Operator
Operator
Good day and welcome to the Outfront Media 2015 Fourth Quarter Conference Call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Gregory Lundberg. Please go ahead.
Outfront Media Inc. (OUT)
Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 26, 2015
$30.47
+0.30%
Same-Day
+2.22%
1 Week
+3.62%
1 Month
+3.04%
vs S&P
+4.52%
Operator
Operator
Good day and welcome to the Outfront Media 2015 Fourth Quarter Conference Call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Gregory Lundberg. Please go ahead.
Gregory Lundberg
Management
Good afternoon everyone. Thanks for joining our 2014 fourth quarter and full year earnings call. On the call today are Jeremy Male, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Donald Shassian, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. After today’s prepared remarks, we'll open up the lines for a question-and-answer session. A slide presentation to accompany today's call can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website at outfrontmedia.com, along with the earnings release and an audio webcast of this call. This conference call may include forward-looking statements and relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements and that are listed in our earnings release in Slide Number 2 of the presentation and in our SEC filings. In addition, on this call we'll refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures and when we say OIBDA we’re referring to adjusted OIBDA. Please refer to the appendix of the slide presentation and our earnings release for the reconciliation of this and other non-GAAP measures to GAAP financial measures, each of which can also be found in the Investor Relations section of our Web site With that, I will now turn the call over to Jeremy.
Jeremy Male
Management
Thanks, Greg, and good afternoon everyone. Let's begin on Slide 4 of the presentation, which are the key highlights for the quarter. We are pleased to report that fourth quarter organic revenue was in line with our expectations. I am also very pleased to report that we also successfully integrated the Van Wagner acquisition into our business, listing our reporting revenues 15% which is right where we expected to be when we announced the transaction back in July. Our performance during the second half as allowed Board to offer out a special top up dividend of $0.06 that represents our 100% payout of distributable REIT income in 2014 that we led out during our IPO process. And as we look at prospects for 2015, we’re up to a good start and we are confident that our business is poised to continue growth. Reflecting the underlying strength of our operations, I am pleased to report that our Board has authorized the 4.6% increase in our regular quarterly cash dividend. 2015 is an exciting year for us with the business in the process of executing on several of our growth strategies that we discussed with you during the IPO. Importunately, this includes significant development on the digital side of the business. In the future, when we say the word digital, we mean something very different from simply digitizing roadside billboard. As you’ve seen in some of our recent announcements, we’re developing new technology platforms to connect, transact and interact with both consumers and our advertising clients. This means that digital will become increasingly integral part of our day-to-day operations on the backend and we’ll also start appearing you as consumers in our markets as we move forward. One of the first places you likely to see that is in our Transit system where we’ll be bringing dynamic content to our audiences on state-of-the-art new screens. Transit remains a strategic part of our business as it allowed us to deliver young urban affluent audiences to advertisers. And with this in mind, we were pleased to announce the recent renewals of our Transit contents in both Miami and Atlanta. We believe our digital strategy will be significant additive to our Transit relationships as we bring advertising and communication to mute dynamic levels. Advances in digital rules have helped our company and indeed the other prime industry benefit increasingly from advertising dollars currently flowing to online media. We continue to believe that we can shift advertising dollars to out-of-home. Before I come back on and talk about this in a bit more detail I'd like to turn this call over to Don, who will take you through our fourth quarter and full year financials.
