iHeartMedia - Q1 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the iHeartMedia Q1 2023 earnings call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be provided at that time. I will now turn the conference over to Mike McGuinness, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Mike McGuinness (EVP, Deputy CFO, and Head of Investor Relations)

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to join us for our first quarter 2023 earnings call. Joining me for today's discussion are Bob Pittman, our Chairman and CEO, and Rich Bressler, our President, COO, and CFO. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, management will take your questions. In addition to our press release, we have an earnings presentation available on our website that you can use to follow along with our remarks. Please note that this call may include forward-looking statements regarding our financial performance and operating results. These statements are based on management's current expectations, and actual results could differ from what is stated as a result of certain factors identified on today's call and in the company's SEC filings. Additionally, during this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures.

Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release, earnings presentation, and our SEC filings, which are available in the investor relations section of our website. Now I'll turn the call over to Bob.

Bob Pittman (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Mike McGuinnes. Good morning, everyone. We're pleased to report that our first quarter 2023 results were a little above the high end of our adjusted EBITDA and revenue guidance ranges. More importantly, while both the macroeconomic climate and the advertising marketplace remain uncertain, the advertising market was a bit stronger in the quarter than we had initially anticipated. Additionally, we expect that our second quarter adjusted EBITDA, while still below 2022 levels, will be approximately double what we generated in the first quarter. The second quarter outlook, in combination with our first quarter performance relative to guidance, gives us confidence that our adjusted EBITDA results will continue to improve throughout 2023. If this advertising market recovery trend continues in 2024, we expect to resume our growth trajectory that was interrupted by this period of advertising softness.

Rich will provide additional thoughts on our forward-looking estimates during his remarks. With that backdrop, let me take you through some of the key financial results of the quarter. In the first quarter, we generated adjusted EBITDA of $93 million, slightly exceeding the guidance range we provided of $80 million-$90 million. Our consolidated revenues for the quarter were down 3.8% compared to the prior year quarter, a little better than the guidance we provided of down in the mid-single digits. Our free cash flow for the quarter was negative $133 million. As a reminder, Q1 is seasonally our lowest free cash flow quarter of the year, and we will generate positive free cash flow in each of the remaining quarters in 2023.

Finally, operating expenses remain a strong focus of ours, and we continue to adjust our operating structure to drive additional efficiencies, and you'll see even more of that in Q2. We're also continuing to explore using AI to substantially transform our operating structure and cost base over time. Turning now to our individual operating segments. In the first quarter, our Digital Audio Group revenues were $223 million, up 4.3% versus the prior year quarter. adjusted EBITDA was $54 million, up 3.1% versus prior year, and our Digital Audio Group adjusted EBITDA margins were 24.2%. We said on our last call, in 2022 we have made changes to certain sales initiatives and commission structures which had a negative impact on our Digital Audio Group margins in Q4.

Those changes were reversed at the end of 2022, and while we saw some of those negative effects continuing through our first quarter results, as we anticipated on our last earnings call, we are confident that our second quarter flow-through will be back on track. Within the Digital Audio Group, our podcast revenues, even in this slow ad market, grew 12% versus prior year, and our Digital X podcast revenues grew approximately 1% versus prior year. In terms of audience reach, in March, iHeart was again ranked the number one podcast publisher in the U.S., with more monthly downloads than the next two largest podcast publishers combined, according to Podtrac. Three data points further illustrate the tremendous opportunity we have in podcasting. First, over 60% of Americans have now listened to a podcast according to Edison, making it one of the fastest growing mediums ever.

Second, podcasting now reaches more consumers every month than the biggest streaming music service. Third, there are now more weekly podcast listeners in the U.S. than Netflix subscribers. In the investor deck, we've included some new slides that show the growth in daily reach and time spent among podcast users since 2015. You'll see a slide that shows where podcasting is drawing its listening from. Spoiler alert, of those surveyed, 70% said they replaced time spent with social media platforms, 50% said they replaced time spent with YouTube, and 46% said they replaced time spent with streaming music services. Most important, not much podcast listening was drawn from broadcast radio listening, illustrating the truly complementary nature of broadcast radio and podcasting. These trends are significant because advertisers and their marketing dollars follow consumer usage.

Indeed, according to a recent Advertiser Perceptions poll, 60% of marketers who invest in audio plan to increase their podcast spending in 2023, a reflection of podcasting's strong performance and upside potential with advertisers. As we mentioned last quarter, we continue to see positive changes in the podcasting industry, specifically as it relates to content cost. While some podcast publishers had chased uneconomic deals that drove up content costs across the podcasting marketplace, we're now seeing a reversal of this trend.

