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Outfront Media Inc. (OUT)

Q4 2017 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 27, 2018

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Please standby. Good day ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the OUTFRONT Media Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2017 Earnings Call. Today's call is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Greg Lundberg. Please go ahead sir.

Gregory Lundberg - OUTFRONT Media, Inc.

Management

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining our 2017 fourth quarter and full year earnings call. On the call today as usual 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 a question-and-answer session. You can find a slide presentation for today's call and the earnings release on the Investor Relations page of our website. After today's call has concluded, an audio archive will also be available. This conference 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 2016 Form 10-K. We'll refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures on this call. Any references to OIBDA made today will be on an adjusted basis. And reconciliations of OIBDA and other non-GAAP financial measures are in the appendix of the slide presentation, the earnings release and on our website, outfrontmedia.com. With that, I'll turn it over to Jeremy.

Jeremy John Male - OUTFRONT Media, Inc.

Management

Thanks, Greg and good afternoon everyone. Our fourth quarter reported revenue growth was up 1%. Our local business once again continued the solid growth we've seen in prior quarters across billboard and transit. This was offset by national advertising being a little weaker at the backend of the quarter than we anticipated. On the expense side, cost discipline helped our controllable expenses decrease 1%. With these good expense levels and despite the pressure from national revenues, we generated OIBDA growth of 3.3% and AFFO growth of 6.7%. Looking forward, we feel increasingly positive about the economy and our prospects in 2018, and I will as usual discuss our first quarter revenue outlook later on this call. I'll also give you some additional commentary on our trends and an update on our strategic initiatives. Don will give you now a more detailed review of our quarterly results and our 2018 guidance on AFFO and its components.

Donald R. Shassian - OUTFRONT Media, Inc.

Management

Thank you, Jeremy. Good afternoon everyone and thank you for being on our call today. Please turn to slide 6 which shows a high level summary of the year-over-year performance of some of our key financial metrics. Please note that one quarter of Latin America is still on our 12 month 2016 results which will trend out in next quarter's reporting. For the quarter, organic revenues were flat which is due primarily to lower national billboard revenues. However, good expense control helped drive 3.3% growth in OIBDA and 6.7% growth in AFFO. I'll now review our financials in more detail beginning with revenues on slide 7. Total reported revenues increased 1%, and organic revenues were flat. U.S. Media increased 0.4% on both reported and organic basis. U.S. billboard organic revenues were down 1.3% compared to the fourth quarter of 2016. This billboard performance reflects growth in local advertising, offset by a decline in national advertising. On the positive side, same board rates were up, as we continue to manage rates overall in anticipation of an increase in demand as we go forward in 2018. Demand wasn't quite there in the fourth quarter, however, and overall yields were down due to declines in occupancy. U.S. transit and other was up 4.5% during the quarter. This was principally driven by the net impact of won and lost contracts, with primarily the addition of the MBTA in Boston. We also saw solid local growth, again offset by a national decline. In other, reported revenues were up 8.8%, principally reflecting our acquisition of a digital billboard portfolio in Canada last June, partially offset by slight revenue decline in our sports marketing operating business. Slide 8 is a new view of some key revenue drivers. Since we now break out digital revenues in our SEC…

Jeremy John Male - OUTFRONT Media, Inc.

Management

Thank you, Don, and moving on to slide 17. Let me now give you some color on our first quarter. We expect revenue growth to be up low single digits, stronger than we achieved in the fourth quarter. And importantly, this will reflect growth in both transit and billboard. This outlook only represents our view at this point in time, and it's on a constant dollar basis. As you know, we've always been a little cautious looking at quarterly swings in our ad categories, so the fourth quarter is therefore an appropriate time to look back at 2017 and see what categories have had the greatest impact for the 12 months. Our 10-K, which will be filed tomorrow, will also give you a three-year view of this. For 2017, the three U.S. advertising categories that had the biggest positive impact on our year-on-year revenue increase across both billboard and transit were technology, professional services, and health and pharma. At the other end of the scale, our bottom three categories in year-over-year revenue change were auto, travel leisure, and retail. We talk frequently during the year about technology, and it continues to be an increasingly important category for us. Although auto was the weakest category for the year overall, by the fourth quarter it had improved significantly. While it wasn't quite positive, it was certainly an improving trend throughout the year. Turning to slide 18, which was new last quarter, you can see an overview of our digital assets and revenues. And I'd like to discuss our digital trajectory in a bit more detail. Our digital billboard inventory was up over 25% during the year through both conversions and acquisitions, with 982 boards at the year-end and revenue growth of 11.5%. Small format digital in-transit displays were up 20%, with 934…

Operator

Operator

Our first question will come from Alexia Quadrani with JPMorgan.

Alexia S. Quadrani - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Thank you. Just a couple of questions. First is just on the sort of the mix in the growth you saw in the fourth quarter, with national being the area strengthened and local being different, I mean how do you compare that to what we saw with Lamar and the relative strength you've seen there? And I guess you talked about the categories a little bit but what would you say was the main reason for your performance you've seen in the fourth quarter versus what you've seen for some of your peers?

Jeremy John Male - OUTFRONT Media, Inc.

