Earnings Call: H1 2021

Aug 24, 2021

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to New Zealand Media and Entertainment's 20 21 Half Year Financial Results Webcast. My name is Cliff Joyner, General Manager of Communications at NZME. Presenting on the call today will be NZME's Chief Executive Officer, Michael Boggs and NZME's Chief Financial Officer, David MacKrell. Given that New Zealand is currently operating under COVID-nineteen lockdown restrictions, today's call is being run remotely with all of us from NZME taking part from separate locations. So thank you in advance for your patience as we work through the call under these conditions. For the duration of the presentation, everyone on the call will be able to listen only. Once the presentation is complete, we'll open the webcast for questions. At this time, if you have a question for either Michael or David, please hover your mouse over the bottom of your screen and click raise hand. You will then be prompted to unmute your microphone on Zoom, and you'll be able to talk. Please note that all registered participants on the webcast will have the facility to ask a question. However, those who have dialed in on a phone line will not have this ability. If you have any technical questions, please use the chat function, which is also at the bottom of your screen. I'll now hand you over to Michael. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us for NZME's 2021 half year results briefing. If you're on the webcast, you will be able to view our presentation pack, which you can follow as we talk through the results, starting with today's agenda, which you'll see here on Slide 2. I'll take you through our results summary before discussing the wider market dynamics for the 6 months to 30 June against the context of the COVID-nineteen business and market impacts. I'll then take you through a detailed review of the divisional performance of each of NZME's Audio, Publishing and OneRoof divisions with a focus on their performance against the strategic priorities, the initiatives for each and then the targets for each division. As usual, I'll then hand over to David, who will talk you through the financial results for the half year, and I'll be back to share in Sydney's outlook for the balance of 2021. David and I will then be very happy to discuss any aspects of today's presentation and the results with you. Given the significant disruption caused by COVID-nineteen across the last year, some of our commentary will compare the half twenty twenty one with that of the half year of twenty nineteen. We expect that this will help provide a more accurate context of NZME's financial performance so far this year. Before I share with you the detail of NZME's half year results, I'd just like to say how delighted we are to be sharing a set of results that feature not only earnings growth, but a further reduction in net debt and the payment of a dividend. So let me start by beginning on page 3. On the right hand side, you'll see our 2021 half year results summary. We're pleased to report growth in operating EBITDA to £30,100,000 for the half year. This represents 4% growth in operating EBITDA against the first half of twenty twenty. This is despite 2020 including $8,600,000 in government wage subsidies. Operating revenue grew 9% in the half to $172,500,000 That's up from $157,800,000 for the corresponding half in 2020. You'll see that our statutory impact was $5,600,000 That's up 85% on the corresponding period in 2020. The operating impact was $7,800,000 an increase of 14 percent, sorry, on the 2020 half year. And our operating earnings per share is $0.309 per share. That's up from $0.035 per share in the 2020 half year. I'd also like to highlight the ongoing reduction in net debt, down by $15,200,000 in the half. We now sit at 18,600,000 dollars Given this, NZME and the Board is pleased to advise that given the significant reduction in debt, the NZME Board has declared a fully imputed and franked dividend of $0.03 per share. During the half, NZME continued to make really good progress on its strategic priorities. These are reflected on the left hand side of this page. We've continued to achieve growth in NZME's radio revenue market share. The expansion of the New Zealand Herald subscriber base has continued, now having 178,000 subscribers. This includes 67,000 paid digital New Zealand Herald premium subscribers. That's up from 53,000 in December 2020. Pleasingly, we've also grown ONEOF digital revenue by 145%, with ONEOF total revenue up 30% year on year. I'd like to take a moment now to discuss the dynamics of the wider New Zealand business and advertising markets that we've experienced during the 6 months to June. You'll see these on Page 5. It's relevant to acknowledge that the disruption caused by COVID-nineteen across 2020 continues to impact the New Zealand economy and the commercial sectors in different ways. This means that the post-nineteen recovery shows some volatility and isn't being felt evenly across the market. You may be familiar with the chart on the left hand side of Page 5. This is the ANZ Business Confidence Index for New Zealand. Providing a broader view of the impact of COVID-nineteen on the general business community, it shows that since moving into positive territory in December 2020, business owners have tended to be neutral in their sentiment. However, this is a significant improvement on the sentiment of last year. The chart on the