We think this return to rational economic behavior across the marketplace is good news for iHeart and good news for the podcasting industry as a whole. Finally, I remind you that at its core, podcasting is an adjacent and truly complementary business to iHeart's broadcast radio assets, which gives us a natural advantage in podcast content creation, promotion, marketing, and advertising sales, as you can see in our consumer engagement revenue and profitability metrics. We've included a new slide in the investor presentation that shows that 68% of broadcast radio listening happens out of the home, and that 69% of podcast listening occurs in-home. Clearly illustrating that broadcast radio and podcasting are complementary and mutually additive businesses in terms of consumer usage. In addition to our industry-leading podcast business, we also have the number one streaming radio service, which is 5 times larger than our closest competitor.

We have the largest social footprint of any audio service by a factor of seven. We operate 3,000 national and local websites that reach almost 150 million people in the U.S. alone, all of which represent additional opportunities for our marketing partners to interact with our highly engaged consumer base. Let's turn now to our Multiplatform Group, which includes our broadcast radio, networks, and events businesses. In the first quarter, revenues were $529 million, down 7.4% versus prior year. adjusted EBIT was $87 million, down 35% versus prior year. Our Multiplatform Group adjusted EBIT margins were 16.5%. The Multiplatform Group was impacted more than the Digital Audio Group by some of the advertising softness we saw in the first quarter.

However, we see this softness as being directly tied to the uncertain macro environment, and we have great confidence in radio's continued importance to both consumers and advertisers. To give that some context, in this period of softness, broadcast radio's performance relative to the performance of the large digital companies has been significantly better than it was during the 2020 advertising downturn. We think that is validation of our technology and data investments to make our broadcast radio assets more like digital for our advertisers, leading to stronger revenue growth potential. As we look at overall advertising revenue potential, today, our broadcast radio assets reach over 90% of Americans every month and actually reach more people than Facebook and Google in the U.S. That strength with consumers also supports our conviction that broadcast radio will continue to have long-term sustainable revenue growth.

Remember, advertising follows the consumer, consumers are on the radio and are staying on radio, unlike the substantial consumer declines experienced by newspapers, magazines, and linear TV. For example, the CBS Television Network, which is currently the largest linear TV network according to the latest Nielsen ratings, has seen its consumer reach cut in half since the early 2000s. While over that same 20-year time period, iHeart's broadcast radio consumer reach has actually grown slightly and now reaches more than twice as many people as CBS. Before I turn it over to Rich, I want to leave you with this final thought. Rich and I and our entire management team remain laser-focused on identifying and targeting revenue growth opportunities while aggressively managing our expense base.

With the actions we've taken over the past few months at a presidential election year ahead, we believe we'll see a ramp-up in our performance throughout 2023, leading to a strong 2024 and beyond for iHeart in terms of revenue growth, profitability, and free cash flow generation. Now I'll turn it over to Rich.

Rich Bressler (President, COO, and CFO)

Thanks, Bob. As I take you through our results, you'll notice that, as Bob mentioned, we slightly exceed our previously provided guidance for the quarter. Our Q1 2023 consolidated revenues were down 3.8% year-over-year compared to the guidance range we provided of down in the mid-single digits. Our consolidated direct operating expenses increased 4.3% for the quarter, driven primarily by the increase in digital revenue, which drives higher content and profit share expenses, increased third-party digital costs due to the short-term concentration of lower margin revenues we discussed earlier, as well as additional costs incurred in connection with the execution of some additional cost reductions we made in Q1. To look ahead for a moment, we expect our second quarter direct operating costs to be down slightly year-over-year, excluding the impact of restructuring costs.

Our consolidated SG&A expenses increased 4.8% for the quarter, primarily driven by investments in key growth areas like podcasting, certain credits which benefited the prior year quarter, as well as additional costs incurred in connection with the execution of some additional cost reductions we made in Q1. We generated a first quarter GAAP operating loss of $49 million compared to operating income of $12 million in the prior year quarter. Our first quarter adjusted EBITDA was $93 million compared to $145 million in the prior year quarter and a little above the high end of the guidance range we provided of $80 million-$90 million. Turning now to the performance of our operating segments. As a reminder, there are slides in the earnings presentation on our segment performances.

In the first quarter, Digital Audio Group revenues were $223 million, up 4.3% year-over-year. They comprised approximately 28% of our first quarter consolidated revenues. Digital Audio Group adjusted EBITDA was $54 million, up 3.1% year-over-year. Our Q1 margins were 24.2%. Within the Digital Audio Group, our podcasting revenues grew 12% year-over-year. Our non-podcasting digital revenues grew approximately 1% year-over-year.

As we mentioned in our last earnings call, in Q4, we had increased our emphasis on certain incremental revenue streams through sales initiatives and commission structures, which resulted in unintended negative impact on our Digital adjusted EBITDA margins in Q4. We have corrected the issue, although there were some lingering impacts on Q1 margins, it will not be an issue by the second quarter. We expect our Digital business to get back to our normal EBITDA flow through starting in Q2, we continue to believe our Digital Audio Group will be a 35% adjusted EBITDA margin business. Multiplatform Group revenues were $529 million, down 7.4% year-over-year. Adjusted EBITDA was $87 million, down 35% year-over-year, adjusted EBITDA margins were 16.5%.

