Patrick O’Connell: Yes. We’ve got a great international footprint with particularly strong kind of market positions in both Southern Europe and Eastern Europe — Eastern and Central Europe. These are our businesses with deep roots in these markets, maybe not as well understood, here stateside. But these are beloved bouquets of channels with, 1000s of hours of original programming, really kind of part of the fabric of many of these communities. So we really like this business, we like the idea that we’ll be able to shine a brighter spotlight on it, excluding some of the work for higher revenue that we recently divested. A couple years ago, we were able to use this as a really great platform off which to launch a number of streaming initiatives internationally, we still think it makes sense in select markets, where we have particularly strong relationships and where we’re doing similar things that we’re doing here in the U.S., which is leaning into those legacy relationships driving our linear business, but also buttressing that with digital product that, you know, still make sense in certain select markets.
For the markets where we don’t have a really strong presence, we’ve really kind of leaned into the content licensing side,
Kristin Dolan: Kim, it’s Kristin, again. This part of the technical reworking that we’re doing in order to have a consolidated back end that we can turn on streaming wherever we want globally, that’s sort of the beauty of delivering over IP as opposed to traditional transmission. But particularly in Spain, I just wanted to mention that we just expanded distribution of AMC+ with Vodafone this summer, and then we’ve made a lot of progress with our linear networks in Spain and in Portugal, with AMC Select, so we partner individually with through Amazon there. So we actually feel like there’s a lot of opportunities around AVOD in certain select European markets. So you couple that opportunity with the work that we’re doing technologically and we think the goal here would be, an investment like model that maximizes the overall returns of the consolidated business. So international while a small piece of our overall business is one that we feel very positive about.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Steve Cahall with Wells Fargo.
Steve Cahall: Maybe first just kind of stepping back from it all, Kristin, you all are managing the business very, very tightly on the cost side and things are certainly improving. But I think investors are also just curious if you think you can get back to a level of growth, either at the top line or at the AOI line in the next couple of years. So just wanted to get your comments on kind of the bigger picture as to when you see the business, maybe starting to flatten out or even grow again. And then just one on advertising, with high single digit declines in guidance for 2024 domestic, could you help us think about what your expectation is for kind of volume delivery versus pricing. And what I’m trying to get at is, it’s just been such a couple of tough years for comps, and then you have the new Walking Dead seasons this year.
So is that high single digit, really a reflection of just the weaker marketplace that you talked about? Or our impression still down on a year-on-year basis, even as you cycle into some new programming? Thank you.
Kristin Dolan: Great, I’ll take your first question, Steven, on the cost management and the top line. Look, we’ve been really clear for the last year and going forward about how we’re managing the business, streamlining it, making it as efficient as possible. And Patrick’s mentioned, our target, where we feel we can do a $0.5 billion in free cash flow in the next two years. But on the top line, we’re really waiting out what’s going on in the industry. And what I’m happy about is that we continue to produce through Dan and the team, really high quality content. The TCA event this week was — we were so proud and so enthusiastic about the slate that we’re putting out right now. And this is part of our ongoing strategy to own and manage franchises that we can monetize over time.
So as the marketplace sorts itself out, the opportunity to grow top line, in the out years continues to be there, I think it’s just got to settle. So we’re sort of sticking to our knitting, as you said, tight cost management, but effective utilization of the resources that we have. And we’re going to stick to the plan. And we’re optimistic over the next, year to two years that that thing that ship will write itself in our industry, and things will open up again, but we’re confident that we’re doing what we’ve always done best, which is create great content for very select, but very passionate audiences.
Kim Kelleher: Hi, Steven, on your second question on volume delivery versus pricing, if we look at 24, I would actually call it impression shifting. We are very thoughtfully working towards increasing our digital inventory through the addition of AMC plus ad supported tier, our growing CTV distribution through as Kristin mentioned, we have 100 fast speeds right now, in market across 11 platforms, we see a large Avon opportunity in 2024. As we convert that inventory as that, as those impressions shift to digital, we’re able to get better yield and pricing out of out of those impressions. So well, while our estimate is, is not great for 24, we do actually believe that that this is moving in the right direction for the future. And we’ll continue to just be very, very thoughtful about how we expand our viewership. Thank you.
Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Charles Wilber with Guggenheim Securities.
Charles Wilber: This is Charlie on for Michael Morris. You guys mentioned and highlighted the fast expansion. I just wanted to dive in on that a little bit and see if you could help us understand the contribution from [indiscernible] and provide any color on how the economics of these work. Is it primarily inventory share or revenue share approach. And then, any impact or lift on the viewership and engagement, you may have seen across the portfolio that your linear and subscription services. And then, secondly, you just mentioned the potential international AVOD opportunity. Just wanted to get your thoughts on how that may extend to the fast channels business as well? Thank you.
Kristin Dolan: Sure. Hi, Charlie. On the first part of your question, I would say it’s extremely important to our strategy that we are — we have first sales position on selling our shows. And that has been key to all of our distributions and all of our platform partners and that has been very lucrative for us and the partners. We don’t break out specific contribution of this particular line of business but it is growing, we are seeing continued growth quarter-over-quarter and expect that to continue through 24 and then to the future. On International, the only thing I lead with is, we see huge opportunity in AVOD and Fast. And it’s obviously a more nascent market. But as partners like Pluto and Samsung and other global partners start looking at their continued rollout by territory, and it overlaps with the regions that we are strong players in, as Patrick mentioned before, we know we will be at the forefront of those growing businesses.
Kim Kelleher: And Charlie, probably echoes to that saying, but I’ll say it anyway. The advances we’ve made in advertising in our ability to sell segments, then it’s up to the internal teams to deliver that segment across all the platforms on which we insert advertising. So whether it’s FAST, or AVOD or linear or linear national addressable or programmatic, we [indiscernible] the segment, and then they place as needed. So we’re getting really sophisticated, and really optimizing every single impression that we have, and the CPMs associated with it. So that’s part of the reason we don’t break it out because it would be nearly impossible to do that math. We put together the best construct to deliver the segment. And then as we mentioned before, we’re very proud of our opportunities and our ability beyond that to deliver attribution reporting and prove out to clients like L’Oreal, that they’ve done really well in placing their money with us and letting us distribute it in the way that best reaches their target audience.
So more to come on that front. But the ability to do that beyond the U.S. is really exciting to us.
Operator: Thank you. I’m showing no further questions at this time. I would like to hand the call back over to Nick Seabert for closing remarks.
Nick Seabert: Thank you for joining us today and we appreciate the interest in AMC Networks. Have a good day.
Operator: This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
