Warner Music Group Corp. (WMG) Q4 2013 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Welcome to the Warner Music Group’s Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year 2013 Earnings Call for the period ending September 30, 2013. At the request of Warner Music Group, today’s call is being recorded for replay purposes and if you object, you may disconnect at any time. As a reminder, there will be a question-and-answer session following today’s presentation. (Operator Instructions) Now, I would like to turn today’s call over to your host, Mr. James Steven, Senior Vice President, Communications and Marketing. You may begin.

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Warner Music Group’s fourth quarter and fiscal year 2013 conference call. Both our earnings press release and the Form 10-K we filed this morning are available on our website. Today, our CEO, Steve Cooper, will update you on our business performance and strategy; and our Executive Vice President and CFO, Brian Roberts, will discuss our financial condition and results, and then both of them will take your questions. Before Steve’s comments, let me remind you that this communication includes forward-looking statements that reflect the current views of Warner Music Group about future events and financial performance. All forward-looking statements are made as of today and we disclaim any duty to update such statements. Our expectations, beliefs and projections are expressed in good faith and we believe there is a reasonable basis for them. However, there can be no assurance that management’s expectations, beliefs and projections will result or be achieved. Investors should not rely on forward-looking statements, because they are subject to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors that can cause actual results that differ materially from those expectations. Information concerning factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements is contained in our earnings press release and our Form 10-K and other SEC filings. We plan to present certain non-GAAP results during this conference call. We have provided schedules reconciling those results to our GAAP results in our earnings press release posted on our website. With that, let me turn it over to Steve Cooper.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. This quarter capped the year of strong progress at Warner Music Group. Looking back I'm very proud of what we accomplished over the last year. Notably, we acquired the Parlophone Label Group, which we have been successfully integrated. We executed well on our digital strategy which is essential as the industry transformation games speed and we maintained our focus on signing and developing artist. As a result, we grew revenue, we gain market share, we expanded our digital presence and we enlarged our global footprint. Moreover, we improved our financial flexibility by lowering our annual interest expense through debt repayments and refinancings even as we increased our total borrowings to finance the PLG acquisition. Looking back over 2013, our most significant accomplishment of the year was the acquisition of PLG. I am very pleased not only that we closed the transaction on July 1, but also that we remained on track with the integration plan we announced following the acquisition. That plan is scheduled to deliver cost savings and other synergies of $70 million over two years. We have made significant progress in growing the combined businesses and strengthening the Parlophone brand through our four key strategic priorities, including making Parlophone a center of excellence in artist signings and development, alongside Atlantic and Warner. Two, implementing an ambitious classical music strategy using the former EMI Classics and Virgin Classics as its foundation, we are innovating around the catalog while continuing to sign top classical artist. Three, leveraging our strength in European operations to expand efforts to signing developed local talent. And four, overhauling our global catalog strategy to capitalize on the great opportunities presented by the combined Warner Music Group PLG catalog. As we make further progress on the integration we will…

Thank you, Steve and good morning everybody. I wanted to first take a moment to add some additional color on the PLG integration process. From a financing operating standpoint, we are on schedule with our plan and in the short-term, we have owned the business. We have already rolled off many of the transition services agreements with Universal Music Group. We’ve identified key personnel and finalized organizational charts in all territories where we acquired businesses and we finalized real estate plans in all acquired territories. We carefully track our overall integration costs and as mentioned, we are making solid progress on the integration. We will provide further updates as appropriate. Let me discuss the results for the quarter and fiscal year. As Steve mentioned, our revenue results for the quarter reflect our acquisition of PLG. On a constant currency basis, revenue grew 7%. Excluding PLG, our revenue declined 1%, the result of our anticipated light release schedule. Additionally, we faced very tough comparison in Japan, when the prior year quarter, strong releases from local superstars, Kobukuro, Tatsuro Yamashita, and Superfly, which represented three of our top five sellers worldwide. For the fiscal year, constant currency revenue grew by 5% and excluding PLG, our revenue grew 3%. From an OIBDA perspective, certain adjustments are necessary to make the year-over-year comparisons more meaningful. We’ve highlighted these in our press release, but let me walk you through them. In the quarter, we had $39 million of transaction expenses related to the acquisition of PLG, which included professional fees and $11 million paid to Access under the Access Warner Music Group management agreement and $19 million in expenses related to the integration of the businesses. Also in the prior year quarter, we had $8 million in fees related to the regulatory review, following the…

(Operator Instructions) Our first question is from Aaron Watts from Deutsche Bank. Aaron Watts - Deutsche Bank Good morning guys.

Good morning Aaron.

Hi Aaron. Aaron Watts - Deutsche Bank So you give us some good color on some of the negative impacts that hit your EBITDA margins in the quarter. You mentioned Japan, I think, Universal side of that as a weaker area too. How should we think about that, kind of for 2014, your fiscal first quarter, second quarter, is there going to be a continued drag on the margins a little bit. And then also do you imagine that PLG will contribute to EBITDA as well, I think, I heard you say that it did not in the quarter, we’re talking about here?

Yeah, so Aaron, just for that -- the last part of that, in the quarter PLG did not contribute to EBITDA, although it contributed to top line. In the quarter, we were still working through the transition process with Universal music on transitional services agreement. We came off of those for the most part pretty late in the quarter. So the impact of that carrying through had PLG delivering really no substantial point to impact in the quarter. As far as fiscal 2014 is concerned and what we think about, how our results are going to play out, especially with Japan, we do see that as a continuing issue in 2014. It’s going to have an impact on the overall business from a revenue and margin perspective. And we also, I think, Steve said, we had a light release schedule in Q4. We see that even now continuing a little bit into our Q1. So that is actually going to impact where we’ll shows sort of our Q1 results as well from our revenue and OIBDA perspective. Aaron Watts - Deutsche Bank Okay. And obviously seeing some nice bump on the recorded music site with some digital revenues, when do you think we start to see the benefit of that line item for publishing?