These margins reflect a high operating leverage nature of the Multiplatform Group revenues, with the vast majority of the revenue declines dropping directly to EBITDA. In addition to certain credits which benefited the prior year quarter and impacted year-over-year EBITDA decline. We expect our normal flow through to resume in Q2. Audio & Media Services Group revenues were $61 million, up approximately 1% year-over-year, and adjusted EBITDA was $15 million, down from $16 million in prior year. At quarter end, we had approximately $5.2 billion of net debt outstanding and our total liquidity was $601 million, which includes a cash balance of $188 million. Our quarter ending net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio was 5.8 times.

Although we can't predict when the advertising marketplace will fully recover from this period of softness, we remain committed to our long-term goal of net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio of approximately 4 times. As highlighted on past calls, we have no material maintenance covenants and no debt maturities until 2026. In the current macro environment, this type of debt profile positions us to be both resilient and opportunistic in responding to debt market developments. In Q1, we proactively repurchased $20 million of the principal balance of our 8.375% Senior Unsecured Notes, which brings our repurchase total to $350 million and results in an aggregate annualized interest savings of approximately $30 million. We were able to repurchase these notes in the market at a meaningful discount to their par value, generating both earnings and free cash flow accretion.

We will continually monitor market conditions and will look to further improve and optimize our capital structure as opportunities arise. In the first quarter, we generated -$133 million of free cash flow. As a reminder, the first quarter is always our lowest free cash flow quarter, in part because the first quarter is our smallest revenue and adjusted EBITDA quarter for the year, as is for most media companies. As Bob mentioned earlier, we expect to generate positive free cash flow for each subsequent quarter in 2023. I want to turn now to our outlook for Q2 as well as some thoughts on the full year. We expect our Q2 2023 revenues to be down mid-single digits year-over-year and down low single digits excluding the impact of political revenue.

Looking at our segment revenues individually, we expect the Multiplatform Group to be down high single digits, the Digital Audio Group to be up mid-single digits, and Audio and Media Services to be down high single digits or down low single digits, excluding the impact of political. In the month of April, our consolidated revenues were down approximately 5% year-over-year. Turning to adjusted EBITDA for Q2 2023, we expect to generate adjusted EBITDA in the range of $180 million-$200 million. Let me provide some updated assumptions regarding cash.

While we initially expected to be a full cash taxpayer in 2023, we have since implemented tax planning initiatives that we expect will reduce our 2023 annual cash tax payments and now expect to pay between $25 million-$30 million of cash taxes in 2023. We now expect our full year 2023 capital expenditures to be approximately $90 million below our previously provided guidance of between $100 million-$120 million, which was already a significant year-over-year reduction from $161 million in 2022. We expect our cash restructuring expenses to be down dramatically year-over-year. We continue to be impacted by the current interest rate environment as approximately 40% of our debt is floating.

We remain committed to further opportunistically improving our capital structure and reducing our interest expense as the market allows. I also want to reiterate Bob's comment on our outlook for the company as we move forward. Assuming a continued improvement in the advertising marketplace, we believe that our multi-platform revenues will continue to recover and that our Digital Audio Group revenues will continue to grow throughout 2023. This second quarter outlook, in combination with our first quarter performance relative to guidance, gives us confidence that our adjusted EBITDA results will continue to improve throughout 2023, and if this advertising market recovery continues, in 2024, we expect to resume our growth trajectory that was interrupted by this period of advertising softness. I hope this extended guidance helps to paint a clear picture of the company's future as we see it.

We remain committed to driving shareholder value through our rigorous allocation of capital, identifying additional cost savings opportunities, utilizing new technologies to expand our product offerings, and improving our operational efficiency. Finally, on behalf of our entire senior management team, Bob and I want to thank our team members who work to deliver for their communities and for iHeart every day. They are the engine that drives our company. We will turn it over to the operator to take your questions. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you have a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you wish to remove yourself from the queue, press star one again. Your first question comes from the line of Jessica Reif Ehrlich with Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich (Managing Director and Senior U.S. Media and Entertainment Analyst)

Thank you. Good morning, everybody. I guess two questions. I guess the first is on your April comments on April revenue, down 5% versus down 4% in Q1. I don't know what you can say about May. It seems like there's very little visibility, but it... I heard what you said about the long-term outlook. I'm just wondering if you think that things are getting a little bit maybe marginally worse. Then it's obvious. I'm saying the obvious, but this, you know, probably the most challenging macro and secular challenging environment that you've had in a, I don't know, a really long time, and competition isn't going away. You've explained some of the margin challenges, but they are down. You've already aggressively cut costs. I'm just wondering, like, what else can be done?

