Earnings Labs

Outfront Media Inc. (OUT)

Q2 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Aug 6, 2015

$30.87

+1.35%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-5.40%

1 Week

-0.12%

1 Month

-10.32%

vs S&P

-5.08%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the OUTFRONT Media Second Quarter 2015 Earnings Call. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Greg Lundberg.

Gregory Lundberg - Head-Investor Relations

Management

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining our 2015 second quarter earnings call. On the call today are Jeremy Male, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Donald Shassian, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. After a discussion of our financial results and a strategic update, we'll open up the lines for a question-and-answer session. A slide presentation to accompany today's call can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website along with the earnings release and an audio webcast of the call. This conference may include forward-looking statements. Relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements are listed in our earnings materials, in our SEC filings, including the 2014 Form 10-K. In addition, on this call, we'll refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Any references to OIBDA and AFFO made today will be on an adjusted and REIT-comparable basis, respectively, both of which are reconciled along with other non-GAAP financial measures in the appendix of the slide presentation, the earnings release and on our website, outfrontmedia.com. With that, I will now turn the call over to Jeremy. Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Greg, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased that you could take the time with us today. There are a lot of exciting things happening at OUTFRONT Media. First and foremost, our second quarter revenues came in as we laid out for you in May, up 2.8% organically. Within this figure was once again very robust double digit growth in our transit business, while our billboard results were slightly down. Transit is nearly 1/3 of our total company revenues and is now a $400 million business annually. And I think you'd all agree that any media business growing over 10% in the current market is…

Operator

Operator

Yes. Thank you. And our first question comes from Marci Ryvicker with Wells Fargo.

Marci L. Ryvicker - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo

Thanks. I have a couple; in the first with the billboards, you had mentioned that they were down in specific markets. It sounds very much like this is a company-specific issue in those markets and therefore the growth you're seeing in Q3 is more in your control and something that you have a lot more visibility into for now and the future. The second question I have is Lamar reported this morning also digital yields were down, they suggested there's just too much capacity. Just wanted to know your thoughts on that comment as it relates to OUTFRONT. And then the third question -- I know you said not to incorporate anything in our models in 2015 for leasing space for wireless, but can you frame up what the potential market could be or any type of financials could be for you in 2016 or eventually going forward? Thanks. Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. I'll take those, Marci. In terms of the first question, in regard to sort is it company specific: yes, I think it is. We've got a number of markets that have been doing incredibly well, East Coast and West Coast have been great for us. There have been three or four markets that really didn't perform for us over the last few months and it's those markets that, specific to ours, I think, where we've taken now some measures to improve our performance. We're starting to see some improvement and that's why -- or one of the reasons certainly that we can be more positive in our pacing indications for billboard in the third quarter. With regards to digital, I guess the first point is that our digital business in terms of number of boards is smaller than our competitors. So…

Marci L. Ryvicker - Wells Fargo Securities LLC

Analyst · Wells Fargo

Great. Thank you so much.

Operator

Operator

And we'll go next to Ben Swinburne with Morgan Stanley. Benjamin Swinburne - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Thank you. Good afternoon. A couple of questions; first, on the MTA, Jeremy, do you have any insights that you can share with us as to why the bids haven't been put out, and the MTA seems to be extending this all to next year? Do you think they're waiting for the Decaux-Cemusa situation to get more clear or anything you've learned that you could help us think about sort of what the thought process is there would be great. That's my first question. Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Okay. So, I guess -- so it's a little bit hard, when we're being asked to speak on behalf of transit authorities because ultimately, obviously it's entirely within their scope to make these decisions. As we said they had two options and they chose one of those. And I would suggest the – actually it's in my opinion I don't think it has a lot to do with the JCDecaux Cemusa situation. And I think it has more to do with the fact that they are interested in thinking about more broadly how media and the general communications could come closer together, particularly given that we're all fairly clear that while we haven't obviously seen the bid document yet or the RFP document, there's likely to be quite a significant sort of digital piece to this. So I think they're just trying to figure that out. That's certainly really more the feedback that we've been given, Ben, rather than it being anything to do with the competitive landscape right now. Benjamin Swinburne - Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC: Okay. That's it; that's helpful. And then, if you missed it…

Operator

Operator

And we'll go next to Alexia Quadrani.

