Lamar Advertising Co/New Q1 FY2024 Earnings Call

Excuse me, everyone. We now have Sean Reilly and Jay Johnson in conference. In the course of this discussion, Lamar may make forward-looking statements regarding the company, including statements about its future financial performance, strategic goals, plans and objectives, including with respect to the amount and timing of any distributions to stockholders and the impacts and effects of general economic conditions, including inflationary pressures on the company's business, financial conditions and results of operations. All forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond Lamar's control and which may cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results. Lamar has identified important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in this call and the company's first quarter 2024 earnings release and its most recent annual report on Form 10-K. Lamar refers you to those documents. Lamar's first quarter 2024 earnings release, which contains information required by Regulation G regarding certain non-GAAP financial measures was furnished to the SEC on a Form 8-K this morning and is available on the Investors section of Lamar's website, www.lamar.com. I would now like to turn the conference over to Sean Reilly. Mr. Reilly, you may begin.

Thank you, Michael. Good morning, and welcome to Lamar's Q1 2024 Earnings Call. I'm pleased to report we had a very successful first quarter, one that exceeded our internal expectations for both revenue and EBITDA growth, thanks to continued strength in local sales and a renewed growth on our digital platform, both helped offset weakness in national ad spend. For the quarter, revenue grew 5.3% on an acquisition-adjusted basis, the largest increase since the previous year and the 12th consecutive quarter of pro forma revenue growth. EBITDA also increased 6.5% on the same acquisition-adjusted basis. This despite some tough expense comparisons due to COVID relief grants received a year ago in our airport business. Overall, the year is shaping up nicely. Pacings for the rest of 2024 are materially stronger than this time last year. Therefore, we're raising our guidance for full-year AFFO per share to the range of $7.75 to $7.90 per share. We are recommending that the Board approve another $1.30 per share distribution for Q2. But if the year plays out as it appears it will, you will see us raise the distribution in August and perhaps also pay a special dividend at year-end. Back to Q1, strong categories included service, amusement and attractions, and building and construction, while health care and insurance were relatively weaker. Revenue from political was $3.8 million, up nearly $3 million over the first quarter of 2023 and slightly ahead of the total for the first quarter of 2022. We expect political to continue to be a tailwind this year. As I mentioned, our local business was extremely strong, up 6.7% versus the year earlier quarter. Programmatic was also very strong, up 27%. But on the whole, National was down about 5.5% versus the first quarter of 2023. We continue to see some larger accounts taking a cautious approach to their ad spend, and we foresee another decline in National in Q2, though maybe a tad better than in Q1. We are tweaking how we are pitching certain national accounts, and we are hopeful National will firm up as the year unfolds. I will note that we've had good success reselling the panels vacated by some of the national advertisers, which is reflected in the very strong local numbers that we saw in Q1. On the Digital side, strength in Programmatic helped that platform grow 2.7% on a same-store basis. Digital revenues now account for about 29% of our billboard billing. It was a quiet quarter on the M&A front as we closed 4 deals for a total of $18 million. We expect that to continue. Our plan remains to dedicate the bulk of our free cash flow this year after dividends to paying off our $350 million Term A loan, which will further strengthen our balance sheet ahead of what we anticipate will be a more active period for deals in 2025 and beyond. Before I turn it over to Jay, a personal note, I returned last night from our industry conference in California. It was a very upbeat meeting with lots of energy and optimism about out-of-home's position in the media landscape and the opportunities in front of us. Advertisers, particularly at the local level, clearly appreciate our ability to deliver contextually relevant, memorable messaging to their audience at competitive rates at the right time and in the right place. I was heartened to hear about some of the initiatives the industry is undertaking to enhance those capabilities. I know we're working hard here at Lamar to enhance our performance, and I'm excited to see what's ahead. With that, Jay will walk through some more numbers and give an update on our ERP project.

