Outfront Media - Q3 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the OUTFRONT third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. My name is Sam, and I'll be your moderator for today's call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call, with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you'd like to ask a question, you can do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. I'd now like to turn the call over to Stephan Bisson with OUTFRONT. Stephan, please go ahead.

Stephan Bisson (VP of Investor Relations)

Thank you, Sam. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our 2023 third quarter earnings call. With me on the call today are Jeremy Male, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Matthew Siegel, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. After a discussion of our financial results, we'll open the lines for a question and answer session. Our comments today will refer to the earnings release and a slide presentation that you can find on the investor relations section of our website, outfront.com. After today's call is concluded, a replay will be available there as well. This conference call may include forward-looking statements.

Relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements are listed in our earnings materials and in our SEC filings, including, but not limited to, our 2022 Form 10-K and our September 30, 2023 Form 10-Q, which we expect to file tomorrow. We will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures on this call. Any references to OIBDA made today will be on an adjusted basis. Reconciliation of OIBDA and other non-GAAP financial measures are in the appendix of the slide presentation, the earnings release, and on our website, which also includes presentations with prior period reconciliation. Let me now turn the call over to Jeremy.

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Stephan, and thank you everyone for joining us today. We're pleased to be here today, reporting our third quarter results, which came in pretty much as we indicated when we spoke three months ago. As you can see on slide three, which summarizes our headline numbers, total consolidated revenue was slightly up during the quarter. Adjusted OIBDA declined 5% year-over-year, principally due to weaker transit and other results, and AFFO was down primarily due to higher interest and lower OIBDA. Slide four shows our revenue results by segment. Total U.S. media revenues were slightly up on a reported basis year-over-year. Other, which consists mostly of Canada, was up 2% on an as-reported basis and 4% on an organic constant dollar basis.

While we're speaking of Canada, I want to briefly discuss the pending sale of our Canadian business, which you may have read about in our press release last week. On October 23rd, we announced that we entered into a share purchase agreement for the sale of our Canadian business with Bell Media. As previously disclosed in our 10-K, the purchase price is CAD 410 million, subject to adjustments, and we expect to close the transaction in the first half of 2024. This strategic transaction will provide OUTFRONT with additional financial flexibility through the deleveraging of our balance sheets. We look forward to continuing to work with our Canadian colleagues on the great business we've built together until the deal closes. So turning back to the quarter, you can see the components of our U.S. media revenues in more detail on slide five.

Billboards, which remains about 80% of revenues, grew 2.6%, with solid performance in most of our markets. Transit revenues were down 8.6% year-over-year, given lower national rates, which I'll discuss in a bit more detail on slide six. Here, you can see our local and national revenue performance. Our local business was strong, up 6% year-over-year, but this was largely offset by our national business. As we noted on the last call, national faced some headwinds during the quarter, with the writers and actors strikes curtailing entertainment ad spend and technology's year of efficiency, pushing some advertisers to scale back their ad campaigns. As a result of the weaker national revenues, our local national split was 58%-42% on the quarter, more locally skewed than our typical 55-45 split.

Slide seven illustrates our U.S. billboard yield, which grew nearly 3% year-over-year to $2,800. This improvement was driven primarily by an increased number of digital faces, which typically generate more dollars per board than our static inventory. Slide eight highlights our digital performance, with digital revenues growing 5.3% in the quarter and representing over 31% of our total revenue, up 150 basis points from last year. Digital billboard revenues were up nearly 7% versus the prior year, primarily because of new inventory. We added 57 digital billboards during the quarter, raising our total to 2,105. Digital transit was up 1%, again, due to an additional inventory compared to last year.

On slide nine, you can see the results of our static revenues, which were down 2% year-over-year, with slight growth in billboard being offset by a decline in transit, which was largely driven by lower bus revenues, a result of the national headwinds we previously discussed. Though static billboard growth remains modest, the fact it continues to grow is notable given the challenging ad environment and the fact that we continue to convert many of our best static boards to digital.... With that, let me now hand it over to Matt.

