Earnings Labs

Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (CCO)

Q3 2014 Earnings Call· Tue, Oct 28, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to iHeartMedia, Inc’s Third Quarter 2014 Earnings Conference Call. For the conference all participants are in a listen-only mode. However, there will be an opportunity for questions. Instructions will be given at that time. (Operator Instructions) And as a reminder, today’s call is being recorded. I'll turn the conference over to your host, Effie Epstein, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Effie Epstein

President

Good morning. And thank you for joining our 2014 third quarter earnings call. On the call today are Rich Bressler, President and Chief Financial Officer; and Brian Coleman, Senior Vice President and Treasurer. We'll provide an overview of the third quarter 2014 financial and operating performances of iHeartMedia, Inc., iHeartCommunications and Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings. For purposes of this call, when we describe the financial and operating performance of iHeartMedia, Inc., that also describes the performance of its subsidiary, iHeartCommunications. After an introduction and a review of the quarter, we'll open up the line for questions. Before we begin, I’d like to remind everyone that this conference call may include forward-looking statements that involve uncertainties and risks. There can be no assurance that management’s expectations, beliefs or projections will be achieved or that actual results will not differ from expectations. Please see our annual reports on Form 10-K and our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission for a discussion of important factors that could affect our actual results. Pacing data will also be mentioned during the call. For those of you not familiar with pacing data, it reflects revenues booked at a specific date versus the comparable date in the prior period and may or may not reflect the actual revenue growth rate at the end of the period. During today's call, we’ll provide certain performance measures that do not conform to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. We provided schedules that reconcile these non-GAAP measures with our reported results on a GAAP basis as part of our earnings press releases and the slide presentation, which can be found on the Investors Section of our websites, iheartmedia.com and clearchanneloutdoor.com. Please note that our two earnings releases and the slide presentation provide a detailed breakdown of foreign exchange and non-cash compensation expense items, as well as segment revenues and OIBDAN. With that, I will now turn the call over to Rich Bressler.

Rich Bressler

President

Thanks, Effie, and good morning, everybody. Once again, as Effie mentioned, you can find our prepared slides on our website. This is our first earnings call as iHeartMedia, Inc. and I am very excited about the opportunity this change gives us. Let me quickly remind you that CC Media Holdings is now iHeartMedia, Inc. Our former Media and Entertainment division is now iHeartMedia and there is no change in the name of our outdoor business. Let me spend a couple of minutes sharing our thinking behind becoming iHeartMedia. This change let us capitalize on the powerful iHeartRadio brand that we built in just four short years. A brand that already has achieved over 70% brand awareness. iHeartMedia puts greater focus on our powerful local and national brands and industry-leading platforms, including broadcast radio, digital, events, outdoor, mobile and social. Our new name better reflects the scale, impact and reach, and looks to our future and not our past. It’s now easier than ever for our advertisers and other partners to take full advantage of the range of content, audiences and experiences we deliver across multiple platforms in cars, on stages and everywhere consumers want to find information and be entertained. With advertisers, the name alone open doors and doesn’t peg us as any one platform, including broadcast or outdoor media. Ultimately, our whole company is focused on becoming the number one multi-platform media company in revenue and earnings, in addition to already being number one in reach in United States. So, this is an exciting opportunity to monetize our assets better and get our fair share of advertising spend. As you know, there was no name change for outdoor, Clear Channel Outdoor is a strong and globally recognized customer facing brand in all the countries in which it operates and…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) First question comes from Jason Kim. Please go ahead.

Jason Kim - Goldman Sachs

Analyst

Hey, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. First on margins, directionally speaking, how should investors think about your ability to hit margin expansion in 2015 for the media segment? I know it’s not a political year next year and you continue to invest in the business to grow. But in terms of incremental spending levels, what’s your comfort level in being able to increase margins for the business in 2015?

Rich Bressler

President

This is Rich. Thanks for the question. So we are comfortable in one word. We expect to see margin expansion in the fourth quarter this year. We expect to see margin expansion in 2015. I think when you’re back to the first, second quarter of this year I talked about you start to see expansions level out. You saw that in iHeartMedia in this quarter. Actually in fact that’s the one-time item just as a reminder what I just a few minutes ago, expenses actually slightly down. So you see margin expansion and it really just a way life around here. It’s just -- we are constantly going through our 2015 budget as we speak and we are constantly looking, getting efficiencies at the organization, widening of the organization where it’s appropriate. I think we’ve taken a lot of steps to do that. And we will continue to challenge ourselves how to bring more money down to the bottomline.

