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Investor Relations - Financials - Report to Investors Liberty Media Corporation
LETTER
TO SHAREHOLDERS
Dear Fellow Shareholders:
Once again, we
have the privilege of reporting to you on the state of our Company,
describing some of our achievements in the past year, and outlining
our aspirations for the future. In summary, 1999 was a remarkable year
for Liberty Media Group. Most of our affiliated companies performed
very well, the market values of our public affiliates appreciated significantly,
we initiated or completed a number of important acquisitions, we embarked
on several new initiatives, and we took advantage of the strong capital
markets to raise new long-term financing. The resulting value creation
was clearly reflected in a nearly 150 percent increase in the price
of our stock in 1999. During the year,
we also witnessed an increase in the pace of consolidation in the communications
and media business and the resulting emergence of global providers of
a wide range of telecommunications services. Technological advances
have enabled the worldwide delivery of new forms of information and
entertainment products and increased the demand for these products.
The importance of scale economics in the creation and distribution of
content is driving the trend toward consolidation and globalization.
At the same time,
the desire for competitive advantage motivates a trend toward vertical
integration. Content companies want to control distribution to ensure
availability of their products, while distribution companies want to
differentiate their offerings with branded content. Both want to offer
bundled packages of services. In this dynamic environment, we believe
that value will migrate to those companies that own branded content
and those that have direct relationships with the ultimate consumer.
Liberty's challenge—and opportunity—is to find the best ways to participate
in and profit from these trends. Creating Value for Our Shareholders
Our past success
is the product of how we approach our mission: to maximize the per share
value of our equity over a rolling five- to ten-year horizon. We do
this through a cycle of value creation designed to make Liberty's overall
equity appreciate at a faster rate than the sum of our parts. This should
drive a commensurate increase in the price of our stock, as was the
case this past year. The value creation
cycle for Liberty begins with acquiring and investing in select businesses
with sustainable rates of internal growth that substantially exceed
the growth rate of the market as a whole. Our affiliated companies are
in the business of satisfying the exploding demand for broadband content
and services. They are developing technology, they are creating broadband
content services, including electronic commerce, and they are providing
the means of distributing these services. It is important to note that
while each of our businesses stands on its own, we do not view our holdings
as a random collection of high-growth businesses. Rather, we see them
as the threads of a single fabric of opportunity. We maximize the
potential of our assets through opportunistic management of our collection
of businesses. We seek to combine like assets to create scale and to
join groups of complementary assets to create synergy. We also deploy
a variety of financial techniques to optimize the returns from our businesses,
minimize risk and maintain a balanced capital structure. The last step
on the cycle is to efficiently use our assets to generate the liquidity
that enables us to restart the entire value creation process with a
new business. Strong Demand Drives Growth Among Our
Businesses Most of our businesses
delivered very strong performance in 1999, either meeting or exceeding
our expectations for them. Time
Warner , one of the largest
media companies in the world, posted record cash flow of $7.3 billion
on revenues of $27.3 billion for 1999, up 15 percent and four percent,
respectively, compared with 1998. Time Warner advertising revenue grew
by 20 percent to more than $5 billion in 1999. Sprint
PCS , the nation's largest
all-digital wireless network, serves a population of nearly 190 million.
During the fourth quarter of 1999, Sprint PCS posted its fifth consecutive
record quarter in the area of customer acquisitions, becoming the first
U.S. wireless carrier to add more than one million wireless customers
in a single quarter. Since the end of 1998, the Sprint PCS customer
base has increased by 121 percent to 5.73 million, and in 1999, revenue
rose by $1.96 billion, up 160 percent compared with 1998. QVC
again reported stellar results in 1999.
Sales at QVC increased by 19 percent in 1999 to more than $2.8 billion,
while operating cash flow grew by 24 percent to $539 million. Over the
past 10 years, QVC's revenue and cash flow have grown at compound average
growth rates of approximately 16 percent and 24 percent, respectively.
