Earnings Labs

Outfront Media Inc. (OUT)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 5, 2015

$30.47

+0.30%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the OUTFRONT Media Third Quarter 2015 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Greg Lundberg, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Gregory Lundberg - Senior Vice President-Investor Relations

Operator

Hey. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining our 2015 third quarter 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 a discussion of our financial results, we'll open up the lines for question-and-answer session. A slide presentation to accompany the call can be found in the Investor Relations section of our web site along with the earnings release and an audio webcast. This conference call may include forward-looking statements. Relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements are listed in our earnings materials and in our SEC filings, including our 2014 10-K. We'll refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures on this call. Any references to OIBDA and AFFO made today will be on unadjusted and REIT comparable basis, respectively. Both of which are reconciled along with other non-GAAP financial measures in the appendix of the slide presentation, the earnings release and on our web site which is outfrontmedia.com. With that, I will now turn the call over to Jeremy. Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Greg. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. It has been a busy summer here at OUTFRONT Media and I think we've made some good progress since we last spoke. Slide four lays out some of the key highlights and I'll begin with the most important item, our revenue growth. Our third quarter revenues were up 2.5% organically, with continued robust growth in our Transit business and our Billboard business returning to positive growth. This is exactly what we described in our expectations back in August. It's important to note that Transit strength was across the U.S. and not confined to any particular market. Our…

Operator

Operator

And we'll go first to Marci Ryvicker of Wells Fargo.

Stephan E. Bisson - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Good afternoon. This is Stephan on behalf of Marci. You guys are looking for nice coloration based on the guidance in Q4. Can we get a little bit of color around that? Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. Thanks, Stephan. We've got very good visibility now. It will obviously improve. We've still got quite a bit of business left to write. It's not an exact science, but we're calling it pretty much as we see it right now. I can tell you that Billboards is certainly going to improve its growth rate from Q3. Transit is still strong. And I can also say that the U.S. is doing better than our international business. So that's kind of where we are right now, Stephan.

Stephan E. Bisson - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Great. Is there any break like local outperforming national vice versa, or any segments that are coming back? I know telco is something strong, some of the other outdoor players this morning (20:28)? Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yes. To be honest, as we look at it right now, I think we're likely to see growth across both local and national. When we're thinking about sort of thinking about categories at the moment either for Q3, the largest sort of changes for us on a positive way were food and non-alcoholic beverages. Computers, Internet was strong. Entertainment was also top three for us. Also, good to see that autos was up in the quarter, and indeed some positive momentum in telecom. So overall, pretty good. Not doing so well, casinos and lottery, still difficult for us. Retail was a little bit off in Q3, and education was also down, but – yes, if that helps, Stephan.

Stephan E. Bisson - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

That helps. Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

And we'll go next to Ben Swinburne of Morgan Stanley. Benjamin Daniel Swinburne - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Thanks. Good afternoon. Jeremy, can you talk about your remaining international business? I don't know if you could help us think about the organic growth rate historically for Canada versus Latin America? Any color there would be interesting. But are you considering selling that business if you can get it sold at an accretive multiple as well? And related to the transaction you've announced, maybe for Don, what are the tax complications, if any, about repatriating the proceeds back to the U.S.? What can you do with the cash? If you have any restrictions at all, I'd be interested in some color there. Thanks. Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. So maybe if I take the first part of the question. I think just maybe to another couple of comments on LATAM. We think it's a very good deal for us. We think it's a very good deal for our clients down there and also our teams down there. And what I'm going to say, it's a good deal for JCDecaux as well. They've obviously got a decent size business down there and I'm sure that they'll be able to generate some cost and marketing synergies. So I think all-round, we feel very satisfied with the outcome of that process, and I'm sure that it wasn't a great surprise to any of you when we announced that – when we announced the deal. So as we look to our business in Canada, if we go back sort of three or four years, the business took a step back with the loss of a couple of transit contracts out there, but since then the growth rates have been…

Operator

Operator

And we'll go next to Tracy Young of Evercore ISI.

