Earnings Labs

Entravision Communications Corporation (EVC)

Q1 2024 Earnings Call· Thu, May 2, 2024

$3.85

+0.00%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Entravision First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Roy Nir, Vice President, Financial Reporting and Investor Relations. You may begin.

Roy Nir

Analyst

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Entravision's First Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me today are Michael Christenson, Chief Executive Officer; and Chris Young, 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 Entravision's SEC filings for a list of risks and uncertainties that could impact actual results. This call will also include non-GAAP financial measures. The company has provided a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most comparable GAAP measures in today's press release. The press release is available on the company's Investor Relations page and was filed with the SEC on Form 8-K. I will now turn the call over to Michael Christenson.

Michael Christenson

Analyst

Thank you, Roy, and thank you to all of you for joining us on this call today. The first quarter of 2024 was transformative for Entravision. As you all know, Meta informed us that they were terminating their authorized sales partner program. The effective date is July 1. For this quarter, we are working with Meta to wind down the business. We are working to provide a smooth transition for advertisers, for Meta and for Entravision. In round numbers for 2023, Meta was half of our revenue and half of our cash flow. Terminating the Meta business will have a significant impact on our strategy and operations. And you'll hear more about this transformation as we progress through 2024. Fortunately, we have a strong balance sheet with substantial cash and modest debt, and our remaining businesses are profitable and generate significant cash flow. So, we have the financial capacity to absorb this event and move on. Now we are focused on our future, and we are excited about the opportunities ahead of us. We are certainly more excited about the opportunities ahead of us than the market price of our stock would indicate. We believe broadcasters provide a valuable service to their audiences in America. We have served our audience for 3 decades. 1 in 5 of the Latinos in America are in our broadcast markets. We believe our audience will be critical to determining the outcome of our 2024 elections. So, this year, we have invested in expanding our news production capabilities and the amount of news we provide to our audience. We now provide morning, midday, early evening and late news in all of our markets, and we provide weekend, early evening and late news in San Diego, Las Vegas, Denver, El Paso and McAllen, Texas. We have also invested in a sales organization that can engage directly with political decision-makers to educate them about our audience and how Entravision can help them reach our audience. As far as our advertising services and technology businesses are concerned, what we present is our digital segment for financial reporting purposes. It will be dramatically smaller after we wind down Meta. The core of this business is our Smadex programmatic advertising platform, our DSP. As we said last year, Smadex continues to work hard building AI capabilities into its platform and building a scalable customer-focused sales organization. They are making progress and have now returned to industry growth rates, and they have done it profitably. So, we have put Meta behind us. We are excited about the opportunities ahead, and we're looking forward to building value for our company and shareholders in 2024. Now I'll pass the call back to Chris Young, our CFO, to provide the financial review.

Christopher Young

Analyst

Thanks, Mike. On a consolidated basis, we achieved a quarterly revenue of $277.4 million, up 16% compared to Q1 of 2023. The increase in revenue was driven by our digital segment and political advertising revenue, partially offset by decreases in national advertising revenue, spectrum usage rights revenue and retransmission consent revenue in our TV segment and decreases in local and national advertising revenue in our audio segment. Net loss attributable to common stockholders in the first quarter was $48.9 million compared to income of $2.0 million in Q1 of 2023. The decline was primarily driven by a $49.4 million impairment charge related to the wind-down of Meta's ASP program and lower margins in our Digital segment. EBITDA in the first quarter was $4.5 million, down 65% compared to Q1 of 2023. Free cash flow in the first quarter was negative $2.8 million compared to positive $3.9 million in Q1 of 2023. The decline in free cash flow was primarily due to higher cash interest and taxes. Now turning to each of our segments, Digital segment revenue for the first quarter was $237.5 million, up 21% compared to Q1 of 2023. The growth was driven by our digital businesses, Entravision Global Partners, Smadex and Mobile Growth Solutions. Digital segment operating profit for the first quarter was $2.3 million, down 34% compared to Q1 of 2023. Digital segment operating margin for the first quarter was 1% compared to 2% in Q1 of 2023. Digital segment operating margin on net revenues minus the cost of revenue for the first quarter was 7% compared to 12% in Q1 of 2023. The decline in digital operating margin was attributed to lower margins in our partnerships business. As of today, revenue from our digital segment is pacing at a plus 6% over the prior year period.…

Operator

Operator

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