Vivendi : la convergence totale ?

Hello, thank you for this very simple question, because in fact everything we are doing is the result of what we announced in 2014, very precisely on June 24, 2014, the date on which the governance of Vivendi, the new governance of Vivendi, was put in place. On June 24, a new Supervisory Board of Vivendi was constituted with its chairman Vincent Bolloré, and a new Management Board was constituted, of which I have the chance to have had the presidency since that date. And we said on that same day that our project was to make Vivendi a French group with a strong European base and global ambitions, and from that point of view, to have the ability to rely on the different businesses that were ours at the time: the communications businesses, the image businesses with the Canal+ group, music with Universal Music Group, which were the main businesses we were in, and to gradually build on the different media brands, the different forms of media, a group that could achieve the strategic objectives that were ours. We also said that content distribution was eminently important because even if we were no longer—because we must remember the history of Vivendi, which after the first phase was created in May 1998, then the second stage in July 2002 after Jean-Marie Messier, and it was a period in which the group had one foot in telecoms. In 2002, the departure of Jean-Marie Messier, and then a period of a little more than a decade where there was one foot in telecoms and one foot in media.

The strategic project of the group from 2014 was to say: we are a media group, we want to create a world champion, we carry the values of a European culture, and we want to create the conditions that will allow us to exist in this extraordinary reconfiguration of the media sector, a reconfiguration accelerated by the technological dimension. So even if we are not a telecom operator, it is important that we effectively take a foothold in distribution, hence the acquisition of Dailymotion, hence the initiatives with Telecom Italia, the initiatives with Telefonica, and other initiatives we have in this area to be able to participate in what is a revolution in the media sector: the impact of technology, the mode of consumption, and the way we think about our businesses, which are more and more one-to-one because the smartphone is a media consumption tool, it is the control tower of media consumption. And from that point of view, we need to have skin in the game that allows us to be a party to this revolution we are living through and on which we want to take advantage of what is offered to us. So since then, because today there is all the news that Didier you just—we can use 'tu' if you like, very well, so to connect, my dear Didier, since we have known each other for a number of years, proven thanks to Média en Scène, so thank you Média en Scène. But we have since completed our range of activities with indeed the magazine press, with publishing, with our entry into the gaming sector with Gameloft today. And the project is exactly the same as in 2014, except that today a certain number of elements give us reason; they illustrate the fact that so far we have said what we wanted to do and we have done what we announced. So it's work in progress, but the strategic ambition of the group is the one that exists and that drives the daily work of all the Vivendi teams since June 2014.

It's not a divestment, it's just an evolution of our commitment. Sorry, it's a semantic aspect but it's the reality. You keep 10%, we keep 10%. And it turns out that the shareholder who is the main shareholder of the group, the Bolloré group, is also a shareholder of Universal Music Group. So let's put this evolution, this news of last September 21, in its historical context. In 2014, and pardon me for referring a bit to historical elements, but at the time people said that music had no future, that it was gloom and doom, and that we should sell Universal. Vivendi had been approached by a group that had proposed a valuation of 7 billion, a valuation considered important at the time. But we made a choice, and I say 'we' because it's very important: it's the management team of Vivendi, but also the support of its reference shareholder, to say we think there is a future for music. We think that after the downloading—because you have to look at what it was like at the time, we saw the beginnings of the decline of downloading with iTunes and the beginnings of platforms like Spotify with Daniel Ek. And two choices were made with the team at Universal, which was number one in 2014: we will invest to create the economic conditions that allow an ecosystem to restart growth, and that is the ecosystem of digital distribution platforms, the famous streaming. Today, Universal Music Group works with 400 players, but at the time, six years ago, a long time ago, there was great doubt about the viability of this new system of music consumption. So there was a strategic, industrial, economic bet to accompany this evolution of music. And the second thing is that Universal Music was already a leader, it was about increasing investments in what is called in music the artists and repertoire. What does artist and repertoire represent? They are almost R&D investments in the music industry: finding talent. If you look at what allowed a Billie Eilish to become one of the world stars in music, it's the investments and the ability to find these stars. Last year, of the top ten singers in the music industry, all ten were from Universal Music Group, and if you take the top ten, more than 70% were artists who were not known in 2014. So that's the whole logic of development, an industrial bet that was made.

