Earnings Labs

Townsquare Media, Inc. (TSQ)

Q2 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Aug 5, 2015

$6.19

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning and welcome to Townsquare Media’s Second Quarter 2015 conference call. As a reminder, today’s call is being recorded and your participation implies consent to such recording. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] With that, I’d like to introduce the first speaker for today’s call, Ms. Claire Yenicay, Executive Vice President. Ma'am you may proceed.

Claire Yenicay

Analyst

Thank you, operator, and good morning to everybody. Thank you for joining us today for Townsquare Media’s second quarter 2015 financial update. With me on the call today are Steven Price, our Chairman and CEO; and Stuart Rosenstein, our CFO and Executive Vice President. Today, we are going to provide an update on our second quarter and year-to-date, as well as to provide a brief update on some recent developments at our Company. Please note that during this call, we may make statements that provide information other than historical information including statements relating to the Company’s future prospects. These statements are considered forward-looking statements under the Safe Harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause the actual results to differ materially from those projections. These statements reflect the Company’s beliefs based on current conditions but are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that are detailed in the Company’s annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC and we incorporate these by reference for this call. We may also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures including direct profit and adjusted EBITDA and make certain pro forma adjustments. Such non-GAAP financial measures should be used in conjunction with all the information contained in the quarterly and year-end reports available on our Web site. At this time, I’d like to turn the call over to Steven Price.

Steven Price

Analyst · Macquarie Capital. Please go ahead

Thank you, Claire. Good morning everyone and thank you for joining us today. We are pleased to report the Company’s second quarter results, which are inline or exceed our previously issued guidance. The Company’s second quarter net revenue grew 10.6% year-over-year, exceeding our guidance of high single-digit revenue growth. And pro-forma adjusted EBITDA increased 2.5% inline with our guidance of low single-digit EBITDA growth. In the second quarter, local advertising revenues increased by 0.6% and local advertising revenues excluding political increased 1.5%. Our second quarter results were impacted by soft results in our New York and New Jersey market. Excluding these markets, local advertising revenue would have increased 1.8% and local advertising revenue excluding political would have increased 2.4%. We have been working to solidify our leadership in these markets. In some cases it requires redirecting management’s focus, and in other it requires finding the right person for the market. A number of positive developments have occurred for the radio industry in recent weeks. First, it was announced that AT&T has agreed to activate the FM receiver chip in their 2016 android smartphones at no cost, allowing the further proliferation of the next radio app. This deal follows the 2013 deal with Sprint that has resulted in 25 million next radio enabled phone in the marketplace today. I want to personally salute Jeff Smulyan and others in the industry who have worked tirelessly for this important step for the radio industry. Second, Nielsen report released earlier just this week, stated that radio has reached an all-time high, reaching approximately 245 million Americans aged 12 or older. This follows the first quarter announcement that radio surpassed TV for the first time as the nation’s top reach medium. Related to this data, a recent MoffetNathanson analysis suggested that although broadcast television ratings…

Stuart Rosenstein

Analyst

Thank you, Steven, and good morning, everyone. As a reminder, our second quarter and year-to-date results discussed today are on a pro forma basis. Meaning they are pro forma for all material M&A activity completed by June 30, as if they had occurred at the beginning of the reporting and comparison periods. Importantly, there are no revenue adjustments necessary in these reporting periods. So pro forma revenue results are the same as they would be on a historical GAAP basis. Our pro forma direct profit and adjusted EBITDA metrics are adjusted to reflect the expenses that were incurred in connection with the WE Fest music festival in the first half of 2014 in order to provide a meaningful comparison. As a reminder, we acquired WE Fest in the fourth quarter of 2014. Please refer to the tables that we have provided in our earnings release, which provide GAAP results with a bridge to our pro forma results, as well as our non-GAAP performance measures. Unless otherwise stated, all of the financial results discussed will be pro forma for these completed acquisitions. For the quarter ended June 30, 2015, net revenue equaled $117.5 million, up $11.2 million for an increase of 10.6% from the same period last year. For the six months ended June 30, 2015 net revenue increased 7.1% or $13.2 million over the prior year period. Local advertising revenue for the quarter equaled $78.5 million for an increase of approximately $500,000 or 0.6% from the prior year’s quarter. This included approximately $400,000 of political advertising revenue in this quarter whereas $1.1 million of political advertising in the second quarter of last year. Excluding political, local advertising revenue increased 1.5% or approximately $1.2 million in the quarter. For the year-to-date period, local advertising revenue increased $300,000 or 0.2% over the…

