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Entravision Communications Corporation (EVC)

Q1 2009 Earnings Call· Thu, May 7, 2009

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the Entravision Communications Corporation first quarter 2009 earnings conference call. As a reminder all participants will be in a listen only mode and there will be opportunity for you to ask questions at the end of today’s presentation. (Operator Instructions) For your information today’s conference call is being recorded and at this time I would like to turn the conference call over to Walter Ulloa, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Walter F. Ulloa

Management

Welcome to Entravision’s first quarter 2009 earnings conference call. Joining me today is Chris Young, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer and Philip Wilkinson, our President and Chief Operating Officer. Before we begin I must inform you that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ. Please refer to our SEC filings for a list of risks and uncertainties that could impact actual results. In addition this call is the property of Entravision Communications Corporation. Any redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of this call in any form without the express written consent of Entravision Communications Corporation is strictly prohibited. Also this call will include certain non-GAAP financial measures. The company has provided a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures in today’s press release. The press release is available on the company’s website and was filed with the SEC in a Form 8-K. In addition with the announced sale of the company’s Outdoor Division at March 31, 2008 Outdoor was classified as a discontinued operation and the results of operations are separately reported for all periods presented. Our results in the quarter reflect the continued economic recession and the challenging environment for advertising supported businesses. Our focus remains on the factors within our control and we are aggressively managing our costs to ensure we are maximizing our cash flows and reducing debt. We continue to take a prudent approach to managing our expenses. We have implemented a number of cost initiatives which are expected to generate approximately $20 million in savings in 2009 versus 2008. These cost savings include an additional $9 million of expense reduction that we have made since our investor conference call in February and we will…

Christopher T. Young

Management

The company sold the Outdoor Advertising business in May, 2008 to Lamar Advertising for $101.5 million including an adjustment for working capital and no longer has Outdoor operations. In accordance with FAS 144 accounting for the impairment or disposal of long lived assets the company reported the results of the Outdoor operations in discontinued ops within the consolidated ops statements of operations. As the Outdoor unit has been included in discontinued ops the following results do not include the Outdoor segment. As Walter has discussed net revenue for the quarter was $41.7 million down 25%. Operating expenses decreased $3.6 million to $31.8 million and consolidated adjusted EBITDA decreased 60% to $6.7 million. Free cash flow which we define as consolidated adjusted EBITDA minus cap ex, cash interest, cash taxes plus interest income was negative $1.1 million or negative $0.01 per share. Operating expenses for the quarter decreased to $31.8 million from $35.4 million a decrease of $3.6 million or 10%. The decrease was primarily attributable to a decrease in variable expenses associated with a decrease in revenue and a decrease in salary expense due to a reduction in personnel. Corporate expenses for the quarter decreased to $3.9 million from $4.5 million a decrease of $0.6 million. The decrease was primarily attributable to the elimination of bonuses paid to executive officers and a decrease in employee benefits. As Walter mentioned earlier the company continues to execute cost cutting measures to better position itself for a difficult business environment. As a result annual fixed expenses are now expected to be reduced by approximately $20 million in 2009. This is an update from the previous quarter when we announced approximately $11 million in expense cuts for the year. Budgeted cap ex for 2009 has also reduced to approximately $5 million. We will continue…

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Gentlemen, our first question comes from James Dix – Wedbush Morgan Securities. James Dix – Wedbush Morgan Securities: Just a couple for you, first any color you can provide. Some operators are talking a little bit about the nature of the ad market in the second quarter versus the first and whether it’s stabilizing or improving or declining. If you could give any outlook on that, that would be of interest. Second, that first quarter retransmission revenue number, is that a good run rate for the rest of this year? I know Walter you mentioned that it’s going to ramp over the period of the multi-year agreements, but is that a good run rate for the first quarter? I have two follow ups but I’ll just stop with those.

Walter F. Ulloa

Management

I can address the first part as to the current status of the ad market as we see it. The run rate or the amount of revenue that we received from our retransmission negotiations in the first quarter, the run rate will be a little higher as we go into Q2, 3 and 4. As I said earlier it does ramp up significantly after that in the subsequent three, four years.