You explained the margins on the digital side. Do you just need a recovery in revenue, or is there more to do?

Rich Bressler (President, COO, and CFO)

Hey, Jess, it's Rich. Thank you. Let me start a couple things. I'm sure Bob will jump in too. you know, the picture we portrayed, we said April was down 5%, also, leading on that we said ex political, we expect the rest of the quarter to get down, to be down low single digits. I think we've seen, you know, we are seeing, you know, what we think is a slightly improving trend. I think if you go back to Q1, what we said in the beginning of Q1 for the first month, we expected to see a trend, particularly with national advertisers, excuse me, who went through the quarter. I think Bob said in his earnings script that it was slightly better, the advertising environment that we thought.

I think our guidance in Q2, quite frankly, continues to reflect that. When you look at the margin question back to your overall, yes, you know, we've taken a significant amount of cost down. By the way, quite frankly, as we said, just taking advantage of the capital expenditure, which if we've made, taking advantage of efficiencies, dramatically reducing our real estate footprint. Yes, margins are down in Q1, and you referred to digital. Just to go back to what we talked about as we left Q4, again, to frame the reference that we had as we did in Q4, we had emphasized some revenue that was lower margin revenue.

We said that we were gonna change a number of our initiatives and commission structure, that it was gonna take us not just Q4, but Q1 to work through that. Reiterated that here. We said we expect that to be fully behind us when we get to Q2. We expect when you think about modeling, fully expect the digital business to be 35% EBITDA margins. If you just look at our overall guidance for Q2, the $180 million-$200 million of EBITDA, there's a lot of pieces to the revenue numbers, but I think you just kinda do the math. You get from, like, $811 million revenue Q1 to about $905 million-$906 million in Q2.

Just doing the math that we gave out as general guidance, then I think you see some pretty significant margin improvement there. As a reminder, Q1, and I repeat this above, and I repeat this often, is our smallest quarter of the year, so you get the lure of small numbers when you're computing EBITDA margins.

Bob Pittman (Chairman and CEO)

I would also... Just let me jump in on your issue about secular competition. I think we are, when we look at both the consumer and the advertising, I think we're pretty pleased with the progress we've made on a relative basis in the competitive marketplace. Radio has just held up extraordinarily well, and you've seen some of the charts we put in this time just to show where the usage of podcasting is coming from. It's not really coming from radio, it's coming from streaming music, it's coming from YouTube, and it's coming from social primarily, which I think is very good news for us.

I think on the advertising side and by the way, on the radio side too, the reach continues to be rock solid on radio and at a time when linear TV and others have declined precipitously, as I, as I mentioned in the comments. On the advertising front, again, I think the investments we've made in making our broadcast radio more like digital offerings has really paid off. You know, we, we've comment a little bit about comparing this to the last downturn in 2020. If you go back to 2020, I think Multiplatform Group in that first quarter was down something like 50%, and I think the next quarter was 30%, and the, and the fourth quarter was 22%.

I think Multiplatform Group was down almost 30% for the year, whereas this year and this downturn, Multiplatform Group's down 7%. Much closer to the digital companies and I think a market improvement on a relative basis. Again, and we point to, again, the idea that we were taking that broadcast radio, adding technology and data, making it more like a digital offering. I think again, we're seeing traction with that.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich (Managing Director and Senior U.S. Media and Entertainment Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Steven Cahall with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Steven Cahall (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thank you. Maybe first I was just hoping to dig into the ad market a little deeper. Was wondering if you could contrast trends you're seeing in multi-platform versus digital and maybe even within digital, podcast versus non-podcast? I'm sort of specifically thinking about categories. You know, I've heard that auto is coming back pretty strongly and local. Would just love to take your commentary about what outperformed expectations and maybe some of those categories and how they're trending across your different channels?

Bob Pittman (Chairman and CEO)

Well, let me, yeah, let me hit the high level that we do think the ad market, we're probably seeing a slightly better marketplace than we had expected. Our expectation based on what we see today is that it's gonna continue to get better through the year. I think also, major advertisers we felt were holding back, trying to put away some money for the year in Q1. We think that as the year goes on, and especially as you get to the biggest sales quarter for most companies, which is Q4, that again that money begins to flow. We're seeing, you know, evidence of that happening. I think in terms of categories, I think you're right about auto. We are seeing strength there.

We're seeing strength in a couple of other categories that are a little unexpected. Again, I think that's going to the point that the advertisers realize that advertising works. The lesson they learned, and a hard lesson to learn in the 2020 downturn is that if they stayed out of the marketplace, it actually cost them more to get back in when things turned up. Hopefully, that's a lesson that is moderating the impact of this downturn.