right hand side of the page shows the growth in advertising agency revenue. Importantly, this is compared to the first half of twenty nineteen, the year prior to COVID-nineteen in New Zealand. It's pleasing to see the underlying growth in the agency advertising market against these pre COVID levels of 6% overall for the half. Digital advertising revenue was the main driver, up 20% on 2019. Radio advertising recovered to be within 2% of 2019. You'll see there's been a steep change in newspaper agency advertising, which resulted in this being 31% lower than 2019. However, as you'll see later, this decline in newspaper advertising has been substantially offset by the digital growth that we've seen. On Slide 6, the graph on the top right shows NZME's quarterly perspective of performance in terms of our focus on returning advertising revenues to 2019 levels again. You'll see that for the Q2 of 2021, advertising revenue is very nearly at levels we delivered in the same quarter in 2019. In fact, in June 'twenty one, revenue was higher than June 2019. The table below shows the half yearly advertising revenue changes by division for 2021 compared to both 2019 and to 2020. Turning now to Page 7, you'll see an updated overview of NZME's performance when you measure us against the market. We're pleased to note we've achieved further gains in market share growth during the first half of twenty twenty one. It's continuing the momentum that we delivered in 2020. We've maintained above the market growth with market share rising for print to 47.8%, audio to 40.9% and digital display stable at 24.3 percent of market share. This reflects NZME's strong focus on delivering against our strategic initiatives. This outperformance of the market illustrates the returns on a superior strategy that includes leveraging our quality journalism, engaging entertainment content and highly relevant real estate products. Before I take you through the detailed performance and strategy of each of our divisions, I'd like to share some of the key audience achievements that we've celebrated over the past 6 months. We've highlighted some of these for you on page 9. They are a great reminder of the power of NZME's brands. They deliver mass audiences for our commercial partners across multiple channels and digital platforms. In total, NZME connects our advertisers with an audience of 3,400,000 customers across market leading news, sport, entertainment and classifieds platforms. Not only is the New Zealand Herald New Zealand's number one daily newspaper, but its digital platform, new Zealandherald.co.nz, has now been New Zealanders' preferred digital news provider for 11 months in a row. In fact, just last week, we hit 12 months at number 1 when we include the results for July 2021. Not only does News Talk. ZB deliver the most audience of any radio network that also broadcasts New Zealand's favorite breakfast show. The ZDM Radio Network is the number one choice for the coveted 25 to 54 year old music breakfast audience. And OneRoof, it's cementing its position as a growing national real estate brand. It's maintained 89% of residential for sale listings nationwide in the face of extremely intense competition. These are just some of our audience highlights across NZME's 32 print publications, our 9 audio brands, our 16 websites and our 17 real estate publications. Let me now share with you a more detailed review of the individual performance of each division. Let's begin with the Audio division on Page 10. You'll see here that radio advertising revenue growth of 17% on the corresponding period in 2020 more than offset the reduced other revenue, which in 2020 included the government wage subsidy. As radio advertising revenue returns in this COVID-nineteen environment, it's pleasing to see NZME growing its share of the total revenue market. NZME now commands a 40.8% share of radio advertising revenue. That's up from 39.7% in the first half of twenty twenty. IHeartRadio revenue represented here as digital audio advertising grew 70% on the 2020 half alongside the significant growth in audience engagement in both music and in podcasts. Revenue growth has resulted in increased expenses, primarily due to higher commissions and license fees. The first half of twenty twenty's EBITDA margin was artificially high due to the government wage subsidy. The EBITDA margin of 10% for 2021 showed an improvement compared to 2019 as a result of the permanent cost savings that we've achieved. The charts on page 11 illustrate NZME's audio reach across our key target demographics and by listening hours for Iheartradio. Let's start with the left hand chart, which pleasingly, NZME has grown its radio audience across the latter part of 2020 and into 2021, with a weekly audience in excess of 2,000,000 listeners. The second chart shows NZNE's Talk Radio market share, which shows News Talks. It'd be continuing to drive audience growth. News Talks. It'd be remains a compelling brand in the market. On the 3rd chart, you'll see our music radio share has softened in the 1st surveys of 2021. As we've previously shared, improvement in the music radio audience is a key strategic initiative for NZME. As part of this strategy, in 2020, NZME made format changes across 6 of our brands to improve their overall performance. While it's not shown here, it's pleasing to note that in 8 of our 9 radio brands, we have grown breakfast audiences in the 25 to 54 demographic, and we expect this growth