven by 6play that is always doing very well, still doing very well. We've had also a good development of segmented advertising.
The, we have multiplied by 7. The advertisers are back, and we have good prospects for the development of this activity in the future years. It is a very important activity, as Régis was saying. In terms of digital audio, we also have a growth of 60% and a change of all of our digital activities, which were very much becoming almost all audio. That will take place next year or the year after. I might anticipate the first question that will be asked. What about 2023?
It's always difficult, you know, that we have less visibility every year. What is clear is that we're not in the same approach as the first quarter. February is quite slow. We're in the middle of annual negotiations, which are difficult with strong inflation. It's too early to know, but we don't have the feeling that the strong break that will continue in the beginning of 2023. Jérôme?
Now, a few key figures about the three segments. First, TV, we've just talked about. Significant efforts were made to manage the cost, to absorb the drop in revenue, in advertising revenue. You see the level of EBITDA, EUR 163, EUR 263. This is thanks to optimized programming cost management and also better management of costs, the rotation between the channels inside the group.
That is for of the TV activity with all of our channels, not only M6. Regarding radio, the revenue has been stable. Régis' teams have answered by increasing cost control, making savings in programming costs, and a lot of synergies with TV's bid in terms of TV and entertainment.
An ability to have an EBITDA of EUR 34 million. In 2017, when the radio division was acquired, EBITDA was EUR 15.5 million. We are on target given the plan we had announced then. If I may, it's an important point, the group's activity, the notion of group is essential. The synergies with radio, TV, digital, all this is very important today. In each entity, there are a lot of synergies that have been implemented between the different teams.
For example, an RTL journalist is now in charge of the weekend news programs during the weekend on M6. The editorials, we have RTL's guests are announced on M6 in the evening news program. We have promotional synergies between our channels. This result is, programming costs have remained more or less the same. We have had no savings on the programming structure of RTL, for example, but we have had synergies allowing us to save on operating costs, building technical organization.
All this has allowed us to maintain high performance for the three radios because they can count on a group and vice versa. For example, when we go in Turkey, we have common teams. When we go to Ukraine, we have joint teams. When we have correspondents here, we have had something taking place in Grenoble. A judge was investigated.
There was a common task force between M6 and RTL. It is a Grenoble journalist who has interviewed the judge in Grenoble, both on M6 and in RTL. This notion of group is fundamental if we want to have a viable aiming, but while respecting the specificity of each team.
To reinforce the notion of a group, the PDA segment this year, we have a revenue that is slightly down, - EUR 4.5 million, a reduction of 3 million viewers. We had a good base effect last year related to the Kaamelott. This year, we have had 12 launches, with a number of admission per movie that was lower, so a contribution to the revenue was lower since the depreciation is has an effect on profitability. Maybe Henri can tell you about diversifications.
Good evening to all. Diversifications, you know that they are a specificity of the M6 Group. Here again, there's a principle of synergies that was applied. Here you see the diversification we're consolidating, that we're controlling. It is a good year in 2022 because the EBITDA of this group has increased quite significantly. In 2022, it is an engine for the group driving the group's profitability.
Why is that? Because we have rotated the portfolio. Today, we have totally sold our home shopping division. Best of TV was sold last year, so we're no longer present in this sector that was going down. We have controlled Stéphane Plaza Immobilier, a company we'd launched in 2014. We had 49% of it.
The company is doing extremely well. It's building, on, the synergy, the presence of Stéphane Plaza, the strength. Of the advertising promoting this company, we've acquired 2% and we're controlling this company. We want to consolidate. It is doing very well, it still has more potential.
Regarding the companies that we do not control, that are accounted for by the equity method, we can see them as a real value reservoir because you can see that they're operating on business segments that have a big future. There's Bedrock in streaming that has a specific status. It's clearly strategic diversification for us in Europe-wide.
There's market, digital marketing, which is very powerful, promoting e-commerce based on different types of services. A big company here, GSG, Global Savings Group, that Jerome mentioned. It's present in over 20 countries worldwide with a big presence in Europe, Germany, UK, and France. We are now the biggest shareholder.
This is a growing company that should have, in 2023, probably over EUR 200 million in turnover. The other activities, I won't dwell on them. It's our diversification policy. We bought a company that was called iGraal. This company, we had a choice either to dispose of it, there was a big player on the market that wanted to buy it, or to merge it and take over the company GSG, which was a German company based in Munich, operating in digital marketing, as Henri said.