Julia Yue - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Hi; this is Julia Yue on for Alexia. I just have two questions. The first -- can you talk about some of the digital initiatives that you're working on for the MTA transit system and if you were to win the contract, what the longer-term revenue and profitability upside could be of the market in particular. And then trends advertising in general as it shifts more to digital. Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: We made an announcement going back to December last year, Julia, with regards to our new platform, which is based around low cost hardware, based around new software cloud-based -- and cloud content delivery, and the ability for these -- for screens, if you like, to behave more like smartphones rather than, if you like, a dumb termini as we go forward. Speaking more generally, I think that digital does have the ability to keep transit revenues growing nicely. And if you look at our transit business, it's done particularly well in the first half of this year. I think, part of that is about the fact that it's a very urban medium. I think it has been a – we've seen a lot of support from national advertiser on our transit media who are looking to sort of target that millennial audience and urban audience. So yes, look, we feel good about our platform and we feel good about its ability to drive revenue right the way across our transit business rather than just the MTA. And the final piece of the – of our digital program, if you like, is we're working hard at the moment to build a data management platform. So significantly enhanced data so that media planners will be able to make decisions about how they deploy their dollars towards our medium in a much more equivalent way to that which they're currently thinking about how they apply dollars to the online mobile piece, and that's quite exciting. We're spending -- and going back to the sort of strategic development costs that Don was talking about it's those sorts of areas where we're putting our focus.

Julia Yue - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay; that's helpful. And then along those same lines given the increasingly digital transit and billboard businesses that you have in the drastically shortened time or higher to change the ads, wonder if you're trying to sell more advertising buys across both transit and billboard assets and if you're seeing any advertiser demand for that. Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: When you drill down into our advertiser base, there is a number of significant advertisers buying across both of our platforms. And I think, as time goes forward, the way that we're going to be sort of thinking about ourselves and I believe that the outdoor medium is going to be positioning itself is that a screen is a screen is a screen. So depending on your audience, why wouldn't an advertiser deploy their ad on -- in a subway station as against above-ground if you like on a digital screen. So I do think that we'll be seeing more of that, Julia, as we go forward.

Julia Yue - JPMorgan Securities LLC

Analyst

Okay. Thank you. Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks, Julia.

Operator

Operator

And our next question comes from Bryan Goldberg with Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Bryan Goldberg - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Oh, thanks. I had two quick ones. First with respect to the color on the third quarter, how would you characterize your level of visibility right now on a low single digit performance playing out as we kind of move towards fall? What are the bigger swing factors we should be thinking about from here on out? And then what expectation is embedded for the international business in that comment? Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: We've tended not to split out international when we give guidance color at this stage, Bryan. So I'll avoid that one for now. I'd just say potentially no great surprises there may be, would be how I might characterize that. And then the only thing do need to bear in mind, obviously, is forex, you have to – because we're always talking about this in sort of constant dollars. So that's something worth keeping an eye on. In the terms of sort of incremental color on Q3, we do stress that it is at a particular point in time. We don't have absolute clarity, but we've got a significant percentage of those dollars already laid down. So from that point of view, as I say, we feel comfortable with the words that we've given, but I wouldn't really want to give anything more than that right now.

Bryan Goldberg - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Okay. Fair enough. And then on the U.S., the legacy billboard lease costs being down -- is this -- I mean, how much of a trend is this, how much of this should we expect to continue as we look out the next couple of quarters, particularly with the billboard business? Sounds like it's accelerating a little bit on the top line. Donald R. Shassian - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, I think our folks have done a really nice job in renegotiating leases, our people have done a nice job in swapping out underperforming leases, we have still more to go. And I think we've seen some of the benefit of that. We have very little rev share, our billboard business in legacy and I'm not sure I'm anticipating too much continued reduction, but if we can hold this to a flat and a minor increase, I'd be very, very happy. But our people continue to make good progress. I don't think there is a lot of great low-hanging fruit to continue reducing those billboard costs, but they keep going after where they can and where it makes some sense, and most importantly getting rid of the leases that are really underperforming.

Bryan Goldberg - Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Analyst · Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Great. Thank you very much.

Gregory Lundberg - Head-Investor Relations

Management

All right. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And we'll go next to Jason Bazinet with Citi.

Jason B. Bazinet - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citi

Thanks. I have two. One, I think is easier one, one may be more difficult. The easy one is, in the past, I never remember seeing as much of a dichotomy in the growth rate regarding transit versus billboard. And I was just wondering -- would you characterize this as sort of a – there is just one particular client that sort of came in and sort of caused the revenues to grow up, increase more than normal or do you see this really as the beginning of something that has legs in terms of reaching millennials or whatever other dynamics are going on? Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: I think, it's fair to say that the transit growth that we're seeing has been right the way across the U.S. which is obviously very positive. We had a couple of advertisers that for their own sort of business reasons this year switched out of billboard and into transit, but really that was very, very small. If I sort of look around and think back to some of my prior years, transit generally has been growing nicely across the world. So I think that we're probably sort of seeing some of those similar trends, but if I was looking forward, I wouldn't expect the same rate of divergence on a going forward basis, but if you do look back to the last few years, actually our transit business had been growing at a slightly higher rate than our billboard business, when we first talked to you when we were back on the IPO roadshow last March.