Jason Kim - Goldman Sachs

Analyst

Okay. Thanks. And any update on the LA Board situation that you can provide for us?

Rich Bressler

President

No real update. I mean, there is not much news on LA with respect to our 77, just to remind our 77 digital billboards. We are continuing to work vigorously, closely, productively with the city on the legislative solution that would allow us to turn back on as many digital billboards as possible -- as soon as possible, believe me nobody wants those boards on more than Bob, myself, William and Investor team. As I said before, this process does take time. I have never put a timeframe on it back when I first started having these calls, I will now. What we are trying to do in the interim is selectively see permits to come some of the boards back to the traditional vital static signs. We converted two boards in the second quarter back to static signs. We converted five boards, I think this is in the third quarter back to static sign. So again, this is -- just based on the numbers to time meaningful from the revenue perspective, but it’s a good parallel step. We got to keep our feet moving that we can take while we work through the legislative process.

Jason Kim - Goldman Sachs

Analyst

Okay, great. And if I can ask a one more on the balance sheet side of things. You guys have included then a lot of on the liability management side of things this year, but the nature of the market is always thinking about what’s next for the company. So how do you feel about the liquidity for the company right now and thoughts about the remaining 2016 maturity? And should we be thinking that your order of priority still remain 2016 maturity first? Or do you feel like the amount that come in due in June '16 is manageable enough for you to start buying back even some of the 2018 maturities in the open market that are trading at this time below par?

Rich Bressler

President

Hey, Jason, let me just start and then I’ll turn it over to Brian who is with me right here. Let me just highlight on, there is obviously two sides of bouncing or bunch of sites. But first just on assets sale, we’re obviously -- non-core asset sales, we’re continuing to look at our business asset portfolios and optimize that. We indicated that the last couple quarters and now this quarter we talked about the sale of our buildings in San Antonio. We expressed the first seems to be approximately $30 million on the lease sale back. So again similar to what I talked about earlier on expense management similar to capital expenditure which you saw on a year-over-year basis, we’re down in capital expenditures particularly at iHeartMedia, I mean that’s slightly on the Outdoor business which are revenue producing assets. So again that really continues to be way a life on the non-core asset side. I’ll turn over to Brian for the balance sheet liability management.

Brian Coleman

Analyst

Sure. We were out in the market and we repurchased $57.1 million of the 2016 note. I think that’s a good indication of how the company uses its liquidity position. We feel pretty comfortable about where we are and I think that we can do. There were some market volatility, maybe even this location over the past couple of weeks. We’re opportunistic. We bought back that at a discount. I will point out that we purchased 2016 indebtedness. We did not purchase any 2018 indebtedness. So when we think about focus, I think we will continue to be opportunistic, although the markets aren’t today where they were the past couple of weeks. We will focus on 2016. We will look to refinance the remaining term loans that are now below a $1 billion. And we will always look to be opportunistic. But again, I would kind of take a look at the actions that we’ve taken and take that as an indication of our comfort level with respect to our liquidity position.

Jason Kim - Goldman Sachs

Analyst

Thanks for the thoughts.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Our next question comes from Lance Vitanza. Your line is open. Please go ahead.

Lance Vitanza - CRT Capital Group

Analyst

Hi, thanks. I wanted to start with the Omnicom partnership. Can you tell me does this reflect a shift in strategy amongst advertisers? Or was this more of a competitive victory? In other words, did you take business away from another radio company? Or is this money coming in from some other media?

Rich Bressler

President

So couple of things, so thanks. So look we have a longstanding relationship with Omnicom, as quite frankly we did with Horizon when we found that deal early this year. The way to think about it is that it underscores that the major agencies, major advertising agencies are these first and clients continue to really appreciate our multi-platform assets, what we’re doing, what we’re delivering on, what we’re achieving, the way we work with major advertisers. And what this enables us to do is to build unique programs to address the advertiser’s individual needs, the results we deliver and really gives them a unique partnership, really gives them unique partnership with us. From a financial perspective, neither the deals are all incremental that we serve these executives as I said for a long period of time. What’s important here is really the innovation for their clients and again an indicator of our ability today to deliver dynamic marketing solutions. And as I mentioned those are my opening remarks, look everything is going to move to ROI. That’s what it can be about it. It can be about the dollars that will get put out of the door by advertisers and companies and then therefore the return that we as in the media can all deliver back to them. We’ve talked about the results before of that. Nielsen came out with a study that on average we are six to one, dollars in versus dollar out. So we think we stand the benefit greatly as the world goes to ROI and we expect our outdoor business to benefit greatly also.