We had a cash part, so we got EUR 35 million during COVID out of the disposal of iGraal. We had a part paid in shares, and we are now the biggest shareholder in GSG, and they're on the offensive buying up companies in Europe and Germany in particular.
Probably in 2024, 2035, they should have an IPO, and then we'll probably recycle our portfolio diversifications as we did for mon Album Photo and other diversifications. To wrap up, we still have a media for equity activity that is very selective. We have Miliboo. Miliboo, a relatively small stake. It has turnover that is quite significant, and we're sowing seeds every year.
On this slide, you don't have a business that we launched in 2022 called Academy, which is a joint venture with Galileo, the French leader in education services. It was created from scratch on a very buoyant segment, e-learning, and I hope that next year I'll have more to say to you about that.
A few words on the financial statements. The profit and loss account, we've just commented on it in great detail. Under EBITDA, you have the difference between 20 21 and 2022 in terms of capital gains from disposals, EUR 50 million last year, and the first consolidation and capital gain on the revaluation of the assets, 20%. This year, provisions on part on stakes and the divestment of Best of TV, which is one of the main explanations for this capital loss in 2022.
Regarding the next line, you all know that it's due to the PPAs that we have on the various acquisitions since RTL, Gulli, and others, Stéphane Plaza in particular. Below that, the key element is the share of profit of joint ventures and associates, which reached EUR 71 million in losses versus EUR 31 million last year.
That's just EUR 40 million, a EUR 40 million difference explained, in particular, as we said, by the anticipation at December 31, 2022, of the possible winding up of Salto. That's EUR 22 million amongst the losses. To that, you should add the operating losses for Salto for 2022.
We all recognize that Salto, in 2022, was able to reduce its operating losses from EUR 86 million to EUR 72 million in 2022, whilst reaching a subscriber base of around 1 billion subscribers, but the viability of this tool is complicated. What's more, you also have the other investments that Henri has just told you about. All of them contribute to startup losses, but with good industrial projects.
For the line relating to income tax, to remind you that this year we're coming back to a nominal tax rate, which is in line with previous years. Of course, we have benefited from the lower CIT rate. We had a lower tax charge last year because we had a short-term merger aligned so that we could reduce our tax charge. EUR 165.9 million net profit and group share EUR 161.5 million versus EUR 280 million last year.
That's the profit and loss account. Little to say about the balance sheet. Very little change in the long-term assets or liabilities. Mostly changes in working capital requirements. The WCR for our media activities, sectoral media activities, went through ups and downs with the COVID effects in 2020.
The exit of COVID, which was favorable in terms of WCR. 2022, which corrected these favorable effects, and we're coming back to a quite nominal level in terms of free cash flow generation from operations. In the cash flow statement, you've got the EUR 26 million change for the fiscal year in total.
That's explained by this reduction in WCR consumption. We used EUR 36 million in cash versus a resource of EUR 73 million last year. More income tax paid because in the previous year, we had the COVID year, and so we had the reductions on the direct tax charge for 2021.
That's for operations, but for recurring investment activities that are slightly lower and offs, postponement of cinema production, whereas last year we benefited from disposal proceeds on one-offs, and especially we captured Stéphane Plaza's cash in December 2021 and the cash-in of the remainder of the disposal of our 51% of Bedrock to RTL Group.
The dividend paid in 2022 accounted for EUR 126 million plus some dividends paid to associates of Plaza Immobilier. We continued to contribute to contributions to joint venture current accounts for especially Salto and Bedrock that used resources from the group to conduct their activities. That's the cash flow statement.
As announced in the statement in the press release, we are proposing to pay out a dividend of EUR 1 per share like last year. The coupon date is on 3rd May, but I think it's in the press release and will be paid out on 5th May. That's it for the income statement.
Thank you, Jérôme. Here you've got the key figures on CSR matters, especially our goals in terms of energy savings and the creation of indicators. Let me point out that all employees who have variable pay in the group will have 10% of their variable pay calculated on the CSR policy with precise indicators, quantitative indicators on the CSR policy. Now, if you agree, we'll answer your questions. Just one word maybe about Salto, if you agree, because that's a major aspect in the financials.
