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msg Q1 2020 Earnings Analysis and Outlook
msg Q1 2020 Earnings Analysis and Outlook
Insight into the new normal/abnormal, covering a wide range of companies and categories, not just media. I will focus entirely on the Q2 outlook, as January through March 11 is, unfortunately, meaningless. Strong evidence that the media landscape has changed forever, especially the TV Upfront. Focus is now on the recovery and opening of businesses with advertising as the fuel that drives demand. The broad reassessment by marketers on all spending is occurring. Cautiously optimistic that the worst is behind us, though still a tremendous amount of macro uncertainty. We have all learned to live with things we never thought we could live without, as consumer habits are changing forever. The future is being accelerated to a more digital economy!!!
Q2 Media Outlook
Q2 advertising for publishers is down 25-30% Y/Y, some even down 50-55% Y/Y, companies that did not use figures used terms like materially weaker and significantly down. Though a handful like Facebook, Roku, SNAP, Dotdash, and J2 are seeing Q2 revenue flat or up slightly Y/Y
For Google, in March, revenues began to decline and entered the month at a mid-teens (15%) percentage decline in Y/Y revenues, although search activity increased, their interest shifted to less commercial topics. In addition, there was also reduced spending by our advertisers
International TV ad sales are down 30-50% Y/Y
DR (Direct Response)/performance ads are strong and advertising for purely brand/awareness building is decreasing
On a relative basis, broadcast is strongest followed by cable, then digital. Local is weakest driven by decreased spending of small and medium sized businesses
Declines in demand from industries like movie studios, restaurants, travel, tourism, retail, auto and luxury
Some advertisers are opportunistically increasing their spend like financial services/insurance, technology, telecom, streaming services, CPG, ecommerce, and APP downloads, especially games
Gaming and streaming seem to be the two categories that are most poised to permanently take more share of our time and wallets
New marketing budgets moving to streaming from traditional TV given cancellation of high profile, live sports, and entertainment events
Impressions/ratings up across the board, especially for the Triopoly
Programmatic revenue seems to be down 40-50% Y/Y so far in Q2, though CTV is up Y/Y
Revenue has stabilized in the second half of April for most companies, the worst was the five week period from March 11 to April 15
May companies expect to benefit from political advertising later in 2020
The last marketing dollar cut is usually the best performing dollar
Many businesses are simply pausing campaigns, not cancelling them to refresh the messaging
Triopoly may not need publishers inventory as much, since they are seeing significant traffic increase on their owned and operated properties
CPM’s may be down 50%+ Y/Y (yes 50%+) so all advertisers are getting huge bargains. New and existing advertisers are trying to acquire customers at a reduced lifetime value
With no commuting, many consumers have shifted their days one hour
The TV upfront will be postponed until September/October, helping CTV thrive
Audiences want their entertainment on demand and their news, sports, and events live
Holding Companies/Agencies are in a world of hurt, especially in Q2. They say they are down 15-20% -- I don't buy it; I think it will be much worse
The large agencies will be most hurt by the shift away from the TV Upfront
Attribution from marketers is now easier since most sales are online and not in store
Easier for marketers to deal with/pause Digital vs. Linear, Programmatic is flexible and agile
Animation should be robust in Q3 and Q4
Cable subscribers will go down because live sports are paused
Most media companies seem to be operating with 90 to 95% of employees working at home -- what does that mean long term for the office? Can work at home continue as we hit the Fall? Is this pace sustainable? Starting a new job with all new people will be very hard as the personal interaction is removed from the process
CMOs more than ever have to defend their spending to CFOs, that’s best done in data-driven advertising with trackable ROAS
Land grab and white space out there, companies just need to take the risk especially as we emerge from this
Advertisers historically try new advertising approaches post recessions
Gulf War recession (July 1990 to March 1991) -- Ad supported Cable TV Networks start to grow
Dot-com recession (March 2001 to November 2001) -- Google emerges and the portals start to lose power
The Great Recession (December 2007 to June 2009) -- Facebook emerges and print advertising decline accelerates
The Corona virus recession (March 2019) Broadcast TV advertising decreases and maybe Google search revenue also decreases, so other advertising mediums grow like:
Connected TV
Advertisers bypassing agencies
Private Deals/PMPs replacing the Open Exchange -- though this needs to be reinvented maybe we call it the Publisher Dow 30 or the Publisher S&P 500
Ads in Video Games
Ads in Video Conferencing?
Non-Media Insights
Significant increase in purchases in Q1 may just mean we see a slow-down in Q2 (e.g., toilet paper, 90 day medications, Tylenol, etc.)
Stores will evolve to become fulfillment centers, click and pick and more self-checkouts
Self- checkout will go beyond just supermarkets to retailers etc.
Supply chain management is critical -- that will be a very popular college degree
Enhanced sanitizing procedures are here to STAY
Digital ordering is here to STAY, especially order ahead
Malls are dead -- acceleration of the future
Additional customer service agents being hired and will work at home for the foreseeable future
A shift to lower price per ounce offerings as many consumers experience financial constraints
May see upward pressure on prices because manufacturing will be brought back to the US and it’s going to cost more than manufacturing in China
No new stores will be opening and many may be closing
Commercial real estate gets cheaper -- hopefully leads to more small businesses opening storefronts
Existing stores probably need smaller footprints
Seeing a pull forward of purchases; purchases made in March/April will not be made in Q2/Q3
Normal travel may be three years out
Forward looking companies are planning for Q4, Halloween, Christmas etc.
The recovery will be dictated by our customers feeling safe both physically and financially
Some marketers are coming back strong in Q2 with new messages around new products and safety procedures
Best Listens
The Trade Desk opening remarks -- TTD
Viacom opening remarks and Q&A -- Viacom
Hershey opening remarks -- Hershey
Delta Airlines opening remarks -- Delta Airlines
Chipotle opening remarks -- Chipotle
MEDIA COMPANIES
The Trade Desk
For a brief period of time, programmatic was hurt by one of its greatest features, its agility. You can easily start and stop programmatic campaigns in ways that are not possible in most other mediums, like linear television
In early April we saw more advertisers slow spend or hit the pause button, across every channel. Some verticals cut most of their budgets, such as the Travel vertical. Of course, some did remain active, particularly in health and fitness, technology and computing, and home and garden.
