Urban One Inc (UONEK) 2023 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Welcome to Urban One's First Quarter Conference Call. During this conference call, Urban One will be sharing with you certain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or its future performance. Urban One cautions you that certain factors, including risks and uncertainties referred to in the 10-K, 10-Q and other reports it periodically files with the Securities and Exchange Commission could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those indicated by its projections or forward-looking statements. This call will present information as of June 10, 2024.

Please note that Urban One disclaims any duty to update any forward-looking statements made in this presentation. In this call, Urban One may also discuss some non-GAAP financial measures in talking about its performance. These measures will be reconciled to GAAP, either during the course of this call or in the company's press release, which can be found on its website at www.urbanone.com. A replay of the conference will be available from 5:30 PM Eastern Time, 06/10/24 until 11:59 PM, 06/17/24.

Callers may access the replay by calling 866-207-1041. International is 402-970-0847. Callers may dial direct. The replay access code is 1372800. Access to live audio and a replay of the conference call will also be available on Urban One's corporate website at www.urbanone.com. The replay will be made available on the website for seven days after the call. No other recordings or copies of this call are authorized or may be relied upon.

I will now turn the call over to Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer of Urban One, who is joined by Peter D. Thompson, Chief Financial Officer.

Thank you very much, operator, and also joining Peter and I as usual, are Jody Drewer, our Chief Financial Officer at TV One and Cleo; Kris Simpson, our General Counsel; and Karen Wishart, who is our EVP of Administration. And thank you. We haven't done a call in a while because we've been going through a long and arduous audit with a new audit firm. But as you have seen from the filings and the press release, we are finally completed with the year-end 2023 audit and also our first quarter 2024 audit results as well. And so we're officially back in compliance with the Nasdaq. And so very happy about that. And in time to keep our eyes moving forward in terms of filings to come.

And you saw from the year end results, we were right in our range -- the guidance that we've been giving all along came in at $128.4 million at year end adjusted EBITDA. Something that we've been asked on a consistent basis and we haven't been in a position to do or have been willing to do at that point in time is talk about some what we think 2024 is going to look like. But at almost the six-month mark, we want to provide 2024 EBITDA guidance. And we expect, depending on how robust political is to do $110 million to $120 million of EBITDA in the 2024 calendar year.

So with that, we -- you can triangulate where you think we're going to be in terms of leverage ratios, et cetera. The political landscape is yet to play out. We're hopeful about it, but it's starting now for us. The primary season wasn't as robust as we would have liked it to be. But we could think that the presidential landscape will be quite robust and we're having really good conversations. So with that, I will turn it over to Peter to get into the specifics of the numbers. We got up more than usual because we're dealing with two reporting periods. So, Peter?

Thank you, Alfred. Just a couple of clarifications, we got audited results for '23. Q1 would technically be unaudited, although it's been reviewed by [UI] and signed off. It's not actually audited until I finish out the annual audit. And then the guidance number that Alfred referred to would be adjusted EBITDA in the $110 million, $120 million range. And with that, consolidated net revenue was down by 9.2% year over year for quarter ended December 31, 2023, at approximately $120.3 million.

Net revenue for the radio segment was $41.7 million, a decrease of 12.4% year over year by 23% on a same-station basis. According to Miller Kaplan, our local ad sales were down 6.8% against a market that was down 7.2%. National ad sales were down 37.2% against the market down 24.5%. And political advertising was the largest driver of that decline in Q4, down $6.6 million in the radio division or 76% year over year, which was a expected, that was not unexpected.

Net revenue for the retail segment was $10.8 million in the fourth quarter, down 9.7% from the prior year. And adjusted EBITDA was $3.4 million, up 10.6% for the quarter. Net revenues for the digital segment decreased by 12.5% in Q4 to $21.2 million. Direct national sales were down while local radio, streaming and podcast revenue were all up. Adjusted EBITDA was $3.5 million, which was up 82%. We recognized approximately $47.3 million of revenue from our cable television segment during the quarter, a decrease of 4.9%.

Cable TV advertising revenue was up 1.9%. An updated rate card, reflecting current delivery drove the overall rate down, but increased volume, along with additional units supplied towards ADU helped to mitigate the rate impact. The cable TV affiliate revenue was down by 13.4% with favorable rate increases offset by net churn. Cable subscribers of TV One as measured by Nielsen, finished Q4 '23 at $42.9 million -- 42.9 million subs compared to 44.0 million at the end of Q3, and Cleo TV had 41.4 million Nielsen subs.

