Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. 2019 Second Quarter Earnings Conference. [Operator Instructions]I'll now turn the conference over to your host, Eileen McLaughlin, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings 2019 Second Quarter Earnings Call. On the call today are, William Eccleshare, Worldwide Chief Executive Officer; and Brian Coleman, Chief Financial Officer of Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. In addition, Scott Wells, CEO, Clear Channel Outdoor Americas is on the call. We'll provide an overview of the 2019 second quarter operating performances of Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. and Clear Channel International, B.V. After an introduction and a review of the quarter, we'll open up the line for questions.Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that this conference call includes forward-looking statements. These statements include management's expectations, beliefs and projections about performance and represent management's current beliefs. There can be no assurance that management's expectations, beliefs or projections will be achieved or that actual results will not differ from expectation.Please review the statements of risk contained in our earnings press releases and filings with the SEC. Pacing data will also be mentioned during the call. For those of you not familiar with pacing data, it reflects orders booked at a specific date versus the comparable date in the prior period and may not reflect the actual revenue growth rate at the end of the period.During today's call, we will provide some performance measures that do not conform to generally accepted accounting principles. We provided schedules that reconcile these non-GAAP measures with our reported results on a GAAP basis as part of our earnings press releases and the earnings conference call presentation, which can be found on the Investors section of our website, www.investor.clearchannel.com.Please note that our earnings release and a slide presentation are also available on our website, www.investor.clearchannel.com, and are integral to our earnings conference call. They provide a detailed breakdown of foreign exchange and non-cash compensation expense items as well as segment revenues, operating income and OIBDAN, among other important information. For that reason, we ask that you view each slide as William and Brian comment on them.Also, please note that the information provided on this call speaks only to management's views as of today, August 1, 2019, and may no longer be accurate at the time of replay.With that, I will now turn the call over to William.

Thank you, Eileen. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to participate in today's call. I'd like to welcome all our stakeholders as we discuss our business for the first time since the completion of our separation from iHeartMedia. Brian will then review our second quarter results and discuss our financial position.As an independent company, we can now fully chart our own course as we seek to build on our momentum, fulfill our ambition and pursue the opportunities in front of us. I would like to acknowledge all our employees across our global operations for their hard work, talent and dedication to serving our advertising partners and contributing to our success, whilst also managing the process of separation from iHeart.Bolstered by our recent steps to establish our new Board of Directors, strengthen our operating management across our regions and address our capital structure with last week's equity offering, we are now well positioned to build on our market leadership as we continue to execute on our strategic plan. Brian will discuss the equity offering in a moment, but let me just note that this marks a significant step in our focus on strengthening our capital structure.This is a period of strong projected growth for the out-of-home market compared to traditional media. The fundamentals of our sector are powerful, but when you layer on the positive impact of the tech field transformation which we are driving, we are confident at delivering significant growth opportunities. Since many of you are new to our story, I'd like to briefly recap our strategic position, outline our growth strategy and provide an update on recent developments.Please turn to slide 4. Our vision is to create a unique, mass reach global media platform that delivers our clients' messages across our distinctive portfolio of…

Thank you, William. I too would like to welcome all of our stakeholders to our earnings conference call and echo the statement that we are optimistic about the future of Clear Channel Outdoor. With the strength of our management team and Board of Directors supported by our stakeholders, we believe we have a unique opportunity to benefit from the ongoing trends in the out-of-home industry.I will first review our second quarter results and then discuss the recent equity offering. As in the past, during our GAAP results discussion, I'll also talk about our results adjusting for foreign exchange. We believe this improves the comparability of our results to the prior year. I will refer to these results as adjusted revenues, adjusted expenses and adjusted OIBDAN. And you will be glad to know we are working on expanding our disclosure to provide additional insight to our stakeholders.This quarter, we've added additional digital revenues for the Americas and International segments as well as the percentage of Americas revenues attributed to national. Going forward, we will continue to review additional disclosures that may be helpful to investors. Our results in the quarter reflect two very different stories. In the US, the team delivered exceptional growth. However, International results continue to be impacted by a challenging economic environment in China.Consolidated revenue decreased 2%. After adjusting for the impact from movements in foreign exchange rates, consolidated revenue increased 1.1%. The 1.1% increase in adjusted consolidated revenue is due to growth in our Americas segment, while International is impacted by the substantial decline in China. Consolidated operating income was 82.4 million, down 12.3% as compared to the prior year. Adjusted consolidated OIBDAN declined to 2.8% to 172 million with growth in the Americas offset by a decline in International, primarily due to China.Moving on to slide…

