Good morning, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today for WildBrain's special call to discuss our recently announced transaction with Sony. Joining me today are Josh Scherba, our President and CEO, and Nick Gawne, our CFO. Before we begin, please note that the matters discussed on this call include forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These statements reflect WildBrain's current expectations regarding future events, including the anticipated benefits of the transaction, our post-transaction strategy, capital allocation priorities, and financial profile. Forward-looking statements are based on a number of assumptions that management believes are reasonable at this time, as well as information currently available. However, these statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond WildBrain's control, and actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied.
These risks include, but are not limited to, the completion of the transaction on expected terms and timing, one-time impacts associated with the transaction, changes in general economic, business, and market conditions, and other risk factors described in our public filings. WildBrain undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements except as required by applicable law. Please note that all currency amounts discussed today are in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated. I will now turn the call over to our President and CEO, Josh Scherba.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. We're pleased to walk you through the details of our announced transaction with Sony and outline what this means for WildBrain's future. This is a transformational moment for our company, one that reshapes our balance sheet, sharpens our strategic focus, and positions WildBrain to unlock the next chapter of profitable growth. Let me begin with the transaction itself. We are selling our 41% interest in Peanuts to Sony Music Entertainment Japan and Sony Pictures Entertainment for $630 million. Proceeds from the transaction will be used to fully pay down debt, representing a 23x fiscal 2025 attributable EBITDA multiple. This valuation underscores both the enduring strength of the Peanuts franchise and the meaningful value creation we've delivered during our period of ownership. Here are the key points I want to emphasize today.
First, this transaction resets our balance sheet, resulting in a debt-free balance sheet at close, saving approximately $50 million in annual interest payments and leaving over $40 million of cash surplus. It transforms our ability to reinvest in parts of the business that are scaling fastest, including our high-margin wholly-owned franchises such as Strawberry Shortcake, Teletubbies, and others in our portfolio, our premium digital content network and next-generation advertising offering across YouTube, FAST, and AVOD, and new technologies, including AI, to drive innovation, creativity, and efficiencies. Second, WildBrain will continue to benefit from its valuable relationship with Peanuts for years to come through exclusive multi-year service agreements on content production for Apple TV, including the Peanuts feature film, licensing through WildBrain CPLG for consumer products in EMEA and APAC, and global content sales of WildBrain-produced Peanuts content.
That continuity is incredibly important because Peanuts remains one of the most durable and beloved franchises in the world. Third, this allows us to apply WildBrain's unique flywheel strategy that has been instrumental in Peanuts' recent success: premium storytelling, global licensing activation, digital-first engagement to our wholly-owned brands like Strawberry Shortcake and Teletubbies, where the incremental margin opportunity is significantly higher. And finally, we return to true capital flexibility with the ability to reinvest in growth, pursue selective strategic opportunities and acquisitions, and consider share buybacks when appropriate.
Over the past 18 months, we have undertaken a number of transformative actions, with this transaction representing the most material. We have completed a comprehensive refinancing of our debt, wound down our legacy television business, and now announced the sale of our Peanuts interest, each of which has meaningfully reshaped WildBrain's operating and financial profile. As we move through these steps, we took a hard look at how the business operates, how we go to market, and how value is created across the organization. As a result, we are implementing changes designed to improve focus, efficiency, and performance. We also intend to resegment our financial reporting structure to better reflect how our businesses operate and how we engage with partners and customers, and to provide investors with greater transparency into the underlying economics of the business. As we work through this transition, fiscal 2026 guidance has been paused.
Once this resegmentation is complete and the new operating structure is in place, we expect to provide updated guidance that more accurately reflects the company's go-forward profile. Our history with Peanuts tells a very clear story. We acquired an 80% stake in Peanuts and 100% of Strawberry Shortcake for $448 million in 2017. Not long after, in 2018, we sold a minority stake to Sony Music Entertainment Japan for $236 million. During our ownership period, we reinvigorated the brand, driving a focus on premium content and premium partnerships. Today, we partnered with Apple TV to produce three series, seven specials, and two documentaries, with more to come, and we're currently in production on a full-length feature film. We drove material acceleration in consumer products growth from single-digit to double-digit through new categories, new geographies, and new demographics.
With today's transaction, we're monetizing that 41% stake for $630 million, representing an aggregate return to WildBrain of over $1 billion from the Peanuts ownership stake. And from that initial transaction in 2017, we still retain 100% of the Strawberry Shortcake franchise, which is accelerating at materially higher returns. Josh has sometimes referred to the Strawberry brand as the free gift with purchase. And now today, that gift will become one of the most powerful value creation engines in our portfolio, a fully-owned, high-margin franchise with years of runway ahead of it.
