Earnings Labs

iHeartMedia, Inc. (IHRT)

Q4 2019 Earnings Call· Thu, Feb 27, 2020

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the iHeartMedia, Inc. Fourth Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Kareem Chin, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Kareem Chin

Analyst

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for taking the time to join us on our fourth quarter 2019 earnings call. Joining me for today’s discussion are Bob Pittman, our Chairman and CEO; and Rich Bressler, our President, COO and CFO. Please note that in addition to our press release, we have an accompanying investor presentation that you can follow along with our remarks. Before we begin, let me quickly cover the safe harbor on Slide 2. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements, including projections or estimates about the future performance of the company. These estimates are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could materially differ, and these risks and uncertainties are discussed in more detail in our filings with the SEC. During this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation between our GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings release or in the presentation available on our website. And now, I’ll turn the call over to Bob.

Bob Pittman

Analyst

Thanks, Kareem, and good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining our fourth quarter 2019 earnings conference call. We delivered strong results in the fourth quarter to cap-off what was a transformative 2019, which included emerging from bankruptcy and listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. And we’re looking forward to an even more successful 2020. Before we get into our results, I’d like to provide a brief recap of some of our key accomplishments in 2019 that helped to solidify iHeart’s position as the number one audio company in the U.S. First, we have continued to leverage our leadership position through the unique multi-platform array of assets to drive outperformance of the broadcast sector and to capitalize on an environment in which audio has never been hotter. iHeartRadio stations are number one in audience in more markets than the second and third largest broadcast radio operators combined. That’s also true in the top 50 markets as well. And we continue to outperform the broadcast radio market in 2019 in terms of revenue by over 350 basis points in the measured markets. And in terms of digital streaming, the gap is even wider. iHeart has a five times audience lead over the number two commercial broadcast radio company. iHeart also remains at the forefront of the audio revolution through our tremendous growth and leadership in the fast growing podcast space, where we are the number one commercial podcast publisher. More than two times the size of the next largest commercial podcaster in terms of downloads. And according to the Podtrac, no other commercial radio broadcast company is even the top 10 podcast publishers. We’re also the fastest growing major podcast publishers measured by unique monthly podcast audience growth and our content spans all the major genres. Like radio, podcasting provides companionship…

Rich Bressler

Analyst

Thanks, Bob. Good afternoon, everyone. As Bob said, we are pleased with our strong financial performance in the fourth quarter and for the full year, which reflects the stability in our traditional radio business and profitable growth in our digital and sponsorship revenue streams. Let’s turn to our fourth quarter results, starting on Slide 8 of our investor deck. On a reported basis, revenue was flat year-over-year and adjusted EBITDA declined slightly by 0.6%. Comparisons to the prior year quarter, we’re impacted by political revenue, the majority of which was recognized in the fourth quarter of 2018. Excluding the impact of political, our revenue grew by 4.3% and was driven by growth across all our revenue streams. Direct operating expenses increased 15% driven by a non-cash one-time charge related to music license fees and costs related to our growing podcasting and other digital revenues. The non-cash music license fee charge was approximately $31 million, the vast majority of which is related to prior year. On a run rate basis, the impact of this increase in fees is not material. SG&A expenses decreased 1.3% driven primarily by lower commissions, as a result of our revenue mix and lower bad debt expense. The decrease in SG&A expenses was partially offset by a higher third-party digital vendor fees driven by the increase in our digital revenues. Corporate expenses decreased $1.3 million during the quarter, as a result of lower employee benefits, partially offset by share-based compensation expense, which increased $5.8 million as a result of our new equity compensation plan. Operating income decreased by 36.5% due primarily to high depreciation and amortization expense, as a result of fresh start accounting and the aforementioned impact of the one-time non-cash updated estimates to music license fee expenses. Turning to Slide 10, you’ll see a breakdown…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from Jessica Reif Ehrlich from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Please go ahead.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich

Analyst

Hi. A couple things. On the podcasting, which is such a big driver of digital growth, could you talk about your build versus buy strategy and how do you think you’re monetizing that business now you – as efficient as you can be?