Moving on to the Q1 revenues, consolidated net revenue was down by 5% year over year at approximately $104.4 million. Net revenue for the radio segment was $36.4 million, an increase of 3.3% year over year, but a decrease of 7.9% on a same-station basis. According to Miller Kaplan, our local ad sales were down 1.9% against the market that was down 7.9%. And our national ad sales were down 18% against a market that was down 4.3%.

Net revenue for the reach segment was $8.5 million first quarter, down 22.4% from the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA was $1.8 million, down 47.7% for the quarter. Net revenues for the digital segment decreased by 7.3% for Q1 at $14 million. Direct national sales were down while CTV, local radio, streaming and podcast revenues were all up for the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $3 million, down 20.1%. We recognized approximately $46.2 million of revenue from our cable television segment during the quarter, a decrease of 6.9%.

Cable TV advertising revenue was down 1.8%. And updated rate card, reflecting current delivery drove average unit rates down the increased volume and increased Urban One honest sponsorships, helped mitigate the rate impact. Cable TV affiliate revenue was down by 12.8% with favorable rate increases of $1 million, offset by a negative $4 million of churn. Cable subscribers for TV One, as measured by Nielsen, finished Q1 2024 at $40.7 million compared to $42.9 million at the end of Q4. And Cleo TV had 38.5 million Nielsen subs.

Turning to operating expenses for Q4, operating expenses, excluding depreciation and amortization, stock-based compensation and impairment of long-lived assets, increased to approximately $105.6 million for the quarter, up 1.6% from the prior year. Radio operating expenses were up 6.5% or $2.1 million. The Houston Radio acquisition, which was effective August 1, 2023, added approximately $3.1 million of expense.

So if you normalize for that, expenses were actually down. On a same-station basis, variable expenses relative to revenue such as sales commission, bonus compensation, bad debt and national rep fees were all down. Reach operating expenses were down by 15.1%, driven by reduced variable expenses tied to revenue such as talent compensation, sales commissions and bonus compensation.

Operating expenses in the digital segment were down 17.2%, driven predominantly by variable traffic acquisition and sales expenses tied to lower direct advertising revenue. Cable TV expenses were down 4.5% year over year. Content amortization was up by $1.5 million, driven by an increase of $600,000 for 2023 originals and $1 million for pre-2023 write-offs related to programming tax credits. That was non-cash, and that was added back to adjusted EBITDA. This increase was offset by a reduction in promotional media spend of $1.7 million due to the timing of return and the series. $900,000, driven by reduced bonuses and $200,000 of reduced travel and expenses in the quarter.

Operating expenses in corporate and eliminations segment were up approximately $5.9 million, primarily as a result of a higher non-cash expense for the CEO's TV One award and higher third-party consulting and audit expenses. For adjusted EBITDA, we added back $2.8 million for the non-cash TV One award expense and $2.6 million for non-recurring professional fees related to the audit and $1.7 million for prior period balance sheet adjustments, including a write off for computer hardware losses.

For the first quarter, operating expenses, excluding depreciation, amortization, stock-based comp and impairment of long-lived assets, increased to approximately $88.3 million, up 11.6% from approximately $79.1 million incurred in the first quarter of 2023. Radio operating expenses were up 13.1% or $3.5 million. The Houston Radio acquisition added approximately $3.2 million of expense. So the bulk of the expense increase related to the Houston acquisition. Reach operating expenses were down 10.9%, driven by decreased affiliate station compensation expense and lower programming talent costs.

Operating expenses in the digital segment were down 3.1%, driven predominantly by lower traffic acquisition costs, which related to lower direct revenues. Cable TV expenses were down 1.5% year over year. Content amortization expense was down $2.1 million, driven by an increase of $800,000 for originals, which was incremental hours offset by $2.9 million of acquisitions going out of license. $1 million increase in marketing and promotion expense was due to timing of campaigns. And there was a $0.5 million increase in travel to the Urban One Honors event.

Operating expenses in corporate eliminations segment up by approximately $7.3 million, primarily as a result of higher third-party professional fees. We had a $5 million non-recurring professional fee related to the prolonged audit and remediation of controls, which was added back to adjusted EBITDA. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $26.4 million for the fourth quarter, down 30.5%. Consolidated broadcast and digital operating income was approximately $38 million, a decrease of 19.6%. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $21.5 million for the first quarter, down 28.9%. Consolidated broadcast and digital operating income was approximately $32 million, a decrease of 18.5%.

