Salem Media Group Inc (SALM) 2016 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good evening, and welcome to the Salem Media Group third-quarter 2016 earnings conference call.

(Operator Instructions)

Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Evan Masyr, please go ahead.

Welcome and thank you all for joining us today for Salem Media Group's third-quarter 2016 earnings call. As a reminder, if you get disconnected at any time, you can dial back in or listen from our website at www.Salemmedia.com.

Joining me on the call today are Edward Atsinger, Chief Executive Officer; David Santrella, President of Broadcast Media; and David Evans, President of Interactive and Publishing. We will begin in just a moment with our prepared remarks. Once we're done, the conference call operator will come back on the line to instruct you on how to submit questions.

Please be advised that statements made on this call that relate to future plans, events, financial results, prospects or performance are forward-looking statements as defined under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These are forward-looking statements are based on currently available information. Actual results may differ materially from those anticipated and reported results should not be considered an indication of future performance.

We do not intend or take no obligation to update our forward-looking statements including forecasts of future performance, the potential for growth or existing markets, the opening of new markets or the potential growth from future acquisitions. More information on risks and uncertainties that may affect our business and financial results are included in our annual report on Form 10-K and other public filings we have made with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The conference call also contains non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of Regulation G, specifically station operating income, or SOI, EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted free cash flow. In conformity with Regulation G, information required to accompany the disclosure of non-GAAP financial measures is available on the investor relations portion of our website at Salemmedia.com.

With that, I would like to now turn the call over to Edward Atsinger, Ed?

Thank you, Evan, thanks to all of you for joining us for today's conference call. I have got some prepared remarks, I will follow my normal protocol comment a bit on Q3 financial to performance and discuss some recent acquisition activity and then conclude with a few comments on our dividend and free cash flow situation. Then I will throw the call back to Evan who can give you more detail on Q3 and provide some guidance for Q4.

Let's dive in for the third quarter. Total revenue was up 5.6%, expenses were up 7.3% resulting in a 1.5% decrease in adjusted EBITDA. By and large, we're pleased with third-quarter performance with the notable exception of increase in the expense side, and that was driven almost entirely by an increase in healthcare costs and that item discussed deserves a little further discussion.

We referenced during earnings call on a number of occasions that we are partially self-insured for our health insurance. We made that decision to self-insure back in about 2005 based upon an analysis of the characteristics of our employee base. We followed that with a health incentive program to encourage a healthy lifestyle and we frankly think the move to self insurance has been successful for us and has resulted by and large in the savings of several million dollars over the period of time that we've had the program in place when compared to what it would have been if we had been on a fixed-premium program. So we are not unhappy with the self-insurance program, but we still have challenges with the insurance -- with medical insurance.

One of the big disadvantages of being self-insured is that it is difficult to predict your health care cost on any quarterly basis although it is fairly consistent and predictable on an annual basis. Actual healthcare costs for any quarter are dependent upon the number of related claims for that quarter, and we don't know what it is going to be until we receive the claims, and we don't receive the claims until the quarter is over.

Over time, if we average healthcare costs on a reasonable expectation, say for Q3, we probably would've budgeted a 10% increase over the same quarter of the prior year. That is closer to what we've seen in healthcare inflation. However, instead of an expected 10% increase in Q3, we actually experienced a 52% increase in the quarter due to an abnormally high level of large claims.

Another contributing factor, of course, is the challenge that most of our peers are experiencing in trying to accommodate the mandates of the so-called Affordable Healthcare Act. With all of the additional mandates that have come along with the so-called Obamacare, such as the mandate to include adult children whether in college or not up to age 26 in your plan, the inability to take into consideration in many respects existing conditions and the numerous other requirements the Act has incorporated, it all conspired to drive costs up to typically double digits or more for us, in spite of the fact that we save substantial amounts of money by being self-insured.

Having said this, the 7.3% increase in expenses for the quarter was driven, as I said, largely by an increase in health claims. If we were to normalize the medical expenses to an increase of 10% over the quarter for the prior year, which is more in line with, as I said, inflation in this area, adjusted EBITDA would have actually been up 3.7% instead of declining 1.5%. So you can see that the meaningful impact this unanticipated expenses have on our Q3 earnings.

Let's take a look at Q3 results by division. Broadcast revenue was up a solid 3.2% for the quarter, but I might add while political revenue contributed to this increase, political spending overall on the broadcast side was not as strong as we had hoped. And we have heard from others in the broadcast industry talk about the same lack of political spending this quarter for their businesses as well.