However, many businesses were simply pausing campaigns, not cancelling them to refresh the messaging. The way a CPG or pharma company planned to message in January had to be redone.
Overall, by mid-April the year-over-year spend decline stabilized. And as April progressed, we started to see stabilization and even some improvement.
Advertisers started to adapt to the current environment. For example, restaurants shifted their messaging to “we are open”, or “we deliver”. Consumer products companies turned their focus to pantry loading products. And some travel companies started to message that they would waive all change or cancellation fees for bookings. And beyond the present, many advertisers started to strategize about how they emerge on the other side of this pandemic.
Flexibility and agility are super important for advertisers. But overall, there will be a massive land grab opportunity. And I expect that marketing will be a critical success factor in that land grab. Think about it. If you’re Uber or Lyft, for example, your business is largely on pause. And you’re not advertising much right now. But as we start to emerge from this, companies will start marketing more heavily because that’s the moment a company can gain awareness, loyalty and share. Whichever of those two companies markets more effectively, will gain share. And that same scenario will play out across every industry. Marriott versus Hilton. Domino’s versus Pizza Hut, Toyota versus Ford. All of these companies, and every other company out there is figuring out, right now, how they use advertising to connect with consumers and gain share once the gears of the economy start cranking again. What will they advertise, using what kind of creative, to what kinds of audiences, in precise locations, using what kind of channel, it’s all being strategized right now.
CMOs more than ever have to defend their spending to CFOs, that’s of course best done in data-driven advertising
I believe that the media landscape has changed forever starting in the middle of March. Every channel and every participant is in a different position today versus a few months ago, because of one dramatic shift. Linear TV’s shelf life has shortened as viewers have moved, en masse, to CTV. The biggest loser in all of this is traditional, linear TV. And CTV is without a doubt the biggest winner.
For advertisers, the cancellation of the Upfront can be liberating. I hear it from brands and agencies every day. For them, the upfronts are a bit of a burden. They’re asked to commit billions of dollars to content they don’t know much about, chasing audiences they can’t measure. Now they have the freedom to be more deliberate, agile and data-driven in their TV ad investments.
Viacom
Audiences want their entertainment on demand and their news, sports and events live
Now with respect to Q2 specifically, on a relative basis, broadcast is strongest, then cable, then digital, local is weakest. Interestingly, though, the weakness is dominated by five categories, and they’re categories you would expect: auto, restaurants, retail, travel, movies.
At this point, we know there will be a significant impact on ad sales in Q2. But based on what we’re seeing today, we believe there will be an improvement in advertising in the third and fourth quarters, assuming businesses begin to reopen at scale.
In terms of the upfront, we expect it to be later and longer than normal, but we’re ready whenever our clients are, and deals will get done. In fact, we invited more than 5,000 agency and marketing executives to our virtual presentation on May 18 and 19
We believe Q3 ad sales will be better than Q2. And, again, right now, May and June scatter looked better than April. So that’s a good sign. We do see categories active in the market, again, pharma, CPG, financial services and tech
We do see categories continuing to be active in the market, pharmaceuticals, CPG, financial services, tech.
Importantly, we continue to expect to benefit from political advertising later in 2020.
J2 Global
In any downturn, the first expense cuts happened within the marketing and advertising budgets of companies. It’s the easiest thing to turn off as there are few long-term non-cancellable contracts. There are few penalties or costs associated with cancelling and the revenue impact is felt in future periods. In this particular market, we have another factor, which is the explosion of ad inventory based on significant increases in media consumption that are causing compression on advertising rates. As a result of all of these trends, a number of the largest sellers of advertising in the world have reported significant, sudden and steep declines in revenue.
At j2, however, we are cautiously optimistic that our $510 million annual ad business can perform better in relative terms.
Our advertising business has little local retail exposure in terms of customers. We have roughly 1,100 advertisers who are mostly big companies, while many of the social media companies have millions of advertisers, a good number of them, local businesses that have been hit hardest by the pandemic.
Little exposure to the hardest hit ad category so far, travel, retail, food and auto. In fact, roughly 40% of our ad revenues fall into the health category, where we are seeing growth from pharma marketers. As a point of reference through April, Everyday Health has seen organic ad revenue growth of 5%.
The last marketing dollar cut is usually the best performing dollar, and as you know, about half of our ad business is performance-based meaning cost per click, cost per lead or cost per acquisition and the other half which is impression based display is usually measured and optimized on performance outcomes.
Believe that video game play will only grow and establish itself as a leading form of entertainment. The spikes in consumption are evident
Now, a few words about M&A, we are pleased to have consummated two transactions in Q1. During this pandemic, we are very reluctant to close on transactions without visiting companies. Right now, we are planting a ton of seeds and when the clouds lift, we think we are going to be very well positioned strategically and financially to act on some very interesting opportunities.
April revenues are also relatively healthy coming in flat year-over-year.
In Q1 of 2020 performance based marketing slightly eclipsed display advertising
Snapchat
Thus far in Q2, Y/Y revenue growth to be 15% through April 19. And our estimated growth rate in the most recent week is 11%.
Today, we have less visibility into Q2 results, because so much depends on factors beyond our control
While it's extremely challenging for the world to stay at home, it does accelerate the move to a digital economy where people are buying and discovering new brands
Pivoted our sales teams and product teams to focus on categories that are best positioned in the current environment, such as gaming, home entertainment, ecommerce and CPG
Continue to help industries that have experienced outsized impacts to build a long-term roadmap to recovery with them as our partner.
Like everyone, we're hearing from advertisers that the global outbreak has dramatically shifted the way that they're thinking about marketing. Some have paused while they're rethinking their messaging and others are cutting funding to save jobs. It's a tough time for the industry. But we are very fortunate to have a well-diversified business across both brand and VR. In fact, VR now accounts for over 50% of our overall revenue.
