Operator
Operator
Good morning, and welcome to the Emerald Holding, Inc., First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time all lines are in listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we’ll conduct a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that this call will include certain statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These include remarks about future expectations, beliefs, estimates, plans and prospects. In particular, the company’s statements about projected results of 2023 are forward-looking statements. Such statements are subject to a variety of risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated or implied by such statements. Such risks and other factors are set forth in the company’s most recently filed periodic reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q and subsequent filings. The company does not undertake any duty to update such forward-looking statements. Additionally, during today’s call management will discuss non-GAAP measures, which it believes can be useful in evaluating the company’s performance. The presentation of the additional information should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. The reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure can be found in the company’s earnings release. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded and a replay of this call will be available on the Investors section of the company’s website through 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on May 10. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Hervé Sedky, President and Chief Executive Officer. Sir, please go ahead. Hervé Sedky: Well, thank you Colin and good morning everyone. It’s great to be with all of you today to discuss our first quarter results. I’ll start with an overview of the trends we’re seeing so far this year and then give an update on our growth strategy, focus on customer centricity, 365-day engagement and portfolio optimization. Then our CFO, David Doft, will provide more detail on the financials. I’m extremely pleased with Emerald’s start to the year. Each quarter, we see more encouraging signs that the post-COVID recovery in live events is progressing at a rapid pace, putting us on track for another year of significant revenue and EBITDA growth. More importantly, this recovery still has plenty of room to play out. So we expect to see higher than historical growth into 2024 and beyond as we benefit from the return of international attendees and improvements in our customers supply chain, lead times in addition to the benefits of our strategic initiatives and investments. When you look at our business today versus pre-COVID days on an apples-to-apples basis, we are approaching pre-pandemic levels of event revenues. However, that’s only part of the story. The bigger picture is that we’ve grown Emerald meaningfully since 2019, both through strategic investments in our capabilities as well as acquisitions that have substantially contributed to our revenue. This means that we’re a much larger company than we were pre-pandemic with a stronger growth trajectory. Despite these positive achievements, we don’t believe this value is reflected in our stock price today, which is why during the first quarter, we repurchased approximately 5.1 million shares or 7.5% of our common stock outstanding. At these levels, we firmly believe buying back shares is a highly attractive vehicle for us to deliver greater per-share value to our shareholders. Over time, we think that the market will recognize the valuation gap between where our business is now, where it was valued pre-COVID and where the market is valuing other trade show platforms. We believe the reality is that the trade show industry is stronger than ever, evidenced by the record attendance and revenue at many of our shows last year and into the first quarter. The trade show industry has always been a stable, growing industry with excellent cash flow generating characteristics. And we think our current revenue trajectory, combined with the near-term margin improvements as we scale will enable the market to begin to see the full value and potential of the business. You have already seen signs of this in recent M&A transactions within our industry where peers were acquired for attractive multiples, and we believe our shareholders will be rewarded for their patience. As a reminder, our long-term growth plan post full recovery is to deliver run rate organic growth in the mid to high single digits combined with growth from acquisitions in the mid to high single digits, contributing to double-digit annual revenue growth overall. In the near term, we expect to see even higher growth rates given the recovery tailwinds. Moving on to our first quarter results. We saw another significant step forward in attendance, which increased 24% year-over-year as we cycled past the Omicron impact of the first quarter of 2022. During that same period, square footage at our events in the quarter grew 18% and exhibiting companies increased 19%. This led to overall revenue growth of 24% year-over-year. On the M&A front, we acquired Lodestone and its Overland Expo consumer events in Q1, extending our Action Sports franchise and expanding our consumer offering in addition to our core B2B focus. Given the timing of Lodestone’s Event calendar, it generated no revenue for Emerald in the quarter while we absorbed its run rate overhead costs in our results. Nevertheless, adjusted EBITDA, excluding insurance proceeds, grew even faster than revenue at over 42% year-over-year as we leverage our existing cost structure to drive margins higher. Strategically, we continue to remain focused on our three pillars of value creation: Customer centricity; 365-day engagement; and portfolio optimization. In customer centricity, we’re continuing our efforts to enhance the customer experience with our road map that calls for reducing friction in our attendee and exhibitor interactions as a result of leveraging data and technology. Our progress on the data front is key to this, in addition to our efforts to increase the actual and perceived value of Emerald’s offerings in all of our products across events, content and commerce. The goal is to provide Emerald’s customers with a clearer picture of the return on investment they receive from the marketing dollars that they put to work across Emerald’s platform. This improves our stickiness with customers, incentivizes them to deploy more marketing dollars with Emerald and ultimately should help drive higher revenue per customer. Our second pillar, 365-day engagement is geared toward providing multiple entry avenues to the customer engagement cycle through trade shows, conferences, webinars, media content and our e-commerce platform. Trade shows and conferences offer valuable in-person meeting to make connections, build the sales pipeline and stay on the cutting edge of industry changes. Through media content and webinars, our platform allows advertisers to reach our audiences in 20 different industry sectors where we have events to share knowledge, industry innovations and new products outside of the trade show environments. Our ecommerce platform gives buyers and sellers a technology platform for year-round selling. Our third pillar of value creation is portfolio optimization, which includes both new show launches and acquisitions. Our Emerald Xcelerator division is dedicated to launching new shows in high-growth industries where we believe there’s an opportunity for Emerald to establish an industry flagship event and scale it up in a cost-effective manner. In September of this year, we’ll be launching the first edition of Cocina Sabrosa, a Latin Food and Beverage Expo, serving the B2B restaurants, grocery and supplier industry within the growing Latin Food business segments. Emerald has also recently entered a partnership with a major U.S. professional sports league to launch new fan-based initiatives as we build on our efforts to expand into business-to-consumer offerings. Further details will be forthcoming in the weeks and months ahead. We’ve also remained active on the acquisition front, acquiring Lodestone Events and their Overland Expo series in January. We continue to evaluate a large pool of potential acquisitions within the highly fragmented B2B events and media industry, leveraging our scale and expertise to compete for deals and drive returns by implementing go-to-market best practices and operational efficiencies. While we face an uncertain economic environment, we have seen how trade show industry has been economically resilient over the decades. Our shows represent a central element of customers’ marketing budgets with a demonstrable return on investments, and as a result, they are among the most easily justified costs for many organizations. In addition, since our exhibitors booked their spots up to a year in advance and pay deposits in the year leading up to the show, they have no incentive to cancel. As a result, often any impact we see from the economic moderation tends to be smaller in size as compared to the broader economic trends, in particular given our belief that the end markets we serve are quite resilient. Most importantly, we believe the ongoing post-COVID rebound in trade show industry provides a strong tailwind that would likely more than offset moderation in the economy. To conclude, we’re pleased with the trends we’ve seen so far to start the year. We think there’s a lot of room left for post-pandemic recovery to play out, which we believe should allow us to keep delivering substantial year-over-year revenue and profit growth as we work our way towards surpassing our pre-pandemic levels. This combined with our favorable working capital dynamics of our business as we continue to scale up positions us well for powerful free cash flow generation into the future. With that, let me turn the call over to David Doft.