For the third quarter this year we did book $1 million of broadcast political revenue. While this compares favorably with Q3 of last year of only $300,000 it is down about 20% from the last presidential year of 2012 where broadcast political revenue reached $1.2 million. Based on the current pace, it appears that broadcast political spending for Q4, especially at the top of the ticket, will also fall short of 2012 levels.

Network revenue was up 29.2% for the quarter, obviously this extraordinary political year is a major driver in this revenue growth. Our nationally syndicated hosts have significantly increased their profile beyond the exposure of their own radio programs, which has resulted in an increased time spent listening to their shows and better response for advertisers, all of which has led to higher rates of renewal and additional advertising clients.

Spot advertising revenue was up 1.9% of in spite of the fact that there was a material decline in transactional spot business associated with our CCM stations in Dallas and Atlanta. There's been a trend in the recent quarters related to the transactional business in those two cities where advertisers seem to be targeting the somewhat younger demographic than our current target demographic. We're making some adjustments to respond to those trends, and we think that we'll see improvements in the upcoming quarters.

[Stable block] programming revenue had another positive quarter with a revenue increase of 2.4% over the quarter from the prior year and finally, broadcast expenses were up 5.3% for the quarter but as I mentioned, the increased healthcare cost was the biggest single factor in that increase. Without the unusual increase in medical expenses, total broadcast expenses would have been up only 4.1%.

I should mention one further item pertaining to our broadcast division. The start up losses associated with the radio stations that we acquired in 2015 continue to decline, and we see good improvement there. We commented on recent calls that because of unique opportunities in 2015 to acquire many of the Disney stations on very attractive prices that we had an unusual number of startups and remember we have to reprogram all of the stations so we begin with zero cash flow. However, we are making good progress there. This quarter the losses were less than $100,000 and we expect that they will improve an show positive cash flow quite soon.

Digital revenue was up 7.8% for the third quarter due to a 92% increase in our website traffic compared to a year ago. This traffic increase was driven largely, very substantially by increased traffic from our Christian mobile apps. Our business of these mobile apps were up 960% and now represent 55% of total traffic compared to 10% a year ago.

While we are still seeing a decline in Facebook traffic, it's down 46%, our dependence on this traffic is much less than it used to be, now only 9% of total traffic. One important note about this shift in traffic to mobile apps and away from desktop and tablet, we've commented on this before and this is pretty well-known industrywide, is that there are far fewer ads on mobile apps and visits are much shorter. As a result our growth in traffic is much larger on the mobile app, on mobile generally that our growth in revenue, so that is a challenge that we continue to address.

Additionally, we received $500,000 in political revenue in the quarter on our conservative news and opinion websites. This compares favorably to last year when we received $200,000 of political revenue and 2012 when we received $300,000 of political revenue. Digital expenses were up 6.3%, resulting in a 13.2% increase in operating income. The operating income increase would've been 17.3% without the unusually high medical costs.

Finally, our publishing revenue for the quarter was up 18.9%. This was due to the addition of Hillcrest Publishing purchased in August and the success of three [regular] e-books, Dinesh D'Souza's Hillary's America, Ed Klein's Guilty as Sin and The Clinton Cash graphic novel. Hillary's America spent a total of eight weeks in the New York Times' bestseller list peaking at number one while Guilty as Sin has been on the list for two weeks and Clinton Cash was on there for four weeks peaking at number one in graphic works.

The fourth quarter will be a fairly quiet quarter with only one noteworthy release currently planned, Paul Batura of Folks in the Family will be releasing Chosen for Greatness, How Adoption Changes the World. Also David Limbaugh will be releasing his next book in the first quarter of 2017. For the quarter publishing posted a profit of $200,000, which includes approximately $300,000 of startup losses associated with the Hillcrest Media acquisition compared to a loss of $100,000 last year.

Let me take a quick look our acquisition activity during the quarter. On August 1 we acquired the general marketing publishing company we just comment on, Hillcrest, for $3.5 million. This is being integrated into our existing Christian content self publisher, gives us some scale and gives us some opportunities that we think will help us grow those businesses. We also purchased Mike Turner's line of investment products for $500,000, which we will fold into our investment newsletter business.

And finally on the broadcast side we purchased three additional translators bringing the total of our translator purchases up to 30 all of which were acquired during the FCC window that allowed owners of AM stations to buy translators and move them into major markets on very favorable terms. We expect these translators when fully up and operational to enhance both operating income in the markets that they are located in but also to represent a significant balance sheet improvement given the favorable basis upon which the FCC rule change allowed us to acquire those stations.