Donald Shassian
Management
Thank you Jeremy and good afternoon everyone. Please turn to slide 6, which shows the summary of our year-over-year performance of net income, EPS, funds from operations or FFO and adjusted funds from operations or AFFO for the quarter. As you will want to recall we began our operating as a REIT on July 17, 2014 and we’re closing the acquisition of Van Wagner on October 01, of last year. this table adjust for onetime expenses such as restructuring charges and acquisition cost as well as what the taxes would have during the year if we were a REIT for the entire year. As you can see our REIT comparable results were net income of $34.2 million, diluted EPS of $0.28, FFO of $82.1 million and AFFO of $79.1 million, those metrics will then compared to 2013 on a REIT comparable basis reflecting improvements in every category year-over-year in particular AFFO which is up 13.5%. Let's turn to slide 7 for a consolidated revenue and OIBDA. Revenues were exactly in line with the expectation we communicated to you back in November which was for flattish performance in the fourth quarter excluding the Van Wagner acquisition. Including acquisitions reported revenues were up 14.9%. Please note we're introducing the term organic revenue and are reporting this quarter. Organic revenues exclude revenues associated with significant acquisitions and divestitures, business lines will no longer operate and the impact of foreign currency exchange rates. So organic revenues in the fourth quarter therefore exclude the Van Wagner part of business, excludes the impact from other significant acquisitions, reflect the 2013 on a constant dollar basis and all to remove the Los Angeles street furniture business that we sold in November 2013 and GameStop which is a business that we exited in April 2014. On an organic…
Jeremy Male
Management
Thanks Don and we’ll now turn to Slide 15. Firstly let me take a moment on our business outlook for the first quarter. At this point, national trends in Q1 look somewhat improved and our current total revenue growth expectation for Q1 is to up in the mid single digit range. As usual, this outlook represents our view at this point in time and is on a constant dollar basis. Please note that it also includes revenues attributable to the Van Wagner assets for both periods and these assets are performing well having revenues to the primarily driven by national advertising, So we’re off to a good start and we’re having some productive conversation with clients and agencies and continued to feel better about 2015 while exiting 2014 in terms of attracting more revenues and new advertisers to our company. Talking to advertisers, this is worth acknowledging that there is still a bit of economic and political uncertainty out there which may make them more cautious this year in how and when they laid down their marketing budgets. That said, it’s very good see Q1 in positive territory. Thinking about the rest of the 2015 is worth noting that 2014 was an unusual year for out-of-home in the U.S. Think of the long-term, there has been a strong correlation between GDP and out-of-home spending with our industry generally performing around 2 point above GDP growth. In 2014 this relationship didn’t hold up. The U.S. out-of-home industry will likely pose 2014 growth of around 1% compared to U.S. GDP of 2.4%. Now some of question whether this is a secular change driven online, but we don’t think so. Going back to 2004, out-of-home had a 3.5% share review as media spending and online 6.2%. According to Magna Global, in 2014 they…
Operator
Operator
Thank you. [Operator Instructions] We will go first to Ben Swinburne with Morgan Stanley.
Ben Swinburne
Analyst
Good morning, I have two questions. First, Jeremy, can you talk a little bit more about the acceleration in the first quarter maybe U.S. flat, billboard, Transit any sort of color, I know the movie business is a big vertical for you and the Box Office is off to a good start this year, so you're seeing any tailwind in that category particular and I have a follow up for Don.
Jeremy Male
Management
So, as we look at -- it's pretty much across the board, across all of our properties. Transit’s doing particularly well in Q1, as I said on the call, national advertising is looking good. Last year - movies is one of our core performing categories and we certainly expect to looking at the slight this year but it's going to bounce back for us so that's definitely good news. So, I guess the answer is pretty much across the board, national bank Transit doing particularly well.
Ben Swinburne
Analyst
Great, it's good to hear and then Don, can you give us a little more on the AFFO outlook, I don't know if you can give us some expectations you have in terms of growth rate to our per share and you've to sort of other cash items that - CapEx but if you have any color on things like cash taxes and any other cash items to keep in mind as we think about AFFO growth?
Donald Shassian
Management
Okay, thanks Ben. And at this point we're not giving AFFO guidance we're most comfortable providing with the revenue outlook for the coming quarter and we do understand AFFO is very important measure for us and from compensation has annual target set of again that so we're obviously - and later in the year we may revisit providing a few of annual AFFO expectations. CapEx guidance we've given you total CapEx and we've given you maintenance CapEx -- range I think we've posted -- and it were approximately about $20 million and I think that probably only the piece of interest you can probably pick off pretty easily and the other piece for us is commissions, the capitalization commissions you can see that picked off from our interest savings I think with those pieces you might be able to build that yourself. Most importantly I'll also point to the earnings release to the schedule in the back and the back of presentation we've done a reconciliation of OIBDA's AFFO that I think will -- I think it's an easier way to think about build up versus doing it from net income and I think with those pieces that are available and what we're just communicating you can probably get there.
Operator
Operator
We will hear next from Marci Ryvicker with Wells Fargo.
Marci Ryvicker
Analyst
I just want to dig deeper into national I know you said Transit is looking better is national actually up on Transit and billboards in the first quarter? That's my first question and secondly, how focused are you on the other REIT industries that you may not yet be a part of? Thank you.
Jeremy Male
Management
Thanks Marci so I'll take the first question. The Yes National is up when you look across our Transit and billboards and businesses, it's probably worth making the point as well that with the Van Wagner assets as we talk you at the time they were much suppose towards national. So, originally three pre Van Wagner we were around 40% national now that sort of moved up to 45% so that's definitely a good thing for us. If we start in this of sort of looking at the trends I prefer not to sort of comments a little bit earlier I don’t think we get too much from the start looking at vertical on a quarterly basis. So simple answer is yes it is up in transport and billboard.