Matthew Siegel (EVP and CFO)

Thanks, Jeremy, and good afternoon, everyone. I appreciate you joining our call today. Please turn to slide 10 for a more detailed look at our expenses. Total expenses were up approximately $7 million, or 2% year-over-year, entirely driven by billboard lease expenses, which were up $10 million. Excluding lease expenses, costs were even lower versus the prior year period. As we've previously discussed, much of the lease expense growth continues to be associated with the new inventory we've added over the prior 12 months. This growth rate has moderated as we have moved through the year and will continue to do so in the fourth quarter and into 2024. Transit franchise expense was down slightly, as the increased MAG over to the New York MTA from the inflation adjustment this year was offset by lower revenue share payments to our other transit franchises.

Hosting, maintenance, and other expenses down 4%, principally driven by lower production expense and a property tax refund. SG&A expense was up less than 2% versus last year, driven primarily by a higher allowance for doubtful accounts, the professional fees in office rents, offset partially by lower total compensation expenses. We remain focused on SG&A and expect these expenses to continue to be a lower percentage of revenue in 2024. Corporate expense was down just over $1 million versus last year. This decrease was driven by lower compensation-related expenses, offset slightly by the impact of market fluctuations on the unfunded equity index-linked retirement plan. Slide 11 provides additional detail on the sources of OIBDA.

U.S. billboard OIBDA was down about 1%, and billboard OIBDA margin was 36.7%, down versus a year ago, but slightly better versus the comparable period in 2019. As we've described in prior periods this year, the margin decline versus 2022 was driven by new and acquired inventory, and this inventory is still ramping to our projected revenue levels. Looking forward to 2024, we expect billboard margins will improve versus 2023 as revenues on acquired inventory continue to grow. Transit OIBDA was down approximately $6 million versus the prior year due to lower revenue. While the Hollywood writer and actor strikes had an impact on all parts of our business, transit was disproportionately hurt, given its greater exposure to the entertainment vertical and the fall television launch season in particular. Turning to capital expenditures on slide 12.

Q3 CapEx spend was $19 million, including $8 million of maintenance spending. The $6 million decline in total CapEx versus the prior year was primarily due to lower investments in new digital billboards. For the year, we continue to expect total CapEx of $80 million-$85 million. We believe 2023 maintenance CapEx will be approximately $25 million-$30 million, higher than usual, having completed office moves in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. We spent about $12 million on MTA deployment costs in the quarter. As we mentioned on our last earnings call, and as a result of our continued expectation of negative aggregate cash flows related to the MTA, we recorded an impairment charge for this amount in the third quarter of 2023.

Looking at FFO on slide 13, you can see our Q3 FFO of approximately $76 million is down year-over-year, primarily given this lower OIBDA and higher interest expense. For the year, our FFO guidance is unchanged from our last update. Please turn to slide 14 for an update on our balance sheet. Liquidity is nearly $540 million, including over $40 million of cash and almost $500 million available on our revolver. As of September 30, our total net leverage was 5.4 times, up slightly from our Q2 level. We remain comfortable with our debt portfolio, with our next maturity not being until mid-2025 and approximately a quarter of total debt subject to floating rates. I'd like to expand briefly on the sale of our Canadian business that Jeremy previously mentioned.

The CAD 410 million sale price currently equates to approximately $300 million—$300 million at today's exchange rate. We currently expect its tax proceeds to be approximately $290 million. Our intention is to utilize these funds in a manner so that way we may pay down debt and delever. We closed just $3 million of tuck-in acquisitions in the quarter, again, completing a number of small deals we committed to in 2022. Given our current commitments, we expect to spend less than $10 million in the fourth quarter. Lastly, we also announced today that our board of directors has declared a $0.30 cash dividend payable on December twenty-ninth. The shareholders of record at close of business on December first.

This dividend fulfills our estimated REIT obligation for 2023, the $60 million of dividend requirements carried forward from underpayments from 2022 and represents a small return of capital during the year. With that, let me turn the call back to Jeremy.