So what's next for WildBrain? We are in a much stronger position now. We moved from a more complex debt burden structure into a streamlined, synergistic premium family entertainment company anchored in high-growth, highly cash-generative businesses. We regained financial flexibility, unlocking that stronger cash generation profile, and we're no longer tethered to a capital structure that required the majority of our operating cash flow to service debt. We now get to play offense. Our strategy is built around a simple but powerful model, a platform designed for where kids and family entertainment is going, not where it's been. We are focused on three integrated pillars: franchises and global licensing, driving fandom for our own and partner brands through consumer products, licensing, and location-based entertainment, audience engagement, delivering digital content and next-generation advertising across YouTube, FAST, and social media, and content creation, producing best-in-class premium and digital-first family entertainment.
Our unique flywheel allows us to scale brands globally and synergistically in a way that drives strong and sustainable free cash flow. As we look to where we will create the most value, the first pillar is franchises and global licensing. This is where our brands become global businesses, where brand awareness and engagement crystallize into durable, high-margin profits, and where our ownership of IP gives us true economic leverage. We're already seeing that growth in Strawberry Shortcake and Teletubbies. And with a deep portfolio of brands, including Inspector Gadget, Degrassi, In the Night Garden, and more, we have a powerful foundation to scale meaningful, repeatable growth. While Peanuts has been a highly valuable franchise for us, our economic participation was limited by two factors.
First, the EBITDA margin was structurally constrained by the cost base of the franchise, and second, by the fact that we owned only 41% of the underlying IP. By contrast, Strawberry Shortcake is a 100% owned asset, and as we scale the brand, the incremental revenue flows through at materially higher contribution margins. There is no leakage to co-owners, no structural sharing of downstream economics, and the full benefit of licensing, digital engagement, and content monetization accrues directly to WildBrain. Put simply, we earn more cash on an incremental $10 million of Strawberry Shortcake revenue than we do on an incremental $40 million of Peanuts revenue. The same playbook that drove Peanuts' growth becomes significantly more accretive when deployed on wholly-owned IP like Strawberry. Our other key franchise, Teletubbies, is also wholly-owned and thus exhibits a similarly attractive economic profile.
With over 30 years of global brand equity and substantial runway across territories and product lines, it remains one of the most recognized preschool properties worldwide. Over the last several months, the brand has continued to grow as a social powerhouse across generations, surpassing comparable global brands including Sesame Street, PAW Patrol, Cocomelon, and Gabby's Dollhouse in total social engagement, with meaningful growth across multiple platforms. This combination of strong brand equity and rising engagement provides a long runway for profitable expansion, making Teletubbies a highly accretive driver of future EBITDA and free cash flow. In the near term, we see commercial opportunities in key markets such as Asia and the U.K., where Teletubbies' deep heritage and built-in brand awareness continue to resonate strongly with both consumers and retailers seeking differentiated preschool IP.
Longer term, as new content comes to market and we expand the brand's digital footprint, Teletubbies is uniquely positioned to capture a massive opportunity in kids' entertainment, with significant room to scale both digital and licensing revenues. A key metric in the licensing industry is retail sales, which represents the estimated value of products sold to consumers at retail across all licensed categories and territories. These figures are derived from reporting provided by our licensing partners and are calculated by grossing up reported royalty data using contracted royalty rates to estimate the total retail value of goods sold. As of fiscal 2025, Strawberry Shortcake has surpassed over $200 million , and we estimate the retail sales potential to be at least $800 million . For Teletubbies, we estimate the retail sales potential of at least $1 billion .
The brand surpassed $100 million in retail sales in fiscal 2025, underscoring both its strong existing momentum and the significant runway ahead as we continue to refresh content, expand digitally, and execute disciplined global licensing programs. Across Strawberry Shortcake and Teletubbies, we see the opportunity to drive multiple turns of franchise revenue growth through our proven playbook. Supercharging our own brands, as well as the vast portfolio of third-party brands that it manages, CPLG gives us a structural advantage. It's one of the largest independent licensing agencies in the world, with a diversified portfolio, deep retail relationships, and a footprint that spans EMEA, the Americas, and APAC. We are a trusted partner to leading global licensees and retailers, which is increasingly important as they look for high-quality, evergreen IP that can perform across categories and geographies.
This credibly helps us not only elevate our own franchises but also deliver meaningful value for partner brands seeking global reach and consistent execution. WildBrain CPLG remains a margin-accretive business with limited capital requirements, and its scale and reputation amplify both owned and third-party brands. Beyond our flagship franchises, we also have a deep library of hundreds of owned titles with significant untapped value. This portfolio allows us to selectively refresh brands, reactivate them digitally, and drive long-tail monetization across AVOD, FAST, and global distribution. Through digital-first strategies, including YouTube, social engagement, shorts, and influencer-led formats, we can efficiently test and scale mid-tier and emerging IP, informing downstream licensing decisions with real audience data, and as retailers increasingly seek differentiated, evergreen properties beyond the largest global franchises, our broad library provides meaningful opportunities for category expansion, seasonal programs, and exclusive capsule collections.
