Earnings Call Transcript - CCU Q3 2020

Michael McGuinness, Deputy CFO and Head of Investor Relations

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join us for our third quarter 2020 earnings call. Joining me for today's discussion are Bob Pittman, our Chairman and CEO; and Rich Bressler, our President, COO and CFO. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, management will take your questions. Please note that in addition to our press release, we have an investor presentation that you can use to follow along with our remarks. Before we begin, let me quickly cover the safe harbor seen on the slideshow. During this call, we will make forward-looking statements, including the current and expected impact of COVID-19 on the company's liquidity, financial position and results of operations. These estimates are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could materially differ from these expectations and assumptions, and these risks and uncertainties are discussed in more detail in our filings with the SEC. In addition, as noted in our March 26, 2020 press release, due to the uncertainty surrounding the impact of COVID-19, we reiterate that the company will not be providing full-year 2020 financial guidance on this call. During this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations between our GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings release or in the investor presentation available on our website. And now I'll turn the call over to Bob.

Robert Pittman, Chairman and CEO

Thanks, Mike, and good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for joining our third quarter 2020 earnings conference call. I'd like to start by recognizing our employees, who continued their strong performance despite what is the most challenging environment any of us have ever encountered. Despite these challenges, our employees continue to make great strides across the organization, moving key initiatives forward, building out new products, testing new ideas and serving our communities and clients. We have developed plans in accordance with the most up-to-date safety guidelines to open each of our markets when their individual local safety criteria are met. And in fact, approximately half of our 160 markets have returned to the office. And we expect more to open in the coming months. And it's encouraging to see that on average, in Q3, markets whose offices are open are performing about 600 basis points better than markets that are not, providing us with even more confidence in our post-COVID growth opportunities. I want to mention a few headlines before I get into the third quarter results. One, we are pleased that revenue continues to recover and improve sequentially. While revenue in the third quarter remained below prior year, it substantially improved when compared to the second quarter and continues to improve sequentially month-over-month. Two, we feel our results this quarter clearly validate the value of our multi-platform product and revenue strategy and the investments we've made in our growth areas. Our revenue is now split approximately 50% broadcast revenue and 50% other revenue lines. These other revenue lines, which include digital and podcasting and networks, all of which are businesses that have been the focal point of our growth efforts had meaningfully better revenue performance than our broadcast segment. For example, digital grew 17% year-over-year and was still up 8%, excluding the impact of podcasting, which grew 74%. Additionally, SmartAudio, which is a part of our broadcast revenue line also had superior revenue performance down just 12% year-over-year, better than the entire broadcast line, which was down 29% year-over-year. Again, more validation of the transformation and modernization of this company and our growth potential. Three, even in an economic downturn, we continue to invest in our strategic goals, like podcasting to accelerate growth. For example, in October, we completed the strategic acquisition of Voxnest for approximately $50 million. We believe this addition will be another driver for increased monetization of our podcast business and that will strengthen our position as the number one podcast company as measured by Podtrac. Also, we continue to attract and collaborate with leading creators and creative talents, including the just announced partnership with Malcolm Gladwell's Pushkin Industries, the Black Effect Podcast Network, which we created with one of our leading personalities, Charlamagne tha God, a new Latino podcast network, led by our own Enrique Santos, 13 Days of Halloween produced in partnership with Blumhouse and Aramak, Hillary Clinton's You and Me Both and much more coming from our growing partnerships with Will Ferrell, Alec Baldwin, Shonda Rhimes, Tenderfoot TV and others. I know many of you were interested in our podcast business, and I will talk in greater detail about more exciting developments there in a few minutes. Four, an important component of our growth strategy is modernization and the related cost savings. We continue to lead the industry in how advertising is bought and sold. We've also developed the studio of the future, utilizing cloud-based technology and AI that helps us maximize the performance of each market, and we have created centers of excellence across the organization that consolidate key resources for the whole company into one location. All this increasing quality, improving service and significantly reducing cost. And with that, I'll turn to a few specifics of how this business performed