Rich Bressler (President, COO, and CFO)

Hey, Steve, the only thing I might add, you know, normally, and you've heard us, consistently talk about that we've got no individual advertiser more than 2% and no category, more than 5%. Actually, a slight modification to that, and I think this is good news and builds upon what Bob said, is actually auto and now financial services are slightly more than 5%. Again, I think it goes back to Bob's point about having strength and even strength where we haven't had it recently in terms of advertising categories.

Steven Cahall (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. A couple more kind of on the, on the housekeeping side. Rich, you said, you expect digital margins, I think, to get back to that 35% range. I wasn't sure, was that a Q2 guidance commentary, or was that just a little bit more general? Also on the, on the cash side, do you have an outlook for cash interest at this point? Or should we just do our best estimates based on kind of the rate curve?

Rich Bressler (President, COO, and CFO)

Two things. On the EBITDA margin, and thank you, 'cause I probably wasn't as clear as I could have been. I expect to get back in the longer term to 35% EBITDA margins for the DAG group, Digital Audio Group. You should expect to see significant improvement in the DAG margin from Q1 to Q2. In terms of free cash, and just to reiterate what we said earlier, 'cause I do think it's significant for the rest of the year, and make sure everybody focuses on it. We've talked about our cash taxes for the year being dramatically down, being in the $20 million-$30 million on a full year basis for 2023. A significant reduction in our capital expenditures from $110 million.

They were previous guidance of $110-$120, down to $90 million for this year. Just as a reminder of over the last couple of years, we've actually done $160 million in capital expenditures, so a significant reduction there. You should think about our cash interest expense being about $390 million overall for the year.

Steven Cahall (Managing Director and Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thank you for all that color.

Rich Bressler (President, COO, and CFO)

Thanks, Steve.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Dan Day from B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Dan Day (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Yeah. Morning, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. We've heard recently a lot about the discrepancy between large and small markets from some other radio station groups and then national versus local. Maybe just if you could share what you're seeing. You got a more diversified footprint, whether these larger NFL cities are underperforming the ones outside the top 50 and then just any differential between national versus the SMBs. Thanks.

Bob Pittman (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. The issues we've seen has been more of the businesses that have to advertise to get the cash register ring tomorrow. They've tended to be stronger and more persistent. Advertisers that had the luxury to say, "I'm building my brand, but if I don't build it so much this month, I'll pick it up next month," or whatever. I think you've seen that has been where you've seen a little slower. As we said earlier, I think, and again, we sort of don't look at it as national or local or big markets or small market. Look more at sort of what's the mix of the particular advertisers.

Again, our expectation is that those large advertisers continue to come back into the marketplace, because they are gonna be building up to bigger and bigger sales quarters for themselves, and they will have to enter the marketplace. I think Q1, because it's such a slow sales quarter for most companies, people do have the luxury to hold back then.

Dan Day (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

Thanks, Bob, and one more from me. You've put out a bunch of press releases on new podcast partnerships over the last couple of months. You talked in your prepared remarks about sort of, you know, rationalization of this market with a lot of the bigger guys pulling back. Just wondering if you could maybe compare and contrast the terms at which you're getting these partnerships today versus one or two years ago, whether there's meaningfully better economics, you know, just the nature of the deals, whether, you know, who owns the IP is split of the ad dollars, et cetera. Whether that's changed at all, and whether the economics are getting any better for you.

Bob Pittman (Chairman and CEO)

Well, it's interesting. We have always held to good economics in podcasting. We refuse to do uneconomic deals, deliberate uneconomic deals. We don't believe there's such a thing as I'm gonna buy my way into the marketplace. We think all those are losing propositions. What I would say is that it's easier in the sense that there are not some crazy deals being offered out there. You know, when we look at it and say, if we're the biggest then we've got probably the best opportunity to monetize a podcast. If we don't think it's economic, how on earth is somebody smaller than us or less able to monetize paying multiples of what we've offered?

You know, the good news along the way for us, even in the past, is many folks like NFL, et cetera, are looking at creating a long-term, sustainable, podcast business. That means they're looking actually to building the biggest podcast they can, not necessarily getting a payment which would compensate the group for not getting the best possible podcast built. So what's nice now is that I think people are not having to make that hard decision.

I think, look, there's some podcasters that if somebody pays them a crazy amount of money, they just say, "Look, if I have a choice between building a big podcast or getting paid this check, I'll take the check." I think those are going away, and I think that's healthy, because now it puts everybody on some level playing field, which is what are the economics of podcasting? How many users are we gonna get? How well can we monetize it?

Rich Bressler (President, COO, and CFO)

You know, by the way, just to add one thing. I think it's probably taking the course of a lot of other businesses, right? For all of us have been following businesses, you get, you know, this initial rush, and as Bob said, you wind up with, you know, quarter cases that are uneconomical. If we can't make the money work, I'm surprised anybody else can. You know, I think we've used this before. You know, I think general direction, the belief is out there. We do, you know, 20%+ of the industry podcasting revenues and probably about 90% or so, best we could tell of the profitability.