We financed the loss for 2022, but we also booked our provision for the possible discontinuation of Salto in 2023, which will materialize in a loss and wind-up costs that were provisioned for EUR 22 million in the accounts for 2022. The loss of EUR 46.1 million on the netting, which is a drag on net income. Why is Salto stopping and what's going to be the streaming policy for the group? Salto's ending for two reasons, two main reasons.
Salto is a service which can be called SVOD because it's partly paid by consumers, by viewers. Our analysis when we created Salto was that our group did not have the ability to offer a full-fledged SVOD service because of our financial clouds, because of our programming capacity and international competition from well-established platforms worldwide.
To take up the gauntlet in France, we decided to be associated with our two main competitors, France Télévisions and TF1 Group, in a common association. For us, we, that was a way to anticipate on the merger with TF1. This was rejected by competition authorities, despite its relevance on one hand, and on the other hand, it's a similar translation of extremely binding rules on the working of Salto.
Because of the self same competition authority who wanted a Chinese wall between competing operators on the television markets, free-to-air legacy television. It's extraordinarily difficult. For instance, we didn't have the same bands when we created TPS. TPS was a success because we were able to manage it with the TF1 Group in particular as a joint company with exchanges of information. We discussed channels, we discussed programs and costs.
We looked at each other's investment. There was full transparency between partners in the TPS operation that lasted for 10 years, that I knew well, and that ended up in a successful sale to Canal+ to turn it into a pay TV operator. That was impossible, neither with TF1, or with France Télévisions, to create an SVOD system.
The decisions by the competition authority on the substance of the working of Salto were extremely binding. For instance, we didn't know the supply costs for Salto. There was a Chinese wall for all three partners on supplying costs. It's difficult to have a policy because we couldn't discuss about the operating costs of Salto, the biggest of them being the programming costs.
Also board meetings that I took part in with Henri and Jérôme were still under the eye of a mandatee. Each time there was a question that could be answered by this or that, a partner, like distribution cost, the mandatee raised his hand and said, "Stop there." It was unworkable. I said that at the Senate, when I was heard by the Senate, saying that it was impossible to pull off an operation like Salto with the operating rules that were imposed by the competition authorities.
That was reason one. Reason two is, of course, the same. It resulted in the impossibility of having a merger, we could have had a very ambitious streaming policy, especially with SVOD, if we had combined our forces with TF1 Group. It was impossible. Okay, let's take note of it.
Threfour operators out of the 4 refused to acquire Salto. That leads me to a comment. It's very important for TV groups like ours to not be intermediated by distributors that decide the future of our groups. That's the whole problem of our relation with distributors. We need to have direct contact with viewers to have control over data, over our marketing, and not be intermediated via ISPs and their modems and boxes.
We saw that these distributors have a right of life and death over publishers. First, they can have contradictory interests. They can be publishers themselves. You're talking about net neutrality, but there's no neutrality of ISPs, how are they are positioned and how do they promote programs and so on. That's a real issue.
The second issue is that, for instance, when you have addressed advertising, it's a lot harder to go through boxes rather than go OTT. We need to have control over distribution. That's why we're applying for a DTT frequency for the M6 channel, and that's why we want to keep that direct connection.
We'll evolve DTT very often. It was hamstrung by the opposition of telco operators. They were opposed to changes in DTT. With HbbTV standard, we want to have a direct relationship with our viewers. That's the first thing. Secondly, we know that audiences are moving OTT. All televisions are connected now. The number of connected TVs is higher and higher.
There's going to have to be a transition between the world of ISP boxes, which is dominant now, and the world of OTT, which will be dominant in the future. This is something we need to negotiate with distributors on a partnership basis, but it needs to be equitable and fair. Equitable and fair so that we can get access to our applications.
That's very important. We need to have control over data. Contrary to what they say, be it on the financial terms or the technological terms, the relationship is skewed and unfair. That's why we need to have control and take back direct contact with our audience. Why is the relationship skewed? Well, because we have a problem with fees over boxes, fees in particular on how we can use data.
On addressable advertising, there's only 7 million boxes now that can get access to addressable advertising, and there should be technological investments in this operation. The smoothness in the way the audience uses equipment is higher with OTT than with boxes. We need to work with all operators to make the relationship between publishers and distributors smoother.