Rich Bressler

Analyst

Hey Jess, it’s Rich. Thanks for the question. Just before we jump and answer that, what we want to do, Bob and I, right up front, apologize to everybody for starting the call a couple of minutes late. Apologize for the materials not being available earlier. It was a technical glitch, but we respect and understand the importance of getting everyone the materials earlier, and again, we apologize for that.

Bob Pittman

Analyst

And Jessica, I think as it relates to the podcast business, as you know, we had a podcast business at iHeart. And we purchased Stuff Media, which is HowStuffWorks and Stuff You Should Know and that array of podcast, and acquired the management team with that as well. And that became iHeart Podcast Network. When we acquired it, I think we had roughly – a little over 5 million monthly users. They have a little less than, added up, I think it was about 11 million. Today, we have more than doubled that. So the growth on top of that has been tremendous. That’s not only come from growth of users of existing podcast, but we’ve developed a lot of new IP. And we are constantly adding new IP to it. And as we monetize it, again, we are profitable. We have a margin which is accretive to the company margin. And there are two vectors of growth for us in that. One is the podcasting pie is growing. I think most estimates for 2020 are about double 2019, so we see that. And we also think the second vector is we think we increase our share of that as well. And I think we’re on track to do that.

Rich Bressler

Analyst

Hey, Jess, it’s Rich. The only two things I would add to that when Bob talked about accretive margin. It’s interesting when you listen to what – just other players out there, whether they’re broadcasters or other people in the audio space, talk about aspirationally getting to be profitable on podcasting. And it’s not a material number yet to our overall $1 billion-plus EBITDA number, but it is growing. It is getting more significant and is accretive to margins. The second data point, which is strategic – if you look at the recent acquisitions that are out there, and recently, Spotify has got about $600 million of acquisitions since they started, and you try and get a fix on from a valuation standpoint, the marketplace seems to be about $6 a download or thereabout. If you look at the numbers that Bob just spoke, our most recent downloads according to Podtrac, third-party download service, is about 100 – I’m sorry, third-party service that measures podcasting, similar to Nielsen, for those of you that are not familiar with it, we had about 177 million downloads, which would put our valuation well over $1.2 billion, $1.3 billion just for the podcasting business alone. So that’s just a data point about the value that we are creating for our shareholders.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich

Analyst

That’s very helpful. Thank you for saying that about the numbers not being out because it was a little bit difficult. Just two quick follow-ups. You guys spoke pretty quickly about the restructuring and the cost savings. Can you just go through the key areas of savings? And it’s all cost. I mean there’s no benefit on the revenue side, is there? And then the last thing for me is the timing of the liquidity event, which is such a big deal. How long does it take to get through the process, the public comment period and when you can actually see a benefit?

Rich Bressler

Analyst

Sure. So let me start with the first question, Jess. On the cost savings, the cost savings which we talked about, again, just to reiterate what we said in the script and for the benefit just because we didn’t have the press release out there, we expect to get about $100 million on run rate by the second half of 2021. We expect in year to achieve about $50 million of that. And just to kind of set it up from a number standpoint, think about it that we’re going to spend about $100 million in total between things like efficiencies, taking advantage of AI technologies, some things in real estate and things like you’d obviously expect along the lines of severance agreements. Then we’re also going to have about $50 million in capital expenditures. So we’re spending $100 million in total. The bulk of that savings is going to be within 2020 and within the guidance we gave you. And then we said – and then we get about a one-year payback by the time you get to the middle of 2021. So I think a pretty good kind of overall return.

Bob Pittman

Analyst

And I think, again, I don’t want to lose the main point of it. The main point of it is we’re modernizing a company that did business another way because it’s been around so long to catch up to the way business is done today. It’s how our employees work. And behind it is pretty simple, that rote tasks are better done by machines. It’s easier. It frees our people up to do what they do best, which is thinking, analysis, contact with other people. And it provides great efficiency, allows us to move faster and to be more responsive. It also allows us to make better decision-making. We have about – and I’ll give you an example. We have about 3,500 data end points of information each week on music selection. There’s no human brain that can absorb all that. But artificial intelligence can, and we’ve developed that over the past couple of years and are beginning to use more and more of artificial intelligence to make decisions, but it frees those people up who are doing a lot of rote work involved with that to do the other side of their job in programming, which is to make our stations as creative as they can be, tie into the community more, promotions, imaging, et cetera. So it’s a big picture thing that has some very good financial outcomes as well. But the reason we’re doing it is we’re taking the company into the future, and we’re playing catch up on it.