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Matt. The world has grown increasingly complicated over the last three months, with various industry strikes and macroeconomic and geopolitical uncertainties permeating through the ad market. Despite these headwinds, we expect that Q4 revenue growth will be broadly in the same range as Q3, with billboard again up low single digits and transit likely to decline. Before turning the call over to questions, I'd like to briefly reaffirm some of the strategic actions we've taken and continue to pursue. First, as we've discussed, we reached agreement to divest the Canadian business. The proceeds from the sale will allow us to delever the company by around a third of a ton. Second, we continue to focus on our SG&A expenses and are evaluating various initiatives to increase efficiency across business lines.

Third, we remain engaged in conversations with some of our transit partners, including the MTA, and are hoping to find mutually agreeable approaches that reflect today's transit environment. At the same time, we remain fully focused on operating our business, which continues to grow despite the environment. In our view, and that of many ad industry forecasts, out-of-home remains in the best position of all traditional media for long-term growth, given its increasing audience, increasing digitization, and improving data and analytics. We also believe that our growing automated selling channels provide an excellent opportunity to increase the pool of advertisers that utilize the medium. And with that, Operator, let's now open the lines for questions.

Operator (participant)

Great, thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, you can do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to remove your question, you may press star two. As a reminder, if you're using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question. We'll pause here for just a moment as questions begin to register. Our first question comes from the line of Ian Zaffino with Oppenheimer. Ian, your line is now open.

Ian Zaffino (Managing Director)

Thank you very much. You know, can you guys just give us a sense of, I know you pointed to some pockets of weakness, you know, maybe also help us understand some of the stronger categories, you know, and some of the other categories that kind of maybe come in as a surprise one way or the other. Thanks.

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks for the thanks for the question, Ian. Yeah, in some ways, Q3 was a sort of an interesting and frustrating quarter for us. You know, our local business, you know, performed extremely well. You saw there, up 6%. And it's really our national business where we saw those categories that I mentioned. In fact, if you just look at the TV category and tech, just between those two categories, our national revenues were down about $16 million, which equates to about 8 points of revenue growth in our national business. So you can see that, you know, the impact of impact of those headwinds.

But if we take a step back from that and just assume out that, you know, the difficult categories were tech and TV, outside of that, real estate was a little bit down, probably worth calling out. Then on the positive side, we had a good dollar step up and percentage step up in legal. We had a good step up in alcohol, also CPG up, and also education. So actually fairly, you know, broadly based on the upside and really skewed towards those categories I mentioned on the downside.

Ian Zaffino (Managing Director)

Okay, great. Thank you. And then as a follow-up, you know, can you just give us, maybe a philosophical discussion on, you know, the REIT status that you guys have? It just certainly doesn't seem like you're being valued in the market, being a REITed or it's a dividend you're not being valued for. You're sitting here with some debt. So does it make sense or is it possible or is it feasible to maybe switch the structure? Then you could take your free cash flow and maybe delever with it, pursue some M&A. Maybe help us understand, a little bit, from that perspective. Thanks.

Matthew Siegel (EVP and CFO)

Sure, Ian. It's Matt. I'll try to take that. First down, obviously, we're a REIT. We don't control the dividend yield, we control the payout. And I appreciate you pointing out that the market's not appreciating our current status. We think being a REIT has a lot of value in avoiding or minimizing our tax liability. We like the structure, we think it works for us. As far as the balance sheet, including the pending sale of Canada, and we think there are other initiatives that we're working on that will help improve that, you know, over the course of the next few months, as it closes and as our EBITDA performance and some other things kick in.

We feel pretty good about where the balance sheet is, and with that, we think the REIT makes sense for us, in our current situation.

Ian Zaffino (Managing Director)

All right, great. Yeah, thank you very much.

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks.

Operator (participant)

Our next question comes from the line of Cameron McVeigh with Morgan Stanley. Cameron, your line is now open.

Cameron McVeigh (Vice President and Equity Research Analyst)

Hey, thanks for taking my questions. I had a couple. I was wondering if you could give just a little more color on what's driving the elevated billboard lease expense growth recently, and you know, what the expectation for normal long-term, the normal long-term growth rate. Thanks.

