Fremantle revenues dipped almost 10% during Q1 but owner RTL is hoping for a bounceback and has set company growth targets for full-year 2024.
RTL put the Poor Things and Got Talent producer’s weak Q1 performance, which saw its revenue tumble by 9.2% year-on-year to €395M ($424m), down to “timing effects in the UK, Italy and Germany” of show launches.
An improvement is expected during this quarter, RTL added, pointing to the launch of a second season of BBC drama The Responder and new BBC series Nightsleeper, as well as season 19 of America’s Got Talent for NBC and Race To Survive: New Zealand for the USA Network in the U.S. Fremantle will also start realizing its €200M investment in Death in Paradise content group Asacha and 80% of Singapore’s Beach House Pictures.
Fremantle’s full-year 2023 turnover fell by 3.5%, revealed last month, at which point Deadline reported that RTL had delayed the super-indie’s lofty €3B 2025 revenue target by up to a year.
RTL, however, saw a healthy overall Q1 turnover boost of 2.6% to €1.3B, which it said was “driven by significantly higher TV advertising and streaming revenue,” factors that were therefore “partly offset by lower content revenue due to timing.”
RTL unveiled a full-year 2024 target of €6.6B turnover, which would be an increase of more than 6%. It does, however, expected adjusted EBITA to fall slightly by around €30M to €750m, although has given itself €50m leeway either side.
The adjusted EBITA outlook includes higher content costs, primarily for the broadcast of Euro 2024 matches in France and Germany, along with higher streaming start-up losses primarily due to investments in a new streamer, M6+, in France.
Further down the line, Fremantle has another lofty target to nearly triple its streaming revenue to €750M by 2026, at which point it will also be spending nearly double on content, up to €500M, and have almost double the subs for its various streaming services.
“RTL Group has started strongly and in line with our expectations into 2024,” said Thomas Rabe, who runs the Bertelsmann-owned outfit. “We have strengthened our leading audience and advertising positions in Germany and continued the dynamic growth of our streaming business. Our first-quarter results confirm our strategy of investing through the cycle.”