Steven Price

Analyst · Macquarie Capital. Please go ahead

Thanks, Stu. In summary, we’re pleased that we produced yet another strong quarter and believe that it underscores the success of our Townsquare Everywhere diversification strategy. We feel we are well positioned to take advantage of future operating and strategic opportunities that may arise due to the investments that we have made and will continue to make this year. We believe in making investment decisions as you know based on both near and long-term results, and are confident that we’re working hard to build shareholder value. Thanks again for taking the time to dial in this morning. And with that, we’re now happy to open the call for questions. Operator, will you please open up the lines.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We’ll now be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Amy Yong of Macquarie Capital. Please go ahead.

Amy Yong

Analyst · Macquarie Capital. Please go ahead

Thanks and congrats on the great quarter. Steven, can you talk a little bit about some of the actions that you’re seeing perhaps visibility and I know choppiness in some of the oil producing states is one of the issues in the first half of the year. Has that kind of improved as we’ve trended toward to summer? And how much of -- and I guess, if you could talk a little bit about your guidance from mid to high single digit growth. I mean what kind of advertising visibility, is that baked in? Thank you.

Steven Price

Analyst · Macquarie Capital. Please go ahead

Sure. Thanks, Amy. On the one, oil producing, we do have a number of markets in oil producing regions particularly Texas and Louisiana. I would say we did see a little bit, we did see some issues in the beginning of the year and I would say that has moderated, and that’s not longer I would say a significant factor. Overall, our view is that the [indiscernible] market at least as we see it has improved on a sequential basis. I wouldn’t say we feel like it’s a boom market, but it’s definitely improved and we feel better about it. On the local side we are seeing and this sort of does answer your question about visibility. We had seen for probably the last year, clients booking later and later. So it does make pacings a little bit more difficult to gauge in this environment than it did a number of quarters ago. And as always for us, local is local, so local factors often overwhelm the bigger economic trends. So sometimes it’s a particular issue in a city. Sometimes candidly if it’s a great management team that’s aggressive they can outrun that, in some cases they can't. So, its -- since some much of our business is local, it’s a little hard to sort of parse out a general advertising environment because there were so many issues if there’s a particular base moving around or closing or new hospital, something in a community, that tends to be as or more relevant. On the national side we do see some softness -- some softness and continuing to see that. But stepping back overall we think that our diversification strategy gives up the ability to deliver the kind of revenue growth that we saw and that we think we’ll continue to see despite these factors given the balance of different products that we have. In terms of forward guidance, we really don’t break that down by segments. So overall we gave sort of the mid high single digit revenue growth and we think it will be sort of a combination.

Amy Yong

Analyst · Macquarie Capital. Please go ahead

Perfect. Thank you.

Steven Price

Analyst · Macquarie Capital. Please go ahead

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from David Bank of RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

David Bank

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Okay, thanks. Good morning. I guess as you kind of look back, think about where you were a year ago telling the story in the IPO. A big part of the story is the kind of mode I think that Townsquare has in the local market place on any platform, be it radio or online, because of the nature of having feet on the street and strong franchises in markets where big national digital players just didn’t have any scale. And I’m kind of wondering if you look back a year later now, do you think the big national players are making any progress in trying to penetrate your mode, do you think -- are they even trying? It doesn’t make sense for them and, do you see that in the market place at all? Thanks very much.

Steven Price

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Yes, sure. Thanks David. We don’t, and again I don’t think that’s because of anything other than in a sense smart business by them even if I had markets in New York and Chicago, in LA and Boston I would not spend a lot of resources in Twin Falls [ph], or Tuscaloosa or Utica were some other markets that we operate in, it just wouldn’t make sense. You can add a couple of people to New York and move their needle much more than they can trying to figure out how to go staff all that I believe. So that’s in our thesis and since we started the company, it was our thesis when we did the IPO and its still our thesis and from what we see, that continues to hold. And in fact if you continue to be live and local and have an active local sales force and active management, we think we’ll have them both. One recent example is, the June rankings which just came out yesterday on streaming. Townsquare stations had more engagement than any other radio group, and our listeners stay tuned into those streams for an average of 1 hour and 27 minutes. That’s not only bigger than radio group in our market, that’s twice Pandora and Spotify. So, we do think that, if we say live and local, we do have a connection to our community. We’re going to keep our listeners, our viewers and our attendees and therefore advertising will follow.