Thank you, Brian. As I've said earlier, this is an exciting time for Clear Channel Outdoor now that we are an independent out-of-home advertising company. With our driven and dedicated team in place and the support of our new shareholders and Board of Directors, our team has the focus, energy and ambition to take the business to the next level. The fundamental strength of our industry combined with our strategic investments in digitization, automation and data analytics are delivering growth and supporting our positive long-term outlook. We welcome our new investors and look forward to updating you on our plan and ongoing progress.And now, Scott Wells will join Brian and myself in taking your questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Steven Cahall of Wells Fargo.

So really strong growth in the Americas this quarter. I was wondering, if you could just help us dissect that a little bit. Is pricing a big tailwind in the market right now on tight capacity. Have you added any significant capacity that's helping you drive that? Is that the conversion to digital inventory? So any color there would be helpful.And then also, I think one of your European competitors won a US contract, you've taken some share from them recently, including in Paris. So do you see them showing up a little more on the US market as you continue to increase your market share in Europe?And then finally, really strong free cash flow in the quarter despite some elevated CapEx. So just how are you thinking about cash generation, maybe outside of the interest color that you've already given for the coming quarters?

Thanks, Steve. It's Scott here and I'll start off with the first couple and hand to Brian on the free cash flow front. On the US growth, we really saw growth across all channels and all product lines. So it was a really balanced growth quarter, we saw growth in national that you heard Brian refer to, and there was strong growth in local as well. From a category perspective, business services, technology, insurance, foods were the big growth categories and the big growth drivers. From a regional perspective, it was pretty balanced across the country, but strongest on the coasts.So it was a pretty balanced picture across. We really didn't have any major new contracts. There were, of course, we have our steady digital conversion and so that gives us some strength, but it was a growth story that really touched on all fronts, and we have seen some enhanced yields. We've definitely seen occupancy growing. So it's a bunch of different drivers.I guess the other thing I'd just call out is we're seeing fruit from our direct-to-client outreach with some new clients coming in, they leverage their RADAR tools pretty effectively. So RADAR has been an important contributor and certainly programmatic, giving a new channel for people to transact electronically. So that's a -- I'll pause there and move on to the [indiscernible] question, in terms of the U.S. contract and just a clarifier, if we could. You're referring to the San Francisco contract that was just announced today?

I am, yes.

Yes, that was actually a renewal. So that's a contract that they've gotten, they've had for quite some time that they're getting the right to digitize it, I think is the main thing that's happening in the -- it's a renewal. They're active primarily in airports in the US, they do have presence in a few of the large markets. I don't particularly see it as something that is a new trend or anything along those lines. And that one was absolutely a renewal.Brian, you want to take the free cash flow?

Yes. Look, I think the way to think about free cash flow is, there's a great deal of seasonality in the business. And so any quarter in isolation, it doesn't tell the full year story. I think in terms of what to think about going forward, you may see a little higher CapEx expense relating to some of the investments we're making in Europe and later in the year, you'll see Paris come online. So maybe a little bit higher than what you've seen historically, but it's for a good reason. We've got some great contracts that we've won and investments that we've made.But I think the biggest impact of free cash flow going forward is really the efforts that we're doing on the capital structure side. You saw the equity issuance that we did, we're taking the net proceeds, and we're paying down some expensive subordinated debt, utilizing a 103 equity clause that we had previously negotiated. Now we have -- you can do the math, but now we have about a $30 million per annum impact that would be cash interest reduction, free cash flow generative.There's been an announcement about a bank meeting. And so it's in the marketplace that we're kind of doing the second phase of work. That refinancing will be anticipated to be at lower rates, and will also reduce cash interest expense. So I don't have the numbers for you there yet, and the full story is really not out there. But I think that's the way to think about free cash flow, where we are today and where we are going forward.