Right now, we're focused primarily on the partner needs and helping them craft thoughtful messages and create valuable experiences. App is one of the areas in which we are seeing this level of success. That includes Apps that are about in home entertainment, Apps that are about gaming, Apps that are about at home fitness, and really anything that you can do, when you do not need to physically leave your home.
We built this very big DR business and that's really an important driver of the growth at this moment.
Doubling of the upfronts year-over-year really tells you that in addition to a very solid DR business, we're becoming more of a core part of folks always on business.
The price per impression has dropped. But that is allowing both our existing advertisers as well as new advertisers to see highly performing advertising and really strong ROI. So while we are seeing new advertisers come in, we are actually really focused on growing the categories on which we've doubled down during this period.
Roku
The pandemic is accelerating the shift to streaming by both viewers and the industry. People are spending more time at home and so TV viewing is increasing. Viewers are selecting streaming because of its excellent content and value. Increased unemployment and a likely recession are making value more important than ever. These factors have driven dramatic increases in our new account growth rate since the pandemic took hold.
In the short-term, the pandemic is slowing the growth of Roku’s video advertising business. While advertisers are spending less, reduced budgets mean marketers are looking for ways to invest more effectively and this should accelerate the shift to streaming.
Acceleration in new accounts and viewership have continued in April. Active accounts grew roughly 38% Y/Y driven by an increase in new accounts of more than 70% Y/Y. Streaming hours grew approximately 80% Y/Yin April driven by an increase in streaming hours per account of roughly 30%.
On the other hand, our advertising business has seen cancellations as some marketing budgets have declined. But this has been partially offset by new marketing budgets moving to Roku from traditional TV given cancellation of high profile, live sporting and entertainment events.
Ad cancellation levels were most pronounced in late March and have since decreased in early to mid-April. We anticipate that our ad business will continue to grow substantially on a Y/Y basis albeit at a slower pace and lower gross profit than we originally expected for the year.
We believe the behavioral changes by TV Ad buyers are likely positive for us in the longer term and that with more time spent at home in many households curtailing spending in light of economic hardships, cord cutting and the shift to streaming will continue to accelerate.
After a strong start to the quarter, we saw a significant impact on our business as a consequence of the pandemic from the second week of March onward. This impact has not been felt evenly. We've seen strong growth in gaming and relative stability in technology and e-commerce, which is one of our largest sectors. There are few contributing factors here. First, as people stay at home, these sectors are seeing more use of their products and services. Second, advertisers in these sectors tend to optimize for measurable objectives and we are generating sales at lower prices due to the overall reduction in ad demand.
Seen significant declines in travel and auto as these industries have been hit particularly hard. These trends are continuing in the first two weeks of Q2.
Revenue was strong from the beginning of the quarter through the first week of March, when we began to see a steep slowdown in our ads business, particularly in countries that implemented shelter-in-place measures to reduce the spread of the virus.
During the last three weeks of March, travel and auto were our weakest verticals and we saw relative strength in gaming technology and e-commerce. These trends have continued into Q2. We've seen relatively comparable pullbacks amongst large and small advertisers.
In Q1, the total number of ad impressions served across our services increased 39% and the average price per ad decreased 16%
The decline in average price per ad was largely attributable to the reduction in advertiser demand during the last three weeks of March
The growth of impressions was primarily driven by Facebook Mobile newsfeed, due to product optimizations we made prior to the pandemic as well as from increased engagement
Given the increasing uncertainty in our business outlook, we are not providing specific revenue guidance for the second quarter or full year 2020, rather, I would like to provide a snapshot of revenue performance in the second quarter thus far. There is a tremendous amount of macro uncertainty. So it's difficult to extrapolate performance based on a small sample of data. After an initial steep decrease in ad revenue in March, we have seen signs of stability reflected in the first three weeks of April. Ad revenue has been approximately flat compared to the same period a year ago, down from the 17% year-over-year growth in the first quarter of 2020.
The April trends reflect weakness across all of our user geographies, as most of our major countries have had some sort of shelter-in-place guidelines in effect.
FOX
In April, Tubi generated a total viewing time of over 200 million hours, which is up more than 150% versus prior year.
Categories that have moved spending into FOX News to reach our expanded and engaged audiences include insurance, fast-service restaurants, telecom, streaming and tech. Where the impact of the pandemic is most apparent in our business is at our local stations across the country, where despite viewership gains for our local news programming
Fiscal fourth quarter advertising revenues are pacing down around 50% from year ago levels. The local auto, local retail, local travel, and local entertainment categories are leading this decline for us and the rest of the local TV market. We'll only see the pattern of how these categories will return after states and municipalities open back up for business
We have seen a slowdown in the active political advertising spend
Cancelled our advertising Upfront, which would otherwise have taken place next Monday.
The most immediate impact has been on advertising revenue at our local television stations, where inventory is sold essentially on a spot basis and many of our advertising partners operate in sectors most displaced by COVID-19. If pacing continues at current levels, we would expect our local advertising to be down by approximately 50% vs prior year.
Meanwhile, our News and Entertainment businesses are expected to be more insulated in the immediate term. News is being supported by strong ratings, the growth of its digital properties, the category mix of its core advertisers, along with the new advertising clients it is attracting that help partially offset decline from the legacy advertising base.
At Entertainment, we are already substantially through the broadcast season with our advertising revenues well supported by inventory that was sold during last year's upfront and until recently, a strong scatter market. So before we get to our Sports business, the impact of weaker advertising demand at our local TV stations, national news, and Entertainment businesses is anticipated to be around $200 million to $240 million or 25% to 30% compared to prior year.
The categories that you would expect are being affected significantly worse by COVID-19, they're pacing 50% below. So travel, entertainment, restaurants are all pacing worse than 50%. But that's offset by many categories that are down significantly less than that. Professional services, insurance and some categories frankly that are up like pharmaceutical. So, it's a real mix.
Dot Dash
At Dotdash, we’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well Dotdash is holding up here. We’ve seen a big surge in traffic and – as more people are spending more time on devices. But the advertising revenue has held up, in particular the performance revenue. The fundamental thing of Dotdash is our traffic is about intent. Our audience is trying to get something very specific done on our properties like learning to cook new things or what to stock in the pantry or things that you could imagine that demonstrate a level of intent that advertisers would want to reach in a moment like this.