Lets comment a minute on the balance sheet. We reduced our term loan and revolver debt by $3 million in the third quarter, leverage improved from 5.39 to 5.29.

Let me then conclude my prepared remarks with a brief discussion of our dividend and free cash flow situation. On September 30 we paid $1.7 million of quarterly dividends actually a return of capital cash distribution since we are not a taxpayer and therefore, this is return to our shareholders on a tax-free basis. It does reduce their basis but there is no tax bill with that. That represents $0.065 per share and that represents I think a 4.6% yield based on today's closing price. Additionally, we have cash flow yield of 17.2% based upon current stock price and adjusted free cash flow over the last 12 months, which was $25.2 million.

It's a lot of information, but with that, I'll turn the back over to Evan with additional information on the quarter and to provide guidance for Q4 2016. Evan, back to you

Thank you, Ed. For the third quarter total revenue increased 5.6% to $71.3 million operating expenses on a recurring basis increased 7.3% to $58.6 million and adjusted EBITDA decreased 1.5% to $12.6 million. But as Ed pointed out, if our healthcare costs for the quarter were normalized to a 10% growth, adjusted EBITDA that would've actually increased 3.7%. Net broadcast revenue increased 3.2% to $51.1 million and broadcast operating expenses increased 5.3% to $37.4 million resulting in a 2.1% decline in station operating income down to $13.6 million.

On a same station basis net broadcast revenue increased 2.1% to $50.5 million and SOI decreased 1.5% to $13.8 million. The same station results include broadcast revenue from 109 of our 118 stations in our network operations and represents 99% of our net broadcast revenue. And for those of you that are interested I will take a look at the revenue on the basis of our formats.

We have 42 of our radio stations that are programmed in our foundational Christian teaching and talk format. These stations contributed 42% of our total broadcast revenue and increased 2% for the quarter. Our 32 news talk stations had an increase of 10% in revenue in the quarter and overall these stations contributed 18% of total broadcast revenue.

Revenue for my 13 contemporary Christian music stations contributed 20% of total broadcast revenue and decreased 9% for the quarter. This was driven largely by the overall softness that Ed previously mentioned particularly in the Dallas and Atlanta markets. The eight stations we have programmed in Spanish language, Christian teaching and talk programming increased by 7% and this format comprises a 2% of our broadcast revenue.

Finally, we have 15 stations doing a business talk format, and that format contributed 3% of total broadcast revenue and experienced a 32% increase in revenue for the quarter. Network revenue increased 29.2% for the quarter and represents 9% of total broadcast revenue. Publishing revenue was up 18.9% to $8.2 million and represents 11% of total revenue. Revenue from our digital media businesses increased 7.8% to $12 million and represents 17% of our total revenue.

During the quarter, we repaid $2.25 million of our term loan B and reduced the revolver balance by about $700,000. At the end of the quarter, we had $269 million due on the term loan and had an additional $1.1 million drawn on the revolver. Our leverage ratio decreased from 5.39 last quarter to 5.29 at the end of September compared to a compliance covenant of 6.

For the fourth quarter 2016, we're projecting total revenue to be between a decrease of 1% and an increase of 1% over fourth quarter 2015 total revenue of $69.1 million and we're also projecting operating expenses before gains or losses of the disposal of assets, impairment of long-lived assets, depreciation, amortization of stock based compensation expense, to increase between 2% and 5% compared to the fourth quarter of 2015 operating expenses of $55.8 million.

This concludes our prepared remarks. Now, we'd like to answer questions that anyone may have. I will turn it back over to the operator.

(Operator Instructions)

The first question comes from Michael Kupinski, Noble Financial.

In terms of the expense guidance for the fourth quarter, is that expense guidance factor in a 10% increase in the healthcare cost? And then if you could just talk a little bit more in detail about what other factors of the 2% to 5% increase might have that may not be recurring?

I'll answer that. With respect to what's in there for healthcare, we do have a more normalized 10% or somewhere in that neighborhood increase for healthcare costs for Q4. A couple of other factors that play into that expense increase is some of the acquisitions, in particular Hillcrest, which we acquired this year. We have duplicate expenses as we are in the process of integrating Hillcrest into Xulon so we have things like extra rent and some extra salaries of people that may be -- the positions may be moving over to Orlando in the future. That is part of it and then other acquisitions that we've had during the year like the station we started [LMAing] in San Francisco. Those things are in Q4 of 2016 that weren't necessarily in Q4 of 2015.