in the third quarter. I'm pleased to report that we have seen strong signs of revenue recovery, with Q3 revenue improving significantly compared to Q2 revenue, with each month through October improving on a sequential basis. While Q3 revenue of $744 million increased 53% over Q2, Q3 revenue was down 22% year-over-year due to the challenges that we and most of the world continue to face as a result of the macroeconomic impact of COVID-19. We're seeing encouraging signs across our markets and in multiple revenue streams that indicate the recovery of our business is gaining traction. Since our low point of $137 million of revenue in April, monthly revenue has more than doubled in September, increasing to $291 million. Looking to Q4 revenue performance, October increased 2% year-over-year benefiting from a very strong political advertising cycle as well as a stronger business environment. While we don't believe that October results will be representative of Q4 as a whole due to the heavy political spending in the month, we do expect Q4 revenue results to be better than Q3 and to be a continuation of the improving revenue trends. Rich will speak to these monthly trends in greater detail during his prepared remarks, but based on what we see now, we expect Q4 revenue to be down in the low to mid-teens. Let me start with political revenue. This year has been our best year on record. And compared to the last presidential election in 2016, we expect political revenue to be up 67% for the full year. If you compare our total revenues for the company for the just closed month of October, which again we're up 2% to the performance of our markets in battleground states, such as Michigan, Florida, and Wisconsin, you can see how strong the political impact was, with those markets up 25%, 14% and 12% in total revenue, respectively. While there was clearly unevenness in the political spend by geography, our results demonstrate the value of a broad distribution of markets. It positions us well to take advantage of geographically isolated trends in political spending. We remain committed to serving our diverse advertising partners with our barbell approach. On one end, we operate as high-touch marketing partners, helping advertisers to craft and deliver a message to their customers. And on the other end, we offer products that allow our advertisers to get to market quickly using our data, targeting, and technology capabilities. We also continue to benefit from the diversity of our advertising base, with no category making up more than 5% of our total revenue and no single advertiser making up more than 2% of our total revenue. Turning to adjusted EBITDA and liquidity. After reporting a small loss in the second quarter, we're pleased to report that we returned to profitability in the third quarter, generating adjusted EBITDA of $162 million, a $191 million improvement over the loss of $29 million in the second quarter and positive free cash flows of $14 million, a $21 million improvement over negative $7 million in the second quarter. Even as the revenue trajectory improves each month, I will note that the speed of the recovery in advertising revenue is still uncertain and unpredictable. With that in mind and out of an abundance of caution, we remain prepared for a wide range of possibilities through year-end and beyond, including a more drawn-out recovery scenario. As Rich will discuss in detail, we've proactively taken steps to reduce costs, fortify our balance sheet, and preserve liquidity. One of the great things about this company is its strong free cash flow generation characteristics. The foundation of our company is our unparalleled scale. Our business model has always been to build engaged consumer relationships by providing the best audio content, by having the most trusted personalities, and by offering always available companionship to our consumers. We then monetize those relationships across each of our multi-platform products and services. Indeed, behind our return to profitability, our positive free cash flow and our steady progression toward full revenue recovery is the fact that we have a uniquely powerful media platform anchored on our broadcast radio business that we have successfully used as the foundation to build our other platforms. Our broadcast radio business has the largest reach of any audio company in the country. And now extends across more than 250 platforms and 2,000 devices. According to Nielsen, we're ranked the number one broadcast company in 97 markets in the 18 to 49 audience. We're ranked number one in 30 of Nielsen's top 50 metros. In both cases, we have about 3x more number one markets than our nearest competitor. In terms of consumer reach, broadcast radio remains the largest medium in the U.S. and iHeart has the largest broadcast audience in the country by a lot. We are twice the size of the next largest company in broadcast listening and 5x their size in digital listening. This scale also gives us the biggest platform to attract the best on-air talent, including Ryan Seacrest, Charlamagne tha God, DJ ND and Angela Yee of the Breakfast Club, Elvis Duran, Angie Martinez, Big Boy, Steve Harvey, Mario Lopez, Ellen K, Bobby Bones, Woody, Delilah, Enrique Santos and many more who are big nationally, regionally and locally, as well as the biggest talk show host in America and it attracts the best creative talent in podcasting as well. We've also used the unparalleled scale of our broadcast radio platform and our strong personalities and creators to help build out our many other