You can see that playing out even more in the Performance Marketing where that advertising revenue is specifically related to performance, so a user taking a specific action and the advertiser paying only when that specific action happens. And obviously, that’s doing really well right now.
Still going to make investments to continue to capture share against the bigger brands in which we compete against
In health care, we can be multiples bigger than we are right now. In finance, with Investopedia and The Balance, we could be multiples bigger in each of those areas. In home, same story. In each of those areas, we have a much bigger competitor, and that's what we're going after to build that business
Display Advertising Revenue -7% in April and Performance Marketing Revenue +115% in April
Many parts of the economy are also able to continue with some semblance of normalcy. Thanks to advances in remote work, online shopping, delivery options, home entertainment and telemedicine
In March, we experienced a significant and sudden slowdown in ad revenues. The timing of the slowdown correlated to the locations and sectors impacted by the virus and related shutdown orders
As we saw after 2008, one of the strongest features of Search is that it can be adjusted quickly, so it’s relatively easier to turn off and then back on, and marketers see it as highly cost effective and ROI based.
At the inception of the crisis, the increase in user interest was for information about COVID-19 and related non-commercial topics. Although we have seen some very early signs of recovery and commercial search behavior by users, it is not clear how durable or monetizable this behavior will be.
As of today, we anticipate that the second quarter will be a difficult one for our advertising business
Google Search and other advertising revenue, generated $24.5 billion in revenues in the quarter that was up 9% year-over-year. This reflects strong year-on-year growth for the first 2 months of the quarter. In March, revenues began to decline and entered the month at a mid-teens percentage decline in year-on-year revenues, although, users’ search activity increased, their interest shifted to less commercial topics. In addition, there was also reduced spending by our advertisers.
YouTube advertising revenues were $4 billion, up 33% year-on-year. Significant YouTube revenue growth persisted until late in the first quarter with different performance trajectories for the brand and direct response components. Direct response continued to have substantial year-on-year growth throughout the entire quarter. Brand advertising growth accelerated in the first 2 months of the quarter, but began to experience a headwind in mid-March. As a result by the end of March, total YouTube ads revenue growth had decelerated to a year-on-year growth rate in the high-single-digit.
Network advertising revenues were $5.2 billion, up 4% year-on-year with healthy year-on-year growth for the first 2 months of the quarter. We ended March at a year-on-year percentage decline in network revenues in the low-double-digits
Criteo
Now I acknowledge these assumptions carry a lot of uncertainty. There are still many things we don't know today and things are rapidly changing. Taking all of these considerations into account and as of today, we believe our business in Q2 will decline by 32% to 35% year-over-year on a revenue ex-TAC basis.
Traditionally, our business mix is about 70% Retail, 10% Travel, 10% Classified and the remaining 10% a collection of verticals including auto, finance and gaming. Spend in the travel vertical decreased by around 95%, compared to pre-COVID-19 levels, while spending classifieds decreased by 40% or more.
Retail by far our biggest vertical has held up well with spend reductions in our core solutions limited to about 10%.
Going into Q2, we've seen our April performance declined by about 25% year-over-year on a global Revenue ex-TAC basis.
Amazon Advertising
On advertising what we've seen is it's been a very strong quarter in ad revenue. Advertising growth rate has stayed consistent with last quarter. And we're very happy with the progression of that offering for not only sellers, authors, vendors and the positive impact it's had on customer selection.
In March, some pullback from advertisers and some downward pressure on price. It wasn't as noticeable maybe as with what some others are seeing, and it's probably offset a bit by the continued strong traffic we have to the site. So it's a bit of a mixed bag. We have again seen a downward pressure a bit on pricing.
A large portion of our advertising relates to Amazon sales, not things like travel and auto which offsite which may have been disproportionately impacted at least early on here in the COVID crisis. And I think our advertising will prove to be very efficient as well. And it can be directly measured. So even as people are cutting back perhaps on advertising, or are their costs, I think this will be one area that will prove its value. It has in the past.
News Corp
In April, advertising revenues at Dow Jones was down more than 20% with digital down modestly. Advertising revenues in Australia and the UK were down more than 45% on a reported basis, or around 40% in local currency.
In Q1, digital advertising at Dow Jones rose 25% year-over-year, despite the challenges we faced with ad sales later in March. This is in strikingly marked contrast to the performance of the New York Times, where digital ad revenue actually declined 8%.
In terms of advertising, clearly, traffic has been particularly strong. There had been, as you may well be aware, some concerns early in the COVID crisis about blocking of ads related to COVID crisis coverage. Gradually, that problem has diminished. And so we are noticing that the amount of advertising we’re getting is matching, not quite, but to some extent, the significant increases in traffic we’ve had across the Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch. We noticed that tech advertising has increased. Custom advertising is also on the rise, and to a certain extent, programmatic.
And they want to deal directly with us rather than necessarily through an advertising agency
Ad revenue from March 11 to March 31 declined approximately 27% year-over-year.
Increased focus on DR
An improved MAP product and more direct response ad formats would increase our addressable market with more exposure to advertising demand that may be more resilient through an economic downturn, while building on our strengths and helping brands launch something new and connect with what’s happening. I’m also pleased to share that
Cost per engagement (CPE) decreased 19%, driven by like-for-like price decreases across most ad formats and lower demand in March
Comcast
Looking ahead, we anticipate advertising revenue will materially weaken from the first quarter due to the continued postponement of sports as well as the shape of the economic recovery as it reopens from COVID-19 shutdowns
Spotify
Ads are a very, very small portion of our business. It’s about 10% of our overall revenues. So, to the extent that were impacted by ads, we’re likely a lot less impacted than many other businesses. So long term, we believe this is a great opportunity for us, as the trend line of moving from linear to on demand will likely be accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis.
And we suspect that our advertisers will shift from pure reach to more measurable ad formats, of which ad formats are obviously a lot better compared to analog ad formats.