Interest income for Q4 increased to $2.5 million compared to $0.5 million in the prior year. Interest expense decreased to approximately $14.2 million for the fourth quarter, down from $14.6 million in the prior year due to the lower overall debt balances and the company made cash interest payments of approximately $121,000 in the quarter. Interest income increased to $2 million in the first quarter from $300,000 last year. Interest expense decreased to approximately $13 million for Q1, down from $14.1 million last year due to the lower overall debt balances.

The company made cash interest payments of approximately $26.8 million in the quarter. And during the quarter the company repurchased $75 million of its 2028 notes at an average price of 88.3% par. The next semiannual debt service payment is due on August 1. A $5 million impairment charges recorded in Q4 permit primarily for our Washington DC radio market, and there were no impairments recorded in first quarter, 2024.

Provision for income taxes was approximately $2.7 million for the fourth quarter, and the company paid cash income taxes in the amount of $337,000. Provision for income taxes was approximately $2.5 million for the first quarter and the company paid cash taxes of approximately $1.6 million. Net loss was approximately $11 million or $0.23 per share compared to a net loss of $1.9 million or $0.04 per share for the fourth quarter of '22. And for the first quarter, net income was approximately $7.5 million, or $0.15 per share, compared to a net loss of $2.9 million, or $0.06 per share for the first quarter of '23.

During the fourth quarter, the company repurchased approximately 396,000 shares of Class D common stock in the amount of $1.4 million. During the first quarter, the company repurchased approximately 256,000 shares of Class D common stock in the amount of approximately $1.3 million and that related to the employee stock pool. Capital expenditures for the quarter were approximately $1.8 million. And as at December 31, 2023, total gross debt was $725 million. Ending unrestricted cash was $233.1 million, resulting in net debt of approximately $491.9 million, which we compared to $128.4 million of LTM adjusted EBITDA for a total net leverage ratio of 3.83 times.

Pro forma for the Houston Radio acquisition, total net leverage was 3.74 times. As of March 31, 2024, total gross debt was $650 million, ending unrestricted cash was $155.3 million, resulting in net debt of approximately $494.7 million, which would compare to $119.6 million of LTM reported adjusted EBITDA for a total net leverage ratio of 4.14 times and pro forma for the Houston Radio acquisition, total net leverage was 4.08 times. And with that, I'll hand back to Alfred.

So circling back on other questions that people have been asking is we gave it to 2024 adjusted EBITDA guide. Thank you for the correction on Q1 numbers being reviewed, but not audited, Peter. But on a full year 2024 adjusted EBITDA guide of $110 million to $120 million, we are still very focused on continuing to manage the company's leverage down. We do not have any M&A on the table planned.

We're always looking at things opportunistically. We have been focused on continuing to lower the company's leverage, and we'll continue to do that. Whenever we look at M&A opportunities, we like them to be not only accretive, but hopefully delevering as well, particularly in the businesses that we're in where you can't count on top line industry level growth. So any sort of M&A kind of needs to fit into the synergistic category, which should produce accretiveness and de-leveraging.

So that's where we're sitting now in terms of stuff that's on the table and what are our intention is going forward for this year. So we haven't come to any concrete decisions on capital allocations at this point in time. But those overarching goals and the thesis that I just laid out for you guide our decision-making process.

So with that, operator, I'd love to open it up for questions from the participants on the call.

(Operator Instructions)

[Tim Daggett, Schroders]

Hey, guys, thanks for taking the questions. As I think about the fixed charges to 2024, specifically CapEx and the taxes of it. Your cash interest is about $48 million per year now after the paydown. And how much do you expect to spend this year on the CapEx and taxes? Thanks.

Yeah. CapEx is penciled out at once and there are a couple of big real estate projects we're doing. We normally run sort of $7 million-ish on CapEx, I think it could be $9 million or $10 million this year. I think we pencil it out around the $9 million mark. And then cash taxes, we're not going to be a federal taxpayer for another couple of years. So I think probably -- what are we look at? A couple of million? Hold on a second. Cash taxes, we've got it pencil out about $3 million this year. So kind of $9 million on CapEx and $3 million on taxes.