Philip C. Wilkinson

Analyst

We all feel here at corporate at Entravision we think we’re seeing the bottom of this thing. The first quarter was atrocious but we saw improvements in the service category in April over our first quarter average. We saw improvement in telecom. We saw improvement, a big jump, in healthcare category which has become a very active and competitive category for us. FSR improved and that was off double digits the first quarter. It was nice to see retail improve in April so our auto businesses, Walter had mentioned it’s such a big part of our overall business but it seems to have flattened out in terms of the decline and we are cautiously optimistic over here into May and looking forward to June. All that said, services, healthcare, fast service restaurant retail all improved in April over Q1. Auto seems to be bottoming out in terms of the decline so we’re a little bit more optimistic now than we were. James Dix – Wedbush Morgan Securities: Just so I understand, so it seems like now the pacings for the second quarter are still down substantially but they’re not as bad as the first quarter results were?

Philip C. Wilkinson

Analyst

We’re down still double digits but there’s so little visibility. For example this week we moved 10 points in May on pace in our local business for TV. So that’s a significant move but it’s coming in so late that it’s really hard to gauge. But we’re seeing a tough second quarter, if that answers your question. A tough second quarter. James Dix – Wedbush Morgan Securities: Do you have a sense as to how the stations are doing relative to what you’re hearing on the network and if there’s a difference why would that be?

Philip C. Wilkinson

Analyst

As you know on the up front they locked in most advertisers through second quarter and there were penalties for cancellations on the network side, general market events, television network so they had this going into May, June last year locked up and now as they come into the new up front, that may be a different case as you I’m sure are reading. As far as what we try to do is gauge our properties, our stations vis-à-vis the market the local market overall. As you may know we subscribe to Hungerford and Miller Kaplan, other services will tell us how we’re doing, how we’re faring relative to the markets overall and I can tell you that we are outperforming, not only overall outperforming in TV versus the TVV number for the whole country but we’re outperforming in several markets. In San Diego we’re down 23%, the market was down 34%. In Las Vegas we were down mid 20s, the market was down 36%. In Boston we actually were up and the market was down significantly double digits. We have some good stories and I think we told you last February we were significantly impacted in geographical areas where we operate that had the toughest local economies in the country and those were Nevada, Arizona, California for the most part. But even despite that we seem to be outperforming the overall industry number in those markets.

Walter F. Ulloa

Management

James, just want to comment as Philip said we’re carefully cautiously optimistic. It feels like the bottom right now but again we’re just kind of slugging it out here, moving through to the midway point of the quarter and hoping things start to turn. James Dix – Wedbush Morgan Securities: Is the amount that you have on the books now comparable to prior quarters or is it much lower? You talked in the past about your percentage that you’ve booked to budget.

Walter F. Ulloa

Management

Visibility as Phil pointed out is certainly more difficult this year than last year. The business comes in even later than last year and last year we were just amazed at how late it was coming in but this year has surprised us in that contracts are being booked even later. A lot of that has to do with technology both in the advertising agency’s ability to book the contracts as well as the technology by which they measure their case lot sales. James Dix – Wedbush Morgan Securities: Just one last one on TV, any sense now that we’re about a month from the digital transition, what the potential impact could be on your audience if any? I’m thinking in particular in the border markets where the signals from Mexico can also be reached.

Philip C. Wilkinson

Analyst

We converted four markets early, February 17th, and we haven’t seen any significant changes in the ratings that we had prior to the switch as opposed to the month trailing the switch. The information and research that we have on those markets that we did convert we have no concerns vis-à-vis the ratings. It’s hard to tell along the border. There’s fewer as a percentage wired homes along the border than there are in the rest of the country. But we are doing everything possible vis-à-vis our awareness campaign among our viewers. I can honestly say that we’ve had such a strong effort n terms of digital awareness and this coming conversion in June 12th that we think that our audience will be ready. Kind of an interesting phenomenon we saw in one or two markets that according to the Nielsen research that there were 3%, 4% of the homes unready and then sure enough on the conversion on June 12th where we went early with the rest of the market they’re 100% ready. Some may wait until the last minute to get either wired or a digital set top box or digital tuner on their set but we’re pretty confident that we’ll be okay vis-à-vis the ratings.

Operator

Operator

We have an additional question. This question comes from [Mark Presley – Health and Safety Group]. [Mark Presley – Health and Safety Group]: Just getting in on the call here and I know that I probably missed a couple key points but just a brief question on the debt issue that you had, I think it was at the end of last year and I don’t think it was as severe as the market thought it was and I think you guys had something about it in the report. Could you elaborate on the debt and are you guys still positive in cash flow and I don’t know if you had touched on commercials, if you’re going to be able to get more commercials back in the second quarter and are your waiting mostly on the automotive to go ahead and make up for the shortage on the commercials and if you guys think that you’re going to be able to do better. I work in radio as well and I understand completely that the advertising has shut down a lot and as far as that goes as well as collections that we’ve received, we haven’t received everything that has been aired as well. I understand completely what you’re saying. As far as profitability do you think there’s a way the company could get back into profit by the third or fourth quarter of the year and as far as commercials go are we waiting on the automotive industry to put you back where you want to be? Again as far as debt and positive cash flow, where you stand there? I haven’t had a chance really to go over the report. That’s all I have.

Christopher T. Young

Management

I think if I understand your question correctly on the debt issue, we amended our credit facility during the first quarter of this year to get us covenant relief basically that pushes out or we basically reset our maximum leverage covenants to 6.75 times our EBITDA and we came in in first quarter at 5.7 times. That 6.75 applies for the balance of the year through 12/31 of this year. It then steps down to 6.5 times for the first and second quarter of the following year in 2010. We’re pretty comfortable with that. The newly negotiated limits are going to get us necessary headroom to get through the time period without issue. With respect to cash flow, if I understand your question correctly, in the first quarter we actually were not a positive free cash flow. Our cash flow was actually negative $1.1 million. With respect to your fourth question on profitability, we’re not in the business in giving out guidance for the balance of the year so it’s not really appropriate to talk about what we see as our prospects to turning to a positive net income scenario. I know you had a third question in there.

Walter F. Ulloa

Management

I think he asked a question about the second quarter and as you pointed out we don’t give guidance. The way the revenue comes in Mark is that second quarter’s is always much bigger than first quarter’s so we certainly expect our revenue and EBITDA to be greater in second quarter than in the first quarter. That’s just the way the business comes in. As far as automotive is concerned we continue to be challenged by automotive and all the changes that are taking place in that industry. We’re also looking to replace that business that we’ve lost form automotive from other new advertisers. Certainly the telecommunications industry has been advertising with the Latino market and with our Univision and radio stations now for, that investment continues to increase. We are also looking for other revenue streams to combat the sluggishness in automotive including our Interactive revenue. We’re doing everything we can here to continue to build our business despite the downturn in automotive and frankly we don’t know when that business will return to former size.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from [Abbey Steiner – JP Morgan]. [Abbey Steiner – JP Morgan]: On retransmissions, did you say it was $1.8 million this quarter?

Walter F. Ulloa

Management

Correct. [Abbey Steiner – JP Morgan]: Should we think about that as a run rate going forward? I know you don’t want to give guidance but just roughly for this year on a quarterly basis.

Walter F. Ulloa

Management

As I said to James Dix, he asked earlier. [Abbey Steiner – JP Morgan]: I apologize if I missed that.

Walter F. Ulloa

Management

That’s okay and we said that we believe that going forward the revenue from our retransmission agreements will increase through the year and that in subsequent years we expect it to increase as well particularly in the early years of the contracts. [Abbey Steiner – JP Morgan]: I assume that Univision takes a little bit of that retransmission fee so is that number you have of $1.8 million is that post what they’ve taken? Does that make sense?

Walter F. Ulloa

Management

That is post. [Abbey Steiner – JP Morgan]: Is there a way to get a sense, do they take 50% or plus or minus?

Walter F. Ulloa

Management

It’s very complicated but there’s no real formula. It’s just a very complicated series of contracts between Univision, us and the cable and satellite providers. [Abbey Steiner – JP Morgan]: Very last question on this topic and I appreciate the time, but when you talk about the early years increasing significantly and I don’t want to put words in your mouth but should I think about it generically as something better than 5%?

Walter F. Ulloa

Management

You could think about it like that, sure.

Operator

Operator

At this time I’m showing no additional questions. We’d like to turn the conference call back over to management for any closing remarks.

Walter F. Ulloa

Management

Thank you everyone for participating on our first quarter investor conference call. We look forward to reporting our second quarter results in August and we look forward to talking to all of you again. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for participating in the Entravision Communications Corporation conference call. this concludes today’s event. You may now disconnect your telephone lines.