Top American Adaptations of Foreign Movies

Free Champions League live streams are back this season for multiple matches if you know where to look. We've found some very affordable options if you insist on seeing every game too. Harry Langer/DeFodi Images via Getty ImagesWhen you buy through our links, Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn moreFinding out where to watch a Champions League live stream can change quite often depending on where you live, but our guide can help you watch every match from anywhere with free and paid routes examined. We have found a free Bayern Munich vs. Man United live stream tonight too.Paying is the only way to see every game, but it's much cheaper in some countries than others. We can show you how to take advantage of those lower prices via a VPN (virtual private network), which masks your location to get around region blocks and greatly improves your online security and privacy in general.A VPN will also unlock multiple free Champions League match live streams each week as numerous markets around Europe feature free games on local channels. More on this below, along with a list of this week's games.We've extensively tested VPNs and international streaming options and regularly browse dozens of TV guides to ensure we're bringing you the most up-to-date information. And if we present an option to subscribe to a cheaper subscription service that offers every game, it's because we've recently put our own money down to check it works.For example, while the US has the cheapest access for Champions League live streams of every game, you'll struggle to subscribe without a US bank account, even via a VPN. There are no such problems with Stan Sport in Australia, though, and it's much cheaper than TNT Sport in the UK.Champions League live stream quick links:USA (every game): Paramount Plus (7-day free trial)Access live streams internationally via ExpressVPN (try it risk-free for 30 days)Australia (every game): Stan Sport (30-day free trial)UK (every game): TNT Sport / Amazon Prime add-on £29.99/pm Canada (every game): DAZN CA$24.99/pm This week's free Champions League live streamsThere are some fantastic free Champions League live streams each week around Europe. You won't get every game, but as you can see from the list below, there are some big teams streaming for free this week. If you're not in the channel's country, you can still watch by using a VPN to prevent the website from detecting your location and blocking you.The VPN mimics the required country for your viewing device and lets you watch along for free. We've tested this ourselves for lots of live sports, including F1, Rugby World Cup, grand slam tennis, cricket, golf, and much more. Don't have a VPN? There's a fantastic offer right now on the best VPN we've tested and have been using for years for streaming and protecting our online devices. You can save 49% on the usual price of Express VPN, and get three months for free. Better yet, if you're unsatisfied, there's a hassle-free 30-day money-back guarantee. Still not entirely sure you need a VPN? Take a look at our detailed ExpressVPN review to see why we rate it number 1. Then get stuck in and enjoy these free Champions League live streams.September 20: Bayern Munich vs. Man United - RTL2 in LuxembourgSeptember 20: Benfica vs. Salzburg - ServusTV in AustriaSeptember 19: Barcelona vs. Antwerp - RTL Club* in BelgiumSeptember 19: PSG vs. Dortmund - RTL2 in LuxembourgSeptember 19: Lazio vs. Atletico Madrid - Canale 5 in ItalySeptember 19: Feyenoord vs. Celtic - RTE2 in IrelandSeptember 20: Bayern Munich vs. Man United - RTL2 in LuxembourgSeptember 20: Benfica vs. Salzburg - ServusTV in Austria*Belgium's RTL Club is free, but you must create a free login to access the free Champions League streams. All other free channels this week don't require an email login.How to watch the Champions League with a VPNSign up for a VPN if you don't have one.Install it on the device you're using to watch the game.Set location to required overseas streaming service's country.E.g., Australia if using Stan Sport or the corresponding country mentioned above for this week's free games.Create an account and sign in if required.Enjoy the game.Where to watch Champions League in the UKThere's a fair bit of change this year. BT Sport has been renamed TNT Sport and now comes under the Discovery+ service. If you've been accessing it as a part of a BT TV subscription, you might have had an email about the change, but generally, you should be able to carry on as usual.If you don't have BT Sport/TNT Sport, you can sign up for Discovery Plus Premium (the cheaper tiers don't include live sport) for £29.99 a month. You can also select it as part of a BT broadband bundle.If the idea of tracking another streaming service grinds your gears, you might prefer the simpler option of adding it to your Amazon Prime membership as an add-on. It's the same £29.99 a month, and you can cancel anytime. You might find watching it through Amazon Prime Video means you can enjoy Champions League live streams across more devices, as app support across TVs, consoles, and streaming sticks is much better for Prime Video than Discovery.Get TNT Sport with Prime VideoPro tip: If you want a cheaper option, you might want to try Australia's Stan Sport, as you can subscribe with a UK bank account for less than half what it costs for TNT (we've tested this ourselves). You will need a VPN to access the site and Champions League live streams outside Australia. It still works out cheaper though. More details below. Where to watch Champions League in AustraliaThe Champions League is a Stan Sport exclusive in Australia. So you'll need to sign up for Stan and then add Stan Sport as an add-on. The cheapest setup is $25 a month (for Stan Basic at $10 and Sport at $15). Better yet, it comes with a 30-day free trial first, even with Stan Sport.Stan Basic only streams in standard definition, but Stan Sport's content will stream in up to 4K, even when paired with this cheapest tier, so you might as well go Basic if you're just getting it for sport. However, if you want to check out the TV shows and movies too, HD is $16 a month/$21 for 4K (then add $15 for Sport). All are on rolling one-month contracts, so there's no long-term commitment.If you're eying up this option via a VPN as a cheaper alternative to your country's Champions League streaming service, we can confirm it will work. We were able to pay with a UK bank card (tested September 2023) and have full access to the streaming service. You could also use a travel card like Revolut to pay in local currency so you don't get a foreign transaction fee from your bank.Where to watch Champions League in the USThis is where 'soccer' being so far down the rankings of the most popular sports in the USA really pays off for viewers who want to enjoy the most prestigious competition in club football.You'll find every last Champions League game live streaming on Paramount Plus from just $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year (you wouldn't get two months of action for that annual price in the UK!). So yes, you can opt for the cheapest Paramount Plus tier and still get the Champions League despite it not having CBS, as the games will run via separate feeds. If you have CBS already, you'll find it airs some games, but nowhere near as many as Paramount Plus. Can I access Champions League on Paramount Plus with a VPN?Yes and no. If you set up Paramount Plus while already living in the US and are traveling abroad, and want to keep watching, you're all set. A VPN will indeed let you tune in like you were still in the US.If you have a non-US subscription, like in the UK, you won't be able to access the US version's content with those same login credentials via a VPN on the app or the US website, as they're essentially different apps and services in each country. Unlike Netflix, which will allow one login to work anywhere via a VPN.  If you're outside the US and want a US account, it would seem Paramount Plus has made it difficult for outsiders to create one recently. That's because you'll need a US form of payment, and we've found international currency cards, like a Revolut, don't count.What about PayPal? You'll need to create a US PayPal account, which must be verified by a US mobile phone number. So, if you can get around all this, you can enjoy the best value Champions League live streams in the world.See also: Where to watch free Rugby World Cup live streams | How to watch NFL without cableNote: The use of VPNs is illegal in certain countries, and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content might constitute a breach of the terms of use for certain services. Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Free Champions League live streams are back this season for multiple matches if you know where to look. We've found some very affordable options if you insist on seeing every game too. Manchester City lift up the Champions League trophy, as they are crowned Champions of Europe after the 2022/23 final.Alexandra Fechete/DeFodi Images via Getty ImagesWhen you buy through our links, Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn moreFinding out where to watch a Champions League live stream can change quite often depending on where you live, but our guide can help you watch every match from anywhere with free and paid routes examined.Paying is the only way to see every game, but it's much cheaper in some countries than others. We can show you how to take advantage of those lower prices via a VPN (virtual private network), which masks your location to get around region blocks and greatly improves your online security and privacy in general.A VPN will also unlock multiple free Champions League match live streams each week as numerous markets around Europe feature free games on local channels. More on this below, along with a list of this week's games.We've extensively tested VPNs and international streaming options and regularly browse dozens of TV guides to ensure we're bringing you the most up-to-date information. And if we present an option to subscribe to a cheaper subscription service that offers every game, it's because we've recently put our own money down to check it works.For example, while the US has the cheapest access for Champions League live streams of every game, you'll struggle to subscribe without a US bank account, even via a VPN. There are no such problems with Stan Sport in Australia, though, and it's much cheaper than TNT Sport in the UK.Champions League live stream quick links:USA (every game): Paramount Plus (7-day free trial)Access live streams internationally via ExpressVPN (try it risk-free for 30 days)Australia (every game): Stan Sport (30-day free trial)UK (every game): TNT Sport / Amazon Prime add-on £29.99/pm Canada (every game): DAZN CA$24.99/pm This week's free Champions League live streamsThere are some fantastic free Champions League live streams each week around Europe. You won't get every game, but as you can see from the list below, there are some big teams streaming for free this week. If you're not in the channel's country, you can still watch by using a VPN to prevent the website from detecting your location and blocking you.The VPN mimics the required country for your viewing device and lets you watch along for free. We've tested this ourselves for lots of live sports, including F1, Rugby World Cup, grand slam tennis, cricket, golf, and much more. Don't have a VPN? There's a fantastic offer right now on the best VPN we've tested and have been using for years for streaming and protecting our online devices. You can save 49% on the usual price of Express VPN, and get three months for free. Better yet, if you're unsatisfied, there's a hassle-free 30-day money-back guarantee. Still not entirely sure you need a VPN? Take a look at our detailed ExpressVPN review to see why we rate it number 1. Then get stuck in and enjoy these free Champions League live streams.September 19: Barcelona vs. Antwerp - RTL Club* in BelgiumSeptember 19: PSG vs. Dortmund - RTL2 in LuxembourgSeptember 19: Lazio - Atletico Madrid - Canale 5 in ItalySeptember 19: Feyenoord v Celtic - RTE2 in IrelandSeptember 20: Bayern Munich vs. Man United - RTL2 in LuxembourgSeptember 20: Benfica vs. Salzburg - ServusTV in Austria*Belgium's RTL Club is free, but you must create a free login to access the free Champions League streams. All other free channels this week don't require an email login.How to watch the Champions League with a VPNSign up for a VPN if you don't have one.Install it on the device you're using to watch the game.Set location to required overseas streaming service's country.E.g., Australia if using Stan Sport or the corresponding country mentioned above for this week's free games.Create an account and sign in if required.Enjoy the game.Where to watch Champions League in the UKThere's a fair bit of change this year. BT Sport has been renamed TNT Sport and now comes under the Discovery+ service. If you've been accessing it as a part of a BT TV subscription, you might have had an email about the change, but generally, you should be able to carry on as usual.If you don't have BT Sport/TNT Sport, you can sign up for Discovery Plus Premium (the cheaper tiers don't include live sport) for £29.99 a month. You can also select it as part of a BT broadband bundle.If the idea of tracking another streaming service grinds your gears, you might prefer the simpler option of adding it to your Amazon Prime membership as an add-on. It's the same £29.99 a month, and you can cancel anytime. You might find watching it through Amazon Prime Video means you can enjoy Champions League live streams across more devices, as app support across TVs, consoles, and streaming sticks is much better for Prime Video than Discovery.Get TNT Sport with Prime VideoPro tip: If you want a cheaper option, you might want to try Australia's Stan Sport, as you can subscribe with a UK bank account for less than half what it costs for TNT (we've tested this ourselves). You will need a VPN to access the site and Champions League live streams outside Australia. It still works out cheaper though. More details below. Where to watch Champions League in AustraliaThe Champions League is a Stan Sport exclusive in Australia. So you'll need to sign up for Stan and then add Stan Sport as an add-on. The cheapest setup is $25 a month (for Stan Basic at $10 and Sport at $15). Better yet, it comes with a 30-day free trial first, even with Stan Sport.Stan Basic only streams in standard definition, but Stan Sport's content will stream in up to 4K, even when paired with this cheapest tier, so you might as well go Basic if you're just getting it for sport. However, if you want to check out the TV shows and movies too, HD is $16 a month/$21 for 4K (then add $15 for Sport). All are on rolling one-month contracts, so there's no long-term commitment.If you're eying up this option via a VPN as a cheaper alternative to your country's Champions League streaming service, we can confirm it will work. We were able to pay with a UK bank card (tested September 2023) and have full access to the streaming service. You could also use a travel card like Revolut to pay in local currency so you don't get a foreign transaction fee from your bank.Where to watch Champions League in the USThis is where 'soccer' being so far down the rankings of the most popular sports in the USA really pays off for viewers who want to enjoy the most prestigious competition in club football.You'll find every last Champions League game live streaming on Paramount Plus from just $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year (you wouldn't get two months of action for that annual price in the UK!). So yes, you can opt for the cheapest Paramount Plus tier and still get the Champions League despite it not having CBS, as the games will run via separate feeds. If you have CBS already, you'll find it airs some games, but nowhere near as many as Paramount Plus. Can I access Champions League on Paramount Plus with a VPN?Yes and no. If you set up Paramount Plus while already living in the US and are traveling abroad, and want to keep watching, you're all set. A VPN will indeed let you tune in like you were still in the US.If you have a non-US subscription, like in the UK, you won't be able to access the US version's content with those same login credentials via a VPN on the app or the US website, as they're essentially different apps and services in each country. Unlike Netflix, which will allow one login to work anywhere via a VPN.  If you're outside the US and want a US account, it would seem Paramount Plus has made it difficult for outsiders to create one recently. That's because you'll need a US form of payment, and we've found international currency cards, like a Revolut, don't count.What about PayPal? You'll need to create a US PayPal account, which must be verified by a US mobile phone number. So, if you can get around all this, you can enjoy the best value Champions League live streams in the world.See also: Where to watch free Rugby World Cup live streams | How to watch NFL without cableNote: The use of VPNs is illegal in certain countries, and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content might constitute a breach of the terms of use for certain services. Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Hollywood is acknowledged as the movie capital of the world, but many cinephiles have criticized the movie-making mecca for its lack of original ideas. Not only do studios turn out endless sequels, franchise entries, and films based on popular TV series, but many American films are reboots from motion pictures that originally made their mark […] Hollywood is acknowledged as the movie capital of the world, but many cinephiles have criticized the movie-making mecca for its lack of original ideas. Not only do studios turn out endless sequels, franchise entries, and films based on popular TV series, but many American films are reboots from motion pictures that originally made their mark in another country, and often another language. (These are the best movie remakes of all time.) To determine the best American remakes of foreign films, 24/7 Tempo developed an index using average ratings on IMDb, an online movie database owned by Amazon, and a combination of audience scores and Tomatometer scores on Rotten Tomatoes, an online movie and TV review aggregator, as of April 2023, weighting all ratings equally. Only movies with at least 5,000 user votes on IMDb were considered. Credits are from IMDb. Click here to see the best American remakes of foreign films The 50 remakes on our list come from 16 different countries, including Scandinavian nations, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, Spain, and the United Kingdom – all of which have long, rich filmmaking traditions. Argentina, Chile, and Mexico also are represented, as is Israel. Most of the American remakes of foreign films fall short of the original, according to critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Eight of the foreign originals, in fact, hold Rotten Tomatoes critics Freshness scores of 100% – two of them from the fabled French director Jean Renoir, “La Chienne” and “Boudu Saved From Drowning.” Only two of the American reboots achieved the same score. (These have been the most successful foreign films in America.) Sponsored: Tips for Investing A financial advisor can help you understand the advantages and disadvantages of investment properties. Finding a qualified financial advisor doesn’t have to be hard. SmartAsset’s free tool matches you with up to three financial advisors who serve your area, and you can interview your advisor matches at no cost to decide which one is right for you. If you’re ready to find an advisor who can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now. Investing in real estate can diversify your portfolio. But expanding your horizons may add additional costs. If you’re an investor looking to minimize expenses, consider checking out online brokerages. They often offer low investment fees, helping you maximize your profit......»»

The Human Industrial Complex Authored by Visayas Outpost's Substack, (emphasis ours) What Have We Wrought? Watch what you say or they’ll be calling you a radical, Liberal, oh fanatical, criminal. Won’t you sign up your name, we’d like to feel you’re acceptable, Respectable, oh presentable, a vegetable...  - Supertramp Admittedly, it is no easy task in 2023 determining which end of the narrative Zeitgeist I find myself on.  Not wanting to add unnecessary noise to the buzzing of the hive, it can be best to wait until there is something that feels important enough to say.  And so it is that a few recent article trends in my news circle have sparked such a moment; because they helped put into place a clearer way of thinking about the nature of the threat we Humans face on this Earth. What piqued my eyeballs as soon as I saw it was an article describing Michael Shellenberger’s testimony to the House Select Committee on what he calls The Censorship Industrial Complex.  A comprehensive and interlocking method used by government and social media companies to engineer what we think and say.  This concept is not new to you, Readers, but it is significant that someone has given it a name, and it has been presented to Congress. Immediately on the heels of that was further proof of Shellenberger’s observation, in the recent announcement about U.S. Special Operations Command’s involvement with Accrete AI in developing a military-grade “AI” censoring tool which will ultimately run on social media.  These things come as no real surprise either, but the sheer nefariousness of this tool is something to behold.  It purports to analyze all content everywhere, in real time, to determine the threat level to the narrative.  To stamp out ‘embryonic’ ideas as soon as they show up.  The “AI” is able to calculate their likely impact, and stop ‘misinfo’ before it can start.    A song like Rich Men North of Richmond would not have lived on YouTube, or ever seen the light of day.  Maybe you post something to a forum and it immediately gets altered.  Insidious.  Twitter (‘X’) is now using ‘user definitions’ in a way to not only regionalize content but granularize it to the individual level, such that no two user experiences are the same.  So you may have an echo chamber of one, friends, with all of your followers being bots. Censorship is not the only Industrial Complex we suffer from however, merely the latest.   The Military Industrial Complex has been with us since before Kennedy.  But add to that the recent exposure of the Medical Industrial Complex, which we just called Big Pharma before.  One could consider the Data Industrial Complex, or the Educational Industrial Complex.  These all have the same nature; being intertwined with the government, with opaque funding, and control agendas that affect everyone.  Climate, the Dollar, Energy, Agriculture; all of them are cartel-level industrial strength forces shaping our reality.    Note that not one of these complexes support liberty or freedom!  They are tentacles of the same hydra, essentially; the one that wants to categorize, classify, assess, and manage you right into a little postage stamp apartment in a 15-minute city.  To keep you in an echo chamber, or immersed in an alt. reality VR game and sipping reconstituted urine.  But at least you’ll have an e-bike.  It occurs to me that we, as humans, are literally just numbers in a balance sheet to someone.  We are animated actuary tables. “They got a building down New York City, it's called Whitehall Street, where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected.” -Arlo Guthrie We have been thinking about our humanity all wrong, it seems, not recognizing the reality for what it is.  Because we are no longer the Human Race, but the Human Industrial Complex.  We are commodities, in a position somewhere above animals but below the needs of the State.  The term ‘sheep’ or ‘cattle’ turns out to be a rather apt description of what we have become.  For decades now the business world has referred to us as human capital.  We are an R.O.I. with values like our talent stack, and our skill set.  To the political class we are simply tax payers or votes to be harvested.  To the medical world we are percentages of mRna uptake in the population.  No aspect of our actual humanity matters to anyone in the halls of power, busy as they are classifying us into threat levels and managing us by algorithm. With all of the stuff we ingest, inject, and absorb, they may as well clip ID tags to our ears.  In a sense we are not very far from that.  Call it vaccine passports, call it mark of the beast, but on this trajectory there is some threshold we will pass where our bodies, even our minds, will not be our own to control.  This is what the ‘brain domain’ battlefield seems to be all about, gaining control of that last line of defense; the human will. By becoming controllable, we have become the ‘known knowns’ in risk management, the part of the equation they can mold and shape to the desired outcome.  What matters is not the wishes of We the People, but the wishes of Blackrock, the City of London, and others.  We provide essential tax dollars and votes needed to implement the vision these others, and that is about all we are good for.  For a time they will still need us as a labor component, but that too will change with increasing automation.  This is all in sharp contrast to what School House Rock explained to us kids back in the ‘70s, about power being vested in the people.  The illusion may still be there, but not the substance.  We act self-important, as if still calling the shots.  We say silly things like “politicians work for us”.  Yet we cannot stop the Pharma companies trying to experiment on us, the Data companies from selling us out, and the Education system from targeting our children with ideological nonsense.  Those agendas are above the plebe paygrade, and it looks like nothing short of armed revolution is going to put a dent in it.  Information: Their greatest tool It took less than a century to advance from Hollerith punch cards to quantum computer tech, but we have paid a heavy price.  Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, the day they formed Apple Computer, had no way to know where it would all lead.  And although I am a huge Jobs fan, the question must be asked:  What have we wrought?  Billions of people walking around staring at their little pandora’s box, every day, all day.  We are living, breathing, talking episodes of Black Mirror.  I fully expect Apple to come up with an implant version of the tech.  Then they can think of something really clever to call it, like iSpy, or iAm.  Short of jacking right into our brains with Neuralink, it would be the next logical step. Fantasize with me and get into the Wayback Machine, tuned to 1976, and show up as a guest speaker in a high school.  I would warn them that as enticing as ‘computer science’ may seem, in the future it would become the backbone of enslavement for a good chunk of the human race.  To the kid in the back row bleeping on his handheld Mattel Football game, I would say we have even smaller devices that can hold thousands of songs and make video calls anywhere on Earth.  The only problem is they monitor us 24/7 and bathe us in EM radiation.  Our brains have gotten so used to blankly engaging and clicking apps that most of us can no longer read paper maps, or have the inclination to read books.  I would tell them that for us, history is whatever the digital library online says it is, so pay attention in school.     And so here we stand, on the twilight of humanity some would say, no longer shaping our own destiny.  Liberté as we knew it has been obliterated by the failure first of legal protections, and then digital protections.  We seem to be past the point of the majority to think clearly on these matters, programmed as they are by the same little devices.  Lacking concern over where we are headed, and unable to even remember what a boy and a girl are.  Vapid expressions, loss of IQ, meaningless relationships, futile careers, and dwindling earnings compared to previous generations.  It is a burn-it-down level of predicament, to be sure.  I hope gen Z is pretty damned angry about it all.  World War ‘Z’ anyone? Just Say No A few weeks ago we watched the new Indiana Jones movie online.  It was pretty mediocre.  But there was an opening scene in which they ‘de-age’ Harrison Ford; Indiana Jones was back in the 1930s fighting Nazis.  The effect was flawless, as far as I could tell, by whatever CGI / “AI” methods they are using now.  Maybe you noticed that we get a lot more movies lately, but at a far lower level of acting and writing excellence.  This is the trend.  We get recycled stars, presumably forever now that they are digitized.  We will be watching Mission Impossible 16 eventually, long after Tom Cruise has gone to Scientology heaven. To bookend that observation, there is apparently now an “AI” category for the Grammy Awards.  I understand there was a song purporting to be “Drake” but did not have enough human content to qualify, or something.  There are “AI” news writers.  There are “AI” generated sermons for Pastors... now there is a scary thought, let’s just listen to what Jesus GPT has for us this Sunday, please turn to 1st John.  There are “AI” Instagram models so realistic that people still ‘follow’ them even after learning they were computer generated.  When I visit YouTube lately to listen to music, it is flooded with “AI”-generated muzak.  For example, type in ‘bluegrass’, and it will yield dozens of Appalachian bluegrass compilations -- but as far as I can tell most of them are not real bands.  Spooky.  The scene of Times Square at the top of this essay is a CGI / “AI” still shot from an ethereal-looking video walk through.  The narration claimed it to be live when it obviously was not.  Double spooky.  Normally I will include a plan of action in these essays, but change will not begin to happen until we unplug, and deprogram.  If you are reading this, then there is a good chance you are already on that path.  If not, then let me encourage you.  When everything around us is fake and distorted, then eventually something inside us will click.  It then becomes so easy just to close the lid on the laptop.  Let the phone run down to zero.  Enjoy a book.  I don’t know where you find yourself, Readers, or how you plan to cope with the mayhem coming our way as we get closer to ’24.  Being an election year, you should expect the worst.  Just say no. In closing, an observational comparison about the 21st century Human Industrial Complex:  Given the emerging state of Serfdom we are facing, are things very much different now than they were in the Middle Ages?  Serfs were valued commodities to the Lords, and privileged to find such work as they could.  They knew better than to bite the hand that fed them, and they were willing to tolerate all manner of dehumanizing treatment to preserve their scarcity-based lifestyle.  The Lords controlled the land, aligned themselves politically, and influenced the way the country was run.  Just like corporations and elites today, come to think of it.  It is as if the experiment of Liberty and Democracy was just a historical aberration, and that it has finally run its course after 240 years.  As we break ground on the homestead, with a newly-dug well in place, I look forward to the day when we will be off-grid.  It is a special feeling designing the plan yourself, having the fellas at church help build it, and knowing that the soil will be pushing up vegetables.  There are coconuts on the trees, fish in the ocean, and a next door neighbor with chickens.  Readers, until the Lord call us up with a shout, I hope and pray that you have found your own slice of Heaven.             P.S. A movie recommendation:  The 1971 dystopian classic TXH-1138, George Lucas’ debut.  Far more visionary than Kubrick’s 2001, in my opinion, and far more chilling than the movie adaptations like Soylent Green or 1984.  The scenes of the Video Jesus were particularly insightful, but so were the robotic policemen, the ‘prison’, the medications -- it is fully packed. *  *  * Subscribe to VisayasOutpost's Newsletter - Observations from Outside the Bubble Tyler Durden Sat, 09/16/2023 - 07:00.....»»