Rich Bressler

Analyst

And by the way, last thing, and then I’ll go to your last question on the FCC and liquidity, it does make it a more contemporary place, just a great working environment for our employees. And also acknowledging that these were very hard decisions that we had to make, and we are very thoughtful about it. Just in terms of thinking, just when you asked about the FCC, and you talked about liquidity, and we’ve talked about this, you and I before, I would think about 2020 as being an important year, as key catalyst for the company to improve liquidity. And it’s really twofold. One is what we talked about in the opening remarks with respect to the FCC. That’s a 30-day – and again, let me just say right up front, we’re dealing with the government. And I think all of you that know Bob and I over the years, dealing with the government and court processes, we never predict timing on the outcome. But you have to start with step one. This was an important first step in clearing that hurdle. So it’s now on for public comment, which I think is about a 30-day period of time. Then you go to a second piece, which is what they call looking at Team Telecom, which is a representative of the executive branch of the government without going too much into the details and the sorts it’s making. We suspect that will be a multi-month period of time also. But it’s really good that we got through this period of time, and a number of people have been asking us that for the last few months. The second piece of liquidity milestones in 2020 is what we talked about also upfront, is hitting the milestones for our leverage ratios. We continue to be on track. The end of 2019, we put our guidance of $375 million to $400 million. We’re actually at $400.3 million, which we’re very proud of. So we slightly exceeded that guidance. We’ll get well into the 4s as we go through – towards the second half of 2020, and we’ve talked about a target ratio of 4, and we’re totally on track to hit that as we get to the middle – to the second half of 2021. So I feel very good about taking the steps to create liquidity in the stock, which we know is critically important.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

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

Steven Cahall

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Maybe first, Bob, I was wondering with the mid-single-digit revenue guidance in 2020, could you give us a sense of what you think core broadcast radio revenue growth is going to be within that? And kind of tied into that, I’m wondering how many of your top advertising clients are now buying both terrestrial and digital and especially maybe how many of those are buying both terrestrial along with podcast ad inventory? And then I got a follow-up for Rich.

Bob Pittman

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Sure. Let me hit the second part of that, and I’ll let Rich hit the first part. I think in terms of the advertisers buying multi-platforms, we’re seeing more and more of it. I would say that most of the digital advertisers are probably also buying broadcast. The numbers would tell you most of the broadcast advertisers are not necessarily buying digital, but that’s a growth area for us. But what’s interesting about podcasting and digital is we’ve had a number of advertisers who’ve come to us for that who didn’t think they wanted to buy broadcast radio and have wound up buying it as well. And we’ve also had people coming even on our events as just an event advertiser and have moved back into broadcast advertising. And as we’ve talked before, having these multi-platforms, not only great for touching the consumer in more spots but – and given the advertiser more opportunities to touch a consumer in more places, but it’s also a way to bring advertisers in who thought they weren’t interested in broadcast radio. And broadcast radio, for us, has this huge reach, reach 91% of Americans every month and makes us the leading media company in terms of reach in America. So we’ve got this powerful asset. If we can bring people in, we can prove the power of it.

Rich Bressler

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

And then just going – and picking up and just going back to the first part of the question. So if you think about the component pieces that drive our mid-single-digit revenue growth on a consolidated basis, when you look at our – when you think about it, it’s like our traditional radio business, our broadcast and our network business, together will grow like, let’s say, low to mid-single digits. Broadcast will see some benefit from political, as we all know, but just as a reminder to all of us, it’s one pool of inventory. So the biggest benefit on political is that it really kind of tightens the inventory and builds up demand. Digital, which the last three quarters now that we reported this one, has been over 30% revenue growth. We’re thinking about digital as we did to be kind of in the mid-20s – or I’m sorry, over 20s, just to be clear, over 20s, driven by podcasting and digital products. Sponsorship should continue kind of in the mid-single-digit revenue growth. And audio and media services should grow in the low to mid-teens, driven by the political revenue impact. And as a reminder, audio and media services, which – obviously, the biggest part of that is Cats, also benefits greatly on the political side, from the TV revenue piece, which will, again, disproportionately benefit compared to radio in a political year.

