Scandi Streamer Viaplay Pulls Full-Year Forecast Amid Revenue Slump
Pan-Nordic streaming group Viaplay on Thursday said it is pulling its previously announced full-year outlook for 2023. A review of the company’s operations and performance, undertaken by new CEO Jorgen Madsen Lindemann after his appointment last month, indicated that the forward revenue and earnings outlook for Viaplay will be sharply down on previous forecasts, the company said.
Viaplay said there was no change to the Group’s Q2 2023 guidance and did not give further details, saying it would provide an update on its strategy and medium-term outlook in conjunction with the announcement of its Q2 results on July 20.
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Lindemann, who used to run Viaplay’s former parent company MTG, took over at the Nordic media company in June, replacing Anders Jensen, the boss who had led Viaplay’s aggressive expansion into streaming and its push into pricey original productions. The company’s board soured on Jensen after disastrous second-quarter results that showed the company posted an operating (EBIT) loss of between $23.1 million and $27.7 million (200 million to 300 million Swedish krona) on expected sales of between 4.5 billion and 4.6 billion Swedish krona ($415 million to $420 million). Advertising sales were also down sharply, projected to drop between 12 and 16 percent on an organic basis, due to a “sharp and rapid deterioration in the TV and radio advertising markets.”
Viaplay said it would be taking “a broad range of actions to address the underlying deterioration in earnings,” including redundancies, cost-cutting and renegotiating deals with distribution partners as well as a “review of the international operations and non-core assets.”
Jensen had bet big on the future of streaming and original programming at Viaplay, aggressively ramping up in-house productions — the company just greenlit a new drama series from Snabba Cash author Jens Lapidus — and snatching up costly sports rights for its premium services. Jensen also had international ambitions, launching a version of its Nordic streaming service in the U.K. last year and in the U.S. in February.
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