to flow through to overall network performance. Win breakfast, win the day. Many of you know that as a key part of any radio strategy. The final chart on the right shows Iheartradio achieved a new record level of digital audio engagement with nearly 6,000,000 listening hours during the Q1 of the 2021 year. Turning now to our audio strategy and an update on progress towards 2023's targets on Page 12. As you all know, our 2023 audio strategy is to be New Zealand's leading audio company by creating New Zealand's best local audio content, growing our broadcast and digital reach, and growing market revenue share and digital audio revenue. In terms of the key metrics set to help measure performance, we've seen a softening of NZME's share of total audience. As noted earlier, the programming changes that we rolled out across 2020 as part of our new audio strategy are impacting the performance against this metric as audiences adjust to new shows, hosts and music programming. Early signs are that these were the right changes to make. It's pleasing to note the momentum in radio revenue share growth and the growth in the share of digital audio revenue as a percentage of total audio revenue. The EBITDA margin is lower for the first half against 20 20's full year achievement, reflecting, as mentioned, the impact of government's COVID-nineteen wage subsidy and the seasonal revenue trends of radio. A number of initiatives supporting our strategic targets have progressed during this half. These include the extension of Kiaonia host contracts, frequency optimization and new local shows which have been created, which will support audience share growth. In addition, we have enhanced our regional management structures and rolled out localized revenue growth strategies that support radio revenue share growth. You can see a progress update on the right hand side of slide 12. Let me now move on to NZME's Publishing division on page 13. Just a reminder that Publishing includes both print and digital reader and advertising revenue streams. It's pleasing to report growth in total reader revenue of 3%, noting significant growth in digital reader revenue, which more than offsets the decline in year on year retail sales and the small decline in print subscriber revenue. In fact, digital growth in terms of both subscriber revenue, with 14,000 new digital subscribers added in the half and digital advertiser revenue up 35% have been a highlight of this half. Total advertising growth is 22% on the first half of twenty twenty and is within 4% of the 2019 levels. You will note that print and distribution expenses are up 12% year on year due to the increased volumes, and content expenses are up year on year, which relates to increased resale of 3rd party digital services. EBITDA for the half was $1,500,000 higher than last year with an EBITDA margin of 17%, and you'll see that's 2 percentage points higher than the first half of twenty nineteen. On page 14, we've highlighted brand and audience growth. As shown on the left hand and middle charts, NZME's print audience and brand growth accelerated across 2020, and it's continued on the same upward path in the first half of twenty twenty one. Readership and brand audience are now at 10 year highs. Accelerated readership growth was experienced in the early phases of the COVID-nineteen pandemic. In June, the New Zealand Herald celebrated continued readership growth, reaching 654,000 readers each day. That's up 48% on the previous year. However, we do expect we will see some readership softening as New Zealand moves into more normalized news cycles and editorial agendas move away from the COVID-nineteen crisis focused content into the future. Our insights show 2,250,000 Kiwis are reading New Zealand Herald content each week across our digital and our print platforms. Again, these results prove the value of our commitment to deliver quality content that New Zealanders can have confidence and trust in. And as I mentioned earlier, new Zealandherald.co.nz has now been New Zealand's preferred digital news provider for 12 months in a row and is delivering on being New Zealand's herald right across the country. So, let's turn now to Page 15, where you'll see details of NZME's print and digital subscription performance for the half year. As shown in the chart on the left, we achieved solid growth in print subscription yield. We enjoyed ongoing growth in our subscriber base across the half, illustrated in the middle graph, supported by growth in digital subscriber base. We finished the half year with nearly 180,000 subscribers. This includes 67,000 New Zealand Herald Premium paid digital subscribers, up 14,000 since December 2020. We continue to target New Zealand Herald premium volume growth, including driving corporate subscription growth with enhanced introductory offers. This has resulted in a slight reduction in yield during the period. Page 16 shows an update on how our publishing strategy is progressing against our 2023 targets. We are on track to reach our subscription volume target. In addition, continuing growth in digital subscriptions supports the retention of our print subscribers. This is also reflected in the transition of the subscriber volume mix from print to digital. The percentage of New Zealand households subscribing to the New Zealand Herald is growing, and the advertiser revenue mix is now 44% digital. Solid progress has been made this half on initiatives activated to support targeted