Netflix (NFLX) enters into a multi-year partnership with a popular production house, Yash Raj Films (YRF), to create films and series for audiences in India and across the world. Netflix NFLX is keeping no stone unturned to strengthen its position in India. The streaming giant recently entered into a multi-year partnership with a popular production house — Yash Raj Films (YRF) — to create films and series for audiences in India and across the world.Netflix-YRF’s first project is the four-part series — The Railway Men — starring R. Madhavan, Kay Kay Menon, Divyendu Sharma and Babil Khan, directed by debutant director Shiv Rawail.The second film, Maharaj, marks the debut of actor Junaid Khan and also stars Jaideep Ahlawat, Sharvari & Shalini Pandey and is directed by Siddharth P. Malhotra, who is well-known for Hichki.Partnerships to Aid India ExpansionYRF expands the list of partners Netflix has added to its content creator base in recent times. The company recently inked a creative partnership with acclaimed director Neeraj Pandey’s Friday Storytellers LLP, the digital content production arm of Friday Filmworks.Netflix and Neeraj Pandey have already collaborated for Khakee: The Bihar Chapter, a cop-thriller that was one of India’s Top ten TV shows for more than five months and became one of the longest-trending shows on Netflix in India. Khakee’s second season will be the first series to be released through the latest collaboration.Netflix’s focus on developing regional content has been a key catalyst in attracting new subscribers. In terms of Indian audience, apart from Khakee: The Bihar Chapter, it has released a plethora of new shows including Friday Night Plan, Guns & Gulaabs, The Hunt for Veerappan, Choona, Kohrra, Lust Stories 2, Scoop, Rana Naidu, Class, Mission Majnu and more.Upcoming content includes Khufiya, which stars well-known actress Tabu and is directed by acclaimed director Vishal Bhardwaj. Other content includes JAANE JAAN (Sep 21), starring Kareena Kapoor Khan and directed by Sujoy Ghosh, well-known for his thriller movies. The much-anticipated movie, The Archies, is now set to launch on Dec 7.Netflix’s Prospects Bright in 2023Netflix’s shares have risen 35.8% year to date, outperforming the Zacks Consumer Discretionary sector’s return of 8.6%. It also outperformed Apple AAPL and Disney DIS but underperformed Amazon AMZN.Netflix, Inc. Price and Consensus Netflix, Inc. price-consensus-chart | Netflix, Inc. QuoteShares of Apple and Amazon have returned 35.3% and 72.3%, respectively, on a year-to-date basis. Disney shares have declined 2.8%.Netflix, which currently has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), is expected to benefit from its diversified content portfolio, attributable to heavy investments in the production and distribution of localized, foreign-language content, particularly in India and Korea. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.Netflix now expects revenue growth to accelerate in the second half of 2023, driven by the launch of paid sharing initiative in addition to an expanding content offering. However, it anticipates foreign-exchange neutral average revenues per membership to be flat to slightly down year over year due to limited price increases over the past 12 months and immaterial revenues from advertising and paid-sharing.For the third quarter of 2023, Netflix now forecasts earnings of $3.52 per share, indicating an almost 10% increase from the figure reported in the year-ago quarter. Total revenues are anticipated to be $8.52 billion, suggesting growth of 7% year over year and also on a forex-neutral basis.The Zacks Consensus Estimate for Netflix’s third-quarter revenues is pegged at $8.53 billion, indicating 7.6% year-over-year growth. The consensus mark for earnings is pegged at $3.49 per share, up 1.7% over the past 30 days. Zacks Names #1 Semiconductor Stock It's only 1/9,000th the size of NVIDIA which skyrocketed more than +800% since we recommended it. NVIDIA is still strong, but our new top chip stock has much more room to boom. With strong earnings growth and an expanding customer base, it's positioned to feed the rampant demand for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Internet of Things. Global semiconductor manufacturing is projected to explode from $452 billion in 2021 to $803 billion by 2028.See This Stock Now for Free >>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN): Free Stock Analysis Report Apple Inc. (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report Netflix, Inc. (NFLX): Free Stock Analysis Report The Walt Disney Company (DIS): Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»

Warner Bros. Discovery's (WBD) HBO Original three-part documentary series, SAVIOR COMPLEX, is set to premiere on Sep 26. Warner Bros. Discovery WBD announced that the HBO Original three-part documentary series, SAVIOR COMPLEX, is set to debut on Sep 26.The first episode of the docuseries will be available on Sep 26 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on HBO, followed by episodes two and three airing on Sep 27 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. All three episodes will be available to stream on Max beginning Sep 26.Directed by the Emmy-winning filmmaker Jackie Jesko and executive produced by Nick Capote, Alex Waterfield and Academy Award winner Roger Ross Williams, SAVIOR COMPLEX delves deeper into the contentious narrative of Renee Bach, a youthful American missionary who felt called by God to establish a charity for undernourished children in Jinja, Uganda.However, as time passed, disturbing accusations emerged suggesting that Renee was personally providing medical treatment to the ailing children, despite lacking the necessary medical qualifications. In its exploration of Renee's polarizing path, the series also raises broader inquiries about the concept of white saviorism and moral considerations surrounding foreign aid work conducted in the name of humanitarian and religious ideals.Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. Price and Consensus Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. price-consensus-chart | Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. QuoteWBD’s Upcoming Original Content to Fend Off CompetitionWarner Bros. Discovery has been focusing on its original content recently. Its upcoming originals are expected to give a tough competition to giants like Netflix NFLX, Apple AAPL and Disney DIS.Netflix has transformed from its origins as a movie rental service into the premier streaming platform. Some of its upcoming original releases include titles like Lift, Bodies and Choona.Apple TV Plus is the most budget-friendly premium streaming service, offering an ad-free experience. However, it is distinct from other streaming services because it exclusively offers original content and lacks a library of previously released shows or movies to browse through. Its highly anticipated upcoming original releases are Invasion, Camp Snoopy and Super Models.Disney has an extensive library which includes Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars movies. These movies regularly bring in original content to the platform. Some of its upcoming original releases include titles like Echo, Ironheart and Wish.WBD’s Max has a strong selection of content for children, offering better control over content ratings on kids' profiles compared with many other streaming services, which is expected to aid viewer growth in the near term.This company has an exciting lineup of original content which includes titles like Gentleman Jack, Avenue 5, The Regime, Hellraiser, Snow and Watchmen. This is expected to boost direct-to-consumer (DTC) subscribers and revenues in the upcoming quarters.The Zacks Consensus Estimate for 2023 total DTC subscribers is pegged at 97,066, indicating year-over-year growth of 1%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for revenues is pegged at $41.98 billion, indicating year-over-year growth of 24.13%.Shares of WBD have gained 21.2% year to date compared with the Zacks Consumer Discretionary sector’s rise of 9.4% in the same period due to steady growth in DTC subscribers and revenues in the previous quarters.However, this Zacks Rank #4 (Sell) company recently guided lower adjusted EBITDA for the full year in the range of $10.5-$11 billion due to the challenges posed by the ongoing strikes in the entertainment industry by the Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild – American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.This reflects a negative impact of approximately $300 million to $500 million, primarily due to the ongoing strikes affecting the timing and performance of the 2023 film slate and content production.You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Zacks Names #1 Semiconductor Stock It's only 1/9,000th the size of NVIDIA which skyrocketed more than +800% since we recommended it. NVIDIA is still strong, but our new top chip stock has much more room to boom. With strong earnings growth and an expanding customer base, it's positioned to feed the rampant demand for Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Internet of Things. Global semiconductor manufacturing is projected to explode from $452 billion in 2021 to $803 billion by 2028.See This Stock Now for Free >>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Apple Inc. (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report Netflix, Inc. (NFLX): Free Stock Analysis Report The Walt Disney Company (DIS): Free Stock Analysis Report Warner Bros. Discovery, Inc. (WBD): Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»

On Dec. 8, 2022, after months of negotiations over her wrongful imprisonment, WNBA star Brittney Griner was exchanged on a tarmac in Abu Dhabi for Russian arms dealer Victor Bout, who had been a prisoner in the U.S. The Griner-Bout trade was the latest high profile event in a long history of prisoner swaps between […] On Dec. 8, 2022, after months of negotiations over her wrongful imprisonment, WNBA star Brittney Griner was exchanged on a tarmac in Abu Dhabi for Russian arms dealer Victor Bout, who had been a prisoner in the U.S. The Griner-Bout trade was the latest high profile event in a long history of prisoner swaps between the United States and hostile foreign nations. And as the number of wrongfully detained Americans abroad increases – one researcher estimates their number o has risen 175% over the last decade – prisoner swaps may become more common. As of this writing, the United States and Iran are currently working on a deal that would lead to the release of five American citizens. Using various news and historical sources, 24/7 Tempo compiled a list of some of the most famous prisoner swaps in history. Prisoner exchanges are ordered chronologically, and the list is far from complete. Some of the most famous prisoner swaps were conducted during the Cold War, when two spies, each caught by their enemy, were exchanged and released to their respective countries of allegiance. The iconographic blueprint for prisoner swaps is likely the 1962 exchange of American pilot Francis Gary Powers for Soviet KGB Colonel Rudolf Abel, conducted on the Glienicke Bridge spanning the border of East and West Germany – an event dramatized in Steven Spielberg’s 2015 film “Bridge of Spies.” (It’s on our list of the best movies set during the Cold War.) Glienicke Bridge would serve as host to several other notable spy exchanges during the Cold War, including the largest of the era, when, in June 1985, the United States swapped four accused Eastern Europeans spies for 25 individuals of various nationalities imprisoned in East Germany and Poland who were “of interest” to the U.S. (meaning that they had probably been working with the Americans or their allies). Click here to read more about the most famous prisoner exchanges of modern times While during the Cold War prisoner swaps tended to involve rank-for-rank trades of spies or combatants, in recent years civil prisoners have been the subject of high-profile exchanges. Princeton University graduate student Xiyue Yang, for example, was arrested for espionage while conducting research in Iran. While the United States denied the charges, they ultimately secured Yang’s release in exchange for Iranian scientist Masoud Soleimani. (These are the most famous spies in history.) Many civilian prisoner swap cases have also been lopsided, as in the Griner-Bout trade, with the United States releasing serious criminals in exchange for Americans arrested abroad for bogus or trumped-up charges. Trevor Reed, for example – arrested while drunk in Moscow and sentenced to nine years in prison – was exchanged in April 2022 for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted of cocaine trafficking charges who had been serving a 20-year federal prison sentence in Connecticut. Sponsored: Tips for Investing A financial advisor can help you understand the advantages and disadvantages of investment properties. Finding a qualified financial advisor doesn’t have to be hard. SmartAsset’s free tool matches you with up to three financial advisors who serve your area, and you can interview your advisor matches at no cost to decide which one is right for you. If you’re ready to find an advisor who can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now. Investing in real estate can diversify your portfolio. But expanding your horizons may add additional costs. If you’re an investor looking to minimize expenses, consider checking out online brokerages. They often offer low investment fees, helping you maximize your profit......»»

Today's Research Daily features new research reports on 16 major stocks, including The Procter & Gamble Company (PG), AbbVie Inc. (ABBV) and The Walt Disney Company (DIS). Thursday, August 24, 2023The Zacks Research Daily presents the best research output of our analyst team. Today's Research Daily features new research reports on 16 major stocks, including The Procter & Gamble Company (PG), AbbVie Inc. (ABBV) and The Walt Disney Company (DIS). These research reports have been hand-picked from the roughly 70 reports published by our analyst team today.You can see all of today’s research reports here >>>Procter & Gamble shares have outperformed the Zacks Soap and Cleaning Materials industry over the past six months (+11.6% vs. +8.0%). The company continued its robust top and bottom-line surprise trend for the fourth consecutive quarter in the last quarterly release. Also, sales and earnings grew year over year.Procter & Gamble’s organic sales grew, driven by robust pricing and a favorable mix, along with strength across segments. It has been focused on productivity and cost-saving plans to boost margins. Consequently, management has provided an optimistic view for fiscal 2024.However, the company has been witnessing supply-chain issues, higher SG&A costs, higher transportation costs, geopolitical challenges, currency headwinds and rising inflation. Procter & Gamble’s significant international presence exposes it to foreign currency risks, which have been weighing on the company’s performance.(You can read the full research report on Procter & Gamble here >>>)Shares of AbbVie have gained +9.8% over the past year against the Zacks Large Cap Pharmaceuticals industry’s gain of +23.7%. The company has several new drugs in its portfolio with the potential to drive the top line and make up for lost Humira revenues.Newer products, Skyrizi and Rinvoq, are performing extremely well, bolstered by approval in new indications, which should support top-line growth in the next few years. The company has several early/mid-stage candidates that have blockbuster potential. AbbVie expects several key data readouts in 2023.However, the company faces several near-term headwinds like Humira loss of exclusivity, increasing competitive pressure on Imbruvica and economic pressure on Juvederm sales. Nonetheless, though revenues are expected to decline in 2023, AbbVie expects to return to robust sales growth in 2025.(You can read the full research report on AbbVie here >>>)Shares of Walt Disney have declined -1.2% over the year-to-date period against the Zacks Media Conglomerates industry’s decline of -1.4%, reflecting concerns about the profitability of the company's streaming business and the long-term outlookf for its media business in the cord-cutting backdrop. Nevertheless, Walt Disney is benefiting from rebounding Parks, Experiences and Products businesses as reflected by the fiscal third quarter results.Both domestic and international theme parks reported impressive top-line growth. Upcoming attractions like the Frozen theme land at Hong Kong Disneyland and Walt Disney Studios Park in Paris, as well as the Zootopia theme land at Shanghai Disney Resort, are expected to boost the prospects of the theme parks business.A strong line-up of movies that includes Haunted Mansion, Poor Things and The Creator bodes well for the Media and Entertainment Distribution segment. The company has been nominated for several Emmy awards, which suggests a strong content portfolio.(You can read the full research report on Walt Disney here >>>)Other noteworthy reports we are featuring today include HSBC Holdings plc (HSBC), Boston Scientific Corporation (BSX) and Duke Energy Corporation (DUK).Director of ResearchSheraz MianNote: Sheraz Mian heads the Zacks Equity Research department and is a well-regarded expert of aggregate earnings. He is frequently quoted in the print and electronic media and publishes the weekly Earnings Trends and Earnings Preview reports. If you want an email notification each time Sheraz publishes a new article, please click here>>>Today's Must ReadP&G's (PG) Productivity & Cost Savings Plan to Aid MarginsAbbVie's (ABBV) Skyrizi, Rinvoq Key to Top-Line GrowthStrong Content Portfolio & Parks Business Aids Disney (DIS)Featured ReportsNew Buyouts Aid Boston Scientific (BSX), Rising Expenses AilPer the Zacks analyst, Boston Scientific is expected to strongly gain from its strategic buyouts of Apollo Endosurgery and Acotec. Yet, rising expenses continue to dent profitability.Solid Investments Aid Duke Energy (DUK), Weak Solvency WoesPer the Zacks analyst, Duke Energy's investment in infrastructure and expansion projects tend to boost its long-term growth prospects. However, its weak solvency position remains a bottleneck.Focused Differentiation Aids Waste Management (WM) Liquidity LowPer the Zacks analyst, differentiation through capitalization of extensive assets ensures long-term profitable growth for Waste Management. Low liquidity a concern.Valero (VLO) Gains on Higher Gulf Coast Refinery ThroughputThe Zacks analyst is impressed by Valero's Gulf Coast refineries contributing the most to its total throughput volumes. Higher Gulf Coast export volumes will also support its margins.Revenue Growth, Decline in Costs Aid Molina Healthcare (MOH)Per the Zacks analyst, Molina Healthcare's rising revenues can be attributed to strong premium revenues and solid membership growth. Efforts to control costs have been driving its margins.Dolby Laboratories (DLB) To Gain From Strong Product PortfolioPer the Zacks analyst, Dolby Laboratories is gaining from increased adoption of Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision. Also, rising demand for new imaging patents and Dolby Cinema are tailwinds.Order Growth and Stringent Cost Control Benefits Wayfair (W)Per the Zacks analyst, Wayfair is benefiting from sequential growth in orders and lower costs that is helping it to report positive adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow.New UpgradesBusiness Restructuring, Focus on Asia, Rates Aid HSBC (HSBC)Per the Zacks analyst, HSBC's restructuring initiatives, Asia focus expansion efforts, emphasis on profitable businesses, higher interest rates and decent loan demand will keep supporting financials.Increased Demand & Strategic Initiatives Aid KB Home (KBH)Per the Zacks analyst, increase in net orders, home deliveries and community count aid KB Home. Also, built-to-order model and Returns-Focused Growth Plan add to the uptrend.Acquisition Of Dealerships & Franchises To Aid Group 1 (GPI) Per the Zacks analyst, Group 1's (GPI) effort to expand and optimize its portfolio through acquisitions of dealerships and franchises are likely to boost its prospects. New DowngradesWeak Volumes & High Costs to Hurt Sealed Air's (SEE) ResultsThe Zacks analyst is concerned about the downtrend in Sealed Air's volumes owing to weakness in end markets and customer destocking. Inflated labor and operating costs will also hurt margins.Nu Skin (NUS) Revenues Hurt by Volatile Currency MovementsPer the Zacks analyst, Nu Skin remains troubled by unfavorable currency rates. The company's second-quarter revenues were hurt by currency headwinds, and are likely to bear 2-3% adverse impact in 2023Low COVID-19 Testing Sales Disrupt Margin for Labcorp (LH)The Zacks analyst is worried about Labcorp posting a steady decline in adjusted operating income due to lower COVID testing revenues. Unfavorable mix impact from Ascension also continues to weigh in. Top 5 ChatGPT Stocks Revealed Zacks Senior Stock Strategist, Kevin Cook names 5 hand-picked stocks with sky-high growth potential in a brilliant sector of Artificial Intelligence. By 2030, the AI industry is predicted to have an internet and iPhone-scale economic impact of $15.7 Trillion. Today you can invest in the wave of the future, an automation that answers follow-up questions … admits mistakes … challenges incorrect premises … rejects inappropriate requests. As one of the selected companies puts it, “Automation frees people from the mundane so they can accomplish the miraculous.”Download Free ChatGPT Stock Report Right Now >>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Boston Scientific Corporation (BSX): Free Stock Analysis Report Duke Energy Corporation (DUK): Free Stock Analysis Report Procter & Gamble Company (The) (PG): Free Stock Analysis Report The Walt Disney Company (DIS): Free Stock Analysis Report AbbVie Inc. (ABBV): Free Stock Analysis Report HSBC Holdings plc (HSBC): Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»

Taibbi: Tracking Orwellian Change - The Aristocratic Takeover Of "Transparency" Authored by Matt Taibbi via Racket News, About to hit the road for vacation, I wanted to highlight something that Walter Kirn brought up in the most recent America This Week, and popped up repeatedly as a never-published theme of the Twitter Files: the shameful, dystopian corruption of the noble word transparency. “Transparency” was one of America’s great postwar reforms. In 1955, a Democratic congressman named John Moss from California — who served in the Navy in World War II, was nominated for office by both Democrats and Republicans, and was never defeated in any election for public office — introduced legislation that would become one of the great triumphs of late-stage American democracy. The Freedom of Information Act took a tortuous path to becoming law, opposed from the start by nearly every major government agency and for years struggling to gain co-sponsors despite broad public support. In a supreme irony, one of Moss’s first Republican allies was a young Illinois congressman named Donald Rumsfeld. After a series of final tweaks it eventually passed the House 307-0 in 1966, when it landed on the desk of Lyndon Johnson, who didn’t like the bill, either. Johnson signed it, but decided not to hold a public ceremony, electing instead to issue a public statement crafted by none other than Bill Moyers, which concluded, “I signed this measure with a deep sense of pride that the United States is an open society.”   The Freedom of Information Act gave reporters and citizens alike extraordinary power to investigate once-impenetrable executive agencies that conduct the business of government. FOIA requests gave windows into the affairs of the Hoover-led FBI, the Iran-Contra scandal, and the “Afghan logs” story made public after a bitter fight put up by the National Security Archive and the Washington Post. The irony alert here was this last FOIA lawsuit ultimately revealed behaviors unflattering to none other than Donald Rumsfeld. The law governing the exercise of FOIA requests lists the following as one of the central duties of the Chief FOIA Officers Council: Identify, develop, and coordinate initiatives to increase transparency and compliance with this section. Transparency for decades was understood to mean a pro-democratic concept giving ordinary citizens the power to see how their government operates, how taxes are spent, and whether or not public officials are complying with laws. It was not dystopian gibberish when the word became synonymous with the fight against abuse of power through organizations like Transparency International’s “Corruption Perceptions Index.” By 2023, the transformation of the term “transparency” has advanced to a stage where the word is now commonly understood by politicians to mean the mathematical opposite of what someone like John Moss would have thought. When elite politicians and media figures speak of “transparency” now, they mean giving government power to obtain “transparency” into the activities of private citizens. I first noticed this quirk going through a batch of Twitter emails from late 2017 through early 2018, when company lawyers began to speak about communicating to the Senate Intelligence Committee plans to increase “transparency efforts around content moderation.” Internal debates also about proposed laws like Europe’s Digital Services Act wondered if companies like Twitter might better serve governments attempting to root out foreign “disinformation” by providing increased “transparency” to intelligence services. Later, in 2021, the Aspen Institute issued a final report report on “Information Disorder” that contained an entire section on “Recommendations to Increase Transparency.” This is as perfect example of deceptive use of language as you will ever find, and also involves the bastardization of the word, “journalism,” which in the context of these “anti-disinformation” efforts means examination of private data by “qualified academic researchers.” The relevant section reads in part: Congress… should also require platforms to disclose certain categories of private data to qualified academic researchers, so long as that research respects user privacy, does not endanger platform integrity, and remains in the public interest… Congress should require the platforms to disclose selected private data to qualified researchers working in the public interest, including any government agency or regulatory or investigative body… The invocation of terms of service to deny access to public interest researchers is detrimental to vital research and reporting… While the protection of user privacy is important, platforms should not be permitted to use privacy as a pretext for restricting and stopping research…   The above video of World Economic Forum head Klaus Schwab speaking on the topic, which circulated a great deal last week, represents the extreme villainous end of the reversal. Transparency in Schwab’s conception has been turned on its head, to mean an unavoidable system of total non-privacy the world must learn to accept. This is not exactly a new thought of his. As far back as 2014, he responded to Edward Snowden’s disclosures about National Security Agency surveillance by saying how important it was to “protect ourselves” against “technological possibilities,” but added: Everything is transparent, whether we like it or not. This is unstoppable. If we behave acceptably, and have nothing to hide, it won’t be a problem. Saying now that we must accept “total transparency,” that “you have to get used to it, you have to behave accordingly,” is a twist on those old statements. Adding that this new transparency “becomes, how should I put it, integrated into your personality, but if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t be afraid,” achieves a fully dystopian reversal. Transparency is what authorities and possessors of the new Promethean thunderbolt want to have into your every action, transaction, and thought. It’s a terrifying idea, and as Walter noted, something Hitler or Stalin would have been reluctant to say out loud, though of course this exact idea was foundational to both totalitarian societies. Telling us not to be afraid of this, to accept it, is a line even studied actors needed a certain panache to pull off in movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. “There’s nothing to be afraid of… once you understand you’ll be grateful… Don’t fight it, Miles, it’s not use. Sooner or later, you’ll have to go to sleep.” These, exactly, are the sentiments of the new priests of “transparency”: One last note. The extraordinary pro-democratic ideal of FOIA was underscored by the fact that the tool was available to every citizen. Not just New York Times journalists, but every private digger, potential whistleblower, even crackpots were granted the power of “transparency.” The chief way you know the new version of transparency is a fraud is that it’s limited to “qualified” researchers. We’re even seeing lately news stories sourced to some of these same “researchers” complaining about having to comply with FOIA requests (a few of which are being made by Racket and partner publications). Ideologically, these self-appointed intellectual vanguards do not believe information is for everyone, nor do they believe they should have to answer to the people funding their “research,” while simultaneously believing that private companies and individuals should get used to the principle of endless inquiry. When the meanings of noble words are turned inside out, we have to pay attention, and this example is about as infamous as this sort of thing gets. Don’t let anyone tell you transparency means surrendering your privacy to the state. It’s supposed to be the other way around. Tyler Durden Mon, 08/21/2023 - 13:25.....»»