Thanks, Sean. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We had a solid first quarter and are pleased with our results, exceeding our budget on revenue and adjusted EBITDA, as well as on operating expenses and AFFO. Q1 continued our trend of nearly double-digit AFFO growth as short-term interest rates stabilized, and we observed a strong reacceleration in revenue. Our billboard regions showed mid-single-digit revenue growth, except for the Midwest, which was flat year-over-year. Although it fell short of our budget, acquisition-adjusted operating expenses rose by 4.4%, mainly due to minimum guarantees to our airport partners returning to normal. In 2023, we benefited from COVID-19 relief grants in our Airport business, particularly in the first and third quarters, which won't occur this year. Strong revenue growth in both Transit and Airport, which increased by 11.6% and 20.4%, respectively, also contributed to expense growth due to a higher concentration of percentage rent contracts compared to our core billboard portfolio. On a consolidated basis, acquisition-adjusted operating expenses increased. However, the Billboard division maintained its focus on expense control, exceeding expectations with expenses dropping by approximately 70 basis points year-over-year. For the full year, we expect acquisition-adjusted consolidated operating expense growth to be in the 3% to 3.5% range. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $211.9 million, up from $198 million in 2023, marking a 7.1% increase. On an acquisition-adjusted basis, adjusted EBITDA grew by 6.5%. The adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was strong at 42.5%, one of our best first quarters in recent history, expanding by 50 basis points over the same quarter last year. Adjusted funds from operations reached $158.2 million in the first quarter compared to $144.1 million last year, a 9.8% increase despite a $3 million rise in cash interest, which impacted earnings by about $0.03 per share. Diluted AFFO per share rose 9.2% to $1.54 from $1.41 in the same quarter last year. Local and regional sales increased for the 12th consecutive quarter, although national sales remain a challenge for our overall revenue growth. Despite the national landscape, we are encouraged by the strength of local and regional sales, which made up about 82% of billboard revenue in Q1, up from 78% in Q4 of last year. In terms of capital expenditures, total spending for the quarter was roughly $29.5 million, including $10.8 million for maintenance CapEx. For the full year, we anticipate total CapEx to be around $125 million, with maintenance CapEx constituting $50 million. Looking at our balance sheet, we have a well-structured debt maturity schedule with no maturities until Term Loan A in 2025. This year, we plan to allocate a substantial portion of cash flow after distributions to repay the Term Loan A and aim to settle any remaining balance on our revolving credit facility. The company's AR securitization matures in July 2025, and we will likely address that through an extension in the latter half of this year or early next year. Additionally, there are no bond maturities until 2028. Based on the debt outstanding at the end of the quarter, our weighted average interest rate was 5.1%, with a weighted average debt maturity of 4 years. We concluded the quarter with a total leverage of 3.14 times, which is among the lowest in our company's history. Our secured debt leverage was 1.06 times, and we comfortably comply with both our total debt incurrence and secured debt maintenance tests against covenants of 7 times and 4.5 times, respectively. If 2024 unfolds as expected, we should finish the year with total leverage below 3 times net debt to EBITDA as defined in our credit facility agreement. This commitment to our balance sheet will provide approximately $1 billion of investment capacity while keeping our leverage at or below the top end of our target range of 3.5 to 4 times net debt to EBITDA. Despite the significant increase in interest rates over the past two years and based on current projections, our interest coverage should conclude the year at roughly 6 times adjusted EBITDA to cash interest. While we do not have an interest coverage covenant in our debt agreements, we actively monitor this important financial metric. The healthy coverage reflects the strength of our balance sheet and our ability to manage debt service. Our liquidity and access to capital remain strong as the company continues to have access to both debt and equity capital markets. At the end of the quarter, we had about $635 million in total liquidity, consisting of $36.4 million in cash and $598.4 million available under our revolving credit facility. We wrapped up the quarter with $143 million outstanding on the revolver and $235.7 million drawn from the company's AR securitization. With our excellent Q1 results and positive outlook for the rest of the year, we have raised our full-year AFFO guidance by $0.08 at the midpoint. We now expect an AFFO range of $7.75 to $7.90 per share for 2024. Our total full-year interest guidance amounts to $168 million, assuming short-term interest rates remain steady for the rest of the year. As previously mentioned, maintenance CapEx is budgeted at $50 million, and cash taxes are projected to be around $10 million. Lastly, regarding our technology enhancement initiative, we are excited to share that Phase 1 of the company's technology transformation has been completed with the successful launch of our new ERP system on April 1. I want to extend my gratitude to the Lamar team and our partners who worked diligently over the past year to make this project a success. The first phase concentrated on resolving deferred maintenance and technical debt in our finance and accounting systems. Phase 2, set to begin in late Q2 or early Q3, will target the revenue side of the business as we aim to modernize our sales platform technology. We look forward to starting this next phase of our transformation journey, enhancing efficiency in the sales process and improving customer engagement with Lamar. Once again, we are very pleased with this quarter's performance, especially our robust local and regional sales and the strong performance in Transit and Airport revenue. We are eager to implement our operating strategy for the remainder of 2024.

