Walter Ulloa
Analyst · Noble Capital. Please go ahead
Thank you, Anita. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Entravision's third quarter 2017 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today is Jeff Liberman, our President and Chief Operating Officer; and 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 non-GAAP financial measures. The company has provided a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their 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 Form 8-K. Our third quarter results include the financial impacts of Entravision's participation in the recent FCC TV broadcast spectrum auction. Earlier in the year, we announced that we have generated approximately $264 million in auction proceeds related to the spectrum before stations and through markets. This gain has been recorded as revenue in the third quarter. In addition, auction-related expenses include a non-cash charge of $12 million, as well as approximately $2.1 million in corporate expense that have also been included in the current quarter's results. Excluding the revenue from the auction results, our core advertising revenue in the quarter was largely in line with our expectations as a result of non-returning political revenue in our television and radio segments. This decline in revenue was offset by higher revenues at our digital segment. At the same time, we carefully managed our costs at our broadcasting operations which allowed us to partially offset the impact on our core EBITDA against last year's third quarter, which as I mentioned benefited from political advertising. Overall, we continue to execute on our strategy during the quarter, and we remain well positioned to deliver on our goals in the year ahead. Our television and radio stations delivered healthy audience shares and we are expanding our collective digital audience, giving us an attractive and growing multimedia platform for advertisers who wish to target and interact with Latino audiences at the local and national level. We are pleased with the performance of our digital division in the quarter, which saw revenue increase of 24% over Q3 2016 on a pro-forma basis. The addition of our recently acquired Headway, an innovative mobile, programmatic, data and performance marketing company, further enhances our digital capabilities to target audiences and consumers. Thanks to the cash generated from the auction, coupled with our existing cash balance, Entravision continues to be in incredibly strong and unique - incredibly strong and unique financial position, as our current cash balance approximates our total debt. Accordingly, today the company's Board of Directors announced its decision to pay a quarterly dividend of $0.05 per share. This dividend will be payable to shareholders on December 29, 2017. Also as of today, we are pleased to disclose that the company repurchased approximately 730,000 shares of its common stock since we announced a new $15 million stock repurchase program authorized by the Board of Directors in August. Approximately $11 million in share repurchase capacity under the program remains and further purchases will continue to be made opportunistically at the discretion of management. Looking beyond our enhanced efforts to return capital to shareholders, we are also pleased to disclose we have entered into a new master affiliation agreement with Univision. The new agreement will effectively extend our Univision and UniMás affiliations on all of our markets through December 31, 2026, with the exception of our affiliations in Tampa, Orlando and Washington D.C., where our affiliations with Univision and UniMás in those markets will expire on December 31, 2021. We also are pleased to announce that we closed on our acquisition at KMIR, the NBC affiliate in Palm Springs yesterday. This accretive acquisition provides us with a more powerful media cluster, led by our Univision affiliate in a high-density growing Latino market. Looking now at our financial results, revenues increased 412% to $334.6 million in the third quarter, primarily due to the inclusion of our recent FCC auction results. Excluding the auction, our revenues increased by 8%, primarily due to our acquired digital operation at Headway. Accounting for the Headway transaction on a pro forma basis and excluding the impact of higher political revenues in the prior year period, total revenues for the company were down 1%. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $262.4 million versus $17.8 million in the prior year, while free cash flow, which we define in our press release was $269 million versus $11.9 million in the prior year. Turning to our television segment, operating results excluding the FCC auction results, our television revenues were down 9%, with local down 12% and national down 18%. And retransmission revenue was up 16%. As a reminder on July 1 of this year our Telemundo San Diego television station was converted to a TV Azteca station, which had an adverse impact on revenue. Excluding the loss of our Telemundo affiliation in the prior year as well as political, core television revenues were flat over the prior year. Core automotive advertising, excluding the loss of our Telemundo affiliations of San Diego was minus 2%. Including the Telemundo affiliate prior results, automotive advertising were down 14% versus the prior year. Auto