In terms of the political advertising, I understand that you guys really didn't play in the last presidential cycle that much aside from Obama spending a lot of money I don't think that Mitt Romney spent a lot with you guys, might just quantify that. But as we look into the fourth quarter typically you guys are used as a get-out-the-vote type of scenario. Could we expect that political would give a little bit more of the increase into your fourth quarter and if you have any visibility about that? And then also you might chat a little bit about, I believe that California has a medicinal marijuana on the ballot, and I was wondering how that was impacting political advertising in the fourth quarter as well?

Michael, it's Dave Santrella, let me address those. First off on the presidential race, there's really relative little money coming in from certainly the Trump campaign and we're not going to get it from the Clinton campaign. Last week literally we got a few really late last minute orders and they were kind of the first orders that we've seen. But nothing significant to speak of.

We're getting some tack money. But again not to the levels that we've seen in the past. With regards to California and ballot initiatives, we get a little bit of that money but just to put things into perspective, and Q3, political was actually the 18th largest advertising category for Salem's radio division, so it really did not even make the top 10, which it probably would in a political year.

Do you have any viewpoint on what the political number looks like for your broadcast group in the fourth quarter?

No, we don't have any specific guidance for broadcast in the political and the broadcast division for the fourth quarter.

In terms of the growth rate down 1%, up 1%, can you just give us a little flavor of what issues that you are seeing whether it is local, national, where are you seeing the weakness? What categories maybe just a little bit more color there?

It's really the biggest issue there on the local spot side is just transactional business, specifically in Dallas and then in Atlanta, and Atlanta to a lesser degree. Dallas and Atlanta are both big transactional markets for us. We've seen a trend with that business, they've gone a little bit younger and so in other words, the buy comes in adults 18 to 49 or women 18 to 49 and that is not as strong a suit for us as say women 25, 54. So that's creative challenges that we are addressing.

I think that's all I have for now (multiple speakers).

One additional point, Mike. Last year on the book publishing side, we had a much stronger Q4 title schedule than this year. In particular, we had a David Limbaugh release a year ago and his next book isn't hitting this Q4 it is hitting Q1 2017. So that's a pretty big impact in terms of strength to schedule compared to last year and that's reflected in the flat guidance.

In terms of the schedule then, is there any particular book that might have breakout potential in terms of fourth quarter?

No, it's a very modest schedule this Q4. The political books that we had all came out Q2, Q3 in advance of the election. Q4 this year is quiet compared to Q4 last year.

Got you. I think that's all I have for now. Thank you.

Thank you.

Robert Maltbie, Singular Research.

Hello, Evan, Edward, and Dave. How are you guys?

We're doing well.

All right. What an interesting times we live in, aren't they? Regarding the situation with your healthcare costs, I know you mentioned early in the call the decision to self-insure and the I guess unanticipated or expected, shall we call it a little blip up in those costs. Would anything inspire or cause you to possibly change your insurance to other types of coverage?

I will tell you that, Robert, when we saw the numbers for the quarter and we were seeing the claims coming in, absolutely it was something we looked at and said are we still saving money? Is it still in our best interest to be self-insured? Because obviously we have to deal with volatility being self-insured.

But we went back through, starting at 2013 so 2013, 2014, 2015, and year-to-date 2016 with our broker we did a very detailed analysis on what did we spend over that time period versus what would we have spent under a fully insured/guaranteed cost type of program? The numbers in that time period that we saved were quite compelling north of $5 million. So while yes, we do have volatility it's, at least from what we can see, well worth it to save $5 million over a four year period. So it is something we will address on a periodic basis as we go through renewals and take a look at whether it's appropriate to stay self-insured but at this point we feel that's the most prudent action for the Company.

I see. Regarding the actual political spending that has occurred this election season versus possibly your expectations going into it, how would you say that they've aligned?

I think it's aligned lower than what our expectations were. When we did the budgets at the front end of the year it was hard to predict really who the candidates would be as we got to November. I think there were what, 14 Republican candidates in January? So I think we anticipated -- we probably did not anticipate the candidate at that point and knew who it is, and the fact that spending would be down at that point.

So everything about this year has been a little extraordinary and in that regard we got less than we budgeted, I guess we might point to one positive is of course the extraordinary developments all year in the political season have also driven much more interest in the news talk format. So we've certainly seen the upticks there that I referred to, both in terms of time spent listening, in terms of advertiser response and in terms of renewals.

While it is not directly limited link to campaigns it certainly has helped us in terms of building those particular formats on a longer term basis. So for that, we're grateful, but no, we've been disappointed. The Trump campaign has spent less money nationally then would've been expected and because it was settled in April most of the money we were getting was when it was competitive when nobody knew who the Republican candidate was going to be.

