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Montrose Environmental Group, Inc. (MEG)

Q3 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 5, 2015

$20.95

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to Media General, Inc.’s Earnings Call for the Third Quarter ended September 30, 2015. Today’s call is being recorded. Now the company will read a brief legal statement.

Andrew C. Carington

Management

This morning the company announced its third quarter 2015 results. The press release along with the supplemental data can be found on the company’s website at www.mediageneral.com. When available, a full transcript along with the replay of today’s call will also be posted on the company’s website. Today’s presentation contains forward-looking statements, which are subject to various risks and uncertainties. They should be understood in the context of the company’s publicly available reports filed with the SEC, including sections in those reports concerning risk factors. Media General’s future performance could differ materially from its current expectations. The company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Today’s speakers will be the company’s President and CEO; Vince Sadusky, who will provide a high level overview of the results and achievements; and Jim Woodward, the company’s Chief Financial Officer, who will discuss our financial results and guidance. They will take your questions after their prepared remarks. And now I’ll hand the call over to Vince.

Vincent L. Sadusky

Management

Thank you Andy and good morning everyone and welcome to our earnings call. We delivered strong results this quarter and made great progress on our integration and operating plans. Total net revenues on the same asset or as adjusted basis excluding the 27 million reduction in political revenues increased 7%. Our results were driven by solid growth in core TV advertising, higher retransmission consent fees, and synergies from the Young and LIN mergers. One of our key strategic operating initiatives is to leverage our resources and scale up operating model to grow viewership and revenues in our largest markets. We have brought in new leadership, re-launched our brands, and implemented our NextGen newsroom and investigative new strategies in many markets with positive results. For example in Tampa our largest big four network station, every newscast increased viewership on a year-to-date basis and we have moved from the fourth highest viewed station in the market to number two. Our ratings growth in Tampa has enabled us to increase market share of TV advertising revenue by 130 basis points over the last four quarters which has driven an incremental 7% increase in that station's revenue. We believe this strategy is resilient for economic cycles, allows us to garner a larger share of political advertising, and generates greater long-term broadcast cash flow growth. Our strong commitment to local -- positively impacts our non-network affiliated stations as well such as Kwan [ph] and WISH as PayTV operators recognize the benefits of providing unique local news and entertainment programming to our local audiences. Overall in July, we have grown both Early and Late News with the Adults 25 to 54. 66% of our TV stations are currently ranked number one or number two in their local markets for news and 66% of our station websites…

James F. Woodward

Management

Thank you, Vince and good morning everyone. Before I begin I would like to draw your attention to the explanation of GAAP results in our press release. As we’ve done in past quarters in order to help you make more meaningful comparisons, we've provided supplemental combined company financial information on the Investor Relations page of our website, mediageneral.com. The as adjusted amounts reflect those assets we currently operate. We believe the same asset comparison provides a transparent and complete basis by which to analyze our current operating results. My comments today are going to focus on the combined company, using this supplemental combined company financial information. Our total net revenues of $322 million were in line with our guidance. As Vince mentioned, excluding the $27 million decline in political advertising revenues from 2014, total net revenue increased 7%. Including political advertising total net revenues declined 2% year-over-year. Excluding political, our net broadcast revenues grew 8% and core time sales grew 4% year-over-year. Overall our total net broadcast revenues were in line with our guidance at $278 million in the third quarter. Diving deeper into our revenues, net local revenues increased 11% to $212 million compared to $191 million in the prior year. Key factors were growth and retransmission consent fees and higher local advertising revenues. National -– net national revenues were essentially flat at 52 million. Our top 10 categories were up 5% year-over-year. Automotive advertising, our largest category, grew 7% in the third quarter compared to prior year and represented 28% of net broadcast revenue. The increase was driven by both domestic and foreign manufacturers continuing their year-long push to sell more cars. Net political revenues were 5 million during the third quarter compared to 32 million in the prior year. Net digital revenues, which include our TV station…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. And we can take our first question from Marci Ryvicker with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.

Marci Ryvicker

Analyst

Thank you, I have a couple. The first question, you made a comment on the better synergies from LIN and Media General. Can you talk about where that might be coming from, that’s the first question? The second is, I’m assuming you are out of the market and cannot repurchase shares with all of the transaction stuff going on? And then the third question is can you sort of walk us through the expense guide for the fourth quarter, maybe just focus on what core operating expenses are at the TV Station Group and maybe what’s layered on top of that? Thank you.

