Lamar Advertising Co (LAMR) 2015 Q1 法說會逐字稿

Excuse me, everyone. We now have Sean Reilly and Keith Istre in conference. Please be aware that each of your lines is in a listen-only mode. At the conclusion of the Company's presentation, we will open the floor for questions.

(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 and plans, including with respect to the level of potential acquisition activity, and the amount of timing of any distributions to stockholders. 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.

Forward-looking statements give Lamar's current expectations and projections relating to its financial condition, results of operations, strategic plans, objectives, and future performance. As such, they are subject to material risks and uncertainties, including economic conditions and their effect on the markets in which Lamar operates and the broader demand for advertising, levels of expenditures on advertising in general and outdoor advertising in particular, and risks and uncertainties relating to Lamar's significant indebtedness.

Lamar has identified important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in this call in the Company's most recent annual report on Form 10-K. Lamar refers you to those documents. Lamar's first quarter 2015 earnings release, which contains information required by Regulation G regarding certain non-GAAP financial measures, was furnished to the SEC on a Form 8-K this morning, and is available on 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, Tiffany, and good morning and welcome all to Lamar's 2015 Q1 Earnings Call. I'm pleased to report a great quarter. We seem to be hitting on all cylinders. In fact, we haven't seen this kind of top-line growth since the great recession, so that's nice to see.

Let me highlight three data points from the release before I turn it over to Keith. Number one, local sales are exceptionally strong, up 6.7%. If you look behind the strength in our bulletin sales, it was almost all driven by rate. That is great to see. We haven't been able to say that, again, since the great recession. That is a good thing, and hopefully continues. That all translates into an exceptional 32% increase in AFFO per share. That of course is the key metric by which REITs are measured. I think that again is exceptional performance. Keith?

Okay. Good morning, everybody. First, let me just say that as far as the press release itself, all the revenue numbers in there are daily, including the pro forma results. There are no more hybrid daily/monthly mix of numbers in there, nor will there be going forward.

As you saw on a reported basis, revenue was up 6.2%, EBITDA was up 13.6%. On a pro forma basis, revenue was up 5.2%, of which almost all of that increase came from the billboard segment, which generates approximately 90% of our annual revenues. Pro forma consolidated expenses was up 1%. The resulting pro forma EBITDA increased 12.3%. As these numbers illustrate, mid-single-digit growth in revenue and low-single-digit growth in expenses produced significant increases in EBITDA. As a footnote for the past five years, 2010 through 2014, our pro forma consolidated expense growth averaged 2% per year during that period.

A couple of other items to note for Q1. Our EBITDA margin was 39.2% versus 36.6% last year. In the first quarter a pick-up of almost 3 points. Sean mentioned AFFO per share. On an actual basis, the actual AFFO increased by $20 million, or 34%. Cash interest expense declined by $5.5 million. That was due to some opportunistic refinancing that we completed in 2014. Last, for 2015, we project our D&A for the full year to be approximately $200 million. Sean, with that, back to you.

Great. Let me highlight a few other statistics for you. I mentioned local sales at 6.7% up. National in the first quarter was up 2.5%. The tone of national business seems to be improving slightly, and we think it will turn in a slightly better performance in the second on the national side. While we turned in 5%s and 6%s on the top in Q1, it is going to be difficult to repeat that performance in Q2. We're seeing things that are more in the 3% to 4%-ish top-line growth. Tone of business for Q2 is fine. We are going to -- we hopefully will turn in a nice print, but it's not quite as robust as what we saw in Q1. That probably has something to do with the comps.

Two other stats. On the digital side we were very busy in Q1. We added 58 digital units in Q1. Please don't multiply that number by four. We're planning on being aggressive, but not that quite aggressive, throughout the course of the year. You can model something in the neighborhood of 175 to 200 new digital units for 2015.

Let me highlight a couple of categories of business. Some are just stats, but others are a little more meaningful. On the service side we did exceptionally well. Our service revenues were up 17% for that category of business Q over Q. Hospital and health care was up 8%. Automotive was up 4%. Big categories doing well. But I really want to talk about two other ones.

As you know, really since 9-11 and through the great recession, we've been struggling with the hotel-motel category. It appears to have stabilized, and gotten back into our top ten categories, which we haven't seen that in some time. At 3% of our book of business, it is now number 10. That is good to see. Finally, the real estate is knocking on the door of our top ten categories, which it hadn't been in since the great recession. Real estate in Q1 was up 15%. Seeing relative strength in those two categories, which again portends well for the future.