Management

Thanks Alexia. And yes, I can obviously understand why you asked that question. I think there's a couple of different pieces here. I guess most importantly we have different assets. We have a major transit business that is obviously different from that of our major peer who reported this morning. We're in different geographies. We have different clients. For example, Lamar have said previously their largest national client is Cracker Barrel and we have said before that our largest client is Apple. So, thus you can sort of feel the difference there, I think, in that example. And I think also as importantly from what we can understand, we think we actually have a sort of different reporting methodology. So that sort of further complicates what is differences between the two companies. But I guess the important point is I think we shouldn't draw a line between – it's difficult to draw a line between the two businesses each and every quarter. I think there's one other thing I'd like to comment on with regards to our local performance. We talk quite a bit going back over the last year or two about the reorganization – reorganizing within our sales force, getting the right people into our business. We've made a lot of effort in terms of training, in terms of motivation, in terms of accountability. And I believe that actually we've been starting to sort of capture the benefits of that over the last sort of 12 months.

Alexia S. Quadrani - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

And so also this morning, Lamar mentioned that political is becoming more of a meaningful contributor to their business. I guess would you see political more of a potential tailwind for you guys as well? Or not necessarily, given what you just said about the differences between your regions and your client base and such?

Jeremy John Male - OUTFRONT Media, Inc.

Management

Yeah, if we look back over the past, political has always had an incremental – or a larger incremental benefit to Lamar than to ourselves, just based on their footprint. So we won't be highlighting any expectation of significant tailwind from political.

Alexia S. Quadrani - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Our next question will come from Marci Ryvicker with Wells Fargo.

Marci L. Ryvicker - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Thanks. Can you talk a little bit more on Q1 billboard up, and your total pace of up low single digits? Did national turn? And then for the full year AFFO guide of low-single digit to mid-single digit growth, are you assuming a positive national business?

Jeremy John Male - OUTFRONT Media, Inc.

Management

So when we look at the guide for Q1, we can certainly see that national is improving. Local is looking exactly where it should be. So we're fine on that. When we look forward at our – when we look at our business on a going forward basis, national is always the latest money to book. And over the last sort of two years or three years, it's becoming increasingly late in terms of that booking, in line with the rest of the media marketplace. So as we look forward, I think we can have an expectation that we will see some growth in national this year. But we can certainly have an expectation of some what we hope will be solid growth in local throughout the year.

Marci L. Ryvicker - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. And then a follow up on the strategic business investment, you spent I think $11 million. You're going to spend more this year. Are you already seeing conversion into revenue growth? Is that what's driving revenue, which we would still consider a little bit anemic? Or is there going to be a point where you've gotten through the strategic business development and revenue will actually start to truly accelerate?

Jeremy John Male - OUTFRONT Media, Inc.

Management

I think when you – we pointed to a couple of areas where we've started to see a little bit of revenue growth. But in the overall scheme of the $1.5 billion, it's relatively de mini mis right now. And that's within the mobile and cellular piece. I think the biggest benefit we will get is when we have comparable data and insight within our current billboard and transit assets that advertisers and agencies are used to when they're looking at how they're deploying other media, particularly within the digital world. And when we can start to trade that media in a much more automated way. I think that's when we're really going to see the bump. And where we're looking – what we're looking to do is to, if you like, marry, if you like, the significantly increased digital hardware in the field that we're going to achieve over the next 18 months or so with the buildout of the MTA and the other investments we're putting in digital. Marrying that to a much more automated back-end with data and insight I believe is where we'll start to capture that enhanced growth rate.

Marci L. Ryvicker - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst

Great, thank you.

Operator

Operator

We'll hear from Jason Bazinet with Citi.

Jason Boisvert Bazinet - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Yes, I just had one quick question on the new MTA contract in New York. You reminded us and I appreciate it that the capital expenditures won't flow through CapEx. But I had a question, if there are cost overruns of some sort as you're sort of spending all this cash to upgrade it to digital, is there a simple way you can sort of frame sort of what risks if any are borne by OUTFRONT as opposed to the MTA?

Donald R. Shassian - OUTFRONT Media, Inc.

Management

I think that the – there is a risk on the cost of the equipment and we think that we've bounded that pretty well. There is risks on the installation and if the risk of the installation is due to something that we've done wrong, then we're going to probably have to bear some of that, but I think we're pretty well organized. I think that the bigger challenge on a logistical project like this is the ability of the MTA to stay up with us in terms of approval of designs, making sure we got all the people that are in locations when they got to be on locations. And to the extent that that is something that – where they do not need and we incur some cost, and that enables us to extend the period of time to be able to recover the dollars on this contract. So if something is due to them, then we get more time to be able to recover the dollars from them. If it's our issue, then we've got to eat it. But I think the -- our risk has been bounded pretty well by what we've managed and estimated on estimating this project.

Jason Boisvert Bazinet - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Okay. Would you – is the largest sort of digital deployment that you've ever done, is that a fair characterization at least the most complex?

Donald R. Shassian - OUTFRONT Media, Inc.

Management

I think this is probably the largest digital deployment in a transit environment in the world. And we are taking it very seriously and we are trying to get the right resources to be working and managing this for us as we work with them and do this in a very smart thoughtful way, in a very multi-year way. It's not something that's going to get done in one year or two years. It going to take five years, six years to get this done and done correctly, smartly with great quality and that we can then therefore sell these screens in an advantageous way to make more revenue and help the MTA with improved communications and experience they want to give to their ridership.

Jason Boisvert Bazinet - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst

Understood. Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. With no additional questions in the queue, I'll turn the floor back over to our speakers for any additional or closing remarks.

Jeremy John Male - OUTFRONT Media, Inc.

Management

Thank you for your questions and for your time today. We look forward to seeing many of you at investor events in the coming weeks. Thank you. Good afternoon.

Operator

Operator

Thank you ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today's conference. Thank you all again for your participation. You may now disconnect.