So our suspicion both on the advertising front, as well as the consumption front is that this will play into the tailwinds of what’s already been happening of linear moving to digital
Discovery
For US Ad Sales, predictably seen higher cancellations and deferrals in Q2. And based on preliminary results, April is down around 20% year-over-year. And based on business booked for the remainder of the quarter, both May and June are looking slightly better than April.
Based on preliminary results, International ad sales for April is down about 40% in aggregate across all international regions. Depending on the market, the range is anywhere from down 30% to down 50%
The number of Discovery's largest advertising categories are holding up nicely, such as certain CPG verticals like food and cleaning products, pharmaceuticals, insurance, financials and e-commerce companies, while travel, movie studios and some autos and retailers understandably cut back significantly
Rubicon
The impact continued to worsen through the first half of April, before showing signs of stabilizing in the second half, with total April revenue down roughly 30% year-over-year.
On a more positive note, CTV has continued to grow albeit at a lower rate with a year-over-year increase in April of approximately 10%, and has also stabilized in the last several weeks. As an omni-channel SSP, we have significant diversity across ad categories and even more so post merger with Telaria. As you can imagine, certain verticals have been significantly impacted, such as travel in media and entertainment, whereas others have benefited such as e-commerce, technology, direct-to-consumer and performance advertising.
Post-COVID CTV ad slot availability grew roughly 25% when compared to pre-COVID volumes.
Upfront deals have been and are expected to be canceled, shifting more spend from linear to the spot market that programmatic serves
Seeing an increase in direct-to-consumer and performance advertisers, who really never had an opportunity to get in to CTV
Microsoft
Significant reduction in advertising spend, which impacted our Search and LinkedIn businesses
Search revenue ex TAC increased 1%, below our expectations, driven by significantly reduced advertising spend
We assume advertising spend levels from March do not improve in Q2, which will impact Search and LinkedIn.
Apple Advertising
Advertising, which is comprised of third-party agreements, our App Store search ads, and Apple News ads has been impacted by overall economic weakness and uncertainty on when businesses will reopen
The other business, which we think is going to be impacted by the overall economic weakness and the uncertainty on when businesses will reopen is advertising, which is the sum of our advertising business on the App Store, on Apple News, and the third party agreements that we have on the advertising front. So, these are two things that during the June quarter will create a headwind for the Services business
Disney
Obviously this whole COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on our ad sales. I think that’s fair to say for anyone in the advertising business on one side or the other. And it’s really due to the lack of live sporting events and the pullback from advertisers in categories that are most impacted. So we have seen declines in demand from industries like movie studios, restaurants, travel, tourism, retail, domestic auto, those are all the things that have – we are seeing pullbacks in.
But on the other hand, we’ve seen some advertisers opportunistically increasing their spend and some of those industry groups are things like financial services, tech, telecom, the DTC/streaming services and also consumer packaged goods.
When you net out all of that, the net impact is what we are expecting as a significant decline in ad sales. And we will see it more at ESPN because of the lack of live sporting events than we will at the broadcast network
iHeart
Let me start with the consumer. We know advertising is driven by consumer engagement, and engaged audiences are the key to strong sustainable revenue. I know that's not the case right now given this temporary downturn in advertising, but it will be when it returns.
We know the reopening of businesses and brands depends on consumer demand, and advertising has always been the fuel that drives that demand. Importantly, we're now focused on recovery.
Advertising overall and most of our advertising streams have seen a major drop, and the reasons are obvious. Many businesses are shut down. Businesses and brands needed time to rebuild their messages to be relevant in a completely changed world. And companies needed to save money, and many did so by reducing or eliminating ad spend.
Characterize April as probably the worst monetization month I've ever seen.
Most of our morning shows added an hour and now end at 11 a.m. instead of the traditional 10 a.m. Our listeners have shifted their days.
Gannett
But as the pandemic significantly affected the U.S. in March, we also saw a spike in advertising cancellations and a slowdown in new sales across both print and digital. Results are still preliminary for April, however, our initial view is that same store revenue was down approximately 30%
In response, we've adjusted our new sales focus around business segments that are better positioned during the crisis. We're also working with our existing clients, particularly our small businesses, to make sure their digital presence is strong. We're able to shift messaging for them, emphasizing features that build online presence, e-commerce capabilities and also to implement digital marketing programs to help them be discovered online.
Given the range of advertisers we touch, from the very smallest local business to the largest advertisers in the world, we expect to have a front row seat on the recovery. We're ready to adjust resources, messaging and products as opportunities present themselves
Obviously, we've seen the biggest hit during the crisis come to print advertising, which is down more than 30%.
Our digital business has definitely held up better. It's been more resilient than print advertising
Cautiously optimistic that the worst is behind us.
Working with advertisers as they adjust to this new economic climate.
The quarter began with a continuation of the strength we’ve seen in Q4, but the pandemic began to impact our business during March.
As offline stores closed around the world, many advertisers slowed or paused their advertising spending on Pinterest. For those advertisers that paused, we’re sharing our insights to help them plan and eventually reaccelerate and reactivate their spend. Pinterest is where consumers have always looked for ideas and plan their lives, and we’re offering CMOs valuable insights to help them decide how to spend their 2020 budgets.
For those advertisers that continue to spend, we’ve seen a shift away from awareness campaigns and towards highly performant ads, an area we’ve invested heavily in over the past year.
NY Times
We saw advertising fall rapidly towards the end of the quarter and believe that advertising in the second quarter will fall between 50% and 55% compared to a year ago with limited visibility beyond that.
We believe that the Company will emerge from this global crisis with a distinctive and valuable advertising revenue stream to complement a digital news subscription business which is now by far the largest and most successful in the world. The revenue from those subscriptions give us real confidence, not just that we can remain financially sound through the pandemic, but also that we can safely invest in our digital growth strategy and continue to hire new talent to help execute it.
Q2 digital advertising revenue expected to decrease approximately 40 percent to 45 percent, largely due to the impact from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Print advertising revenue decreased as the COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated secular trends, largely impacting the luxury, media, entertainment and financial categories
One of the trends we have talked about for a while is just the idea that we will have a larger concentration of advertisers and a smaller number of categories. And I think it is fair to say, in both print and digital we saw more pressure in our legacy categories. And I think we can assume that that will continue through the crisis.