That was always a stumbling block between the manufacturing, the production world that we are, and the distribution world. In a lot of businesses, in agri-food, you can see that is the case, and audiovisual is no exception. The relationship between producers and distributors, that's the reason why you could say that there's only 30% of the population that receives DTT. Why are you fighting to get a DTT standard and so on? Again, well, because with DTT, we can have a direct relationship.
It's fundamental for us to have this relationship. We know that over the long term, there will still be this direct relationship with the audience via, on the one hand, OTT and DTT. We need to have that transition between the world of boxes. We need to change it. We are not enemies of ISPs, we are partners for them.
We need to have a more effective and efficient cooperation, especially in technological terms. We offered the services of Bedrock to one of them because it's absolutely necessary for ISPs to make bigger efforts to adapt boxes to the world of television.
Jérôme Bodin, Oddo BHF. I had questions about the advertising trend. Could you explain sector by sector whether there were changes between the beginning of the year and Q4, if there were sectors that were up or down?
About advertising trends, how is the trend going for digital versus TV? That was question one. Question two, about programming costs and costs overall. First of all, programming costs, what are the trends for 2023, and especially regarding priorities and formats, is there going to be growth in 2023?
For 6playSome of the savings generated on Salto, will that be transferred to 6play? Is there going to be an increase in the investment envelope? Last question about taxes. I can see that the tax rate is higher than the normative tax rate for 2022. I've calculated 31%. What should we expect for 2023, especially vis-a-vis Salto? In the introduction, you said that there would be a tax impact. You didn't explain that again. What should we expect in terms of corporate income tax rate for 2023?
That we don't end up at midnight, we'll give a very rough summary. For advertising for 2023, there are still sectors that are impacted, especially FMCGs that are fully impacted by inflation problems. Historically, these were big advertisers for the TV market. The benefit of that drawback is that very often these are big advertisers with excellent conditions.
As long as we can replace them or replace the volumes that they give us back with customers for which the terms are a bit more balanced, that's good. For automotive, there's the beginning of a return to normal, although they haven't yet really made a comeback, those players, but it seems to be normalizing. For your question on digital, indeed, the year is starting as it did in 2022, rather well.
6play is doing very well. Segmented advertising is still growing, audio is also growing as well. Are there any further questions about costs? Well, about advertising, digital advertising. It's working out well. It's working well, says Mr. de Tavernost. Well, the message from competitors is rather negative. Well, we're rather positive as far as video is concerned.
Well, yes, the growth that we had on the digital market, especially as you saw the Observatoire de l'e-pub published a survey two weeks ago. There was a break from H2 onwards with a lower growth rate. It's not really the case for us. Not really for us. Over the long term, is that going to hold up? It's very difficult to manage, but we are attractive, especially with our 6play format. That's due to the conjunction of two things.
On the one hand, our TV experience, the fact that it's TV content. The brand safety is very important for brands. Then data, we have more data with OTT than with IPTV. We combining the two is a value proposition that advertisers still seem to be keen on. On programming costs and our investment in 6play, that was what your question was about.
We'll go full steam ahead. We've got the technology with Bedrock. We've got a very robust base with 6play. Unfortunately, we'll get back our investment on Salto. Programs, we won't have to finance there, so we'll be able to invest in 6play on the one hand, and the investment that we're making in Salto will be transferred to 6play, of course. We are currently fully reviewing this business.
We are convinced that we shouldn't think in terms of digital investment or linear investment. We are convinced that it's the same ecosystem. There will be linear successes. I mean, don't bury legacy TV now. It's the biggest media. Our customers want it, and some are coming back from digital, social media, coming back to TV.
That's a significant trend. A number of clients need to have the reach, to have the firepower and quick execution. Linear TV still has that factor. You've also got streaming non-linear TV, which is complementary. Here we're thinking along a total envelope. It's no longer the '80s. We are thinking in terms of an overall budget for our programs and more and more comprehensive for all our channels. Before that, we already had a comprehensive organization for linear TV.
We're integrating a comprehensive organization for non-linear, it's an ecosystem in which we've got brands with editorial lines, but it's all made up of a number of contents that we publish, that we have made or that we make ourselves. The sum total of that, is that going to grow?