I think, publishing revenues from the digital perspective, we’re also seeing the impact of the transition to subscription services business in the aggregate as well. There is definitely a delay as between how recorded music sees it and music publishing sees it. And there could be as much as an 18-month gap between the collection of those streaming and subscription service dollars in some of the European societies and the distribution of those two, our publishing companies and others as they voted that process. So, I think, you are going to continue to see growth in publishing in 2014 and beyond as that leg starts to catch up. Aaron Watts - Deutsche Bank Okay, that’s helpful. And Steve, as you've kind of thought about with what you have seen conversion for some of these streaming services from free usage to people actually paying to use and in light of Spotify launching a free service? How do you think about, what you need to see from these services in terms of people actually paying for the service versus using it free and what that means for Warner Music?

Well, let me create a couple distinctions, Aaron. First of all, just so everybody understands, while this service maybe free to consumers, the music industry does collect revenues. We are paid either on a per play basis or percentage that of ad revenue, based upon whatever the contractual relationships are with those streaming services. What we have seen is that, after certain amounts of time and based upon the friction levels between the free and subscription services, there is a fairly strong conversion rate within the first, as I would call, six to 12 months. The free experience at least in our view gives the consumer seeking access to literally something approximating 100% of the world’s recorded music library. The opportunity to exploring become familiar with the service and we are at least happy today to see that for many of these services, there is a nice conversion rate during that time period when the consumers are on the premium experienced. I think that in the long-term based upon how these services scale and how they expand their ad revenue will ultimately, I hope, create for at least the industry some degree of indifference is to whether or not it is free, Aaron, or whether or not it’s subscription, but only time will tell in our calendar. Aaron Watts - Deutsche Bank Okay. All right. Now that’s helpful perspective. And last one from me and I appreciate you taking all these. Obviously, 2013 was a busy year for you guys on kind of the acquisition front? As you think about the coming 12 months, are there any areas you feel Warner Music needs to go out there and be acquisitive to help fill in kind of gaps or areas you want to be stronger or have more scale in? And maybe do you see kind of the pipeline of assets that might be available more on the publishing side versus the recording side, just your kind of general thoughts on the M&A outlook?

Well, if you keep it a secret, we will probably acquire Universal Music. That was a joke, Aaron. That was a joke. Listen, we are always looking in both -- on both sides of our business, both recorded music and music publishing for what we believe to be solid opportunities to acquire outstanding assets or businesses and we will continue to do that. We allocate capital every year to make acquisitions, as you know last year on the publishing side we acquired the publishing rights to both Lionsgate and Miramax. We continue to look for those types of opportunities not only in the U.S. and the U.K., but worldwide. The same is true on the recorded music side. If we see opportunities to acquire assets or operations that we believe are of high quality and we can successfully integrate into our operation, we will pursue them. We know that over time to meet our goals that we have to grow not only organically but through M&A and that will continue to be one of our strategies Aaron. Aaron Watts - Deutsche Bank Okay. Great. Thanks again for the time.

Sure.

(Operator instructions) The next question is from Doug Wooden from DDJ Capital.

Yes. Hi. I just wanted to maybe get a little bit of clarification on the Parlophone contribution on revenues. When I go through constant currency reported, it looks like PLG contributed sort of $40 million to $60 million, but from some of the disclosures for the full year I would have expected it to be more, today if the different seasonality or am I just missing something on this?

So, you are right on the number for the quarter for PLG and PLG as a company going through the acquisition process, really had a very light release schedule coming into what would have been their first fiscal quarter, because if you call, no, in their second fiscal quarter, excuse me, their March 31 year end. So, it’s really not related to seasonality or business but more related to the acquisition or divestures if you will of the business just related to operating activity.

Got you. Got you. Okay. And then if you could maybe clarify…

Just to be clear, it was only one quarter of activity there, right. So it’s just, that’s the only thing that was in our results.

Right. Right. No. That’s helpful. And then, I guess, lastly you mentioned that there wasn’t any margin contribution in the quarter? Could you maybe just run through why that it is, transition services, I am a little bit unclear?

It didn’t contribute at an OIBDA margin. It contributes some at a gross margin perspective, given the revenue. But given that it was one quarter, the expenses that we brought on when we acquired PLG, not just from transitional services agreements, which we had in place with Universal around certain aspects of that operation as we moved them off of their core EMI systems, Universal systems onto our systems. But also you have to remember that this was a European based acquisition, so in going through and achieving cost savings around certain elements of that business, you have to go through a process by which you deal with restructuring plans and alike in the quarter before we can achieve those cost savings. So we had the burden of those costs in the first quarter and for the most part. As I said earlier, we came off of the large transaction services agreements that we had with Universal and in our fiscal first quarter we have executed substantially against the savings plans around restructuring plans.

Would you be open to disclosing those expenses for this quarter and going forward?

Well, I think, overall we’ve say that, we are going to end up with costs against our $70 million worth of savings that are roughly two times that number in the aggregate.

Okay. Okay. We will figure out the timing. No. That’s helpful. Okay. Great. Thank you.

Thank you.

There are no further questions.

Listen, I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe holiday season. I want to thank all of our investors for your support this last year and for your continuing support. So have a wonderful holiday and we look forward to chatting with you in 2014. Bye-bye.

That concludes today's conference. Please disconnect at this time.