Versant Media Group, Inc. Class A Common Stock Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference 2026
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Wonderful. Well, good afternoon, everybody. My name is Mike Ng. I cover media cable telco here at Goldman Sachs, and I have the privilege of introducing Anand Kini, who is the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer at Versant Media. We have 35 minutes for today's presentation. First and foremost, I want to thank you so much for being here today, Anand.
Oh, thanks, Mike. Thanks for having me.
Pleasure's mine. Well, let's talk about big strategic priorities for Versant. The company completed its separation from Comcast earlier this year in January. It is a pure-play media company with cash-generative linear networks such as USA Network, CNBC, MSNOW, as well as very fast-growing digital platforms. To kick things off, would you talk a little bit about the operational performance of the business and how you would characterize the first few quarters as a standalone public company?
Sure. We are very pleased as to the momentum we have in the business. So a few different fronts. Let's start with the financials. So strong EBITDA. We have grown EBITDA for the first half of the year. Very strong margins, generating very healthy free cash flow. So all of the financial metrics that we look at and measure our performance have come in very strong. I am very pleased it is not just the financials, which are one snapshot in time, but also more structurally for now and going forward. What I mean by that is you look at the audience metrics. So our portfolio reaches 120 million pay TV people who watch us primarily through pay TV. We are seeing ratings growth really across the portfolio. Every single network, you look portfolio-wide, double-digit ratings.
It is both in, again, the pay TV business as well as platforms. Our platforms businesses, which are hallmarked by GolfNow and Fandango, 9% kind of underlying revenue growth for both Q1 and Q2, so that part of the business doing quite well in addition. Then kind of wrapping it all up, we are really executing on our growth priorities, so investing in the platforms business, driving audience, and doing all that while kind of executing as well our capital allocation, which again, for us is about really three-fold. We are doing all of them, returning capital to shareholders, investing in growth, and maintaining a healthy balance sheet. So I am very pleased on our ability to execute all of that just in the first six months.
Wonderful. There is a lot in there that I wanted to dive into, but let us start with the linear networks side of the house and just talk about some of that ratings momentum.
Yeah That you mentioned at the onset.
So MSNOW exiting the second quarter, I think MSNOW delivered its seventh consecutive month of audience growth with viewership up 14% year-over-year in the second quarter. What do you see as the key drivers behind that momentum and MSNOW's ability to capture a meaningful share of the cable news audience? How are you thinking about sustaining that trajectory through the midterms?
Well, first, I am very happy to report it was seven months as of our Q2 earnings call.
Sorry, yes. We've continued. It's actually now, we just got August results.
It's 9 months where we've seen that kind of year-on-year growth. The momentum, and it's actually growing even faster the last several months compared to the metric in Q2. Really pleased. In terms of what's driving it, I think a couple things. One, our team has done a very good job at editorial. We made a bunch of editorial changes in Q2. People like Pete Alexander, who you may know from NBC News, now is on MSNOW. Every new show we launched in the summer, if you look at the ratings compared to the prior year time slot, it's up. That editorial has really worked well. We recognize who our audience is with MS. I mean, we are kind of people who have that kind of affinity towards the Democrats are who we are.
That's our core audience, and we're going to be true to that audience. We've also broadened the tent some. We think there's a way to do it where you can appeal maybe to some independents, some other constituencies who want to try something new. To kind of demonstrate how we do that, we had Ted Cruz on air in the last couple of weeks. He was on with Ali Velshi. I don't think somebody like Ted Cruz would've thought MSNOW would've been a platform where he would've felt comfortable coming on a few years back. It's kind of creating that environment, which again, we want to have as big of a tent as possible while, again, staying true to our core audience, and we've successfully done that.
I think that's going to be what's going to drive us as we get to the midterms, and there's obviously tremendous interest in the elections right now, and we are the place to be. Once we get past the midterms, all eyes are going to really look towards the primaries in 2028. I think we're really set up here for not only the growth you see today, but kind of continuing going forward.
Could you talk a little bit about how investors should think about the kind of translation from ratings momentum into advertising revenue? For cable news networks, how much of that ad inventory is sold upfront versus available to monetize in scatter to benefit from shrunk ratings? Is this something that is more of a tailwind for the subsequent year?
Yeah. I think overall in terms of the upfront versus scatter, they can be small changes by network, but it's generally a good rule of thumb. It's about 75% is sold in the upfront, and the balance is sold in scatter. That's going to be broadly true with a network like MSNOW as well. I think a key point is the incremental ratings we're delivering, we're able to monetize them. In that 25% that is not sold in upfront, that can continue, and there are opportunities for us to drive, both in terms of fundamental demand to place more and more advertising in it, in that network. That's what you've seen. We've been able to monetize those rating points that we're delivering, both on MSNOW and frankly, across the portfolio.
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