Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the half year results for 2026 of M6. All participants should be only on listening. We'll have a Q&A at the end of the presentation. We'll hand over to Mr. David Larramendy, Chairman of the Executive Board. The floor is yours.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam. Good afternoon, one and all. I'm with Mr. Lefébure. We'll be talking you through the first half results. We'll do something a bit different from usual. That is, we're going to start with the World Cup. A World Cup review. That was mainly during H1, yet there were some matches played during Q3. As you probably know, we were the sole broadcasters with 54 matches that were broadcast, on not M6, but M6+ between the 11th of June and the 19th of February. What can we say about the World Cup?
It's very positive in three different ways. That is, we've scaled up for M6 as we decided to broadcast the matches. It's positive in terms of the audience share. M6 was the first domestic channel during the whole competition as far as number of viewers are concerned. 94% of the French, that is 60 million French, were watching the World Cup on M6. For those below 50, it's almost 100%. Of course, the audience shares for the French team were excellent, with 13.7 million as an average, with a peak during the semis between France and Spain at more than 20 million viewers, the second-best historic record. As of today, 20th of July, we have the 10 best ratings of the year. We'll see if this situation changes during the rest of the year.
I'm not certain it's going to change, which means a really good success in terms of audience share. Together with this, we've had an editorial success recognized by everybody. That is the way we presented the World Cup was very modern in terms of the comments and also on the billboards and on air, we had a major impact with social media. Quantitatively, qualitatively, it was an editorial success, a massive one. On M6, we had the World Cup, but also on M6+. As you probably know, M6+ is a very important tool in terms of digitizing what we broadcast and in terms of changing the group. We've done something spectacular with M6+. We have more than 4 million accounts that were opened, 11 million active users. As far as videos watched, it's usually more than 1 million.
A total of 100 million hours viewed. If you include the social media, it's more than 1.5 billion videos or hours of videos that were viewed or watched by the French. Finally, to illustrate this success, we were the most frequently downloaded app during the World Cup, from the different app stores. The third element, which is very important, is our commercial performance, which was unequaled during the World Cup. We were the first TV group in terms of advertising content and contacts. We were the first channel with more than half of those advertising contacts. We attracted more than 300 brands, that's for advertising, who joined us during the World Cup. More than 40 special campaigns were organized and special commercial events that were organized, which means a massive success that we're very proud of.
We'll talk about the financial aspects of this in a minute. To get started in a different way, I thought we'd say a few words very quickly about this event, the World Cup, thanks to which we've grown considerably. Now let's have a look at the H1 numbers. As of the 1st of January to the 30th of June. We were helped with the World Cup, partly, but also, we've had a very good H1 in terms of audience share. We are the group that's gone up more than any other group at 14.2 versus 13.4 points. That's for the four-plus , but for the ones between 25 and 49, we've gone up 1.2 points, whereas the other groups, apart from France Télévisions, who benefited from a good sports programming, the other groups, as I was saying, have been slower than us.
If we look at the other competitors now. That's more than just the first half. We've improved for the four-plus at 8.1 points and 13.4 points on our target on M6. During the first half, however, we've had other events. If you look at entertainment, the main prime time entertainment hits, for instance, "Pékin Express" or "Les Traîtres," these were major hits. We had also the final of CAN, then the Champions League final between the French PSG and Arsenal. Also we had been broadcasting. Well, we had pre-bought something else a couple of years ago, and for the first time, we decided to broadcast this video on M6. It was incredible, 7.1 million, more than 1 million acquired in replay, which I think is a record for this film shown on M6. There are other things that we usually don't talk about.
If you look at programming, however, this is something that happens five times a week, 52 weeks a year. We have [access gaming] and "La Roue de la Fortune," the "Wheels of Fortune." On a Saturday, we've been suffering, we launched "Le Maillon Faible," thanks to which we increased twofold the audience share in a year. These were the highlights for M6, W9 is also doing well. W9 is doing well. If you look at the period from January to June, we were ranked number one in terms of rating, 4.7 points. That's the audience share. That's for DTT channels, first time for us, and we're very happy about this. That's the target, 25 to 49-year-olds. It's historic. This represents a 27% growth of our audience share and 30% if you look at the four-plus audience share.
This is due to "Tout Beau, Tout N9uf " that we launched on the 1st of September last. That's really what people watch in France. It's always been the case, month in, month out for the first season. Audience share was multiplied 7x , and that's for the average viewers. Apart from these numbers that you can see, we had a good repositioning that went on really well, which is what we told you before. We're very happy about this. This is another success, thanks to which we've got now W9 that's grown as well considerably. What about our digital business? We have mentioned this before. This is a key pillar in our transformation, we're going on. We're making headway, progress. If you look at the monthly coverage, it increased twofold in three years, and it's still up.
