Good day, everyone, and welcome to the MDC Partners Fourth Quarter and Year-End Results Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please also note, today’s event is being recorded. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference call over to Mr. Matt Chesler, Vice President of investor Relations and Finance. Sir, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. I’d like to thank you for taking the time to listen to the MDC Partners conference call for the fourth quarter of 2017. Joining me today from MDC are Scott Kauffman, Chairman and CEO; and David Doft, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin our prepared remarks, I’d like to remind you all that the following discussion contains forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial data. As we all know, forward-looking statements about the company are subject to uncertainties referenced in the cautionary statement included in our earnings release and slide presentation and are further detailed in the Company’s Form 10-K and subsequent SEC filings. For your reference, we posted an investor presentation to our website. We also refer you to this afternoon’s press release and slide presentation for definitions, explanations and reconciliations of non-GAAP financial data. And now to start the call, I’d like to turn it over to our Chairman and CEO, Scott Kauffman.

Thanks, Matt, and good afternoon, everyone. 2017 was a year of significant progress for MDC Partners. We executed on what we said we were going to do, firmly reestablished our place as the industry’s disruptive growth story, invested in our future and strengthened our financial position. All of these factors helped us achieve our financial guidance, and in many cases, with industry-leading metrics. Reported GAAP revenue increased over 9% to $1.51 billion, our best year ever. We delivered best-in-class organic revenue growth of 7.0%, spot on with our approximately 7% guidance and 6 times the industry average for the big legacy agency holding companies. Organic revenue increased nearly 7% in the United States and 15% outside of North America. Canada declined 1%. We saw double-digit gains in client verticals, led by communications, financials and consumer packaged goods and double-digit growth in our media businesses. We generated adjusted EBITDA of $203.5 million, an increase of over 15%, with margins expanding by 60 basis points, also spot on with our guidance. Our improved profitability was driven by the growth of our business; payoffs from investments in growth areas, such as international and data analytics; and the leveraging of our cost structure. This year, we also significantly strengthened our financial position. We began the year with a $95 million equity investment from Goldman Sachs Merchant Banking and finished in a strong cash position and out of the revolver, as expected. We passed a significant milestone in terms of reducing our deferred acquisition consideration and non-controlling interests. After funding $129 million of acquisition-related payments in 2017, we’ve now reduced these items to a new 6.5-year low. At the same time, we brought our reported net-to-debt EBITDA ratio down to 4.2 times, a full turn lower than year-end 2016 and consistent with our commitment to…

Thank you, Scott, and good afternoon. As Scott indicated, we ended the year exactly how we had hoped and guided to, both in terms of revenue, adjusted EBITDA and margin. Organic revenue grew 7.0%, with Q4 at plus 3.3%. This was consistent with our approximately 7% full year guidance and included 150 basis points benefit from higher billable pass-through costs. Adjusted EBITDA was $203.5 million, up 15.2% year-over-year, with Q4 at $66.7 million or up 19.5% year-over-year. The 60 basis points of margin expansion for the full year was also consistent with guidance. Importantly, when we updated guidance in the middle of the year, given the higher pass-through trend, we mentioned that margins would still be up 100 basis points on a net basis. And in fact, they came in better, at plus 120 basis points. We delivered strong full year results despite the sale of our local lead gen business, LBN, in August, which cost us about 1% of revenue and $1.6 million of adjusted EBITDA over the past four months. We were also able to successfully overcome $2 million of incremental unbudgeted costs for professional fees incurred mostly in the back half of the year. These costs primarily relate to compliance efforts for new revenue recognition rules. Finally, as a reminder, beginning with 2017, we voluntarily stopped adding back acquisition deal cost as part of our effort to simplify our non-GAAP reporting. This would have added another $1 million, approximately, to our adjusted EBITDA this year. With all of this considered, we’re very pleased with our revenue growth for the year and even more pleased with our ability to convert a higher percentage of it to the bottom line. I’d also like to highlight a number of items related to our balance sheet and cash flow. We finished…

Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we’ll begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] And our first question today comes from John Janedis from Jefferies. Please go ahead with your question.

Thank you. David, when you talked to prioritizing the strategic growth initiatives and divestments, I know you spoke a little bit about it, but can you be more specific in terms of dollars, with both your comments and Scott’s, about leveraging the cost structure? And I was hoping maybe there would be a little bit more margin growth this year. So is it the $5 million or so you just spoke to or something more? Because I think, if it’s $5 million, that’s more like a 50 basis point kind of growth in margin as opposed to the 20. So any help there will be helpful.