advertising represented approximately 33% of our total TV advertising revenue in the quarter. Retail services, restaurants and healthcare, four of our top-10 categories for television were particularly soft in the quarter compared to the third quarter of last year, whereas our media category was particularly strong in the quarter compared to the prior year, due to rebranding efforts at Spectrum Charter Communications. Overall, we added 26 new advertisers who's spent more than $10,000 during the third quarter, which totaled approximately $591,000 in advertising revenue. Notable new brands in the third quarter included Uber, the Health and Human Services Commission, and Specialty Retailers, Inc. Turning to our ratings performance, our Univision television station is built upon the market leadership in the July 2017 sweeps. For adults 18 to 49 in early local news, our Univision television station finished ahead of their Telemundo competitors in 13 of 17 news markets where we have head-to-head competition with Telemundo affiliates. Additionally, early local newscasts are number one or two against English and Spanish competitors in 14 markets. During a full week, our Univision and UniMás television stations combined have a cumulative audience of 3.2 million persons 2-plus across our television platform, compared to Telemundo's 2 million persons 2-plus. We have 59% more viewers than Telemundo across our Univision and UniMás affiliate footprint and we reached 160,000 more viewers than we did a year ago. During weekday prime time, when compared to all stations in total, we had higher ratings than one of the big four networks in 13 markets among adults 18 to 34 and adults 18 to 49, and 12 markets among adults 25 to 54. The Univision Premios Juventud award show in July 2017 was among the top-10 TV prime time programs, broadcast TV prime time programs for the night among adults 18 to 34 in 15 markets. Among adults 18 to 49 and 25 to 54, the show ranks among the top-10 in eight of our markets. Turning to audio division, audio revenues were down 12% during the third quarter compared to the prior year. Local revenues were down 6% and national revenues decreased 21% in the quarter. Excluding political in the prior year periods, core audio revenues were down 11% in the third quarter. Notable new advertisers to our audio network during the third quarter included LALA Milk, AT&T and U.S. Postal Service. These brands choose to advertise with Entravision due to our superior targeting capabilities and consistently strong audience share, supported by our nationally recognized talent. We continue to work closely with our syndicated radio personalities and supporting their roles, not only as successful entertainers with household names, but also as multi-platform brand ambassadors and influencers for our major advertising partners. Automotive advertising was down 8% for our audio segment and represented 16% of our total audio advertising revenue. Breaking out the various auto tiers, tier 1 manufacturer revenue was down 90%, while tier 2 regional auto-dealer saw an increase of 4% and tier 3 local auto dealers were down 3%. Retail services and travel and leisure all saw single-digit gains. The remainder of our top 10 categories saw decreases compared to the third quarter last year. Overall, we added 19 new advertisers who spent more than $10,000 during the third quarter, which totaled approximately $454,000 in advertising revenue. Notable new brands in the third quarter included Fred Loya Insurance, Pep Boys, Auto Parts, and California Department of Health. Looking at audio division ratings performance among Spanish language stations, the Erazno Y La Chokolata show is ranked number one in six of our markets released to-date for summer 2017 among Latino adults 18 to 49, among Hispanic adults 25 to 54, the show ranked number one in six markets. Piolin [ph] ranked number one or two among Spanish language radio stations in five of the summer 2017 markets released to-date, among adults 18 to 49 and adults 25 to 54. Lastly, with regard to our new format La Suavecita radio and KSSE FM in Los Angeles, the station is performing well with solid year-to-year audience growth comparing 2017 to September 2016 our average quarter audience for prime Monday to Friday, 6:00 AM to 7:00 PM among Hispanic adults 18 to 49 and 25 to 54, increased 50%. Turning now to our digital business revenues increased 198% during the quarter. On a pro forma basis, digital revenues increased by 24% representing approximately 24% of our company's total non-auction related revenue in the quarter. With Headway acquisition, Entravision has further enriched it's powerful ad stack of services, all which are fully advertisers centric. This acquisition is part of their ongoing strategy is to sustain a leading position within Latino market in the U.S. and abroad. Our four core development areas are: first, branding and customer engagement platform alongside our premium digital brands, content and communities; second, an ad stack that provides of that and will go to reach through our publishers; third, a sophisticated mobile programmatic and performance demand side with data reach platforms, clear attribution and machine learning optimization to better support our clients and our margins; fourth and last are strong 14 country distribution and sales organization to grow