If that's the question, the answer at the very least is that we are going to increase that by what we invested in Salto, we'll get the results at the end of H1. We'll probably accelerate our investment so that, for instance, let me give you two examples where we are accelerating investment. We are looking at a call for projects for a soap opera, so to speak, for 2024 because it can be streamed.
We'll focus on a soap opera more than sports, which you cannot stream, to give you but one example of what M6 is doing. Similarly, in movies, we need big assets. We already had two movies. Thomas will correct me, but two Astérix animated movies, which are a big success. It's a big asset for the group, and we financed 100% of them. We'll launch new projects, over EUR 30 million of budget for a new Astérix animated movie, and it's an asset available to the group. Are we gonna use it?
In movie theaters for replay or preview on this or that channel, we don't know. It's an ecosystem where we have a number of options open to present that to viewers. Let me repeat that what is very important is that we keep this direct contact with the audience, either via apps, and so the app battle is very important, or through DTT, so that we can get access and hoping that this new standard will modernize things. For the tax rates, that was my question.
First, a reminder. In 2021, the theoretical tax should have been 105, 106. We had 76. The EUR 30 million discrepancy was a short-term merger, big volume on capital gains, for disposals at reduced rates, the state subsidies that were not taxable. If you do the sum total of all that, you get a tax rate in 2021, which was atypical because it was slightly over 20% when it should have been at 28.
This year, the theoretical rate is rather normally at 25.8, we are slightly above that because to that 25.8, we added the CVAE that we always booked in our tax charges. For 2023, for your models, we'll be below this year's rate for two reasons. The tax rate now will be nominal, and the CVAE will be halved in 2023 and fully disappear in 2024. I think it's reasonable to use 26.5 as a matter of caution.
Hello. I have 3 question. One, on the advertising market. What you're reading of, the arrival of Netflix and Disney, do you think that this will weigh over the long term?
Yes, indeed. The first experience in terms of advertising volume does not seem very successful. It is, of course, a competitor we have respect for. They have a lot of subscribers, a lot of consumption, so they should keep growing even though today the impact on the TV advertising market is very low. It's going to grow.
I don't know to what point. There's always this balance they have to find between a model with a subscription and/or with advertising. What's interesting is the price positioning at around 49 CPM, EUR 49 by CPM. It is a very high price for programs that are often the same on the same TV screen and advertisers that are the same.
For us, it is more an opportunity to have some of our advertisers that it would be a good idea to increase the price of what they're ready to pay on Netflix. To complement what David says, first, we have other competitors. We have Amazon. First, when you look at the history, in pay TV, there was a mix between advertising and pay TV. beIN SPORTS, for example, is doing advertising during the World Cup.
We've had the social media and the platforms. The whole ecosystem, we're trying to explain to competition authority. An ensemble that is competing with us, an old ecosystem. What David says is quite right, i.e., the proposition of Netflix and Disney gives value to the media.
It's a good thing, but it remains a serious competitor where there's a viewing time consumption, so we're careful about that. It is good that they have high prices on the market.
Second question about 6play and 6play Max. Do you have an idea of the number of subscribers you could have?
We don't give information about the numbers of our subscribers. 6play Max is a comfort. It's not SVOD. We're replacing advertising, but the same programs are provided on 6play in AVOD and that are provided. It's not SVOD. It is a comfort.
It's a transformation of 6play in a non-advertising model. The start up is quite good. A number of big TV consumers have come to join us. I think that as Salto stops, we will benefit from that at the level of 6play be it funded by advertising with 6play, non-funded by advertising.
One last question regarding the renewal of the license in the worst of scenario, if it is not renewed and given to another candidate, have you made calculations about the possible loss, a range?
When you are in the middle of a battle, you don't think about retiring or retirement. From that point of view, we are determined to win that battle. We have everything we need to win it. There is a call for... projects. We're respecting everything we have to respect in Arcom.
On the telephone, do we have any questions? Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to ask a question on the phone, please dial star one one on your phones. Apparently, we've been very clear since there are no questions. Any questions? You. One question has disappeared. There's nothing we can do about it.
Thank you very much for having come. Sorry. Yes, go ahead. Yes, we can hear you. On Salto, Christophe Cherblanc from Société Générale.
Yes. Good evening. Thank you for taking my question. One first question about the tax treatment of Salto. I thought it was a transparent company from a. What about the EUR 22 million, is that before tax? Another question about Bedrock. We're talking of a negative contribution of EUR 7 million. If you stop Salto, will that loss be higher in 2022?