Vincent L. Sadusky

Management

Good morning Marci. So, yes, I’ll take the first couple of questions and hand it over to Jim to talk about expenses. On the synergy side, it was the combination of achieving cost synergies earlier. So things like preferred contract, acceleration of facilities consolidation, it was that bad on the cost side as well as on the revenue side as well, primarily doing better on retransmission fees than we originally anticipated. With regard to your second question on share repurchases, we're going through this process right now so, we view ourselves to be in a blackout period.

Marci Ryvicker

Analyst

Got it.

Vincent L. Sadusky

Management

And then with regards to expenses, I’ll let Jim go ahead and handle that.

James F. Woodward

Management

Okay, thank you Vince. Good morning Marci. So yes, for the Q4 expense guidance we said the range excluding the programming fees to awards is going to be up 3 to 5 in Q4. So, what drives that? We have made some investments in the business including content centers and building out a national sales team, research and programming department, but also included in that is the potential cost for the increased digital revenues. So if you were to exclude that we're flat quarter-to-quarter.

Marci Ryvicker

Analyst

Got it, thank you.

Vincent L. Sadusky

Management

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we can take out next question from James Dix with Wedbush Securities. Your line is now open.

James Dix

Analyst · Wedbush Securities. Your line is now open.

Hey, good morning guys. I guess, just first on the ad market, can you give a little bit of color on the change in growth you’re seeing in your pacings for the fourth quarter which is the pretty good growth you saw in the third? And then, I guess, just related to that if I could just know, when you talk about core and excluding political, do you make any attempt to assess how much displacement occurs by the political or are you just pulling it all out and then talking about it in that regard? And then my last one no, actually my second is, when you look at your digital revenue, roughly how much of that is essentially ad sales or driven by the advertising sales as opposed to other services that you provide? And I’m curious of those ad sales, how much of those are related to sales of what you call video advertising as opposed to other types of advertising? And then I had one follow up on spectrum, but I’ll just stop there.

Vincent L. Sadusky

Management

Okay, sure thing. So with regard to the color on the ad market, we had mentioned our core was pacing up 2.5% for the fourth quarter. Local was pacing stronger than national. With regard to where it’s coming from, auto is very strong again for us in terms of the pace for the fourth quarter. Ford had its best September in 15 years, gas prices are low, Ford and Chevy in particular are selling a lot of truck and SUVs, so that’s been a driver. But also, retail is up, services are up as well. With regard to the core measurement, excluding political, it is very difficult to make a determination around how much of that is incremental versus non-incremental. So when we talk about political we pull political out of both years. So just looking at our advertising revenue X was categorized as political for both periods. And then with regards to digital ad revenue, 100% of our digital revenue is related to ad sales. We don’t provide technology as a service, we are not in that kind of business. We are in the marketing and advertising solution business on digital which we believe is complimentary to what our business is on television. And then finally I think you had asked the question about what percentage of that digital ad revenue, those digitalize sales are video and I think it is about 25% or so is video and video is clearly the growth opportunity on a go forward basis we believe and given our extensive ad inventory on the video side for our owned and operated television station group. And the focus we’ve had on video being a big part of our transformation in our national group through Federated Media, I think that’s an exciting opportunity. I think we are in the right place.

James Dix

Analyst · Wedbush Securities. Your line is now open.

Okay, great. That’s very helpful. And then just on the spectrum what are the next milestones that we should be expecting from you on that. I know there is filing date coming up with the FCC, should we expect to get any type of public update from you on any types of agreements you are entering into or is that prohibited, I just want to make sure that as we move toward March we are generally aware of what we should be looking for from you in terms of that process and disclosure to investors?

James F. Woodward

Management

Sure thing, so, what we said about the spectrum auction is we plan to participate, we continue to believe the auction could present some opportunities for us to monetize some of our spectrum, and also have a negligible impact on our ongoing ability to generate cash flow from our continuing television business. Given the uniqueness of our portfolio in certain markets where we believe we will have high demand based on the FCCs established opening digital. But it is certainly very complex and really difficult to predict outcomes. For example we don’t even know what big clearing the FCC will set. But we do think we have a reasonable chance in some of our markets will need to have spectrum leader and our pricing maybe cleared for us. As far as what you would see from us, the bidding strategy is something that is very important for us to keep confidential the level of our participation in particular markets is something that’s important for us to internally evaluate and not share with folks. So it will be a process that’s largely done internally other than the required public filings.

James Dix

Analyst · Wedbush Securities. Your line is now open.