businesses, like our digital business, which includes our iHeartRadio app and service, which has been downloaded over 2.9 billion times, our newsletters that reach almost 12 million subscribers, our social media following of 223 million fans, which is over 7x larger than the next audio player in social and our digital services associated with our stations and personalities that according to comScore reached an average of 71 million unique visitors a month in Q3. Additionally, our broadcast platform has helped build our number one podcast business and our events business, which although down this year for obvious reasons, has had great success with virtual events like our recent iHeartRadio music festival and the iHeartRadio Country Festival, which actually exceeded last year's live events, both in social impressions and live streams. This platform has also helped make totally new businesses like the Black Information Network an immediate success. We launched BIN across 15 markets in the second quarter and have since expanded to 25 markets in Q3, including New York City, and we're pleased to report that peak moments of audience engagement have coincided with major news stories, indicating that has established itself as a trusted go-to source for breaking news and information in the Black community. As I mentioned earlier, I know many of you are interested in hearing more about our podcasting business. I want to spend some time discussing this growing part of our company. Podcasting continues to be our strongest performing business line, reflecting the fact that we built iHeart into the number one commercial podcast publisher in America with 252 million downloads a month as of September, which is up 71% year-over-year. In Q3, as measured by Podtrac, we were number one in downloads each month. Our audience continues to be more than twice the size of the next largest commercial podcaster, and we extended our lead over all other ranked podcasters. Let me share with you our model. We partner with the best content creators in the world, some of whom are our very own radio talent, distribute content to the largest audience possible without a paywall, and use the unparalleled scale of our broadcast radio business as a built-in marketing machine to drive engagement with our podcast shows. We feel this is an important part of our secret sauce. It's how we continue to build hit podcast after hit podcast and how we continue to grow our leadership position. According to Podtrac's latest data, not only are we number one overall, but we currently have the most shows featured across all categories, and we have ranked shows featured in all 19 possible categories, the most among all publishers. Let me be clear. Podcasting is already a profitable business for us and has an EBITDA margin that is higher than the overall company margin. Our podcast business is advertiser supported. It's not subscription-based, and it's not behind a paywall, which enables our creators to share their passion with the widest audience possible, and we distribute their podcast not only on the iHeartRadio app but across as many other distribution platforms as possible. I want to point out that because podcasting is an adjacent business to our radio business, we've been able to use our broadcast radio assets to drive podcast usage and build hit shows. If you think back to a similar situation that television faced and how they missed an adjacent business, which is called Netflix, by the way, we not only did not miss our chance, but we are currently the industry leader in our adjacent business. To further strengthen our position as the number one podcast publisher, in October, we acquired Voxnest to continue to increase our monetization capabilities. The Voxnest acquisition provides two crucial benefits to our podcast business. First, it opens up meaningful additional targetable inventory to our podcast advertisers. Second, it will allow for the more efficient monetization of our inventory by helping to connect the fragmented programmatic marketplaces that exist in podcasting and establishes the first at scale, real-time bidding podcast platform for non-premium podcast inventory. We believe the addition of Voxnest has the potential to be a significant contributor of growth for our podcast business when combined with the audience, distribution, and quality of content that iHeart can provide. As a backdrop to podcasting, all of our other growth opportunities are made possible because we have a deep connection to the communities we serve. We provide our consumers with the products and services they expect from us regardless of where they are and what platforms they're using. And as our consumers' listening behaviors have changed, our leadership position across multiple devices has ensured that they have a multitude of ways for our consumers to engage with us. Even now, as certain areas of the country have shown signs of returning to normalcy, and people have begun to resume many of their old habits and lifestyles, digital listening on home devices is still up. Consumers continue to engage with our multi-platform offerings at rates equal to, and in some cases, greater than they did in the second quarter lockdown. Our hope and expectation is that we will continue to benefit from consumers having learned to find and use our products across these many new devices. Early indicators show consumers are sticking with these new habits. iHeartRadio digital listening has seen double-digit year-over-year growth across digital devices, like up 42% on smart TVs and even up 