Your next question comes from the line of Aaron Watts of Deutsche Bank.

Everyone, thanks for all the detail today. Brian, I know you talked about it in the pacing that Europe is pacing flat as of last week. I apologize if I missed this, but how did Europe perform in the second quarter?

So I think we probably say Europe was pretty much flat in Q2 as well. I mean, it's impacted by a couple of significant lost contracts, the Barcelona bikes, which we didn't renew and the Rome Airport contract, which went in-house into the airport, and those have some impact. But that disguises -- the overall figure for Europe disguises individual market performances, we run the business as a portfolio of markets across the region. We saw a very strong performance in the UK in the quarter. We saw a strong performance in Norway, in Finland, in Sweden and France showing growth as well. So some good performance in some countries and as you'd expect, given the macro environment, Italy, weak, Spain suffering a little bit. And then good growth in the Latin American markets as well.

Okay, that's helpful. And Brian, one other question for you. I know last time we convened for your earnings call, you had given some initial thoughts on your stand-alone kind of costs going forward. Now that we're a few months removed from the separation, can you maybe give us your updated thoughts on how you envision costs for Clear Channel Outdoor kind of going forward? And if it's in line with what you had commented on last time we spoke with you?

Yes. Aaron, I think it's generally in line. I think what you will find over the 9 months to 12 months post separation as we migrate from the TSA agreement that's in place, that there's going to be some volatility in corporate expense. An example would be, you just don't exit the TSA and then start day 1. You actually have to hire the people, train the people, have some processes run duplicatively. So I do think you'll see a bit of an increase in separation costs during this time period.I think the more relevant question that you may be getting too, is what's the run rate kind of after all these costs have been processed? And I'm still sticking to, we hope to be around the same place. So if you took the first quarter kind of corporate expense number that we're in the same zip code, backing out all the kind of onetime things that occur, there will be pressure on that. I think that there may be some ability to operate more efficiently in certain areas, and there's going to be other areas where, for example, you don't get the economies of scale that you got because iHeart was able to combine both companies and purchase things, services, different things more cheaply than we could. So we're still working through all that. In any case, I don't expect major changes in the run rate. And as soon as we are able to identify that is not the case, we would communicate it, but generally, I think we're in the same place as we were when we last spoke.

Okay. Great. That is helpful. [Technical Difficulty] I appreciate the time. William, you talked about opportunistic expansion being one of the tenants of your kind of vision going forward. Can you just give us your latest thoughts on the M&A environment, maybe both in Europe and here in the US and how you think about being kind of an acquirer of assets versus divesting some assets potentially? But more generally, even just how active do you think the environment will be for the industry for the next kind of 12 months?

Yes. I mean, I'll give you my view overall for the industry, which is I think it will continue to be active across the globe. I mean, the sector -- the out-of-home sector, as I said in my introductory remarks, it's a very hot sector within advertising right now, and that tends to lead to opportunistic M&A. I think there is still opportunity for consolidation in pretty much every market that I look at around the world. So I would expect to see continuing activity, we've seen it in the US, we've seen it in Europe.We saw all of the activity in Australia last year. So yes, I think we would certainly expect that trend to continue. As for ourselves, I'm not going to make any specific observations about our plans. I mean, we will look at opportunistic M&A, we will look to tuck-in acquisitions where they make sense for us. I don't think you should anticipate a massive acquisition spree in the next few months. That's not the plan at all. But for us, it's about winning the right contracts that enable us to increase the value of our existing assets in the markets where we have presence.And yes, we also will continue to review asset sales, if someone else values our assets more highly than we do then we will obviously pay attention to that and consider that. But to be very clear, we do not think it makes sense to sell off individual markets or individual countries that might devalue the remainder of our footprint and to be absolutely crystal clear, nothing is planned at this time. Does that give you enough of an answer?