Sure. So there were three real items that are impacting the margin this year that are really not related to the underlying agency operations. So one is the growth initiatives, and it will likely end up being somewhere in that mid-single digit million sort of range. The second is the real estate opportunity that’s been identified which offers us substantial savings in the long run, but has an upfront cost to the tune of $3 million to $4 million. And the third is higher professional fees related to some of the new regulations that I mentioned that we need to get going on, but once it gets going, those professional fees will fade away. And that’s a little over $2 million. So when you add all of those up, you’re looking at a double-digit million dollar impact on the bottom line, based on those initiatives.

Okay, got it. Thanks. And then separately, I guess, understanding it’s a low double-digit piece of the business, can you give us an update on your expectations for international growth this year? As you know, it’s been a big driver, and I was wondering if that’s expected to continue or to moderate.

So our expectation is to continue to see solid growth overseas. We continue to be invited to more and more pitches on a global basis. Scott mentioned some of the wins in 2017, and those opportunities are picking up, not slowing down. So we’re very excited about that. And that’s what’s leading to some of the incremental office openings in new regions around the world.

And are there more reasons to open up [indiscernible] (26:39) or no?

I’m sorry, that didn’t quite come through. There was a beep of some sort.

Are there more to open in 2018 relative to what you just spoke to on the call? Or are we sort of done on the expansion there?

We’re always evaluating incremental opportunities. And ultimately, we’ve built into the budget the investment for those offices that opened in 2017 that need to scale. And so we’ll operate at a loss in 2018. And then we’ll continue to evaluate opportunities as they come.

Thanks a lot.

Our next question comes from Dan Salmon from BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead with your question.

Hi, guys. This is Caroline on for Dan. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about tax reform and how you think it’ll impact your business in 2018. One of your peers said that they expect consumers to start spending their extra cash towards the second half of the year. Are you as optimistic here?

We absolutely believe that tax reform will be beneficial to the consumer economy. And the consumer economy has been the key driver of advertising spend by brands historically. So net-net, we think it’s a good thing for our industry. We went into detail in the prepared remarks about how it impacts us specifically in our tax structure. So overall, it’s good for us, it’s good for consumers, it’s good for our industry. That’s our view.

Thanks.

Our next question comes from Rich Tullo from Midtown Partners. Please go ahead with your question.

Hi, guys. Congratulations on a good quarter. It seems like you’ve made a lot of progress. A couple of quick questions. It seems like Scott was very high on the data opportunity and the data growth. Is that complementary to your media buying business? And are you seeing competition from kind of the consultancy class in that business? And then I have a question on international.

Thanks, Rich. A lot of the initial or the early stage data initiative did come out of the media world, in part because media has always been – even back to the days of demographic and psychographic audience measurement, it was the place where data was entering the agency. But obviously, with the advent of the social grid and all the different ways consumers now leave trails of information about them and clients are becoming increasingly more sophisticated, even with their own first-party customer data, it really just – it transcends just media, which is why we’ve made a concerted effort to bring data-centric strategies to the center of all of our operations. So that includes, not just media, where it’s in wide supply and demand and is widely deployed, but also data as it informs both strategy and creative. David Ogilvy was famous for saying, "Give me the freedom of a tight strategy." The more information that our creative teams have about prospects in consumers, the more effective creative development can be. And of course, that gets into strategy about how to turn prospects into customers. So we think data is a key value creator. It’s central to everything that we’re doing here as technology and design and data and creativity all continue to merge, it completely changes the landscape. We feel we’re in a uniquely capable position with the agility required to make the kinds of changes that marketers are demanding today. And much of it is about helping them deal with their own onslaught of data in all the many forms that it takes. With regard to the consultancies, there’s so much noise and so much coverage, and yet you’ve heard it from across the industry, we see very few instances of it actually impeding our ability to continue to progress with Chief Marketing Officers. We also think that we already provide a very high level of strategic support in all of the relationships that we have with our clients. And I would just offer this up, and I think this is widely felt across the industry, we think it’s a whole lot easier to bring strategic insights to our clients than it can be for strategists to bring creativity to their clients. And this is where we think that duplication and disintermediation are very difficult when you have doubled down on creativity as we have.

