Viacom Chief Looks to International Opportunities

NEW YORK, December 5: Philippe Dauman, the president and CEO
of Viacom, wants to raise the company’s international profit margins by 10 to
15 percentage points in the next few years, he told investors at an event in
New York yesterday.

Dauman, speaking at the Credit Suisse Media and Telecom Week
Conference, noted, “We’re going to make some aggressive moves to improve
profitability” outside the U.S. “That includes our consumer products business,”
he said. “We derive 20 percent of our consumer products revenues
internationally. We’ve grown that from 8 percent two years ago. I want to see
that grow to 50 percent over the next several years.”

Dauman, who was installed as president and CEO just three
months ago following the ousting of Tom Freston, said that the company is
currently reviewing all of its international businesses. “We are working very
methodically right now, region by region, country by country, [looking] at how
we are running our operations, and whether some of our territories should be
licensed rather than owned. There are some territories where it’s better for
our channel to be operated by a local player who can perhaps manage it along
with some other local media properties. We control the brand. We get a secure
fee. These are countries where on a standalone basis we don’t see much prospect
for making money over time. We will continue to develop countries where we are
not making money but where there is potential. If you have a country which has,
from a macroeconomic standpoint, a good solid growth opportunity and a large
population, I think we can take a bet if the expense is relatively low.”

Dauman is also aiming to bring in $500 million in digital
revenues next year. “We want to accelerate the digital development of our
networks,” he said. “We can do a much, much better job of monetizing our
digital presence. The bulk of our digital revenues is advertising sales. There
will be many forms of revenue streams as the model develops. There will be
licensing revenues, and the mobile revenue stream is growing and is
particularly attractive for us.”