So, the number of times that commentators, you know, said it will never work, there is no future, etc. We gradually built an industrial success. Now this industrial success was so striking that we found ourselves with a sort of hypertrophy of Universal Music Group within the strategic project of Vivendi. And I remind you, it is a company that has a reference shareholder, the Bolloré group, but it is a listed company, a CAC 40 player, we have many American, British shareholders, etc. And you had a sort of exclusive focus on music, but next to it, all the other businesses of the group—Canal+ is a formidable house, an exceptional group, Havas is a remarkable player in the communication sector, and I won't list all the activities—you had a valuation of Universal Music Group that was almost equal to the market capitalization of Vivendi. Sorry to use financial aspects, but it's a reality. And so what we decided to do when we announced at the end of April 2018, if my memory is correct, that we would start working on possible evolutions of Universal Music's capital, is simply to create a history: let's make it so that we can give Universal the possibility to accelerate its growth, but also to partially separate the tree from the forest that this tree hides. And that's exactly what we developed with a whole process that was a bit long, but successfully crowned, and which means that we have a participation that is of course lower than what it was in Universal Music Group. We remain very associated, very close to the house from a strategic and operational point of view. Capitalistically, we gave the house the possibility to have this shareholder Tencent for the opening to China and all the perspectives that this formidable country and this part of the world offer, an American shareholder Bill Ackman who gives the American exposure, and a company listed in Amsterdam that effectively allows it to accelerate its growth. I think there is a very bright future for music. So not a divestment, a new phase of Vivendi's life, and the ability, while remaining very close to the Universal Music Group house, to give ourselves as a group with global ambition in the media sector the possibility to concentrate and give visibility to all our activities and our project, which was a bit hidden because of the formidable success of Universal. And so my mission, our mission and our determination in what is today Vivendi Act 2, if I may express myself that way, or the third chapter of Vivendi, and the act of this third chapter is to have the ability to demonstrate in all our other businesses our capacity for transformation, because that is what we have piloted, that is what we have done with the evolution of Universal Music Group in recent years, and to do it across all the businesses that make up the group today, while creating value, because value allows us to have resources, resources allow us to invest, and to be able, in this extraordinary global consolidation in the communication sector, to have the chance to be competitive and to achieve the ambitious strategic objectives for Vivendi that I described at the beginning of our exchange.

There is no priority, we advance all three at the same time, and with a somewhat dual vision in the process: giving each of our businesses the ability to grow, develop, adapt to changes, and have the capacity to make them stronger day after day, month after month, because that is obviously our objective. But also to create, across all our businesses, bridges that make the sum of the different parts that make up the group greater than this individual sum. It's about artists, all the initiatives we have, and which mean that when you have a certain number of brands and projects, you can make these brands and projects work together. Take Paddington, for example, which is one of the Alps? We have Paddington in the group, it is exposed both through Canal+ and everything we do with Paddington. We launched a TV series, we have books at Editis, Paddington at Prisma. We haven't had the opportunity to do it yet because Prisma joined the group last June, but we will give visibility to Paddington. And this ability—I want to take a drawing that I really like, that I have in my office, a drawing that was made I think in 1954 by Walt Disney. I recommend you look at it. It's a drawing in the middle of which you have Mickey Mouse, and then there is the vision that was Walt Disney's, which gave birth to the Disney Company. And on that, they built a formidable empire, a formidable success. Obviously, comparison is not reason, but to say that fundamentally, the values that allowed the construction of what is today Disney—if you look at what we are putting in place, I look at the vision of the Vivendi team, shared with all our shareholders and all the stakeholders of the house, it is to create a European Disney. Why not? A good illustration.

It is a promising perspective because today the Canal+ group as a whole is a group that combines both the businesses of distribution, it is a broadcaster, and the businesses of creation, everything that is done in the different areas around Canal+, Studiocanal. So we are creators and we are also aggregators, that is, a capacity to give our clients, who are more and more numerous—we have a little more than 22 million subscribers within the Canal+ group. Maxime Saada has set an objective of more than 30 million subscribers, objective 2025. So we are in an agenda of very important evolution of the group, positioning this group in this arrival of the host? In a competitive environment that has been revolutionized in recent years, obviously. And when I look at the quality of the teams, the strategic project, the results, and the opportunities of the Canal+ group abroad, they are notorious. And when you look at our results, they are absolutely brilliant in the different countries where we operate. The French part is a little more complex because France is a formidable country, of course, but which has a certain regulatory complexity, and we need to move forward in this complex environment. But we do so with determination, and once again, regarding the perspectives of the Canal+ group, I am enthusiastic and a party to the ambition we all have for the Vivendi group. I will let François, who will tap my fingers.