Donald Shassian
Management
And the question about the negative industries we are off seeing and another add of own company offers in and we continue to have a great dialogue with the investors. What happens with getting to the R&D I think time is going tell I think there is a continual education but we continue to have a very strong interest we continue to have a great dialogue education getting familiar with our business the stability of our business the predictability of our business we'll see how things play out I think it may take a lot of time to prove that one to happen. But we're encouraged by the continued dialogue and strength of interest we have.
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instruction] We'll go next to Alexia Quadrani with JPMorgan.
Alexia Quadrani
Analyst
Jeremy just looking back to some of the comments you made earlier about this year shift the potential share shift to add how in from may perhaps from TV. I guess any more color where you may be seeing that certain verticals more receptive to making that leave versus other that are holding back and I guess still staying along those lines I mean obviously this looks like more of an national share shift then a local share shift and I guess getting a bit further color in why you could have thought or reversal or sluggish national last year versus in the local and why that necessary is reversing on this year.
Jeremy Male
Management
I guess a couple of one and I think if we look at generally advertising last year and I don’t think it was a strong for mostly the earn. I think we sort of we caught tailwind of that I think what's really interesting now when you sort of look around and our both and you see apple there and you see Google and you see YouTube and you see snap shot. You're seeing some great brands that they're realizing what out-of-home couldn’t do for it, if we think on a sort of trailing 12 months basis. I was sort of thinking about in terms of dollar last year our categories were up so they're starting at the top kind of healthcare to TV retail was up and really state was also strong. Last year in terms of main categories were down. We were down in beer and liquor that was a difficult category for last year we’re down in telephone utility and to be fair that was I think we will know that was principally driven by changes strategy by one particular advertisers and movies without. So that’s a sort of shape of what's being going on a 12 month basis. I think I honestly believe that 2014 was a one-off I think there is the longer trend that I talked about on the call is really what we need to focus on I see absolutely no reason why out-of-home can’t continue to growth share in the U.S market. We're remembering again that around 4% is significantly lower than the international share that out-of-home has internationally and up closely to 7%. So I think significant opportunity there and I believe that we're placed and we've got the right strategy in order to be the leader driving that change in U.S out-of-home.
Alexia Quadrani
Analyst
And here is the decision might got there is that one vertical that has to make that more to make it notable is it the ad agencies that may be are necessarily giving that as making decision going advice our client or this is just broad based kind of move.
Jeremy Male
Management
I think one of the strengths of our business strength of out-of-home is just how broadly based our medium one over reliant on one category and when you drill into it you go around 90% of the top 100 advertisers using out-of-home it's just when you drill into that top 100 it's really just the shares really bounce around a bit. The average top 100 spend on average of 2% of their dollars on out-of-home as it goes to 4%; so, actually under represented within that you've got some advertisers such as apple spending over 10% of advertising dollars in out-of-home. I do think that part of it is actually getting and having real media conversations with clients and agencies back top by good data which the industry now has I don’t think that as in industry we've been as a speck of is that as we should have been in the past and it's certainly something that were trying to change in terms of how we're restructuring our sales force. I think just going on from some of the other comments I made. When we were talking some of the benefits from that; one benefit from if you like making out out-of-home to find we’re talking about that sort of again the possibilities to have much more seamless trading of our media will be the fact that actually it will release ourselves our sales teams to be spending more times with agencies, agencies and clients. So I think that will be an important piece of it and that certainly what we’ll be working hard on this year.
Operator
Operator
We’ll hear next from Tracy Young with Evercore Partners.
Tracy Young
Analyst
I just want to say thank you for providing this non-GAAP reconciliation for OIBDA to AFFO as media analyst beside that I had two questions, one is related to the digital business, when you talked about the growth, can you talk about where that you saw the increase related to occupancy rate? And then also can you provide an effective tax for 2015? Thank you.
Jeremy Male
Management
Digital business, we do not manage this business by occupancy versus rate. We are trying to maximize yield which is the combination of the two. So our digital revenues have grown because we’ve had conversations of static to digital but most importantly our yield on digital board same board in fourth quarter of last 13 and fourth quarter of 14 of same digital board that average yield is up which is great, which means they were being judicious about our deployment were being very smart about our pricing and our utilization of those boards and I think that’s great and we’re trying to be careful at -- as you know our deployment of digital board is not as significant maybe as some others in our industry we’ve been judicious and placing in those and it will continue to be very smart about our placement because you don’t want to come out size of risk your boards and the area, so we feel pretty good about that of what we’ve been doing and continued to very judicious about it. I think tax rate, trade setting the best scenario the way by giving you a perspective of cash taxes it could be approximately 20 million. I think it’s a best guidance I am going to give you because when you go through the effective tax rate that’s a very-very low effective tax rate and I think probably the best scenario to work offload. One reason as we think about the non-readable aspect of our business, there is not a lot of deferred taxes, there is a lot of assets that have deferred taxes and appeared outside of the business, so effective tax rate should be pretty close with the cash, the current tax rate should be the same with the effective rate very-very close.