David Bank

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Okay. Thank you very much.

Steven Price

Analyst · RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead

Thanks David.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. The next question is from Michael Kupinski of Noble Financial. Please go ahead.

Michael Kupinski

Analyst · Noble Financial. Please go ahead

Thank you and congratulations on your quarter.

Steven Price

Analyst · Noble Financial. Please go ahead

Thanks Mike.

Michael Kupinski

Analyst · Noble Financial. Please go ahead

In terms of the tower deal which was pretty incredible. I was just wondering if you can just talk about the special situation nature of that deal because it seems like if you’re offered that deal you would just, you may have wanted to do additional markets. And I was just wondering if you could just chat a little bit about that?

Steven Price

Analyst · Noble Financial. Please go ahead

Sure. We thought for a while about what to do with our towers because its, it’s an asset that to some extent was a hit in our stock asset and our company. And we decided a couple of things. We had not candidly been as aggressively in actively managing and finding new tenants, finding tenants on our towers as we put the company together candidly as we might have been able to. So there are many of our towers which either don’t have outside tenants, have very small number of outside tenants or in some cases candidly just are in places or our structure show that they’re probably not going to have many outside tenants. So we spent a lot of time with Vertical Bridge and put together this package 43 towers. We kept some 250 or so of our towers which as part of this, they’re going to market those towers on our behalf with a revenue share that works on a percentage basis in our favor. And importantly we wanted to sell these towers without increasing our costs. So we’re able to structure something with Vertical Bridge that worked with us. They see opportunity in the towers that they bought, as well as we hold [ph] in the towers that we kept to market those.

Michael Kupinski

Analyst · Noble Financial. Please go ahead

Okay. And as you’re in the third quarter, I was just wondering if you can, you’ve gone through a significant number of Live Events increases over the years but that seems to have stabilized at least a little bit. So in the third quarter, can you tell me, are there additional live event venues in this quarter that you didn’t have last year or if so how many? So I’m just looking on the apples-to-apples basis.

Steven Price

Analyst · Noble Financial. Please go ahead

Yes, I’d have to get you that Mike and we can. There are some -- and there were some that we moved. Whenever you have 500 to so Live Events, you’re always thinking through what the right portfolio is, how to move things, so there are some. This happens to be a big weekend for us. I hope anybody who had some spare time will get on a plane and fly up to Detroit Lake because it’s WE Fest this weekend which is a big one for us, which is our first year running it. So there’s opportunity but also risk because while we’ve seen it and we never actually managed it ourselves so we’ll see, so far the weather looks good other than Thursday, where it looks like they’re going to get an inch of rain or so. So I don’t exactly have the specific number. There’s always movements in the portfolio.

Michael Kupinski

Analyst · Noble Financial. Please go ahead

Okay. And then, in terms of -- there seems to be some radio companies out there struggling with managing even more debt than you are. What are your thoughts on additional acquisitions at this point? How are you going to manage it with other?

Steven Price

Analyst · Noble Financial. Please go ahead

Yes, so I appreciate it. So we look for active issues, we’d like to continue to make acquisitions. We said a couple of things on that front and we have been pretty consistent on this. One is that, our mid to near-term objective is to get our leverage down below five turns, so that’s -- and over the more mid and long-term into the four range, so we’re conscious of that. And the other thing is, if there are accretive acquisitions we think that we could make, we’ll go do that. We don’t think we have to go buy more things or particularly more radio stations, but we’d like to. And if we can, and if it meets their criteria that makes sense for us which we have defined as the right price, the right cluster which is a dominant cluster, and the right market in the right geography that fits with us. And if we could find things that fit in that box we’ll be pretty aggressive doing that. And if they don’t meet those three criteria, we’re not just going to go buy things just to go buy things.

Michael Kupinski

Analyst · Noble Financial. Please go ahead

Great. Thank you.

Steven Price

Analyst · Noble Financial. Please go ahead

Okay. Thanks Mike.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] The next question is from Jim Goss of Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

James Goss

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead

Thanks. A question or two on the Live Events. What’s way past for this weekend, is it one weekend or two weekends this year? I know there was a plan to ultimately expanded, that wasn’t clear on that.

