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Entravision Communications Corporation (EVC)

Q4 2013 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 27, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Entravision Communications Corporation Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2013 Earnings Conference Call and webcast. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Walter Ulloa, please go ahead, sir.

Walter F. Ulloa

Analyst

Thank you, Laura. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Entravision's fourth quarter and full year 2013 earnings conference call. Joining me today is Chris Young, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I must inform you that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ. Please refer to our SEC filings for a list of risks and uncertainties that could impact actual results. This call is the property of Entravision Communications Corporation. Any redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of this call, in any form, without the expressed written consent of Entravision Communications Corporation is strictly prohibited. Also, this call will include certain non-GAAP financial measures. The company has provided a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in today's press release. The press release is available on the company's website and was filed with the SEC on a Form 8-K. Our fourth quarter results marked a strong end to a highly successful year for Entravision. We generated solid core advertising revenues in the fourth quarter and full year, and consistently outperformed the broader television and radio industries. At the same time, our conservative approach to debt management continue to deliver strong free cash flow generation and improved net income over the fourth quarter of 2012. We prepaid $10 million of term loans under our senior secured term loan credit facility and have entered into a 2-year forward interest rate swap agreement that will become effective December 31, 2015 and provide for fixed rate interest rate of 5.23% on $186 million of our outstanding debt. We also initiated the first quarter dividend in Entravision's history. During the year, we further extended our revenue streams and strengthened our multimedia platform…

Christopher T. Young

Analyst

Thank you, Walter, and good afternoon, everyone. As Walter has discussed, net revenue for the quarter with $60.1 million, down 6%. Operating expenses increased 7% to $35.9 million and consolidated adjusted EBITDA decreased 22% to $19.8 million. Net revenue for the year was $223.9 million, modestly higher compared to the prior-year. Operating expenses for the year increased 4% to $135.2 million and consolidated adjusted EBITDA decreased 5% to $73.0 million. On December 16, 2013, the company entered into a 2-year forward 3-year interest rate swap agreement with an aggregate notional amount of $186 million as a requirement under a company senior secured term loan credit facility that we entered into on May 31 of 2013. The swap takes effect on December 31, 2015, with a maturity date of December 31, 2018. During that period, the swaps will provide a fixed interest rate of rate of 5.23% on $186 million of the company's outstanding debt. During the fourth quarter of 2013, the company prepaid $10 million of term loans under the company's senior secured term loan credit facility. Also during the fourth quarter of 2013, the company declared and paid a cash dividend of $0.125 per share to shareholders of the company's class A, B and U common stock. Dividend consisted of a special cash dividend of $0.10 per share and a quarterly cash dividend of $0.025 per share. The total amount of cash dispersed for the dividends was $11 million. The company also announced, today, that the Board of Directors has declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.025 per share to shareholders of the company's common stock, payable on March 31 of this year, 2014. Total amount of cash to be dispersed for this quarterly dividend will be approximately $2.2 million. As we announced in December 2013, we currently anticipate…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from Michael Kupinski of Noble Financial.

Michael A. Kupinski - Noble Financial Group, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

I have a couple questions. It looks like Radio came in a little better than expected and it sounds like the pacings in the first quarter are pretty strong. Is there a particular reason for the strength? Anything you can identify? It sounded like some of the categories, key categories, were strong. But regionally, station performance, anything that account for the strength?

Walter F. Ulloa

Analyst

Michael, it's Walter. I think, probably the strength that stands out the most right now, for the momentum we're showing in Radio in the first quarter, is our network business. We've done, I think, a very good job of retooling it and we've got a very strong executive heading our network sales, and we've done some work -- or we did some work I should say -- in 2013 in tweaking our national sales effort. That, coupled with our Entravision Solutions rep firm, which we have done more in terms of investment and attracting stronger people to our rep firm to represent our stations, as well as other stations that's part of the Entravision Solutions group.

Christopher T. Young

Analyst

Just to add to the -- that, category-wise, 2 categories that has been stand-outs to radio, thus far, in the quarter. Telecom, which ebbs and flows, at least it has over the past couple of years. That's up significantly, January and February, year-to-date, as well as the health care category, which is not that unexpected given the Affordable Care Act.

Michael A. Kupinski - Noble Financial Group, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

And so I can assume that the national categories is performing stronger than local. Is local still up?

Christopher T. Young

Analyst

That's correct. And local, as far as the pace is concerned...

Walter F. Ulloa

Analyst

We don't have that, Michael. We didn't go that deeply into the pace.

Michael A. Kupinski - Noble Financial Group, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

Okay, that's fine. Okay. And I know that the company healthcare-related programming in several key markets to take advantage of what was expected to be the healthcare advertising ramp. Was the influx of health care-related advertising in the last quarter, was that related to the programming initiatives? And if that was successful, are you rolling that in additional markets? Could you just give us a little color on that?

Walter F. Ulloa

Analyst

Well, I think it was a variety of initiatives. One is that we started working on health care, on the health care initiative -- or I should say the opportunity -- early in 2013, and in fact [ph] , it may have been late 2012, when we started circling the rollout of the Affordable Care Act. And part that was we saw that this act, this legislation, was going to provide health care for a number of Latinos across the country, particularly in California and Texas, that have not been able to either afford health care or receive it due to some pre-existing condition. So, we looked at it from that standpoint as well, and then we created a task force to monitor every aspect of the Affordable Care rollout, in every one of the states where we operate. And then, that, combined with our news coverage of the rollout of the Healthcare Act or health care services, certainly we wanted to get the word out to all of our audience across our platform, that health care would be available for those that are eligible and we wanted to make sure that people were informed and educated about this important legislation. Now we continue to do that, by the way. As you know, there's still another month to go and so our rolling up our sleeves here, to get the word out in every one of our markets about health care services and how people can sign up for them.

