Outfront Media - Q4 2023

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Hello and welcome to the OUTFRONT Q4 2023 Earnings Conference Call. My name is Harry, and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you'd like to ask a question today, you may do so by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. I'll now hand you over to Stephan Bisson, Vice President of Investor Relations at OUTFRONT, to begin. Stephan, please go ahead.

Stephan Bisson (VP of Investor Relations)

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our 2023 Q4 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 slide presentation that you can find on the Investor Relations section of our website, outfront.com. After today's call has been concluded, an audio archive 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 files, including our 2022 Form 10-K, as well as our 2023 Form 10-K, which we expect to file this week. We will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures on this call. Any references made to OIBDA will be on an adjusted basis. Reconciliations 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 of prior period reconciliations. Let me now turn the call over to Jeremy.

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Stephan, and good afternoon, everyone. We're pleased to be here sharing our Q4 results and 2024 outlook. Before digging into Q4, I'd like to quickly highlight some of our accomplishments from 2023. Revenue has finished up 3% year-over-year on an organic basis, with both U.S. Media and Other, which is essentially our business in Canada, up by the same rate. Our U.S. billboard business, by far our largest in terms of revenue, was up 4% for the year on an organic basis. As has been the case for the last couple of years, this growth was predominantly driven by higher rates resulting from robust demand for billboard advertising and our expanding digital revenues. Also contributing significantly to our billboard growth was the continued impressive performance of our automated sales platforms, including programmatic.

These channels comprised approximately 16% of our digital revenues in the Q4, up from 10% in the Q1, single digits in 2022. In October, we announced the sale of our Canadian business to Bell for CAD 410 million, or around $300 million US, subject to certain adjustments. We expect this transaction will close in the first half of this year. I'd also like to mention the achievements of our creative team, XLabs, which was awarded two Cannes Lions, one Gold and one Bronze, at the International Festival of Creativity for our partnership with Google and Gorillaz. The awards honored the team for transforming Times Square into a live stage for a revolutionary music performance by the award-winning virtual band Gorillaz. This event truly showcased the evolutionary potential of the out-of-home industry.

Now let's turn to our Quarter Results, and you can see the headline numbers on Slide 3. Consolidated revenues grew 1.3% toward the higher end of the guidance we provided in November, while OIBDA was $152 million and AFFO was $108 million. Slide 4 shows our segment results, with total U.S. media revenue increasing 1.1% year-over-year. Other, which consists mostly of Canada, was up 5.9%. On Slide 5, you can see our U.S. media revenues in more detail. Billboard revenues were up 3% with growth in all four of our regions, but stronger performances in the East and the South. I'm pleased to call out our New York, Houston, Dallas, Orlando, Kansas City, and national teams as these markets displayed exemplary growth leading our billboard geographies. Transit revenue was down 4% versus the prior year.

The entire decline in the quarter was due to weaker tech, financial, and entertainment revenues. Though the media strike finally ended in early November, the fall primetime TV season was effectively pushed entirely out of the quarter. On a consolidated basis, our best-performing categories in Q4 were CPG, legal services, education, and retail. On the weaker side were technology, government political, financial services, and of course, entertainment. The breakdown of local and national revenues in our U.S. business can be seen on Slide 6. Local grew 4.5% during the quarter, while national, which was more heavily impacted by the weaker tech and entertainment verticals I noted earlier, declined by 3%. As a result, our 43%-57% national-local split during the quarter was a bit more locally skewed than our more typical 45%-55%.

Slide 7 shows our solid U.S. billboard yield growth, up around 3% year-over-year and topping 3,000 a month for the first time. The largest drivers of this yield growth remain our digital conversions, rate, and higher Programmatic and other automated transaction revenue. Slide 8 highlights our strong digital performance, with revenue growing 9% in the quarter, digital revenue representing nearly 36% of total digital revenues, up 33% last year. Digital billboard was up a robust 10.6%, again fueled by our automated sales channels and new inventory, while transit was up 4.5%. Let me now hand over to Matt to review the rest of our financials.

Matthew Siegel (EVP and CFO)

Thanks, Jeremy, and good afternoon. For a deeper dive into our financial statements, please turn to Slide 9 for a more detailed look at our expenses. Total expenses were up about $8 million or +2.5% year-over-year. Billboard lease expense increased +9% year-over-year in Q4. As had been the case throughout the year, this increase reflects annual rent step-ups, acquired billboard sites, and higher variable expense on a portion of our billboards that contained revenue share agreements. Transit franchise expense was down -3.5%, with lower revenue share payments for franchises partially offset by the higher MAG payments for the MTA. Hosting, maintenance, and other expenses was down -2% versus the prior year. This increase is related to higher business activity, which was offset by reduced maintenance and utilities expenses. SG&A expense increased by +1%, $4 million versus the last year.

