Viacom Conference Call Highlights

Viacom, Inc. VIA reported its fourth quarter earnings on Thursday. Shares of the company are up 3 percent.

Below are some key highlights from its conference call.

Performance Metrics:

• In the fourth quarter, revenues increased 9% to $3.99 billion.
• Adjusted operating income was $1.21 billion, effectively unchanged from a year ago, and adjusted net earnings from continuing operations were down 1% to $729 million.
• Adjusted diluted earnings per share from continuing operations increased 10% to $1.71.
• For fiscal 2014 revenues were $13.78 billion, essentially flat from the previous year.
• Adjusted operating income grew 5% to $4.13 billion, an all-time record for Viacom.
• Full-year adjusted net earnings from continuing operations rose 3% to $2.38 billion and full year adjusted diluted earnings per share grew 15% to $5.40.
• Our full year EPS also marked an all-time record for the company.
• We continue to generate strong cash flow enabling the company to invest consistently in content and new initiatives, expand its global footprint and return significant capital to shareholders.
• In fiscal 2014 we returned $3.9 billion to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends. That includes the repurchase of more than 40 million shares and more than $540 million in dividends paid.
• In the current quarter, we plan to purchase $750 million in stock.
• For the 2015 fiscal year we plan to purchase at least $2.5 billion of our stock.
• At our Media Networks we invested well over $3 billion in content in the fiscal year.
• We remain committed to treating more original programming to grow our business and serve audiences where consuming entertainment on more screens and in more ways than ever.
• With growth in domestic and international programming investments and the addition of channel five in the U.K. our overall content investment in fiscal 2015 will be in the neighborhood of $3.8 billion.
• Of course the entire domestic television industry endured rating challenges in the latter half of fiscal 2014 due in part with the addition of broadband only homes with the Nielsen.
• Our young audiences remain on the leading edge of this trend, and we are working toward two broad strategic objectives, implementing an industry-standard that appropriately reflects our valuable and rapidly growing multi platform viewership, and aggressively moving towards non-Nielsen dependent advertising monetization.
• Worldwide advertising revenue fell 2% in the September quarter reflecting a 5% decrease in domestic advertising revenue in the quarter as a result of ratings declines.
• For the full fiscal year, worldwide ad revenue was up 2% and domestic ad revenue was flat.
• As we continue to work with the industry to accelerate the evolution of the measurement systems, we are also being aggressive in creating new ways to monetize within the current evolving framework.
• In addition to the new deal with Sony, we recently renewed our agreement with Hulu and Amazon.
• These renewals were completed on terms that confirm our long-term guidance high single low double-digit growth in year-over-year affiliate revenue.
• Interbrand and it dominates social media with more than 200 million followers.
• In the September quarter worldwide affiliate revenue was up 22% and domestic affiliate revenue was up 21% for the full fiscal 2014, both worldwide and domestic affiliate revenue increased 10%.
• Looking ahead we are fueling our brands in all platforms with strong, sustained investment in content.
• When Spike launches in the U.K. it will join the Channel 5 portfolio of channels and combine U.S. content with U.K. reality series such police interceptors and cowboy builders.