Perfect.

Your next question comes from the line of Kannan Venkateshwar of Barclays.

Hey, it’s Dev [ph] on behalf of Kannan. I just have one question on International. The digital revenue growth rate seems to be a little slower than the US, are we -- is it mostly to do with macro factors or is it due to something else going on in particular there? And then I have one follow-up on International around top line growth. Is it possible to get a breakdown of organic growth without Italy and Spain?

Okay. So let me take those. I mean, on digital grades, if you back out FX, it's around 10% growth. And it will vary quarter-by-quarter, depending upon which contracts have come on stream in that quarter. So I don't think it does reflect any particular macro trend. Some contracts that we win will have a high element of digital, such as the Madrid Street Furniture contract that we won a couple of years ago. But other big new contracts such as the Paris one that we mentioned, that is not a digital contract, that's a scroller contract.So it just really depends on which new contracts we have and on the specific rollout plans within a quarter. So I think the short answer to your question is no, it doesn't reflect any slowdown in our ambition regarding digital.Your second question regarding the kind of the specifics of the contract losses in Spain and Italy. We don't break out individual contracts or individual country or market financials. So I'm afraid I can't give you any more detail on that.

Your next question comes from the line of Marci Ryvicker of Wolfe Research.

It's Stephan for Marci. Brian, you mentioned the equity offering was step one, I assume, kind of a term loan a step 2 to fixing the capital structure. What are the possibilities for steps 3 and possibly 4?

Yes. I think, first, I’d talk a little bit about the term loan launch, which is out there as kind of the debt side, just step 2 being addressing the debt. And I think that it's important that we take a look at all of our senior debt and look at a comprehensive refinancing. So the bank loan is the start of that. I think there's more to come. Your question really is, though, after that, what comes next?And look, I think, we've done a great start. We've issued equity, we put ourselves in a position to take advantage of opportunities in the high-yield marketplace, do some significant refinancing, dramatically increase our free cash flow by interest cash reduction, strengthened our strategic flexibility. So I think that puts us in a pretty good place. And I think that will help with further steps that we can take to delever. Because ultimately, that's the goal here.The company, upon separation, had too much leverage, it was a goal of the board and senior management to reduce leverage, but there's still a significant amount of leverage even after we do this. The company upon separation didn't have strong free cash flow. If we had operated a plan, which we expect to do, it still would have been a while before we generated free cash flow. These actions help accelerate that free cash flow generation and the ability to de-lever organically by 18 months to 2 years. So those are big steps.But it does put us in a better strategic position. And what I mean by that is some of the other things that we look at, such as potential asset monetizations or M&A activity where we can go out and acquire tuck-in acquisitions or win contracts that provide a network effect and are accretive to the business. We're going to be front-footed now, we'll be better able to operate from a position of strength.I think, in cases, people saw us as a company that was separated from a bankrupt parent and had a weak balance sheet, and that will no longer be the case. And so I think we're better positioned. So without telegraphing what the next steps are beyond -- the refinancing is probably bigger than what we're seeing today. I will tell you that we are open, and we are looking, and we want to be aggressive operators of the business as long as it makes sense. And we think we're in a position to benefit from that.

Great. Thanks. And then just one more. How should we think about the expenses for OpEx and CapEx regarding Paris?

On specific contracts, we don't really talk about any of the details. Just, I think conventional wisdom, we tell you that this is a big new contract. There's a significant amount of CapEx that's involved. The timing of this is pretty much now as we're acquiring equipment and over the third and fourth quarter as we start putting plant into ground. So you will see some CapEx flow through the company in the latter half of the year. There's a little bit of a delay before you start monetizing that CapEx, but you should see the revenue benefit coming shortly thereafter. So in a general way, that's the sense of how I would think about it, the details we just don't provide on a contract by contract basis.