Lance Vitanza - CRT Capital Group

Analyst

Thanks. And then just the one another question, about a week -- on the iHeart segment side, about a week before the quarter ended, when you were marketing your bond deal, you provided pacings that were plus three if I remember correctly or closely to plus three. You came in at round plus one, can you explain the variance there for us?

Rich Bressler

President

Sure. But you know -- but I just have to say this, which you know I said this every quarter, I hate giving out pacings. That’s why I hate giving out pacings because it’s just a reminder pacings for a period of time. Let me give you a couple of things on that. Having said that, first of all the industry was overall weak in the third quarter. We significantly outperformed in market based on Miller Kaplan. And September was weaker than August. The political dollars came in a bit softer quite frankly than we expected which I mentioned in my opening remarks. Plus we also had some timing issues with Jingle Ball and the Festival. I know, you’ve seen I reiterated that pacings, I think as we say today 1.3%, so we’ve improved since we closed out the quarter.

Lance Vitanza - CRT Capital Group

Analyst

Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from the line of Avi Steiner. Please go ahead.

Avi Steiner - JP Morgan

Analyst · Avi Steiner. Please go ahead

Thanks for taking the questions. I know you hate point in time. So I want to approach at least the commentary around Q4 in the media and entertainment segment by asking is there any tough comps that I should be aware of or any thing else potentially weighing on the segment as we think about fourth quarter this year?

Rich Bressler

President

No Avi, thanks for the question. No there is nothing overall in particular that comes to mind. The one thing -- the only thing general comment I would give you is picking up on the last question and in fact, it grew up 1.3% today. And we continue to significantly out perform the sector. I think you are seeing real evidence not just in the advertising agency deals that I mentioned earlier but just in revenue in their bottomline performance. It really start to -- really start to bring money to the sector -- bring money to the sector but has not come to the radio industry before. And again based on all the data, based on the ROI data we have, based on the case studies we have with lots of big advertisers like Discovery Network which advertise with us. We made short week number one across all the mediums in that week. If things like that as we build out the momentum, I think the industry continued improvement. But nothing, nothing in particular under comp basis.

Avi Steiner - JP Morgan

Analyst · Avi Steiner. Please go ahead

Okay. And then if I can turn to international outdoor for a second, you’ve had some nice revenue growths, some new business wins you’ve highlighted. When do we see the bottomline flow through there? I know there is a timing issue but if you can help us out there?

Rich Bressler

President

So we’ve had -- may be you and I have a little different definition of really good performance on the bottomline. I think we were up 14% this quarter on a reported basis, 15% on FX neutral basis overall in the quarter. So I think we’re really starting to see the bottomline expansion we had. We’ve had margin expansion in the last couple of quarters, the increase that we’ve have we -- yes we’ve -- I mentioned before we have had some increase in expense because there is some airport contracts, some digit -- in Rome, some digital more contract in France. We’ve had some new contracts in Sweden. But if you look at the top line as we talked about earlier in the year, these are countries and management set up, delivered every time we’ve allocated capital to them with margin expansion and with bottomline growth and at least eye full one or due to that 14% increase on the recorded basis and then international outdoor, 15% on apples-to-apples basis with foreign currency. I think that’s pretty good margin expansion. Obviously we could always do better. But I give William and his team great kudos for the job they’ve done outside the United States. I’d put them up against any management team out there.

Avi Steiner - JP Morgan

Analyst · Avi Steiner. Please go ahead

Fair enough and sorry for that. Balance sheet for a couple of questions and I will turn it over. The 5.5 that you bought back, not a huge amount but I am curious why you decided to keep that outstanding relative to, I guess prior purchase where I believe you retired them. And then the follow up to that one, if hypothetically you ended up buying significantly more, would the existing no condition will be triggered if you help them and then retire those numbers?