Verizon
In Verizon Media, we are experiencing a decline in advertising and search revenue as advertisers pause, hold back or cancel campaigns during this time and users are searching for fewer commercial terms providing us with less opportunity for monetization.
As a result, advertising revenues declined by nearly 10% in the month of March with COVID mostly impacted in the second half of the month and that rate of decline has increased in April. A number of industry forecasts expect a 20% to 30% decline in digital media revenues in Q2 and Verizon Media's results are likely to be similar to those experienced in the broader industry.
Seeing some staggering numbers like over 200% up on gaming, 10 times up on collaboration tools, 40% up on video.
800 million calls a day, which is twice the amount of what we have on Mother's Day which is the biggest day a year.
Netflix
Increase in subscriber growth in March. It's essentially a pull forward of the rest of the year. So our guess is that subs will be light in Q3 and Q4 relative to prior years.
When it comes to production, almost all filming has now been stopped globally, with the exception of a few countries like Korea and Iceland
We’ve taken on another 2,000 customer service agents (all working remotely), so our customer service levels are almost fully restored despite the increased demand.
Within two weeks of the shelter-in-place orders coming into effect in Los Angeles, most of our animation production team was back up and running, working from home. On the post production side, we’ve been able to get 200+ projects going remotely. Most of our series writers rooms are operating virtually.
Over the years, we’ve invested heavily in Open Connect, a pioneering caching system that puts our library of content as close to members’ homes as possible. This enables ISPs to run their networks more efficiently and at a lower cost. However, given the surge in internet use, networks in some countries have struggled to cope.
Meredith
With April complete, we see Q2 pacing for local television non-political advertising and National Media Group digital advertising revenues down approximately 40% and print advertising revenues down approximately 30%.
On the national side, not a surprise, the categories that are feeling pressure: automotive; entertainment; obviously, luxury, retail and travel are the categories where we’re seeing the most pressure. On the positive side, the areas that are holding up well: pharma, pets, home and food early on. We’re seeing a little decline in food now because some food advertisers don’t have enough inventory and have actually paused a little bit in the current month.
AT&T
COVID-19 impact of ~$600M, mostly from lower sports related advertising and lower wireless equipment sales
WarnerMedia revenues reflect lower advertising due to March Madness cancellation along with comparisons to strong 1Q19 theatrical results
COVID-19 uncertainty limits visibility for now
The most disconcerting troublesome area that we are seeing is what’s happening in small business.
There is no sports content, one of the best yielding pieces of inventory that we have access to
Omnicom
We don’t collect weekly revenue numbers by agency and roll them up at the Omnicom level. But the expectation is that year-over-year revenues will be down in the month of April.
Looking at a Q2 downfall, which could be double digits.
I don’t think it’s going to be rosy, but we do fully expect to bring many of those people back as we get later and later into the year.
Interpublic
The second quarter is not going to be pretty, hard to predict where this is going.
The second quarter should be the worst of the quarters.
The conversations we’ve had with the clients range from, yes, we think it’s coming back in the later part of the third quarter or some clients don’t think it’s coming back until the first part of the next year.
Sectors that are basically come to a standstill and particularly in the events side and in the sectors like airlines and cruise ships and things like that, our model dictates staffing reductions in those environments
Much more flexible to deal with digital than linear
Many of the senior teams are reporting that the intensity of what we are living through is leading to very deep engagement with clients, which could mean over time even stronger and more productive relationships with our clients
Clients understand the value of our services and the importance of work for their long-term competitiveness and growth
NON-MEDIA COMPANIES
Amazon Whole Foods and e-commerce
We began requiring temperature checks across our operations network. In our Whole Foods stores, we added plexiglass barriers between cashiers and customers, and reserved special hours for senior customers to shop. We temporarily raised wages and overtime premiums, we funded a new Amazon relief fund, and we allowed employees to take unpaid time off at their discretion. To deal with the unprecedented demand, we hired an additional 175,000 new employees, many of whom were displaced from other jobs in the economy.
We took steps to dampen demand for non-essential products, including reducing our marketing spend. Our network pivoted to shipping priority products within one to four days and extending promises on non-priority items. Our independent third-party sellers, most of whom are small and medium-sized businesses worked tremendously hard to serve our customers, and we are grateful for their efforts.
Third-party sellers continue to see strong growth in our stores, with more than half of our units sold or from third-party sellers. We increased grocery delivery capacity by more than 60%, and expanded in store pickup at Whole Foods stores from 80 stores to more than 150 stores. And other Amazon teams shifted their focus to directly helping customers and the overall effort to fight the COVID virus.
Johnson & Johnson
Tylenol is one of our most iconic and trusted brands by consumers and healthcare professionals for reducing fever and we have increased production running our Tylenol manufacturing plant 24/7 to maximize supply. We have also refocused our manufacturing lines to make our easiest-to-produce pills, which are the white Tylenol caplets, so we can increase production and throughput
In Medical Devices, we are experiencing a near term negative impact and expect this to continue while elective procedures are deferred and hospital resources are redeployed to address patients impacted by this pandemic.
We’ve implemented significantly enhanced sanitizing procedures and appropriate distancing to ensure we maintain safe, clean and well functioning facilities across our manufacturing, distribution centers and research and development sites
We take a long-term strategic view, which means we’re in this for the long haul delivering value to all of our stakeholders.
We are utilizing our supply chain delivery in 3D printing expertise to manufacture and distribute the VESper ventilator expansion splitter device, which addresses the acute ventilator shortage during the COVID-19 pandemic and at no cost to healthcare providers
Over-the-counter medicines grew globally almost 26% operationally with about 36% growth in the U.S. and 17% outside the U.S. COVID-19 contributed about 17 points to the global growth
Procter & Gamble
Consumption of hand soaps has obviously increased. Consumers in the U.S. are doing more laundry loads per week and washing more garments after wearing them just once. More loads are being done with unit dose detergents. We’ve seen a spike in demand for Tide antibacterial spray. This care consumption has increased as families eat more meals at home and are more concerned about the hygiene of their dishes, glasses and silverware.