And just to add to that, I mean, revenues will start to flow in Q4 of this year. And then it's in 2020 that we'll see the full impact of that contract. And as I said in my remarks, it is a very significant contract for us, not just for the value that it gives us in the city of Paris, but the impact that it has on the rest of our assets in France, our ability to sell a national network to our advertisers across France is significantly improved by winning Paris. So I think that is probably true to say that that contract was worth more to us than to any of our competitors because of the incremental value it gives to the rest of our assets.

Your next question comes from the line of Jason Bazinet of Citi.

Just had a question for Mr. Coleman. Do you mind just going back to the equity raise last month and just walking through some of the alternatives you considered in terms of raising capital? And what were the sort of the pluses and minuses of going down the equity route that you went down that sort of caused you to reach that conclusion?

Thanks, Jason. That's a question that not only do I get from investors, but one that I've been asking myself for 90 days because it's the exercise that we've gone through and we've gone through with the board. And we did look at a lot of options. I think, on our last earnings call, we talk about the tool kit and we talked about equity as one of the levers that we have, asset monetization as being another lever addressing our capital structure or our debt and the financial markets as being another.So we look at all the different levers that we have and really didn't want to -- and really couldn't rely on any one of them. There had to be a combination of these different levers to really address where we wanted to go. And again, if you focus on the priorities of reducing leverage, increasing/accelerating free cash flow and establishing some strategic flexibility, which we didn't feel like we had upon separation, the one solution that actually impacted and improved the other solutions was an equity issuance.The two questions I get the most are, why did you issue equity first, and why didn't you issue a whole lot more? And the answer really is, we wanted to issue enough equity to kind of unlock the benefit of the refinancing options, being in a better position, being in a position where we got a ratings enhancement, being able to tap both the term loan market as well as the high-yield market potentially to help refinance at lower rates and push out our maturities.The equity offering did that. If we'd gone out and refinanced without it, we'd be much more restricted in a much worse position. We might have been able to do some refinancing, we might not have…

That's helpful. And this maybe an inappropriate follow-up, but is it reasonable to assume that the daisy chain that you're talking about is essentially issue equity, pay down debt, open up the credit markets, refi, lower interest and then come back to the equity market and sort of rinse and repeat?

I would not come -- I would not say come back to the equity markets and rinse and repeat. We think we've got this process, once we go through it, we may have to see where we are, but I like where we are. I think that through the equity raise and the pay down of debt and the kind of the debt recapitalization, we're not going to be at or maybe the target or optimal leverage level, but we'll have a path to being there, and we won't really have to do anything else. So I would say that it's that sequence, that daisy chain as you put it, and then I think it's, all right, let's see where we are. But yes, I would not say that there's any plan or desire at this point to come back to the equity markets.

Your next question comes from the line of Davis Hebert of Wells Fargo.

Just a couple for me. Given all your commentary, Brian, I wonder if you could help us with any sort of targeted leverage over time and any sort of targeted credit ratings profile as you think about some of these refinancings.

Yes, I'm going to be real careful, I never say that there's a quote, I'm doing air quotes, "target out there" unless that target is lower. Leverage is something we need to work on, and this is the first step, and we'll need to continue to approach a more meaningful and balanced number. When I answered Jason's question, and I talked about, it gives us line of sight, really my goal, I won't call it a target, but my goal is to have that downward sloping leverage profile where in the next 18 to 24 months, you can see yourself getting to 6.5% and 6%.That's dependent on you being conscientious and taking your excess free cash flow and paying down debt. There may be opportunities to continue to invest in the business, and we'll have to balance those options versus a repayment of debt options, but those options grow the business, grow EBITDA. So it still could be a way to approach a more meaningful leverage target. And then I think once you actually get to that, then you have to reassess where you are. But the first step was being able to equip the company with the ability to reach that point. And that's what these actions are designed to do.And then you asked about ratings. I think it was important as we went through this process to get some ratings enhancement, particularly from S&P. We hope that the equity process in combination with some of the stuff we're doing on the debt side will resonate. It was one of our goals. Ultimately, where we want to be is probably still an open question, but we needed to get some enhancement to kind of kick this off, and maybe next quarter or the next, we'll have a better idea of where we want to be when we grow up. The first step was the first step, and that is to get into -- out of triple C land and into at least single B land.