What will be the tax treatment of it? I don't know anything about the situation. Second question, you said regarding Stéphane Plaza, I thought the contribution to EBIT was EUR 15 million. Is that a good order of magnitude? Last question, about the authorization to broadcast. You don't intend to lose. From a theoretical point of view, if there is a renewal or a change in the authorization holder, what happens? Is there a schedule to transfer?
When I read the law, I thought there was a two-month period during which the two holders could make an agreement to. Is that still valid? What is going to be the approach? The only thing I can tell you is that the company will answer to Arcom. Of course, there will be no break in the reception of M6 programs.
It is the end of the present authorization is on May the 5th. We don't want a third of the French population not to be able to continue receiving M6 programs as of May 6th. Regarding the tax treatment of Salto and Bedrock, Salto is an SNC, so the 22 is before tax.
We take the income before tax. The losses of Salto, EUR 46 million, have a tax effect of about EUR 12.5 in our tax income. Regarding Bedrock, it's totally different. Bedrock is a 50/50 company, non-physically integrated, and now it has a launching deficit which it is keeping for the moment. It is in the process of refining its widening of customers to have enough revenue given the costs incurred.
Regarding Bedrock and Salto, the comparison between the two, in fact, we have right away asked Bedrock to review their number of providers to start adapting and make sure that Bedrock's cost base is adapted to the loss in revenue. This is a company in which we've been able to migrate customers like that in Holland with no problems.
Bedrock has proven its efficiency. On top of that, we're going to develop with RTL streaming activities to which Bedrock is going to contribute. We're still in the process of investing. They are a technological company. It's very important for us. It's part of our investment in streaming. We want to have a company in which we can pool a number of developments and have, as in the Netherlands, a very powerful technological basis. T
he battle of technology is going to amplify in the future. Bedrock has 350 external providers. They're a very important basis for us. We can add that Bedrock, the Salto was a loss-making contract. The last question was about Stéphane Plaza. The EBITDA in 2022 is slightly higher than EUR 15 million. It is around EUR 17 million.
Thank you very much. One word about Salto. What is the date? Will it be the probable winding up? Maybe somebody could buy the company. Is it over? Second question, what about after the merger? I thought you wanted to maybe buy M&A.
Several things in your question. First, the group has no debt, it's healthy. The group has substantial possibilities to develop. That is my first answer. Second thing, indeed, Salto, given its operating conditions, given the fact that the merger didn't take place, we're going to turn the page.
There are a number of procedures going on. Jerome will end the Salto chapter, we will focus on our core business. We tend to fund our activities with advertising, we're going to refocus on that business by developing investments.
When you say the area of contents, both to increase our contents expenditures and provide them to all of our audiences, notably the younger audiences, through streaming in the ecosystem I mentioned, with channels of different brands, different editorial lines, and a general app, 6play, to offer to our public, the big thing today, what is the level of investment to be made in all of our programming?
Secondly, how can we have the best possible access, both for our viewers, our public, by starting a development in our distribution contracts. Finally, we also have a program to modernize the sales of advertising and optimize our advertising revenue.
Those are the specific areas we're working on to continue development. Regarding M&A, if there are opportunities presenting themselves, we only have five DTT channels today. Maybe we will see whether there are other opportunities on the market.
About the share ownership, you've met with a lot of shareholders. Well, one more than others, but after the TF1 sequence, maybe you met with other shareholders. One has entered your capital. Any idea about what it wants to do with it, what their project is? The other subject that I wanted to discuss, RTL. RTL missed quite a few things in terms of diversification. What is the strategy for you regarding the parent company?
Well, first of all, RTL Group is a good shareholder for us. They know the business. They have no conflicts of interest with distribution, as I said, in particular. They leave accountability and responsibility to local management. They're independent in editorial terms. Last but not least, they don't put a lot of debt in their affiliates.
There was no leverage that they wanted with M6, with debt that would preclude our development. It's all done with shared know-how. For instance, in Bedrock, which is essential in the group with the competitive landscape that we have now. The shareholder decided to stay in. They published a statement on 22 October, and they decided to keep control of the company and not to sell all or a part of its stake into M6.