Let me shift from licensing to focus on how we reach and monetize global audiences and how the dynamics in the kids' and family digital market create an especially compelling opportunity for WildBrain. The broader kids' media landscape has undergone a dramatic transformation. AVOD networks like YouTube and FAST, or free ad-supported TV, have emerged as some of the most important platforms for premium family content, with revenue across the industry growing at double-digit rates and the global kids' digital advertising market expected to expand nearly eightfold over the next decade. Meanwhile, the traditional linear kids' TV has effectively collapsed, with viewing on major networks down more than 90% since 2016. This migration hasn't been smooth for advertisers. Regulation has tightened, the ecosystem has become more fragmented, and brands are struggling to find a single solution that gives them both scale and safety.
Those pressures extend to content owners as well. They can't rely on the old linear model for exposure, and discoverability on streaming platforms is increasingly difficult in an algorithm-driven world. That's the problem that WildBrain solves through our scaled premium digital platform. We operate at a scale very few players in kids' entertainment can match: more than 1.7 trillion minutes watched cumulatively on our YouTube channels, over 2 billion average monthly views across that network, 14 billion minutes watched annually on our FAST channels, and over 150 FAST channels live globally. This level of reach gives advertisers a premium, COPPA-compliant digital environment across YouTube, FAST, and social that helps them navigate complexity and reach high-quality premium kids' and family audiences where they are actually watching. We've strengthened our commercial engine as well.
Over the past year, we've upgraded our team, technology, and tools to deliver higher-value, industry-leading services across YouTube, FAST, and media solutions. Through our premium content, our scaled distribution footprint, and our deep compliance expertise, we're helping top global brands navigate complexity and achieve meaningful results, and we see substantial runway to grow this business for years to come. Turning to content creation, this is another area where WildBrain has a clear and durable competitive advantage. We are one of the leading animation producers in the industry, with world-class pre-production capabilities through House of Cool. Our current pipeline includes the highly anticipated Peanuts feature being produced for Apple, positioning us strongly in one of the most resilient categories at the global box office, animated family features. Alongside premium production, we are increasingly focused on lower-cost, digital-first content designed to support and extend our own brands, including Teletubbies and Strawberry Shortcake.
This approach enables high-volume, brand-consistent programming optimized for today's digital platforms while maintaining disciplined capital deployment. This is the area where we see the largest near-term opportunity to deploy new and emerging AI tools across production workflows. We have dedicated teams actively working on these new initiatives and are confident these tools will dramatically reduce timelines and production costs, improving returns across our franchise content and the programming that fuels our digital networks. Importantly, the studio itself remains cash-generative, supported by disciplined production economics and a steady pipeline of contracted work. This provides a reliable funding base that allows us to reinvest selectively in high-potential franchises and content formats that power the broader WildBrain platform.
Over time, we also see meaningful opportunity to further simplify this business, enhance margins through a more focused production model, and drive stronger cash conversion as we align our content pipeline with the priorities of a streamlined, higher-return operating structure. This transaction marks a true inflection point for WildBrain. The strategic rationale is straightforward. We are monetizing a minority-owned asset at a highly attractive valuation, strengthening our balance sheet and preserving our long-standing exclusive partnership on Peanuts across content and licensing. Just as importantly, this allows us to redirect our focus toward the areas where we can generate significantly higher returns, namely our fully-owned, higher-margin franchises like Strawberry Shortcake and Teletubbies, and the opportunity in advertising across our premium digital network. The same playbook that delivered meaningful value for Peanuts becomes even more accretive when applied to assets where 100% of the economics flow to WildBrain.
With a clean balance sheet, our capital structure is more aligned to long-term value creation. We intend to invest behind our high-margin-owned franchises, expand our premium digital content network and advertising footprint, and continue adopting new technologies, including AI-driven efficiencies, to strengthen our operating model. We also have the flexibility to explore share buybacks if and when they make sense to drive shareholder value, as well as disciplined bolt-on acquisitions that enhance our portfolio or accelerate our growth. This is a level of strategic optionality we simply did not have before. On closing, we expect to retain over CAD 40 million of cash proceeds, which provides a strong liquidity position from which to operate. Looking ahead when the time is right, we anticipate adding back a prudent level of debt to optimize our capital structure.
This framework ensures we maintain balance sheet strength while still accessing low-cost capital to support accretive investments. After years of significant industry disruption, WildBrain exits this period as a more focused, more resilient, and better-positioned company. We have a best-in-class management team, strong momentum in high-growth segments of the market, and a platform that is increasingly cash flow generative. This transaction sharpens our strategy, pivots us to being a highly cash-generative company, and sets the foundation for the next chapter of profitable growth and shareholder value creation. We're excited about the road ahead, and we look forward to keeping you updated as we execute against this plan.
This concludes our call. Thank you for joining us today, and please feel free to reach out with any questions.