More meals at home means more surface cleaning, often with a preference for a disposable cleaning solution versus a funky sponge, dingy cloth or suspect mop, leading to increased consumption of Bounty Swiffer and Mr. Clean.
March was a true test for our product supply planning and logistics organization, which they passed with flying colors. We set records for the volume of product produced and shipped. Our largest five North American plants produced and shipped 22% more cases in March than the average of the prior 12 months.
Work is underway to produce critically needed nonmedical face masks. We’re already up and running in China and the U.S. and we currently have teams working to solve additional capacity in every region of the world and will quickly begin production in those areas in coming weeks. When fully operational, we expect to be producing more than 10 million masks per month. We’ve leveraged P&G R&D, engineering and manufacturing capability to quickly produce face shields in Boston and Cincinnati, which are currently being used in hospitals and COVID-19 testing centers
We’re using our marketing and communications expertise to encourage consumers to support public health measures to help flatten the curve and slow the spread of the virus.
Top line results this quarter obviously benefited from consumer pantry loading in preparation for in-home quarantining. We’re planning for pantry inventory levels to eventually return to normal.
The second topic is recession. We’re assuming it’s already here and will be here for some period of time. While we are not immune, our current strategy puts us on better footing than prior downturns to weather economic headwinds. Our portfolio is now focused on daily use items where performance drives brand choice. We have much less exposure to discretionary items than we had during the last downturn. We’ve increased the superiority of our offerings, simultaneously increasing their value.
The Hershey Company
Currently, all of our manufacturing plants remain open and we continue to operate our supply chain with limited disruption. As the situation began to unfold, we built inventory in both raw materials and finished goods to mitigate risks and to help us to continue meeting demand
In addition to our three retail stores which have closed, there are several other parts of our business that are seeing an outsized impact, including our food service business and our travel retail business, both of which are seeing channel decline of 75% to 80%.
Grocery and snacks businesses in particular saw increases in both household penetration and basket size. Hershey syrup, baking chips and cocoa all grew approximately 30% during March, and trends have remained strong as families are spending more time together at home baking.
Our Skinny Pop and Pirate's Booty businesses grew approximately 20% and gained share
Seen a shift to lower price per ounce offerings as many consumers experience financial constraints. As a result, Skinny Pop and Pirate's Booty have experienced share declines and softening performance over the past three to four weeks
E-commerce growth has accelerated meaningfully, as many of you would expect and have likely observed yourselves, the number of consumers purchasing groceries online has increased significantly over the past several years. Our research indicates that 45% of consumers have used one or more online grocery options in the past four weeks, 23 points of them -- which use these services for the first time.
We are evaluating our media plan and adjusting both levels of support, messaging and channel when appropriate. For example, we've adjusted our S'mores copy to emphasize family consumption at home versus larger community and friend gatherings. We have taken savings from events like NCAA March Madness and Olympics and reallocated some to digital and our Reese's Lover promotion this summer, while leveraging some of that to cover incremental COVID-19 manufacturing and selling costs.
We are proactively planning for Halloween and partnering with our retailers to be prepared for a strong recovery, while also making smart choices to mitigate risk if consumer behavior remains impacted. This includes optimizing our portfolio and price point mix and activation timing, as well as amplifying our e-commerce plan.
Bed, Bath and Beyond
All four of our e-commerce fulfillment centers are currently operating. And by the end of this week, we will have converted approximately 25% of our Bed Bath &Beyond and buybuy BABY stores in the U.S. and Canada into regional fulfillment centers to use our bath inventory resources to assign orders locally and deliver quickly.
With these conversions, we expanded our fulfillment capacity significantly. The regional fulfillment stores have doubled the capacity of our entire fulfillment network
This kind of strategic action and innovation has allowed us to quickly implement curbside pickup, which was launched April 1st at buybuy BABY. In the first full week alone, we completed more than 11,000 curbside orders
Also this week, we are rolling out Buy Online Pick Up In Store at our BABY stores.
The Bed Bath &Beyond digital business is seeing net sales growth of more than 90% for the month of April to-date
As the quarantine phase of this pandemic has taken hold, we are seeing consumer purchasing demand focus on categories such as water filtration, air purifiers, vaporizers and humidifiers and kitchen electric cleaning, and coffee mates.
We'll also continue to review our store footprint, as we have nearly 250 leases that are up for renewal in 2020 alone, which gives us added financial flexibility
I believe that Bed Bath & Beyond will emerge from this even stronger
For the first two weeks of April, the fiscal quarter-to-date overall decline in our total net sales was around 42%, primarily due to the additional temporary store closures. However, net sales from our digital channels have further strengthened with year-over-year growth of more than 35%. Due to the level of market uncertainty, we will not provide further financial guidance for fiscal year 2020 at this time.
Rite Aid
We saw a significant increase in revenues during the month of March with same-store frontend sales increasing by 33%. These increases were impacted by demand for general cleaning products, sanitizers, wipes, paper products and OTC items. The demand has moderated in the first few weeks of April.
Same-store for script counts are 8.3% for the month of March driven by the acceleration of 90 days fills of maintenance prescriptions. We view this as a timing item and expect this phenomenon to have a negative impact on script trends in April and May.
The benefit that we have seen from increased sales has been largely offset by investments made related COVID-19 including pay adjustments for store and distribution center hourly associates, bonuses for store managers and pharmacists, increased charges to clean stores and other expense increases in related to our increased volume such as supply costs and credit and debit card fees.
Regarding supply chain, our current supply for the majority of our branded and generic drugs is good. However, we've seen increased demand for certain generic products such as inhalers and hydroxychloroquine and are closely monitoring the supply of these and other generic products.
We've had issues in restocking of our front-end products with heavy demand similar to others in the industry. We're working diligently with our supplier partners to get back inside. We've seen an increase in mail order prescriptions and drug utilization which has a favorable impact on the business.
We have expanded self-checkouts at the 260 stores with plans for an additional 400 locations in FY 2021.