Michael A. Kupinski - Noble Financial Group, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

One final question for me, in terms of Luminar...

Walter F. Ulloa

Analyst

This is something that I think is important noting, Michael. We're proud of this. President Obama was on one of our programs, Erazno y la Chokolata, this morning, talking about the health care services that are available, and we thought that was important to not only issue a press release, but also talk about on the call. We're proud of that.

Michael A. Kupinski - Noble Financial Group, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

Good. And one last question, in terms of Luminar. How meaningful was that in terms of revenue contributions in the quarter and how can, I guess -- I know it's a new business and you guys are really expanding or excited about it. Do you expect that this business will follow typical seasonal trends? Do you think that's there's -- how big of an opportunity could we see, maybe in 2014, 2015, in terms of revenue?

Christopher T. Young

Analyst

Michael, it's still kind of in its incubation phase. We don't break out the financial. So I can't kind of give you a scope. It's not necessarily material yet, but we do have great expectations for this group. We're getting feedback from our clients and telling us that the products that we have are for real and we've pretty optimistic about the business line. But we're not in a position, yet, to start breaking it out separately on the financials.

Operator

Operator

And the next question will come from Tracy Young at Evercore.

Tracy B. Young - Evercore Partners Inc., Research Division

Analyst

Three questions if I could. Just checking on auto. Are seeing pacing continuing to be up in the first quarter? And then are you seeing any political advertising outside of health care? And then, finally, if you could just update us. Obviously a lot of focus has been on Washington in terms of JSA. Could you just let us know what JSAs you have? Thank you.

Walter F. Ulloa

Analyst

Sure, Tracy, it's Walter. Automotive continues strong in Q1. We like what we see, at least through February. And so that's one metric we'll share with you -- or some insight, I should say. And then political. We do have some political in the quarter. We did about $7.1 million of political in 2010, which is the last midterm cycle that we compare our sales to -- or we compare our performance to. Our goal, certainly, is to outperform our 2010 numbers, or revenue total, but most of that revenue is going to come in the third and fourth quarter. But we did see some in the first quarter. Not a lot. Again, the quarter's not over yet, but we have seen some first quarter revenue, political.

Christopher T. Young

Analyst

And the last question was with respect to JSAs, Tracy, we've got 6 JSAs across the country with Univision and 1 JSA that we've just put into place back in December. It's a Fox station in Monterey. The FCC hasn't made a decision on the JSAs, but we don't believe that any of our Univision JSAs would be impacted by an FCC decision's work to kind of try and clamp down on the existing JSAs across the country. The one JSA that probably would be at risk would be our Monterey station. But it's brand-new, just an operation and certainly not material to our current operations as it currently stands. So I don't see any adverse outcome on the JSAs with respect to the industry having any material impact on our financials.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And the next question will come from Aaron Syversten of Sidoti & Company. Aaron Syvertsen - Sidoti & Company, LLC: Just one question. Can you kind of give an update on the landscape for the World Cup, in terms of, now that we're a little bit closer into 2014, just how that inventory is selling maybe compared to 2010?

Walter F. Ulloa

Analyst

It's Walter. We're pretty pleased with the way World Cup is laying in, as we move through the first quarter and certainly head to the start of the games in June. I'll say that we're well ahead of our 2010 pacing for World Cup. I think there's 2 or 3 important reasons for that. One, the economy is in much better shape than it was in 2010. Number two, I think that we have the best marketing effort we've ever had in our history, around World Cup this year. And I think, three, there's more enthusiasm around World Cup. Every 4 years, it just seems to get bigger and bigger and bigger, particularly in the Latino community, and even outside the Latino community. I mean it has always been a big sports spectacle around the world, but now it's becoming more and more a bigger spectacle here in the United States. And of course it's in Brazil, a Latin American country, which is close our shores. So certainly that adds to the excitement.

Operator

Operator

And next we have a follow-up question from Michael Kupinski of Noble Financial.

Michael A. Kupinski - Noble Financial Group, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

The retransmission revenue in the fourth quarter was a little bit better than I was looking for. I was wondering if you would want to give us any thoughts on the retransmission outlook for 2014.

Christopher T. Young

Analyst

Well, that's all part of the arrangement that we have with Univision, Michael. We ended up just north of $22 million this year for the year. We would expect to see something between $22.5 million and $23 million for 2014, as far as retrans.

Michael A. Kupinski - Noble Financial Group, Inc., Research Division

Analyst

Okay. And obviously, in terms of the negotiations, I know that Univision handles most of that. Is there anything that's coming up that looks meaningful as they kind of renegotiate some of their contracts?

Christopher T. Young

Analyst

We don't have any material retrans deals that come up for negotiation in the Univision universe until, call it, mid-2017. So all of those deals are basically locked and loaded as far as the revenue streams are concerned.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to management for any closing remarks.

Walter F. Ulloa

Analyst

Thank you, Laura. This concludes our fourth quarter and full year 2013 earnings call. We thank you, all, for participating. We look forward to, again, speaking to you in May of this year when we will report our first quarter 2014 results. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.