Letter from the chairman

We address all of you - our audience, shareholders, advertisers, employees and suppliers - to share our thoughts about an unprecedented year. We saw the beginnings of recovery and the reigning uncertainty eased, but it is of course still there. Even in this tough climate, however, Atresmedia grew stronger and put in a historic performance, thanks to our solid strategy and our people’s excellent work. We exceeded our own expectations and gained a strong foothold to face 2022.

We are living in a time of tough challenges that need to be addressed urgently. The pandemic changed everyone’s lives. It also sped up developments that, under normal circumstances, would have taken years. The social and economic fallout of the pandemic drove home the importance of sustainability, which has now become the central vector of recovery in Europe.

Our industry is also undergoing far-reaching change. New business models are emerging, consumer habits have shifted towards paid content as the norm, and content is assessed using new metrics. This means that our Group must continue to develop and adapt. However, we face the obstacle of regulatory asymmetries in the audiovisual industry that unbalance competition and leave users unprotected. Clearly, this needs to be put right, and we hope that the upcoming legal reform in Spain under the new Audiovisual Communication Law (Ley General de Comunicación Audiovisual) will play a key role here.

Although last year we were still in the throes of the pandemic and its surrounding uncertainty, we proved able to reinforce our commitment to society by providing high quality, responsible content and accurate, fact-checked news and information. We chose to display optimism in our support for the sectors of the economy and society that were hit hardest by the coronavirus crisis; so at every turn, we reminded everyone that our society is robust and resilient.

Our strategy and our model of responsible audiovisual content were again warmly received by our audience and the wider industry, and we became the leading audiovisual group. In the closing months of the year, Antena 3 was the most-viewed television network, while laSexta and our specialty channels Nova, Neox, Mega and Atreseries were the most-viewed in their segments. What’s more, yet again this year, we took the absolute lead in news and current affairs. Antena 3 broadcast the most-viewed news programmes while laSexta remained a benchmark for current affairs. This shows that audiences trust our professionals and our way of conveying and analysing reality.

In a year in which the public needed truthful reporting about the coronavirus and vaccines, we fought disinformation with fact-checking mechanisms that help us ensure credibility and accuracy. We are proud that for yet another year Antena 3 Noticias was Spain’s benchmark news network and topped the ranking of Spanish media as the most trusted brand, according to the Digital News Report 20 published by the Reuters Institute, of the University of Oxford.

In addition to fulfilling our public service role in news broadcasting, we widened the diversity of our entertainment content, with popular formats such as La Voz, Mask Singer, El Hormiguero 3.0, and El Desafío, and our family of game-shows, La ruleta de la suerte, ¡Boom!, ¡Ahora caigo!, ¿Quién quiere ser millonario? and Pasapalabra, which had its best year ever and was the most-watched daily television show in 2021. Our constant innovation in original fiction content brought to homes the most-watched series of the year, Infiel and Tierra amarga, and the firmly entrenched Amar es para siempre and La cocinera de Castamar, which led viewership figures for their time slots. In the linear broadcasting and time shift viewing categories, moreover, the year’s most viewed series were Mi hija and Mujer, which topped 2.5 million and 2.3 million viewers respectively.

Atresmedia Radio continues to evolve, with a focus on listeners’ and society’s new ways of consuming audiovisual content. Therefore, we intensified the digital transformation of Onda Cero in 2021. In addition to the conventional airwaves, it is now available over its own app and website ondacero.es, voice-driven assistants, car-mounted devices and TDT. New technological enhancements of the listener experience are achieved almost every day.

As a media group, we understand that we owe a duty to society and play a special role facing each of our stakeholders. In 2021, therefore, we completed our second Corporate Responsibility Masterplan by seeing through the achievement of its final targets. We have now set new ESG goals to guide us through 2022 and 2023. The new aims are to reinforce our environmental strategy, update and amplify the ways we measure the Group’s impact on communities and step up our reporting to investors on ESG performance.

ALTHOUGH LAST YEAR WE WERE STILL IN THE THROES OF THE PANDEMIC AND ITS SURROUNDING UNCERTAINTY, WE PROVED ABLE TO REINFORCE OUR COMMITMENT TO SOCIETY BY PROVIDING HIGH QUALITY, RESPONSIBLE CONTENT AND ACCURATE, FACT-CHECKED NEWS AND INFORMATION.

Our businesses are aligned with the Principles of the United Nations Global Compact, which we joined in 2008. We are also aligned with the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. We are aware of the key role we can play in achieving these aims, and thus focus on the roll-out of initiatives that engage our audiences and wider society. Our Compromiso Atresmedia initiatives and the efforts of Fundación Atresmedia - which in 2021 set itself new aims and widened its scope of action to encompass media literacy for children and young people - are the Group’s response to the global social and environmental challenges that we all face.

Our business activity is always on the move on an endless road. I would like to pay tribute to the valuable role played by everyone who contributes to the development of the Atresmedia Group. Without our people, none of our achievements would be even imaginable. So yet again this year, from a place of pride and affection, I send my thanks to our employees, who have faced tough and uncertain times with dedication, tenacity and unflagging effort. They managed to keep the business going and uphold the high standards of quality that have always been our hallmark.

Finally, I should say that our project as a global audiovisual group would be unfeasible if it were not for the trust placed in us by our advertisers, who continue to choose us every day as their preferred advertising space. In our commitment to our advertisers, we continue to strive for effectiveness and innovation. Through technological development, we were again able to offer innovative formulas that bring advertisers new options to improve their return on investment. Our role is to provide a better, safer environment in which advertisers brands can be displayed without risk facing a general audience. We must also make sure that ours is the best venue to advocate for our advertisers’ social causes.

We thank our audience and our advertisers for yet again placing their trust in us; we thank the industry, for sharing our commitment to innovative creativity; and we thank our shareholders for their continued support for our business model, which has become a benchmark. My thanks and acknowledgement to you all. You partake in our successes and in our vital role in a society that, now more than ever, needs the media to provide quality, accuracy, confidence and human warmth.