EXPRESSLY PREFERENTIAL
Though a media pioneer and first-comer in many aspects of Portuguese media, the group is managing to reinvent itself in order to stay relevant to national tastes.
BIOGRAPHY
Francisco Pedro Balsemão has been CEO of Impresa, the largest media company in Portugal, since March 2016. Prior to that, he was Impresa’s Executive Director and COO responsible for HR, legal affairs, and sustainability. He got his law degree from Universidade Nova de Lisboa and has a master’s in law from Oxford. He also undertook a general course in management at the Nova School of Business and Economics and the Kellogg School of Management. Beginning as an associate at Linklaters in 2003, he later became an HR consultant for Heidrick & Struggles in 2008, before joining Impresa in 2009 as Human Resources Director. He was also an assistant adviser to the Portuguese Mission to the UN.How has Grupo Impresa evolved, and what are some of its milestones?
There is Grupo Impresa and there is SIC, the company's most relevant part, thanks to the country's thriving TV business. Impresa as a holding was launched 45 years ago in January 1973, but first started as a newspaper, Expresso, that began during the Portuguese dictatorship. At the time, it was a huge risk to use free speech, and there was a lot of censorship. Fortunately, a year later, Portugal became a democracy. In the 1980s, we were able to buy some magazines and became a publishing company in the 1990s. SIC was launched in 1992 and became the pioneer in its industry. Although it wasn't launched as a start-up due to its large and expensive launch, it was a pioneering operation as the first privately held TV station in Portugal. We had to be disruptive in terms of the way we operated, and due to our efforts, the channel quickly became the leader in the market in terms of ratings and shares within four years. Although we lost our leading status after maintaining it for five to six years, we are still leaders in commercial targets: the most affluent families turn to our channel, which is extremely important because they possess the purchasing power that advertisers want to tap into.
What strategy do you have to refocus the business on audiovisual and digital segments?
We had a large publishing business up until the end of 2017. When I became CEO in March 2016, the strategic plan in place was ending; therefore, I decided to hire a consultant to help us develop a new plan. One thing we had always felt was that the publishing business in particular, in Europe, the US, and Australia, is difficult. We had 14 publishing titles, and decided to sell all of them except our original newspaper, Expresso, and a music magazine. We decided not to sell it because we wanted to capture the younger target market; however, we stopped printing it and converted it to an entirely digital publication. It was hard to sell off our titles because it meant losing 200 people and 12 products; however, we had to do it because the contribution of all these brands combined was insignificant to our EBITDA. Expresso is an oasis here in the publishing business; it has a 36% share of the advertising market in Portugal. It has the largest circulation in Portugal, although print sales are falling. We will not close the paper version, although our growth is focused on the digital version. We are well ahead of the rest of the market, selling 25,000 digital copies of the newspaper every week. We sell 86,000 of Expresso's weekly publications.
Impresa closed 1H2018 with EUR2.5 million, 30 times higher than figures in 1H2017. To what would you attribute that success?
It has been over 20 months since the 2017-2019 strategic plan was put into place, and so far, it has produced tremendous results. Selling the publications was important, in addition to reducing our fixed costs. Similarly, we had some programming cuts due to shows that were not getting a good return on investment. We had no opportunity to increase the return because many of them were foreign programs, such as Brazilian telenovelas. They were successful in the past in our programming slots, but consumers habits have since evolved. Another reason was our increase in advertising revenue, which related to our performance and ratings. It also had to do with the World Cup in 2018 as we had some of the matches alongside RTP. We developed new entertainment and news shows around the World Cup, and advertisers were eager to work with us.
What are your goals and priorities for the year ahead?
There are different challenges we face. For starters, we have competition from international players; given that the media landscape is now global, there is no level playing field because the rules that apply to established media players in the past don't apply to Netflix, Google, or Facebook. Nonetheless, local quality content is something that we are investing in, not just in terms of telenovelas, but in news and other fiction. When we start developing fictional products, we are always thinking about how they can be exported abroad—stories with a global appeal. For Dubai, for example, we have to edit and need to make sure that certain content is adapted according to local preferences. We are doing it systematically rather than ad-hoc. Our main goal is to move into our new building, an historical milestone since it means SIC will be in the same building as Expresso, something that has never happened in the company's 45 years of history. Our goal is to create synergies in different areas, improve operations, and boost creativity and motivation.
EXPRESSLY PREFERENTIAL
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Focus: Community of Portuguese Language Speaking Countries
Making an Impact
Established in 1996, the Community of Portuguese Language Speaking Countries (CPLP) is a mechanism geared at linking and sharing the experience of Lusophone countries. Besides Portugal, this includes Brazil, Portugal, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and São Tomé and Príncipe.
read articleFocus
Don’t Mind the Disruption
Having won the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest, Lisbon hosted the 2018 event. The relevance? Well, the contest began back in 1956 as a showcase not only of song, but of then-nascent live television broadcast technology. Today, Portugal is on the cutting edge of new technological developments.
read articleInterview
João Pedro Soeiro de Matos Fernandes , Minister , Environment and Energy Transition
The Ministry for the Environment and Energy Transition is focusing on decarbonizing the economy, valuing the territory and its habitats, and striving for a more circular use of the country's resources.
read articleInterview
António Braz Costa , General Manager, Portuguese Technological Centre for the Textile & Clothing Industries (CITEVE)
CITEVE has transformed the industry by promoting value addition, adopting the latest technologies, and ensuring the highest standards of environmental sustainability.
read articleFocus: New airport
Right Time to Seize Missed Opportunities
Portugal has seen its air traffic figures increase by as much as 80% in the last five years. As a result, its transportation infrastructure, and Lisbon's airport in particular, cannot cope with the rising numbers. A new airport project that will turn a military base into a commercial airport is now under discussion to bring much-needed relief to air traffic.
read articleInterview
Germano de Sousa , President, Grupo Germano de Sousa
Grupo Germano de Sousa's success can best be summed up by its understanding that science and medicine only really progress when technological development is combined with a deeper respect for human values and professional ethics.
read articleInterview
Isabel Capeloa Gil , Rector, Universidade Católica
Having pioneered the introduction of multiple subject areas to Portugal's tertiary education scene, Universidade Católica is aspiring to establish the country's first private medical school and introduce cutting-edge digital transformation.
read articleInterview
Carlos Guillén Gestoso , President, Escola Universitária de Ciências Empresariais, Saúde, Tecnologias e Engenharia & President, Atlantica University
Atlantica University differentiates through its company-university model and an MBA program in partnership with the University of California, Berkley, among other initiatives, to produce practical theoreticians.
read articleFocus: Public teaching staff
An Age-old Problem
Over a decade of austerity measures combined with an ageing population have seen the average age of the Portuguese public teaching staff progressively climb to one of the highest in the OECD. With frozen salaries, an extended retirement age, and precarious working conditions, today the sector faces one of its biggest challenge yet.
read articleInterview
Pedro Queiroz , General Manager, Federation of the Portuguese Agri-Food Industry (FIPA)
Portugal's economic recovery has seen its F&B sector emerge with annual turnovers of EUR16 billion, thanks to FIPA's undeterred focus on stable policies, excellent nutrition standards, and sustainability.
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