growth. These included growth in more content driven out of NZME's Wellington and Christchurch newsrooms, supporting local audience growth, the introduction of story commenting and the launch of a new email onboarding series to drive the key 100 day habit that supports subscriber growth and retention. During the period, we've also commenced the monetization of 1st party audience data and launched new native advertising products among other initiatives designed to support digital growth. Let's now turn to Page 17 and discuss NZME's Real Estate Division 1 roof. Overall, Real Estate revenues were 30% higher than the first half of twenty twenty. Print revenues have been impacted by reduced periods of advertising in the Q1. This was given the booming property market, and they were below 2019 levels. However, digital classifieds revenue has more than doubled to C3.5 million dollars against the same period, both in 2020 2019. On the lower right hand side of the slide, you'll see from the chart that ONEOF Print revenue had recovered to 2019 levels at the end of 2020. This clearly shows the impact of the booming market at the beginning of 2021 when properties were selling quickly and at record levels, reducing the need to advertise in print or upgrade in digital. By the end of the half, the market had returned to more normal levels. However, overall real estate inventory remains low. An increased investment in marketing was made to grow revenue and audience, and this has impacted the EBITDA margin for the half. On Page 18, you can see how ONEOOOP is performing in terms of audience and listings growth, reinforcing ONEOOOP's position as a fast growing and highly recognized brand throughout New Zealand. On the left hand chart, you'll see continued steady growth in national residential for sales listings measured as a percentage against Trademate. As you'll note, our main competitor has worked hard to attract the Auckland listings that ONEOOOP is attracting. The middle chart illustrates ONEOOOP's digital audience, which continues its growth trajectory. The peaks in Q1 clearly illustrate the huge period of interest in property at that time. Growth continues in the ratio of residential listings upgrades and as at the end of June was at 12% nationally. In the Auckland market, market listing upgrades have reached 23%. WONRO's performance for the first half of twenty twenty one against our 2023 targets as outlined here on Page 19. With solid achievement of listings penetration in Auckland, growth outside of the Auckland market is now a concerted focus for the ONEOOOP team. While ONEOOOP has grown audience numbers, so too has our main competitors' real estate platform. It's pleasing to see growth in listings upgrades and growth in the digital advertising as a percentage of our overall ONEOOOP revenue during what has been a difficult market for advertising. EBITDA margins will continue to improve as overall revenues increase. Initiatives progressed this half to support the OneRoof strategy include a dedicated leadership structure with regional reporting enhanced across our key markets and the completion of audience segmentation that supports the targeting of real estate audiences with more relevant content and listings. We have also initiated the development of rural and retirement verticals, which we expect these to be live this year. Let's now move to discuss Grab 1 on Page 20. As you'll see, Grab 1 is classified as an asset held for sale. Yesterday, we entered into a conditional agreement to sell Grab 1 to Global Marketplace New Zealand for $17,500,000 which is payable in cash on completion. NZME retains the net liabilities to settle as they fall due. The sale is not subject to any regulatory conditions. It is conditional on no material adverse change to the performance of Grab 1 occurring prior to completion and on Global Marketplace completing funding arrangements by the 15th October 2021. Global Marketplace will pay NZME a break fee of $1,000,000 if the funding condition is not satisfied by 15 October 2021. The sale is expected to be completed no later than 31 October 2021. Meanwhile, it's pleasing to report that Grab 1 revenue was 9% higher for the half, which combined with 8% lower expenses resulted in a 58% increase in EBITDA for the half. The results of our corporate areas, together with our events business and automotive website driven, are on Page 21. Revenue increased during the half due to the return of some events that were canceled during the first half last year. Overall, expenses were higher as a result of the cost of delivering these events in line obviously with the increased revenue. Let me now hand over to our CFO, David Necrol, who'll update you further on the results, and I'll be back with you shortly. Thank you, Michael, and thank you to all who have joined us on today's call. Let's start with our interim operating results on page 23. As Michael mentioned earlier, we've included a 2019 comparative to provide a more appropriate assessment of revenue recovery and cost base reduction. Operating revenue was $172,500,000 an increase of 9% and the interim result for 2020, even though 2020 included $8,600,000 of wage subsidy as other revenue. Segment revenue highlights the underlying revenue performance, which was 16% higher than 2020 and just 4% lower than 2019. Operating EBITDA grew 4% to $30,100,000 up 9% on 2019. Operating expenses increased by 10% largely as a result of increased revenue