Tracy Young - Evercore Group LLC

Analyst

Yes. I just wanted to follow up on your organic growth. Obviously, you had a nice little uptick on the Billboard business. Is there anything that you could particularly highlight as to that growth? And also, is there any way you can provide same-store billboard growth for the digital business? Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: I'll take the first part of that, Tracy. When we look into the business, just to give a little more color, we've had some pretty good revenue growth in two of our key markets which is New York and LA. When we go into some of the other markets, as you know, we've got a basket of markets and we did call out the fact that we were making some changes in a number of those markets. And so far, I think the sort of proactive changes that we've made are starting to bear fruit. Those markets that were sort of underperforming were either less underperforming in Q3 or indeed some of them returned to growth. So that's all positive. Donald R. Shassian - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Same-store digital, Tracy, much better. It was a decline, not nearly as big as it was last quarter. Third quarter was slightly negative, very low single-digits, a nice improvement over prior quarter.

Tracy Young - Evercore Group LLC

Analyst

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we'll go next to Jim Goss of Barrington Research.

James C. Goss - Barrington Research Associates, Inc.

Analyst

Thanks. The 8.5% organic Transit growth jumped out at me and I know in prior quarters, you mentioned that it's a lower margin business, so that growing could actually have compressed somewhat the overall margins. I was wondering, to the extent those are clearly being successful, is there some solution to the margin pressure through pricing upside that you might be able to push into that area to the extent that they are having results? Donald R. Shassian - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Jim, I think as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, I mean, our number of displays in the third quarter of this year are pretty much – pretty comparable to the third quarter of last year. When we look at it, it is incremental yield. It is significant demand and improved pricing, and our people are trying to sell these for the value we think they deserve, and it's a supply demand. People are really pushing for access to major metropolitan urban audiences and our folks are doing a nice job demonstrating the value by selling them for what they are worth. I think we are presently doing that and will continue to do so.

James C. Goss - Barrington Research Associates, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. And are there other categories, either existing or some of the new ones you are describing, that you think are going to be pretty important to the growth you are going to be developing? Whether it be getting into airports or street furniture, more than you have or are these other areas in mobile and digital, how should we look at the evolution upfront? Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: As we look at our business going forward, we obviously have a very strong presence in the billboard market and we will continue to develop that, and we'll continue to digitize that. We are the leader in transit in the U.S. We don't currently operate in the airport advertising market. Never say never, but it's not something that's immediately on the cards right now. We continue to bid on bus shelter and street furniture franchises as and when they come up. I think as we look forward, we are certainly going to be thinking about the screens business, as you know, we announced around about this time last year, the rights to the pitary (30:55) products which is sort of low-cost screens and cloud content at distribution. We think that there is some opportunities potentially in the screens business that may lead us into slightly different sectors, if that helps

James C. Goss - Barrington Research Associates, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. One other thing in terms of digital boards, have you seen some evolution in how they were intended to be used when they began to be implemented a decade or so ago? And what they are evolving into today in terms of just how you are dividing up the number of participants on a board, the time allocation, whether it has become more of a local advertising business than just national brand building business, that sort of thing? Are there changes you think are worth noticing and pointing out? Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Digital certainly appeals to both local and national, that's for sure. I still think that in certain ways we probably don't harness all of the benefits creatively that digital has to offer. Too often we still see copy, where effectively it could be – it could equally as well be on one of our analog boards. I think as we go forward, we are looking to actually upgrade the way that we reach out boards and it will also give us the ability to potentially load apps onto our billboards and this is where it gets to be very interesting because the apps then reach out for information, so they can do things like display a particular message dependent upon whether or not the Dow Jones has hit a particular mark, or whether or not the temperature in a particular area hits a particular point. So I think as we go forward, as we change the way that we are addressing our digital billboards, I think we will be able to capture that creativity in a much more dynamic way. Donald R. Shassian - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Enabling the advertisers to get their message out quicker, more timely, give them more flexibility to do things, and I think both we have provided better technology to do that and the advertisers are starting to realize how they can use these boards to really get their message out much more timely and focused to target their customers. So it's evolving.

James C. Goss - Barrington Research Associates, Inc.

Analyst

And your measurement efforts should be able to tie into that really well too then, I would imagine? Donald R. Shassian - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: That's correct, absolutely correct.

James C. Goss - Barrington Research Associates, Inc.

Analyst

All right. Thanks very much. Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thank, Jim.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions... Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Yes, I believe there are no further questions right now. So I'd like to thank you for your questions and your time today. And we look forward to seeing many of you at investor conferences over the next several weeks. Thank you very much, indeed.

Operator

Operator

And this does conclude today's conference. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.