Before I turn it over to questions, I do want to mention one other initiative we have going. You hear a lot about automated billing in both the out-of-home industry and other ad-supported platforms. We went live with our automated billing platform last weekend. We had a test customer go up and run it through its paces. By all accounts, it performed well. This was a test case, automated buying customer. We hope in the next couple of weeks to go live with paying customers. We will see how that goes.

For the industry this is very important, because the ad budget pie is separate from the digital budget pie. Things that go through this automated buying process come out of digital budget. For us to get a piece of that going forward is an important thing. More to come on that. We will probably do some sort of release on those results in incoming weeks. With that Tiffany, I'll open it up for questions.

Thank you. At this time we will open the floor for questions.

(Operator Instructions)

Stephan Bisson with Wells Fargo.

Hi, guys. The flow-through from the great Q1 results might take AFFO above the Street, above the guidance. Is there any reason we should take the subsequent guidance down?

We were tempted to raise guidance for you guys. What we're waiting for is a little more clarity on Q4. We've got some difficult comps. It wouldn't surprise me if we didn't raise the next time we visit. But again, we wanted to be cautious and get a little more visibility into Q4.

Great. Then there was no mention on the digital trends for revenue. How's the yield on those boards?

They're doing fine. If you look at the whole platform it's up double digits. The same board was relatively flattish. Obviously most of the increase was those new additions that we put up.

Great. Thanks so much.

Alexia Quadrani, JPMorgan.

Thank you. On the better pricing that you've been seeing, when was the last time you saw rates coming up to these levels? Then a bigger-picture question. When you see the kind of increased demand that allows to you raise these rates, how's your thought process in terms of deciding whether to go for better rates on the static boards versus maybe think about additional conversion to digital?

It has been quite some time since we have been able to drive rate up. I think we've been answering this question every quarter since 2010. Most of the growth that comes out of recession in our platform initially comes from increases in occupancy. That's traditionally coming in and out of recessions for the last four that we've managed through. That has been the case. Now with this recession, everything happened a little slower. Getting the normalized occupancy took longer. It took four years. Now that we are at normalized occupancy, with a little bit of a tail wind behind us on the macro-economy, we are able to see and drive rates.

There's not really a trade-off between driving rate and digital conversions. As a general rule, we are converting our best and most profitable units from analog to digital, because that's where you see the best lift. It's really a function of really the attractiveness of an individual unit to a digital conversion, more so than a trade-off between analog rate and the conversion, if that makes sense.

Yes, thanks very much.

Tracy Young, Evercore.

Hi, following up on that, you used to also give occupancy and rate on bulletins and posters. Maybe that would be helpful also for us to get a sense of the increase in price? Also, how is the telecom sector or category been doing this quarter? Thanks.

Yes, Tracy you'll remember that we converted from monthly to daily billing last year. That created two issues for us. Number one, our historical rate and occupancy statistics hadn't developed a lot of noise, and really became not too relevant. Number two, calculating occupancy on a daily basis also becomes a little bit problematic. We are working on trying to figure out a way to give you very meaningful and relevant statistics.

Right now, we are trying to highlight same-board growth. If you look at what we highlighted in the release, pro forma analog bulletin revenue, that's a same-board growth without breaking it out for rate and occupancy gains. We can tell you, though, that the vast majority of that was rate. I can't give you a hard number, but I can tell you the vast majority of that was rate. What was the other question?

The question was just on the telecom category. I know it was weak last year. Has that one turned around, as well?

It hasn't really turned around. But the good news is we've lapped the comp. Whereas in previous quarters you would see double-digit declines in that category, because we've lapped the comp, they're now flat.

Okay, thank you.

Eric Handler, MKM Partners.

Yes, thank you very much for taking my question. Just curious, what changed all of a sudden? You have been in this tight range with rate and occupancy for several years now. Then first quarter you got pricing power for the first time in quite some time. Just wondered if there was any sort of inflection point that you saw that enabled this to happen? Then secondly, maybe you could talk about automated billing a little bit more, and tell us what are some of the cost and revenue implications of this?

Thanks. I think it's really the strength, relative strength, of Main Street USA. It's easier for us to drive rate when we are talking to one of our 45,000 local customers and generate demand amongst that universe of buyers, than it is for us to drive rate with national buyers, because they're buying in bulk. If I had to point to one thing, it seems to be relative strength of local economies and Main Street, as opposed to Madison Avenue.

I misspoke, I called it automated billing. What I meant to say was automated buying. It's a buying platform that allows customers that are used to buying digital through an automatic, automated, or programmatic mechanism that uses an algorithm to place their buys, based on the demos and CPMs they are trying to reach.