And the big CapEx project is our consolidation in Indianapolis, right? I don't know what you have penciled in for that, but we bought the Emmis Cluster radio stations in Indianapolis. We had our own operation there. We've actually been running two separate facilities for quite some time. We ultimately made a deal with our, the Radio One, Urban One original landlord to expand in that facility.

So we moved everybody over to the Emmis facility, while we're building out the expansion in our original facility, so that's taken. But it took us longer to decide where to go and make the right deal. But once we actually get that done in Indianapolis, we're probably going to save another million dollars here in the operating expense there, from what we're currently paying. So that's what's driving the CapEx number this year.

Okay, great. So if I add that up, that's about $60 million of fixed charges amongst interest CapEx and taxes, is there anything else that we should consider in terms of cash outflow? So at the midpoint of the $115 million of EBITDA, less to $60 million that kind of gets you to $55 million of free cash flow. Is there anything else I need to consider for this year?

Yeah. The one thing that can swing a bit is cash versus panel in TV One programming. And so for this year, we've got additional cash going out the door, it doesn't get amortized until future periods. So we should probably pencil in $10 million-ish for that. That's the sort of big-ticket item that won't be easy to get out.

Okay.

That doesn't necessarily come to pass but that's just the forecast as it is at the moment.

Sure. Thanks.

Dominic Laib, Stifel.

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. If you just touch a little bit on kind of like -- I know you guys kind of said that the national ad was down a little more than the general market in the fourth -- in the first quarter. Can you just describe a little color just from what you're seeing there? Do you expect that to kind of persist? And then, just to follow up on -- I know you guys said like your EBITDA targets dependent on how political ad comes. Are you guys able to provide some sort of forecast, what your latest thinking in political ad might come in that for '24?

Yeah. So we budgeted $10 million for political this year, which is low relative to the last couple of even year cycles. But we did incredibly well down in Atlanta, the last two goes around. So $10 million, that's hopefully conservative. And I think what we are seeing is a fair amount of that is starting to switch to digital. Normally, the bulk, almost 80%-plus of our political is radio. I think we're starting to see some of that switch towards digital. And so digital could have some -- our digital division could have some political upside that's not necessarily factored in.

And then on national, in general, we were -- we've been outperforming on national for quite a while, and that just seems to have sort of reversed and it's reversed in terms of our corporate sales team, who -- we had a bunch of clients who just didn't come back in the same way volume as they had before. And so we got hurt a bit more than the market did. I think over time that normalizes and as we look into Q2, we're actually doing better on national than we are relative to local. So it's flip-flopped in Q2. But because we're not as big as some of the other national radio players, one client that doesn't recur that maybe a $3 million or $4 million client can really impact that comps. And so you saw some of that going on in our corporate sales activity.

Okay. Got it. Thank you for the color. And just lastly, if I can just follow up, are you guys able to read any kind of read through on how 2Q is coming along? Just any color, maybe not some official guidance, but kind of what you're seeing?

Well, it's soft with the exception of political. I think we're continuing to experience churn in cable TV plus some softness in delivery there. So there's softness in TV, there's some softness in digital, and then offsetting some of that is the political. So that's kind of the shape of where it's at.

People have been given radio guidance. Our Q2 right now is [trying to down three] in our radio business. All of that is factored in. So let's say that Q2 is not going to be a great quarter for us, but all of that's factored into the guidance that we're giving. We're almost through Q2 now, right? And so we feel pretty good about being able to -- the reason the guide is so wide is, quite frankly, there's a lot of big conversations going on around political, but you just can't count on it until it actually hit, right?

And so the conversations are encouraging. But yes, until those orders are placed start running, we don't like to get too optimistic. But even with a soft Q2, we feel okay about what we just outlined to you.

Okay. All right, got it. That's it for me. Appreciate you answering the questions.

(Operator Instructions)

Hal Steiner, BNP Paribas.

Hey, guys, thank you for taking my questions. On the back of the discussion on digital, can you just talk a little bit more about what's been sort of driving the softness in digital and I guess a little bit, to a lesser extent, reach for the last two Q's and just what you're sort of like going to be focusing on or trying to work on this year to sort of reverse some of those trends or improve performance there?

Yeah. I mean, like I guess, we haven't talked about it as much, but there was a wave of diversity dollars that happened post-George Floyd that benefited minority targeted, minority owned media. You also -- prior to that, you didn't have advertising uncertainty in the marketplace.