Netflix (NFLX) reported earnings 30 days ago. What's next for the stock? We take a look at earnings estimates for some clues. A month has gone by since the last earnings report for Netflix (NFLX). Shares have lost about 7.9% in that time frame, underperforming the S&P 500.Will the recent negative trend continue leading up to its next earnings release, or is Netflix due for a breakout? Before we dive into how investors and analysts have reacted as of late, let's take a quick look at its most recent earnings report in order to get a better handle on the important drivers. Netflix Q2 Earnings Beat, Revenues Up Y/Y on User GainNetflix reported second-quarter 2023 earnings of $3.29 per share, which beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 16.25% and increased 2.8% year over year.Revenues of $8.19 billion increased 2.7% year over year but lagged the consensus mark by 0.93%. On a foreign-exchange neutral basis, revenues grew 6% year over year.The streaming giant gained 5.89 million paid subscribers globally, thanks to a crackdown on password-sharing and the introduction of paid sharing in more than 100 countries in May, which represents more than 80% of Netflix’s revenue base. The company lost 0.97 million paid subscribers in the year-ago quarter.Netflix now expects revenue growth to accelerate in the second half of 2023, driven by the launch of paid sharing. However, it anticipates foreign-exchange neutral average revenues per membership (ARM) to be flat to slightly down year over year due to limited price increases over the past 12 months and immaterial revenues from advertising and paid-sharing.ARM decreased 3% year over year on a reported basis and 1% on a foreign-exchange neutral basis in the second quarter. ARM declined due to a higher mix of membership growth from lower ARM countries and limited price increases over the past 12 months.Netflix scrapped the basic ad-free plan for new and rejoining members in Canada and is doing the same for U.K. and U.S.-based subscribers.At the end of the second quarter, the company had 238.39 million paid subscribers globally, up 8% year over year.Although Netflix is suffering from growing competition from services provided by Amazon, Disney and Apple, it benefited from a strong content portfolio in the reported quarter.Hit shows like The Night Agent, Beef, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story and Love is Blind S4 helped Netflix win subscribers. Noteworthy movies include Murder Mystery 2, The Mother and Extraction 2.Netflix’s Segmental Revenue DetailsThe United States and Canada (“UCAN") reported revenues of $3.60 billion, which rose 1.7% year over year and accounted for 44% of total revenues. The figure missed our model estimate of $3.71 billion, primarily due to lower ARPU.ARPU climbed 1% from the year-ago quarter on a foreign-exchange neutral basis.The paid subscriber base for UCAN increased 3.1% from the year-ago quarter to 75.57 million. The company gained 1.17 million paid subscribers compared with the year-ago quarter’s loss of 1.3 million.Europe, Middle East & Africa (“EMEA”) reported revenues of $2.56 billion, which increased 4.3% year over year and accounted for 31.3% of total revenues. The figure beat our model estimate of $2.51 billion. ARPU decreased 2.7% from the year-ago quarter on a foreign-exchange neutral basis.The paid subscriber base for EMEA increased 9.4% from the year-ago quarter to 79.81 million. Netflix gained 2.43 million paid subscribers compared with the year-ago quarter’s net loss of 0.77 million.Latin America’s (“LATAM”) revenues of $1.08 billion increased 4.6% year over year, contributing 13.2% of total revenues. The figure beat our model estimate of $1.07 billion.ARPU declined 1% from the year-ago quarter on a foreign-exchange neutral basis.The paid subscriber base for LATAM rose 7.2% from the year-ago quarter to 42.47 million. It gained 1.22 million paid subscribers in the reported quarter.Asia Pacific’s (“APAC”) revenues of $919 million increased 1.2% year over year and accounted for 11.2% of total revenues. The figure missed our model estimate of $926.7 million, primarily due to lower ARPU.ARPU decreased 7% year over year on a foreign-exchange neutral basis.The paid subscriber base for APAC jumped 16.5% from the year-ago quarter to 40.55 million. The company added 1.07 million paid subscribers in the quarter, down 0.9% year over year.Operating DetailsMarketing expenses increased 9.1% year over year to $627.2 million. As a percentage of revenues, marketing expenses increased 40 basis points (bps) to 7.7%.Operating income increased 15.8% year over year to $1.83 billion, beating Netflix’s guidance of $1.71 billion. Operating margin expanded 250 bps on a year-over-year basis to 22.3%.Balance Sheet & Free Cash FlowNetflix had $8.58 billion of cash and cash equivalents as of Jun 30, 2023 compared with $7.83  billion as of Mar 31, 2023.Total debt was $14.47 billion as of Jun 30, 2023 compared with $14.44 billion as of Mar 31, 2023.Streaming content obligations were $20.90 billion as of Jun 30, 2023 compared with $21.53 billion as of Mar 31, 2023.Netflix reported a free cash flow of $1.34 billion compared with a free cash flow of $2.1 billion in the previous quarter.GuidanceFor the third quarter of 2023, Netflix forecasts earnings of $3.52 per share, indicating an almost 10% increase from the figure reported in the year-ago quarter.Total revenues are anticipated to be $8.52 billion, suggesting growth of 7% year over year and also on a forex-neutral basis.The quarterly operating margin is projected to be 22.2% compared with the 19.8% reported in the year-ago quarter.For 2023, Netflix expects the operating margin to be in the 18-20% range. It expects to generate a free cash flow of at least $5 billion, higher than its previous guidance of $3.5 billion.How Have Estimates Been Moving Since Then?In the past month, investors have witnessed an upward trend in estimates revision.The consensus estimate has shifted 10.59% due to these changes.VGM ScoresCurrently, Netflix has an average Growth Score of C, a grade with the same score on the momentum front. Following the exact same course, the stock was allocated a grade of C on the value side, putting it in the middle 20% for this investment strategy.Overall, the stock has an aggregate VGM Score of C. If you aren't focused on one strategy, this score is the one you should be interested in.OutlookEstimates have been broadly trending upward for the stock, and the magnitude of these revisions looks promising. Notably, Netflix has a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). We expect an in-line return from the stock in the next few months. Zacks Names "Single Best Pick to Double" From thousands of stocks, 5 Zacks experts each have chosen their favorite to skyrocket +100% or more in months to come. From those 5, Director of Research Sheraz Mian hand-picks one to have the most explosive upside of all. It’s a little-known chemical company that’s up 65% over last year, yet still dirt cheap. With unrelenting demand, soaring 2022 earnings estimates, and $1.5 billion for repurchasing shares, retail investors could jump in at any time. This company could rival or surpass other recent Zacks’ Stocks Set to Double like Boston Beer Company which shot up +143.0% in little more than 9 months and NVIDIA which boomed +175.9% in one year.Free: See Our Top Stock and 4 Runners Up >>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Netflix, Inc. (NFLX): Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»

Getty Images Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:GETY) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript August 14, 2023 Operator: Good afternoon, and welcome to Getty Images Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s call is being recorded. . We have allocated one hour for prepared remarks and Q&A. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to […] Getty Images Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:GETY) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript August 14, 2023 Operator: Good afternoon, and welcome to Getty Images Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Today’s call is being recorded. . We have allocated one hour for prepared remarks and Q&A. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Steven Kanner, Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasury at Getty Images. Thank you. You may begin. Steven Kanner: Good afternoon, and welcome to Getty Images Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. Joining me on today’s call are Craig Peters, Chief Executive Officer; and Jen Leyden, Chief Financial Officer. As noted in today’s press release, the financial results for the second quarter ended June 30, 2023, and related comparisons to prior periods included in this release are preliminary. The Company expects to file a Form 12b-25 with the Securities and Exchange Commission to disclose that it will not be able to file its Form 10-Q by its due date of August 14, 2023, and may not file within the five-day extension period allowed by the form. The delay in filing 10-Q is due to the Company’s independent auditors requiring additional time for additional audit processes in response to a comment arising from an inspection of the audit work papers of the Company’s 2022 financial statements. As of this date, we are not aware of, nor has our independent auditor advised us of any material misstatement to the 2022 financial statements. We would like to remind you that this call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to various risks uncertainties and assumptions which could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. These risks, uncertainties and assumptions are highlighted in the forward-looking statements section of today’s press release and in our filings with the SEC. Links to these filings and today’s press release can be found on our Investor Relations website at investors.gettyimages.com. During our call today, we will also reference certain non-GAAP financial information, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted EBITDA less CapEx, free cash flow and currency-neutral growth rates. We use non-GAAP measures in some of our financial discussions as we believe they assist investors in understanding the core operating results that management uses to evaluate the business. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP measures as well as the description, limitations and rationale for using each measure can be found in our filings with the SEC. After our prepared remarks, we will open the call for your questions. With that, I will hand the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Craig Peters. Craig Peters: Thanks, Steven, and thanks to everyone for joining our Getty Images second quarter 2023 earnings call. I will start by addressing the quarter’s business performance and progress, the high level before Jen takes you through the full second quarter financial results. Second quarter of 2023 reported revenue was $225.7 million, representing a year-on-year decline of 3.3% on a reported basis and a currency-neutral decline of 2%. Our adjusted EBITDA finished at $66.5 million for the quarter. This reflects a reported year-on-year decline of 10.3% and a currency-neutral decline of 8.9% with EBITDA more heavily impacted by legal costs associated with previously disclosed litigation. While we continue to see increased utilization of our content and increased customer commitment overall, these numbers are not what we wanted to finish the quarter. Macroeconomic conditions are pressuring our agency business. The writer and actor strikes have also impacted our entertainment business and our media and production customers. While these factors are largely outside of our control, we are not happy with our performance and are committed to elevating our sales execution in the face of challenging market conditions. We were pleased to add US Soccer as a new partner in a multiyear agreement and renew our agreements with Major League Baseball and the Tribeca Film Festival. It has also been great to see the stellar execution of our world-class editorial team on the ground in Australia and New Zealand, covering the FIFA Women’s World Cup as the competition’s authorized photographic agency. It’s a designation Getty Images has held since 2009. On the AI front, we continue to play to the long term, and I’m pleased with the progress we are making in partnership with NVIDIA to build and launch a high-quality, commercially viable, fully indemnified, creator-responsible generative AI service that gets set alongside our other highly differentiated industry-leading services. We are now in limited alpha and expect to launch later this quarter. We’re also excited to expand the deployment of our Natural Language search to better surface our pre-shot content in response to customer needs. Our pre-shot content continues to offer a compelling customer value as it’s free to search, substantially more time efficient, and provides for a unique level of creativity, authenticity and quality. Using Natural Language processing, we now return a much broader set of high-quality results even against the most complex search terms. For those at a browser, to see this in action, I would encourage you to go to istock.com and search “Colorful umbrellas seen from below hanging over a street” and wait to see the results. Then try the same at other content providers. When asked about what keeps me up at night, my answer is always the same, execution. It is entirely within our control. It is a more difficult environment and our execution needs to match it head on. My colleagues and I are committed to elevating our performance throughout the second half, and we remain focused on building for the long term through differentiated and high-quality offerings required by our customers and through the preservation of our extremely unique assets. With that, I’ll hand the call over to Jen, who will take you through the more detailed financials. Photo by ThisisEngineering RAEng on Unsplash Jen Leyden: As Craig mentioned, our second quarter results were disappointing, with revenue impacted by ongoing macroeconomic pressures, challenges in our agency business and adverse impact from the actors and writers strike and with adjusted EBITDA also impacted by ongoing litigation costs. I’ll begin by reviewing some of the key operating metrics or KPIs. Note, today’s press release contains information on all 7 of our KPIs. All KPI metrics are as of the trailing 12 months or LTM period ended June 30, 2023, with comparison to the LTM period ended June 30, 2022. As a reminder, beginning with our Q3 2022 results, we made two go-forward changes to our customer data reporting. I’ll highlight the impact of these changes on total active annual subscribers and on total purchasing customers, which are the KPIs more meaningfully impacted by those changes. We will anniversary these changes in the third quarter and will have like-for-like comparisons thereafter. Total purchasing customers were 830,000 compared to 843,000 in the comparable 12-month period due in large part to the changes to previously discussed customer data reporting. Absent the reporting changes, total purchasing customers would have been 839,000. On a sequential basis, total purchasing customers remained steady from Q1 levels. We delivered another quarter of significant growth in active annual subscribers, adding 93,000 to reach 182,000 or growth of approximately 104% over the corresponding period in 2022. Absent the customer data reporting changes noted a moment ago, the increase would have still been strong at 82% or 73,000 subscribers added. The strength in annual subscribers was driven by e-commerce offerings, including growth of our smaller iStock annual sub and the newer Unsplash+ subscription as well as steady growth in our premium access subscriptions. Notably, we are pleased to see substantial progress in our efforts to expand our geographic footprint in various markets leveraging our e-commerce subscription offering to attract over 23,000 new annual subscribers across our growth markets in LATAM, APAC and EMEA, and over 40,000 new annual subscribers in our core markets, which include the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, the UK, Japan and Australia. Our growing mix of revenue from subscription products exceeded 50% for the third straight quarter and grew to 51.8%, up from 50.7% in Q1 and from 48.2% as of Q2 2022. Our revenue retention rate for our annual subscriber customers was a healthy 98.5% compared to 101.9% in the LTM period ended June 30, 2022. The slight decline in our revenue retention rate was primarily driven by lower revenue retention rates on some of our smaller e-commerce subscription customers. Paid download volume rose by 1.1% to 94 million year-over-year, speaking to the continued customer value being delivered through our offerings. And last, our video attachment rate rose to 13.5% from 12.2% in Q2 2022. While we continue to see steady growth in this metric, it remains a key growth opportunity for us as we continue to focus on executing across increased customer awareness of our video offering, improved search and site prominence for our video content and upselling a video into subscription. Turning to our financial performance. In addition to some of the adverse revenue impact from macro, agency and the U.S. Hollywood strikes previously mentioned, our Q2 results were also impacted by foreign currency headwinds from a stronger U.S. dollar, primarily with respect to the euro and the pound. These headwinds drove differences between reported and currency-neutral performance, although more moderate than the prior few quarters. Assuming rates hold relatively steady to where we see them today, we expect foreign currency to turn to a slight tailwind in the back half of 2023. Total revenue was down 3.3% year-on-year on a reported basis and 2% on a currency-neutral basis. While we have commented on some of our revenue headwinds this quarter, I’d be remiss to not also highlight continued positive momentum across our subscription business, our new customer acquisition growth, the tenth consecutive quarter of growth in our corporate sector and healthy performance across our KPIs. Our annual subscription revenue as a percentage of total revenue rose to 51.8% in Q2, up from 48.2% in Q2 of 2022. This equates to year-on-year growth of 4% on a reported basis and 5.5% on a currency-neutral basis, driven by further gains across our premium access and e-commerce offering. Creative revenue was $141.3 million, down 3.7% year-on-year and 2.3% on a currency-neutral basis. Our agency business, which sits entirely within creative, was down double digits this quarter due to macro conditions and a softer ad market, and is the primary driver of the declines in creative. Annual subscription products within creative grew 6.5% year-on-year and 8% on a currency-neutral basis. Within our e-commerce business, we had strong gains in our annual iStock subscription offerings, which grew by 16.9% on a reported basis and 15.7% currency-neutral. The gains were driven by the success of our customer acquisition efforts across core and growth markets, coupled with some contributions from upsizing our existing monthly or à la carte customers into annual offerings. Custom content, which leverages Getty Images’ global network of contributors to create cost-effective, customized and exclusive content to meet specific customer needs, grew 8.4% year-on-year, or 10.8% currency-neutral. Q2 editorial revenue was $80.3 million, down 3.2% year-on-year and 2% on a currency-neutral basis, driven by results across our sports, news and archive verticals. The largest decline was in sports, where we have seen reduced activity in the crypto and NFT space as well as challenging year-on-year compares due to one-off events in 2022. Breaking down our performance across our major geographies, we posted year-on-year currency-neutral growth of 4.5% in APAC and 0.3% in EMEA, while the Americas were down 4.5%. Revenue less our cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue remained consistent and strong at 71.9% in Q2 compared with 72.1% in Q2 of 2022, with a slight decrease driven primarily by variations in product mix. Total SG&A expense of $107.7 million was up $12.2 million this quarter with our expense rate increasing to 47.7% of our revenue, up from 40.9% last year. The higher year-on-year expense was primarily due to higher legal expenses tied to our previously disclosed and our ongoing litigation, largely expected to be concentrated in the first half of the year and also due to higher staff costs, which this year included $11.9 million of stock-based compensation related to the vesting of employee restricted stock units and earn-out shares compared to $1.4 million of equity-based comp in Q2 of 2022 prior to our return to the public markets. Excluding stock-based compensation, SG&A was 42.5% of revenue compared to 40.3% in the prior year. Further excluding the litigation expense, which totaled $7 million in the quarter or 310 basis points of revenue, SG&A would have declined in both dollars and as a percentage of revenue from the prior year. That is a result of proactive cost management measures executed towards the start of Q2. Earlier in the quarter, we proactively executed a plan to slow down our rate of spend to better position ourselves as we, similar to other global companies, navigate a more challenging macroeconomic backdrop. This plan included a hiring reduction and optimization of our marketing deployment with total marketing spend down $4.2 million and dropping as a percentage of revenue to 4.7% from 6.4% in Q2 of 2022. We anticipate maintaining these plans through to the end of the year. Adjusted EBITDA was $66.5 million, down 10.3% year-over-year. On a currency-neutral basis, adjusted EBITDA was down 8.9%. Our adjusted EBITDA margin was 29.5% compared to 31.7% in Q2 of 2022 with the lower rate driven by the impact of elevated legal costs within SG&A expense. Excluding the litigation costs, we would have delivered 80 basis points of margin expansion. CapEx was $13.9 million, down from $14.1 million in the prior year period. CapEx as a percentage of revenue was 6.2% versus 6.1% in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA less CapEx was $52.5 million compared to $59.9 million in Q2 of last year. Adjusted EBITDA less CapEx margin was 23.3% in Q2, down from 25.7% in Q2 of 2022. Free cash flow was $27.9 million, up from $16.8 million in Q2 of 2022. The increase in free cash flow primarily reflects working capital changes related to the timing of receivables. Free cash flow is stated net of cash interest expense of $23.2 million in Q2, an increase of $2.9 million over the prior year. Cash taxes for the quarter came in at $11.8 million, a decrease from $14.7 million in Q2 of 2022. Our ending cash balance on June 30 was $121.3 million, up $4.5 million from Q1 of 2023 and a decrease of $92.5 million from our ending cash balance in Q2 of 2022. That year-over-year change in our cash balance reflects total debt paydown of $330.4 million on our USD term loan, inclusive of a $22.6 million repayment in the second quarter of this year. We ended the quarter with a net leverage of 4.4 times, unchanged from year-end 2022 and down from 4.8 times as of June 30, 2022, representing nearly 0.5 turn of leverage reduction in a one-year period. As of June 30, we had total debt outstanding of $1.418 billion, which included $300 million of 9.75% senior notes, $662.2 million USD term loan with an applicable interest rate of 9.84%, $456.1 million of euro term loan converted using exchange rates as of June 30, 2023, with an applicable interest rate of 8.625%. In addition, on August 11, we used $20 million of our balance sheet cash to repay a portion of our USD term loan. Year-to-date, we have applied $45.2 million or over 100% of our free cash flow towards debt paydown, demonstrating our ongoing commitment to further deleverage the balance sheet. Based on the foreign exchange rates and applicable interest rates on our debt balance as of June 30th and taking into account the $355 million of interest rate swap agreements and last week’s $20 million debt repayment, our 2023 cash interest expense is expected to be about $122 million. Now turning to our guidance for 2023. Based on our performance through the first half of this year, ongoing macroeconomic and agency sector pressures, expected impacts from the U.S. Hollywood strike and litigation costs, we are revising our guidance. We expect revenue of $920 million to $935 million, down 0.7% to up 0.9% year-on-year and on a currency-neutral basis, down 0.7% to up 1%. Assuming current FX rates hold, embedded in this guidance is an expectation that FX will have an overall neutral impact on full year revenue. This includes the $10.7 million negative impact from the first half of 2023, turning to an estimated tailwind of approximately $10.5 million in the second half of 2023. This includes approximately $3 million of benefit in the third quarter. We expect adjusted EBITDA of $292 million to $303 million, down 3.8% to 0.3% year-on-year on a reported basis and on a currency-neutral basis. Included in the adjusted EBITDA expectation is a relatively neutral impact from FX for the full year, including the $4.4 million impact in the first half, again, assuming a tailwind of approximately $4.5 million in the second half. This includes about $1 million benefit in the third quarter. Please note, built into this guidance are costs related to ongoing litigation and cost to operating as a public company. This includes the litigation cost, which for this year, we expect to largely be concentrated in the first half of 2023. I’ll turn it back over to Craig for some closing comments before we begin our Q&A. Craig Peters: Thanks, Jen. For over 28 years, Getty Images has thrived in a competitive and ever-changing landscape. Today, we remain the industry leader in this space with content and services our customers trust, rely on and value. We continue to innovate across our content, services and technology to provide our customers with incremental value and at the same time, reward our creative community and partners. We are laser focused on execution and believe we have the strategies and team in place to navigate through the current uncertainty, capture exciting growth opportunities and drive long-term shareholder value. With that, operator, please open the call for questions. See also 30 Countries With The Highest Percentage of College Graduates and 15 Cheapest CBI Programs in 2023. Q&A Session Follow Getty Images Holdings Inc. Follow Getty Images Holdings Inc. We may use your email to send marketing emails about our services. Click here to read our privacy policy. Operator: [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from the line of Ron Josey with Citibank. Unidentified Analyst: Hi. This is Jake on for Ron. Thanks for the questions. So first, really, given the agency sector pressures with — you commented revenues down double digits, could you talk to us more about the mix shift to corporate? Because you’re clearly seeing traction in ramping subscriptions. Maybe you could remind us of the percent mix corporate and agency. And then just second, on the writers’ strike, could you talk to us what’s your — like how customers in the media space are responding? And then, how you’re factoring in that slowdown into your guidance given clearly, there’s some uncertainty around how long it will last? Thanks so much. Craig Peters: Sure. Thanks, Jake. I’ll start and then, Jen, feel free to chime in with anything. So, as Jen noted, the corporate segment has been one that has been delivering growth for us 10 consecutive quarters in a row. That growth, we haven’t disclosed, but is — it obviously doesn’t fully offset for the more recent agency declines, which we think are largely driven by macro pressures. But historically, it has more than offset for kind of, I’d say, the segment declines that have persisted in agency over recent time periods. So, we would say that we’ve seen a more challenged corporate environment in the quarter. We’ve seen some deal time lines shift out. We’ve seen slightly reduced inbound, but it’s a very durable segment. It’s one that continues to grow. And it’s one that continues to be in subscription, which gives us a lot of forward visibility on it. So, in the short term, it’s kind of net decline relative to the creative shift into the corporate market and away from the agency market. Over the long haul, it has been a net positive to the business, and we expect that to continue to be a net positive going forward. With respect to the strikes in Hollywood, we are seeing that manifest itself as productions are basically put on hold. So, those could be movies. Those could be television shows. Those could be other theatrical productions. Those could be award shows. Those could be red carpet events and such. So, those have kind of had an impact over Q2. We expect that to persist and are largely planning for that to persist in terms of the guidance that we’ve given you through the full calendar year. So obviously, we’re hopeful that the parties are able to come together and resolve that on a more immediate basis. But right now, the guidance is reflective of a continuation of that strike to the year-end. Jen, anything that you would add? Jen Leyden: No, I think that’s right. I think we took a conservative view to guidance, as Craig noted, and we are assuming that strike goes through year-end. I mean, we just saw in the past few days, big events like the Emmys have already been pushed out by several months. So, that’s the approach we’ve taken. I think, Jake, on your mix shift question, agency-corporate, you’ve probably heard us speak to agency being roughly 20% of our revenue in recent history. We’re seeing that dip below 20%. So, while we have exposure there, certainly, it is by far not the largest piece of our business. Operator: Our next question comes from the line of Mark Zgutowicz with The Benchmark Company......»»

