Scott Kauffman
Analyst · Wedbush Securities
Thank you, Matt, and good afternoon, everyone. This was a challenging quarter for our business. Second quarter organic revenue growth was just 0.3% and adjusted EBITDA was down a 11.8%, which was organic revenue growth at 1.2% and adjusted EBITDA down 5% for the six months. As we indicated to you last quarter, our year is expected to be significantly back half weighted and that continues to be case. Despite what we believe will be a steep acceleration in both revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth in the third and fourth quarters, no one here is happy with our performance in the first half. Its disappointing and the slower than expected start to the year is leading us to revise our 2016 targets. David, will walk you through some of the drivers of our financial performance and our guidance change in more detail in just a moment. Notwithstanding these financial results, I have no doubt that our business model is firmly intact and as I said is poised to grow strongly in the second half of the year and into 2017 and beyond. Our partners are driving new business wins from blue chip, increasingly global clients. Looking out further than the solid year we're having in generating net new business, which is $36.9 million in the quarter and $56.8 million year-to-date. Notable wins include 21st Century Fox and E-Trade and Media, Four Seasons, NPR and PSpice Ray [ph] from Apple, Stanley Black & Decker, Vonage, Diageo Brazil, Adidas Golf, and Creative. Our partners are attracting the most innovative talent in the business with several important new hires and recent weeks and we're confident that they will outperform the market over the long-term. Importantly, two quarters of results doesn’t throw us off our strategy or have any questioning the strength of our model or our partners or the vision of our long-term plans. So I'd like to use my time with you to focus on the strategy actions that we've taken and that we continue to take to make our business stronger and more efficient and our leadership accountable for long-term success. Combined with the strength of our agency partners, know that we are confident that these steps will quickly return us to an attractive run rate leading to solid shareholder returns. Its starts with five point strategic plan that we laid out at our Investor Day, as well as other actions to make certain that we deliver sustainable, financial results over the long-term that correlate more closely with the underlying strength of our business. First, we're continuing to make a major push in Media, adding talent and new capabilities. The upfront effort and cost here has been significant, including in the second quarter and impacting our full year profits. But we're now having the breakthrough year that we've been working towards since forming assembly roughly two years ago. The 21st Century Fox and E-Trade wins are clear evidence that we're an emerging player in this space and they give us visibility to even more opportunities on the horizon. Assembly is changing the conversation with clients and prospects and elevating strategy and creativity as they apply science, data and insights to our modern solution. We expect strong contribution from our media business in the coming quarters and in particular this momentum will better reflect – better reflected in second half financial performance. Second, is global, where we've been building out full service hubs in key markets around the world. MDC when compared to other holding companies is relatively new to operating outside of North America. We believe we have to have a global presence to go after global assignments. We're quickly building a global network, but doing so in a prudent manner and we're continuing to see solid traction. We've seen the challenges navigated by other holding companies operating in Asia and Europe and are avoiding some of those pitfalls. Importantly, we begin by leveraging existing domestic relationships to help clients with their challenges outside of North America. Big global brands now recognize the MDC presence in the region and its providing us with key opportunities including with such brands as American Airlines, Infinity, AXE, Smirnoff, Adidas, Hersheys, PayPal and now [indiscernible] for Apple. Our international growth strategy is working and we believe it will continue to work, but has proven to be lumpy in our financial reporting as David will discuss. To further support our global strategy, just this past month we hired a dedicated European CMO with proven experience. This should add more fuel to our business capabilities overseas just as we've done this spring in Canada when we added a new Chief Marketing Officer there, and just as we've done simply in the US by adding dedicated new business talent in healthcare and media. We're further investing in and strengthening our global footprint and our creative credentials through strategic M&A. Most notably, earlier this month we brought into partnership Forsman & Bodenfors, a creative power house in one of the worlds most awarded advertising agencies. This 30 year old shop was famous for its first independence, but recognized that MDC was the perfect and only partner to help them realize their own global vision. They've made it clear that they wouldn’t have partnered with any other holding company. F&B will be teaming up with [indiscernible] to create an entrepreneurial global strategic partnership leveraging each others infrastructure and talent pool to accelerate their respective global ambition. Based in Sweden, the agency works with globally recognized clients, including Volvo, P$G, IKEA, H&M and many others. In the past two years alone S&B was named the most awarded agency in the world by the gun report and independent agency of the year by Eurobest. In addition, F&B is celebrating several big wins from CAN last month including a Glass Lion and Grand PR making them the recipients of 47 lions over the last three years, a validation of the teams dedication to delivering the most creative and impactful results for their clients. As strength at MDC agency are known for and one of the elements that made F&B such as a perfect strategic fit for our network. F&B falls right in the sweet spot of where we scaled world class agencies multiple times, so consider it doubling down on a model that makes MDC unique and we did this through an all stock deal structure that allows us to meaningfully advance and reinforce our strategic positioning and growth plans, while maintaining our commitment to reduce balance sheet leverage. Third, we're continuing to support the next wave of growing firms within our portfolio, firms such as [indiscernible] Concentric and Healthcare, Allison & Partners and Hunter NPR, Y Media Labs and Mobile, Yales Partners and Analytics and Redsouct [ph] and Strategy among others. They are increasingly benefiting from investment in senior talent, real estate expansion both in the United States and abroad and cross selling. For instance Allison & Partners with our support now operates out of more than 20 offices around the world and recently expanded into Japan and Germany. Fourth, we're tapping into emerging technology trend in particular mobile, social and analytics. Our acquisition of Y Media Labs last year has given us deep technological expertise in mobile that complements the mobile solutions that our integrated agency are already building into effective marketing campaigns. Similarly, the acquisition of Unique Influence last fall bolsters our ability to deliver to ads in the social mobile world and with analytics Gal is leading the way in translating big data insights into new revenue streams. Together these partners set up to capture some of the fastest growing revenue streams in the business And finally we continue to bolster systems, support mechanism and other processes at the corporate level that are facilitating collaboration among our partners, the result to date are clear. We highlighted Hershey at our investor day as a great recent example of this and in our several ongoing integrated pitches that leverage multiple MDC agencies. These growth initiatives will certainly augment our competitive position. But let me be clear, I've not been satisfied with the flow of information from our partners to the corporate level nor the urgency with which that information is acted upon. As such I removed the layout management at corporate and reallocated resources, changes that put me close to the business and allow for seamless flow of information, as well as quick decisions making. And while these actions have a short term negative impact on profits this quarter, we're confident that they will produce positive long-term benefits. In total, our actions represents an 8% reduction in corporate staff incremental to our broader corporate efficiency plan that will translate into savings in 2017 and beyond. Also at the corporate level, as you now we almost completely transformed our boar of directions over the last year, most recently with the addition of our newest independent board member Dan Goldberg. Dan is President and Chief Executive Officer of Satellite Operator Tlesat, a seasoned global executive that brings MDC's strategic vision, financial acumen and operational expertise. We are thrilled to have Dan on our team and we continue to speak with several compelling candidates to round out our board. What's notable about all of these actions is not only how they will contribute to our long-term growth, but also that we're continue to actively chart the course to our strategic and long-term financial ambition even in the phase of headwinds that emerge from time to time. I look forward to updating you in future quarter on how we're reaping the benefit of this continue disciplined and focus. And I will now turn the all over to David to discuss our financial performance and outlook