Excuse me, everyone, we now have Sean Reilly and Jay Johnson in conference. [Operator Instructions] In the course of this discussion, Lamar may make forward-looking statements regarding the company, including statements about its future financial performance, strategic goals, plans, objectives, including with respect to the amount and timing of any distributions to stockholders and the impacts and effects of general economic conditions of the company's business, financial condition and results of operations. All forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond Lamar's control and which may cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results. Lamar has also identified important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in this call in the company's fourth quarter 2023 earnings release and its most recent annual report on the Form 10-K. Lamar refers you to those documents. Lamar's fourth quarter 2023 earnings release, which contains information required by the Regulation G regarding certain non-GAAP financial measures was furnished to the SEC on a Form 8-K this morning and is available on the Investors section of Lamar's website, www.lamar.com. I would now like to turn the conference over to Sean Reilly. Mr. Reilly, you may begin.

Thank you, Savannah, and good morning, all, and welcome to Lamar's Q4 2023 earnings call. I would characterize 2023 as solid, while on the whole, revenue growth was not what we hoped it would be. As a company, we successfully navigated an uncertain macro environment and a recession in national ad spend, and we ended the year with encouraging momentum on the sales front. Meanwhile, our local managers controlled expenses incredibly well throughout the year, helping us to set another company record for adjusted EBITDA margin at 46.7%. I could not be prouder of our team for how they distinguish themselves in 2023. For the fourth quarter, revenue grew 2.5% on an acquisition-adjusted basis, accelerating each month with pro forma growth of 4% in December, our strongest year-over-year result for any month in 2023. Expenses, meanwhile, were basically flat for the quarter on an acquisition-adjusted basis. That translated into EBITDA growth of 5.1%, again on an acquisition-adjusted basis and an EBITDA margin of 48.2% for the quarter. As a result, as noted in the release, we easily exceeded the top end of our revised guidance range for AFFO per share. In fact, at $7.47 of AFFO per share for 2023, we were basically at the midpoint of the original guidance range that we provided last February. Jay will have more to say about what an achievement that was given the interest rate headwinds that we faced. As you saw, we issued guidance for 2024 of $7.67 to $7.82 per share. Being almost two months into the year, we are off to a good start, and we are tracking towards the upper end of that range. That said, the mid-ish point of that range equates to an increase of approximately 3.7% in AFFO per share. Also embedded in that outlook is…

Thanks, Sean. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We had a solid fourth quarter and are pleased with our results, which exceeded internal expectations across revenue, adjusted EBITDA and AFFO. The AFFO growth achieved was the strongest since the second quarter of 2022, improving 9.9% to $2.10 per share on a fully diluted basis. In addition, despite a challenging interest rate environment, the company ended the year above the high end of our revised AFFO outlook. In the fourth quarter, acquisition-adjusted revenue increased 2.5% from the same period last year. As expected, expense growth continued to decelerate with acquisition-adjusted operating expenses increasing only 20 basis points in the fourth quarter. The company maintained a strong adjusted EBITDA margin of 48.2%, expanding margins by 110 basis points over the fourth quarter of 2022 and remaining at historically high levels. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $268.2 million compared to $252.3 million in 2022, which was an increase of 6.3%. On an acquisition-adjusted basis, the increase was 5.1%. Free cash flow also improved in the quarter, growing 13.2% over the same period last year. For the full year, acquisition-adjusted revenue increased 2.1% to $2.11 billion compared to $2.07 billion in 2022, with operating expenses growing approximately 1% during the year. This was driven primarily due to expense controls in our Billboard business as well as COVID-19 relief grants received from our airport partners. Adjusted EBITDA was $985.7 million, which represents an increase of 3.5% on an acquisition-adjusted basis, following strong 10.6% growth in 2022 over the same period in 2021. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 46.7% for the full year, expanding 50 basis points versus a year ago. The company ended 2023 with full year diluted AFFO of $7.47 per share, which was above the top end of our revised…

Thanks, Jay, and I'll cover some familiar metrics and then open it up for questions. In terms of pro forma growth performance across regions, as you might expect, those reason like the Gulf Coast and Atlantic and Central that under-indexed to national outperformed those regions that over-indexed to national like the Northeast underperformed. For Q4, as Jay mentioned, static represented 68.6% of our Billboard revenue, while Digital represented 31.4% of our revenue. We ended the year with 4,759 digital faces. As I mentioned, while digital billing was in the aggregate up for the year on a same board basis, it remains slightly down in Q4. In terms of local national split, local regional business for Q4 was 77.8%, national programmatic was 22.2%. As Jay mentioned, local was up in Q4, 3.3%, national programmatic was down 4.3%. For the year, local represented the 78.3% of our business, national programmatic was 21.7%, representing for the year on the local regional front, an increase of 2.6% and on the national programmatic front, a decrease of 2.2%. I mentioned categories of strength. Let me wrap some numbers around that. Relative strength was exhibited by our service category, up 15.4%, automotive, up 4.5%, amusements up 5.1%. Relative weakness, categories, retail down 5.1%, gaming down 3.7% and insurance down 3.8%. Again, those categories, some of which over-indexed to national, which explains their relative weakness. With that, Savannah, I will open it up for questions.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question will come from Cameron McVeigh with Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Sean. Thanks, Jay. Curious on today's - guide from a macro standpoint in a vertical recovery standpoint. And as you mentioned, it's a political year this year as well. So I would be curious if you could try and size that impact.