Thanks, Jay. As Jay mentioned, thinking about regions, we had relative strength across all but one of our regions. I'm particularly proud of New York and Seattle. They really raised their game on local sales in the face of national softness. Also, as Jay mentioned, I want to highlight Transit, particularly in Canada, which has returned to strong growth, and Airports, which showed exceptional growth. Most of Q1's growth came from rate, but we also saw some gains in occupancy. On same-board digital, as I mentioned, we're proud to return to growth there at 2.7%. Recall that last year, for the full year, digital same-board revenue was down 1.8%. So it's good to see that positive number again. In terms of local regional versus national programmatic, roughly in Q1, 82% local, 18% national, a slight uptick in local, which shows up in that stat. In fact, if you look at our top 10 customers, their revenue with us in Q1 totaled $23.3 million, which is less than 5% of our book. That just goes to illustrate that the strength is really across tens of thousands of local customers served by our approximately 1,000 account executives across the country. Again, on relative strength in verticals, services were up 14.5%, restaurants were up 6%, amusement and attractions were up 11.4%, and building and construction, this is a great number here, up 33.2%. Relative weakness, of course, as we mentioned, is that health care and insurance continue to lag. With that, we'll open it up for questions.

And our first question will come from Cameron McVeigh with Morgan Stanley.

Just a couple of questions here. To start, as you look to the remainder of the year, how do you expect the cadence of organic growth to shape up, especially with consideration to the election in the back half of the year?

We already have April in-house, and its growth was quite similar to Q1. Looking at the quarterly progress, Q2 might see slightly lower pro forma growth compared to Q1, but we anticipate a significantly better performance in the second half. As you pointed out, we'll benefit from political factors contributing to this growth. However, I don't expect much variation between quarters; they should all be relatively consistent.

Got it. And then secondly, I noticed the expected stock-based comp increased by about $15 million for the year. Is that tied to performance versus what was originally budgeted or maybe just more grants than you had expected?

That, you nailed it right there. Last year, we didn't hit our internal goals, and we had fewer performance stock awards. This year, we are going to exceed our internal goals. And so that's the difference.

Finally, do you have any further information on the expected timing of the NOL usage and how that might affect the distribution moving forward?

I'll kick that one over to Jay with the comment that we're basically running out of it as we speak. And that is the reason that you'll see a jump in the distribution in the back half.

That's right, Cameron. If you recall, I think we converted to a REIT in 2014, and we've been using NOLs since that time to moderate our taxable income. If this year plays out as we anticipate, this will be the last year that we will be able to use NOLs. Going forward, what you'll see is upward pressure on our distribution as we seek to distribute 100% of our taxable income in compliance with our policy.

And we have our next question, David Karnovsky with JPMorgan.

This is Ken on behalf of David. I wanted to ask about the cost guidance for 2024. You mentioned it’s between 3% and 3.5%. I’d like to understand the factors that could push you towards the high or low end of that range. I assume this considers 2% to 2.5% of normalized expense growth along with the phasing out of COVID relief grants and peak ERP spending. Any insights you could provide would be appreciated.

Sure. Yes. Yes. If I understand the question, you are modeling a little more than 3% growth on the comp...

Top 3 to 5, what would take you to...

Okay. I got it. I got it. Okay. Got it. Got it. What takes it to the upper end of what you just said to the 5% growth? Look, if we have really steady performance in local sales like we demonstrated in Q1 and a modest, modest recovery in national. We'll get there. We'll get to the top end of that range. And then on the expense side, I think your model is spot on.

I think you're right. It's the return of COVID-19 relief grants as well as peak ERP spend that are the major drivers.

And our next question comes from Jason Bazinet with Citi.

This may be sort of a strange question, but when I read the press, it feels like consumers are sort of more upset at the health of the economy. They don't like the inflation that's going on and the wages aren't keeping up. But the ad numbers have been pretty strong. Are there any sort of areas that you're looking at that are showing signs of stress? Or is sort of the aggregate numbers that you put up and the commentary you're getting from your sales force, all as constructive as the aggregate top line that you guys are talking about?

Jason, one of the data points I mentioned was the relative strength in quick-service restaurants. And of course, they've been all over the news talking about the strength of the consumer. But in our book, they were up 6%, right? So I would say that at least in terms of Lamar's book of business, we're not seeing that.

And that does conclude today's Q&A session. I will now turn the call back over to Sean Reilly for closing remarks.

Well, thanks, Michael, and thanks all for your interest in Lamar. We look forward to chatting again in August.

Thank you. This does conclude today's teleconference. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.