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript August 8, 2023 comScore, Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.51 EPS, expectations were $0.04. Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by, and welcome to the comScore Second Quarter 2023 Financial Results. [Operator Instructions]. And please be advised that today’s conference is being […] comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript August 8, 2023 comScore, Inc. misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $-0.51 EPS, expectations were $0.04. Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by, and welcome to the comScore Second Quarter 2023 Financial Results. [Operator Instructions]. And please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, John Tinker, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead. John Tinker: Thank you, operator. Before we begin our prepared remarks, I’d like to remind all of you that the following discussion contains forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include comments about our plans, expectations and prospects and are based on our view as of today, August 8, 2023. Our actual results in future periods may differ materially from those currently expected because of a number of risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include those outlined in our 10-K, 10-Q and other filings with the SEC, which you can find on our website or at www.sec.gov. We disclaim any duty or obligation to update our forward-looking statements to reflect new information after today’s call. We’ll be discussing non-GAAP measures during this call, for which we have provided reconciliations in today’s press release and on our website. Please note that we will be referring to slides on this call, which are also available on our website, www.comscore.com, under Investor Relations, Events & Presentations. I’ll now turn the call over to comScore’s Chief Executive Officer, John Carpenter. John? Jonathan Carpenter: Thanks, John, and good evening, everyone. Thanks a lot for joining us to talk about our second quarter this evening. Our results in the quarter are solid, and while the end markets we serve continue to experience softness, particularly in the ad markets, our results across a number of areas in our business are encouraging. We delivered revenue growth of 2.5% over the second quarter of last year and saw sequential growth over the first quarter of this year. Local TV continues to show strength, and our digital business was up for the first time in 5 quarters, led by strength in our Activation product, which was up by over 30%. As we’ve discussed previously, this team is focused on delivering scalable profitable growth, and in the second quarter, we printed adjusted EBITDA growth of 125% after adjusting for foreign exchange, clear signs that we’re moving in the right direction. I continue to believe that our opportunity to drive meaningful growth and deliver value for our stakeholders is significant. And the challenges that our clients are faced with that include the continued fragmentation of media from traditional channels to more digital programmatic channels, coupled with the proliferation of signal loss throughout the digital ecosystem that has created an audience addressability gap approaching nearly 70%; and finally, a lack of accountability across advertising that’s fueling billions of dollars in waste. These are all problems that comScore is uniquely positioned to help solve. Our audience intelligence footprint across digital, video and connected TV as well as web, mobile and linear is unmatched. And due to over 10,000 publisher integrations and the trillions of signals we collect, we have massive scale and a trusted methodology that is both solving the audience signal loss problem and helping close the addressability gap. Until now, our massive scale has made comScore a stable, reliable audience measurement partner who’s more granular and accurate than the competition. But the industry needs more than that in the age of signal loss, and that’s why we’re invested in making our data actionable. Our AI-driven Predictive Audiences segment empower advertisers to maximize reach regardless of whether IDs are present or not. In fact, a recent case study that showed our AI-enabled Predictive Audiences product reached nearly double the incremental users versus ID-based segments. Signal loss isn’t a someday problem. It’s one that every advertiser is dealing with now, and comScore is unique in our ability to help them solve for it. We also have the linear footprint that can provide both transparent and accurate reach and frequency to our clients, providing data that is 93% accurate to final posting data within 48 hours across all 41,704 ZIP codes and 210 local markets. Our depth in understanding audiences with precision in every market and ZIP code is valuable for advertisers who want to maximize reach and eliminate waste. While you’ve heard me speak about our digital and linear data assets many times, we’re finding new ways to use them to create value and solve problems for our clients. One of the things that I’m most excited about is the innovation and transformation I’m seeing when we bring our digital, linear and cross-screen capabilities together. While we’re still in the early innings here, results are encouraging. With best-of-breed measurement approaches in both digital and linear, comScore is positioned to make advertisers more efficient and to bring a new level of insight to the delivery of cross-screen incrementality. With our assets, clients can guarantee deduplicated reach across digital and traditional video channels optimizing in-flight campaigns in ways that help them eliminate wasted ad spend and inventory. I want to be clear. We’re committed to delivering products and solutions that help our clients solve the big problems and challenges facing their businesses. The product capabilities that we’ve talked about, coupled with the continued execution like we had in the second quarter, gives me confidence that we’re focused on the things that matter most to our clients and our stakeholders. With that, let me turn it over to Mary Margaret to discuss our second quarter results in more detail. Mary Curry: Thank you, John. Total revenue for the second quarter was $93.7 million, up 2.5% from $91.4 million the same quarter a year ago. Cross Platform Solutions revenue of $41 million was up 3% from $39.8 million in the second quarter of 2022, primarily driven by double-digit growth in local TV and the continued strength of our movies business, which grew 5% to $8.8 million from $8.4 million a year ago. Revenue from Digital Ad Solutions of $52.6 million was up 2% compared to $51.6 million a year ago, primarily driven by an increase in usage of our Activation product. We also saw an increase in revenue for certain custom digital products as a result of higher deliverables for our enterprise customers. As John mentioned earlier, the end markets that we’re serving are challenged evidenced by recent earnings reports from some of our biggest clients and softer-than-expected upfront this year. We’re certainly not immune to these macro factors, and these may have an impact on our business as we move into the third quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $8.8 million, up 35% from the prior year quarter, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 9.4%. If you exclude the foreign exchange impact from adjusted EBITDA, this year’s second quarter results of $9 million is up 125% over the prior year. This result is a testament to our continued focus on cost execution. Our core operating expenses were down 4% year-over-year, with a large part of that due to lower employee compensation. We are continuing to execute on the restructuring plan we put in place last year as evidenced by the restructuring charge of $4.1 million we took in the second quarter, which is and will continue to contribute to lower operating costs as we move through the year. And we’re not done yet. We’re diligently working to transform our business operations and to simplify our tech stack to drive additional efficiencies in the latter part of 2023 and into 2024. Regarding our full year guidance, we noted last quarter that there was pressure on the high end of our revenue growth range. Based on our current expectations, we’re tightening our revenue guidance to the low end of the range with growth in the low single digits. For adjusted EBITDA, we remain confident in and are reaffirming the guidance we previously provided. With that, I’ll turn it back over to John for closing remarks. Jonathan Carpenter: Before we wrap up, I want to take a moment to thank our employees who work tirelessly every day to deliver for our clients. Without them, none of what we’ve executed on or spoke about today would be possible. Thanks to everyone on the call for joining us this evening. We’ve got a tremendous opportunity in front of us, and I couldn’t be more excited about our growth prospects and the value we can create for our shareholders. With that, operator, let’s open it up for questions. Q&A Session Follow Comscore Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR) Follow Comscore Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR) We may use your email to send marketing emails about our services. Click here to read our privacy policy. Operator: [Operator Instructions]. Your first question comes from the line of Jason Kreyer of Craig-Hallum. Jason Kreyer: The quarter to delay the dividend payment, it looks like probably until the end of the year. Just curious if you can unpack that decision, why you delayed that, the benefits of that and maybe any near-term uses of those funds. Jonathan Carpenter: Jason, yes, thanks for the question. Yes, we — as part of our ongoing conversations with our preferred shareholders around flexibility and freeing up capital to reinvest back in the business, they agreed to push the dividend out. They also agreed to give us some optionality in terms of how that was paid for in one of our earlier releases. We made that announcement as well. All that just points to giving the company greater flexibility to execute the restructuring and transformation plan that’s well underway. That’s where the bulk of that investment is going toward, things like improving our tech infrastructure, making the investment in resources and engineering and analytics and shoring up our product capabilities so that we can continue to deliver on some of the things that I spoke about at the top of the call. Jason Kreyer: Okay. Perfect. And then you’ve talked about Proximic over the last couple of calls. It seems like you’re seeing good results there. Can you talk maybe more about what the vision is there? I would imagine it’s not a meaningful contributor to results today. But is there a point in time where you expect that to be a more meaningful contributor? Jonathan Carpenter: Yes, it’s certainly not an insignificant part of the revenue profile, and it’s growing rapidly. I think we’re just on the cusp of what that capability is when paired with our broader measurement solutions across both digital and linear. I think the pairing of the flywheel of insights and planning to activation to measurement, it just fits so nicely into the solution set that we’re delivering for our clients. And I think we’re at the tip of the spear in terms of the integration of what Proximic can do in terms of advanced audience segments coupled with advanced audience segments that we deliver in our linear comScore TV product and then, broadly speaking, what it can do to better position comScore digital more broadly in the wake of broader signal loss in the marketplace. So I like the progress that we’re making there on the product front, and our integrations that we announced in the second quarter are starting to — excuse me, earlier in the first quarter have really kind of positioned us well here, which has contributed to some of the growth that we were able to unlock in the second quarter result. Jason Kreyer: John, one more just in terms of clarification. Last month, we saw a deal struck between Comcast and Nielsen. I think they expanded their relationship, and that included some local markets. I was under the impression that you were doing a lot of the local market stuff for Comcast or at least for NBCU. Curious if there’s any change with your relationship with Comcast or NBCU after that deal was struck. Jonathan Carpenter: No, not at all. I think, in fact, NBC has leaned in quite a bit in terms of them leveraging comScore in market for currency across their local suite. Let’s remember, Nielsen has had that Comcast data for the better part of 5 years. And so for us, this wasn’t a surprise that stated that they’ve had access to for, gosh, last handful of years easily. So our relationship with NBC is very, very strong, and we’re pleased with the progress that we continue to make across not just local but other areas of their business in terms of helping them more broadly as it relates to cross-platform measurement capabilities. Operator: Your next question comes from the line of Laura Martin of Needham. Laura Martin: You guys have done a great job of shortening the window between 2 weeks to, for now, 48 hours, and your accuracy at 93% is really impressive. However, a lot of your competitors in the marketplace are now doing real-time in-campaign measurements. Is that your next step? Do you have to get to that point in order to compete? Jonathan Carpenter: I think that the big difference is certainly in some of our digital products, where we’ve got the ability to deliver a lot closer to real time. But as it relates to in-flight linear optimization within 48 hours across all 210 markets, there’s really nobody that stands up to that capability. And if you think about the ability within 48 hours to effectively be able to deliver as close to 100% accuracy to final posting, when you think about guaranteeing a buy or guaranteeing audiences against that, it allows our clients a tremendous amount of flexibility to optimize in real time. And then you start taking — you start adding on the capability to drive incremental reach, leveraging that 48-hour optimization to extensions to digital, including connected TV. Do you want to add anything, Carol? Carol Hinnant: Just to say the tie to local and national is really important. Jonathan Carpenter: That’s an excellent point. Carol’s point is that our — we’ve got a singular methodology, which is a big differentiator when we start talking about every single one of our markets rolling up to a national number. So it’s not just the ability in all markets, but it’s the ability to optimize within 48 hours on the national campaigns as well. Laura Martin: Okay. And then my second one is on the strikes. So you have this wonderful monopoly, my word, in the movie business, and it went through COVID, and I felt like it was coming back. And now we’re in strikes for, depending on who you ask, anywhere from another 4 to 6 months. So the question is does this actually structurally hurt your movie income stream sort of forever. What’s your point of view on that? Jonathan Carpenter: Yes. I mean it’s unfortunate that we’re in — the industry is kind of going through what it’s going through. As it relates to our business, we don’t see an immediate impact to the financial profile of what our guide implies or even into next year. I think should the strike start to carry out for long periods of time, and that ultimately impacts production at some point in the future, that may bleed into renewals that are out in those years. But it’s not a remainder of ’23 or even a ’24 kind of issue for us, our business at least for now. Certainly something we’re watching closely. Operator: And your next question comes from the line of Surinder Thind of Jefferies LLC. Surinder Thind: Start with a question around the use of AI for kind of filling in the signal loss and enhancing the measurement techniques here. When you take a step back, how much of an advancement is this over previous data and analytics techniques? Like how should we think about the point of competitive differentiation here? Jonathan Carpenter: Well, I think if I — thanks for the question, Surinder. I think you’ve got kind of 2 parts to that. You’ve got kind of AI as it relates to our predictive audience capability and then that product in and of itself, what is the differentiator in the market. I would say the simple explanation in terms of how we’re differentiated for other kind of what I would consider more run-of-the-mill basic contextual audience activation plays is that we’ve got a significant digital panel that gives us a tremendous amount of insight that allows us to get at the 70% addressability gap that exists in the digital ecosystem. That is audiences without IDs. We leverage our panel to play a big role in our predictive audience capability, which is a big difference. No one else has got the size of the panel that we have nor would the economics of investing in something like that make a ton of sense for others. So that business benefits from the fact that we’re grounded in our — in the panel, in the measurement standard that comScore has always been, and we bring that benefit to the Activation business. As it relates to AI, I think any time you think about AI, I think you have to start with the scale of the data that you have to train against. And I think that’s where we’ve got a massive differentiator as it relates to at least other players in the measurement space, is that the scope of data that our AI capabilities have the ability to train from is a massive differentiator. And that extends to not just our predictive audiences, but if you think about planning and leveraging AI and planning to better inform outcomes when it gets to measurement, leveraging AI algorithms is a massive play that Jon Lieberman and his team are building out as it relates to our measurement capabilities leveraging AI. So for me, the AI piece starts with the first question is what’s your data set, what kind of scale do you have because that’s what you’ve got the ability to kind of train from. And then given our size and scale, that’s massive back data. That is massive kind of ongoing data from digital, from linear. And so I think that’s our biggest differentiator when it comes to overall AI capability. Surinder Thind: Got it. And then when I think about the cross-platform measurement more broadly and I kind of look over the revenue trajectory over about the last 6 quarters or so, relatively stable. Can you kind of unpack the different moving pieces underneath? Obviously, you’re seeing strong double-digit growth in some areas. But any additional color on what the puts and takes are? Jonathan Carpenter: Yes. I think really encouraged by the momentum that we continue to build across our local capabilities and those local capabilities are, from my perspective, a real differentiator as it relates to how we deliver cross-platform and overall incrementality to our clients. So think about an advertiser that’s running a campaign nationally across a suite of markets. Our local foundation allows us to take that campaign that’s being run by an advertiser and highlight over or underperformance down to the ZIP code level. We can take that linear audience, suppress it, use it to inform better connected TV, purchase behavior through programmatic channels. That cross-screen incrementality capability is a big differentiator, and it starts from kind of this local foundation that comScore has always been rooted in. And so I think we’re just at the tip of the spear in terms of what our opportunity is on that front. But it’s showing up in our local performance. It’s showing up in our performance in aspects of our digital business, which grew for the first time in the last 5 quarters, really, on the backs of activation and some of the early wins that we’re starting to get against what I just spoke about. Surinder Thind: Got it. And then final question on — you called out syndicated digital as a bit of a headwind. Any additional color there or how we should be thinking about it quarter-over-quarter? Jonathan Carpenter: Yes. It’s still a significant business and an important part of I would think — I say this to the team all the time that our syndicated digital business is probably more important now than it ever has been in the history, maybe going all the way back to the beginning in terms of signal loss that’s happening across this ecosystem and our client penetration and our ability to work with them to surface their audiences in a world where signal loss is proliferating, CPMs are getting completely depressed. Our digital business is really well positioned for future growth. And we’re just — it’s — we’re just in the very, very, very early innings of what that looks like, and I expect you’ll hear from us over the course of the next quarter on some of the things that we’re doing with that asset as it relates to the industry more broadly. Operator: Thank you so much. And presenters, there are no further questions at this time. This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect. Have a good day. Jonathan Carpenter: Thanks, everybody. Follow Comscore Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR) Follow Comscore Inc. (NASDAQ:SCOR) We may use your email to send marketing emails about our services. Click here to read our privacy policy......»»