The entire increase was related to higher professional fees, partially offset by lower compensation expenses. Corporate expense was essentially flat in the quarter as lower compensation-related expenses were offset by the unfavorable impact of market fluctuations on an unfunded equity index-linked retirement plan and higher professional fees. Slide 10 provides additional detail on our sources of OIBDA. U.S. billboard OIBDA was just over $145 million and represented over 95% of our consolidated OIBDA. U.S. billboard OIBDA margin was 39.5%, down versus a year ago but up again versus 2019. Transit OIBDA was $13.7 million compared to last year's $16.6 million. The decrease was primarily due to lower revenues, as Jeremy described earlier. While on transit, I'd like to take a moment to discuss some of our expectations for the New York MTA.

Our MAG payments to the MTA will step up by under 3% this year to about $150 million given the CPI escalator contained within the contract. We will continue to account for our New York MTA franchise expense on a straight-line basis throughout the year. On the MTA deployment front, we are pleased to say we are very close to the completion of our initial build. Specifically, we expect to spend around $50 million on deployment in 2024, finishing our installation of advertising screens on rolling stock. The annual capital investment will step down in 2025 as we look forward to the replacement-only phase of our capital commitment. Turning to capital expenditures on Slide 11, Q4 CAPEX spending was just over $23 million, including about $6 million of maintenance spend, both essentially flat with last year.

For the full year, total CAPEX was about $87 million, just below our historical 5% of revenue benchmark. Included in this total was almost $9 million of spend related to the moves to three large offices in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. 2024, we expect to spend approximately $75 million of total CAPEX, with about $70 million to be spent on our U.S. business. Of the total amount, around $25 million will be maintenance CAPEX. Looking at AFFO on Slide 12, you can see the bridge to our Q4 AFFO of $108 million.

The improvement is principally driven by the non-cash effect of straight-line rent AFFO line item, which was an $18 million swing versus last year. 2024, we currently expect reported consolidated AFFO growth in the high single-digit range from 2023's AFFO of $271 million, driven principally by improvement in OIBDA. Notably, this guidance assumes a June 30th close for the sale of our Canadian business. Please turn to Slide 13 for an update on our balance sheet. In July this year and in November, we completed a new $450 million senior secured note offering and utilized the proceeds to repay our $400 million of senior unsecured notes due in 2025, pushing this maturity out about six years to 2031.

Committed liquidity is slightly over $600 million, including around $40 million of cash, nearly $500 million available via revolver, and nearly $5 million available via accounts receivable securitization facility. As of December 31st, our total net debt to revenue was 5.4 times, and we remain comfortable with our debt stack with our next maturity other than maybe our facility not being due until 2026 and with less than 25% of total debt subject to floating rates. As Jeremy mentioned, we reached an agreement to sell our Canadian business to Bell Media for CAD 410 million subject to certain adjustments, which equates to about $300 million-$300 million US at today's exchange rate.

Continue to expect this transaction to close in the first half of 2024 and intend to use the proceeds to pay down debt, delever, and reduce annual interest expense by approximately $20 million. Turning to our dividends, we announced today that our board of directors has maintained a $0.30 cash dividend payable on March 28th to holders of record at the close of business on March 1st. Based on our current operational expectations and the taxable gain created with the sale of our Canadian business, we believe we will need to pay a larger dividend later in the year for REIT compliance.

We spent $3 million in acquisitions during the quarter, bringing our total for 2023 to about $34 million. Looking at our current acquisition pipeline, we expect our 2024 deal activity to look similar to that of 2023. In closing, we accomplished a lot in the quarter, and we are fully focused on delivering growth in 2024. We remain excited about our business's future, and we look forward to seeing many of you at various conferences and events in the coming weeks. With that, let me turn the call back to Jeremy.

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

Thank you, Matt. All who are pleased with our billboard revenue performance in what ultimately proved to be a rather challenging 2023, we're happy to turn the page to 2024, which we expect will be a significantly improved year. We'll be starting off on the right foot in the Q1, as based on our trends of today, we estimate that reported Q1 total revenue growth will accelerate to the low to mid-single-digit range, with billboard and transit growing at similar rates. Importantly, we expect this growth despite our Q1 2023 billboard revenues benefiting from around $6 million of non-recurring condemnation revenue, which we highlighted last May. Further, as I just mentioned and implied by our full-year AFFO guidance, we are encouraged by the early signs we are seeing for the remainder of the year.