11% on smart speakers. Since our company reaches 90% of all Americans every month, listening to, understanding and integrating input from diverse voices and views are critical to our business success. As a company, we value diversity, and we respect all voices from both inside and outside our company. At the beginning of 2020, we announced our company’s latest steps to enhance diversity at iHeart. With increased focus on recruitment, education, mentorship and accountability. We remain committed to further increasing the diversity of our organization, from board diversity to appointing a Chief Diversity Officer, to requiring consideration of diversity candidates for all of our major hiring and promotion decisions, improving our interviewing process to include a wide representation of interviewers, instituting a diversity, equality, and inclusion advisory board. And on the content side, making diversity a real priority, including pledging that 50% of the new podcasts we launch of the iHeart podcast network will be from female and diverse creators, as well as a number of major programming initiatives on our stations designed to foster understanding through more diverse voices. Serving our communities is more than a platitude. It's at the heart of our product strategy. During the pandemic, we built a virtual events business from the ground up, producing virtual concerts and filling the void in people's lives left by missing events due to the pandemic, like commencement speeches for the class of 2020, our virtual commencement address podcast for graduates. A virtual homecoming celebration for HBCUs and the iHeartRadio music festival, which generated a total of 19.4 billion social impressions, up 20% over last year's event and more than double the total live stream of last year's live and in-person event. The iHeartRadio music festival owned the night on social media with the hashtag iHeartFestival2020 trending worldwide in 14 countries and 64 cities in the U.S. Post-pandemic, virtual events will certainly be a new category for us, and we expect it will be accretive to our sponsorship revenue line. We also continue to pioneer new products and technologies, like the Blumhouse and Aaron Mahnke-produced 13 Days of Halloween, a thrilling horror anthology that used cutting-edge 3D audio and sets a new standard for podcasting. If you haven't already, I highly recommend that you listen in order to really experience and understand the power of this new audio technology. This is just one more example of our commitment to delivering the entertainment, information and companionship that our listeners seek. Rich will take you through the details of our Q3 performance, but I want to leave you with just these few points. First, scale matters. It bears repeating that broadcast radio remains the number one reach medium in the U.S., that we are the number one audio company in America by a wide margin, and that we have used that position to transform iHeart into a true multi-platform company with diverse yet complementary revenue streams. And to use our leadership position to build new businesses like the Black Information Network and our recently launched iHeartRadio sports network. We're encouraged that revenue continues to improve sequentially and that while there is still some uncertainty about the future, we believe that if current macro trends persist, we're on a path to full recovery. Our performance this year has shown the value of our multi-platform and investment strategies as the parts of our business that have been the most resilient and performed the best during the downturn have been our newer diverse offerings. Our relationship with the consumer has only grown stronger during this downturn. In the past, we've seen consumers turn to us during times of crisis and need. The same has occurred during the pandemic. But on a national scale and for a longer duration, and we expect this strengthened relationship to continue after the pandemic ends. We continue to be disciplined capital allocators with a focus on reducing cost and creating efficiencies. COVID hit everyone hard and quickly, but the economic downturn has continued to prove that one of the core strengths of the company is our free cash flow characteristics. Even during the pandemic, we saw positive free cash flow of $14 million in the third quarter. Finally, I want to remind you that before COVID hit, we had already taken steps to modernize the company. Investing in growth areas and creating centers of excellence across the organization, resulting in savings of $50 million in 2020 and a run rate of $100 million by mid-2021, both of which we're on target to achieve. When COVID hit, we again took decisive action to further reduce our in-year expenses to help mitigate the impact the economic downturn was having on our business and to accelerate our modernization efforts by identifying another $200 million of savings. We remain on track to achieve the $200 million of additional savings in 2020 and have plans to make the majority of the $200 million of savings part of our cost structure into 2021 and beyond. This downturn accelerated our discovery of new ways to operate that will make us a leaner, more efficient organization with improved operating leverage that will carry forward into the future as revenue continues to recover. Before I turn it over to Rich, I want to emphasize that while we are working hard on our recovery through COVID, we are also laser-focused on ensuring that we are well positioned to take advantage of the growth opportunities post-COVID.