Topgolf Callaway Brands Corp. (NYSE:MODG) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript August 10, 2023 Operator: Welcome to the Topgolf Callaway Brands Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation, there’ll be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now […] Topgolf Callaway Brands Corp. (NYSE:MODG) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript August 10, 2023 Operator: Welcome to the Topgolf Callaway Brands Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation, there’ll be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Katina Metzidakis, Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Please go ahead. Katina Metzidakis: Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to Topgolf Callaway Brands Second Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. I’m Katina Metzidakis, the company’s Vice President of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications. Joining me as speakers on today’s call are Chip Brewer, our President and Chief Executive Officer; and Brian Lynch, our Chief Financial Officer and Chief Legal Officer. Earlier today, the company issued a press release announcing its second quarter 2023 financial results. In addition, there is a presentation that accompanies today’s prepared remarks and may make it easier for you to follow the call. This earnings presentation as well as the earnings press release are both available on the company’s Investor Relations website under the Financial Results tab. Most of the financial numbers reported and discussed on today’s call are based on U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. In the instances where we report non-GAAP measures, we have reconciled the non-GAAP measures to the corresponding GAAP measures at the back of the presentation in accordance with Regulation G. Please note that this call will include forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from management’s – differ materially from management’s current expectations. We encourage you to review the safe harbor statements contained in the presentation and the press release for a more complete description. And with that, I’d now like to turn the call over to Chip Brewer. Oliver Brewer: Thank you, Katina, and welcome to the team. Good afternoon to everyone on the call, and thank you for joining us today. Q2 was a solid quarter for Topgolf Callaway Brands, driven by strength across all our business segments. At the halfway point of 2023, here are just the highlights of what we see. Market share gains and brand growth in Golf Equipment, a stronger economic model and proven growth algorithm in the Topgolf venue business and continued growth in our apparel assets. We also see a resilient and engaged consumer across all of our businesses. We remain on track to deliver strong EBITDA growth for the full year and a transition to being cash flow positive, both at the corporate level as well as at Topgolf individually. This transition to being cash flow positive is an important milestone for our business, and we are confident it will ramp from here. Having said this, we also recognize that there is more quarterly noise in our results that would be ideal. Most significantly, last year’s retail inventory catch-up in our Golf Equipment business and separately, the post-COVID surge in the events business at Topgolf, make year-over-year quarterly comparisons difficult and cloud, the true progress we’re making in improving the fundamental economic engine of our business. In our comments today, we hope to clearly explain the short-term volatility as well as highlight the long-term positive story of continued improvement in the earnings power of our business and the resilience of our core modern golf consumers. With that said, let’s shift gears and talk about the business segments. We’ll start by discussing Topgolf. This is a business which is expected to add 3 million to 4 million new off-course golf participants each year for every 11 new venues and thus will help drive growth across the entire modern golf ecosystem. With this growth, Topgolf will soon have more consumers visiting it than exist in all of U.S. on-course golf, including 1/2 of the total on-course golf population as many now participate in both on- and off-course golf. In what is truly a synergistic relationship, Topgolf sister brands at our company will be helping drive this growth and also have a competitive advantage and reach to all these modern golf consumers. As outlined by Artie in his June 1 fireside chat, there are 3 key performance drivers for our Topgolf venue business: first is our development pipeline; second is the same venue sales growth; and third is the venue margin expansion. Let’s walk through each one. Starting with our development pipeline. This quarter, we successfully opened 2 new venues in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania and St. Petersburg, Florida, both of which drove excitement and brand heat in those regions. We’re pleased to report that our new venues continue to perform extremely well and that we remain on track to open 11 new owned and operated venues in 2023, in line with our guidance. Turning to our second performance driver, same venue sales. As expected, Topgolf posted its seventh consecutive quarter of same venue sales growth despite challenges from temporary venue shutdowns from air pollution caused by the fires in Canada. Same venue sales for the quarter was within our guidance range at approximately 1%. And the two-year stack, which takes out some of the post-COVID-related volatility shows an even more impressive 9% growth. As we discussed last quarter, we fully expected Q2 to be challenging from a comp perspective as last year’s same venue sales benefited from a post-COVID surge in the events business. That said, we are maintaining our same venue sales guidance for the full year based on the continued strength in the consumer portion of our business, along with new initiatives that will ramp during the second half and some nuances in the quarterly comparisons. Let me give you more detail on each of these and walk you through how we get to this conclusion. First, and most importantly, we have seen consistent and strong growth in the consumer-led portion of our business. This category represents the lion’s share of our business, and we believe it is the best indicator of brand heat. Second, as of Q2, we have made continued progress on our digital journey, including reservations. In fact, U.S. venue digital sales penetration increased 8 points versus last year to approximately 34%. The largest driver of this growth is our digital inventory management system, PIE, which has now been rolled out to over half of our venues. This system allows us to maximize sales, improve the customer experience and optimize costs. And we continue to expect to have all venues on PIE by the end of the year. More specifically to this section of our call, on an individual venue basis, it helps drive approximately a 2-point increase in same venue sales post implementation. And given the timing of the rollout, we estimate it will add at least 1% to same venue new sales in Q4. Third, we have and are taking incremental pricing both in gameplay and food and beverage. Based on our experience as well as competitive positioning, we believe this will have at least a 1% positive impact on same venue sales primarily in Q4. Fourth, we’re excited about a new innovative marketing campaign, which will launch later this month. It is designed to both captivate and appeal to the modern golfer and to drive both incremental awareness and visits. I’m not going to ruin the surprise by trying to describe it to you on this call, but I’m sure you’ll notice it, and I hope it makes you smile. Lastly, we believe our second half comp will be slightly less challenging than our Q2 comp. This is because we expect the lap of last year’s especially strong events business to be somewhat less of a headwind for the second half of the year. And last year’s Q4 comp was negatively impacted by approximately 2 points by venue closures due to extreme cold weather, which we don’t expect to repeat this year. Moving on to our third performance driver, venue margin expansion. COGS and labor optimization along with continued leverage of fixed overhead costs drove sequential quarter-over-quarter improvement in our Q2 adjusted EBITDAR margins. This, in turn, drove total segment EBITDA towards the high end of our range despite same venue sales coming in towards the low end. This is just a fantastic story, and it highlights how our venues are becoming increasingly profitable. PIE continues to be a key ingredient to our venue margin expansion. It does so by facilitating increased reservations, which in turn support more predictable labor scheduling and increased pay utilization. As mentioned, at the end of Q2, more than half of our venues had implemented PIE, and we expect to have all venues utilizing PIE by the end of the year. The Topgolf’s teams excellent work over the last few years puts us well ahead of the plan laid out at the time of the merger and in a strong position to achieve the updated target venue unit economics we provided last quarter, including approximately 35% 4-wall adjusted EBITDAR margins, 2.5-year payback period, a 20% return on gross investment and 50% to 60% cash on cash returns. Together, these targets represented a fundamental long-term improvement in the cash generation and profitability of our venue business, in essence, a step change in value. Lastly, turning to Toptracer. I want to quickly highlight its success in the quarter and continued dominant leadership position as golf’s number one range technology. We continue to see healthy demand for this product with accelerating bay installations versus Q1, and we are on track to install at least 7,000 bays this year in line with our guidance. Moving to our Golf Equipment segment and another example of strong execution. We delivered improved U.S. market share performance in the second quarter in what has been an excellent year-to-date for our brand in both tour exposure and product performance. In June, we saw U.S. market share gains in every category in both the on- and off-course channels. For both, the month of June and year-to-date, our brand is number one in drivers, ferry woods, hybrids, total woods and irons. We’re also number two in putters and golf ball with strong shares in these categories as well. This performance shows the continued strength of our brand and our products. Our Paradigm line of clubs, which launched in Q1 was the primary driver of this success. Paradigm had continued strong demand throughout Q2 and has been exceptional on tour all year with the Paradigm Driver winning an impressive 9 times on the PGA Tour year-to-date. Not surprisingly, Paradigm is the number one selling driver and ferry wood model year-to-date in the U.S. I’m proud of these results, and I believe our performance this year has further strengthened our brand. This, in turn, will benefit our shareholders, not only this year, but going forward. In other brand news, just last month, we announced the extension of our long-term partnership with Masters Champion, Jon Rahm. Jon will continue to play both Callaway and Odyssey equipment, wear Callaway Headwear, TravisMathew Apparel and Footwear and Champion Topgolfs business, including the Topgolf logo on the side of his headwear. This is another wonderful example of how we are achieving synergies across our brands. Looking at the overall golf industry and the health of the game, the U.S. hard goods market continues to hold up quite well, down just 1.6% June year-to-date, consistent with our expectations. In addition, all signs point to golf participation remaining robust with U.S. rounds played up 5.5% through June year-over-year and strong demand for consumables in the quarter. Looking ahead, our leadership position in R&D investment and more specifically, our expertise in the use of AI in the development of product gives me continued confidence in our current and future product pipeline. Turning now to Active Lifestyle. TravisMathew had double-digit growth again this quarter. The brand continues to successfully open new retail stores, including 5 year-to-date and totaling 46 overall. The team also continues to do a tremendous job executing the new women’s category expansion, which has now grown to become a mid-single-digit percent of overall sales and early sign of success. TravisMathew also continues to find exciting ways to grow its brand in the modern golf ecosystem, including building additional synergies across our brands. In June, the brand had a very successful marketing activation event at the ACC Golf Tournament in Lake Tahoe. This high-profile event drew participation from several TravisMathew ambassadors as well as Callaway brand ambassador, Stephen Curry, who went on to win the event via a dramatic walk-off Eagle finish. Both Callaway and TravisMathew, including new TravisMathew brand ambassador, Reggie Bush, also participated at Topgolf’s U.S. Open event at El Segundo. We feel incredibly proud to partner with ambassadors who share our excitement about the growing modern golf ecosystem, and our teams are increasingly enjoying opportunities to leverage cross brand synergies. Moving along, Jack Wolfskin had a good first half despite choppy macro backdrop in Europe as well as earlier shipment timing this year versus last year as supply chain is corrected. Jack Wolfskin remains on track for steady growth in both revenue and profits for 2023. In conclusion, we’re excited about the strategic direction of our portfolio of global brands in the growing modern golf ecosystem. In the near term, our brands are strengthening, and we remain on track to deliver impressive EBITDA growth and transition to positive free cash flow this year. This inflection point is just the first step in what will be a strong long-duration story of overall growth in both EBITDA and cash flow. As we do this, our top capital allocation priority continues to be investing in the profitable growth of our business, most notably in new venues. This is an area where we have demonstrated strong competency in selecting, building, opening and operating these unique and high-performing assets. Our Topgolf venues are delivering increasingly attractive returns, and we have a high degree of confidence in their performance both out of the gate and over time. Looking forward, we remain excited and optimistic about our business, which benefits from a defined leadership position in modern golf, synergies across our portfolio of premium brands and a clear path to continued profitable growth. And now I’ll turn the call to Brian to provide more detail on our financials and outlook. Brian Lynch: Thank you, Chip, and good afternoon, everyone. We are pleased with our Q2 results, which showed strength across each of our segments and progress against each of the key Topgolf performance drivers Chip discussed, including continued development of 11 new venues this year, 7 consecutive quarters of same venue sales growth, and good progress toward our venue margin expansion goals. This progress, together with continued high consumer demand for on- and off-course golf, receding inventory levels and improved liquidity puts us in a strong position to deliver positive free cash flow this year and to meet or exceed our long-term financial targets. Now let’s turn toward our second quarter financial results. Second quarter net revenue was $1.2 billion, an increase of 5.7% year-over-year or 6.5% on a constant currency basis, which was in line with our guidance. This increase was led by Topgolf’s robust 6.6% year-over-year revenue growth. We achieved this result despite an $8 million negative impact from changes in foreign currency exchange rates and the post-COVID inventory filling in retail in our products businesses, which primarily impacted the first half of 2022. Q2 non-GAAP operating income was $130.5 million, down approximately 3% and flat on a constant currency basis year-over-year. We are pleased with this performance considering both the challenging lap of the inventory filling at retail and our products businesses, as well as the planned investments in labor and marketing we made in the Topgolf business. Q2 non-GAAP net income was $77.8 million, a decrease of $15.7 million compared to Q2 2022. The decrease is attributable to a $20.3 million increase in interest expense, primarily due to higher interest rates and additional term loan debt related to our recent debt refinancing. Lastly, Q2 adjusted EBITDA was ahead of our guidance range at $206.2 million, down 0.5% compared to last year, primarily due to unfavorable changes in foreign currency rates. Q2 adjusted EBITDA increased 2% on a constant currency basis and was driven primarily by operational efficiencies. Now let’s turn to our segment performance. In the second quarter, Topgolf revenue increased $67.1 million to $471 million, a year-over-year increase of 16.6%, driven by the addition of 11 new venues and approximately 1% same venue sales growth, which was within our guidance range. We estimate that the impact from temporary venue shutdowns caused by fires in Canada was worth about 1 point of same venue sales. We believe it is helpful to compare same venue sales on a 2-year stack basis because it removes some of the COVID-related volatility and demonstrates the strength of our venue business. On a 2-year stack basis, same venue sales growth for Q2 was 9%. By comparison, Q1 2023 same venue sales was 11%, and on a 2-year stack basis was 14%. Topgolf segment operating income was $44 million, which was largely flat versus last year. As mentioned previously, this result in large part reflects the planned increase in marketing expenses related to Topgolf’s Come Play Around marketing campaign and investments in labor we made in Q3 of 2022. Importantly, the underlying earnings power of this business continues to increase, and we remain on track to achieve our 4-wall adjusted EBITDAR margin target of 35% by 2025, if not sooner. Topgolf’s adjusted EBITDA was $92 million, up approximately $6 million compared to Q2 of last year. And at the high end of our guidance range due to solid performance in our new venues and improved operational efficiencies at existing venues. Golf Equipment net revenue was $451 million, flat year-over-year and up 1% in constant currency. This was good performance considering the previously mentioned retail channel filling last year and the unfavorable changes in foreign currency rates. These headwinds were largely offset by our increased market share gains in golf clubs, strong golf ball sales and continued strength in overall rounds played. Golf Equipment segment operating income was $96.4 million, a 3.9% decline versus Q2 2022, primarily due to unfavorable changes in foreign currency exchange rates. This result was partly offset by stronger gross margins, which increased approximately 100 basis points year-over-year due to increased pricing and lower freight costs. Lastly, Q2 Active Lifestyle segment revenue was $258 million, slightly down or flat on a constant currency basis as compared to Q2 2022. This result was in large part due to a shift in timing of wholesale shipments between Q1 and Q2 as compared to 2022. This is evident in our first half results, where Active Lifestyle revenue increased 13.3% year-over-year. Q2 Active Lifestyle operating income of $19.5 million decreased $3 million versus Q2 2022 due to planned operating expenditures to support growth and was partially offset by gross margin increases related to price increases and a higher mix of direct-to-consumer business. Moving to our balance sheet. As a reminder, we completed a significant debt refinancing in March of this year, which added approximately $300 million of additional liquidity, reduced our cost of the refinanced debt and extended the maturities of our credit facilities. We’ve not only simplified and strengthened our capital structure, but also gave ourselves flexibility on how to finance Topgolf venues, including self-financing, which provides us with another option as we decide how to finance future venues. As of June 30, 2023, available liquidity, which is comprised of cash on hand, and availability under our credit facilities was $648 million compared to $415 million at December 31, 2022, and as compared to $640 million at June 30, 2022. At quarter end, we had total net debt of $2.24 billion, which excludes convertible debt of approximately $258 million compared to $1.44 billion at the end of Q2 2022. This increase relates primarily to incremental new venue financing, the additional $300 million of term loan debt, and normalization of working capital for the non-Topgolf business. Our net debt leverage, which excludes the convertible debt, was 4.1x at June 30, 2023, compared to 2.7x at June 30, 2022. The year-over-year increase was due to new venue development and increases in working capital. Our net debt leverage ratio was in line with March 31, 2023, which is a little better than we discussed last quarter. We continue to expect our leverage to decline in the back half of the year as we generate free cash flow. Consolidated net accounts receivable is $397 million compared to $376 million at the end of Q2 2022. Non-Topgolf days sales outstanding increased slightly from 55 to 58 days. Our inventory balance increased to $840 million compared to $640 million at June 30, 2022, and is down from our December 31, 2022, balance of $959 million. The team’s active inventory management has led to a reduction of $119 million in the first half of 2023. Continued momentum in our Golf Equipment and Active Lifestyle segments gives us confidence that we remain on track to be at more normal levels of inventory by the end of the year. More importantly, we feel good about the quality of our inventory as much of the older inventory was cleaned up during the pandemic. Gross capital expenditures were approximately $263 million for the first 6 months of 2023 compared to $243 million for the first 6 months of 2022. Net capital expenditures, which net out the proceeds from construction reimbursements, were $148 million and $154 million in the first 6 months of 2023 and 2022, respectively. For full year 2023, we expect total company net capital expenditures of $270 million, which includes $190 million from Topgolf. Before moving to our outlook, I want to comment on a few other matters. First is the Form 8-K we filed yesterday. Last week, we identified unusual IT system activity and immediately took proactive steps in consultation with our advisers to secure our systems. We activated our incident response plan and moved portions of our network off-line as a precautionary measure. The majority of our systems are back online and full access is expected to be restored in the coming days. Based on what we know now, we do not believe the incident will have a material effect on our business, operations or financial results. Second, during the quarter, we repurchased 1 million shares in open market transactions for a total cost of $17.8 million. Finally, I want to provide a brief update on our relationship with Full Swing, the owners of the Swing Suite indoor golf simulation technology that delivers golf ball tracking data and measures fall flight indoors. On August 1, 2023, we acquired certain assets of the Swing Suite business for approximately $12 million. This small acquisition is strategically relevant to us as it allows us to control the use of the Topgolf brand in this channel. And from a financial perspective, it is immediately cash flow positive in year 1. Now turning to our balance of the year outlook. We are maintaining our full year 2023 revenue guidance range of $4.42 billion to $4.47 billion and our adjusted EBITDA range of $625 million to $640 million. At Topgolf, we continue to guide to approximately $1.9 billion in revenue and an adjusted EBITDA range of $315 million to $325 million. We are also reaffirming same venue sales guidance to be mid- to high single digits. For the quarter – for the third quarter of 2023, we estimate revenue to be within the range of $1.05 billion and $1.075 billion compared to $989 million in Q3 2022. For Topgolf, we estimate third quarter same venue sales growth between 1% and 3%, which would represent 12% to 14% growth on a 2-year stack basis. We estimate Q3 consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $141 million to $154 million, which is slightly ahead of Q3 2022. Now I’d like to provide some additional details so you can better understand our second half guidance, including the cadence between Q3 and Q4. Topgolf’s second half venue sales growth will be more heavily weighted towards Q4 versus last year for several reasons. In Q4 2022, there was some unusually severe weather that led to the shutdown of a significant number of our venues, negatively impacting same venue sales by approximately 2 percentage points. We are assuming that shutdown does not repeat in Q4 this year. Pricing we are taking at the end of Q3 should also provide at least a 1 percentage point lift to same venue sales in Q4 versus Q3. Our PIE initiatives should also provide at least a 1 percentage point lift in same venue sales in Q4 versus Q3. Further, we expect Topgolf profitability to improve in the second half as the year-over-year comparisons for marketing and labor become much easier and increased pricing and improved operational efficiencies in our venues from PIE and other initiatives continue. Moving to our products businesses. We expect growth in the second half as we will no longer be lapping the retail channel inventory filling in – that occurred in the first half last year. Also, our second half golf equipment launch schedule is more heavily weighted towards Q4 this year as opposed to Q3 last year. And on a consolidated basis, we expect changes in foreign currency rates and lower freight expense to be tailwinds in the second half of this year, especially in Q4. Overall, and despite the ongoing macro volatility, our business fundamentals remain strong. The modern golf consumer remains healthy and engaged. We are on track to deliver double-digit revenue and EBITDA growth this year. We are also successfully managing down our inventories, and our liquidity position is strong. And finally, we expect to generate free cash flow this year on a consolidated basis, and at Topgolf, well ahead of our plan at the time of the merger, which is a significant proof point for unlocking shareholder value. That concludes my prepared remarks for today. I will pass it back over to Chip for some additional comments, and then we’ll open the call for questions. Oliver Brewer: Thanks, Brian. Before we open the call for questions, I just wanted to wrap up by reiterating our confidence in our strategy and long-term outlook. Our incredible portfolio of brands provides us with unmatched scale and reach within the modern golf ecosystem, an ecosystem in which we believe we are the dominant player. Our businesses, both individually and collectively, have both high barriers to entry and are structurally positioned for accelerated profitable growth. Overall, we see a business that is well capitalized as a long runway for continued growth and is set to ramp up free cash flow by year-end and beyond. With this, we remain highly confident in our ability to meet or beat our long-term financial targets. We’re optimistic about the future of modern golf and believe that our portfolio of premium brands uniquely positions us to be highly successful in it. And now I’ll turn the call open for questions. Operator, over to you. Q&A Session Follow Topgolf Callaway Brands Corp. (NYSE:MODG) Follow Topgolf Callaway Brands Corp. (NYSE:MODG) We may use your email to send marketing emails about our services. Click here to read our privacy policy. Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Matthew Boss with JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Matthew Boss: Great. Thanks. So Chip, could you just elaborate on the progression of Topgolf same venue sales that you saw through the second quarter? Maybe any commentary on July? And just your overall confidence in the sequential back half improvement that you’ve embedded to hit your full year same venue sales growth guide? Oliver Brewer: Sure. When we look at the quarter, Q2, Matthew, we obviously were within our guide. And it’s our seventh consecutive quarter of positive same venue sales. So there really wasn’t much new in that quarter that we didn’t identify going into the quarter other than a small impact from the Canadian wildfires. And the consumer business remains strong. Our venue margins are improving. The new venue growth is on track. So a lot of good positives there. And we called out in advance that we’re going to have events down a little year-over-year due to the post-COVID surge that we experienced in late ‘21 and throughout 2022. When you look at the progression from there, it’s not much of a move to go to 1% to 3% that we’re calling for Q3. And then we gave you several of the key initiatives that are further helping us in Q4. We talked about the marketing campaign. We talked about the strength of the general consumer, which is the lion’s share of our business. We also talked about a 1% improvement from PIE, 1% from price, and 2% from the lap of the unusually severe cold weather that we experienced last year and don’t expect to repeat. So I think that kind of at least directionally, if not provides a pretty specific walk of how we’re getting to the full year number. Matthew Boss: That’s great. And then just a follow-up on the Equipment side. Could you speak to recent retail sellout trends that you’ve seen maybe relative to 3 months ago and just market share gains that you’ve seen for the Callaway brand? And maybe just larger, how would you characterize the health and composition of your inventory in the channel today as we head into the back half of the year? Oliver Brewer: Sure. And Matthew, these are all really strong stories. So we had a great quarter from a brand perspective, excellent market share results. And the market is staying very healthy. The rounds played is the biggest highlight of that being up 5.5%. But there is no question that the core golf consumer remains engaged and active. And our inventories in the field, as you would expect, given our market share performance there in very strong position. They improved during the quarter, and we like where we sit going into the second half of the year from brand strength, product line and the health of the consumer within the very important Golf segment. Matthew Boss: It’s great color. Best of luck. Oliver Brewer: Thank you. Operator: Our next question comes from Randy Konik with Jefferies. Please go ahead. Randal Konik: Yes, thanks, guys. Just a follow-up on back on Topgolf to start here. Maybe just give us some perspective on how you’re thinking about over the medium term where we are with the dynamic between pricing and traffic. Where – how much further do you think you have on pricing? And how do you want us to think about normalized ability to drive same venue sales growth between pricing and traffic? I think in the past you said 1/3 pricing, 2/3 traffic, I might have that backwards. Just give us reminder parameters on how we should be thinking about the long-term opportunity to drive more productivity per box over the medium term at Topgolf would be very helpful. Oliver Brewer: Absolutely Randy, a really important point. So if you look at our consumer business at Topgolf, it really remains strong and resilient. We’re consistently driving same venue sales growth there and have throughout the entire first half of this year, and we’re seeing a nice mix between pricing and traffic. So positive traffic as well as price. Price or spend per visit a little higher than traffic, but nice momentum in both, candidly. In the long term, what you can expect from us is that we are going to drive same venue sales growth at the venues above and beyond the inflationary effects of our cost basis. So forecasting the inflationary cost basis right now is a dynamic process, right? It’ll surge. Now it’s moderating. It will likely continue to moderate. But we’ve shown with clear evidence that we can take price. And when we’ve taken price, we’ve seen no negative impact. It really comes down to the strength of demand in the consumer. And the only other thing I want to add there is we’ve got these initiatives in place, the marketing campaign, PIE, other factors that are driving margin expansion. This is still early days on these. We have gas in the tank on these. These aren’t going to time out in anywhere in the near future, and we’re developing more. Randal Konik: Great. And then just my last follow-up on – I want to go back to Equipment as well. Talking about gas in the tank, where do you think we are in the – from maybe perhaps from an industry and company-specific perspective on the ability to drive further margin opportunity on clubs or just equipment generally through either customization, fittings and/or ball plant fixed cost leverage as you drive more and more volume gaining share on balls. Can you give us some perspective on that dynamic on where you see margin opportunity or just opportunity and generally speaking, from these things would be super – from exactly to be super helpful. Oliver Brewer: Yes, sure. Another positive story, Randy, because it’s early innings on all of these. We’re really starting to ramp up the performance of the ball plant. I had the pleasure of visiting it a week ago, and they’ve just transformed that place. It’s an impressive operation. The efficiencies are improving rapidly as are the margins. Over the last several years, we’ve also seen a lot of inflationary pressures across the business, but a lot of those are moderating right now. Freight rates is a great example of that. But we’re also seeing a moderate in other areas of the business. And throughout all of this, again, we have shown that we can operate quite successfully through any of these environments. In inflationary environments, we’re able to pass it on. In noninflationary environments, we’re able to sustain the demand side of our business. So you’re seeing even this year, margins – gross margins now that are improving, and we feel good about the long-term outlook there. Randal Konik: Super helpful. Thank you. Operator: Our next question comes from Alex Perry with Bank of America. Please go ahead. Alexander Perry: Hi, thanks for taking my questions. I guess just first, can you give us a little more color on how the corporate events business is doing versus walk-in? And then any more color on how you think about the rest of the year and sort of corporate events versus walk-in? Does the guide assume that either part of those parts of the segment improved versus the trend you saw in the second quarter? Oliver Brewer: Yes. So obviously, corporate events as we’ve mentioned is down year-over-year, but really performing well versus 2019 levels. So if you looked at the 2-year stacks or looked at the comparison that wipes out some of the post-COVID surge, it’s quite good. The consumer side of our business has been steadily good and remains there. And we’re really not expecting significant change in these trends through the balance of the year. So our assumptions are not for marked change on any of those trends. Does that answer your question, Alex? Alexander Perry: Yes, that’s really helpful. I appreciate that. And then I guess, back to Golf Equipment. So I think early in the year, you sort of said that you’re thinking about the Golf Equipment business is sort of flat, FX neutral for the year. Is that sort of how you’re still thinking about it? And then could you just help us with any sort of quarterly fluctuations that we should be thinking about? Any sort of product launches we should be considering? And then just on golf balls, like the growth there in the quarter is really, really – was strong. So is that level of growth something that should continue going forward? Oliver Brewer: Sure. A couple of questions there. Hopefully, I can get them all. So the quarterly – the last two are the ones that I remember most clearly. So quarterly, we’re going to have a little bit more launch timing in Q4 as we currently plan it versus Q3, but that timing happens across quarters. So we’ll give you our best estimate on that. But as you know, from the Golf Equipment business, between quarters, it can move a little bit. And – but we do have more launch activity in the second half of this – or the second half of half 2, Q4 versus Q3. On the ball side, we’ve had excellent results this year. We’re on track to grow for the full year and really strong results, as you could see during the quarter. We will – our growth in the ball will moderate during the second half of the year for a couple of reasons: one is we were constrained last year in Q2. So we had a little bit of carryover into Q3, which we haven’t been constrained this year. So we won’t have some of that carryover. And then secondly, it’s – in our launch cycles, when we’re at the tail end of a product cycle for our urethane product, we have to shift the plant to producing the new product, and that’s likely to be the case by the end of this year. So there will be a little constraint that happens every other year. It’s a normal course of business in the golf business. So not a – but something that you – for those that want to model, you should model it. And then in terms of full year, yes, we obviously are having an excellent year in our Golf Equipment segment. We had about $100 million inventory fill in last year that we’ve talked about, ad nauseam, and it doesn’t repeat this year. So we had to cover that. And we’re doing a pretty good job of that and growing share, and our forecast for the year remain unchanged. Brian Lynch: Yes. Just – as Chip mentioned, there’s growth in the second half, but period-over-period, quarter-over-quarter, most of the growth will occur in the Q4. Again, as Chip mentioned, it can move depending on timing of shipments, but it’s definitely heavily weighted to Q4. Alexander Perry: Perfect. That’s really helpful. Best of luck going forward. Brian Lynch: Okay. Thanks, Alex. Operator: Our next question comes from Daniel Imbro with Stephens Inc. Please go ahead. Daniel Imbro: Yes. Thanks for taking my questions. Chip, I’ll start on Topgolf as well – continue the trend. Obviously, same-store sales moderated kind of sequentially. Maybe to follow up on Randy’s question, can you just give the actual numbers or detail on traffic versus ticket growth? And then when you look at the Topgolf slowdown, I guess, how do you think about the risk of other leisure activities, whether it’s pickleball or travel or movies? Is that taking traffic away? Are you guys monitoring any data around like competitive just uses of that leisure time? Or what are you seeing in terms of that when you look at the slowdown in sales? Oliver Brewer: Well, Daniel, unless pickleball and the movies are taking away corporate events, I don’t think there’s any data that suggests it’s having much impact on us. The same venue sales is – again, I apologize, it’s very strong on the consumer side of the business and resilient. There was no change in trend across the quarters. The – we feel very good about that. The pickleball is obviously growing. From time to time, you’ll have a movie that comes out. We do compete against consumer activity. Pickleball is not a new trend. And we have been growing in our business and our brand for 7 consecutive quarters, as a matter of fact. So we feel good about that. Brian Lynch: I also think, Daniel, that people on average only go to Topgolf 1.5 times a year. So it’s not something they’re doing every week and now they want to go do pickleball and they have to replace it. They fit this in with their rotation of other activities that they want to do. Oliver Brewer: And Daniel, steer me if I didn’t answer the question completely, and I can provide any further value there. But you asked about specific traffic versus price, sorry. And the – I can give you just general. In the quarter, because of events, the total traffic was down a little bit. But the traffic was up nicely in the consumer side of our business. And for the full year, we expect it to be a mix of positive traffic and spend per visit with majority being spent per visit, but we’re going to contribute 20% to 25% of our same venue sales growth through traffic. Daniel Imbro: And then a follow-up on Topgolf. I guess, you mentioned, obviously, corporate is the weak spot here and that sounds specific. But if we look at pre-COVID, I think corporate was 30% of total Topgolf revenue, but that was very 4Q weighted. And so I guess we’re staring down the back half that has a much higher mix of corporate revenue historically. Corporate is the weak spot in Topgolf right now. I know Brian walked through a few points of maybe what’s going to drive the acceleration into 4Q. But maybe can you just help investors bridge that gap of what you guys see to give you confidence in the improved sales given the corporate uncertainty we’re seeing? Oliver Brewer: Okay. So let me just correct a few numbers for you to start with Daniel, because you’re directionally correct, but the numbers were slightly inaccurate. Corporate, since we’re saying that specifically is, on average, 21% of our total business in the venues for the full year. In Q4, it is roughly 28%. So maybe for Q4, you can round to that 30%, but 28% would be a more precise number. And we obviously – as we go through our – we’ve got pretty good visibility on what the corporate trends have been. And we factored them into our guidance as best we can and giving you is – what I think is a walk on some of the other factors. So I’m not sure if I can add too much more color right now in terms of – we prefer not to get into specific estimates by subcategory by quarter. And I’m sure you can understand why. Daniel Imbro: Absolutely. I’ll hop back in queue. Thanks for the color. Oliver Brewer: Thank you. Operator: Our next question comes from Noah Zatzkin with KeyBanc Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Noah Zatzkin: Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe switching gears to apparel. Just hoping you could provide some color both on inventory levels and channel health, along with the level of promotionality you’re seeing in the channel. And then I guess relatedly, within Active Lifestyle, strong gross margin improvement in the quarter, hoping you could help bridge to the EBIT margin pressure you saw. And then just any color on how we should think about margins there moving through the back half. Oliver Brewer: Okay. Brian, I’m going to throw that margin one your way. So I don’t know whether we have anything on that at this point. But in terms of the field inventories and inventory levels in general, it’s a little bit of the same story in Golf Equipment, but it’s going to take a little longer is the long and short answer of it. So inventories built up in the field over the 2022, they are in process of correcting. We had a strong sell-through quarter for our brands. We feel like we’re in a good position at or ahead of our plan from that basis. It’s a little more promotional than it was – well, it’s a lot more promotional than it was in ‘21 and ‘22 when there were no inventory and nobody promoted anything. But it’s – I wouldn’t call it highly promotional right now. And we feel good about those trends. Brian, do you have any color for the margin expectations for the balance of the year? I think what you might be seeing, though, is just a little bit noise between the quarters because Q1, we had stronger volume than Q2, and it’s another one of those COVID quarterly comparison issues because our supply chain corrected this year. So we shipped the product when we’re supposed to ship it, which was Q1. Last year, we shipped a lot of it in Q2 because we couldn’t get it. And so now when you compare the quarters, Q1 and Q2 look wonky. If you look at the half, it looks pretty solid, and it’s very representative. And we’re on track or trend for our plan there. Brian Lynch: Yes. So for the second half, we would expect it to be up. So the trends, as Chip mentioned, is pretty good if you look at the half – the first half. But then second half, and we get – we’re going to continue to get some benefits from the freight and then also from FX, and that will help those as well and just the continued sales growth in the back half. Noah Zatzkin: Thank you. Very helpful. Brian Lynch: Thank you. Operator: Our next question comes from Martin Mitela with Raymond James. Please go ahead. Martin Mitela: Hi, this is Martin on for Joe Altobello. I appreciate your commentary about the ramp-up for 4Q. I just consider 3Q guidance is a little bit softer than what the Street expected. I was wondering if you can give a little bit more commentary around that. Oliver Brewer: Martin, it’s hard for me to comment on what the Street would have expected because the Street didn’t have any of the information that we had in terms of actual results. So I think it’s pretty logical and believable when we – you look at how it ramps based on the actual facts. So I guess, hence the purpose of these calls. Martin Mitela: Okay. Fair enough. And there was a comment made on this earnings call and the virtual Investor Day as well, which suggests that you’re opening the door for self-financing for Topgolf venues. Just wondering if we can get a little bit of idea or the reason that you’re looking down that path and maybe what sort of implications it could mean? Brian Lynch: Sure. Thanks, Martin. This is Brian. We wanted to provide flexibility to do so. Right now, the REITs – cap rates have been holding stable for us. I know everyone else has been seeing a lot of increased interest rates, but they’ve held reasonably stable. And I think there’s a few reasons for that. We tend to run a competitive process. We have more REITs that have interest in working with us now. The venues have become more proven and are less risky to the REITs. So everything has been holding. Occasionally, you run into a site that for whatever reason a REIT may not be interested or just to keep them honest on the rates. We wanted the flexibility to be able to self-finance if that proves to be economically feasible for us. Martin Mitela: Great. Thank you. That was very helpful. Brian Lynch: Thank you. Operator: Our next question comes from John David Kernan with TD Cowen. Please go ahead. John Kernan: Good afternoon guys. Thanks for taking my question. Oliver Brewer: Sure. John Kernan: Brian, I just wanted to go to the OpEx line, specifically the deleverage that’s occurring on the operating expense as a percent of sales. I think it was about 400 basis points in the first half, but it was based on the Q3 guidance. You probably have to have significant leverage by Q4 on this line. How should we think about the balance between top line investing in Topgolf and that operating expense line, which seems to be driving a lot of the margin deleverage? Brian Lynch: Yes. I think a lot of it is. We’ve been talking about the labor and marketing all year and how those comps get a lot easier in the second half. I mean it is significant. If you look at it being – it will shift from being a headwind to a tailwind first half, second half, and it’s 400 to 500 basis points. So you get that plus the improved profitability, I mean that’s a significant lift there. And I think that’s probably what you’re seeing. John Kernan: Okay. Got it. It just seems like in Q3, it’s going to remain a pretty significant headwind just based on the EBITDA guidance you gave for Q3 and then it has to switch to a pretty meaningful tailwind by Q4. Brian Lynch: Yes, it does, because a lot of the actions will happen in Q3 and then it ramps towards the Q4. John Kernan: Got it. And then is the meaningful improvement in the EBITDA margin by Q4, is that being driven more by Topgolf? Or is it balanced between the Golf Equipment business and Topgolf? Brian Lynch: A lot of it is Topgolf for the things we just mentioned, plus the increase in same venue sales. But there’s also improvements in the gross margin – the other businesses gross margins as well. And especially with the second half product launch, foreign currency, freight rates, I mean it’s all adding up to be a pretty nice improvement for the EBITDA margin. John Kernan: Okay. Got it. Thank you. Operator: Our next question comes from Michael Swartz with Truist Securities. Please go ahead. Michael Swartz: Good evening. Everyone. Just with regards to the Full Swing acquisition, maybe give us a little color on just the background of that acquisition, what it provides you? And then is that a material business in terms of revenue or EBITDA? Oliver Brewer: Michael, it’s Chip. So Swing Suites is – it’s more of a strategic acquisition than it is a financially material one. So Swing Suites, for those on the call that are not familiar with it, is almost a lounge business that you would find at resorts and premium hotels. So you visit Omni and it’s Topgolf Swing Suites and you’d see these bays that you can go in and hit falls and play games and entertain. And it has the Topgolf brand on it. But it wasn’t – it was a business that we had had prior to the merger. The previous owners had licensed out long-term license to Full Swing. And so it wasn’t being controlled by Topgolf. It’s a nice business. It has our brand on it. It has some good long-term potential, but it’s a small business. It’s, roughly on a GAAP basis, $5 million in revenue. So very small there. It will be accretive from a cash basis, about $2 million starting next year. It will be accretive this year, but I’m giving you annual numbers here, not partial year numbers. So not a material business, but a strategically very attractive one, part of the brand, something we do think we can grow. And something even potentially more importantly, we wanted to control given how positively we feel about the Topgolf brand and the long-term potential there. Michael Swartz: That’s helpful. And maybe, Brian, with regards to the free cash flow improvement in the back half of the year, I think part of that is working capital and bringing down inventory in the products business. But just given the fourth quarter launch cadence, should we expect the inventory to come down more materially over the next few quarters relative to the [indiscernible] $120 million in the first half? Brian Lynch: Well, it’s come down a significant amount. And then you have to remember toward the end of the year, we’ll start ramping up for the launches next year. So you have to build that into it, but that will be next year’s launch and next year’s product. But this year it will continue to come down, but there’s usually less sales in the second half of the golf business anyway. But it will be in good shape by the end of the year. That’s – I guess that’s the bottom line. Our inventory will be in great shape in all current. Michael Swartz: Thank you. Operator: Our next question comes from Eric Wold with B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead. Eric Wold: Thanks. Good afternoon. So one question. I know that – so if I kind of think back, you started your half year guidance, you raised it a little bit Q1. You’ve reaffirmed it on this call, I think like a lot of confusion has been around kind of the quarterly cadence given a number of wonky comparisons to last year. The post-Omicron demand by the Topgolf, the equipment catch up, the weather shutdown in Q4. I guess that all – obviously, there’s still 4 months left in the year. Assuming nothing wonky happens next 4 months, does that kind of normalize everything in terms that the next year’s quarterly cadence should be normal – does that sort of any weird comparisons in any certain quarters? Oliver Brewer: Eric, this is Chip. The short answer with, obviously, fingers crossed is yes. What we – we had a decision to make at the beginning of the year, which did we start comparing against 2022 numbers because 2019 was so long ago. And we made the obvious decision, which is probably the only decision to do that. But it has a lot – 2022 still had a lot of COVID and what we’ll call onetime noise in it. This is not fundamental to our business. It doesn’t really impact long-term, but we had these inventory catch-ups and inventory shortages and periods where COVID was impacting consumers at Topgolf. And so there’s – bear with us as we get through it in the balance of the year. And yes, it should be cleaner going forward. Eric Wold: No, that’s perfect. I appreciate it. Operator: Our next question comes from Casey Alexander with Compass Point Research & Trading. Please go ahead. Casey Alexander: Yes, thank you. I think there’s been pulled apart in about every way possible so far. But the discussion to cash flows should turn positive for Topgolf at the end of the year, it’s obviously a big swing. The golf business has always generated nice cash. What kind of cash flow range are you thinking about for 2024? And what would you like to do with it? Is it to pay down debt? And if so, what’s kind of a net leverage ratio that you’d like to get it to like a normalized basis? Brian Lynch: Casey, this is Brian. We’re not going to provide guidance at this point on cash flow for next year, but we agree that it will generate significant cash flow. As far as what we do with it? Well, we – paying down debt is an obvious one, investing back in the business is our primary one we do. We have plenty of availability at this point. So we’ll monitor it, and we’ll balance it between investing back in the business, making sure our leverage ratios are on track to decrease. I mean longer term, we want to get below 3x and then a balance between returning capital to shareholders and other investments, smaller investments. Casey Alexander: All right, thank you. Oliver Brewer: Thank you, Casey. Operator: This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Chip Brewer for any closing remarks. Oliver Brewer: Well, thank you, everybody, for dialing in. We appreciate your participation and questions, and we look forward to engaging with you post call, where appropriate. And look forward to continue to update on our journey. I do want to say I’m very pleased, and I believe that the business is continuing to strengthen in the fundamental economic engine, and I hope that came through in our comments. Thanks for your time. Operator: The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect. Follow Topgolf Callaway Brands Corp. (NYSE:MODG) Follow Topgolf Callaway Brands Corp. (NYSE:MODG) We may use your email to send marketing emails about our services. Click here to read our privacy policy......»»