Rich Bressler

President

Okay. On the first one, I think our typical practice is when we repurchased that and restricted that, we actually keep it outstanding. There has been a couple of cases several years ago where they -- (indiscernible) acquired us to retire them but typically we don’t in the unrestricted subsidiary and so we just follow a standard practice here. The second question, I want to think through a little bit. If we bought in these notes, could we accelerate the existing notes condition, is that the question?

Avi Steiner - JP Morgan

Analyst · Avi Steiner. Please go ahead

Yes. If you go below the $500 million thresholds but kept those outstanding.

Rich Bressler

President

I don’t think they are technically -- I think we repurchased them but we don’t cancel them. They are not technically outstanding. So, I do not believe that we would accelerate the existing notes condition. I may want to check on that but they are not technically outstanding. So, I still think they count under the debt agreement. One thing I would point out is we would need to retire nearly all of the 2016s, or repurchase nearly all of the 2016s and retire them in order to do that.

Avi Steiner - JP Morgan

Analyst · Avi Steiner. Please go ahead

Okay. Thank you for that. Last question for me. Can you remind us, I guess based on last public disclosure anything else you want to provide? What the sponsors own or control of your debt. And while you’ve done a good job kind of selling assets and talking about the couple of other ones, I am wondering if there is under capital management side that working capital has been great and progressing. Wondering if there is a more holistic solution to the cap structure here and obviously you may not want to share that with us, but I’m just wondering how you think about -- you’ve got a short-term staff but longer term how you think about this balance sheet?

Rich Bressler

President

Well, I think, I’m going to take in reverse order, Avi. You’re right, to the extent there is more holistic strategic solution. I’m sure there is a lot a lot of people thinking about it but that’s not something we can really talk to on earnings call. I would say that certainly the sponsors. I’m thinking about all the things they can do and I’m not privy to many of those conversations. But going into the first part of your question, actually -- would you repeat the first part of your question because I don’t want to get it wrong.

Avi Steiner - JP Morgan

Analyst · Avi Steiner. Please go ahead

Well, I just want to -- I think in different proxy statements you’ve disclosed what the sponsors or certain divestitures may hold up your debt and I wanted to get?

Rich Bressler

President

Yeah. I would kind of respond that it’s just in a proxy statement. I actually think we do update affiliate positions in some of our offering documents, so it’s not something that we update on earnings call or have special disclosure around. But certainly we do update in our annual proxy that’s available. And I do believe we make reference to affiliate positions in some of our offering documents when we issue debt. So, I refer you back to those public documents for a response there and I apologize for having you repeat the question.

Avi Steiner - JP Morgan

Analyst · Avi Steiner. Please go ahead

Thanks for the time, gentlemen.

Operator

Operator

And we have a question from the line of Tracy Young. Please go ahead.

Tracy Young - Evercore Partners

Analyst · Tracy Young. Please go ahead

Yes. My question relates to the Americas. In the release you mentioned that higher digital revenues were offset by decreases from traditional product lines. I assume that is partially related to the Logan airport contract. How is that airport doing and also what should we assume for digital boards in terms of ramp up for the year? Thanks.

Rich Bressler

President

Yes. Thanks. So, I mean, Logan airport contract that’s relatively small to be honest in the overall scheme of things. The traditional front, we’ve talked about national every quarter and that’s where we’ve driven by national being down. As I said, we’re starting to see some improvement. We obviously have made changes in management. And I think while we made those changes, we saw obviously some improvement there and we talked a lot about that. Another tradition, with the recent traditional event is that was down as you convert board to digital you lose inventory from those converted boards and thereby you driving down the traditional revenue, just kind of the math. Digital is up because of the new boards we have in ’13. We’ve got full year revenue from those in boards. We continued to build out our digital presence this year. Just as a reminder, year-to-date we’ve added 57 digital boards across all markets in the U.S. And as I said out front, we starting to talk and interact on the ’15 budget. So we’ll continue to look to add boards in ’15 where it make sense, where we can get the return on investment, not only where we can get the return on investment and as around we typically we tend to add more boards in the fourth quarter of the year than we do in the other quarters.

Tracy Young - Evercore Partners

Analyst · Tracy Young. Please go ahead

All right. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question is from Marci Ryvicker. Please go ahead.

Marci Ryvicker - Wells Fargo Securities

Analyst

Thanks. When do you wraps the Logan contract, is that the beginning of next year?