Richard Bressler, President, COO and CFO

Thanks, Rob. The challenging macroeconomic environment which began in April has improved significantly. And while we've experienced partial improvements in each of the months that have followed and see multiple areas that give us reason for optimism, we continue to experience year-over-year revenue declines. In terms of our third quarter results, if you turn to Slide 7 of our investor deck. On a reported basis, our consolidated revenue decreased by 22% over the prior year period. Direct operating expenses decreased 13%, driven primarily by cost reductions associated with our modernization initiatives as well as those taken in response to COVID-19. In addition, variable operating expenses decreased 13%, in line with lower revenue recognized during the period. SG&A expenses decreased 11%, driven by cost reduction initiatives and lower sales commissions, which were driven by the decrease in revenue. Corporate expenses decreased 41% during the third quarter compared to the prior year quarter, primarily as a result of lower employee compensation, including variable incentive expenses and employee benefits resulting from expense reduction initiatives. The decrease also included the impact of an $11 million decrease in share-based compensation expense compared to the prior year quarter. The declines in our third quarter GAAP operating income to $39 million compared to $141 million in the prior year quarter, as well as the declines in our adjusted EBITDA to $162 million, down from $275 million in the prior year quarter, were driven by lower revenue. Turning to Slide 9. I'll provide additional color on the performance of our revenue streams. In our broadcast business, revenue declined by 29% on a reported basis, while networks declined by 26% year-over-year. Our digital revenue stream grew 17%, driven by continued growth in podcasting, which increased 74% year-over-year. Audio and media services increased by 25% on a reported basis, driven by Cats who benefited from extremely strong political spend, particularly in TV. Sponsorship and events revenue decreased by $27 million or 48% compared to the prior year period, primarily as a result of the postponement or cancellations of physical events, again, partially mitigated by the success of virtual events. Turning back to our consolidated results, I'll look at the items below the line. Interest expense decreased $15 million compared to the same period in 2019. On Slide 12, there's a summary of our balance sheet. At quarter end, we had approximately $5.3 billion of net debt outstanding, which includes a cash balance of $714 million. Our net debt of $5.3 billion is down over $200 million from $5.5 billion at the same time in 2019. Importantly, we generated $14 million of free cash flow in the third quarter, after having negative free cash flow of $7 million in Q2 2020. We took early actions to focus on course management and have continued to analyze and address our cost base throughout the year in order to maximize liquidity to be prepared even if there was a protracted recovery. The fact that we've been able to quickly return to cash generation is proof of our strict cost controls of our sequentially improving revenue trends and most importantly, of the company's strong free cash flow characteristics. As a reminder, the terms of our debt structure include no material maintenance covenants, and there are no material debt maturities prior to 2026. As we look ahead to the fourth quarter, we expect that revenue will remain challenged given the impact that COVID-19 continues to have on the macroeconomic environment and advertising trends. However, we are cautiously optimistic as we continue to see improvements in the rate of year-over-year revenue declines. July, August, and September declined 27%, 21%, and 18%, respectively. And we just closed the month of October and finished plus 2% year-over-year. Although we recognize that there is still some uncertainty, right now, we project Q4 revenue will be down mid- to low teens on a year-over-year basis. I also want to provide an update on the modernization and cost initiatives that we announced earlier in the year. Together, these initiatives remain on track to deliver the expected $250 million of expense savings in 2020. As we had said previously, we expect our modernization initiatives to deliver $50 million of savings in 2020 and $100 million of annualized run rate savings by mid-2021. We are fully on track to achieve these segments. We are also on track to achieve all of the $200 million of post-COVID savings in 2020. Further, we have developed detailed plans to make the majority of the $200 million of post-COVID savings permanent as we have developed long-term structural expense savings within our cost structure. These savings include continued optimization of our real estate footprint, the adoption of technology solutions that will drive increased efficiency and effectiveness in our operations, the centralization of resources into centers of excellence, significant reductions in TV, consulting fees, discretionary spending, and employee hiring, and continued monetization of our organization. The pandemic forced us to transform the way we do business more rapidly than we could ever have imagined. And the actions we have taken leave us exceptionally well positioned for margin expansion as advertising activity continues to recover. Our full year capital expenditures guidance remains unchanged at approximately $75 million to $95 million, but we will come in on the higher side of the range as we expand capital in Q4 to drive operational efficiencies. We continue to expect minimal cash taxes in 2020 due to the CARES Act. As a reminder, the provisions of the act that pertain to us result in our ability to divest 100% of our 2020 interest expense as well as a portion of interest from prior years that was disallowed and the deferral and potential avoidance due to certain credits we may qualify for of 2020 payroll tax payments. We also wanted to update you on the company's FCC petition with respect to the foreign ownership of our equity. On November 5, the company received a declaratory ruling from the SEC, granting the company's request to allow up to 100% of the company's equity and voting stock to be owned by non-U.S. persons, subject to individual hold of foreign ownership and media cross-ownership limitations, which continue to apply. This ruling will allow for the simplification of the company's capital structure and enhance the liquidity of the company's Class A common stock by facilitating the conversion of the warrants, which currently represents a little over half of the company's equity. Warrant holders will receive the instructions through U.S. mail from Computershare, the company's warrant agent regarding how to participate in these change of warrants. In wrapping up, we believe that our previously announced modernization initiatives and cost savings actions in combination with our resilient capital structure will provide us with financial flexibility and ample liquidity. We are confident in our ability to drive shareholder value through our operational discipline and continued investment in the areas of our business that will position us for growth as advertising demand continues its return. And again, we'd like to thank our employees who have committed to serving our listeners, our communities, and our business partners during this challenging time. We appreciate you all joining our third quarter earnings call. And now we will turn it over to the operator to take some questions.

