AMC Networks Inc. (NASDAQ:AMCX) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Operator: Thank you. And one moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Douglas Creutz with Cowen. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Douglas Creutz: Thanks. This is a bit of a follow up to your last answer. You know, everybody decided to invest in streaming very heavily, others more so than you and it hasn’t worked as you sort of identified your cutting costs and to reflect that, but obviously, if you can’t grow revenue, then it’s still going to be pressure on your business. So, do you think your ability to grow revenue is something that’s completely in your hands or is it going to take some changes to the market structure to make it a more healthy environment? And if so, what are they?

James Dolan: Well, that’s an interesting question. I mean, in some ways, I do think it’s in our hands, right, because we have great content. We have a product that the customer wants, right. So from that point of view, you do get to sort of guide your destiny, but on the other side, I mean, I really think that what we’re going to — we have to look for is, is a sea change across the industry. That is something that AMC is not going to be at the forefront of because we’re just playing, we’re not big enough. We can’t drive that kind of change. But the marketplace will evolve and what we need to do as a company is we need to be really in tune with it. We have to watch what the customers are doing, how they’re behaving with their subscriptions, what kind of content they like, et cetera, but we, as I said, we’re not going to lead the way.

I think the rest of the industry, like the larger players in the industry will have a much greater impact than we do that they will continue to watch them, will continue to watch the customers will get much more adept at things like the research and understanding viewership patterns and all that, so we can keep customizing and making our products into a product that consumers will want and will watch the pricing. But I do think that pricing, right, is going to change. How it’s going to change exactly? I take a pass on being that prescient, but I do think we’re going to see change.

Douglas Creutz: Great. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. One moment for our next question. Next question comes from the line of David Karnovsky with JPMorgan. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

David Karnovsky: Hi. Thank you. Just on the kind of overall shift towards driving more cash flow. I mean, wondering if there’s been consideration towards changing the mix of content toward lower price programming like non-scripted still drives a large audience or doing less originals. And then Patrick wants you to just follow on your ad commentary. We’ve heard from some of your peers about a stabilizing or improving market. Want to see if there’s an update or maybe you could say what’s assumed in your guide for the year with advertising.

James Dolan: Well, on the content piece, basically what we did in the last few months is we took and hung on to some of our best programming, the content that performs really well. And I mean that’s what we’re good at. So no, I don’t think that we’re going to change that strategy. We’re just going to try and keep it more efficient and work on the monetization models.