TelevisaUnivision Confident Heading Into Second Half Of 2022

Spanish-language media giant TelevisaUnivision reported second quarter revenues up 11% to $1.1 billion, with CEO Wade Davis crediting ratings performance in both the U.S. and Mexico, along with the impact of last year’s upfront and the recent launch of its ViX (ad-supported) and ViX+ (subscriber) streaming services.

“Univision was essentially flat in the ratings, compared to the rest of broadcast, which was down mid-teens. Univision was the No. 2 network in absolute audience delivery regardless of language, behind only ABC, going into the important May sweeps, so we did extremely well in the ’22-’23 Upfront,” Davis bragged. He noted that the company’s Spanish-language share in the U.S. grew to 63%, with its total TV share boosted to 7%.

“Q2 was a fantastic quarter overall. Our core business continues to deliver sufficient growth to potentially fund the investments we’re making in our new businesses. We delivered double-digit growth in advertising and in subscriptions in both the U.S. and Mexico this quarter,” Davis told Wall Street analysts on Tuesday.

“We’re improving advertiser churn, attracting new advertisers to the platform, improving pricing, mix and driving improved yield,” the CEO said. He applauded “superb execution” by the company’s ad sales team, but noted how much more growth is possible. He noted that only about a third of U.S. TV advertisers are advertising to the Hispanic population — and half of those who are onboard are under-indexing in their spending on Spanish-language TV.

For the quarter, Univision’s U.S. ad revenues grew 10% to $447.7 million, but CFO Carlos Ferreiro said that was 13% excluding political and advocacy advertising. He says the company is “firing on all cylinders” going into the third quarter and should perform better than its peers if there is an economic downturn.

Not surprisingly, analysts wanted to know what to expect if there is a recession.

“We are seeing several tailwinds for the second half. First, we closed a very successful ’22-’23 upfront in the U.S. Second, political advertising is definitely going to be helpful to the fourth quarter in the U.S. as well,” Ferreiro noted. He added that the World Cup will help advertising in Mexico in the second half. (Rival Telemundo has the U.S. Spanish TV rights.) And finally, he said, ViX will be a tailwind to boost the company in the second half of 2022.

Asked for more details about the upfront, CEO Davis said volume was up in the mid- to high-teens. Linear was up double-digits and streaming was up triple-digits, he told the analysts. “We have now reset pricing for Univision as being a rate of change at or above the general market for the past two upfronts,” he told the analysts.

Regardless of the direction of the economy in the coming months, Univision is expecting a big boost from political advertising.

“The U.S. Hispanic audience is increasingly the swing vote for both Republicans and Democrats. And, in addition to these better demand dynamics, we have new solutions,” Davis said, referring to detailed demographic, spending and other data which the company has developed. “In addition, we have an expanded team in D.C. and a completely new go-to-market approach around political. We have said before that we expect political to be significantly more than double what we achieved in the 2018 mid-term election and we’re just as bullish, if not more bullish, the closer we get to the election,” he concluded.