TelevisaUnivision Sees Q3 Profit Dip Due in Part to Advertising Shortfall

Spanish-language giant TelevisaUnivision said third-quarter profit declined as the company continued its efforts to streamline operations and downturns in linear advertising outpaced new gains in efforts to bring advertisers to streaming.

The company said net income fell to $90.5 million, compared with $180.9 million in the year-earlier quarter, when TelevisaUnivision enjoyed a gain from the sale of a portfolio of towers that weren’t core to its business. Revenue was off 3%, to $1.27 billion, compared with a little more than $1.3 billion in the year-earlier period.

“Our third-quarter results demonstrate the results of our disciplined execution of our reimagined content strategy and the continued momentum” of the company’s ViX streaming service, said Daniel Alegre, the company’s CEO, in a prepared statement.

TelevisaUnivison said advertising revenue fell 6% to $755 million during the quarter, citing a decline in linear viewership for its media assets. Subscription and licensing revenue rose 3% to $493 million, thanks in part to consumer interest in ViX in the United States.

TelevisaUnivision has been working to bolster its balance sheet after Alegre took its corporate reins of TelevisaUnivision from Wade Davis, the former Viacom CFO who orchestrated a buyout of Univision in 2020 before merging it with Mexico’s Grupo Televisa in 2022, ceded his CEO role to him. Alegre was president and chief operating officer of Activision Blizzard, which was acquired for $69 billion by Microsoft. Davis remains TelevisaUnivision’s vice-chairman. Since Alegre joined last year, TelevisaUnivision has been working to streamline operations that had previously been siloed by geographic region. The company owns media assets in both the United States and Mexico.