We see numerous tailwinds for our company in 2024, including the continued ramping of our acquired inventory and additional recovery in our transit business. We also expect that we and, in fact, the entire out-of-home industry will benefit from the crowd-out effects of the Olympics and the 2024 election, as well as the return of a primetime TV season in the second half. I'd like to close off with a pair of comments today by reiterating how proud I am of the OUTFRONT team for their performance last year and in doing so that continues their sort of position for success in 2024. With that, operator, let's now open the lines for any questions.

Operator (participant)

Certainly, thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure that your phone is unmuted locally. Our first question today is from the line of Jason Bazinet of Citi. Jason, your line is now open.

Jason Bazinet (Managing Director)

Thanks, Go on. I just had a question on the AFFO guide. Do you guys mind just unpacking any of the details sort of below the headline sort of EBITDA number, just so we have the pieces right, and then also the impact of Canada, assuming that June 30 close, occurs?

Matthew Siegel (EVP and CFO)

Sure. Thanks, Jason. How are you doing? Good, Matt.

Jason Bazinet (Managing Director)

Good.

Matthew Siegel (EVP and CFO)

We understand. Good. Go talk to them. There's a few more moving parts this year because of the timing of the sale of Canada. So, the growth of the AFFO growth we cited assumes, as you mentioned, the sale of Canada mid-year, June 30th. There's some seasonality in the business. So given that we get the shorter half of the Canada operation in 2024 compared to the full year of Canada in 2023, I probably think there's a couple more points of growth available on a full-year comparative basis of AFFO based on the timing.

Otherwise, once we sell Canada, we can probably clarify that a little better. The seasonality, heavy Q4 AFFO from Canada that was felt in 2023 won't be felt in 2024. That's what led to our AFFO growth. Other parts of AFFO growth, I mentioned maintenance CAPEX is about $25 million, cash taxes about $5 million, and interest expense somewhere in the $155 million-$160 million range, of course, depending on where interest rates flow to.

Jason Bazinet (Managing Director)

Okay. Got it. So the growth, if I heard you right, would be a few points higher if you hung on to Canada for the full year. Did I hear that right?

Matthew Siegel (EVP and CFO)

Yes. Thanks for clarifying that. That just choked me on my word.

Jason Bazinet (Managing Director)

Okay. Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

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

Cameron McVeigh (VP of Equity Research)

Great. Thank you. Just had a couple I was hoping you could help us think through the impact of the immediate strikes on growth this year. In particular, what does the cadence of growth look like given the comps we faced last year, and should that have a greater impact on billboard or transit?

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

So when you look at it, certainly, it impacted our business really far more than others generally with the industry just because of our exposure to media revenues in particular, given our prominent positions in both New York and Los Angeles. So when we look into it, reasonably significant impact in dollar terms on our billboard business, particularly in L.A., but in percentage of revenues terms, the transit business was most impacted. And that's because transit is more dispersed towards national, and within transit, it's certainly been somewhere where the full TV schedules have typically been very, very successful for us and our clients. So as we look to this year, we obviously expect that we'll see a full schedule this year. So we think that'll be telling to our numbers as we go through the year.

Maybe we'll see a bit of benefit in those early months as well because there's some new content out there that we believe that would have been promoted last year that may well be promoted in the earlier part of this year. So generally, we feel positive on that. It's interesting, the other category that was difficult for us last year, not only difficult for us, I mean, difficult for just about every ad-holding company, I think, that's reported so far was obviously tech. And while one swallow doesn't make a summer, it's good to see that our tech revenue is actually pacing a bit ahead in Q1. So that's a positive sign.

Cameron McVeigh (VP of Equity Research)

Got it. Thank you. Then just secondly, if you could just walk through an update of how you're thinking about how margin should trend through the year. Yeah, if I think about what impacts margins, you have wage and ad commission inflation, you're lapping some M&A comps, and then there's some further tech integration with the MTA boards. Curious, from your view, just what's causing the most material impact and how you're thinking about that trend throughout 2024. Thanks.

Matthew Siegel (EVP and CFO)

So again, thanks, Cameron. A lot of moving parts in 2024 may break some down. Transit, we expect some improvements in our transit business, given our big franchises in New York, L.A., are underneath their minimum guarantees. Improvements in their revenue will help margin. We expect to see that on the transit side. On billboard, we had, again, acquisitions in 2022 and early 2023, which kind of a bit of a drag in 2023 on billboard margins, just the higher lease cost outstripping revenue growth.

We think that catches up during 2024, even though there will be rent increases. I think our lease cost as a percent of revenue will improve. Of course, there's other costs, some inflationary pressure in certain areas and some tech spend. So it's hard to say quarter to quarter. We think margins will be somewhat a little better this year than last year.

Cameron McVeigh (VP of Equity Research)

Got it. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. Our next question today is from the line of James Goss of Barrington Research. James, your line is now open.