Steven Cahall

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

And if memory serves me correctly, that’s pretty much all organic for digital in 2020, is that correct? So that’s more than 20% essentially organic?

Rich Bressler

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Yes, I would say the bulk of that is organic. The biggest piece of that is organic, yes.

Steven Cahall

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Great. And then just on free cash flow…

Rich Bressler

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

It’s about 100%. I would say 100%, sorry, I think, yes, 100%.

Steven Cahall

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Okay, great. And then just on free cash flow. So you’re going to do low 300s this year. If I’m just thinking about 2021 already. I know you lose some political, maybe like $70 million, but then you’ve got all these modernization benefits and I’m guessing the cost to achieve step down. So I’m assuming you’re going to – we should kind of think about like a 4 handle for free cash flow, other things being equal, in 2021 and beyond, and all that’s going to go to debt for now?

Rich Bressler

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Yes. Let me say, so we’re not giving any guidance for 2021. We’ve given an overall leverage direction if you think about 2021. But I’m just kind of back to take the opportunity for first principles. This is a great free cash flow business. What I would say is we don’t see any of those dynamics changing, low capital expenditures, low working capital overall, great fixed cost base that drops things like on broadcast and network, 80-plus percent incremental margins to the business; digital, incremental 50-plus percent margin overall to the business. We’ve articulated the profitability and the growth in podcasting. We’re going to continue to aggressively manage the balance sheet, like you’ve seen us do in the last nine months. So we don’t see that financial characteristic changing at all, without giving you an exact number.

Steven Cahall

Analyst · Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.

Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Sebastiano Petti with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Sebastiano Petti

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Just circling back to the podcasting questions earlier from Jessica. Just how do you think you could perhaps get better appreciation from that from The Street, just given some of the revenue and perhaps download multiples that you cited earlier, maybe more disclosure? And in line with that. Can you maybe give us a direction or some sort of color on how we should be thinking about podcasting as a percentage of overall revenue within digital?

Rich Bressler

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Well, let’s take maybe – set up the question, let’s take maybe the second part first, which I think might be helpful. So Bob talked about the categories before, so we don’t – as you know, and goes to your question, we don’t break it out separately. So think – I would think about it this way. The overall podcasting U.S. revenue pie in the United States this year, the estimates are, again, all third-party ranges, but there are probably $400 million to $420 million, $430 million. There’s ranges out there for next year that go from, I think, $800 million, $850 million that, I think, Pricewaterhouse has, to like $1 billion that Forrester has out there. So if you look at the overall piece of the pie out there, that’s the pool that we’re playing in. And then as Bob mentioned, there’s really two vectors in terms of how we’re going to grow our advertising revenue. One is we were just going to increase, the easy one, in the overall share of the advertising dollars that are out there for the pod – for the overall growth that I just articulated. And two, because particularly the historical nature of podcasting, it’s historically been more of a DR business, direct response advertising business. As this become much more mainstream from a consumer habit and everything we know what’s happening with listening habits, more mainstream advertisers are coming in. People like Procter & Gamble, which we’ve talked about, which was our biggest advertiser last year. And other – T-Mobile is in now. And so we’re going to continue to take a bigger and bigger share of that pie of the total U.S. dollar advertising pie. Where today, if you look at the broadcast, radio broadcast advertising pie, we’re getting 20% or north of 20%. We’re not getting our fair share yet on podcasting, but yet, we continue to increase every year – and that will accelerate. So think about, again, the pools of money, two vectors, overall pool going up, and we continue to increase our fair share. And on the disclosure.