That's the first comment. The second comment, there's a 51% float, slightly over 51.5% float. CMA CGM thought it was interesting to accept M6's proposal in terms of share ownership. They invested into slightly over 8% of their capital, and now we have CMA CGM on our board. They will take part in the next meeting now.
We are very happy that investors are recognizing the merits of our strategy and the merits of our group. These are big investors, and they want to invest in media. Side by side with our controlling shareholder, we can only be satisfied with the interest that they have for our group and the trust that they're showing towards us that way. We're talking about slightly more than 8%.
A question on the phone from Julien Roch. You have the floor, sir.
Good evening. Thanks for taking my question. The first one is about programming costs. For the last few years, it's roughly EUR 500 million. You're saying that for transformation, you're going to invest at least what you invested into Salto. What does that mean? From EUR 500 to how much?
ITV, when they announced their transformation plan last year, they invested EUR 150 million more, so 13%, so that would be over EUR 50 million for you. Any comments, or should we wait for the H1 results to get an idea on your transformation plan? That was question one, to know how much Salto costs and the minimum amount for programming costs this year.
Second question, could we get an idea of the split in advertising revenues between linear and nonlinear? You said that digital was working very well, but we have no indication of that. ITV gave figures and ProSieben when we asked them, is 15%-20% of advertising, TV advertising revenues coming from digital.
Third question, I never quite understood why French TV did not develop segmented advertising using HbbTV, either 1.5 or 2.5, what they're doing in Germany and now in Italy, because Italy just signed a partnership with Samsung. Why were you not more invested in HbbTV than the others for segmented TV? That was my three questions.
For the first question, the change in programming costs. Programming costs, the investment, I think that I answered that the investment into Salto will be transferred over to 6play. We are quite offensive, and we'll probably talk about that amount of money, but we'll give you more color when we give you the interim accounts in July. That's the plan. That's the investment at within the group scope. We don't segment between linear and nonlinear.
For digital TV, we're talking about 10% of advertising revenues for digital advertising and for segmented TV, HbbTV, David will answer. For HbbTV, indeed, we ran some tests, or we marketed, we launched a product already at least six or seven years ago, so theoretically, it's working well, but then it didn't really find a market in France unlike what happened in Germany.
The main reason is that distribution is limited to DTT for a third of the market, as you know, and since two-thirds are mostly going through ISP boxes, they block HbbTV signals in spite of our repeated and request to have it. If one day we get it through negotiation or other means, once we get full signal, including HbbTV, we'll be able to grow on that type of segmented advertising similar to what our German friends did. Maybe one last question.
Can you hear me? Could I come back to my first question? I understand your answer, Nicolas, say that you take the programming cost and you at least add what we spent on Salto. That's an answer, yeah. What you're spending on Salto is not very clear. Is that the Salto programming cost or your loss of 30% or 100% of the loss? It's fairly simple.
The investment we're making into Salto is about the loss of one-third. That's one thing, and we're checking how much we're going to increase our programming costs so that we have commensurate growth in streaming. It's proportionate to our distribution agreements. I'll insist on that. It's no use spending a lot on streaming if we don't get access to TVs, if we don't get enough access to box data.
Advertising through boxes for replay is much less interesting than what we have OTT. Why? Box technology or investments that were made on boxes is hampering our advertising investment. That's why I can't give you a very precise answer to your question. In parallel, we'll see how we can ally linear and nonlinear. That's one, two, how can we expose our streaming services to the widest number possible?
Thank you.
No more questions?
You said that H-2 was difficult for advertising. Next year, there will be the Rugby World Cup that you got some matches for. Are you expecting an increase in H-2 and so an anti-base effect? Same question for 24 with the Olympics, just to understand the various factors.
Well, for us, yes, we've got a number of fixtures in the Rugby World Cup. There won't be the same effect as the Euro because in terms of viewership, it won't be the same. A potential recovery depends on a lot of outside factors, less inflationary pressure, the end of the Ukraine situation. We are dependent on some external factors.
Although, the Rugby World Cup is a high-quality event, I don't think it can turn the situation around. That's why we're very cautious about the latter part of the year. With the Olympics, are you observing similar effects? Well, it's far off, isn't it? We'll get the Euro in 2024 as well. Yes. Well, thank you very much.
Now see you back probably over the phone for the interim accounts for H1 for our group. Thank you.