Matthew Siegel (EVP and CFO)

On the lease expense, as you know, we put a lot on new inventory in 2022. We look at things, we buy them at the second year, EBITDA performance, so we're kind of in the middle, maybe toward the latter half of the ramp-up. The lease expense comes on immediately, you know, so it's fully expensed-

... and the revenue ramps up a little slower. So, you know, that's been a central large acquisition year in 2022. We feel the impact still in 2023. And again, as I mentioned, it should moderate over the course of, you know, into next quarter and certainly in 2024.

Cameron McVeigh (Vice President and Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Thanks. And then secondly, you know, last quarter, you'd mentioned a baseline assumption of around, you know, mid-single digits. I think it was 6.5% growth for the MTA contract revenue long term. Has your long-term growth rate assumption for the MTA changed at all, just given what we've seen with transit? Thanks.

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

No, we, you know, as we mentioned on last call, you know, we moderated our performance expectation at the MTA then. And there's nothing to suggest that our current forecasts, you know, are anything other than absolutely achievable. So we remain, yeah, confident there. It's interesting, so if you just think of the, you know, the categories that we just talked about, I mean, both of those are very sort of disposed towards transit. So while they're a headwind for us, you know, this year, next year, we would, you know, absolutely expect that they could become a tailwind. In fact, just this week, it looks like there's quite a strong expectation, and we're keeping our fingers crossed that there'll be resolutions in the actors' strike.

So that's that I think is good news. And I just wanted to come back to talking about lease expense. And you know, this year is absolutely a one-off. If you look back historically, lease expense growth was probably more in the 2%-3% range, you know, but yeah, something like that.

Cameron McVeigh (Vice President and Equity Research Analyst)

Got it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. Our next question is from the line of Jim Goss with Barrington Research. Jim, your line is now open.

Jim Goss (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

All right, thanks. A couple of questions. First, just to clarify, the, did you say the after-tax proceeds were $200 million-$290 million in terms of that sale of Canada? That was-

Matthew Siegel (EVP and CFO)

Yeah, Jim, approximately the gross CAD 410 million, $300 million, a little bit of tax leakage in Canada.

Jim Goss (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Yeah, I was surprised there wouldn't have been a little more leakage since you've owned that property for a long time. But, but that's how it calculated.

Matthew Siegel (EVP and CFO)

Jim, going back to, going back to Ian's question, that's one of the benefits of being a REIT, is the capital gain is part of that, that REIT structure.

Jim Goss (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. And on the entertainment side, I think you also indicated transit had a bigger impact of somewhat softer entertainment dollars than the other area. What is the share of revenue that is assigned to transit or you're achieving in transit in the entertainment space?

Matthew Siegel (EVP and CFO)

It's really the focus is TV. Entertainment, generally, movies were up for us, in where, TV is down. And, I don't know if we gave you the exact number, but, more than half of the decline, almost two-thirds of the decline is in transit, about a third of the decline in billboards.

Jim Goss (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. And entertainment on the film side, are you actually perhaps getting a little more revenue in that? I think one of the things that's been pointed out is the actor participation in promoting their films is absent when they're on strike, and I thought some of that might have accrued to you, but maybe not so, or at least not sufficiently so.

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. The number we called out was specifically for TV. You know, that's where we really, you know, in the third quarter, really noticed it because there was essentially no fall launch. But, right now, I mean, the film category for us has been fine. No problems at all.

Jim Goss (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. I think that's it for the moment. I appreciate it.

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Jim. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We have no additional questions waiting at this time, so as a final reminder, to ask a question, it is star one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause again here for just a moment. With that, I'd like to hand the call back over to Jeremy for any closing or additional remarks.

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Sam, and thanks everyone again for joining our call today. I'm sure we'll be seeing many of you at various conferences over the next few months. But for those who I don't, please enjoy the upcoming holiday season. We're looking forward to presenting our year-end results to you in February. Thanks very much.

Operator (participant)

That concludes the OUTFRONT third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.