with new products and new markets. Foreign synergies and value will be created to advance our existing legacy media datasets, and business intelligence as well as our integrated media and digital services. Digital services Pulpo and Headway. These synergies will improve our overall digital product offerings, our digital margins, our digital growth, and research and development, and product development capabilities. On this front Entravision continues to build a leading database of Latino online navigation and purchasing behavior. Also, we're building our data manager platform to enable efficiencies, productivity, powerful insightful product offerings to our clients on broadcast digital and in great solutions. Entravision continues to attract a diverse range of well-known brands to its digital platform. Major advertisers in the third quarter included Subway, Toyota, Charter Communications, Buffalo Wild Wings, P&G, U.S. Army, BMW, Chevy, Wells Fargo, LA Care, and Unilever. In terms of reach Entravision remains a number one digital Latino platform to reach Latinos in the United States. Based on the most recent comScore data, we connect with 41 million unique U.S. Latinos across all acculturation levels delivering the total Hispanic to our advertisers. According to [Apple fire] [ph] rankings, MoBrain is the third mobile ad volume platform in Latin America and the number 12 worldwide. To put this information in context, we've reached more online Latinos in the U.S. than Facebook, and in Latin America, we have greater app mobile ad inventory volume than Twitter, right behind Facebook and Google. So we believe mobile will continue to be a driver of revenue growth for Entravision in the years ahead. To service this massive audience, Entravision has doubled its effort on content quality, digital video protection, social interaction and user experience as published over 6,000 news, sports and entertainment content image and video pieces during the third quarter. These stories produced over 9 million views across our owned and operated websites and over 75 million views on all platforms, which represent an increase of 119% in the third quarter when compared to the previous quarter. In the digital audio front, Entravision also experienced some impressive growth based on a very strong community and engagement strategy focus. During the third quarter, we streamed over 7.3 million hours of digital audio reaching 750,000 unique listeners. We'll soon release audio engage design is one of the leading digital auto marketplaces to reach Latinos, in the U.S., and in Latin America. We believe this has great synergies with our traditional audio business. As we continue to strengthening the bonds with our local communities, we're thrilled to see that our community in social media following surpassed 9.4 million followers across key networks including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Overall Entravision continues to strengthen its digital platform through its commitment to product high-quality content, increased community engagement and above all to provide the most powerful set of Latino data and digital services to advertisers. We will continue to form strong alliances, acquisitions and digital skill development. Turning now to our pacing for the fourth quarter. Television revenues are currently pacing minus 23% in the fourth quarter. As a reminder, on July 1 of this year our XHAS station serving the San Diego market switched its affiliation from Telemundo to Azteca América, excluding the impact of this change our TV revenues are pacing minus 7%. Recall also that we are up against 5.3 million in non-returning political in the fourth quarter of last year, excluding the Telemundo Azteca affiliation swap and political, our TV pace is flat for the fourth quarter. Our audio advertising revenue is currently pacing minus 13% in the fourth quarter, excluding political core audio revenue is pacing minus 6%. Digital revenues are currently pacing up mid-teens on a pro forma basis with the Headway acquisition. To clarify totaled pro forma digital revenue in Q4 of last year, including Headway was approximately $17.7 million. In summary, with the Univision affiliation extension not completed and the FCC auction behind us. We now find ourselves in an excellent financial position to execute our strategy of building on our existing unique audience reach and targeting capabilities, while carefully managing our costs. We'll continue to focus on growing our free cash flow through acquisitions and existing operations. We'll continue to evaluate and remain committed to returning increasing amounts of capital to our shareholders. As we began doing in August with an increased dividend and share buyback plans. We will also focus on putting to a portion of our auction proceeds to work in an accretive tax efficient manner by seeking M&A opportunities within our existing broadcasting footprint in order to strengthen our competitive position in the same vein as our recently closed acquisition of the NBC affiliate in Palm Springs. So in addition, we'll continue to seek digital assets that can complement our current digital portfolio and strategy. Importantly, we'll pursue this acquisition strategy, while keeping a net leverage profile of a less than three times. I'll now turn the call over to Chris to cover the numbers in more detail.