That's helpful. Thank you. And then one fundamental question. On China, it seems like this weakness has gotten worse. Should we expect some sort of turn in the corner that down the road or is this something we should be concerned about as being maybe an impaired asset? Just any thoughts there.

Yes. I mean, I think it's a fair question. It's also a difficult question for me to answer because as you know it's a -- this is a joint venture, clearly, there's a public equated company in Hong Kong, and I don't want to preempt in any way the results announcement that they will be making in August later this month. They did it through a trading update a couple of days ago, which is publicly available, where they talked about the uncertainties around the external environment and a continued slowing in the market.I really don't want to make any kind of indication about what we think the second half will be. What I would say is that I do think that we are seeing here a significant macro impact, the China economy was undoubtedly overheating. The China government took some pretty significant steps to slow things down. We've seen retail sales slowdown, the lowest growth in retail that we've seen in the last few years.We've seen GDP growth slowdown, we've seen media spending overall in China declined 11% in Q1 of this year, the biggest drop that they've seen in China for 11 years. And we've seen the out-of-home market as a whole decline by 18% in China, which is also the biggest drop since the global crisis 11 years ago. So I think there is a macro issue here without a doubt, and we have been particularly hit by it because our sector of the out-of-home business, which is the traditional bus shelter business, is almost entirely a paper and vinyl business.It has virtually no digital. We just have a small digital pilot in the city of Nanjing, and traditional outdoor is being particularly badly hit. And then finally, we've been hit as we see in our statement, by the decline in big categories for us around technology and e-commerce. So I think we're seeing a cyclical issue, not a structural issue for the Clear Media business. But I don't really want to say more than that until the Clear Media announces its results later this month.

Your next question comes from the line of Lance Vitanza of Cowen.

I had a couple of follow-up questions and then I wanted to ask about the Paris contract. But first, so the follow-up on the refinancing at lower rates. Given your leverage profile, should we assume that any pretax interest savings you're able to generate would equal after tax interest savings?

Any pretax interest savings that we get, I'm sorry, run me by that again, I just want to make sure I understand.

Yes. So just given your high leverage, I'm wondering if we can assume that pretax interest savings from lowering the coupons on your debt would translate into -- would equal after tax interest savings. In other words, are you in the zone where you're really not getting any tax shield from the interest expense that you're paying?

Yes.

Okay. So then a follow-up question on US. growth. You mentioned at one point early on you did benefit from some new customers. And I'm just wondering if those new customers were new to out-of-home advertising or had been advertising with some of your peers and you sort of stole them? Could you comment on that?

So I think about new customers in a couple of ways, Lance. First off, with our move into selling programmatically, we've enabled our inventory to be accessed by a bunch of customers who buy digital first. And some of those are customers who did out-of-home years ago and had gone away, and they've come back. Some of them are customers that are truly new to the category.From a direct client outreach, a lot of the activity in new customer development is with emerging growth companies and that's an area that we've had some really good success in. And we're definitely not poaching them from other out-of-home companies. I think when we bring these companies in and our competitors benefit from it, we hope in the long run that we benefit as well as they bring new customers to the category. I think all of us benefit from growing the out-of-home buying.

