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FINAL TRANSCRIPT Conference Call Transcript GE - GE Investor Webcast Regarding NBC Universal Event Date/Time: Dec 03, 2009 / 01:30PM GMT "Results are preliminary and unaudited. This document contains “forward -looking statements” - that is, statements related to future, not past, events. In this context, forward-looking statements often address our expected future business and financial performance and financial condition, and often contain words such as “expect,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “plan,” “believe,” “seek,” “see,” or “will.” Forward-looking statements by their nature address matters that are, to different degrees, uncertain. For this transaction, particular uncertainties that could cause our actual results to be materially different than those expressed in our forward-looking statements include: the timing of, or ability to obtain, necessary regulatory and governmental approvals for the proposed transaction with Comcast on acceptable terms; the timing and completion of the financing of NBC Universal on contemplated terms before the closing of the proposed joint venture; the receipt of an investment grade rating from the rating agencies of the proposed joint venture between GE and Comcast; adverse developments in the business and operations of NBC Universal, including potential disruption that may make it more difficult to maintain business and operational relationships; the successful combination, operation and overall performance of the joint venture post closing; the ability t o redeploy our capital into high-growth technology businesses; our projected cash flow for 2010, as well as our growth prospects for 2011. These uncertainties may cause our actual future results to be materially different than those expressed in our forward-looking statements. We do not undertake to update our forward-looking statements.” “This document may also contain non-GAAP financial information. Management uses this information in its internal analysis of results and believes that this information may be informative to investors in gauging the quality of our financial performance, identifying trends in our results and providing meaningful period-to-period comparisons. For a reconciliation of non-GAAP measures presented in this document, see the accompanying supplemental information posted to the investor relations section of our website at www.ge.com .” “In this document, “GE” refers to the Industrial businesses of the Company including GECS on an equity basis. “GE (ex. GECS)” and/or “Industrial” refer to GE excluding Financial Services.” Conference call transcript provided by Thomson Reuters. GE assumes no responsibility or liability for any errors, misstatements or omissions made by Thomson Reuters in the transcription process. 1 THOMSON REUTERS STREETEVENTS | www.streetevents.com | Contact Us © 2009 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. 'Thomson Reuters' and the Thomson Reuters logo are registered trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies. FINAL TRANSCRIPT Dec 03, 2009 / 01:30PM GMT, GE - GE Investor Webcast Regarding NBC Universal CORPORATE PARTICIPANTS Trevor Schauenberg General Electric - VP, Corp. Investor Communications Jeff Immelt General Electric - Chairman, CEO Jeff Zucker General Electric - President and CEO of NBC Universal Keith Sherin General Electric - Vice Chairman, CFO CONFERENCE CALL PARTICIPANTS Terry Darling Goldman Sachs - Analyst Steve Tusa JPMorgan - Analyst Jeff Sprague Citigroup - Analyst Nigel Coe Deutsche Bank - Analyst Steven Winoker Sanford Bernstein - Analyst PRESENTATION Operator Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the investor webcast regarding NBC Universal. My name is Noelia and I'll be your coordinator for today. At this time all participants are in listen-only mode. We will be facilitating a question-and-answer session towards the end of this conference. (Operator Instructions). As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes. I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today's event, Mr. Trevor Schauenberg, Vice President of Investor Communications. Please proceed, sir. Trevor Schauenberg - General Electric - VP, Corp. Investor Communications Thank you, Noelia. Good morning and welcome, everyone. We're pleased today to host the webcast regarding NBC Universal. Regarding the materials for this webcast, we issued the press release earlier this morning and the presentation slides are available via the webcast. Slides are also available for download and printing on our website at www.GE.com/investor. We'll all have time at the end for some Q&A. As always, elements of this presentation are forward-looking and are based on our best view of the world and our businesses as we see them today. Those elements can change as the world changes, please interpret them in that light. For today's webcast we have our Chairman and CEO, Jeff Immelt; our Vice Chairman and CFO, Keith Sherin; and President and CEO of NBC Universal, Jeff Zucker. Now I'd like to turn it over to our Chairman and CEO, Jeff Immelt. Jeff Immelt - General Electric - Chairman, CEO Great, Trevor, thanks. Good morning, everyone. We're having a call this morning to I guess confirm what most of you have been reading about for the last 60 days. Just as an overview, we really do believe we're in a new economy, that the economy has been reset, the environment is really 2 FINAL TRANSCRIPT Dec 03, 2009 / 01:30PM GMT, GE - GE Investor Webcast Regarding NBC Universal different coming through this cycle than it's been in the past. And we think in that context, GE is going to have many strategic opportunities to invest as part of this reset world. NBCU is a good business that's generated strong returns, 11% returns for GE shareholders over the past two decades. We've continued to evolve NBCU into cable and parks and movies, digital content, global distribution. We've always grown NBCU based on the dynamics of the media competition. I think it's time to do that again. Really what we're announcing today, if you think in the context of NBC, we went from 100% of NBC to 80% when we merged with Universal in 2003. This takes the 80% down to 49% as we merge with Comcast and really creates a more competitive and valuable media enterprise. We think this new company will be a leader in cable and digital content and it's going to offer better service for consumers and advertisers. We think ultimately that GE investors win in two ways. By owning 49% GE is going to benefit by future growth from newco and we think Comcast will be a great partner and our interests are aligned. At the same time, we have the opportunity to redeploy $8 billion of cash back into a high returning global infrastructure business. Again, we believe there's going to be multiple investment opportunities with attractive returns. And we think that we can put our capital into the businesses that most fully utilize GE's core strength. So we think this is the right deal at the right time for our shareholders and with that I'll turn it over to Jeff Zucker to really talk about what newco looks like. Jeff Zucker - General Electric - President and CEO of NBC Universal Thank you, Jeff. So the new company is really an incredibly strong media company that's focused primarily on cable networks. The NBC Universal of today was valued in this day at $30 billion; that of course is the two broadcast networks, NBC and Telemundo and a very strong suite of cable assets of led by USA and CNBC and then, of course, Universal Pictures and our theme parks as well. What happens today is that NBC Universal valued at $30 billion gets put together with the Comcast entertainment businesses, which today have been valued at $7.25 billion. Those businesses are a suite of five national cable channels led by E! and the Golf Channel and Versus, 10 regional sports networks around the country, and then several digital assets including Fandango and DailyCandy. I think the combination of what exists today with NBC Universal and the Comcast business gives us an incredibly exciting expanded cable offering in the new company. 80% of the new company's operating profit will come from those cable businesses, and it really shows you what the key to that company is. It also gives us an opportunity to create new offerings in several key segments. If you think about our move into women's programming, especially at Bravo and Oxygen, and you think about E! and Style going forward, iVillage and Daily Candy, the women's portfolio becomes even that more exciting. And you think about the opportunities in sports. You think about what we have done at NBC Universal on the news side, on the broadcast, cable and digital side. The opportunity now to do that on the sports I think is a real exciting possibility of this. And then frankly, this deal will also give us a larger Internet presence, additional capabilities through the combination of NBC Universal's digital assets and Comcast's assets. If the future of media is cable, digital and global, this combination serves all three. Keith Sherin - General Electric - Vice Chairman, CFO All right. Next is the deal terms and I'm just going to cover the key terms as they've been widely reported, as Jeff mentioned earlier. We are forming a joint venture combining all of NBC Universal with Comcast content and Internet assets. Comcast will own 51% and we'll own 49% after we form this venture. You saw the valuations on the asset contributions. The JV will [raise] $9.1 billion of debt and the proceeds will be distributed to GE at closing. In addition, Comcast will pay about $6.5 billion of cash to closing.