QVC's powerful domestic electronic retailing business delivered more
than 75 million packages and increased its customer base by one million
to more than eight million customers in 1999. QVC's international businesses
have also enjoyed success, exceeding $384 million in sales, up 38 percent
over 1998. Revenue from QVC's retail website, iQVC, more than doubled
in 1999 to nearly $100 million. In June 2000, Discovery
Communications will celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Discovery
Channel, and the fact that Discovery's programs, products and services
have become available to almost a billion people in 147 countries. For
the third consecutive year, the nationwide EquiTrend survey named the
Discovery Channel as the leading media brand in overall quality among
61 brands measured, including newspapers, magazines and television.
The Learning Channel was third on the list. Overall, Discovery was the
only media brand that ranked in the top 10 among all consumer brands.
Discovery enjoyed unprecedented growth in 1999, with total consolidated
revenues growing by 33 percent to $1.4 billion. Animal Planet continued
its rapid growth rate, adding 10 million new subscribers in 1999. Major
new initiatives for 1999 included Discovery Health Media, which has
quickly become a leading cross-media health information brand, and Discovery.com,
which aims to create new revenue streams by extending the reach of Discovery's
content services onto the Internet. During 1999, Starz
Encore Group created pay TV's first ''Super Pak'' of up to 12 differentiated
premium Starz and Encore movie channels for one low price. Starz Encore
was the first to introduce Subscription Video-On-Demand (S-VOD), a new
business model that will carry pay television into the new era of broadband
services. Using the emerging video-on-demand technology platform, S-VOD
allows Starz Encore Super Pak subscribers to view movies at any time
with full VCR functionality of play, pause, fast forward and rewind.
In 1999, Starz Encore also increased its distribution reach by signing
long-term contracts with DirecTV and 15 MSOs, and strengthened its programming
through long-term exclusive output deals with Disney, three independent
producers and, in early 2000, with Sony Pictures. These agreements include
current S-VOD and future Internet rights. Growth among the satellite
distributors and the digital services offered by cable companies fueled
a 20 percent increase in revenue for 1999 and a 65 percent increase
in cash flow to $165 million. TV
Guide, Inc. markets and distributes television viewer guide products to more than
100 million cable and satellite homes each week in the U.S. and markets
its products internationally in more than 45 countries. During 1999,
United Video completed its merger with TV Guide and relaunched its Prevue
Channel using the powerful TV Guide brand. Later in 1999, TV Guide launched
Television Games Network, a 24-hour horse racing channel with an interactive
wagering capability. TV Guide also signed a marketing alliance with
Echostar to convert TV Guide's C-Band satellite customers to Echostar's
service. Telewest
Communications , with 1.6
million residential cable television and telephone customers, is one
of the largest providers of broadband video and data services in the
United Kingdom. It has more than 100,000 subscribers to its new suite
of digital services and recently launched the country's first high-speed
Internet access services. Telewest revenue grew by 42 percent, and cash
flow increased by 40 percent to approximately $339 million in 1999.
Jupiter
Telecommunications is Japan's
largest cable company, with a base of 4.8 million homes under franchise.
Jupiter's networks are capable of carrying television channels, telephony,
data and two-way interactive services. Jupiter's digital telephone service
represents wireline competition in the local loop for long-time dominant
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone. In 1999, Jupiter became the first cable
company in Japan to begin testing digital broadcasts. At the end of
1999, Jupiter had 537,000 cable television subscribers, an increase
of 42 percent compared with 1998. Residential telephone and Internet
lines more than tripled to 28,000. Jupiter
Programming manages and
distributes channels for cable and satellite networks in Japan. The
Golf Network and Shop Channel now lead the market in their sectors,
while CableSoft Network is one of the most highly rated movie channels
in Japanese cable. J-Sports recently merged with Sky Sports, becoming
the largest shareholder in a three-channel sports operation with partners
Sony, Fuji TV, Softbank and News Corp. The new entity, J-Sky-Sports,
has an extensive rights inventory that includes baseball, Japan's J-League
soccer and a wide range of international soccer events. Managing Our Assets For Growth, Scale
And Synergy Management of our
assets involves two distinct phases. The first phase is to acquire all
or a significant part of businesses involved in the creation or distribution
of media and telecommunications services. In so doing, we position our
Company to benefit from the growth in value of these individual businesses,
and we create the building blocks of scale and synergy so crucial in
our industry. The second phase is to initiate or support timely acquisitions
or mergers that create scale economies for the business involved, reduce
the risk in that business, and/or improve the liquidity of Liberty's
position. In each case, we are careful to structure transactions to
maximize our after-tax returns. Throughout the process, we actively
seek opportunities to increase management or shareholder focus on discreet
sets of assets. Last year was an
active one for Liberty with regard to these efforts, particularly in
the telecommunications and foreign cable arena. We continue to believe
that demand for broadband telecommunications services will exceed the
physical capacity of the distribution infrastructure for the foreseeable
future. This is particularly true with respect to the most expensive
part of the distribution network, namely the point of access to the
ultimate user. In the past year, we acquired portions of several large
companies with unique advantages in the delivery of broadband services
to consumers and businesses. In December 1999
we acquired approximately 32 percent of Astrolink, LLC. Astrolink is
planning to launch a constellation of four Ka-band satellites with on-board
processing capabilities over the next three years. Once operational,
these satellites will constitute a global infrastructure capable of
providing fixed, two-way broadband data services anywhere in the world.
Possible applications include carrying traffic among local carriers
in distant markets, connecting global facilities of multinational companies,
and offering Internet and streaming video services to individual consumers
in the U.S. or abroad. The global network also will be able to provide
services to our other content and distribution companies. The relatively
low cost of creating the global infrastructure and the variety of potential
service offerings make Astrolink an attractive proposition. In January 2000,
we completed the acquisition of The Associated Group, whose largest
asset was a 34 percent position in Teligent. Teligent provides broadband
voice and data communications services to small- and mid-sized businesses
by means of fixed wireless transmission. Because it does not rely on
fiber optic cable, Teligent can serve customers more quickly and at
lower cost than the incumbent telephone company competitor in many areas.
In February 2000,
we led a group that invested $750 million in ICG Communications, a competitive
local exchange carrier and a provider of network facilities and management
to Internet service providers, business customers and other carriers.
ICG is focused on the development of a complete portfolio of telecom
products, such as voice, data and teleconferencing for business customers;
and network management functions for Internet service providers and
application service providers. Also in February, ICG and Teligent entered
into a share exchange and committed to find opportunities for their
complementary systems and infrastructure to work together. Both ICG
and Teligent can provide key terrestrial services and traffic to Astrolink.
In September 1999
we made an investment in UnitedGlobalCom. UGC, through its majority-owned
subsidiary, United Pan-European Holdings, is the leading provider of
cable television, telephony and related broadband services in continental
Europe. Its ''chello'' broadband Internet service is a leading provider
of broadband Internet portal services. This investment complements our
existing cable television, telephony and content holdings in the U.K.,
Ireland and continental Europe, as well as our activities in Japan and
Argentina. We also took steps
in 1999 to create a number of smaller corporate units to pursue individual
areas of business opportunity. These efforts are motivated by two objectives.
First, as we grow in size and scope, we need a way to pursue the myriad
opportunities that are presented to us without significantly increasing
corporate staff. Second, we want to ensure that the value of our less
visible assets is not obscured by our larger businesses. By creating
separate publicly traded entities, we attract and motivate entrepreneurial
management with specific expertise, and we create a stock that can be
used to acquire like assets and raise shareholder awareness of certain
groups of assets. So far, we have established two such companies—Liberty
Digital and Liberty Satellite—and we are developing a third, Liberty
Livewire. We may create others in the future. As mentioned in
last year's letter, we folded certain of our interactive television,
Internet and music assets into a new company called Liberty Digital.
This transaction was announced in April and completed in September 1999.
Liberty Digital has a dual mandate: to develop applications and services
under the bandwidth agreement we negotiated as part of the AT&T
merger, and to make venture capital investments in the fields of interactive
television and Internet content. Exploitation of the bandwidth agreement
is dependent on deployment by AT&T and other cable operators of
next-generation set-top devices. Since such devices will probably not
be deployed in scale for at least another year, Liberty Digital has
focused on a steady stream of investments and acquisitions. In December 1999,
we announced a transaction with TCI Satellite, soon to be renamed Liberty
Satellite and Technology, Inc. (LSAT), in which we agreed to acquire
a controlling interest in LSAT, and to form a joint venture. We contributed
all of our satellite-related assets (including Astrolink, XM Radio,
Sky Latin America and iSky) into the joint venture, thereby placing
them in the hands of a management team with expertise in this field.
The transaction was completed in March 2000. We began to assemble
Liberty Livewire in July 1999 with the announced acquisition of Todd-AO,
followed by acquisitions of SounDelux and Four Media. When assembled,
Liberty Livewire will function as a third-party service company offering
an end-to-end package of post-production services and video and Internet
distribution services to studios, television programmers and advertisers.
These services will facilitate the efficient production and networking
of interactive programming and advertising bound for the consumer's
TV and PC via cable, DSL and broadcast television distribution, addressing
both the narrow band and broadband needs of our customers. Liberty Livewire
is still in its infancy, but could emerge as a very important business
as the nature and delivery of video and Internet content continue to
evolve. Liberty Livewire not only offers the potential for significant
economic opportunity, but it should also add to the value of our other
programming businesses by providing a cost-efficient infrastructure
for the development of interactive programming services. We also orchestrated
three large merger transactions, all of which demonstrate the transition
of our holdings into larger companies. Each transaction offered different
benefits to Liberty. In September 1999,
General Instrument announced a merger agreement with Motorola, a leader
in wireless communications, networking and semiconductor technology.
This transaction brought the value of Motorola's technology resources,
brand name and business diversification to GI. The merger made Liberty
one of the largest shareholders in Motorola and it also substantially
increased the liquidity of Liberty's ownership position, enabling us
to use the asset to finance other activities while continuing to benefit
from the future growth of Motorola's businesses. In October 1999,
TV Guide announced its agreement to merge with Gemstar International
Group. Upon completion of the merger, expected in the second quarter
of 2000, our 44 percent interest in TV Guide will convert to approximately
20 percent of the new TV Guide International. Liberty—together with
News Corporation, which holds a similar interest—will be the largest
shareholders and will continue our active roles in the management of
the Company. The objective of the merger is to combine TV Guide's strengths
in providing viewer guide information to consumers through its magazine
and passive and interactive cable services, with Gemstar's preeminent
global position with broadcasters and consumer electronics manufacturers.
The scale provided by the combination will also increase the potential
audience size available to advertisers and present opportunities for
cost savings. In December 1999,
two of our U.K. affiliates, Telewest Communications and Flextech announced
their agreement to merge. Our holdings of 22 percent and 37 percent
in Telewest and Flextech, respectively, will convert into a 24 percent
holding in the merged entity. Following the merger, Liberty and Microsoft
will be the largest shareholders of the new Telewest. Our objective
in initiating and supporting this merger is to combine Telewest's distribution
assets with Flextech's programming businesses. Given the competitive
landscape in the market, we believe that an integrated company with
an array of voice, video and interactive services will be more successful
than either company alone. Thus far, the market agrees with our determination.
Managing Our Capital Structure The past year was
particularly active on the capital-raising front. Immediately following
the AT&T acquisition in March 1999, we had approximately $5.5 billion
in cash. Since then, we have invested approximately $4 billion in new
initiatives. In order to maintain the financial flexibility required
to take advantage of emerging opportunities, we issued two types of
debt securities for a total of $4 billion: · In
July 1999 and January 2000, we issued a total of $750 million of 10-year
debt and $1.5 billion of 30-year bonds. These debt securities carry
an investment-grade rating and have a weighted average interest rate
of 8.18 percent. We paid a small premium for the longer-term securities,
but felt it was prudent in view of the long-term nature of our assets.
· We
also sold a total of $1.7 billion of exchangeable debt securities. These
instruments have 30-year maturities and are exchangeable by the holders
into some of the shares of PCS common stock that we hold. By offering
the exchange right, we were able to achieve a blended interest rate
of 3.88 percent. The long maturity, connection to an underlying asset
and very low after-tax interest cost created an efficient means of raising
our debt leverage without risking our investment-grade debt rating.