Bob Pittman

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Let me just add. I think also on the podcast, you need to think a little bit too about the unique structure we have for podcasting. Because we have this incredible megaphone called broadcast radio that reaches 91% of Americans, we can promote these podcasts maybe $100 million of free advertising a year, cost us nothing because it’s unsold inventory. But to replicate it, if you were a third-party, you’d have to spend the $100 million. So that gives us one cost advantage. The second is, in terms of production, remember we’re in the audio production business. So this is an incremental cost. We don’t have to go set up all these production costs that other companies do that are in the third-party business or that’s their only line of business. And we also have shared IP across our platforms as well. And because we have such a big footprint in radio and such a big content creation there, I suspect there’s no one that comes close to us in terms of content creation in radio. And we’re able to take that and put it into the podcast pipeline as well. You also get to a certain point a flywheel effect that once we are this big and have this kind of leadership, you look at the kind of lead we have over the second largest commercial podcaster. You began to see that people who want to do a podcast, what do they want more than anything else to have a successful podcast. If they’re taking a share of revenue as a payment the more revenue you can generate, the more money they can make. And who stands the chance of generating the most revenue? Logic would tell you, we would. So again, we’re beginning to feel that flywheel effect of people coming to us. We get first look, we get to put these together and as we have success, the people we have success with want to do more with us. And we’ve seen that kind of expansion. We saw Jake Brennan, who brought us Disgraceland and had it on another platform before he came to iHeart, had something like a couple of hundred thousand downloads a month. He put it on iHeart and went to over 2 million downloads a month. And of course, from that we’ve now come out with yet another podcast from Jake and there’ll be more coming. So that gives us an advantage on the cost side and the creation side and the marketing and advertising. And when you think about margins, why do we have such great margins when others are talking about hopefully getting to profitability? I think those are some of the driving reasons as well as the monetization issues that Rich talked about.

Rich Bressler

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

And probably just on your last question, in terms of disclosure, very fair question. We’re constantly challenging ourselves and welcome all feedback on that. Understanding and very much appreciating more disclosure, from everybody on this call’s standpoint, less disclosure. And that’s why we gave the download numbers, and we’ll continue to challenge ourselves and just – the only other side there, as Bob talked about, kind of the way we run the business, the business being integrated in terms of the company competitive advantage. So we just need to think through all those points. But again, everybody – we’re not the experts on this, all your feedback is welcome.

Sebastiano Petti

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

And one quick follow-up. In the past, you’ve talked about looking more at advertising effectiveness over CPMs, Broadcast revenue was strong in the quarter. Anything you could perhaps give us in terms of what you’re seeing on that front in terms of perhaps feedback from clients as well as maybe trends in the quarter? Thank you.

Bob Pittman

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Yes. Interesting. I think when you look at developing revenue, you have two issues: are people trying it, and is it effective for them? Our biggest problem in growth or our biggest constraint in growth is just getting more people to try it. I would say we’ve had a stellar results in terms of if they try it, showing that it gets results they expect. I think you’re also seeing with TV, the decline in TV audience, coupled with the fact that because there’s a scarcity of TV inventory, has basically pushed prices up. Once upon a time, radio and TV were about the same CPM. Today, TV is probably 3x the CPM of radio. Maybe in this political year, it will go to 4x. And when you consider that of the TV audience, according to Nielsen, about 40% is a light TV viewer, radio fills in 90% of those light TV viewers, where as online video only does 50%. The facts are stacked on our side. I think our biggest issue that we work against, and time will cure it, but the biggest issue is just the inertia of habit. There was a habit built for TV in an era in which TV had the big reach, before the subscription services took a lot of the scripted programming off of advertiser-supported TV and moved that over to streaming services. So for us, we are making – and we’re pleased with the progress we’re making. There’s a lot more we can make and should make, and again, the facts are on our side. And if I had a problem, I’d rather our problem being getting people to try it, not the problem of delivering once they try it.

Sebastiano Petti

Analyst · JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

That’s great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Zack Silver with B. Riley FBR. Please go ahead.

Zack Silver

Analyst · B. Riley FBR. Please go ahead.

Okay, great. Thanks for taking the question. The first one is just back to the 2020 revenue guidance for up mid-single digits. I just was curious as to whether that includes any contribution from some of the newer initiatives around the self-service product that you guys have been developing and have recently rolled out. And if not, can you just give us an update on when we should see a revenue contribution from that?