What are the ramifications? It's a digital-only product, so hopefully it helps us sell available digital inventory. It is a different, as I mentioned, pool of money. Agencies and customers increasingly have a digital pot of money that they're spending, and an ad budget they're spending. The ad budget is actually slowly contracting over time. The digital budgets are getting bigger. As an industry, again it's very important for outdoor, because we have a dynamic digital platform that reaches a lot of eyeballs to participate in that shift from traditional ad budgets to digital budgets.

Right now this is a science project. It will hopefully be embraced. I think what's of note is that we are live, and we have run a real live, although test customer, through the paces, and everything worked.

Thank you.

Bill Bird, FBR.

Good morning. For Q2, what kind of trends are you seeing in your shorter-cycle projects like posters? On digital, how best to interpret the throttling forward on new digital boards? Is that in effect signaling your view of the strength you're seeing in the business?

We are a bottom-up, not top-down organization. Our local general managers are complete business people. They make calls on managing their local inventory, yield management, and importantly, the deployment of digital within their market. When you see us accelerate, that's a sign of local confidence, that our local managers are saying look, I'm seeing sufficient demand to increase my digital capacity.

On the issue of what we're seeing in Q2, my comments on 3%s and 4%s on the top line, as opposed to the 5%s and 6%s we were seeing in the first, was really meant to modulate enthusiasm just a bit. Because we're not going to -- I don't think we can repeat what we did in the first on the top. The bottom line looks super, so hopefully we don't have any expense surprises, and I think we should be perfectly fine there. But it's a little early in the day to slice and dice the top by product.

Thank you.

David Miller, Topeka Capital Markets.

Yes, Sean, an overall high-level topical question. As you're looking out at your categorical break-down, and looking out at the categories that are your top ten categories, are there any other, are there any emerging categories that you see coming down the pike that maybe traditionally have not used outdoor in the past. The one that comes to mind, I remember, is health care and hospitals. Out here in Los Angeles, I remember six or seven years ago you would never see a hospital advertising on a billboard. Now you see it all the time, and it sounds like that's a top-ten category for you. Looking out ahead, are there any other categories like that, that you see emerging, that may become top 10 categories one day? Thanks a lot.

Sure, great question. Yes, on hospitals that was a pleasant Q1. Hospitals actually are number three for us now. They're 10% of our book. They were up 8% in the queue, so that's nice to see. The emerging categories that are going to be I think helpful -- again, this is not Lamar specific -- but industry initiatives that Jeremy Mayo talks about on measurement, on buying platform, I think are going to inure to our benefit. That will help us get, again, pieces of that digital spend.

Now, I can -- if we were going to get categories we don't get, the largest and most important would be packaged goods. If we can get into the head of P&G, and get a piece of what they are doing on other screens, that would be very powerful. Again, to do that we need the kind of buying platforms that I referenced went live for us last week, and that Jeremy and out front are developing.

The other big category, I think, and these are people that appreciate outdoor, they love the big splash. But if you look at what Apple and Google are beginning to do in their branding, they are beginning to look at large format out of home again. I shouldn't say again, because Apple has always used us. But I think to a greater degree.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Our last question will come from James Dix with Wedbush.

Good morning, guys. Wondering if you are seeing any interesting trends in terms of growth by region. I know there's been talk about what could be happening in the oil patch economies. Then also I'd be curious in terms of markets where you've seen strong real estate advertising in the past, which took a hit. You're talking about the category coming back, wondering if that's correlating to any particular regions which are showing outlier growth? Thanks.

Yes, good question, and you're right. The best-performing regions were coastal. Extremely good performances turned in on the west coast and the eastern seaboard. Some of that was driven by real estate recovery, absolutely. The oil patch question is interesting. I was out in Midland Odessa a couple of weeks ago. There seems to be more confidence than you think out there. West Texas markets are still pacing up in the low single digits. We are struggling a little bit in some of our south Louisiana markets, where rig counts are just vital to businesses like the offshore servicing businesses. We're seeing a little bit of erosion in places like Houma, Louisiana, and Lafayette, Louisiana. But overall, it's not the end of the world in those places. They're doing okay. Relative to our overall platform, it's not material.

Great. Thanks very much.

Thank you. Sir, it looks like we have no further questions at this time.

Well great, everybody. Appreciate your interest in Lamar, and look forward to visiting in August.

Thank you. This concludes today's presentation. You may disconnect at this time.