And that's been, by the way, whether there were all the corner cases out there where people paying a lot of money or trying to put something behind the paywall, and we've continued to be steady in that. I really would encourage everybody on the call. We've added a number of new slides this quarter to the investment deck, but particularly in podcasting, and Bob touched upon this, I think, a few different times in the script and when he responded to Jessica's question. There's a slide there that just shows how two things, how complementary our assets are. About 69% of podcasting listening is inside the home and 68% or so of radio listening is outside the home. Again, that, you know, just factually shows you that.

There's another interesting slide that shows it because we get this question all the time, where podcasting listening, you know, is coming from, 70% is coming from social media. You see that slide 14 in the deck. I don't have to walk through all the slides, but it really is an enhanced deck based on all the questions that we've been getting and to get back to you what the actual facts are, not the speculation.

Dan Day (Senior Equity Research Analyst)

All right, very thorough answer. Thanks, guys.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Ben Swinburne with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Ben Swinburne (Managing Director, Head of U.S. Media Research)

Thanks. Good morning, guys. Couple questions. You guys have a fairly large digital business outside of podcasting. I think last year, almost $700 million. I know there's a lot of sort of third-party business, you know, inventory that you're selling and bundling with your other properties. Can you just talk about why that's a good business for iHeart? Is it allow you to maximize the value of your sales force, maybe helps drive podcasting? 'Cause I think a lot of that is selling other people's inventory, and which is typically a lower margin business. I was just curious if you could comment on that. Rich, on the cost side, the cash tax reduction's obviously significant this year.

Is that timing or sort of permanent savings as we think about your free cash flow heading into, you know, the next couple of years? Just wondering if maybe there's been a significant change in your cash tax outlook for the company. Thank you.

Well, let me start with the digital. Actually, the biggest areas we focus on are podcasting and our own streaming service, the iHeartRadio service. We've also used with Triton, been able to build out some marketplaces which allow us to capture some additional revenue coming into that world based on the strength of our own streaming service and our own podcasting business. We look at other businesses that we can either put on our platform and/or we can use our sales force for. You know, we've got the biggest sales force in audio by a lot. That's one of our great assets. We have trained people to sell every seller to sell anything from anywhere, anytime.

That allows us geographically to be able to capture clients that are not necessarily in New York or LA, which are the traditional hubs of advertising. Again, in looking at those, we're pretty particular about the margins we get. As we said, we had a particular problem at the end of last year because we tried to get some incremental revenue on some products that were not as, didn't have the, as good a margin as we normally have, thinking it would be incremental to everything else we have. Instead, we found a little bit of float out of where we had higher margin business, so we made some corrections there. By Q2, that effect will be gone.

Rich Bressler (President, COO, and CFO)

Yeah, on taxes, Ben, you know, I'm not gonna comment on any detail, anything going forward, but we've done say or comment on the details of our tax planning initiatives. You know, I think the team has done a really nice job, at looking at, all the tax initiatives and the opportunities that we have to maximize the value for shareholders. That's enabled us to reduce our overall, cash taxes for this year quite significantly.

Sebastiano Petti (VP, Equity Research)

Okay. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Sebastiano Petti with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Sebastiano Petti (VP, Equity Research)

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. I just wanted to maybe follow up on some of the digital, Ben's question there. You know, we talked about some of these, you know, social extension or other products that you sold within the, you know, that are still working their way through the system were supposed to, you know, drag or weigh on digital margins, but margins didn't seem to be all that bad in the Digital Audio Group. Conversely, on the broadcast side is the worst margins we've seen since 2Q 2020. I mean, Can you unpack maybe what occurred there?

The, you know, OpEx obviously up in the Multiplatform Group, but can you just give us a little bit of help on how we should perhaps think about the trend in Multiplatform Group in the context of your guidance for, you know, not only the second quarter but just expectations for continued recovery there?

Rich Bressler (President, COO, and CFO)

It's Rich, you know, we expect to continue to make improvement, you know, in the Multiplatform Group. You know, and just going back, you know, as, it's had in terms of the challenges in the advertising environment that we've, I think, all talked about and you've heard from many other companies out there, Multiplatform Group has been a little bit harder hit. It's absolutely a higher fixed cost business that we talked about. When you look at the flow-through, it gets hit higher on the flow-through. We've announced a number of, you know, cost programs, you know, the $250 million in total that we announced going before Q4 of 2022.

We announced another $75 million in the fourth quarter of last year. I think as you go into Q2 of this year, and I kind of gave you some sense how to think about overall revenues for the company, I think you'll, you know, continue to look to see improvement in Multiplatform revenues, and I think you'll see some significant improvement in flow-through in Q2 also. I'll go back to one thing, you know, I've said a couple different times, and I say on every call, anytime you look at margins, it just gets greatly accentuated in Q1 because of the lower small numbers, which I know we all know and is probably, and I appreciate sometimes hard to accept.