Steven Price

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead

One weekend.

James Goss

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead

One weekend.

Steven Price

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead

When we made the acquisition, we said that over time which wouldn’t be this year and might not be next year. We are looking at -- we do have the land, it’s an attractive area. If we think we can start a festival, if that makes sense, we’ll go do that. But we wouldn’t have had time, booking would have been early done for second weekend, so its just one weekend this year.

James Goss

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead

Okay. And you mentioned …

Steven Price

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead

Well, I would say it’s exciting because it’s the first time that Blake and Miranda are together since their announced divorce.

James Goss

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead

Okay. That’s pretty interesting. The three new music festivals, could you give any scale on those, I mean WE Fest was sort of outsized relative to the rest of the Live Events category. What sort of description would you have for the other [indiscernible]?

Steven Price

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead

Are you saying on a revenue side or on a …

James Goss

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead

Well, revenue or the nature of the festival or, I mean WE Fest is sort of a different thing where you’re out in the middle of a large area with a big draw. Are these -- these aren’t anything like those, I assume.

Steven Price

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead

No, nothing newly that big. It was an incremental a little over $2 million in revenues and we took a loss. We expected a loss in the $1 million, maybe a little bit more of EBITDA hit. It ended up being about that a little more than that, what we thought. What we expected -- the biggest one was a rock festival we did out in Colorado where we wanted to build to your point on WE Fest to do a second weekend. We do a country music festival out in Colorado, called Country Jam. We added a second weekend this year which was a rock festival. It, I would say broadly met what we thought. I think we’ll continue to do it. Are you ever happy to loose I’ll call it a $1 million bucks or whatever that number is, I don’t have the exact number for that festival. You’re not thrilled about it but you know it. We planned on it, we’ve only said when you do festivals you’ll loose money in the first -- we sort of laid that out, we laid it at the beginning, we laid it out in the IPO and when we talk to investors. So if you’re going to build something that’s going to be a franchise and build a brand, you invest in it. That’s why we didn’t start 10 music festivals this year, we started a few. That was the biggest one. We did a couple of other ones, started a couple of other ones in both country and rock, also in the mid-west. And as expected, we think those are good investments. Do they hurt? Cash flow if you just look into cash flow this year, they do. I think the right thing to do for the company and will there by an ROI on those? We think so. That’s why we do. So we -- as we -- so, that’s sort of how we thought about those festivals. And we’re still excited about those.

James Goss

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead

You also had talked about Beer Fest and other portable type concepts. Where do you stand on some of those ideas?

Steven Price

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead

We are still rolling those out. I mean, you saw we had a -- even without the music festivals, we have booked a 40% growth in our Live Events business. So putting up new festivals aside, we’re doing lots of different things, credit to Dhruv Prasad and his team who run a Live Events business, who’ve been able to manage not only the music business, but our portfolio of non-music events that we’re excited about and that we’re growing. Beer festivals as you mentioned are doing well for us. I think we hare the only national tour of craft beer festivals called America on Tap. I’d ask people to go to the Web site and go check out one of the events, and lots of other non-talent based events.

James Goss

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead

Okay. And lastly, following up on the question Mike had asked about M&A. Is there -- do you have any sense of potential acquisition multiples in the types of markets you would be looking at where that sort of stands right now?

Steven Price

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead

You know I don’t, and I still don’t want to give it away to sellers. We’re looking at some stuff now; I’d say some things on the smaller scale. So I think we may have a better -- I don’t know if they’ll happen. We may have a better sense. I don’t think -- I wouldn’t say -- I don’t think multiples have changed in the past six to nine months of where sellers are, where buyers are, and where things may transact. And again, it’s to some extend its specific. It fits right into what makes total sense for us, and we think there is a lot of geographic and other synergies, probably worth a little more. If not, it’s probably worth a little less.

James Goss

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead

All right. Thanks very much.

Steven Price

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead

Okay. Thank you, Jim.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We have no further questions at this time. I’d like to turn the conference back over to Mr. Price for any closing remarks.

Steven Price

Analyst · Macquarie Capital. Please go ahead

Great. Thank you so much, operator. Thank you all for participating for getting up this morning, listening and for supporting us as shareholders, debt holders, and bond holders. To the extend you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to call any of us. Thanks so much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time and thank you for your participation.