Rich Bressler

President

It came off at the end of 2013 I believe, so, yes, beginning of next year.

Marci Ryvicker - Wells Fargo Securities

Analyst

Okay. And then you mentioned for Clear Channel Outdoor Americas that a big percentage of your contracts are on a long-term basis? Can you talk about the average length of your contracts today maybe versus historically? I feel like the contracts have shortened in length, but I just want to make sure I understood about your comment then?

Rich Bressler

President

So look that, I’m not going to -- note, I don’t think you need surprise, I’m not going to talk about the average length because it really does. It varied by -- it varies by product, excuse me, by advertiser, by product, by category. I think the overall statement, which I’ve been talking about are consistently the last three quarters on an average, yes, things have shortened up in the timeframe. So, that I’ll reiterate and confirm, but other than that I’m not going to go into any detail.

Marci Ryvicker - Wells Fargo Securities

Analyst

Okay. And one last question on the, I heard somebody talk about margin expansion in Q4 next year, is that all in or is that excluding the investment spend?

Rich Bressler

President

It’s going to be both. Its going to be, I think, if you include the investment spend year-over-year, you’ll see margin expansion, but we really look -- investment spend is going to be a little bit of way of IPO. And again, when we look at investment spend, just to be a 100% clear, we never attach or I never attach any digital value to it. So every investments spend is got to stand on its own and we turn our investment basis cash-on-cash. So it will really be both ways with and without.

Marci Ryvicker - Wells Fargo Securities

Analyst

All right. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we have a question from David Miller. Please go ahead. David Miller - Caris & Company: Yes. Hey, guys. On the, excuse me, on the third quarter domestic outdoor results, which was quite good, it was obviously above the pacing number that you issued 90 days ago. How much of that was due to lapping the Los Angeles digital situation on a comparison basis? And how much of it was taking share perhaps from CBS outdoor? Any commentary will be great? Thanks and then I have a follow-up.

Rich Bressler

President

Sure. Well, a couple of, so at LA came off, just as a reminder, fully came off in the second quarter. I think this is the first time getting the job, I haven’t been talking that. We’re looking at LA or that will lapsed full-time. I know LA is in our, not having LA, the other thing you remember is on digital national footprint of portfolio also. So it part was LA but part of not having it, also does quite frankly affects part of our overall national business that’s there. And also, I would said, we’ve made a bunch -- like I said, we’ve made a bunch of changes on Americas Outdoor within the top ranks of the organization. We’re looking to hire a new CEO for America, but really not much else to comment on in terms of LA Digital. David Miller - Caris & Company: Okay. And then just to follow on the Los Angeles Digital situation. I mean, at one point, obviously, you’re facing some of the boards, you’re putting up sort of vinyl boards in the places of those particular boards? At one point do you sort of throw your hands up and just say, this isn’t working, we’re stuck in red tape and you just move to replace all the boards with vinyl? And then within that we heard some rumblings about some sort of court hearing that’s going to take place in the situation in Q1? Could you confirm that? Thanks.

Rich Bressler

President

So a couple of things, first of all, let me say unequivocally we never throw up our hands. So that would be oxymoron if you know anything about Bob and I, so we… David Miller - Caris & Company: Yes.

Rich Bressler

President

… and the rest of the team, so we’re never going to throw up our hands. Look, we put up five boards this quarter, again I acknowledge that’s not meaningful, but to point about throwing up our hands, we’re continuing to move the ball forward. I’m not going to comment on any specific court hearings or court dates, because they get set up and I get frustrated as they get moved, they get delayed. I start like, looking to our people thinking, why can we do something about it? But productively, again, I had said this earlier, we are working with the municipalities on a legislative solution with the city that will allow us turn as many digital billboards as possible. And as consistent with the past, I don’t think, I have ever given the date, because, to some extent it’s out of my -- out of my control… David Miller - Caris & Company: Yes.

Rich Bressler

President

… because of legislative process and I’m not going to give you date. David Miller - Caris & Company: All right. Fair enough. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions in the queue at this time. I’ll turn it back over to you.

Rich Bressler

President

Thank you everybody. Really appreciate spending the time and look forward to speaking everybody in the future -- near future.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our conference. We’d like to thank you for participating and for using AT&T Teleconference. You may now disconnect.