Operator
Operator
We’ll hear next from [Jason Mesnick] with Citi
Unidentified Analyst
Analyst
Just had a quick question on the long-term deleveraging target that [indiscernible] four times net debt, is it fair to assume that bulk of that is emanating from your expectation of OIBDA growing or is there some non-QRS cash flow that will be used to de-lever? Thanks.
Jeremy Male
Management
Jason, it’s a combination of OIBDA and debt pay down, it is primarily growth and OIBDA but it is debt pay down. Our targeting of what we’re paying dividend is a healthy percentage of our free cash flow of but out of all it and so we’re expecting that the excess or residual free cash flow after dividends, we will be paying down debt and that’s not an insignificant amount in the next couple of years but it is primarily a growth on OIBDA that may happen. Anything on M&A we’re going to do is totally superb to that. We were introduced something else on transaction we may have some other debt, but I add to that I look at our business today and how we continue to grow this business now organically. We able to grow the EBITDA and use excess cash to pay down that debt to get there and it’s a not a huge lump, it’s a dollar amount that will be paid the later of the 2015 and a dollar amount will be paid the later part of the 16, but it’s not insignificant item.
Operator
Operator
[Operator Instructions] We’ll go next Jim Goss with Barrington Research.
Jim Goss
Analyst
I was just wondering if you would frame your expected role of M&A in both sides in 2015 in 2016 in terms of distributing the growth and also contributing to shift to more re-qualified assets as a share of total, are you more likely to be buying or selling or is it some combination you’re envisioning?
Jeremy Male
Management
Thanks Jim. Since the IPO we’ve sort of been talking about our general M&A strategy is being principally focused on our REIT assets. So what that typically means would be billboard type of assets and principally and in the U.S. So that’s where we’re sort of looking for tuck-ins. We're not targeting a particular and sort of growth rate through these transactions where we’ll be opportunistic and look where there is smart deals to be done, we will do so. It’s a part of that there are some swaps or some possible disposals along the way and we’ll consider that also, but there isn’t -- we don’t actually have a kind of target sort of related growth that we expect from M&A.
Jim Goss
Analyst
Okay, and just one other thing, you mentioned the film business had heading off here and that was a category that was important. As it comes back and maybe there are other examples of this, will there be some competitive issue that will help rates in certain targeted areas with sort of renewed emphasis in that industry or some others in that are important clients?
Jeremy Male
Management
Yes, if you look at sort of TV, entertainment and movie category, and sort of combine those, it's a significant part of our business. It's 19% of our revenues. To be honest, rate is all about demand from whichever category it might be. So, as we get incremental demand it gets us to a place where we can start looking at getting rates up. Interestingly, if we think about the transit side of our business and sort of thinking about rate; obviously a lot of that [indiscernible] and actually passenger usage now [indiscernible] in most of our transit systems are getting to all time highs and that said you got to be something that we'll be talking about with advertisers because quite simply you're getting more bank for your bucks so that's where we'll be looking to see reasonably how we can start driving rates in hopefully stronger demand market.
Jim Goss
Analyst
One final thing, when you changed your name I think one of the benefits to that was that you might be easier to avoid any issues with the sort of immediate company name as you're dealing with media company clients. Have you found that to be actually the case in practice?
Jeremy Male
Management
I think probably the biggest benefit we get from the name change system, -- CBS's tremendous plan and they're a great company but for us just to have absolute control of it over our brands so what we say about Outfront is what people hear, I think that's probably the biggest benefit Jim and we think the new brand looks great, we got out of the box very quickly in terms of getting the new brand up on all of our assets I hope you've seen it some when you're add on the - or whatever happens to be and we feel very good about Outfront Media.
Operator
Operator
At this time there are no additional questions in the queue. I'd like to turn the conference back over to our speakers for any additional or closing remarks.
Jeremy Male
Management
So, I'd just like to say, look thank you very much for your questions today. We look forward to seeing many of you next week, at an investor conference in San Francisco. Once again thank you very much for your time and attention.
Operator
Operator
That does conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation.