Earnings Labs

Beasley Broadcast Group, Inc. (BBGI)

Q4 2007 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 19, 2008

$19.14

-14.63%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning my name is Brae and I will be your conference operator today. At this time I would like to welcome everyone to the Beasley Broadcast Group 2007 fourth quarter results conference call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks there will be a question-and-answer period. (Operator Instructions) It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Chief Financial Officer, Caroline Beasley. Ma'am, you may begin your conference.

Caroline Beasley

Chief Financial Officer

Thank you Brae. Good morning and welcome to the Beasley Broadcast Group fourth quarter conference call. Before beginning, I would like to emphasize that this call will contain forward-looking statements about our future performance and results of operations that involve risks and uncertainties that are described in the risk factors section of our most recent Form 10-K. This call will also contain a discussion of certain non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of Item 10 of Reg S-K. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures with their most directly comparable financial measures, calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP can be found on the company's website. I would also remind listeners this call is being webcast live over the Internet and that a replay of the call will be available on our corporate website, BBGI.com, for five days after the call ends. Investors can also find a copy of today's press release on the investors or pressroom section of the site. As always we will keep our remarks focused this morning on the fourth quarter, our guidance and operations outlook and then open the floor to Q&A. Bruce Beasley, our President and COO is with me this morning. Before the quarter, our revenues increased 0.4%. Actual fourth quarter net revenue, SOI and other metrics reported include $1.4 million in revenue from the Miami Dolphins, which the company didn’t have in last years fourth quarter. BBGI exceeded its fourth quarter guidance for a net revenue decline of 2% as we generated better than projected cluster revenue in Philadelphia, Augusta and Coastal Carolina. According to Miller Kaplan total Philadelphia market revenue declined 4.1% in the fourth quarter while our cluster revenues fell 1.4%. So we out performed our market in Philadelphia. Our stations also out performed the market in Miami. In total, market…

Bruce Beasley

President

Thank you Caroline. I would like to spend my time this morning briefly addressing three areas, they are interest I believe to our financial community and form the foundation of our continued enthusiasm for the Beasley Broadcast group’s prospects. The first topic I would like to address is the state of the industry and how Beasley is fairing and what has been generally been categorized as a very challenging environment. I am going to start by saying that the sky is not falling down in broadcasting and our fourth quarter results highlight the benefit of our strategies to target good growth markets, appoint qualified staff, programs to listeners preferences, sell locally and promote each station appropriately, which together will allow us to exceed market and industry performance. During the quarter on actual basis we’ve recorded year-over-year revenue increases in seven of our top ten ad categories and on a same-station basis we recorded year-over-year revenue increases in five of our 10 ad categories. And if you look at our ad categories 3.8% same-station decline is directly related to auto and political. The second area I would like to address this morning is how we faired relative to the operational and strategic goals that we established for BBGI in ’07. On a big picture basis we set out to manage our stations for industry outperformance and we succeeded in that effort, and digging a little bit deeper though, we entered '07 seeking to close the gap on our performance in Miami relative to the market. Our second area of focus for the company in '07 was to strengthen the revenue contributions from KKLG and KFRH general Las Vegas cluster following programming and on-air changes throughout these stations. We had recorded several quarters of double-digit revenue growth in Las Vegas, largely related…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our first question is coming from Tracy Young with Bear Sterns. Tracy Young - Bear Stearns Hi, I have actually got two questions. The first is, are you hearing from advertisers, a puzzled reaction to sell Bill Parcells as General Manager of the Dolphins? And also your CapEx guidance seems to be a little bit higher than historical. Could you give us some guidance on that?

George Beasley

Analyst · Bear Sterns

As far as what we've heard about Bill Parcells, that's only positive for the Dolphins. He has been a great coach in the past and has had winning teams and we certainly believe that he's is going to help us out with advertisers or the Dolphins. And quite frankly even though Dolphins had a terrible year last year, advertisers still loved them. So it's only going to help us.

Caroline Beasley

Chief Financial Officer

And in terms of CapEx guidance, it is higher than what we said last year. We do have two big projects included in this, one over in Miami and one in Las Vegas, and that is in addition to our HD conversion. So those two markets Miami and Vegas will make up the difference.

Tracy Young

Analyst · Bear Sterns

Okay, thanks.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our next question is coming from Lee Westerfield from BMO Capital.

Lee Westerfield

Analyst · BMO Capital

Thanks folks, good morning.

Bruce Beasley

President

Hi, Lee.

Caroline Beasley

Chief Financial Officer

Hey.

Lee Westerfield

Analyst · BMO Capital

Two questions if I may. First, I think you said Philadelphia might be flat for this year, which I wondered if you can elaborate on a bit in terms of how that trend will develop. Secondly, Caroline, for the audience at large, do you mind just walking trough your debt structure at this point, your leverage and what covenant terms and so forth may come up in the near and distant future?

Caroline Beasley

Chief Financial Officer

In terms of Philadelphia, the guidance that I gave for first quarter was flat. While January proved to be a very good month for Philadelphia, we are seeing slowness in February and March. Now what we’ve been told by your National Rep firm, Philadelphia is one of two markets that we have that are actually pacing up in National. So for the month of January the increases that we saw were largely attributable to National. We're hoping this pans out. Therefore we are projecting local to a bit soft. The market itself was down in the month of January 10%, so the Philadelphia market locally is down and is bringing down the market, national is pacing higher. So, we're just tying to be conservative here and we're projecting a flat quarter for Philadelphia. Certainly for the year, we expect growth from that market, but for the quarters, we're expecting flat.

Lee Westerfield

Analyst · BMO Capital

Thank you for clarifying. I misspoke when I said full year.

Caroline Beasley

Chief Financial Officer

Okay, and then in terms of our debt structure, I have a revolver and a term. Right now the covenant calculation is 6.25 times through the end of the year, and for March 31st 2009 then the leverage calculation or the average covenant will go down to 5.75 times. There are no required principle payments. However, we are making principle payments on a monthly basis to our revolvers.

Lee Westerfield

Analyst · BMO Capital

Great, thank you very much.

Caroline Beasley

Chief Financial Officer

You're welcome.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. (Operator Instructions) Our next question is a follow-up from Tracy Young with Bear Stearns.

Victor Miller

Analyst · Bear Stearns

Actually it's Victor Miller standing in for Tracy on the second question. Can you talk a little bit about couple of the ad categories specifically, one thing I'm curious about in the first quarter and fourth quarter is the impact of TV tuning dollars from maybe the Writers strike and what impact that might have had in February for example? Secondly, can you give us any sense of any real estate home improvement oriented categories especially in your Florida and Las Vegas market, and then generally, how you are seeing auto retail and Telco, because I heard there is quite a lot of mixed signals across the country in those categories. Thanks.

Caroline Beasley

Chief Financial Officer

Victor what I can do is address the impact of TV in fourth quarter. I do not have the numbers available for first quarter. Someone actually asked me this question earlier; revenues were down in that particular category, 12% in the fourth quarter. So we are definitely seeing an impact of the Writers strike. I would expect that they would still continue to be down and first quarter.

Victor Miller

Analyst · Bear Stearns

What percentage of that is that 5%, 6%, 7% what kind of --

Caroline Beasley

Chief Financial Officer

For the fourth quarter it is 5.5%.

Victor Miller

Analyst · Bear Stearns

Of your revenue?

Caroline Beasley

Chief Financial Officer

Yes.

Victor Miller

Analyst · Bear Stearns

Okay.

Caroline Beasley

Chief Financial Officer

In terms of real estate for the quarter obviously we saw a slight decline in real estate for the quarter and that is decline in advertising is coming from Fort Myers and also Vegas, as well as some of the other markets; Miami and Acosta. Interesting enough, Philadelphia was up in real estate. But overall there was a decline and in terms of the percentage of revenue, real estate is 2.4% or about 2.4%.

Victor Miller

Analyst · Bear Stearns

And on auto retail, Telco, and then I have a follow up for -- one other follow up, thanks.

Caroline Beasley

Chief Financial Officer

In terms of Auto, auto was down obviously in fourth quarter and it's pacing down in the first quarter as well. It was off about 10% in fourth quarter and right now it looks like it's going to be offset for the same amount in first quarter. Telco was actually up for us and the information that I am getting from national, I guess there has been a reclassification of one of the big advertisers.

Victor Miller

Analyst · Bear Stearns

AT&T?

Caroline Beasley

Chief Financial Officer

You know [national per local]. So it's a little bit grey out there at this point but that kind of worries me.

Victor Miller

Analyst · Bear Stearns

One other follow–up; Bruce I am just curious; the PPM, and what I was struck by is a leak of some rep data earlier this year and what I found interesting was that the two PPM markets Philadelphia was the only market top 10 that was actually up in national and Houston was only down high single digit relative to the numbers that were out at that point. And what I was struck by is that the two PPM markets actually were doing the best out of the top 10-20 markets. So, is that just coincidence or do you think that the markets adjusted last year as PPM came in and now they are readjusting upward a little bit to the reality of PPM or is there any takeaway at all from that coincidence or a reality?

George Beasley

Analyst · Bear Stearns

Victor, I think its coincidence, what Caroline was alluding to earlier. In the top 50 markets Las Vegas and Philadelphia were the only two markets that were up. And so coincidentally Philadelphia is a PPM market. Obviously Las Vegas is not and again we're a strong believer in that medium but I think that’s more coincidental than anything else.

Victor Miller

Analyst · Bear Stearns

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We have a follow up coming from Lee Westerfield.

Lee Westerfield

Analyst · BMO Capital

I couldn’t resist, but it is a serious question and it’s a far reaching one but, in your HDA broadcasts, are you guys encoding songs if people who happen to have the buy button for I-tunes choose to at this point.

Caroline Beasley

Chief Financial Officer

We're not doing that just yet. We're hoping to embrace that technology and the future of that. We are not set up to do that just now.

Lee Westerfield

Analyst · BMO Capital

Okay, I will wait and watch. Thank you.

Caroline Beasley

Chief Financial Officer

Okay, thank you. Alright, thanks to you operator, and thank you everyone for attending today.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This does concludes today's Beasley conference call. You may now disconnect and have a wonderful day.