At this time, the company does not have enough information about the ultimate impact of Covid-19 on fiscal 2021 results to justify changing the fiscal 2021 guidance. It is important to note that the impacts of Covid-19 on our business are fluid and difficult to predict and these estimates could materially change.
Chipotle
Supply chain partners who have been dedicated to keeping our restaurants stocked with gloves, hand sanitizer, masks, and other necessary items to keep our employees, food, and customers safe.
Only about 100 restaurants are fully closed at this time. These are mainly inside malls and shopping centers
Sales dropped 30% as we entered April and then improved again over the past week with comps adjusted for Easter in the down high teens range.
The beginning of April, in-store ordering is down around 75%, while delivery is up about 150% and order ahead is up nearly 120%, highlighting the importance of our digital platform and setting us up for a bright future as digital sales tend to be sticky. Digital is currently accounting for nearly 70% of sales.
Rewards program which now has more than 11.5 million enrolled members. Over the past month, daily sign-ups spike nearly fourfold, which is another sign that our digital platform is gaining traction. We are pleased to report that 65% of newly-enrolled rewards members are new to the Chipotle brand, up from 51% pre-COVID.
49 stores under construction. However, we have begun to see construction delays and therefore, have preemptively delayed groundbreaking on the majority of projects in April.
Shake Shack
Shack track will result in interior and exterior pickup windows or new pickup areas to improve flow and encourage digital preorder. We've been studying current Shack layouts and future Shack designs in order to identify where this model can be quickly added. It may take time in many forms, but all towards the goal of continuing to build the community gathering places the world needs, while adding a level of convenience, safety, distance, and frictionless pickup to meet the needs of our guests.
Shake Shack brand was in an incredibly strong poison as additional real estate and development opportunities became available. We'll be ready to capture the whitespace ahead, what could be a forever change to the retail and restaurant environment.
On the subject of new Shack development, during this COVID-19 crisis, we have paused all design and construction of new Shacks. We're committed to getting back on track for those development plans and the execution of our broader growth strategy as quickly as possible and our teams are employed to do so when the time is right.
Overall, most recent fiscal week, ending last Wednesday, the 29th of April, same-Shack sales were down 45% compared to the same period last year and total Shack sales were down 34%
McDonalds
Looking at comparable sales, we expect the second quarter as a whole to be significantly worse than what we experienced for the full month of March. Kevin will talk about what we have seen in the month of April.
Global comp sales were down 22% in the month of March
In the second-half of March, comp sales were down roughly 70% as several markets like France, Italy, Spain, and the U.K. temporarily closed all restaurants, and other markets like Australia, Canada, and Germany had drive-thru delivery and takeaway only for limited hours and menus. Comp sales have continued to be down about 70% through April in this segment as many of the fully closed markets are now just beginning to reopen.
Turning to the U.S., comp sales were negative 13% for the month of March. Beginning in mid March and continuing through mid April, U.S. comp sales were consistently down about 25%. However, we have begun to see some improvement in the last couple of weeks. We expect April comp sales to be down about 20%. Also over the last several weeks, the U.S. has experienced a significant increase in average check across all channels. This is due an increase in party size as well as the evolving consumer behavior with daily routines interrupted and fewer transactions at the breakfast day part.
As consumers shifted from in-person ordering to drive-thru and delivery channels, drive-thru now accounts for nearly 90% of sales in the U.S.
Starbucks
Moving to the U.S. Today approximately 50% of our company operated stores and 46% of our licensed stores in the U.S. are temporarily closed.
To date in April, comparable sales growth for U.S. company operated stores that are open is averaging approximately minus 25% or indexing at 75% of prior year levels. However, as we have not yet entered the recovery phase in the U.S.
For the month of April, comparable store sales in China were down approximately 35%, marking strong improvement from a weekly low of minus 90% in mid-February.
So when we open starting next week, we're going to open with modifications. And those modifications will be drive-through stores. We will amplify delivery. We will have the Mobile Order & Pay channels open, and then the addition of a new concept, the entryway handoff.
We will only have roughly 30 stores that will be open and in those 30 stores, there will be no seating. So we are making sure that we provide a safe environment for our customers and for our partners. And we will monitor what happens as shelter-in is lifted in certain regions and areas and then begin to reopen the cafe stores
You'll see later in the summer, we'll also add curbside access to our stores.
Also remember that we have really turned off any marketing in this time. And so our customers are used to us introducing spring beverage in addition to speaking to them on a one-to-one basis through our digital relationships. And we've not acknowledged our birthday presentations to our customers. We've not introduced Happy Hour, nor have we done our Double-Star Days. So, I would say that we're operating in an abnormal position in terms of how we communicate to our customers.
Now, coming out of the gate, we're doing a lot of new things with marketing. We'll have digital media. We'll have TV. We'll have paid social owned earned media. That all begins early next week. We're also creating new e-mail contacts to each one of our members. So those 30 million that you're -- that we can reach we will do that in the next week. And the most important thing is to let them know that we are open.
DELTA Airlines
Unprecedented situation where demand for near-term air travel dropped to almost zero in a matter of weeks
We're taking steps to help our employees and customers practice social distancing including blocking middle seats
Right now 37,000 employees more than one third of our workforce have elected to take voluntary unpaid leaves ranging from 30 days to one year
This is helping reduce our daily cash burn which started at $100 million per day in March down to $50 million a day starting next month in May.
Safety will no longer be limited to flight safety but personal safety as well.
On Monday, April 20, we received $2.7 billion of the $5.4 billion that's expected over the next few months. $3.8 billion of this is direct aid with $1.6 billion in a low-interest unsecured 10-year loan.
The path to recovery is uncertain and will likely be choppy and while we all wish we could predict the pace of the recovery, the truth is our recovery will be dictated by our customers feeling safe both physically and financially to begin to travel at scale.
Given the combined effects of the pandemic and associated financial impact on the global economy, we believe that it could be up to three years before we see a sustainable recovery and to succeed throughout that environment we will likely need to resize our business in the near term to protect it in the long term.
while the resizing business over the short term is painful it will also be an opportunity to accelerate strategies to streamline our company, simplify our fleet and reduce our fixed cost base in ways not possible in the past