If you look at our Q1 numbers versus Q2 and Q3, which are dramatically larger than Q1 historically and roughly in that same size zip code, and then you go to Q4, which is dramatically bigger. We just get hit very hard in Q1 on margins, particularly when you have down revenues.

Sebastiano Petti (VP, Equity Research)

Okay. With Digital X podcasting, any help on sizing, you know, obviously your streaming product, you know, can you, can you perhaps unpack, you know, the revenue contribution in the Digital X podcasting? How should we think about, you know, the social extension versus perhaps some of the, you know, other, maybe organic, or for lack of a better term, like the streaming product? Because, you know, in terms of your guidance in the context of the mid-single digit, just trying to unpack, you know, how we should be thinking about the trend through the year there. Thank you.

Rich Bressler (President, COO, and CFO)

Well, we've got two things which we focus on, obviously, is our streaming service, iHeartRadio, which does very well, and it's the digital version of our radio stations and other products as well. We also have digital. We've used that strength and also our acquisition of Triton to build out some, you know, interesting audience networks and marketplaces as well. That continues to expand. Keep in mind, we also have a big social footprint ourselves. We have about seven times a larger social footprint than the next largest audio player, and the ways we monetize that in addition to the social e-extension products that we have and others as well.

For us, look, we look at anything that sort of fits with the needs of our advertisers, and that our sales force can bundle together with other things we're selling, and that we think gives us a good economics, not just top line.

Sebastiano Petti (VP, Equity Research)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Jim Goss with Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

Jim Goss (Vice President and Senior Research Analyst)

Thanks and good morning. Regarding your optimism, about multi-platform revenues rebounding, are you suggesting that the sluggishness in ad spending to this point has largely taken into account any recessionary risks? Do you think if a recession were to occur, given the relationship to GDP historically, that there could be another downdraft?

Rich Bressler (President, COO, and CFO)

Well, I'm not smart enough to be able to predict all the economic futures here. I think.

Bob Pittman (Chairman and CEO)

seeing is certainly as it relates to Multiplatform Group and specifically as it relates to radio, that we're seeing much better relative performance in this downturn than we did the last. I think that is, again, probably linked to how we have changed how we are selling and presenting broadcast radio to make it look much more like a digital product. That was really behind our acquisition of Triton. It's why we built out that digital ad tech stack. We've been able to include broadcast in that. We've been able to go to cohorts and audiences, you know, with the loss of cookies and mobile ID, digital is moving from one-to-one, and we think moving more to cohorts and audiences that people are targeting, tracking, and looking for the attribution on, that we can do with broadcasting.

We're not limited by the fact that we can't do one-to-one with broadcasting, as the marketplace changes. I think that's probably positive for us, and I think that relative performance differential between now and 2020 is tied to that.

Jim Goss (Vice President and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you. Regarding reach, you've brought that up, and, in one of the trades, the Audacy CMO was talking about reach and monetization, that should be an opportunity. That's been around for a lot of years in terms of, you know, achieving a better monetization relative to your product. Are you thinking that what you were just describing is your means of maybe closing that gap right now that might be more successful than historically then?

Bob Pittman (Chairman and CEO)

I think you've hit it exactly right. I think that, look, the reach is what we're selling. It's why we're there. It's also, if you look at, which we just recently were running some numbers on, if you look at the overlap, a lot of digital overlaps. Whereas people thought they were adding one digital product to another digital product to another digital product to get more reach, it turns out they were just getting more frequency among the same people. That radio does offer not only reach, but a unique reach that you can't get with a lot of the other products in the marketplace. I think the way in which the advertiser is buying those products is not like it was 20 years ago or 10 years ago.

They're not so much interested in buying spots as they are reaching audiences, and they're expecting data and technology to help them. Over time, they're all building basically unified planning and buying systems at least the major agencies, and I think other platforms emerging as well. We have built our products so that we can be a part of those platforms. I think that has some really long-term, you know, terrific benefits for us because if we can get an algorithm to start doing the media mix as opposed to personal bias doing the media mix, we know we will do much better. The audio today is about, I think, 31%, 32% of all media usage every day. By the way, according to Nielsen, radio finally passed TV in terms of usage in addition to reach.

You know, the idea is how do we get at that in terms of full monetization? We've invested heavily in the tools. We've invested over the past five or six years of building out the infrastructure to do it. I think, again, we're beginning to see some of the positive benefits of that. Coming out of any slowdown, that should just accelerate.