Plus the popularity of our host, particularly Hugh Hewett, I think it aided our network revenue scenario.

Okay. I know on previous calls you've spoken of your initiatives for more digital growth. Can you give us more color into that maybe expectations or goals versus actual performance here so far this year?

Well, as Evan mentioned earlier, our digital revenue did quite well in the quarter, we were up 7.8%. Our traffic did been extremely well, up 92%. What is driving the traffic growth is over the past year, we've acquired five Christian mobile apps. Those apps are performing extremely well, significantly ahead of our original projections, and they are definitely fueling growth in our additional business.

Offsetting that however, Facebook has been changing its newsfeed algorithms for the past year or two and we've seen a big drop in traffic from Facebook down about 50%. So those are two pretty significant shifts in our business. We expect Facebook to continue to be a challenge and we expect the Christian mobile apps to continue to perform well. So digital is in good shape but things are changing and we've got to keep up with those changes, and we think we have with this extra investment in the mobile area.

To bring up the algos, I know someone over there, I think it was Marco in Germany had a beef with Google for various reasons about the methodology behind the algos. Is that just something totally we are all at the mercy of, our do you have any insight into that?

Facebook controls their newsfeed algorithm just as Google controlled their search algorithm. I think in both cases they are trying to maximize their audience, their revenue opportunity and their engagement with their users.

In Facebook's case they're trying to keep people on Facebook. That's what's in Facebook's best interest. So the types of posts they are favoring on the newsfeed are posts that lead people in the Facebook environment rather than having people leave. If I was in Facebook's shoes, I think I would do that too.

No doubt. Final question regarding decisions on capital allocation, did I hear 17% as your current free cash flow yield?

That is correct. That's where we are based on today's stock price.

Yes, so will there be any consideration towards perhaps some type of, I know paying down or deleveraging is also an important objective, but is there, at these levels some type of a balancing objective where perhaps a share buyback might be a better return for shareholders than paying down debt or any thoughts on that?

I think that our priority is going to remain to pay down debt. To get our leverage lower we're going to refi our current credit facility, probably beginning sometime in fourth quarter 2018. So that's a couple of years from today. We want our leverage to be at a level that will facilitate a smooth attractive refi and so that's going to be our priority rather than increasing direct value to shareholders. We think that that will drive stock price we think as we get our leverage lower and if we can get the new facility at a cost of capital that is attractive, again, we think that will be a great benefit to shareholders. And that is the priority right now that the Board has mandated and that Management has fully bought into.

I appreciate that. To refresh memory what is the current cost of debt?

All in, including the interest rate swaps we have we are just north of 5% on our term loan and revolver blended.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Chris Temple from the National Investor.

With that last question or series of questions, as far as a dividend is concerned, correct me if I have got the figure a little wrong, but I seem to recall that your informal target for the dividend as a percentage of free cash flow is actually 20%. So it is a bit below that now and if you our fourth quarter projections for, give or take flat revenue, but it increased in expenses are correct and especially wanting to get the balance sheet looking better, is a dividend cut on the table?

I doubt if there will be a dividend cut unless there was a very substantial turn in our fortunes. No, we don't see that. These are targets and they are not hard and fast, they are targets that we want to maintain over a longer period of time, but I don't see that happening.

I think will be able to maintain the targets, both for acquisitions. Probably as we've mentioned in prior calls, we will deemphasize the acquisition part to maintain the debt retirement as our top priority and to maintain the dividend. And I guess I should also comment that we referred to it as a dividend but as you know, it's not really a dividend, it is a return of capital. It is not a tax benefit because we don't pay taxes. It does reduce our shareholders basis in their stock slightly, but it doesn't represent a taxable advantage. So technically it is not a dividend but it is a return of capital.

Got you, okay. One other quick question on the healthcare cost. The self insuring obviously is usually a great thing. I don't know if I've ever read this before or not do you guys have anything in the form of a catastrophic or umbrella policy for anything that's really off the charts catastrophic?

We do, Chris. Any claims that are above $150,000 that's all reinsured, plus we have an aggregate level of insurance. So if total medical claims hit above a certain level regardless of individual large claims just in total we also have insurance there. We're not completely exposed.

Thank you.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Edward Atsinger CEO for any closing remarks.

Thank you, operator and again, thank you all for joining us. We look forward to visiting with you again when we give the year-end results and report on Q4 so looking forward to talking with you then.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.