If you look at consumption, it's up again, up 35% in three years. This means that we have total revenue multiplied by two in three years, and we're still treading that path, that positive path. We started a partnership as well with Amazon Prime for the distribution of our content. We're very happy about this partnership. It's working rather well. We have steady growth in consumption on the platform, so we're very happy about this contract that we've signed with Amazon. Financially speaking, it's interesting, and it's interesting as well for the group in terms of audience share. As far as advertising is concerned, thanks to the World Cup, well, that's in June, we've managed to outperform the advertising market during the first half. We're growing 1% versus H1 2025. If you look at the market excluding M6 Group, it's at more or less -9%.
Over-performance totaling 10 points, and this over-performance is really good. It really shows that TV is an appealing medium, as well as major sports events that are broadcast on TV. The advertising video revenue is more or less 30%, which is a record for us, and 2.2 points is our increase in market share. Some numbers. Revenues for the Video division is what you can see here. Thanks to advertising and advertising as well during the second quarter, EBITA is dropping to the tune of EUR 50 million, more or less. To cut a long story short, we can say that half of the drop is due to the World Cup and the rest, half of this, is due to the market effect. As everybody knows, the market is awfully complicated. Apart from M6, the market is down 9%. There you go. It's an investment.
It's a loss which is lower than what we'd expected, and we're very happy about this. Our estimates show that had we not been broadcasting this, we would probably have suffered more or less the same amount. That is, with such a competition, you know that many advertisers will come to you, and there's less money for the other players.
Moving on to the audio sector. We have the RTL radio stations, RTL2 which is a radio station that works rather well in terms of consumption. We have about 96% of the French population that listens to the station. We also have digital versions of all of these radio stations for both of them, RTL2 and RTL. RTL is actually the leading radio station in France. Fun Radio is, of course, also a musical radio station that is also quite well-positioned. Of course, the ambition here is to develop the digital aspect through podcasts mainly. We're, in fact, the second commercial podcast publisher in France. During this season, we've actually reduced the gap with the leader on the market, and we're going to continue our efforts on this front. We have 39 million monthly listens at this stage.
When you look at the top 30 podcasts downloaded in France, you have "Les Grosses Têtes ," which is leading. We also have seven other podcasts among the top 30. This is, of course, something that's crucial, and we're going to continue to develop this, either by enhancing the schedule itself, by looking at or working on programs that work on narratives that can be downloaded, that can take the shape of podcasts, but also by working on very specific podcasts. The RTL and Fun brands also have a life on social media where we have record consumptions. Although there's no advertising revenue generated per se through their presence on social media.
We're going to work on enhancing the programs starting from September, I'm very happy to say that the main slots of information on RTL will be actually led by women, Anne-Sophie Lapix, Céline Landreau, and Amandine Bégot. Amandine Bégot is, in fact, going to continue her slot between 12:30 P.M. and 2:30 P.M. There will be a few changes made to improve this scheduling. Now, on the financial results, we have had to endure a margin hit by the advertising market downturn in Q2. EBITDA has gone down for the Audio division. This is not the first time it's happening, but this is rather temporary, and we're going to have a clearer view of the situation in the next months. We remain optimistic in thinking that the market is going to come back up again.
Now, moving on to the other divisions, while they don't have that much of an impact on EBITDA, we're looking at Production and Audiovisual Rights. As for Diversification, while the real estate activity remains rather complicated. Given the international situation, while the decision we announced a few months earlier, i.e., to divest from brands such as Stéphane Plaza, et cetera, and Sixième Avenue. We're going to actually strengthen our position in Sixième Avenue and divest from Stéphane Plaza network. This transaction is set to be finalized in August. The non-recurring income with no equivalent in 2025 is to be noted.
Now I'll hand over the floor to Jérôme so he can talk about some of the equity accounted entities.
Now, there's been a fair share of increase in profits over the period H1. Last year in 2025, we had a lot of the preparation of RTL Deutschland that was going to be mounted on the Bedrock platform, this migration was finalized in April 2026. In 2026, we had the first initial financial flows from the traffic coming from the migrated subscribers. There's a small amount of loss attributed to the fees related to this particular activity. We're rather satisfied in seeing that all of these activities are moving towards profitability on all fronts. Now, moving on to the financial statements, the consolidated statement of comprehensive income. While the financial results themselves are lower than the past couple of years, there's been a real desire to focus on shareholders, we have been working on this from the month of May. This has actually reduced the remuneration treasury.
I can't give you any other major explanations on the results themselves. Moving on to the balance sheet. You can see here that you have a treasury that's missing some of its dividends, and you can see here that we're roughly at EUR 33 million when it comes to the cash and cash equivalents and some investments as well in cinema that are going to be balanced out in the coming months. On the cash flow statement, we have a positive closing situation at EUR 33 million and a net treasury at EUR -36 million. No other major explanations that I can give out here.