Sure. Let me start with - we start with our pacings and what we're actually seeing, and then we move on to our touch points with our leadership in the field and that's really how we come up with guidance. We don't really make assumptions around the macro. Regarding political, it tends to show up late. So I would guess that most of that is not reflected in our pacings yet. The - it should be a good political year. By all accounts, record amounts of money are going to be spent this year. So we are looking for a nice tailwind in the back half.

Got it. And secondly, I was hoping you could provide an update on the ERP initiative in terms of both timing and just trying to size the impact on margins. And on that margin point, where do you expect margins to trend both, I guess, in the near term? And then just from a longer-term perspective, taking into account normal top line growth, digital conversions and operating leverage within the business model.

Great. I'll hit it quick, and then I'm going to turn it over to Jay. He's the tip of the spear on that initiative. So we, for this year, are at - or approaching peak spend for that initiative. So when you think about our expense growth, you're going to see a little of that in our corporate expenses this year. As we go forward, that's one of the headwinds on the expense growth. But as you alluded to, it will certainly pay dividends 18, 24 months from now. And we're approaching a go live date as we speak, and I'm feeling good about it. Let me turn it over to Jay.

So Cameron, as you may recall, it's really - the rollout is really in two phases. The first is the ERP phase, which you think of this sort of the back of the house finance, operations, really automating all of that. And that go live that Sean alluded to, is on April 1. The second phase is the front of the house from a sales engagement perspective all the way through billing, configuring price and quoting our business, and that go live is mid-next year. We began this journey last year, so we did have elevated operating expenses at corporate. Because of it, we'll have a peak year this year, as Sean alluded to, and we'll have a little next year, it should tail off. And then we should really begin to see the benefits of our labor and margin expansion in 2024 as a result of these initiatives - I mean, 2026 as a result of these initiatives.

Great. Thank you, both.

And our next question will come from Jason Bazinet with Citi. Please go ahead.

I just have two quick ones for Jay. Would you mind just reframing or recasting your guidance for the year through the lens of total revenue growth and total expense growth as opposed to acquisition adjusted? That's my first question. And then second, on the range on the AFFO for the year, is it fair to say that organic rev growth is sort of the key sort of swing factor in terms of that range?

Yes. So I'll take the first one. In terms of the difference between pro forma and acquisition, there really isn't a lot. As you may recall, we mentioned that acquisitions are going to be muted this year and we're going to divert that free cash flow to pay down Term Loan A. I think in the budget right now, we have approximately $30 million of acquisitions. So really, when you think about performance next year, it really is focused on organic growth. And the inflection point, I think, is really around our national business. The local business has continued to hold up well. We've had 11 straight quarters of growth and the national customer, it's been a little more challenging on that front.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question will come from Richard Choe with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Hi. I just wanted to follow up on the national commentary. Do you expect it to just a relatively flat in - as negative as it was in '23? Or do you think that gets better or worse? And then in terms of programmatic, strong finish, kind of what helped drive that? And do you think you're seeing kind of some shift that programmatic is coming back a little bit higher this year? Thank you.

Yes. So I'll hit the programmatic one first. Richard, we're looking for the momentum that was represented in Q4 to really carry throughout the year. So low double-digit increases is what our expectation is for our programmatic platform. In Q4, we had a really important vertical come into the platform, and it's one that we don't see very often and that would be packaged goods, and that's really encouraging. As you know, they have big budgets and far reach and they're not typically utilizers of out-of-home. So that was very encouraging in Q4. In the general national tenor, what I'm looking for and what I think we're going to see through the year is what I would call stabilization. And I'll take that because we are seeing such good performance at the local and regional front that if we can just get national to stabilize, which we think we're seeing that, we'll hit our goals, for sure.

Got it. And then more of a longer-term kind of capital allocation question. As your leverage comes down and you pay the near-term floating stuff down, how should we think about the incremental cash that you'll be generating if the M&A environment stays low kind of beyond this year?

So as Jay mentioned and I alluded to, the first step is that Term A., so we're going to take that out and whittle away at it. When I think about '25 and beyond - 2025 and beyond, I think in our industry, you're going to see consolidation accelerate. And one of the reasons, as a team, we decided - and this was a conscious decision to pay down a little debt as we're prepping the balance sheet for what we believe will happen over the next, let's call it, 18 to 36 months.

Richard, as you may recall, what I mentioned in my comments, if we pay down the debt this year focus on the balance sheet, leverage will tick below 3x as calculated under our credit facility and we expect to generate EBITDA north of $1 billion this year. What that means is we could - we have an investment capacity of north of $1 billion and not exceed the top end of our leverage range. So we're excited about positioning the balance sheet for what we think could be some pretty transformative things to come on the acquisition front.

Great. Thank you.

And that will conclude our question-and-answer session. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference back to Sean Reilly for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Savannah, and thank you all for your interest in Lamar. We will visit again come May. Thanks a lot.

And that will conclude today's conference. Thank you for your participation, and you may now disconnect.