Operator, Operator

Your first question comes from the line of Jessica Reif Ehrlich of Bank of America.

Jessica Reif Ehrlich, Analyst

You talked a lot about cost savings and the ongoing benefits from that. You've been streamlining operations. How are you approaching opportunities for investing in growth while you continue on this recovery path, especially with the recent positive news? We're hoping to see sequential improvement. What is your perspective on the magnitude of investments in growth areas like podcasting compared to reducing debt on the balance sheet? It seems you will benefit from great operating leverage. Additionally, you mentioned in the press release the agreement with Pushkin Industries to distribute certain content. Should we expect more deals like this? Can you elaborate on the economics of such a deal, how it’s structured, and the advantages of co-producing shows? How does it impact your ability to produce your own podcasts?

Robert Pittman, Chairman and CEO

Yes, Jessica, I’ll address the second part of your question, and then Rich can elaborate on the first part. Regarding the agreement announced today with Pushkin Industries, founded by Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg, I believe we possess a significant advantage in the competitive podcasting space: we have the largest platform. For anyone with a podcast or plans to develop a popular podcast, being on the largest platform is crucial. Our extensive radio promotional capabilities and the largest sales force in audio and podcasting enhance monetization opportunities. Instead of seeking to acquire talent, we provide a compelling proposition—an opportunity for maximum return on their creative and financial investments by joining our platform. Currently, we have a diverse portfolio of podcasts, some of which we produce entirely ourselves, while others involve different levels of profit participation. We maintain partnerships and co-productions as well. Profitability and margins are key considerations for us; we aim to ensure our podcast margins remain above the company's overall margins. This is undoubtedly a growth business in every aspect. Rich, would you like to add anything?

Richard Bressler, President, COO and CFO

Yes, thank you, Bob, and Jess, I appreciate your question. To conclude Bob's point on podcasting and costs, it’s important to focus on the facts. As Bob mentioned earlier, we have notable partnerships with recognizable figures like Will Ferrell, Hillary Clinton, Bobby Brown, and Charlamagne, particularly with our collaboration on the Black Effect Network. Enrique Santos noted that while many can express words, the real evidence lies in the commitment from our talent who have chosen to work with us based on our strong asset base. This reflects our joint ability to profit together. Regarding costs, as highlighted in our opening remarks, we anticipate a significant portion of the $215 million in cost savings we announced this year to be permanent. I won’t provide an exact figure, as that would imply guidance, which we’re not offering for the remainder of the year, aside from Bob's comments on revenue for Q4 and into next year. Like many companies in America, we've learned to be much more efficient than in the past. Our management team, including Bob, myself, Mike McGuinness, and our broader leadership, have all embraced this efficiency.

Operator, Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Steven Cahall from Wells Fargo.

Steven Cahall, Analyst

Just wanted to dive a little more into podcasting. So maybe first, where did the inventory for Voxnest primarily come from? And we've seen some similar ad tech investments from SiriusXM and from Spotify. And I was just wondering if you think about that as competition at this point? Or is it kind of everybody growing the pie and getting advertisers to commit more funding to this? So is it a market share battle? Or is it kind of good for the whole industry right now as everyone invests in ad tech?