The main information that you need to keep in mind is that the favorable effect of the World Cup is going to significantly improve the treasury in the second half year, because all of the invoicing of the matches in the latter half will be transformed into cash in the month of August. Of course, that'll be the invoicing for the final phase, i.e., that of the month of July. The positive effect will be there, will be felt later on. The level of revenue obtained was beyond what we expected, so that's good news. On the ESG front, a bit of information here. We have achieved a lot on transparency when it comes to financial information. We also signed the Working with Cancer charter that now brings together more than 5,000 companies.
We're very proud to participate in this project, and you can also see some of the other awards we've been given. Thank you very much. Let's move on to outlook. As I said, the advertising market is rather crippled right now, and there's very low visibility at this point in time. Given that, we're going to very carefully monitor our costs in the five months leading up to the end of the year. You know that we have an M6 2030 plan that targets EUR 80 million in savings over the next five years. While that plan is going to be gradually executed soon, and of course, this very careful cost management is part and parcel of our DNA, we're going to pursue that.
Those of whom watched the World Cup, I think you were able to see some of the trailers of some major programs, some returns of some flagship programs that are going to come back on screen from September. That is also something that we're counting on for a long-term impact. On the digital front, we're looking at a streaming revenue of more than EUR 200 million by 2028, and we're going to continue to invest in these digital programs and technologies alongside Bedrock. That's in a nutshell what we can say to you on the financial results. Of course, we're open to any questions now. Over to you.
Thank you. If you want to ask a question, you have to dial star one, asterisk one on your telephone. The first question is from Christophe Cherblanc.
Good evening. Thank you for taking my question.
My first question was on the World Cup. How were the costs attributed? Was it a linear attribution in terms of the number of matches in the second trimester, or rather the third trimester? Of course, you're looking ahead towards the third quarter, but how can you evaluate the commercial potential of these matches? What's the percentage that you're expecting? That's, I think, important for us to understand. The second question is for Jérôme, who spoke about the return of BFR. Is the WCR completely going to be removed from last year's information? The last question is on the restructuring of the real estate front in the first semester. There's nothing actually that's visible on that front. Will there be more changes in the second semester? What is the new real estate hub going to actually look like? Thank you very much.
Well, I'll answer the first two questions and then let Jérôme talk to you about WCR and Stéphane Plaza. Yes, the attribution was entirely arithmetic. We're looking at one-fifth of the cost of each match, irrespective of what the match was. Yes, there were more costs on the second trimester rather than in the first. About the impact on the third trimester, well, we think that it's going to be actually no impact.
Now on the return of the WCR. Well, I think it's going to go beyond the first semester. Maybe we won't be able to recover all of the WCR from last year, but that's the plan. Now on the real estate front, the operation is not entirely finalized. We have announced at this stage the major principles of this operation.
We're currently validating this transaction, then there will be a finalization mid-August, then we'll know all of the metrics, mainly of the distribution of the agencies, because the franchises of Stéphane Plaza had the choice of either joining Sixième Avenue or continue as Stéphane Plaza, or make a third choice, in fact, a completely different one. Depending on the number of franchises that choose one of these options in each of the networks, we'll have to look at the consequences that this might have on the valued assets. This is a scission. We're actually cutting up the company with the same shareholders, there's going to be an exchange of shares. 74.5% of Stéphane Immobiliers will be exchanged against the 25% that Mr. Plaza himself holds.
This exchange, once it's done, will deconsolidate the share that comes from the M6 Group, there will be a residual value which will be fully analyzed by the end of the year, keeping in mind the recruitment of the new franchises that would want to enter our business plan rationale. That's what I can say. There's actually no reason, no legal motivation either to anticipate the resolution. In about three weeks, we'll have more details on this front and more on the technical finalization of all of this.
[Non-English content]. Okay, thank you very much.
Next question, please. Conor O'Shea , Kepler Cheuvreux.
Good evening. Thank you for having me. The first question to ask, because I'd like to pick on the question asked by Christophe. The World Cup effect in July. David, you've talked about this. You said that there will be a zero effect later on. Is it zero effect on the margins? That is the cost of the programming or the schedule will be offset by incremental advertising revenue. Is that correct? What about this minimal effect or impact? Second question on the dividend. 2026 is marked by a margin drop. There's also the effect of the World Cup that has to be factored in. What about your dividend outlook? Will it mirror these changes? Does that mean more net cash, or is it based on the EPS, earnings per share level?
I don't know if you've heard my answer to the first question because we were talking at the same time. There's the EBITA effect that's really neglectable at the end of July or beginning of July. That's the World Cup effect. The dividend or payout policy, it's difficult to know. We'll see, depending on the cash flow position and the market results at the end of the year. It's too early to say.