Jason B. Bazinet - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citi

Okay. And then maybe the one that's a little bit out of scope. On the leasing capacity to wireless carriers, is it fair to assume that any wireless carrier that uses your space for wireless equipment has to also get fiber backhaul to that site as well? And the only reason I ask is I'm just trying to get a sense of if this works, how quickly could it potentially ramp. Donald R. Shassian - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Jason, it really depends on the location and what they have. I got to believe they need to have big pipes for what they're going to do, but this is primarily getting to small cell technology. I'm going to leave that technology solution to them, but we do expect that there may be more pipes that are going to have to be deployed to these structures. And obviously to the extent we can take advantage of the use of some of those pipes for the data analytics information we want to gather, it would be good for us as well.

Jason B. Bazinet - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citi

Okay. Thank you. Donald R. Shassian - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: But your question does lead to, this is not -- this is something that they take a lot of time to analyze...

Jason B. Bazinet - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citi

Right. Donald R. Shassian - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: ...their network and their propagation...

Jason B. Bazinet - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citi

Yes. Donald R. Shassian - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: ...and they continue to need more sites to get to. I think we end up being a very interesting solution for them, which can be very, very helpful. Conduits do exist to just about all of our structures we think that we're going to go to. So hopefully there's a somewhat easier way for them to get bigger pipes there, but a big part of their process is making all that happen. You're absolutely correct.

Jason B. Bazinet - Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.

Analyst · Citi

Okay. All right. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

And we'll go next to Tracy Young with Evercore ISI.

Tracy Beth Young - Evercore ISI

Analyst · Evercore ISI

Hi, two questions if I could. The MTA contract with the extension -- are you extending that as same terms as your prior contract or as a contract before the extension? And then just as a case study, maybe it will be helpful, to the extent you can, to talk about the rollout in the Atlantic Yards and sort of who pays for what as far as that rollout is concerned. That would be great. Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: So the first point in terms of the MTA extension. I don't want to talk specifically, but no huge change to the way the current shape of the contract. With regards to Hudson Yards, it's a relatively small amount. In terms of who is paying or the shape of that investment and the returns, I mean all I would say is that, look, when we deploy CapEx, we look for it -- a return on that investment and we're confident that we're going to be able to achieve that. Donald R. Shassian - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: This was actually a really unique opportunity for us as they were looking to open up this station, the technology that we've been developing with our partner was really looking for a good example to be able to deploy. So it was really a nice confluence of events and a nice coincidence to really try to take advantage of this.

Tracy Beth Young - Evercore ISI

Analyst · Evercore ISI

Okay. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

We'll go next to Drew Borst with Goldman Sachs. Drew M. Borst - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Thank you. Dovetailing off of one of the earlier questions about the performance of transit versus billboard, I was wondering if you guys had off hand how your billboards performed in the quarter in the markets where you own transit and I guess so like New York and L.A. Guess I was just trying to understand if there is some sort of, kind of shift going on in those markets or maybe all those markets are just very vibrant in total, but I didn't know if you had any of that data in hand. Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: What I can say is just because it's kind of very much top of mind, Drew, is that we have very big transit businesses in New York and L.A., and both of those billboard markets actually are performing very well. So, I think part of that is the vibrancy just generally in those two markets, but as I said it's certainly not – it's not the case that where transit is strong, billboard is weak, to put it like that. Drew M. Borst - Goldman Sachs & Co.: Okay. And then one other question, I was looking at the Van Wagner results and even adjusting for the kiosk business that has been (41:20), looked l been jettisoned, looked like the growth had slowed quite a bit, like it was down about 1% year-on-year in the second quarter. In the first quarter, the core business was up 10%. I was wondering what's kind of going on there. Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: I think as we said on the last quarter, frankly, it's already – we're already…

Operator

Operator

I'd now like to turn the call back to the company. Jeremy John Male - Chairman & Chief Executive Officer: Thanks very much, and thank you for all of your questions today. We hope you have an enjoyable rest of summer and look forward to seeing many of you at an Investor Conference in September in New York City, if not beforehand. Many thanks again.

Operator

Operator

And this concludes today's call. Have a wonderful day.