Rich Bressler

Analyst · B. Riley FBR. Please go ahead.

Yes. Well, let me take that, Zack. Thanks for the question. No. There’s really self-serve, just to remind everybody, we’ve just started to roll out mostly in beta. Not fully rolled out. It’s rolled out in a handful of limited markets out there. What we know is that when you look at – we have 60,000 clients. Facebook has 6 million to 8 million clients, sorry. Facebook and Google, over half of their revenue is self-serve. So we think we’ve identified the right opportunity. But just to be clear and to manage and set expectations, I think you’ve heard Bob and I say this many, many times before, this rollout is going to be – this is a consumer-adopted technology. It’s going to be slower than a B2B-adopted technology. And clearly, the revenue is going to be insignificant this year. And it’s not going to be material for at least a number of years out there. And we’ll keep everybody updated on it. So we’re excited about it, but at the same point in time, realistically, you shouldn’t be building anything into your models for this year, just to be clear.

Zack Silver

Analyst · B. Riley FBR. Please go ahead.

Okay. Thanks. And then a follow-up. When we think about the modernization initiatives, are there any risks that go along with that and potentially diluting local brands and talent from some of the cost-cutting? On the flip side of that, and you’re talking about how the modernized structure allows you to kind of move faster, make things more streamlined. We have a cost/benefit number out there that you’ve given us. But how should we think about potentially some of the revenue benefits from the more streamlined structure?

Bob Pittman

Analyst · B. Riley FBR. Please go ahead.

Yes. Let me hit the first part of it is, no, we don’t think the quality goes down. We think it goes up. We’ve got today, and we’ve had some great examples of it, Ryan Seacrest actually does his morning show in L.A. from New York, four days a week after he gets off the air on TV. All of his teammates are in L.A., and he’s in New York. They operate on a unified basis, and the ratings are great. We’ve seen that time and time again that what we want to do is get the best programming we can into the marketplace. And we’ve looked very carefully at our stations and where we have leadership positions and iconic personalities, we’ve not made changes there. That’s working fine. Where we think we could get better quality or we could get more leverage out of great talent we have, we’ve tried to find those opportunities. And I think we’re encouraged by the results we’ve seen. We did not just start this. It’s been going on for a while. I think there are other aspects of it, too, where we’re getting a lot of leverage. Again, when you start thinking about selecting music on a weekly basis for all of our radio stations and building the music logs, that’s a lot of work. And now that we have so much data, one of the problems is absorbing the data. So beginning to use AI to help us with that and – I think improves the music quite a bit and free our programmers up from having to do rote work every day of music logs and getting automation to do some of that, and technology frees them up to do the other parts which make a radio station great, which is tying into the local community, building in local content, making – imaging the radio stations, the promotions that work there, working with the talent wherever the talent is. Again, the wonderful thing about technology is just like long-distance calls. Distance is no longer an issue in our business either, and we’re able to project the best talent we have to any location anywhere, anytime. We think that’s a substantial advantage for us.

Rich Bressler

Analyst · B. Riley FBR. Please go ahead.

Yes. And one of the ways that, as – we’ve talked about this both in the prepared remarks, and Bob and I have been talking about now, one of the ways, I think, when you think about all of these initiatives and the effect of – from an operating standpoint and as you think about building out all of – everybody’s models and projections, I think the comfort level that it should give you because of driving – the efficiencies we’re driving into the business. And I talked a little bit at length before about the efficiency of our business model, economic model even before we do these efficiencies and think about it, that this – these efficiencies just make us a more efficient company going forward with the one objective in terms of this audience, which is to drive our stock price out there. And I think this just gives everybody a higher comfort level in achieving all of our guidance that we put out there.

Bob Pittman

Analyst · B. Riley FBR. Please go ahead.