So a couple of things happened. Interest rates went up, national advertising got soft. You saw it everywhere, right? You see it at Paramount and Disney, and you saw that the other radio companies. We had the diversity win at our backs that was helping us. And then you have started to see a falloff and diversity started down in dollars particularly as the concept of the E&I becomes more and more under assault by certain political factions.

So you get an economic. And I always talk about a soft economic environment, but now nobody really feels like we're in a recession, but there absolutely was a national ad recession. People felt that across the media sector. Maybe Meta and Google didn't experience it, but the rest of traditional media did. And then you factor in a tail off in diversity dollars and that's what you see to contribute into digital and reach.

And so, look, we're working through -- this is stuff that's all happened in kind of the last six months, right? I would say six to nine months. We knew going into this year that Q1 was going to be tough and we're going to see falloff in dollars. I haven't quite figured out the sort of the three drivers. One driver being a continued shift out of traditional ad distribution systems into digital distribution systems. And when I say digital distribution systems, you're really talking about Google and Meta because a lot of digital publishers have been struggling.

And then the second bucket would be what's just the general ad recession that's happening? And when did that national ad recession, when did that correct itself? And then how much of it is sort of the diversity of bucket falling off? I don't know how to weight sort of blame there yet. And so the strategy of how you turn that around is not fully in place. I would say right now, we're giving you a view of where we're going to land this year.

But the strategy of how we're going to take that EBITDA number back to north, I don't have a solid answer for you right this second. And so I don't know how much of that is just internal investments in the assets that we already have. I don't know if there's any accretive and deleveraging M&A that helps us a lot. I've always felt that there needs to be some sort of scale solution for both our TV and our radio business. But again, that's tricky, right? When you do those kinds of deals, you got to make sure that you're taking into account any sort of market declines that most people are not very good at predicting.

Got it. That was all very helpful. Thank you for that, Alfred. Okay. And then maybe on just the expense side then, I know sort of in SG&A and sort of on the corporate expense line for SG&A. I know that has been -- there should have been elevated investment in there for the last two quarters like that spending has been going up, which I was a little bit surprised about. And I guess I'm just like giving a commentary on sort of thoughts to try reduce any of those expenses and --

Yeah, I kind of called it out. It's one-time audit and consultancy fees in corporate SG&A that's driving it up. We had a super expensive and prolonged audit. I mean, there's $5 million of additional expenses in Q1. And by the way, I should have called that out as a deduct on the cash flow question that I got earlier because we're adding that back for adjusted EBITDA, but obviously, that's cash that's going out, but that's what's driving it. And there was some -- in Q4, there was some tidy up entries of about $1.7 million, which I also called out. It went back and over a period of three plus years that we ran through corporate SG&A in fourth quarter as part of the detailed audit cleanup.

Okay, got it. Sorry for missing some of that.

No, I wasn't -- I probably wasn't clear enough. There was a lot I was going through.

Understood, thank you. And then I guess my only other one is just sort of where sort of the cash balance now like as of today. And I hear you, it sounds like you're very focused really mostly sort of on kind of continuing to manage leverage down and all of that, I guess one asset that's been sort of thrown out or recently talked about was sort of Bounce TV and Scripps might be marketing that and I'm just curious, do you have any thoughts on that asset?

Yeah. We signed the NDA. We're going to participate in the process. We have not -- we don't have any information yet. It's a competitor. The best places to look for synergy is that provide accretive acquisitions and stuff that can help you delever are places where you can create great synergies. And so now there's program synergies, promotion synergies, same target audience scale synergies.

I have no idea what the -- I couldn't even tell you exactly right now what the particulars of the Bounce numbers are because we've been focused on this. And I have no idea what the potential acquisition expectation of costs would be. I think I saw some of them in a Scripps con-call where they kind of caught up what they thought it was worth.

And so we're at the very early stages of that. But just like BET, which made sense, we absolutely will be at the table looking at it because it makes sense. But everything's relative as to price, right? And a lot of things happened. Somebody's willing to pay more than you're willing to pay because it works for them and for some other reason. Or in the case of BET, they didn't achieve their price expectations, so they decided not to sell.

And then on the cash on hand today, $162.9 million. So up a little bit for the quarter end.

Great. Thank you, guys so much for taking my questions.

And we have no further questions at this time.

Thank you, operator. And we look forward to talking to you all next quarter. And thank you for your patience in getting these statements caught up today. I'll talk to you next quarter. Thank you.

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.