TelevisaUnivision Confident Of Continued Growth

Spanish-language media giant TelevisaUnivision on Thursday reported consolidated total revenue for the third quarter grew 5% to $1.15 billion. That included a 2% increase in the U.S. to $769 million and an 11% gain in Mexico to $382.2 million.

“Moving to advertising, consolidated revenue grew 6% [to $725 million],” CFO Carlos Ferreiro told analysts in the company’s quarterly conference call.

“In the U.S., ad revenue grew 5% [to $463 million]. Our teams executed superbly and grew revenue in the quarter despite a tough comparison to 2021 when we had three major soccer tournaments — the Gold Cup, Copa América and the Euro Cup — all of which generated significant advertiser interest,” Ferreiro said.

In Mexico, advertising grew 9% to $262 million. The CFO said the company was benefitting from strong upfronts in both countries, which led to increased ad volume and pricing.

The launch of the Vix+ subscription tier of the company’s streaming product helped drive 8% growth in subscription and licensing revenue to $400 million. U.S., growth of 7% to $296 million was also driven by virtual MVPD revenue following the YouTube TV carriage which began in the third quarter of 2021.

CEO Wade Davis noted that everybody in U.S. advertising is feeling some impact from current macroeconomic challenges. “We’re not immune to that. However, we have been able to continue to grow our business at a very, very healthy level. Although there was a modest deceleration sequentially from Q2 to Q3, from a growth rate standpoint that was mostly driven by the comparison with last year’s third quarter that came from soccer,” Davis said. And while TelevisaUnivision doesn’t provide forward guidance, he said to expect acceleration going into the current quarter.

The CEO laid out four reasons for his optimism going into 2023.

“First of all, we had an amazing upfront. We delivered a mid-teens growth rate in the 2022-2023 upfront — and that includes any sort of options, breakage, cancellations that occurred over the course of the year. And that’s probably three times what the next-best performer in the industry has delivered.

“Second, we continue to have capacity. So, our ratings are strong on linear. We’re delivering a streaming business that’s growing at an explosive rate.

“Third, increasingly our advertisers are looking at doing multi-platform deals across both linear and streaming, which gives us both pricing and yield optimization benefit.

“The last thing I’ll say… in the ad sales business we continue to have enormous opportunity around zero and low-share advertisers. So, in the U.S. only about a third of television advertisers are currently advertising in Spanish. So, our ability to capture low- and zero share advertisers, even as the broad markets might be down, is something that should continue to be a tailwind for us,” Davis told the analysts.