Petróleo Brasileiro S.A. – Petrobras (NYSE:PBR) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript August 4, 2023 Operator: Good morning everyone. Welcome to Petrobras webcast with analysts and investors regarding our Results for Q2 of 2023. It’s a pleasure to be here today. This event will be presented in Portuguese with simultaneous translation into English. The links for […] Petróleo Brasileiro S.A. – Petrobras (NYSE:PBR) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript August 4, 2023 Operator: Good morning everyone. Welcome to Petrobras webcast with analysts and investors regarding our Results for Q2 of 2023. It’s a pleasure to be here today. This event will be presented in Portuguese with simultaneous translation into English. The links for both languages can be found on our Investor Relations page. We would like to inform that all participants will follow the broadcast over the internet as listeners. After our intro, we will have a Q&A session where you can send your questions to petroinvest@petrobras.com.br. Today with us we have Carlos Travassos, Chief Engineering, Technology and Innovation Officer; Clarice Coppetti, Chief Corporate Affairs Officer; Claudio Schlosser, Chief Logistics, Commercialization and Market Officer; Joelson Falcão Mendes, Chief Exploration and Production Officer; Mário Spinelli, Chief Governance and Compliance Officer; Maurício Tolmasquim, Chief Energy Transition and Sustainability Officer; Sergio Caetano Leite, Chief Finance and Investor Relations Officer; and William França, Chief Industrial Processes and Products Officer. To initiate we will watch a video with a message from our President, Jean Paul Prates. Jean Paul Prates: Good morning. It is an honored to be here again to share our results with all of you. It has been six months of achievements and accomplishments, which reflect the quality of the work that we are doing within Petrobras. In this first semester of management, we were able to establish a new commercial strategy that is producing the results we wanted so much, more flexibility and competitiveness for fuel prices. At the same time, we are committed to leading the energy transition in the country in a fair, safe, and inclusive way driven by partnerships we are building with companies of technical excellence and by the growing decarbonization of our operations. One of these results is the neutralization of Scope 2 emissions since all electricity purchased by Petrobras now has a proven renewable origin. It is important to highlight that we approved the revision of the strategic elements for our 2024-2028 strategic plan, as well as the driver to increase low carbon investors to up to 15% of our total investments. In the operational side, FPSO’s Anna Nery in the Campos basin and Almirante Barroso in the Búzios field started up production. FPSO’s Anita Garibaldi and Sepetiba are expected to join them soon, helping us to continue increasing pre-salt production. The utilization factor of our refineries reached 93% with the highest level since 2015, even with several scheduled shutdowns at our refineries, respecting safety, environment and health issues. And we achieved record sales in the first half with 10-ppm diesel accounting for 62% of the total diesel sales of Petrobras. Regarding Diesel R, which is our diesel with 5% of renewable content, we project to increase our processing capacity by 146% later this year. We increased our investments to $5.7 billion in the first half of the year, and we kept our debt under control at a gross debt of $58 billion while our operating generation reached $10 billion. In the first half of 2023, we continued with our total focus on people. We had an unprecedented initiative with the launch of our diversity supplement to reinforce awareness among our internal public and our society at large. All these results were achieved in the first half of this year represent only the beginning of a journey that will take us increasingly further for our benefit and for the benefit of the shareholders and the society. Thank you very much. Operator: Now we will initiate our results of Q2 of 2023. And now I will hand it over to Sergio Caetano Leite. Sergio Caetano Leite: Good morning. I am very pleased to be here today to discuss our results for the second quarter. During this quarter – during this quarter our gross recurring EBITDA was BRL12 billion. This our operational cash flow demonstrates the resilience of our company despite an adverse foreign scenario. We have approximately BRL10 billion, BRL9.6 in operating cash flow. Our debt – our net debt over EBITDA also shows the control of our indebtedness and the financial soundness of our company that would be 0.74 times. Now, the return on capital employed is almost 13%. This is 12.8%. Our net profit totaled $5.8 billion, free cash flow $7 billion, and we continue contributing sustainably. We’re promoting inclusive developing paving R$56.1 billion in taxes contributing towards social development. Our dividends totaled $6.2 billion and we have a comfortable cash flow of $15.8 billion. So despite external adversities, Petrobras financial soundness is positive and the results take us this. This is why we’re – this is one of the ten best years of the company. Now here you can see the foreign environment. There was a drop in Brent. It was significant. We’re talking about the second quarter of 2022, $114 in Brent. Now during this quarter, $78 per barrel, this is the drop of the barrel price was highly significant although the exchange rate is in line with last year’s quarter. The drop of Brent is another factor that I will comment subsequently. And this is why this dropped our results, although we continue with sustainable development and the company continues resilient. Our EBITDA demonstrates that we are aligned with the drop of the Brent and the appreciation of the dollar, but there is an important interpretation since the beginning of the year. I mean Q1 and Q2, our adjusted EBITDA is very close, almost at the same level of a recurrent EBITDA or recurring EBITDA. This is because there has been a lower disinvestment program because of our asset portfolio. This – so our company continues adjustment presenting very important value. Below you can see the devaluation of Brent, which impacts significantly our operations. There was a lower Brent reduction in exploration and production. Now, refining and marketing captures the foreign scenario factors. If we consider the EBITDA with a stock turnaround, we have a drop of 33% vis-à-vis Q1 with a replenishment cost, we have an EBITDA minus 42%. Gas and power aligned with the refining area. So we have a 33% drop if we consider the first quarter in comparison to Q2. Now, our cash generation, as I mentioned, continue strong and robust. There was a slight contribution of non-recurring results that are because of the sale of Potiguar and Norte Capixaba Complex our debt management from – allowed us to – to amortize $0.7 million and these are data. This is data that is aligned with the market in reality. In oil and gas, Petrobras has presented one with the best results despite an adverse scenario. Now, when we talk about our debt, there was a slight spike in our total indebtedness because of the freight of Anna Nery and Almirante to Búzios, but our financial debt maintains its dropping trajectory. We drop, we’ve lowered 0.6% million in debt. Our gross debt is within the limits that we establish and what we announced in our strategic plan. Now our next slide. Now, portfolio management. This is a question – this is a constant question mark from our investments. We have a dynamic portfolio in Petrobras. So, this means that we are going to work with these divestments with investments and with partnerships. There are assets that are of interest and we can do this through partnerships. So, all our portfolio is being reassessed under a different view. This is a long-term view. In addition or aligned with what we announced regarding the signed contracts for divestments, they remain, there are fields Albacora Leste that was sold in Q1. We have Norte Capixaba cluster or complex or Potiguar Complex. Now, in terms of cash inflow generated from these divestments until June of 2023, we are talking about the end of the second quarter, well, this was $3.5 billion. Well, our net results reflect the stringiness of the market, the drop of the Brent and the appreciation of the dollar vis-à-vis the dollar what is important is the crack spread of the diesel. The market is being pressured by the low offering of Russian diesel dropping 40% will hire operating expenses US$0.4 billion. And this has been reduced to – when we compare it to other quarters. Now, what we give back to society? This is part of our ESG program. It is highly consistent and strong. We give back to society in terms of taxes and we gave back R$56.1 billion. Another important fact was we reviewed the shareholders’ remuneration policy. In this policy review – we will maintain important aspects that will guarantee the financial soundness of the company, the control of that. We maintained the same periods, we continue with the same guides of indebtedness. We have a reference, we have our gross debt and how we pay out quarterly our dividends. And we’ve reformulated our formula going from 60% to 45% of free cash flow designated to dividend pay-out. This level is in line with the major worldwide enterprises. I am here considering independent enterprises and also state companies. Remuneration to shareholders, I would like to highlight the main dates that were already announced to the market here for the second quarter remuneration. The base data will be August 21. The first tranche will be paid of – the person will be paid November 21 and the second December 15. We continue controlling our debt using capital principle that is part of the guidance of the company. And we continue committed to generate and to distribute value. Now our buyback program. Well, Petrobras is one of the companies that communicates most with the market in Brazil and abroad. These are the shares that are mostly traded abroad. What we do have impacts, and this is why we have to be careful, therefore, our buyback program will start in a conservative fashion. We will buy 157.8 million preferred shares. This will be done with preferred shares, which represent a small amount of these Free Float that would be 3.5%. And this is a pilot program will last around 12 months. So, we expect, to conclude this, we believe that this will not cause major price fluctuation and it’s the first share buyback program that Petrobras will use to remunerate their shareholders. So, these – so they can be bought in parcels. So what this domain highlights, here, you can see more in our IR sites. And now I will give the floor to Maurício Tolmasquim, Chief Sustainability and Transition Officer. Maurício Tolmasquim: [Foreign Language] But I am just giving you a general overview. So here we see a lower emission rate of greenhouse gases in refining. Since the beginning of the operation, which was in 2019, we signed the first charter contract for hybrid support vessels, meaning using batteries and marine fuel. This allowed us to reduce emissions by about 15%. We certified our energy production through I-REC, renewable energy certificate guaranteeing that 100% of the electricity purchased in – was generated by renewable sources. And we invested BRL 200 million in a new gas treatment system at REPLAN and REFAP, which reduces emissions in particulate matters, which have a negative health impact. So these are Scopes 1 and 2, meaning decarbonizing the company’s processes. In Scope 3 which refers to products with a lower carbon footprint. Our goal is to expand our diesel production capacity with renewable content by 2023, especially through processing. So this was authorized by ANP to operate another unit with REPAR, expanding our production to 12 million liters per day. We signed a cooperation agreement and we began a new test with, for maritime transport with a chartered vessel from Transpetro, which has 24% renewable content, which also allows us to reduce emissions by about 17%. So those were the highlights I had for you, and I’ll pass it over to my colleague here, Joelson. Q&A Session Follow Petroleo Brasileiro Sa Petrobras (NYSE:PBR) Follow Petroleo Brasileiro Sa Petrobras (NYSE:PBR) We may use your email to send marketing emails about our services. Click here to read our privacy policy. Joelson Falcão Mendes: Good morning, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here. We’re going to start by discussing the growth of our operated production in the second half, or excuse me, in the first half of 2023, we have seen significant growth. There was a slight reduction from the first quarter to the second, which is expected considering our maintenance operations, which had been programmed and planned. Our own production is also in line with what we had planned. It seems like we are going to finish the year along what we have planned without major issues and in line with what happened in the second quarter of 2022. Our pre-salt owned production as expected had a significant increase, which represents 78% of our own production already with more than 2 million barrel equivalent from coming from pre-salt. Next slide, please. In Buzios, we have a relevant production level. We are producing 800,000 BOEDs total. It’s very significant and due to the relevance of this production. In five years only, we have an accumulated production of 1 billion barrels of oil, which was much faster than what we did in Campos Marlim in the 2P field as well. So it’s extremely significant how quickly we were able to grow our production from Buzios with these five units, which are the five original units foreseen, we have an additional six that will produce oil in excess to this. Next slide, please. Another important activity that we had during the second quarter was returning all of our production from the Bahia Terra Cluster. We had to adapt our production there according to the new requirements from the ANP. And we had a long contact with them with the risk analysis for all of the activities needed. And it was a new outlook on safety and how our activities are done. So next slide, please. At the end of last year, we also participated in a bid round and we were able to acquire three important blocks in investment of over BRL 700 million in the Norte de Brava field, which is the most significant one in investments. We acquired 100% of it and it’s close to an area where we are already in production, which is very important. We want areas where we already have an infrastructure that can be used. Also, Água Marinha, we had some partners there and also Sudoeste de Sagitário with other partners. So this consolidates our exploration strategy with profitable assets close to our activities in borders that we already know very well. There are other frontier areas in Brazil, but these are well-known areas where we can produce with lower extraction costs and certainty of that exploration area. We’re very confident that we’re going to get good results from these areas, and we’re planning to start this exploration next year. Wells are planned for 2024. Next slide, please. Within our strategy of recovering more and getting more value from the assets that we have, we concluded a major seismic survey in Tupi and Iracema through partnerships. So this is a major area. We have very high quality images, which will allow us to plan how this area will be explored. And of course, this is a deep conversation that we’re having with the ANP to decide how we can have another production in this area. So it was an extension and we expect this to have a lot of value for Petrobras and for Brazil if we can increase the prediction time in these areas. Next slide. This slide shows the extraction cost for pre-salt, which is in line with what we had during the first quarter in mature areas deep waters and shallow waters. Naturally, we would see lifting costs go up. There’s a reduction in production due to the depletion of these fields, and there are also need other associated costs. So the total cost of oil produced is quite significant for our financial results around $35 per barrel, which is in line with what we had been expecting considering all of these production changes that make us very competitive. That’s my last slide, so thank you very much and I’ll pass it on to Marcos [ph] Travassos. Thank you. Carlos Travassos: Thank you, Joelson. Good morning. So I’m going to start my presentation here by discussing some of the advances that we had in technology. Our company has the highest number of active patents in Brazil, over 110,000. So for the second year in a row, we had a record number of patents licensed. 214 were made available for licensing, so we’re made available to the market. During this time, we received some awards related to innovation. We received the MIT Award as one of the most innovative companies in Brazil. There’s no ranking, but we are among the top most innovative companies. There we also received the Elite Awards in Nevada and the U.S. for our HAZOP program, and we also received the Valor Inovação Award as the one of the most innovative oil and gas companies in the world and the second most innovative company in Brazil across all industries. It’s our best historical result and it’s a very relevant and important award for us. It shows that we’re really valuing innovation, which is so important for transformation. This is what the company has been doing and has been getting prepared for. The next slide will show some of these innovations. You can see our FPSO all electric. And the next project will include our combined cycle technology. So we’re going to use all of the technology that we have in our units to reduce our emissions rate. We also saw some advances in remote operating marine technologies. We have artificial intelligence being used by these drones, onshore monitoring as well. We also advanced through our PEP70 Well Efficiency Program. Our goal is to reduce the cost of each well in pre-salt and PEP70 was our goal, which is to reduce values of about a $100 million to $70 million. So we concluded this program achieving these results. And downstream as Tolmasquim has said, we also had an agreement for industrial scale tests to produce bio-aromatics in Riograndense refinery based on vegetable oils. So we were able to get plant-based products and next year they will be processed and tested, which can be very important for our refineries as we’ll increase our FCC load through plant-based oils also generating products with a lower carbon footprint. We advanced in our robotics program. So to the right, you see our Petrobot, which is in testing for equipment inspection. And finally on the right, we have our fire fighting robot created in a partnership with some startups, which is now being tested in a smaller version to be used in our platforms. Next slide, please. This slide discusses some of our projects. At the center, we see Almirante Barroso, which is five, we started our operation there on March 25. Then on [indiscernible] with production ramp up. To the right, we see the auction for the P-32 area to find a sustainable density for this platform. We had 31 new wells in operation in the first half of 2023, an increase of 25% in their interconnection. And you can see the whole of P-78. This is our first project after we revitalized and reinvigorated our hiring strategies. So this is our own area that’s going to operate in the Búzios field. We also have FPSO Sepetiba in MERO 2, which is headed towards Brazil. It’s close to South Africa and expected to arrive by September. This will be our last unit to go into operation in 2023. And we also have FPSO Anita Garibaldi, and its last few stages to go into production and it will start its operations in August. So Anita Garibaldi is the second unit that will go into operations in the Marlim Sul field. Also, we’re announcing that we’re publishing today the Barracuda REVIT. So this is a call for bid for a production unit that has the capacity of 100,000 barrels. And this is also a part of our renewal program for Bacia de Campos. The next slide shows some of the advances that we have downstream. We had some significant advances to expand and modernize our refinery. We also published today an auction for the second train for RNEST. We’re going to increase our processing capacity for that refinery from 115,000. This revamping will increase it by 15,000 and we expect to have 130,000 more in the second cycle. So the processing capacity will be 260,000 barrels of oil per day and it will generate 30,000 jobs in direct and indirect employment in [indiscernible]. We also see our coke drums at RBPC, which is a very challenging project. It was the biggest implementation that they ever had there, and they – it was revitalized and modernized in our coking activity there. Here we have our image of acid water in the REPLAN treatment plant. Here we will add 10,000 cubic meters diesel. The works is according to the deadline. And here we also recently celebrated the deployment of the Reduc HDT work. This was a REVAP work where we added a new reactor. The one that you can see and hit this, we will have more diesel in Reduc. And the last image you can see GASLUB. We resumed the work of GASLUB. I have to register in record time. The last time that there was a shutdown, we needed 30 months for analysis and for a new bid. And now we’ve resumed the GASLUB works in only six months with engineering contracts, with building assembling contracts and other contracts. We are here in Itaboraí, in the UPG work in GASLUB. And all GASLUB – and GASLUB, we started the UTE. This is a project that is conditioned to an auction and we will present a proposal throughout 2024. But we’ve started the contract. This is a demand for these types of auctions for this thermal plant unit. And here I end my presentation and I will give the floor to the Chief Industrial Processes and Products Officer, William França. William França: Thank you, Travassos. Can you hear me? Can you hear me and see me? Yes. So during this quarter, our results were excellent in terms of operation in our natural gas plants and refining our natural gas plant had high results here the best in the history, the sustainability plant excellent. We also had a burning rate that this measures the quality of decarbonization in our natural gas area. We had very good burning rates. This means that we’re evolving in energy efficiency lowering our carbon footprint, which is very positive. Well, I’m sorry, I didn’t say good morning to everyone. Now, in our refineries, our utilization factor was 93%. This is a result of our planning and logistics and marketing and allowed us to increase the utilization factor guaranteed by the excellent operational availability of our assets. Here you can see our refineries, therefore, this is a very good result. The best result since 2015. This is the best result in the history of refining pre-salt oil in refinery input. We are almost 70% the oil that comes from pre-salt. We are increasing the share of pre-salt in the processing of our unit. We increased gasoline days almost 70% and this result was positive because we ended the REVAP, Reduc, REPLAN shutdown and RPBC although there were shutdowns in the refineries, we achieved this result. This means that we can make even more progress in the utilization factors of our refineries during the second semester. Carlos Travassos: William, your microphone is muted. William França: Our result of oil byproducts highlighting diesel oil, once again, we achieved a record in with 2.11 million cubic meters of produced diesel and we will reach another record in July with 2.38. Here we have 2.38 million and then we will outperform in August because we started at the end of July with the 700. Our unit was readapted. We included another reactor and other offsite accessories says that here we have offsite structure to produce diesel with 4,000 cubic meters a day and due to our operational availability and the trust on the unit, we will outperform and we will outperform July and this is due to the excellent working structure of our commercialization area. This is Tolmasquim mentioned, we have excellent result in gas emission in emission intensity. Here, we had 103.7 results and we reached 102 in region. That is the best historic result in all refining. We’re close to the standard number achieved by refineries. There are refineries with something lower than 90 like RefTOP. So emissions intensity Tolmasquim in June, we had the best historic result in terms of CO2 with 37.2. This shows that we are evolving in trust, increasing utilization factor, and lowering our carbon footprint regarding the assets of our refineries. Your microphone is closed once again. Now I would like to broaden refining to implement. So we are studying some robotics sales in our company. We are working firmly in our decarbonization process. So thank you everyone. And I’ll now pass it over to my friend, my longtime friend, 36 years Director, Claudio Schlosser. Claudio Schlosser: Thank you, William, and everyone else. It’s a great pleasure to be here. I’m talking about the highlights of the office and we’re going to start with this slide, presenting sales of derivatives in our market. Our oil product sales, which had an increase versus 2022. We had some effects that led to this. One of them was the higher competitiveness for gasoline. We also had LP seasonality – LPG seasonality and diesel. This diesel effect was partially offset – because during this time, we saw a higher rate of diesel mix-ins from 10% to 15%. This happened in mid-April. So if we look at the data from the second half of 2022, we were very aligned despite these divestments in the Reman refinery in Amazonas. One item that was mentioned by William was the excellent result of availability, which led to historical levels in refinery availability, which really supported the sales of these oil products. As a consequence, we had lower margins, but our margins were still above our historical levels. This increase in refinement allowed us to capture this margin across all of our industries. So it reduced oil exports and we allowed the country to process more oil. As another highlight, gasoline sales grew 5% this quarter. It happened, especially due to the higher competitiveness against our main alternatives for clients. And in addition to that, we had an increase in fuels for light vehicles, that is automobiles, motorcycles. Gasoline had more competitiveness versus hydrated ethanol due to tax reasons. This can be explained by tax reasons. And just for your reference, Petrobras Gás participation in the second half of 2022 was 40.3%, and in the second quarter it was 42.3%. And it shows how we have significantly evolved during this cycle. Looking at the foreign market, we had higher exports due to our production of oil products and our availability. Due to the concentration of programmed downtime during the first half of 2023 in refinement. Next slide, please. So this slide discusses oil sales. There was a reduction in exports, which was expected due to this increase in availability in the refinery park and the higher utilization of pre-salt oil in refinery loads. And this adds a lot of value to how these assets are generating value. We had about 150,000 barrels per day produced nationally in comparison to other quarters. Another point that allows us to understand this variation was the inventory in the first quarter. So it was favor in the first quarter, because we were carrying out some ongoing exports from the previous year, which ended up being carried out in the first quarter. So that had an impact of a 100,000 barrels a day. Next slide please. The next topic is the approval of the new commercial strategy. This was widely communicated, and I’d like to take this opportunity to underscore that this was a very positive change for Petrobras. We started having more room to work in our commercial strategy, and of course, this is aligned with the best production conditions, our refinement assets, the use of our logistical assets to have much more competitive prices and to be able to compete in markets that add value to the company. So overall, this measure optimizes our refinement and logistics assets. Another essential value that was reported in this strategy was the mitigation of volatility peaks, which gives our clients a more stable price environment. This allows us to work in balance with the international market in a way that is sustainable and profitable. Next slide, please. This is my last slide in the presentation. It was widely discussed and presented by Tolmasquim, our Director. And I’d just like to underscore our hybrid vessel. Not only does it reduce emissions, but it also reduces costs. And this is a part of our offense a lot program, which is focusing on better reliability and safety, but also in logistics costs. So this was an important effort that was carried out. We are advancing significantly in reducing emissions. And I can also mention the new test that we are performing using 24% biodiesel produced from plant sources. And there’s also a pioneer process of green recycling of one line, which is following international ESG best practices. So that’s all we had to say. Thank you for your attention and we’ll give the floor back to Carlos. A – Carlos Travassos: Thank you, Schlosser. And we’re now going to begin the questions and answer session. The first question we got was from Vicente Falanga from Bradesco BBI. And he asks, Sergio. Sergio, how do you see the company’s minimum optimal cash $28 billion? Can you work with less than that? Sergio Caetano Leite: Hello, Vicente, I hope you are doing well. Well, we are still creating a strategic plan for 2024 to 2028. As you know, these answers will be addressed in the projections that will happen in this plan. But I’d like to remind you that our – the minimal cash is $5 million in our PO. So our reference is $8 billion. So this is well in line. That’s our idea. We want to keep it like that. Thank you. Carlos Travassos: Thank you, Sergio. The next question was also asked by Vicente. It’s a question for Schlosser. Schlosser, Petrobras is selling gasoline below marginal levels. For how long does the pricing committee believe that this kind of discount will be sustainable for? Schlosser, you have to turn on your microphone. Claudio Schlosser: Thank you, Carlos. Vicente, thank you for your question. As we presented before, the essential value of our commercial strategies based on three points to be competitive, having competitive prices for our clients and generating assets through marginal value. And another very important value is international volatility. So we’re providing to our clients price stability. What we’re seeing right now is a lot of uncertainty about the global economy. And this affects the demand for energy, how much is expected and the supply of oil and fuel due to these geopolitical issues, the Ukraine war. So this short-term combination of factors led to high volatility in the market. The reference levels adopted by the international market fluctuated wildly. And another important point is an inflow of Russian products to Brazil. Our monitoring shows that in July, Russian diesel was over 80% of our production in Brazil. So we’re monitoring the market every day and whenever it’s necessary, we’ll have readjustments in our commercial strategy. Obviously, we can’t advance these decisions yet, so thank you for your question, Carlos. Carlos Travassos: Next question from Gabriel Barra from Citibank for Joelson. Joelson, could you elaborate on the information regarding the government discussions and with the environmental authority regarding the – first Amazonas the margin equatorial development? How much will you invest in exploration and development? Could Suriname and Guyana be an alternative for long-term investments? Joelson Falcão Mendes: Thank you, Gabriel, for your question. Well, the portfolio management – margin has five basins that goes from Rio Grande do Norte until the Amazon basin in Amapá. So we initiated our environmental licensing projects in two basins for Amazon and Portuguese in a sequence of wells, one in Amazon and another wells in the Portuguese basin. And we already supplied all the information requested by IBAMA for these two areas, these two licensing processes already from Petrobras’ point of view. And we have let the government view the – the government is informed by all of our actions and we have exchanged information with IBAMA that is environmental agency trying to ask questions. In July, we ended this communication. So now this is being analyzed by IBAMA. We have no pending issues and we depend – we don’t have to give any more information. Regarding investments, well, we expect in our planning and 16 wells in the five basins in five years, this is an exploratory investment of US$3 billion in these areas. All the areas here in Latin America and also Western Africa are of our interest because they’re similar to our activities. We have planned exploratory activities for Columbia next year in Suriname, Uruguay and Africa. Our exploratory team is in communication and is paying attention to auctions and is talking to partners. These are areas where we will possibly invest, but this is still under negotiation and we have to wait for the end of these negotiations. We are reassured that this year we will be able to initiate one of the most advanced basins in terms of licensing process and this would be a first well. Carlos Travassos: So thank you very much Joel. So we have an additional question from Gabriel Barra about Braskem. According to there is a discussion regarding the cell of Braskem and some are interested in buying the control of a company. Could you give us the view of the management regarding the prospects for the oil sector and investment? Should this be a long-term focus for Petrobras, the petrochemical sector? As he’s facing technical problems, we will go to the next question and Sergio will answer the question about Braskem. Sergio Caetano Leite: Can you hear me? So thank you. Thank you for the question. Braskem is appearing in the media. The operators are questioning these proposals together with a partner. In our strategic plan, they mentioned the management of the company – I’m sorry, we’re having sound problems. I would like to apologize. We’re receiving very choppy sound. This is a business that makes sense for our company in the mid and the long run. Carlos Travassos: Thank you, Sergio. The next question from Bruno Montanari, Morgan Stanley and it’s for Schlosser. Regarding the company’s commercial policy, there are questions regarding market international reference with dispersion and parity accounts that go from 10% to 30% currently. Now, naturally each player has a cost structure which hinders the comparison. Now from the Petrobras system point of view, could you mention in average where the price of the company is when we compare to the marginal bands and the cost of the client? Claudio Schlosser: Bruno, thank you for your question. Here we have the opportunity to reflect on each one of the agents that perform in the Brazilian market. For instance, you are talking about a parity, the dispersion of the educators just demonstrates how the supply alternatives are different or can be different depending on the scale, infrastructure, logistic costs. And this is all reflected on the efficiency of this agent. And when they import certain byproduct in terms of Petrobras, we also have our own costs and productions opportunities and also the import and export fronts of oil or fuel. Our efficiency is significant because we’ve implemented this type of logistic. So when we implement this commercial strategy, we already incorporate within it all of these elements. These are the elements, these are differential, a competitive elements of Petrobras. So we have the best production conditions and logistic conditions. And this is one of the elements of our commercial strategy as a competitive price mitigating market volatility as we see currently as we mentioned. Now regarding the current positioning of the price, regarding reference marginal value, we cannot disclose this because we would expose data that is very sensitive for the company from the competition point of view. So this is it. Carlos Travassos: So thank you very much Schlosser. The next question is for you from Bruno Montanari regarding the commercial policy. Assuming that the independent importer is in competitive in terms of price, how can the company believe that the market will balance from here and due to the structural need to import diesel and gasoline? Can import – can Petrobras import with a competitive margins? What about Russian diesel with the company consider importing Russian diesel for the market? Claudio Schlosser: Well, now regarding the market balance, it is very important to remember that the greatest diesel importers and gas for Brazil are the distributing companies. They make up their mix with different suppliers nationally, international and this from different origins. This could be Russia. When we analyze the month of July, we can see that over 80% of the imported diesel by third parties to Brazil came from Russia. This is a product that presents certain restrictions from sanctions, but it has flown in the international market. Now from our side, we are meeting the commitments with our customers. We are optimizing our refining complex, broadening the use of our cluster and our logistic assets and complementing our national offering with very specific imports. Petrobras tries to operate – to optimize its operations of foreign trade to use its logistic capacity and analyzing the synergies of its assets with this what happens at the end of the line. With promising results is that we practice competitive margins regarding the margins offered by other players that are not integrated. So regarding opportunities import of Russian diesel, we are constantly assessing the risks and returns. As I said, there are particularities regarding the sanction and this is why we observe closely the sanction loss regarding Petrobras Global activities. So thank you, Schlosser. Carlos Travassos: The next question from Bruno Amorim from Goldman Sachs. And this is geared to Sergio regarding the dividend policy. The new policy was very clear, but this means that all no free cash flow will be for dividend payout and by batch, can you pay an extraordinary dividends at the beginning of next year due intend to draw the net debt of the company. Sergio Caetano Leite: Thank you for your question. In reality, our dividend payout policy is similar to our past policy. We’re have – they’re having problems with the sound again, can you hear me? Well, your audio is a little bit choppy. Well, unfortunately the sound of my laptop isn’t very good. As I said, the current policies anticipate the payout of extraordinary dividends. So yes, we expect to payout these dividends. The decision is going to depend on the technical analysis of the company in the short, mid and long run. And then the analysis of certain adjustments and now these adjustments will be concentrated at the end of the year when we have a general outlook of the results of the company throughout the entire year. Now, regarding the net debt, the financial that is dropping our debt is impacted by the charter, but it’s at a comfortable level regarding RPL [ph] and the levels are very, are according to what we expect in our strategic plan. But we also follow up. There could be a fine tuning throughout our next strategic plan. And thank you for your question. Thank you, Sergio. Carlos Travassos: The next question from Lilyanna Yang from HSBC. And she said, in this management, will Petrobras in take their investments to a new level? Can you talk about the strategic view regarding energy transition? Could you elaborate on the rationale in expanding investments in biofuel and negotiations with you Unigel? And when can we expect an announcement about complete strategic plan for 2024 between 2028? Now Tolmasquim and William have the floor in order to answer the question. Maurício Tolmasquim: I am going to start talking about energy transition and biofuels and then I will give it back to William that who will talk about fertilizers and Unigel and he will give us necessary information. So thank you very much for this question. There are three main reasons why Petrobras will embark in the biofuel business. Number one, will be that Brazil is one of the countries with the greatest amount of available land water. And so these three factors together, there are very few countries that present these three factors together. Number two, is that despite the electrification of a number of transportation means all the logistic of the country is for liquid fuels. So to use biofuel, well you leverage the existing logistic factor. Number three, is highly connected to Petrobras that is that we can use or we can adapt the existing refining units to produce this biofuel. So Petrobras has a comparative advantage when we compare it to other players, because these are adaptations of existing units and Petrobras has an excellent trajectory in all segments in highway transportation. It’s to put the vegetable oil in would be between 5%, 7% together with oil and this is produced through treatment. They produce diesel and therefore this is a patent from [indiscernible] from the research center. Then we have air transportation with the unit that is dedicated where you can only use vegetable oil and then you can produce fuel and there will be a major demand throughout the world as of 2027, because there is a mandate that all companies will have to decarbonize themselves as of this period. There will be SAF, there will be a worldwide demand for SAF and Petrobras has an advantage. Maritime transportation where we mentioned we are carrying out a experience of vessels that combine biodiesel to their – and we also have a biodiesel production and we produce the bunker and that there is an advantage here. And finally, the petrochemical industry, which is a major trend, how to pro – produce plastics. So there is a test that will be performed in the Rio Grande density refinery using bio oil and vegetable oil. Therefore, from the strategic point of view, if there is a country that has to embark in biofuel is Brazil. And if there is a company that has to embark in biodiesel in Brazil, it’s Petrobras, because precisely we have all the refining investments and therefore it is possible to adapt their – our refining unit. Now, I will give it back to William that is in charge of refining and he will talk about fertilizers and he will answer the question about Unigel. William França: So thank you very much Lilyanna. Thank you for your question. It is interesting when you ask this number one that the verticalization is important when you see how things compliment themselves. I’m talking refining, petrochemical and the fertilizing production – fertilizer production. So we are studying fertilizers. We are analyzing the return of the company to fertilizers. We are already working with a working troop coordinated by the officers in order to start up this. There is an advantage that it doesn’t need natural gas. It could use asphalt residue from Repar. So the refinery from Paraná compliments and lanza [ph] that is right beside the refinery. Therefore we are assessing the economic feasibility as you mentioned to start UFN-III, we have a work, this is a gas plant with 80% that is 80% mechanic. We are studying how we complete UFN-III Três Lagoas that will have capacity of 3,200 tons day of urea of ammonia. So we are also, we compliment – we, gas no where we have, we will have the production of lubricant using oil gas from Reduc. There’s a plant that will start in the middle of the year. And in this plant we will have a CO2 plus production. Now the CO2 plus this is rich in raw material to produce a ethane to polypropylene. We have a non-compete with Braskem [ph] but because of this Braskem is very important as Sergio mentioned. So it will be very important here due to the important, the size and the integration of Braskem with this process. So the integration with the refining industries is very important because they supply enough the natural gas, because of our refineries, are right beside our couplets like a Massad Rio de Janeiro [indiscernible] there is a strong integration with raw material petrochemical lubricants, and also fertilizers, well, where gas lube will have remaining of 2 million cubic meters of gas that we will be able to use for fertilizers as well for an addition integration for a Biofine plant using totally green raw material and producing biodiesel. Diesel are 100 and our SAF, our Sustainable Aviation Fuel, what is this? This is the use of a refined hydrogen with green raw material. We will carry out a test in November in the Riograndense refinery with Ultrapar and Braskem. This is a green refinery. We will have 2,000 tons of soybean in our catalytic cracking unit to produce green NAFTA and green propane. We’re talking about raw material that comes from renewable sources for petrochemical plants. And this will be successful. This is an international patents. We trust [indiscernible] and this will be the first totally green refinery in the country. So we are complementing petrochemical, biorefining lubricants, fertilizers, and refining. Thank you for the question. Carlos Travassos: Thank you, Tolmasquim. Thank you, William. And the next question will be asked by Rodrigo Almeida from Santander Bank for Schlosser and William again. After nearly three months of the new pricing policy being announced, what advances have you made in gaining competitiveness for the company considering the competition with Russian diesel? How are internal production costs and commercial costs changed with the increase in production? Is there any significant cost dilution? How has the company dealt with a higher production of products that have a limited demand in the domestic market? Claudio Schlosser: Rodrigo, our entire commercial work as its starting point, a planning process that is quite complex. It involves over a 100,000 variables, 40,000 restrictions. So it’s a very complex process, but what I can tell you is that I joined the company 36 years ago and our process was exactly that it was based on that foundation. And not only Petrobras, companies around the world are adopting this planning mechanism and it takes into consideration, for example, the production of each kind of oil per refinery per unit. And it also uses all of the logistics restrictions which are also placed there. And why do we depend on the model? What information do we get from it? As a final result, we optimize our refinement and logistics assets. So what we’re seeking are economic assessments for each of our operations and for each production alternative that we have, both taking oil to some refinery or exporting it. Similarly, following this planning model, we have different production fronts from all sorts of oil products. It analyzes changes in quality. So its entire goal is to find a more efficient process. So the utilization of our refineries and increasing production was supported by these economic assessments and they had a very positive result for the company. Considering costs as you mentioned, I would draw your attention to this. Most of the costs or the cost of the product sold is mostly including the entire business, a result of the raw material oil. If we add in the energy it takes for it to be produced, then it’s basically over 90%. So the dilution effect is basically in existence. So we don’t really take it into consideration in our planning and optimization plans. So in the operational plan, we don’t take this into account. A lot of it is connected to the bread I don’t know if William has any comments about this, but I’ll pass it over to him. William França: Thank you, Claudio. Yes, that was a good question, Rodrigo. Thank you. To add to what Claudio said, our refinery cost has a synergy across all of our refineries. Some of them have a higher cost due to their complexity location, and others have a lower cost. But since there is a synergy across all kinds of refinement, our cost is about $2 or $2.5 per barrel, which is quite reasonable considering our refinement. And even considering the last program to down style – downtime which increased our cost, we were able to keep that stability around $2 to $2.5 per barrel. And I’d also like to highlight this. We’re getting very good utilization factors around the level of 93% to 95%. In May, we had 95%. In June, we were able to stay at 93%. Obviously, this depends on planning as was said. So planning is what is going to define what load is received in each refinery, the different products of course. And obviously, we have availability, which is a significant factor. Looking at our systems, they have a certain maximum load, but we also have maximum loads that are adjusted and authorized by agencies. So it defines the maximum loads that we have with environmental agencies. So this is due to planning and we hope to work at 95 or even a bit higher, but of course it will depend under the pan demand of our logistics provider. Thank you. Carlos Travassos: Thank you, William. The second question from Rodrigo is from Sergio, and he asks about capital allocation. So Sergio, I’d like to understand if the additional project for energy transition being studied are influencing your minimal cash and your reference cash indications that you passed to us before. In theory, the company will conclude 2023 with cash levels above the indications that we have for the minimum and for the reference. And it would be interesting to learn a bit more about what will be done with this excess cash on the short term. Sergio Caetano Leite: Hi, Rodrigo. Thank you for that question. As I said before, we are at a very comfortable position in cash. We don’t have on the horizon any sort of radical changes to manage excess cash. And excess cash can be used to pay additional dividends. It can become additional dividends. If the administrators understand that that’s the best use for our capital. So thank you very much again. Carlos Travassos: Thank you, Sergio. Still on this topic. We got a question from Pedro Soares from BTG Pactual addressed to you. He would like to know a bit more about extraordinary dividend payouts. We know that this possibility is established in our payout policy, but we would like to hear from you if it would make sense to have a new statutory reserve to use resources to expand the company or if that doesn’t make any sense? And if there’s an extraordinary payout, will it only be defined when we receive results from the fourth quarter? Sergio Caetano Leite: Hi, Pedro. Thank you for your question. So some of it has been addressed in the previous answer, but yes, the extra results may be used for payouts extraordinary or additional payouts. But if a reserve is created considering what you said, since it doesn’t exist yet, it would need to be approved by an extraordinary shareholders meeting and we would need to have a justification for it but it is feasible. Connected to – but it needs to be connected to shareholders and their interests need to be represented? Carlos Travassos: Thank you, Sergio. The next question is from Monique Greco from Itaú BBA. And it will be addressed to Spinelli. So Spinelli, can you tell us a bit about the first impressions you’ve had since you took on this position? And if you can tell us what has been your focus in your office? Mário Spinelli: I’m Mário, thank you. Good morning and thank you for your question. I knew this office because I was an ombudsman for the company for nearly six years. So we have a governance system at Petrobras, which has already been robust but can be strengthened. Our compliance participates in decision making processes. So whatever decisions are received by the Board are examined by our governance department. And when it comes to compliance, we also have a very robust system and this is paying attention to new challenges. So in our compliance department, we have been looking at all acquisitions of sexual harassment in the company, which is very important even for our reputation. So we’re going to try to make compliance come closer to the business working with our managers. And similarly, it’s important to highlight that when we need to work with a more repressive initiative we just had the 10-year anniversary of the Anti-Corruption Act in Brazil. But you have to know that Petrobras is the company that most uses more – most enforces this Act that most punishes for corruption. Of course, we don’t want it to happen when it does – when it does happen we need to punish it. So over $90 million have been applied in fines to companies, there has been a volume of sanction applied to all levels of the government and Petrobras represent 21% of them. So I had the opportunity of working with this Bill, and I’m very happy to see how Petrobras is using it. And the most important part is that 61% of these sanctions or the initiative is being enforced by us, by our Directors. So identifying regularity was done by the manager itself, which shows that our compliance culture is being spread across the company. So these are some of our results and future challenges. Thank you. Carlos Travassos: Thank you, Spinelli. The next question from Monique will be asked to William. William, even with the maintenance carried out in the last quarters, the company has maintained high utilization levels for its refineries. Is there still some space to increase these utilization rates? And what would be the desired level for a refinery or for the entire refinery structure? William França: Well, I’ve answered a similar question to that, but I’ll add-in some information. We’ve been able to get very high utilization factors increasing availability. Carlos Travassos: Sorry, your microphone was closed, William. William França: So as I said, we have higher availability in our refineries considering our commercial and logistical plan, but there’s an essential factor here. We need to, well, we have good availability, but we have to ensure that all aspects are respected including safety, environment, integrity and that includes diversity. So we’ve talked about diversity before and we need to maintain the same levels. So we’re very happy to say that we have recordable incident rates in our refinery infrastructure of 037 [ph], which is the global benchmark. Of course, we can’t rest on those laurels. We know that SMS is a running truck. You always have to pay attention to the brake because if you let go, it will go down. So you always have to keep attention and respect all of the procedures that will ensure that your activities are done safely, respecting the environment, respecting people, their global health and with integrity. Okay, Monique so it’s very important to highlight that operational results are important, but they need to be done sustainably. Thank you for your question. Carlos Travassos: Thank you, William. We’re going to repeat Gabriel Barra’s question about Braskem to Sergio since he had a technical issue. Sergio, there’s a discussion on selling Braskem and some people are interested in buying it. So can you give us the management’s take on these investments in the petrochemical industry? Should this be one of the company’s long-term focuses? Sergio Caetano Leite: Gabriel, thank you. We didn’t get enough sound during the first part of my answer, but around May, we launched a review of the company’s strategic directives and this guides a new plan, which is ongoing. It takes one-year to generate these strategic plans, so it’s at the end of its conclusion. So with diversification for petrochemicals and fertilizers, this will allow us to look at petrochemicals differently. So it’s also important to see that major integrated companies have a strong position in petrochemicals. Petrobras has a strong stake at Braskem because we understood that petrochemicals were important to develop our business as a whole. So this integrion provides value and there’s a matter of long-term security here, since the long-term scenario is lower, margins for example, for gasoline. So we will require oil to be used in more noble purposes. So if you consider these three things that Braskem has a strategic compliance, allowing it to or determining it to diversify in the petrochemical industry. If you look at the medium- and long-term perspective and the importance for the resilience of our business, yes, we can consider that petrochemicals are very attractive and aligned to our long-term strategy. Thank you for your question. Carlos Travassos: The next question is from Luiz Carvalho from UBS to Schlosser. He’s asking for the national spread of gasoline on Brent was at negative levels. Other local products could export diesel at these levels, but from our understanding both points represent that the company is below the marginal price levels. So how do you understand this? Does this assumption make sense? Can Petrobras be below its pricing interval exporting for a marginal value? Does that make sense for the company? Claudio Schlosser: Thank you, Luiz for your question. This topic involves marginal values for Petrobras. So as a highlight – I’d like to highlight that this is the result of a complex operational plan, as we said before, involving different areas and the alternatives that we have to run our business. What I would add about to what has already been said is that basically refining is a joint process. So when you’re refining a bear of oil, you’re not producing a single product. You have a basket of gas products, and the relationship between them influences the marginal value of one to the other. So to summarize it for these reasons, the marginal values is not limited to exportation. It involves production, importing the products. So it cannot be only compared to exportation. And the other value that we have to highlight here is the mitigation due to volatility peaks in the market. We have a very volatile market. If we looked at the previous strategy, Petrobras would make these adjustments immediately for this volatility, and would provide stability for their clients. So we were able to overcome this moment and we’re still monitoring the domestic and international markets. And when we have to adjust the prices up or down, we will according to technical parameters in our commercial strategy. Carlos? Carlos Travassos: Thank you, Schlosser. The next question from Luiz Carvalho is for Sergio, and it asks about the strategical plan. Sergio, the strategical plan included diversification. Now, as the plan is being developed, what have been your focus in your internal discussions? Will you make more organic investments, or is there a procedural for mergers and acquisitions? How much diversification is the company considering 6% or 15% of the CapEx direction for low carbon? Would that also include these activities, petrochemicals, renewable developments, or should we see new investments in M&As? Sergio Caetano Leite: This range between 6% and 15% is specific for energy transition in the world. There is a business of low carbon actions and initiatives of low carbon. Today, 6% that we see in the CapEx, the use of 6% of Petrobras CapEx is US$4.4 billion. And it is used, and it is part of our way of operating internally, decarbonizing our operations. And this has been successful. We are amongst the greatest investors in decarbonizing the operations of oil and gas. Now it’s obvious that Petrobras has to recover a space that was left behind. We did go toward Scope 3 of decarbonization, and there is this range. We establish this rate between 6% and 15%, specifically for energetic transition, decarbonization of our operations and new investments. Any M&A that emerges in the area will fit within the range between 6% and 15%. It has to be within the range of CapEx allocation. Now for these new investments, Petrobras has decided the upper management has decided to embark in partnerships with big companies like Petrobras. Because we do understand that partnerships faster the accelerated – transference of a know-how, and they mitigate are – that is inherent, inherent. When you embark in a new business area, the company may consider an M&A or a certain acquisition as long as it is between 6% and 15%. But these M&As must meet a number of criteria strategic compliance, whatever is the M&A. It has to be accordance with our strategic planning. It has to be in compliance. We are not going to invest in transition for the sake of investing. The economic part is important. We need a return, we need a consistent cost structure. So dimension and a strategic compliance would be the main criteria that we take into account when we think about mergers and acquisitions. Carlos Travassos: Sergio, the next question from Régis Cardoso from Credit Suisse for Schlosser, it’s about fuel prices. Can we guarantee a country’s supply when there is high volatility and international prices? Could Petrobras be forced to increase it? Import levels taking to, although it can take it can result in economic losses. What is the share of Russian fuel in Brazil? Claudio Schlosser: Well, the Brazilian market is properly supplied, and there are a number of agents that work in this market. So in addition to Petrobras, there are other national companies. We have distributing companies, we have diesel and gas importers, independent importers, and even distributors are the main importers. And in addition, there is an alternative of biofuels. Now, when we talk about Russian diesel, there has been an evolution since the beginning of the year reaching values above 80% in July. And this environment results in great competitiveness. Petrobras six is a market share that allows us to use our assets, our logistics structure, and our refining as is creating value in a sustainable fashion and also part of our commercial strategy. Carlos Travassos: So thank you Schlosser. We have a last question that is for you for Rodolfo Angele, JPMorgan. In May Petrobras published a new policy prize seeing opportunity cost for clients and opportunities for Petrobras. How can the Russian diesel dynamic and the refining capacity will impact the second semester? Could you talk about the range of gasoline prices currently? Claudio Schlosser: So thank you, Rodolfo. I would just like to highlight the commercial strategy and its evolution. In the past there was a reference that was the price of import parity. Ours has been implemented, it is underway. We have two market references. One is the alternative cost of the client, and the other one is the marginal cost. The Russian diesel is an additional alternative for supply, and we already mentioned this now simultaneously, the essential part of our commercial strategy is volatility of prices. Nonetheless, we continuously are seeking the optimization of a refining assets and seeking other opportunities like import and the export of oil and byproducts to create more value for the company. Now, regarding margins and positioning because of the competition, we cannot disclose our position vis-à-vis the internal references, but we want to clarify that each agent has its own characteristics for production, for import. Here we have, we have a logistics system for supply and even with other alternatives. And this results in commercial strategies that are totally different from these agents with diversity, that results in a new dynamic for the market. So now I give it back to you. Sergio Caetano Leite: So thank you very much, Schlosser. So now we bring our Q&A session to an end. Should you have additional questions, they can be sent to our IR team. And the presentation of the event is available in our site. And in brief, we will make available the audio. Thank you very much and have a very good day. Follow Petroleo Brasileiro Sa Petrobras (NYSE:PBR) Follow Petroleo Brasileiro Sa Petrobras (NYSE:PBR) We may use your email to send marketing emails about our services. Click here to read our privacy policy......»»

