Alison Engel
Analyst · Stephens Incorporated. Your line is open
Thank you, Sharon and good morning everyone. We are pleased with our second quarter, which demonstrated continued digital advertising and marketing services revenue growth, as well as, year-over-year earnings growth, driven by strong cost management. Two quick housekeeping items to start. First, our second quarter of 2018 had 91 days as did the second quarter of 2017, so there are not any day adjustments this quarter. Second, we have renamed our advertising revenue category, advertising and marketing services to better reflect how we analyze our business-to-business revenues. As such, about $13 million in revenue, was recategorized from other revenue into advertising and marketing services revenue in the current period and about $9 million for the year ago. This revenue was primarily software subscription and services related revenue such a SweetIQs location based services, our SCO offerings and website development services. Now let's focus on our second quarter results. Consolidated revenues were $731 million compared to $775 million in the second quarter of 2017. The revenue decline reflects the challenge to print advertising and single copy circulation environment, partially offset by our digital advertising and marketing services revenue growth. Our full access subscriber pricing initiatives, the SweetIQ acquisition and a few publishing acquisition. On a same-store basis, total revenues declined 7.5% in the second quarter, consistent with the first quarter decline. Total digital revenues of $261 million, grew 8% in the quarter and represented 36% of total revenue, up from 31% a year ago. Adjusted EBITDA totaled $86 million for the quarter, up 2.3% from last year. We were able to offset the secular print revenue pressures with digital advertising and marketing services growth, in addition to cost reductions. Total same-store operating expenses fell approximately 8% year-over-year, reflecting production and distribution savings, due to facility consolidation and lower payroll and benefits expenses. These reductions were offset in part by higher expenses at our ReachLocal segment, associated with their higher revenues. Turning to the publishing segment, we were very pleased with the continued momentum we saw in our digital, advertising and marketing services revenues, which increased 6.4% in the quarter on a same-store basis, consistent with first quarter levels. Our domestic operations grew even faster, offset by some weakness at our Newsquest operations, as the U.K. economy remains challenged. Digital marketing services revenues experienced our fastest growth in the quarter, up 72% year-over-year on a same-store basis. We continue to see growth in our client count and are seeing increases in average revenue per unit. Since the time of launch in the second quarter of last year, we have grown our average number of products for client from 1.7 to 2.3, which is helping to drive higher ARPU. Within digital media revenues grew 4.9% on a same-store basis with a very strong national performance across both our premium sales, as well as, our programmatic channel. Categories showing particular strength include; financial, technology and telecom. Advertising solutions showing strong results include video, high impact display and branded content, where we had several key wins. On the advertising product side, we improved our owned and operated performance with the advertising call enhancements that sped up the delivery of high impact ads and improved mobile viewability by 10% to 15%. Finally, programmatic CPMs grew 10% year-over-year, driven by continued optimization of our programmatic step. As expected, digital classifieds continue to negatively impact our overall digital advertising and marketing services results. The employment category is the weakest, although we did show some improvement late in the quarter with new packages and pricing that were rolled out. If you were to exclude digital classifieds, digital advertising and marketing services revenues were up 15% on a same-store basis in the quarter. Same-store print advertising revenues fell 19.1% in the quarter worse than our first quarter decline, largely reflecting the shift of Easter between quarters. Looking at the first half of the year to isolate the Easter impact between quarters, same-store print advertising revenues fell 18.1%, consistent with the declines we saw in the second half of 2017. We continue to see some of the largest declines from our national preprint advertisers and also saw some incremental weakness at Newsquest. Switching to circulation, our same-store revenue trends were down around 5% consistent with first quarter trends. Our local U.S. markets are delivering the best results with revenues down only 3% as a result of our full access subscriber pricing initiatives. Single copy trends at both USA TODAY and within our local markets remain weak as we expected. Digital only circulation volume growth was robust in the quarter up 46% year-over-year, as we are aggressively targeting new digital subscribers. Early in the third quarter, we closed off most side door traffic from social and search channels that were allowing users to view content without hitting our pay meters. While it is still early, we have seen a marked increase in digital subscriptions, since making the change and have not seen a material impact our page views. In our ReachLocal segment, second quarter revenue, we reached $100 million, up 17% year-over-year, driven by strong performance of the migrated Gannett clients and organic core revenue growth. We're pleased to see ReachLocal’s second quarter adjusted EBITDA margins reach double digit at 10%, ahead of our expectations, driven by the continued scaling of platform revenue and the sale of Germany, which was slightly unprofitable last year. Additionally last year, our margin was negatively impacted by some of the ramp up costs, associated with migrating the Gannett clients. Our GAAP net income for the quarter was $16 million, up materially from a loss of $500,000 a year ago, reflecting lower facility consolidation and restructuring costs, as well as, lower depreciation and amortization. This also includes a gain on the sale of ReachLocal Germany of $1.8 million. Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $337 million in debt, including our convertible debt and $170 million drawn on our revolver. We drew $140 million on the revolver at the end of the quarter in anticipation of closing on the WordStream acquisition on July 2nd. We estimate an incremental $3 million in interest expense for the rest of 2018 related to the transaction. On the pension front, when our Form 10-Q is filed later today, you will see $115 million reduction in our pension liability, which is related to our Newsquest pension plan. This reduction is a function of changing the inflation index, used to pay the participants from the retail prices index to the consumer price index. As such on a GAAP basis, our Newsquest plan was remeasured and is now in a surplus position. We changed the index as part of negotiations with the U.K. pension plan for our fees and authorities, which also included new agreed upon pension contributions that are slightly higher from our previous obligations. Capital expenditures totaled $14 million for the second quarter, reflecting investments related to digital product development, as well as, projects supporting our ongoing consolidations. There were no share repurchased this quarter and we paid $18 million in dividends. Turning to our full year outlook. We are raising our revenue guidance to $2.95 billion to $3 billion and raising our adjusted EBITDA outlook to $337 million to $345 million. We expect WordStream to contribute approximately $27 million in revenue and $7 million in adjusted EBITDA in the second half of the year. While adjusted EBITDA results were better than expected in the first half of the year, we are anticipating that higher newsprint prices will impact our second half results. We are pleased with the recent announcement by the commerce department to scale back some of the tariffs that have impacted newsprint pricing. However, we will still need to cycle through our current inventory, which was purchased prior to that announcement. Based on our strong momentum, we expect continued growth in digital advertising and marketing services revenues throughout the second half of the year. Finally as a reminder, compared to last year, our third quarter will have one additional day and our fourth quarter will have six less days and therefore anticipate year-over-year trends to be better in the third quarter as compared to the fourth quarter. With that, I will turn it back to the operator for questions. Thank you.