The Future As a result of
our success (and some luck) in 1999 and the first quarter of 2000, Liberty
Media Group's equity market value recently reached $80 billion. This
figure is noteworthy, as it places us among the 40 largest American
companies. It is staggering in comparison with our market value of $5
billion just three years ago. However, it also leads to a frequent question
from shareholders: How will we sustain our rate of growth now that our
base has become so large? Our answer is simple:
We will continue to apply the strategy that has proved to be so successful
in the past. We will endeavor to create extraordinary returns for our
shareholders through a combination of internal growth, aggressive management
of our collection of assets and creative but conservative financial
management. Our approach is
straightforward. We try to determine the leading trends that will shape
the way consumers and businesses behave in the future. We then try to
profit from these trends by owning companies that have a unique advantage
in addressing these future needs. The inherent growth in the value of
these businesses is compounded by their association with our affiliated
companies and by our willingness and ability to combine assets to create
scale or business synergy. Finally, whether we are buying, selling or
merging businesses, we seek structures that lead to the highest after-tax
return and the least risk. In last year's
Annual Report, we wrote: ''Our sole objective has always been to maximize
the value of Liberty's stock. We pursue this goal with diligence, focus,
energy and creativity. Liberty is managed by shareholders for the benefit
of shareholders. Every corporate employee owns stock and has a direct
stake in the success of our efforts. Each action we take in the future
will be consistent with that goal.'' This statement
articulates the philosophy that has guided us since we were founded
in 1991. Our shareholders can expect that our tactics will evolve and
vary as we adapt to changing conditions, that the scope of our business
interests will broaden, and that the pace of our activity will quicken.
But you can also expect that our key objective and our fundamental approach
to achieving that objective will not change. The accelerated
pace and wider range of our activities recently required us to expand
our corporate staff to 39 employees. While this is an all-time high
for Liberty, the ratio of our market value per employee also rose—from
$1.4 billion last year to more than $2.0 billion today. This result
would not be possible without the enormous dedication of those 39 people
and without their commitment to the principles of the Company. We thank
each of them, and all of their counterparts and colleagues at our affiliated
companies, for their contributions to our success. On behalf of the
entire family of Liberty employees, we would like to thank you, our
fellow shareholders, for your continuing support and encouragement.
We look forward to meeting the new challenges and seizing the exciting
opportunities that the coming year is certain to bring. Very truly yours,
Robert R. Bennett
President and Chief
Executive Officer
John
C. Malone Chairman
of the Board
April 13, 2000
On March 9, 1999,
Tele-Communications, Inc. completed its merger with AT&T Corp. Prior
to the merger, Liberty Media Group Class A and Class B Common Stock
were tracking stocks of TCI and traded on the Nasdaq Stock Market under
the symbols LBTYA and LBTYB. Upon completion of the merger, both classes
of Liberty Media Group common stock became tracking stocks of AT&T
and transferred to the New York Stock Exchange where they trade under
the symbols LMG.A and LMG.B. The following tables illustrate the performance
of the Liberty Media Group Class A Common Stock since it was initially
issued by TCI in August of 1995, and a comparison of the performance
of the Liberty Media Group Class A Common Stock with the performance
of the S&P 500 and Nasdaq.
Liberty
Media Group, through Liberty Media Corporation and its subsidiaries
and affiliates, owns interests in a broad range of video programming,
communications and Internet businesses in the United States, Europe,
South America and Asia. The principal assets in the Liberty Media Group
include interests in Starz Encore Group LLC, Discovery Communications,
Inc., Time Warner Inc., QVC, Inc., USA Networks, Inc., Telewest Communications,
plc, TV Guide, Inc., Motorola, Inc., Sprint PCS Group, The News Corporation
Limited, Teligent, Inc. and Liberty Digital, Inc.
The
following table sets forth information concerning Liberty Media Group's
subsidiaries and business affiliates. Liberty Media Group's interests
are held either directly or indirectly through partnerships, joint ventures,
common stock investments and instruments convertible or exchangeable
into common stock. Ownership percentages in the table are approximate,
calculated as of March 31, 2000, and, where applicable and except as
otherwise noted, assume conversion to common equity by Liberty Media
Group and, to the extent known by Liberty Media Group, other holders.
In some cases, Liberty Media Group's interest may be subject to buy/sell
procedures, repurchase rights or, under certain circumstances, dilution
CABLE AND TELEPHONY
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