Baby boomers – those born between 1946 and 1964 – grew up in a rapidly changing America, witnessing, and sometimes taking part in, the civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, and the Vietnam War. And the films they watched as they came of age reflected the cultural shifts that were taking place around them. […] Baby boomers – those born between 1946 and 1964 – grew up in a rapidly changing America, witnessing, and sometimes taking part in, the civil rights movement, the women’s liberation movement, and the Vietnam War. And the films they watched as they came of age reflected the cultural shifts that were taking place around them. In 1968, Hollywood abolished the Hays Code, a guideline for movie censorship that limited depictions of profanity, suggestive nudity, graphic violence, and more. This ushered in a generation of young filmmakers who made increasingly innovative films which explored themes and content previously impermissible in the industry. Many of these films are still celebrated today as among the most influential movies ever made – shaping the efforts of later filmmakers and themselves becoming objects of study in colleges and universities. (Here’s a list of the best movies that defined the boomer generation.) To assemble a list of movies baby boomers loved that kids study in college, 24/7 Tempo reviewed data on syllabus citation counts from the non-profit Open Syllabus, an open-source project tallying the number of times a movie, book, or other media has been assigned across a corpus of millions of college syllabi. Movies released between 1967 and 1985 were ranked based on the number of times they appear as assigned films on syllabi, considering the movies that have been assigned the most to be the most influential. (Documentary films were not considered.) Supplemental data on user reviews from IMDb, an online movie and TV database owned by Amazon, and audience and Tomatometer rankings from Rotten Tomatoes, an online movie and TV review aggregator, are current as of July 2023. Only movies with at least 2,000 IMDb user ratings were included. Director information is from IMDb. Click here for a list of movies baby boomers loved that kids study in college Auteurs including Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, and Stanley Kubrick emerged during this era, and each of these directors has three films on the list. An interest in foreign films grew in the 1960s, and a few of the most influential films of the generation are from Japan, Belgium, Mexico, and Germany. Some of the movies deal with race, including “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” which features one of the first positive depictions of an interracial couple. Others explore youth culture including “American Graffiti” and “Easy Rider.” Technological advancements were reflected in the sci-fi and action movies of the day, including Ridley Scott’s “Bladerunner,” and James Cameron’s “The Terminator.” (These are the best R-rated sci-fi movies of all time.) Sponsored: Tips for Investing A financial advisor can help you understand the advantages and disadvantages of investment properties. Finding a qualified financial advisor doesn’t have to be hard. SmartAsset’s free tool matches you with up to three financial advisors who serve your area, and you can interview your advisor matches at no cost to decide which one is right for you. If you’re ready to find an advisor who can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now. Investing in real estate can diversify your portfolio. But expanding your horizons may add additional costs. If you’re an investor looking to minimize expenses, consider checking out online brokerages. They often offer low investment fees, helping you maximize your profit......»»