Rich Bressler (President, COO, and CFO)

By the way, just to come back and put a very fine point on it. I would say, 'cause you make the point about reach historically. I would say the two new data points that are there, one is the last point that Bob just said, when Nielsen came out and talked about reach over TV reach. I think that kind of like a moment that got marketers and advertisers to stand up and say, "Well, I hadn't quite realized that." I think the other piece is it's only been within the last year or so in terms of our capability of a fully built out audio tech stack since we completed the acquisition of Triton. We always had the relationship with Triton, but now we have the relationship.

Now we can, with dealing with advertisers, plan with their campaigns, monitor their campaigns, and report on their campaigns just like the big digital players could do. As Bob pointed out, not one-to-one, but one to, you know, for many, one to cohorts, which is the direction the industry is going in as we all know. Those are two new different things that were not there before.

Jim Goss (Vice President and Senior Research Analyst)

All right. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Bob Pittman (Chairman and CEO)

Your next question comes from the line of Stephen Laszczyk with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Stephen Laszczyk (Vice President, Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, great. Good morning. Just on the expense structure, maybe for Rich, you did a great job taking expenses out of the business over the course of the pandemic. You mentioned some of the continued flexibility you think that there still is in the cost structure. You know, it seems like you still might wanna play offense heading into the political cycle next year. I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more about how much opportunity you think there might be to reduce expenses, you know, if you entered a scenario where the macro or the ad market wasn't showing signs of a recovery over the longer term?

Rich Bressler (President, COO, and CFO)

Well, thanks for the question. Look, I, you know, you've heard us say this a little bit before, so it'll be consistent. You know, I think our job as a management team, starting with Bob and myself, is to constantly look for efficiencies in the company. You mentioned the numbers during the pandemic. I'll just repeat what I said earlier, is that we took out $250 million as we went into Q4 of 2022 on an annual basis. We announced another $75 million of core savings to be realized in 2023.

Quite frankly, I think as you look at Q2 2022 to give everybody some comfort, additional comfort level, hopefully in our guidance, you know, we expect about that $20 million of that $75 million, you'll see flow through in Q2 for the year. Again, back to my earlier point about when people were asking about margins, whether it's Multiplatform Group margins or the Digital Audio Group margins, why we have a high level of confidence with our revenue guidance to see additional flow through to that. And the last piece I would mention, although it doesn't go under the word, you know, expense from an accounting GAAP P&L standpoint, we've always talked about our ability to aggressively manage capital expenditures to the highest ROI, return on investment projects when there were kind of uncertain, you know, advertising economic environments.

I think with the guidance, the new guidance we gave today of $90 million a year in capital expenditures, down from the $110-$120 that we talked about going into the year and down from the $160 million or so that we've been spending the last couple of years, I think again, all of that to me, that reiterates what a great free cash flow company this is, and the structure enables us to generate a significant amount of free cash flow. I think we pointed that out today with the numbers we gave you for the rest of the year, even in uncertain advertising environments and uncertain economic times.

I think Jessica started out with the first question, gee, you know, these are about the most uncertain times I think any of us have seen in a long period of time, and I don't think Bob and I would with, you know, all the good news also we talked about today, I don't think we would disagree with that. It also shows you our ability and resiliency this company has to generate free cash flow even during this period of time.

Bob Pittman (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. I just wanna add one thing, which is a little longer term, but we're also looking as every company is and how we use AI. I think AI can fundamentally change the operational cost structure of the company. I think that's the primary value for us. It will turn employees from doing, you know, lots of employees doing rote work to our employees doing more of editing and more of the higher level work, which I think, one, will make their jobs more enjoyable, I think we'll do stuff faster and our cost will be lower. You know, I'm in the boat, I think Rich and I both are of thinking that AI is gonna be a major productivity enhancer for American Business, and we fully intend to use it to its fullest.

Stephen Laszczyk (Vice President, Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Thanks for that. Maybe just one more on capital allocation, if I could. You've been fairly active in buying back your own debt the last few quarters, $20 million this past quarter. I was curious if maybe you could speak to the opportunity or what conditions you might be looking for to ramp on repurchases, just given how accretive it is and the trajectory of your cash flows later this year.

Rich Bressler (President, COO, and CFO)

Look, we are, and I think have demonstrated not just in words, we are, you know, continuing to aggressively look to improve our overall capital structure, aggressively look to improve our cost of capital. We've got, you know, nothing's changed. Bob used the word long term in terms of AI. Long term in terms of our leverage ratio, the company's target is still to get to 4 to 1 leverage ratio, which I think in a leverage capital structure that we have, taking that free cash flow, paying down debt, which gives the highest return to our shareholders is a great way to return equity value to our shareholders.

we'll continue to look to improve the capital structure, along those ways, which again, which is why it's so important and we're laser focused on the generation of free cash flow.

Stephen Laszczyk (Vice President, Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you.

Rich Bressler (President, COO, and CFO)

With that, I'd like to Bob and I and the rest of the team, would like to thank everybody, and we are here and available for more questions. Thank you all.

Operator (participant)

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect your lines.