Robert Pittman, Chairman and CEO

We're experiencing significant growth in the marketplace, benefiting everyone involved. Voxnest provides us with an electronic trading platform for our non-premium inventory. We've excelled in selling our premium inventory for high-profile podcasts, but there remains a portion that goes unsold. This inventory does not meet the premium standard typical of successful podcasts. By creating an electronic platform and integrating it with data while addressing the fragmented podcast market, we can deliver a real-time bidding platform. This approach greatly enhances the value of our offerings and is crucial to our strategy. Additionally, there are secondary advantages, such as various tools and ad-serving capabilities. Focusing on unsold inventory and improving efficiency in that area can effectively boost both our company’s bottom line and top line.

Richard Bressler, President, COO and CFO

Sure. First of all, this year is going to be the biggest political year we've ever had. Just to remind you, we've not only benefited from the core of the iHeart business, but also from our partnership with Cats, one of the largest TV rep firms. In Q3, our political revenue was around $40 million, and in October, it increased to about $55 million. Looking forward, we expect to continue benefiting from political revenue, although November's benefits will be lesser than in October. Just to reiterate, that’s $40 million for Q3, $55 million for October, and a reduced benefit in November. As Bob mentioned earlier, we are managing the same inventory, and we're clearly benefiting from political advertising as well as the tightening supply in the advertising market. In terms of guidance for Q4, we anticipate a revenue decline in the low to mid-teens percentage range, but we expect to see sequential improvement in Q4 compared to Q3, even as we phase out the political benefits.

Robert Pittman, Chairman and CEO

Yes. Let me just add to it, to be clear. Without political, we still have seen the sequential improvement of ad revenue, which I think you were asking.

James Goss, Analyst

In terms of downsizing your footprint, do you think, could that involve station sales, for example, might you not need to be in some of the smallest markets, for example?

Robert Pittman, Chairman and CEO

Let me address that directly. When I refer to our footprint, I mean that in each location, we'll be operating with less space than we currently have. We do not plan to abandon any of our locations. One of the key strategic advantages of our company, which sets us apart from others, is the number of locations we have. We operate in 160 markets with owned stations, and no one else in the U.S. comes close to matching that in radio or TV. This extensive distribution and control allows us to provide unique offerings to advertisers, creating a scale that others cannot replicate. This was evident during the recent political season; being present in many locations enables us to capitalize on opportunities regardless of which states or cities are trending. We see this as a strength and don't believe there is any need to reduce our presence, as it serves as one of our most significant strategic differentiators.

Richard Bressler, President, COO and CFO

If you refer back to Bob's opening remarks and the four key points regarding our future and growth strategy, one of those points was modernization, which includes end-related cost savings. This encompasses much more than just saving on costs; it also involves developing the studios of the future using cloud-based technology and leveraging AI, as Bob mentioned. After several years of investment and the expertise of our team, we're able to enhance performance not only in advertising but also for listeners and programming in each of our markets. We've established centers of excellence throughout the organization to consolidate essential resources, enabling the entire company to improve quality while also cutting costs and providing better service. While cost reduction is a beneficial outcome, our primary focus is on enhancing quality and service for our listeners. It's important to underline that when we speak about our footprint and efficiencies, we are addressing both aspects.

James Goss, Analyst

Okay. Maybe lastly, with this more optimistic look at a potential vaccine or multiple vaccines. What impact do you think that would have on maybe trends accelerating anything with your business model?

Robert Pittman, Chairman and CEO

That's a great question and one we've been discussing extensively, especially today. The vaccine news is encouraging not just for society but also for our business. Some categories that were heavily impacted haven't seen significant recovery. From Q2 to Q3, much of our growth stemmed from categories that had decreased significantly in Q2 and are starting to rebound, such as food and beverage, auto, restaurants, and retail. If a vaccine becomes widely available, we anticipate the return of major spenders like moviegoers, concert attendees, and retail shoppers who haven't returned much yet. Local businesses, such as neighborhood restaurants, could also benefit. We believe this could significantly influence our business, and we're monitoring the situation closely.

Richard Bressler, President, COO and CFO

I want to express our gratitude to everyone for joining us today and for your interest in the iHeart story. In closing, I want to emphasize that we have received FCC approval for our warrant holders to convert into Class A shares. There is a specific process outlined on our website for this, which is straightforward and will enable conversions starting in January. This process will significantly increase the public float of our market capitalization. This has been a key question we've received from many of you, and I wanted to highlight it before we conclude. Thank you once again to everyone.

Operator, Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.