Costco has 32 warehouses in Japan, where the groceries, food court, and appliances are a bit different from what shoppers in the US are used to. Costco has 32 warehouses in Japan. The groceries, food court, and appliances are a bit different from what shoppers in the US are used to.Richard Truong Richard Truong is a 26-year-old software engineer from Pennsylvania who has been a Costco member since 2016. On a recent trip to Japan, Truong stopped by the Costco warehouse in Kyoto to see the differences. While the environment was very familiar, he found several food offerings he'd never seen in the US. This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Richard Truong. The following has been edited for length and clarity.I work as a software engineer for a large insurance company in Pennsylvania, and I've been a member of Costco since 2016. I started taking lots of pictures of the signs and prices at my local warehouse because that's how I would budget my food expenses in college.I enjoy traveling around the world to understand different cultures and different places because you see them on TV and in the movies, but it's never really the same as actually being there.It's fun to wander around Costco warehouses in different countries and see what they have — what's similar to the US and what's specific to that region.Japan is pretty cool with their food. If I had a way to cook while I'm traveling, I'd maybe buy the Wagyu beef cheaper there, instead of going to a restaurant. But traveling solo, it's pretty hard to try a lot of foods in bulk. It would not be great to have five pounds of beef to eat and five liters of alcohol to drink by myself, but I'm pretty sure I could at least down a whole sushi platter.Japan has 32 Costco warehouses – here's what I saw on my visit to the one in Kyoto.The Costco warehouse is about an hour outside of downtown Kyoto, roughly midway between Kyoto and Osaka.Richard TruongThere was a parking lot on top of the warehouse, and a special escalator that you could put your cart on.Richard TruongI showed the greeter my membership card, but since I have a foreign one that's on the back of my Citi credit card, he definitely looked confused. I guess he'd never seen one of those before.Richard TruongInside, the warehouse seems very familiar, the same Costco experience. What's different are the individual products.Richard TruongI found shopping in Japan to be a more pleasant experience than in the US, since the US is more chaotic and Japanese people usually are more respectful and calmer.Richard TruongClothing-wise, it was pretty similar. A lot of the clothing brands are also sold in the US, like Puma, Nike, and Adidas.Richard TruongThere were plenty of US brands...Richard Truong... and some items came with reusable storage containers that I hadn't seen in US stores before.Richard TruongPortion sizes actually were a lot smaller on individually packed items even though they’re sold in bulk.Richard TruongThere was a pear, peach, and currant tart I'd never seen before.Richard TruongCostco called these "luxury" croissants for some reason.Richard TruongOne big thing that I noticed was a lot of the meats were US meats.Richard TruongA lot of the meats were labeled as USDA Choice, which was interesting to see, considering Japan is the home of Wagyu beef.Richard TruongThere was also a remarkable variety of seafood.Richard TruongSushi is probably one of the things that most people look for in a Japan Costco, but surprisingly there were only two options: one was a smaller package of salmon and mackerel sushi….Richard Truong… and then there was a bigger, 48-piece sushi platter that was a pretty good dealRichard TruongIt seemed like there were more party-sized pre-made foods instead of single-family pre-made foods.Richard TruongThere were rotisserie chickens, of course...Richard Truong... plus options like charcoal-grilled chicken wings...Richard Truong... and garlic beef rice that smelled delicious.Richard TruongThere's also the alcohol section, which I never see back home in Pennsylvania.Richard TruongThey gave me an alcoholic drink, which was a different experience because my local Costco doesn't sell alcohol, so it's kind of unfathomable to get a sample of alcohol.Richard TruongAll the food samples were delicious, and I would consider buying the products if I actually lived there.Richard TruongI took a look at the fridges and a couple of appliances.Richard TruongA lot of them are a bit more narrow because a lot of Japanese houses are smaller, more apartment-style.Richard TruongIt looks like the appliances are still well-equipped tech-wise too.Richard TruongThey had a grill that's used for Takoyaki, which is like a pancake ball that you put octopus inside. Very good.Richard TruongI noticed a Tiger rice cooker, a brand that I've seen in the US.Richard TruongSoaps and shampoos were in plastic refill bags that don't take up a lot of space like other plastic containers.Richard TruongThe Costco food court in Kyoto is way different from the US one. There are a lot more options in Japan.Richard TruongShoppers were neatly putting their carts around the perimeter of the dining area, making a kind of barricade.Richard TruongThe hotdog is still technically $1.50 if you convert Japanese yen to US dollars. You'll also find the Costco staples that you'd see in the US, like pizza, coffee, ice cream, and smoothies.Richard TruongBut in Kyoto they also have very different items, like the bulgogi bake instead of the chicken bake, a shrimp bisque, a roast beef sandwich, and falafel salad.Richard TruongThe chicken nugget bucket was pretty popular, and it was pretty massive. There were like 30 chicken nuggets and a bunch of fries — definitely not a one-person kind of meal, but I tried it anyway.Richard TruongThe shrimp bisque was very smooth, very rich. Definitely something I was surprised they sell because you don't really see soup options at US Costcos. It was pretty amazing.Richard TruongAnd the smoothie was actually a bit different than the US. It was a little bit sweeter and more smooth.Richard TruongI definitely would come back if I was staying somewhere with my own kitchen and maybe a car to take stuff back.Richard TruongRead the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The number of movies that have been adapted for television are legion – think “Fargo,” “Highlander,” “Bates Motel,” and maybe most of all “Star Wars.” The reverse has also been true, with many TV shows brought to the big screen over the years. To assemble a list of popular TV shows that have been turned […] The number of movies that have been adapted for television are legion – think “Fargo,” “Highlander,” “Bates Motel,” and maybe most of all “Star Wars.” The reverse has also been true, with many TV shows brought to the big screen over the years. To assemble a list of popular TV shows that have been turned into movies, 24/7 Tempo reviewed scores of TV series on IMDb, an online movie database owned by Amazon. Only films released theatrically were considered; TV movies were not. When shows have spawned sequels or whole franchises, only only the first movie was considered. Our list isn’t intended to be comprehensive, but rather a sampling of series that were so popular at some point that major Hollywood production studios decided to revive them in some form, obviously hoping that home audiences would flock to movie theaters to see the same characters and settings reinterpreted. (Television isn’t the only medium that has inspired film adaptations. These are 20 graphic novels that were made into really good movies.) Some of the films taken from television are sequels, such as the period piece “Downton Abbey,” or prequels like “The Many Saints of Newark,” whose storyline preceded the rise of mobster Tony Soprano in the wildly successful mob series “The Sopranos” – widely considered one of the 100 best TV dramas of all time. Successful television shows such as “The Fugitive,” “The Untouchables,” “The Addams Family,” and “Mission: Impossible” have become hits on the big screen – and in the case of the latter two, movie franchises. Some movie versions of long-running animated series such as “The Simpsons” and “South Park” appeared while the series was still appearing on television. Others took advantage of their place in the popular culture to come to the big screen shortly after their series run ended, such as “Sex and the City.” All were successes. Click here to see TV shows that were so popular they were turned into movies With a nod to the Baby Boomer generation, Hollywood has resuscitated series from decades ago to bring to the big screen such favorites as “Maverick,” “Dennis the Menace,” “Get Smart,” and “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” The live-action-animated film “Casper,” about a friendly ghost, became a motion picture in 1995, 46 years after it first appeared on television. Bringing back a beloved TV series has no guarantee of success. Despite honored casts for “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “The Avengers” (not the Marvel Universe Comics franchise), both movies were clunkers at the box office and were pilloried by critics. Sponsored: Find a Qualified Financial Advisor Finding a qualified financial advisor doesn’t have to be hard. SmartAsset’s free tool matches you with up to 3 fiduciary financial advisors in your area in 5 minutes. Each advisor has been vetted by SmartAsset and is held to a fiduciary standard to act in your best interests. If you’re ready to be matched with local advisors that can help you achieve your financial goals, get started now......»»

Today's Research Daily features new research reports on 16 major stocks, including The Walt Disney Company (DIS), The Boeing Company (BA) and General Electric Company (GE). Friday, July 28, 2023The Zacks Research Daily presents the best research output of our analyst team. Today's Research Daily features new research reports on 16 major stocks, including The Walt Disney Company (DIS), The Boeing Company (BA) and General Electric Company (GE). These research reports have been hand-picked from the roughly 70 reports published by our analyst team today.You can see all of today’s research reports here >>>Shares of Walt Disney have performed in-line with the Zacks Media Conglomerates industry over the year-to-date period (-0.9% vs. -0.9%), but have lagged the S&P 500 index's +19.5% gain. The company’s profitability continues to be negatively impacted by higher programming and production costs across Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu. Disney’s leveraged balance sheet remains a concern.Nevertheless, Disney is benefiting from growing popularity of Disney+ core, owing to a strong content portfolio and a cheaper bundle offering. Strong line-up of movies that include Haunted Mansion, Poor Things and The Creator bodes well for the Media and Entertainment Distribution segment.The company has been nominated for several Emmy awards that suggests a content portfolio. Revival in Parks, Experiences and Products businesses is encouraging. Theme Park business is likely to gain from strong demand across both the domestic and international parks.(You can read the full research report on Walt Disney here >>>)Boeing shares have outperformed the Zacks Aerospace - Defense industry over the past year (+49.0% vs. +1.5%). The company remains the largest aircraft manufacturer in the United States in terms of revenues, orders and deliveries.During the second quarter, Boeing booked 460 net commercial airplane orders and recorded a 10% hike in service revenues. Strengthening U.S. defense budget should also boost its growth. The company holds a strong solvency position in the near term.However, Boeing expects supply-chain disruptions to continue to harm its operational results, at least in the near term. Further, the company has been incurring notable abnormal production cost in relation to production quality issues for 787 jets, which may hurt its future results.(You can read the full research report on Boeing here >>>)Shares of General Electric have outperformed the Zacks Diversified Operations industry over the past year (+97.2% vs. +4.0%). Strong performance of the Aerospace unit, driven by commercial aerospace strength, significant growth in LEAP engine deliveries and higher defense engine orders, is aiding General Electric’s growth.With strength in GE Gas Power services and growth at Grid business and Onshore Wind in North America, signs of improvement in GE Vernova (the combined operations of GE Power and Renewable) hold promise. Due to these tailwinds, the company has raised its 2023 guidance.However, supply chain disruptions, inflationary pressure and foreign currency headwinds are other concerns for General Electric.(You can read the full research report on General Electric here >>>)Other noteworthy reports we are featuring today include Lam Research Corporation (LRCX), GSK plc (GSK) and América Móvil, S.A.B. de C.V. (AMX).Director of ResearchSheraz MianNote: Sheraz Mian heads the Zacks Equity Research department and is a well-regarded expert of aggregate earnings. He is frequently quoted in the print and electronic media and publishes the weekly Earnings Trends and Earnings Preview reports. If you want an email notification each time Sheraz publishes a new article, please click here>>>Today's Must ReadStrong Content Portfolio & Parks Business Aids Disney (DIS)Military Business Aids Boeing (BA), 787 Program Issue WoesGeneral Electric (GE) Rides on Aerospace Segment StrengthFeatured ReportsLam Research (LRCX) Benefits From Strengthening NAND DemandPer the Zacks analyst, increasing NAND requirement in accelerating 5G migration, video, and new game consoles is a positive for Lam Research.America Movil (AMX) Benefits from Increasing Subscriber BasePer the Zacks analyst, America Movil's performance is gaining from growing subscriber base. Focused 5G efforts and deployment of advanced technologies are other tailwinds.Strong Domestic Demand, Cost Cuts Aid Sherwin-Williams (SHW)Per the Zacks analyst, favorable demand in domestic markets will support Sherwin-Williams' sales volumes. Cost savings from restructuring actions will also support margins.nAutomotive Market Momentum Aids NXP Semiconductors (NXPI)Per the Zacks analyst, NXP Semiconductors is benefiting from growing momentum in automotive market owing to innovation in system solutions.Kinder Morgan (KMI) to Benefit From Rising Demand for RNGThe Zacks analyst is upbeat about Kinder Morgan's huge growth potential in the RNG business, with the demand in North America expected to rise significantly in the next two decades.Insulet (PODD) Banks on Omnipod Adoption, Stiff Rivalry AilThe Zacks analyst is impressed with Insulet's strong U.S. growth in Q1 driven by Omnipod 5 market adoption, representing almost 95% of U.S. new customer starts. Stiff rivalry remains a concern.Snap-On's (SNA) RCI Program Aids Sales & Margins GrowthPer the Zacks analyst, Snap-On's focus on the rapid continuous improvement (RCI) program, designed to enhance organizational effectiveness and minimize costs, has boosted sales, margins and savings.New UpgradesGSK (GSK) Vaccine & HIV Products to Drive Sales GrowthGSK's key products like Dovato, Nucala, Shingrix and Juluca are driving sales. The Zacks analyst believes GSK has some promising new products in Specialty Medicines and Vaccines areas.Improving Commissions and Fees Drive Brown and Brown (BRO)Per the Zacks analyst, Brown and Brown is set to grow on higher commissions and fees across all the segments driven by net new and renewal business that in turn drive top line.Product Expansions Boosts JAKKS Pacific's (JAKK) ProspectsPer the Zacks analyst, JAKKS Pacific is likely to benefit from product expansions, FOB business model and digital initiatives. Also a strong capital structure with no debt bode well for the company.New DowngradesHeavy Investments in Technology Hurt Robert Half (RHI)Per the Zacks analyst, Robert Half's increasing expenses, due to a rise in staff compensation costs and heavy investments in technology initiatives, are likely to affect the company's bottom line.Rising Costs, Poor Asset Quality Hurt Ally Financial (ALLY)Per the Zacks analyst, elevated costs due to Ally Financial's efforts to launch products and grow inorganically will hurt profits. Deteriorating asset quality due to rising provisions is another woe.Elevated Costs to Hurt Associated Banc-Corp (ASB) ProfitsPer the Zacks analyst, persistently rising expenses on the back of higher technology and personnel costs are expected to hurt Associated Banc-Corp's bottom-line growth to an extent in the near term. 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days Just released: Experts distill 7 elite stocks from the current list of 220 Zacks Rank #1 Strong Buys. They deem these tickers "Most Likely for Early Price Pops." Since 1988, the full list has beaten the market more than 2X over with an average gain of +24.3% per year. So be sure to give these hand-picked 7 your immediate attention. See them now >>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report The Boeing Company (BA): Free Stock Analysis Report General Electric Company (GE): Free Stock Analysis Report GSK PLC Sponsored ADR (GSK): Free Stock Analysis Report America Movil, S.A.B. de C.V. Unsponsored ADR (AMX): Free Stock Analysis Report Lam Research Corporation (LRCX): Free Stock Analysis Report The Walt Disney Company (DIS): Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»

Netflix (NFLX) gains 5.89 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2023. The company is benefiting from a strong content portfolio amid stiff competition. Netflix NFLX reported second-quarter 2023 earnings of $3.29 per share, which beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 16.25% and increased 2.8% year over year.Revenues of $8.19 billion increased 2.7% year over year but lagged the consensus mark by 0.93%. On a foreign-exchange neutral basis, revenues grew 6% year over year.The streaming giant gained 5.89 million paid subscribers globally, thanks to a crackdown on password-sharing and the introduction of paid sharing in more than 100 countries in May, which represents more than 80% of Netflix’s revenue base. The company lost 0.97 million paid subscribers in the year-ago quarter.Netflix now expects revenue growth to accelerate in the second half of 2023, driven by the launch of paid sharing. However, it anticipates foreign-exchange neutral average revenues per membership (ARM) to be flat to slightly down year over year due to limited price increases over the past 12 months and immaterial revenues from advertising and paid-sharing.ARM decreased 3% year over year on a reported basis and 1% on a foreign-exchange neutral basis in the second quarter. ARM declined due to a higher mix of membership growth from lower ARM countries and limited price increases over the past 12 months.Netflix scrapped the basic ad-free plan for new and rejoining members in Canada and is doing the same for U.K. and U.S.-based subscribers.Netflix, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise Netflix, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Netflix, Inc. QuoteAt the end of the second quarter, the company had 238.39 million paid subscribers globally, up 8% year over year.Although Netflix is suffering from growing competition from services provided by Amazon AMZN, Disney DIS and Apple AAPL, it benefited from a strong content portfolio in the reported quarter.Hit shows like The Night Agent, Beef, Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story and Love is Blind S4 helped Netflix win subscribers. Noteworthy movies include Murder Mystery 2, The Mother and Extraction 2.Shares of this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company have declined almost 6% in pre-market trading. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.The company’s shares have outperformed Amazon, Disney and Apple year to date. While Netflix shares have gained 62%, Amazon, Disney and Apple returned 61.1%, 50.2% and 0.2%, respectively.Netflix’s Segmental Revenue DetailsThe United States and Canada (“UCAN") reported revenues of $3.60 billion, which rose 1.7% year over year and accounted for 44% of total revenues. The figure missed our model estimate of $3.71 billion, primarily due to lower ARPU.ARPU climbed 1% from the year-ago quarter on a foreign-exchange neutral basis.The paid subscriber base for UCAN increased 3.1% from the year-ago quarter to 75.57 million. The company gained 1.17 million paid subscribers compared with the year-ago quarter’s loss of 1.3 million.Europe, Middle East & Africa (“EMEA”) reported revenues of $2.56 billion, which increased 4.3% year over year and accounted for 31.3% of total revenues. The figure beat our model estimate of $2.51 billion. ARPU decreased 2.7% from the year-ago quarter on a foreign-exchange neutral basis.The paid subscriber base for EMEA increased 9.4% from the year-ago quarter to 79.81 million. Netflix gained 2.43 million paid subscribers compared with the year-ago quarter’s net loss of 0.77 million.Latin America’s (“LATAM”) revenues of $1.08 billion increased 4.6% year over year, contributing 13.2% of total revenues. The figure beat our model estimate of $1.07 billion.ARPU declined 1% from the year-ago quarter on a foreign-exchange neutral basis.The paid subscriber base for LATAM rose 7.2% from the year-ago quarter to 42.47 million. It gained 1.22 million paid subscribers in the reported quarter.Asia Pacific’s (“APAC”) revenues of $919 million increased 1.2% year over year and accounted for 11.2% of total revenues. The figure missed our model estimate of $926.7 million, primarily due to lower ARPU.ARPU decreased 7% year over year on a foreign-exchange neutral basis.The paid subscriber base for APAC jumped 16.5% from the year-ago quarter to 40.55 million. The company added 1.07 million paid subscribers in the quarter, down 0.9% year over year.Operating DetailsMarketing expenses increased 9.1% year over year to $627.2 million. As a percentage of revenues, marketing expenses increased 40 basis points (bps) to 7.7%.Operating income increased 15.8% year over year to $1.83 billion, beating Netflix’s guidance of $1.71 billion. Operating margin expanded 250 bps on a year-over-year basis to 22.3%.Balance Sheet & Free Cash FlowNetflix had $8.58 billion of cash and cash equivalents as of Jun 30, 2023 compared with $7.83  billion as of Mar 31, 2023.Total debt was $14.47 billion as of Jun 30, 2023 compared with $14.44 billion as of Mar 31, 2023.Streaming content obligations were $20.90 billion as of Jun 30, 2023 compared with $21.53 billion as of Mar 31, 2023.Netflix reported a free cash flow of $1.34 billion compared with a free cash flow of $2.1 billion in the previous quarter.GuidanceFor the third quarter of 2023, Netflix forecasts earnings of $3.52 per share, indicating an almost 10% increase from the figure reported in the year-ago quarter.The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the same is pegged at $3.14 per share, currently lower than the company’s expectation, but up 1.29% from the figure reported in the year-ago quarter.Total revenues are anticipated to be $8.52 billion, suggesting growth of 7% year over year and also on a forex-neutral basis. The consensus mark for revenues stands at $8.63 billion, higher than the company’s expectation and indicating 8.96% growth from the figure reported in the year-ago quarter.The quarterly operating margin is projected to be 22.2% compared with the 19.8% reported in the year-ago quarter.For 2023, Netflix expects the operating margin to be in the 18-20% range. It expects to generate a free cash flow of at least $5 billion, higher than its previous guidance of $3.5 billion. 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days Just released: Experts distill 7 elite stocks from the current list of 220 Zacks Rank #1 Strong Buys. They deem these tickers "Most Likely for Early Price Pops." Since 1988, the full list has beaten the market more than 2X over with an average gain of +24.3% per year. So be sure to give these hand-picked 7 your immediate attention. See them now >>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN): Free Stock Analysis Report Apple Inc. (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report Netflix, Inc. (NFLX): Free Stock Analysis Report The Walt Disney Company (DIS): Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»

Netflix (NFLX) continues its streak of releasing Korean content with the production of the series, The Trunk, starring Gong Yoo and Seo Hyun-jin. Netflix NFLX announced the production of an upcoming Korean drama, The Trunk, starring Korea’s A-listers, Gong Yoo of Train to Busan and Goblin fame and Seo Hyun-jin, known for Another Miss Oh and The Beauty Inside.The show, written by Park Eun-young of Hwarang: The Poet Warrior Youth and directed by Kim Gyu-tae of Our Blues fame, the story revolves around a marriage arrangement service, where clients are arranged into a contract marriage for a year with their most suited partner and the series of secrets that unfold after a mysterious trunk floats ashore.Netflix is investing heavily in Korean-language content since Korea emerged as an entertainment superpower with K-pop groups like BTS, K-dramas like Squid Game and the Oscar-winning Korean movie Parasite dominating the entertainment industry globally.Netflix has also experienced record-breaking hits from Korean series like Squid Game, All of Us Are Dead and The Glory, with the streaming giant announcing an investment of $2.5 billion in South-Korean creative content over the next four years, building on an already strong portfolio of Korean movies, series and reality shows.Globally, Netflix has been focused on strengthening its regional content portfolio with a plethora of foreign-language shows like Kohrra (Indian), The Surrogacy (Mexican) and Sleeping Dog (German).Netflix, Inc. Price and Consensus Netflix, Inc. price-consensus-chart | Netflix, Inc. QuoteTurkey’s rom-com Make Me Believe holds the #1 position in its latest Top 10 Non-English Films list with 3.8 million views. Lust Stories 2 grabbed the #3 spot with 3 million views and Spain’s Through My Window: Across the Sea firmly stands at #4 with 2.6 million views.Although facing stiff competition from peers like Apple AAPL, Disney DIS and Amazon AMZN, Netflix seems to be expecting an increasing trend in its subscriber base with strategies like releasing more non-English content and launching the paid sharing model in four countries — Canada, New Zealand, Spain and Portugal — during the first quarter.Netflix launched its paid-sharing model in the United States on May 23, notifying members that their accounts cannot be shared for free with users outside their residences. It also plans to launch the same model into major markets like Brazil, Britain, France and Mexico.Encouraging 2023 for NetflixNetflix shares have surged 49.9% year to date, outperforming the Zacks Consumer Discretionary sector’s return of 13.3%. It outperformed Apple, which has returned 46.8% and Disney, which has returned 2% on a year-to-date basis.However, this Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) company underperformed Amazon, which has returned 60.3% on a year-to-date basis. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.Netflix’s diversified content portfolio, subjected to heavy investments in the production and distribution of localized, foreign-language content, has been aiding its growth.For the second quarter of 2023, the company forecasts earnings of $2.84 per share, indicating an almost 20% decline from the figure reported in the year-ago quarter. The Zacks Consensus Estimate stands at $2.82 per share, up by a penny over the past 30-days.Total revenues are anticipated to be $8.242 billion, suggesting growth of 3.4% year over year or 6% on a forex-neutral basis. The consensus mark for revenues stands at $8.26 billion, indicating 3.63% growth from the figure reported in the year-ago quarter. 5 Stocks Set to Double Each was handpicked by a Zacks expert as the #1 favorite stock to gain +100% or more in 2023. Previous recommendations have soared +143.0%, +175.9%, +498.3% and +673.0%. Most of the stocks in this report are flying under Wall Street radar, which provides a great opportunity to get in on the ground floor.Today, See These 5 Potential Home Runs >>Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN): Free Stock Analysis Report Apple Inc. (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report Netflix, Inc. (NFLX): Free Stock Analysis Report The Walt Disney Company (DIS): Free Stock Analysis ReportTo read this article on Zacks.com click here.Zacks Investment Research.....»»