James Goss (VP and Senior Investment Analyst)

All right. Thank you. I was wondering, with regard to billboard, your dominant category, what the mix of digital versus static was this year versus last year, whether that trend has had an impact on those gains you've made?

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, James. Yeah, when we look back to Q4, the numbers are digital was 36% of our revenues, and that's very much weighted towards billboard rather than transit. So 36% of our revenues versus 30% the previous Q4. So you can see that's a big step up. That's 20%. And we think that that number's only going to go one way. We continue to opportunistically convert boards, and this year, we would expect to be in that 150-200 new board range. So you have essentially more assets in the field. And then we also have this swing towards automation.

And that's an exciting trend. For our automated revenues to be 16% in the final quarter of that sizable digital business, that's starting to become a needle-moving, we think. As time goes on, as we've said before, we believe that digital, in general, will be margin-enhancing for our billboard business. It's not necessarily a linear thing, but if we look over time, we think it's certainly going to be positive for the billboard business.

James Goss (VP and Senior Investment Analyst)

Are you generally feeling that it's a plus because now things are improving in terms of ad revenue trends? Because I think in a slower period, it could be a disadvantage, but it is being helped by the rebounding ad market in terms of pricing.

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

Yeah. Look, obviously, yeah. Thanks, James. Yeah. Look, obviously, whenever you digitize your estate, you are adding on supply. And it's always helpful when you're adding on supply to have a tailwind in the ad market. But as I say, last year, actually, there were a bunch of headwinds, and those digital revenues still managed to grow significantly. So net-net, we're still very confident in the investments that we're making in our business to further digitize. One of the big factors last year that we started seeing was just the late money that we were able to take as a company that we wouldn't have been able to take in years before.

If someone wants to get an ad up today, if we had thought through in the next hour, we can have that ad up later on and see. This is in an industry where previously, inflexibility, really, was the key word. So to have that flexibility, we think, is a real bonus for the industry as a whole.

James Goss (VP and Senior Investment Analyst)

All right. Just one other one. You called out a number of markets where you thought there were particularly notable strengths in your billboard business. Is there any commonality among the markets you called out that you can draw any conclusions from, and what might those be?

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

Look, a number of the markets were in the south. So Houston, Dallas, and obviously, Texas has been strong as a state. Florida, generally, is good. So obviously, included in that was Orlando. And Nashville goes without saying, I think, with Tennessee, which also maybe speaks for itself. The only markets that were sort of difficult for us, really, in particular, with some of the West Coast markets, we talked about San Francisco being difficult for us last year, and I think some of the reasons for that are maybe self-evident from what we will read in the press. And then LA, in particular, as noted, was impacted by the media strikes.

James Goss (VP and Senior Investment Analyst)

All right. Thank you very much.

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, James.

Operator (participant)

Our next question today is from the line of Richard Choe of JPMorgan. Richard, your line is now open.

Richard Choe (Executive Director of Equity Research)

Thank you. I just wanted to follow up on the Q1 revenue guide of low single digits. In terms of the strength that you're seeing between billboard and transit, where is the strength coming from, and how much is programmatic potentially contributing to that?

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

Okay. So yeah, going back to the guidance, Richard, thanks for the question. So we guided to low- to mid-single digits, and we said that both parts of the business were going to be, we're going to be up, which is obviously a great sign. Part of that is going to be automated revenues, which will continue to grow this year, we expect. There's no reason why that graph should immediately take it out, and that'll keep creeping up, and that'll be a good thing. What is also good to see right now is that both our local and national businesses, while there's still, whatever it is, a few weeks to go in the quarter, both businesses are pacing up right now.

So that's good to see. Strength feels very, very broad-based, and it's nice to see that acceleration from the growth rate that we achieved in the back half of last year with some of the challenges that we've already talked about.

Richard Choe (Executive Director of Equity Research)

And given that, do you see that there's been a change in your customers in wanting to do more out of home at this point, and they feel more comfortable with the environment versus last year where there was a lot of uncertainty?

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

Well, on the face of it, yes. I mean, last year, actually, was all about really two or three categories that really didn't show up. So we think that if tech gets just a bit of a bounce, that will be very positive for us. As I say, media coming back will undoubtedly be positive. And we expect that the clients that have given us support over the last years will certainly be showing their support again in 2024.

Richard Choe (Executive Director of Equity Research)

Great. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

As a final reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad now. Okay. It appears we have no further questions in the queue today, so I'd like to hand back to Jeremy Male for any further remarks.

Jeremy Male (Chairman and CEO)

Thanks, Harry. Everyone, thank you for joining us today. I'm sure we'll be seeing many of you at conferences and events over the coming weeks, but for those that don't, I look forward to presenting our Q1 results to you in early May. Thanks very much again.