Okay, great and just one follow up, it might take that you at this point you are basically kind of reaffirming the range of values that you talked about at your Investor Day as far as the spectrum goes and that’s just for me thanks?

James F. Woodward

Management

We have not changed our view from Investor Day around the relative attractiveness of the markets and in fact opening bid prices which are certainly not the final indicator of what value will be by any means but it is a data point and the opening bid prices in many of our markets were higher than we had initially outlined. But you know all that said we think we got a reasonable shot at some of these markets, we will need to have spectrum cleared in that and we have got a chance in having our prices cleared but in the end its impossible to know exactly where it will end up.

James Dix

Analyst · Wedbush Securities. Your line is now open.

Great, thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

And we can take our next question from Tracy Young with Evercore ISI. Your line is now open.

Tracy Young

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Your line is now open.

Yes hi, is there any way for you to give us a political number for Q4, the primary to standard do you have a sense of what the political number could be for Q4? And then your number for digital is in line with what I expected but could you talk a little bit more about the impairment, is there any change in strategy on the digital side, thanks?

Vincent L. Sadusky

Management

Yes, so on a political – we don’t give a fourth quarter number but I can offer some color. Political in the third quarter over achieved our internal estimates due to certain reasons. So when you have got a nice large footprint like we do in interesting markets where there could be a material spend, we saw things like a heated mayor’s race in Nashville that we never would’ve predicted, state-wide open seats in the Virginia markets, and even some early presidential spending in Iowa, South Carolina for Marco Rubio and Hillary, and things like the marijuana issue that was on the ballot scene in the State of Ohio. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, political is again pacing ahead of our internal estimates, and a good amount of that also has to do with Presidential primary spending. With regard to the digital business, look -– I mean, we have a very positive outlook for our digital business. We've got a -– we’ve built a great team headquartered here in New York City, they’ve been working diligently with advertisers to identify marketing opportunities on the premium side through our significant digital and TV footprint. We've been delivering campaigns that have exceeded advertiser expectations and we've got a strong pipeline of new business for the fourth quarter and the first half of 2016, which we believe is the right business line to be in, and we think will meaningfully contribute to the growth of our digital business going forward.

Tracy Young

Analyst · Evercore ISI. Your line is now open.

Okay, thank you.

Vincent L. Sadusky

Management

Sure.

Operator

Operator

And we can take our next question from Barry Lucas with Gabelli & Company. Your line is open.

Barry Lucas

Analyst · Gabelli & Company. Your line is open.

Thanks and good morning, Vince. I’ve got a couple of questions on auto, because it is such an important part of your business. So core advertising up for in Q3, pacing plus 2.5% in fourth quarter is – and auto, you did pretty well in the third quarter. Auto is accelerating or decelerating in 4Q?

Vincent L. Sadusky

Management

Yes, so auto, I think I -– we mentioned was up about 7% or so in the third quarter, and it’s pacing up about the same percentage in the fourth quarter.

Barry Lucas

Analyst · Gabelli & Company. Your line is open.

Okay. And was 28% of your roughly -- of revenues coming from auto, how would that compare in the digital side of your business, are you getting a comparable share of auto business in digital and/or is that an opportunity down the road?

Vincent L. Sadusky

Management

The auto is significant for digital as well. We are actually running several significant campaigns for U.S. auto makers right now on our digital ad network. But it’s a smaller percentage. If I had to guess I’d say it is probably in the 10 plus percent range in terms of total ad -– digital ad dollars by the auto category.

Barry Lucas

Analyst · Gabelli & Company. Your line is open.

Okay. Thanks. Let me just switch gears quickly and maybe not specifically about the transaction but there are some rules that came out of the FCC with regard to discussions amongst the participants in the auction, and I’m just wondering how that might affect you if deals are not inked or deals are in flux? How can you discuss strategies with either Meredith or potentially with Nexstar?

Vincent L. Sadusky

Management

Yes, so we don’t think that the rules will impact our strategic conversations at this point. There are certain rules that have been laid out in terms of having conversations with competitors around channel sharing and when those conversations need to end. But we believe, at the moment the strategic transaction that we've outlined with Meredith does not preclude us from having those conversations with others.

Barry Lucas

Analyst · Gabelli & Company. Your line is open.

Okay. Thanks very much.

Operator

Operator

Thank you ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude the question-and-answer session, I would like to turn the program back over to Media General Inc's CEO for closing remarks.

Vincent L. Sadusky

Management

Thank you everyone for participating today. We look forward to updating throughout the quarter. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's program. You may disconnect at any time.