Now, should you want to ask a question, please dial star one. Next question. Christophe Cherblanc, Bernstein.
Evening again. I'd like to seize this opportunity. David, I think that in your presentation, you told us that you were wondering about what's happening on the audio market and the impact on the structure of your group, could we say the same about the TV market? I'm asking the question because if the market is decreasing to the tune of 5% or 6%, historically, this is something we saw when there was marked recession, which means the macro landscape is not really good. That's true, but there's no technical recession. Do you think that to we've climbed down a ladder or a flight of stairs, that's going to be difficult to climb up again? What can you say about the structural effects of the video market? Yes, video. I'm talking about the video market.
That's the question. Difficult to answer. We've seen two trends, you see. There's a trend which is due to the economic situation. By the way, this drop started when the French National Assembly was dissolved, and there are more structural events. Difficult to know which has had which impact. Very difficult to do. I know the advertising market, and I think that this drop that we're seeing is not justified. TV channels are a cheap medium. It helps the advertisers sell their message. It's connected to the brands. It's brand sales. It's not the case in the digital world. Of course, the audience share has dropped. There's a market that has dropped. The level, I think, of this decrease is not justified. I think it's not justified, but I'm not saying that it's going to stop miraculously.
We have two things to do. First, we have to work on the schedule, on the programming. We have to have the best programs for as many people as we can. The second thing is that our advertising group will have to continue and meet the advertisers and show them the clout of the group and the resilience of TV advertising. For TV advertising and digital platforms. It's a long answer, it's a key question, I couldn't really give you a short answer to that.
Thank you very much.
As a complimentary question from Kepler Cheuvreux.
Good evening once again. This is once again on the growth of revenue from streaming, which was roughly at 20%, I think. Which is quite a good number, but we're at +24% on the first semester, which in fact indicates a slowdown in the second. We could have imagined that the activity on the analog front would increase activity on streaming. Would you say that this was because it was launched mid-May 2024? Or is there any other explanation to this slight decrease?
Yes, there has been more digital growth on the second half of the World Cup rather than in the first. Was it because of the phasing in the market? It's really difficult to say. There was really good impetus, and look at the percentages of growth, and also on the amounts that they represent. I think the fact that the percentages themselves of growth are decreasing, I don't really think that's very telling. I don't think that's a negative effect per se.
Thank you.
Just as a reminder, if you want to ask a question, you have to dial star one, asterisk one on your telephones. The next question is going to be in English from Nizla Naizer of Deutsche Bank.
The campaigns that would have happened in Q4 were brought forward during the World Cup period, given the buzz around the tournament. Just trying to understand what we could potentially expect in Q4, which is, I guess, traditionally the largest quarter, given how much excitement there was around the World Cup. Some color on your conversations with potential advertisers would be great. Second, just to understand the scope of growth in Q3. I'm not sure if you've mentioned this already. Would the magnitude of growth be similar to what we saw in Q2? Or because there were fewer games, it won't be as dramatic. Some color there would be great. Thanks, David.
I missed the beginning of the first question. Would you mind starting again? The second one I have it, but the first one I don't.
Sure. My first question was, do you think that there was some advertising spend from Q4 that were pulled forward towards the World Cup-related spending? Because traditionally, Q4, I guess, is the most important quarter for advertising. But given all the excitement around the World Cup, do you think some of those campaigns were already done, or are the conversations you're having with advertisers still constructive about how they feel about spending in Q4? Thank you.
Yeah. It's an interesting question. I think there is both. Not all the World Cup revenue are marginal compared to the rest of the advertising spendings for the entire year. Some part of it, maybe money was pulled up from Q4, but also from the rest of Q2 or earlier in the year. That's probably the case. Also, lots of advertising spend is based on the launch of new products, and that actually is not changed by the World Cup. If there is a launch of a new car happening in Q4, the advertising spend will happen at the time of the launch and not for the World Cup. We know that part of it is marginal. Part of it is some money taken out of the market, but it's hard to put a number on it.
We will monitor that, but it's hard to put a number on it. Regarding your Q3 question, what I was telling Conor is that the net EBITA impact for the World Cup in July will be more or less zero. We'll have higher revenue because of the World Cup, we'll have higher cost because of the cost of the competition, but more or less, the net impact will be zero. I hope that helps.
Thank you.
I'm going to hand over the floor back to you, sirs, for your conclusions, because we have no more questions.
Very well. Thank you very much, one and all, for having attended this presentation. This is a presentation that's coming to you from a very proud group. The event was a major one. It's the first time that the World Cup had so many teams participating, and it was a huge event, and we were delighted to go along with the French team. I think the 1,400 employees of the group were extremely proud to be associated with this event. Thank you very much. For those who are taking vacation, well, happy holidays. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference has now come to an end. Thank you one and all for your participation. You can disconnect now. Thank you.