I think, and I just want to leave one point is, Rich and I spend a lot of our time saying, if we started this company today with these assets, how would you build the operation of the company? And I think technology has changed substantially in the past 10 years, 20 years, and I suspect it will change in the next 10. And what’s important for us is to be vigilant, to be making the technology investments and understand what’s going on and we’re not above copying people. So if we see somebody else has a better idea of how to operate using technology, we want to adopt that as well. We want to be – continue to be looking in the windshield and not be obsessing with the rearview mirror.

Zack Silver

Analyst · B. Riley FBR. Please go ahead.

Got it. That’s really helpful. Thank you, guys.

Rich Bressler

Analyst · B. Riley FBR. Please go ahead.

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And your next question comes from Jim Goss with Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

Jim Goss

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

Thanks. To the extent that companionship that radio offers usually often implies localism, do you think the fact that some of these technology initiatives get away from that in a way that would harm your audience levels? Or do you think that really doesn’t matter to as many people as we might think?

Bob Pittman

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

I think it matters a lot, and companionships are very important. And I think the number one goal we have, in our talent, is to get people who really do feel like your friend on the radio. And our number one job of our program is just to make sure the talent, no matter where we’re using them from, is integrated into the local community and talking about things that are relevant and interesting to the people. We have, over the years, taken some of our great talent Elvis Duran, The Breakfast Club, Bobby Bones, Ryan Seacrest, and put them on multiple stations because we find that they can integrate themselves into the community and their – the quality they provide is a ratings enhancer and enhances that companionship relationship with the consumer. So we continue to do that. And we have a lot of other great talent in this company, whose names you may not recognize but are equally as powerful in the communities they’re in. And our job is to continue to look for that and continue to serve the community. To the listeners, it is local, it will be local, it will continue to be local. And that’s probably the most important relationship to have.

Jim Goss

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

Okay. Well, a couple of other things. To the – are you able to monetize your live events? Or are they entirely promotional and brand building?

Bob Pittman

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

No, we do monetize them. They’re very important in terms of being an opportunity for us to build out sponsorship relationships with our partners. We’re able to tap into another pool of revenue, which is sort of the sponsorship revenue. They also wind up being very important to building social for not only us, but for our partners as well. In the old days of sponsorship people say, I had 12,000 people came by my booth. Today, they go, we had 100 social impressions from that event for our product or for our products. And so we and the advertisers use these events for that. It’s also – as you say, it’s also a great promotional vehicle for us, but yes, they are moneymakers. We do look for them to be that. And we also look for as a way to bring in certain advertisers who have not been advertisers with our company, who we can attract through these big, massive, well-known events and bring them into our world. They see how we operate. They see the benefits, and we can get them excited about some of the other opportunities we can work with them on.

Rich Bressler

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

One of the interesting things, maybe just to build upon that, is we always talk about multi-platform. And again, for everybody on the phone, we need to break down revenues, whether it’s broadcast or network or digital or events. But at the end of the day, that’s the reason it’s so important, and we are the only ones, broadcast, radio, television, whatever, to have a multi-platform approach to the marketplace. So we really don’t care what platform people come in. As Bob just said, we talked about sponsorship. But that example could be used for any platform to come in and experience the medium and then become major advertisers with us.

Jim Goss

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

Okay. And maybe lastly, political. Have you given a scale of what your political can be this year in this contentious year? And a lot of it, I imagine, is – does not involve displacement given the number of radio ad spots you have to fill. But is there any displacement element? And does it affect pricing at all?

Bob Pittman

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

There is some displacement. And it depends upon the radio station probably as to how much of that. And we do see in political years that it puts a positive pressure on pricing. The TV industry sees it a lot. The radio industry sees it some, and we’ll see some benefit. So part of the political, it does use displaced inventory. But overall, it also puts a nice positive pressure on pricing. So we see the benefit in two ways.

Jim Goss

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

Okay. Thanks much.

Bob Pittman

Analyst · Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I’ll turn the call back over to the presenters.

Rich Bressler

Analyst

Well, on behalf of the company, it’s Rich and Bob and Kareem, we thank everybody. We apologize again for the glitch upfront. We welcome not just these questions, but obviously, on an ongoing basis, any suggestions how we can continue to improve our communication with all of you. Thanks very much.

Bob Pittman

Analyst

Thanks.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.