Great. And then just lastly for me on Paris. I just -- let me play devil's advocate here for a second. And this may be the wrong premise, but given its presence throughout Paris, I would have thought that Decaux would sort of had it -- would have had an advantage on bidding for that business. And that, therefore, presumably you bid down the expected IRR, so to speak on that business to a level that perhaps Decaux found unacceptable.And I'm wondering -- I understand, I mean, why would you -- what are the benefits to you? Are there tangible benefits beyond the value of that contract, whether it's being able to offer Paris on a national campaign throughout France? But just if -- anything you could help us -- that would help us draw a clear line to why that contract -- why you did what you did there?

Yes, sure. Thanks, Lance. I think I touched on it in the answer to an earlier question, and I think you are pretty close to the answer when you talk about the ability to offer national campaigns. I mean, I certainly can't comment on our competitor's bidding strategy, that's entirely their issue and clearly they failed to retain the contracts, and we won it. So we are delighted by the win, we feel we bid at a very rational level for us, and as I said earlier, I think it is plausible to argue that the contract was worth more to us than to any of our competitors because of the impact it has on the rest of our inventory in France and the added value it gives to that inventory by giving us full national coverage and what we call the network effect. So I don't really want to go into our bidding strategy in any more detail than that. But I think you pretty much got your answer.

We have time for one more question. Your last question comes from the line of Jim Goss of Barrington Research.

I'm wondering, the enhancement to digital by RADAR is targeting in measurement capabilities, obviously, creates improved pricing power. I'm wondering if the benefits are immediate or should there be a general upward bias in your capabilities to secure dollars there and the overall impact on margins as this is affected.

Thanks, Jim. It's Scott here. I'll take that one. First and foremost, RADAR is relevant for all of our inventory. It's not just for digital inventory. It is an important part of our programmatic offering, which focuses on digital, but we do a lot of deals with RADAR using it against our traditional inventory. I would think of it as a tool in the toolkit to drive revenue growth, which revenue growth, we have good flow-through as we get increased revenue.It's probably the biggest tool we have for improving margins. And I wouldn't -- it'd be hard for me to put a margin enhancement number specific just to RADAR because it's part of several prongs that we're using to drive revenue growth. So I'm not sure I can answer that question for you in a dimensionalized way. But you should think of it as a critical part of us driving our top line, which then enables us to get the operating leverage that you've seen in our last few quarters' results.

Okay. Fair enough. One other thing on capital allocation and the M&A in context. Given that you do want to bring down leverage, in order to trade up your properties, will it be necessary to sell certain assets in order to create room for additional M&A? Or is there enough flexibility within the overall M&A or within the overall capital allocation, where you feel you can use some of your free cash flow to make those acquisitions?

Well, Jim, part of the -- what we talked about, the issuing the equity, the refinancing of debt to the creation or acceleration of free cash flow generation is to ensure that we're not in a position where we have to sell. That doesn't mean my asset monetization is off the table. I think we're very open to looking at opportunities, but again, we don't want to be perceived as a company that is distressed and has to sell assets because that will be reflected in the prices that you are offered.And I've heard William say, and I know I've said that we're open and if our assets are worth more to somebody else than they are to us, we'd be very open to entertaining discussions. But we also want to be in a position where we can operate our businesses, fund the growth of those businesses, and we think we can do a pretty good job at it. And so that's the work we're doing right now is to position the capital structure to match that strategic objective.

Okay, we're going to end it there. I'd like to thank everyone very much indeed for joining us today. I just wanted to make a couple of closing remarks. First of all, clearly we have some challenges in China as a result of the issues in the macro that I talked about. I don't think we should allow those to overshadow the really exceptional performance that we've seen in the United States in the last quarter, and I congratulate Scott and the Outdoor Americas team on delivering those results.And I'd also end by thanking Brian and his team for their work on the balance sheet, which truly does increase optionality for the business at this very exciting time for Clear Channel Outdoor. So thank you very much to everybody for joining us. If you have any questions, please do direct them to Eileen, and we look forward to joining you next quarter. Thanks.

Thank you for participating in the Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. 2019 second quarter earnings conference call. You may now disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.