Bob Dickey
Analyst · Noble Financial. Your line is now open
Thanks Mike, and good morning everyone. We are very proud of our journalist's dedication and accomplishment so before we get into the details of our second quarter results, I want to take a moment to recognize the USA TODAY Network as the recent winner of three significant Edward R. Morrow awards. The Radio, Television and Digital News Association host the National Edward R. Morrow awards annually to honor outstanding achievements in electronic journalism and news rooms across America. In no particular order, first is Eric Seals from the Detroit Free Press who won the best feature award. Next is our operation in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel with its win for best website audio and finally the Burlington Free Press with its win in best reporting in sports video. These awards reflect our company's commitment to innovation and excellence in all of our news rooms. These awards also demonstrate Gannett's dedication to delivering high quality independent journalism across all platforms to the diverse communities we serve. Our employees and journalists are our greatest assets. We believe that it is important to have a strong expensive network of individuals empowered to report the news as they see it especially as we continue to grow our USA TODAY Network to include more local markets and new platforms. Our continued investment in our news rooms and people will ensure that the USA TODAY Network has the scale to preserve the best principal journalism for years to come. On the product front, we’re continuing to make progress as well. At the cornerstone of our USA TODAY Network is a robust content management system that enables our journalist to work closely together, collaborate and drive efficiency in content creating and sharing across the network as we coordinate our news coverage. We're beginning to rollout enhancements to this system which includes the ability to load virtual reality content, directly into the CMS giving journalist access to this content across the network. In May we were listed the number one news network on mobile web in the news and information category according to comScore. Our internal investments continue to focus on product enhancements for mobile web as we grow and nurture this audience. Recent upgrades includes enhancements for speed, advertising including advertising enhancements to extend the reach of our award winning Gravity ad unit to the mobile web. As these things demonstrate, we are making the internal investments necessary to create robust and appealing content for our digital audience and provide the tools necessary for advertisers and journalists to be successful. Now I would like to touch on the business acquisitions we’ve announced over the last several weeks. Let me start with ReachLocal, which accelerates our digital growth strategy adding more than $320 million of annual digital revenue with the best digital marketing solutions technology in the marketplace and an outstanding and well respected management team. ReachLocal's focus on local small and medium sized businesses aligns well with Gannett's local to national strategy and extends our reach into new local markets. This transaction represents an important step as we continue to transform our business to meet the changing needs of consumers and advertisers in today's digital world. Initially, ReachLocal will expand Gannett's digital revenue by roughly 50% with its more than 16,000 customers in markets throughout North America, Latin America, Europe and the Asia Pacific region. After Gannett's concludes its current digital services arrangements for its existing markets at the end of quarter two 2017, the combined organization will benefit further from leveraging ReachLocal's best-in-class digital marketing services products in Gannett's existing 109 local markets in the U.S. The tender process for the ReachLocal shares is currently underway. We expect to close this transaction during the third quarter. In July, we also acquired the New Jersey Media Group including the record in Bergen County, the Herald News and their affiliated digital property. These outstanding publications have been in the same family for generations and have a strong record of journalistic excellence, community engagement and expectably connecting advertisers to the audiences they seek. We continue to execute on our local market growth strategy and this latest acquisitions, positions the company to be the leading news provider in the state of New Jersey, as well as adding about $19 million in annual revenues. We expect this deal to be mutual to earnings for the balance of 2016 and modestly accretive in 2017with margins approaching corporate averages by the end of 2017. Let me touch on our overall financial performance. Overall reported revenues increased in the second quarter by $21.7 million or 3% compared to the second quarter of last year. Year-over-year revenue comparisons for the quarter were impacted by several items including the unfavorable impact of exchange rate changes, accounting for third party digital affiliate agreements and the closure of certain printing operations which Ali will detail for you in a bit. Revenue before these items increased 7.3% in the second quarter compared to the second quarter of last year. This is primarily due to the addition of Journal Media Group on April 8 of this year and increases in national digital advertising. While we have been expecting to see modest improvement in underlying revenue trends throughout the year, these improvements have been less than expected, consistent with our experience in the last couple of quarters. On the cost side we have been successfully implementing actions to improve efficiency throughout the printing, packaging and distribution system, as well as executing on the savings plans related to our recent JMG acquisition. In June, we announced plans to consolidate our Fort Myers printing and packaging operations into one of our newly acquired Journal Media Group properties in Maples, Florida. In July, we also announced the printing and packaging operations of Florida Today in Brevard will also be consolidated into one of our newly acquired Journal Media Group properties, the Treasure Coast printing facility. These consolidations will provide operational efficiencies to increase utilization and newer equipment, as well as provide enhanced color capabilities which will give advertising clients in the region more options. Lastly also in July, we announced that the Journal Media Group, Corpus Christi Editing and Design Center will be closed and combined with Gannett's Phoenix operations. Each of these moves are underway and are expected to be completed before the end of the year, another example that at Gannett we move quickly. Now before I turn over to Ali, I want to take this opportunity to welcome all of our North Jersey Media Group colleagues into the USA Today Network and Gannett family. I believe the combination of these two organizations will carry on the tradition of great journalism as we continue our transition towards a digital first organization with outstanding journalistic talent as the cornerstone. Let me now turn it over to Ali to take you through the financials.