Okay. And now my question on international. A number of the peers suggested they’re seeing a lot of weakness in Brazil, Venezuela, owing to the economic and social chaos. I guess China has got some internal issues it’s working out. How are your businesses, if you could provide any color, operating in these regions? And did they provide a headwind or a tailwind in the current quarter? And how do you look at them in 2018?

Well, before David jumps in, I can just tell you, we are underpenetrated in Venezuela, so we don’t think we’re as vulnerable as some of the others. David?

So ultimately, Rich, we’re so small in those markets, what those economies are doing, what those advertising markets are doing, are actually irrelevant to us. At 14% of our revenue, it’s a little over $200 million across all those regions for us. And if you break it down between each of them, it’s such a rounding error and the opportunity is so large that just our ability to provide solutions that clients need is driving very strong new business opportunity and growth.

Real quick, as a follow-up. I think Scott said – you said – how much was FANG as percentage of total revenue? And how much would you say direct-to-consumer is a percentage of total revenue?

As we said in the prepared remarks, FANG’s over 5% of revenue now. And our business is largely direct-to-consumer advertising. We have small components of business-to-business capabilities as well as specialist capabilities around health care that sometimes market to physicians, but the vast majority of our business is direct-to-consumer.

Very good. Thank you very much, appreciate it and good luck next year.

Thanks, Rich.

Our next question comes from Leo Kulp from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead with your questions.

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I just had two quick ones. First, just curious what you’re going to do with your excess free cash flow, given the lower DAC paydown. Do you think M&A is on the table? Or are you going to just let the cash build on the balance sheet? And then second, with regards to your organic growth guidance for next year, what level of incremental new business is baked in?

Thanks, Leo. I mean, as you can tell from the results, we’ve been pretty heads-down on focusing on the year and we remain committed to delevering the balance sheet. But historically, we have grown through both organic growth and through acquisition, and we continue to be a beacon for those brilliant entrepreneurial teams that are looking for a safe harbor and a potential home. So the doorbell rings frequently. And we’re in a position now where we’re continuing to evaluate possibilities and opportunities. And don’t be surprised if we do make a couple of acquisitions this year.

In terms of our growth profile for 2018, we never made the assumption that we’re just going to get price increases from clients. It hasn’t been that sort of environment for many, many years. We need to earn incremental assignments, scopes of work, geographies from them. So generally, we’re looking at growing our relationships with existing clients as well as winning new clients, but it’s not price increases because that’s just not the way the industry has operated for a long, long time. So ultimately, it’s all going to come from new business in one form or another.

Got it, thank you very much.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Barry Lucas from Gabelli & Company. Please go ahead with your question.

Thank you and good evening. It looks like 2018 could see a ripple effect of large media assignments turning over. And given the growth of Assembly and the awards that you’ve recently received, I wonder how – if you could provide, I was going to say color, but where do you think you are in the continuum in terms of scale to be able to potentially pick up some even larger pieces of media assignments?

Thanks, Barry. If we look back a couple of years and a couple of earnings calls, I was very frustrated when Mediapalooza I hit and we were pretty much on the sidelines. We haven’t effectively scaled our media operations. But Martin Cass and the team at Assembly have done a phenomenal job over the last few years. We’ve knocked down a couple of marquee, larger pieces of business. And as we know, because it happens somewhat frequently despite our size, when we get named Agency of the Year, we know that the phone rings. And so the pipeline continues to be robust and we expect that the awards and accolades really do matter in a case like this. There’s been reports about large domestic consumer packaged goods campaigns up for grabs now. With our market share, odds are those aren’t our accounts. So we’re not in a defensive mode, we’re not preoccupied with defending. These represent upside opportunities for us. We referenced in the prepared remarks the number of at-bats that we anticipate this year. And so we like the way the market is continuing to evolve and what the landscape for competitive opportunity looks like right now.

Thanks for that color, Scott.

And ladies and gentlemen, at this time, I’m showing no additional questions. I’d like to turn the conference call back over to Mr. Scott Kauffman for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Jamie. In closing, I just want to thank all of you for joining us today, and we certainly appreciate your questions. And as indicated, 2017 was a year of significant accomplishments for MDC Partners, and we’re proud of the talented teams at our agencies who have been fundamental to our strong performance. As we look ahead in 2018, we have the right strategy and the talent, culture and creativity in our agencies to build on our success. We have a robust calendar of investor conferences and meetings in the months ahead and look forward to seeing many of you in person. Good evening from New York City.

And ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today’s conference call. We do thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect your lines.