volumes. However, operating expenses are $11,100,000 lower than the first half of twenty nineteen. This highlights the annualized permanent cost base reduction of $20,000,000 being achieved. I will talk to this in more detail on the next slide. This slide also highlights the 17% increase in operating NPAT to $7,800,000 with operating earnings of $0.309 per share. Turning now to the expenses on page 24. NZME maintains a determined focus on continually improving its cost base. There have been some increases in expenses against 2020 associated with increased revenue and activity, these were temporary savings in 2020. These are most obvious in the print and distribution and agency commission and marketing lines. The increases in people and contributors expense reflects the temporary salary sacrifice reductions made by NZME's people in the first half of twenty twenty. The permanent cost base reductions are obvious by comparing to 2019. Exceptionals and other items are substantially lower in the first half of twenty twenty one with lower restructuring costs. Most significant items in this category for the half relates to impairment of assets relating to the sublease of a portion of NZME's Graham Street premises in Auckland. This sublease is expected to generate annualized cash flow from the sublease of around $1,000,000 from 2022. The balance sheet as at 30 June is summarized on page 25 and highlights a further strengthened financial position. Working capital movement is minor and reflects normal seasonality and timing of significant payments such as salaries. Depreciation and amortization was higher than capital expenditure for the half, resulting in lower fixed assets and lower right of use assets. As previously mentioned, net debt is reduced by $15,200,000 to $18,600,000 Overall, the net asset position has increased by $6,200,000 to $138,300,000 Moving now to the cash flow summary on page 26. Operating cash flow was $21,900,000 which is lower than 2020 due to the previous half year benefiting from a significant reduction in working capital. Capital expenditure was just $2,700,000 for the half, but is still expected to be around $10,000,000 for the full year. The sale of Mount Victoria's transmission site was completed in April this year, adding $1,800,000 to the cash flow. Lease liability principal repayments have increased due to last year, including transmission cost relief from the government and rent concessions received. Page 27 highlights the significant improvement in NZME's capital management position since 2018. Net debt has reduced by over $80,000,000 to 18,600,000 which equates to a leverage ratio of just 0.3 times operating EBITDA for IFRS 16 compared to a leverage ratio of 1.8 times in 2018. This ratio is now well below our target leverage ratio of 0.5 to 1 times rolling 12 month EBITDA. With the current leverage ratio below the target range, the company is in a strong position to consider returns to shareholders and is well positioned for any investment opportunities that may come available. As Michael noted earlier, as a result of the progress made to grow earnings and strengthen the balance sheet by reducing debt, the NZME Board has declared a fully imputed and fully franked dividend of $0.03 per share. During the first half of twenty twenty one, the company has confirmed that an Australian dollar 9,200,000 in franking credits are that $9,200,000 of franking credits are available to be attached to any dividend. The dividend will be paid on 22nd September, 2021 for registered shareholders as at the 10th September, 2021. This represents a dividend payment of $5,900,000 The board recognizes the company's strong capital position and the absence of opportunities to invest and will return capital to shareholders. The board was in a position to approve and announce a capital return to shareholders. However, given the current COVID-nineteen uncertainties that have emerged since the last week, it has chosen to pause at this time. I will now hand back to Michael to discuss NZME's outlook for the remainder of 2021. Thanks for that, David. So, let's now look at the outlook on page 30. Given that New Zealand has moved into Level 4 lockdown over the past week and just been extended in Auckland yesterday for another week, we are wary of the potential impacts of this outbreak. We've been pleased to see our advertising revenues track closer to the 2019 levels, and quarter 3 have been tracking to actually be in line with the 2019 levels prior to the commencement of this latest outbreak. Real estate markets have been active, and they do provide an opportunity for OneRoof to grow. So on the basis of the trends to date and on New Zealand containing any outbreaks quickly, we would expect profit growth over 2020 for the full year 2021. However, we do note that this may become challenging depending on the duration of the lockdowns. Separately, Google has announced that it will bring Google News Showcase to New Zealand by the end of 2021. We look forward to discussing with both Google and Facebook arrangements in regard to accessing and supporting the editorial content that we produce. We'll update you that in the future. We will update you on the capital management position further when the market conditions become clearer and the sale of Grab 1 has been completed. We also look forward to updating you at NZME's Investor Day, which will hold in November 2021. In summary, that concludes our presentation. Thank you for all joining