ViaPlay crashed: big losses and share plummeted
ViaPlay is still a relatively new streaming service with us. Started last year with the broadcasting rights of Formula 1 as a big hit. In addition, they have the broadcasting rights for Darts and the German and English football competitions in many countries, including the Netherlands. Of course they have to pay a lot for that and to earn that money back a lot of streaming subscriptions have to be sold.
Streaming services usually make some statements about this – just look at the figures from Netflix and some competitors – but with ViaPlay it mainly remained with general statements such as ‘It’s going well’ or ‘It’s going better than expected’. The only figures that have been communicated so far for the Dutch market spoke of 1.2 million subscribers at the end of 2022. Well, today it turns out that things are not going well at all. In fact, it’s going much worse than expected.
Things are going much worse than ViaPlay itself thought
ViaPlay today issued a press release in which the company indicates that the situation in the advertising market has deteriorated. In addition, the price increases of the subscriptions have also caused many customers to decide to cancel their subscription. How many are there? ViaPlay does not make any statements about this.
The fact is that the CEO of the company has already resigned. As head honcho, he is of course ultimately responsible and his departure proves that the company – and probably he himself – has no confidence that he can still turn the tide. Meanwhile, ViaPlay stock has also crashed since the news. In the course of the afternoon, the company had already lost almost two-thirds of its stock market value.
Major loss of revenue and customers expected
For this year, ViaPlay has significantly adjusted its revenue and profit (or rather loss) expectation, and not upwards. In the Scandinavian countries, where ViaPlay has its origins and has been active for much longer, a profit is still expected. However, not the 100 to 130 million euros predicted prior to this year, but only 70 to 85 million.
The international branch of ViaPlay, which also includes the Netherlands, expects the loss this year to be much higher than what was taken into account in the forecast. Initially, the company expected a loss of 85 to 95 million euros. That loss would be more than compensated by the expected profit of the Scandinavian branch. However, that kite is no longer up. According to the adjusted expectations, the loss of the international branch now amounts to 120 to 130 million euros. In short, ViaPlay is diving sharply into the red this year. And now that investors are dumping their shares en masse and the company’s stock market value has crashed, it remains to be seen whether ViaPlay will find investors who want to keep the streaming service afloat. The resignation (undoubtedly in good joint consultation, so actually dismissal) of the CEO is then an inevitable decision if they want to regain the trust of investors and investors. Undoubtedly to be continued.
