Good afternoon. Thank you for attending the Outfront Media fourth quarter 2024 earnings call. My name is Cameron and I'll be your moderator for today. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad and I would now like to pass the conference over to your host, Stephan Bison. May proceed.

Good afternoon and And thank you for joining our 2024 Fourth Quarter Earnings Call. With me on the call today are Jeremy Male, Matthew Siegel, and Nick Bryan. After a discussion of our financial results, we'll open the lines for our question and answer sessions. Our comments today will refer to the earnings release and slide presentation that you can find on the Investor Relations section of our website, Outfront.com. After today's call has concluded, an audio replay will be available there as well. This conference call may include forward-looking statements. Relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements are listed in our earnings materials and in our SEC files, including our 2023 Form 10-K, as well as our 2024 Form 10-K, which we expect to file this week. We will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures on this call. Any references to OIBDME today will be on an adjusted basis. Reconciliations of OIBDA and other non-GAAP financial measures are in the appendix of the slide presentation, the earnings release, and on our website, which also includes presentations with prior period reconciliations. With that, let me now turn the call over to Jared.

Thanks, Stefan, and good afternoon, everyone. We're pleased to be here sharing our fourth quarter results in 2025 outlook. Before diving into the Q4 details, I'd like to quickly highlight some of our accomplishments during 2024. Organic revenues, which exclude the results of our Canadian business in both 24 and 23, finished up about 4% year over year. Our billboard revenues were up 3% for the year, with growth being driven by both higher static and digital. We continue to realize significant growth from our automated sales platforms, which grew from 14% of our digital billboard revenues in 2023 to 20% of our digital billboard revenues in 2024. Our transit revenues rebounded nicely in 2024, up nearly 9% for the year. The New York MTA led the chart here, growing by nearly 12% during the year, helping transit adjusted EBITDA to improve by nearly $20 million and returning the segment to positive territory. 2024 AFFO grew 11.5%, nicely ahead of the high single-digit guidance we provided this time last year. In June, we closed the sale of our Canadian business for approximately 300 million US dollars and utilised essentially all of the proceeds from the sale to reduce our leverage, which ended the year at 4.7 times, down from 5.4 times at the end of 2023. Turning now to our fourth quarter results, you can see the headline numbers on slide four. Organic revenues grew 3.9%, a little ahead of the guidance we provided in November, while Oibida was 155 million and AFFO was 119 million. Slide five shows our segment results with billboard growing 2% transit growing just over 9% and other which now principally consists of digital equipment sales growing by 1.4 million dollars slide 6 shows our detailed billboard revenue growth the 2% top-line growth was driven primarily by higher rates that occupancy was up during the quarter as well. Digital billboard was up 4.7%, while static was up slightly. Notably, these numbers include the impact of the marginally profitable contract that we exited in October, which we estimate cost us over 100 basis points of growth. Slide seven shows our detailed transit revenue growth. The 9% top line growth was driven by 12% growth in our digital revenues and 7% growth in our static revenues. As has been the case for much of the year, the MTA continued to perform well, up 13%. On a consolidated basis, our stronger categories during the quarter were technology, political, and financial. The weaker categories during the quarter were CPG, health and medical, and alcohol. Slide 8 shows our combined digital revenue performance with revenue growing almost seven percent in the quarter and digital revenue representing nearly 36 percent of the total up from 34 last year total digital automated sales which include our programmatic and digital direct products across both billboard and transit the latter of which we launched in the first quarter of 2024 were up over 40 during the period and represented nearly 17% of our total digital revenues, up from just under 13% last year. The breakdown of local and national revenues in our U.S. business can be seen on slide nine. Local grew by just under 1% during the quarter, while national grew a strong 7%. The strength in our national book of business was primarily driven by the tech and financial verticals slide 10 shows our solid billboard yield growth which was up about five percent year over year to nearly three thousand one hundred and fifty dollars per month the drivers of this were static yield growth which was up about four percent and our continued digital conversions with only 4.9 percent of our total billboard inventory digitized we remain confident with continued digital growth.

With that, let me now hand it over to Matt to review the rest of our financials. Thanks, Jeremy, and good afternoon, everyone. Before getting to the detailed financials, I'd like to say a few words about my friend and colleague, Jeremy Mail. Toward the end of last year, you may have noticed he announced his retirement from out front. In his nearly 11 years as CEO, Jeremy navigated the company through its separation from CBS with of its initial public offering, the subsequent conversion to a re-corporate structure, a rapid digitization of assets, and a pandemic that produced the most challenging operating environment the out-of-home industry has ever seen. Outfront would not be the industry-leading company it is today without his vision and leadership, and all of us here wish him well in all his future endeavors. Now let's turn to our financial statements. Please look at slide 11 for a more detailed look at our billboard expenses. in total billboard expenses were up a little under two million dollars or less than one percent year over year billboard lease costs were down almost six million dollars or about five percent due primarily to the exit of the billboard portfolio in new york that jeremy mentioned earlier and lower payments on revenue share leases posting maintenance and other expenses were up a little under five million dollars or 14 percent due to higher maintenance and utilities costs compensation expense and production costs included in this increase was approximately two million dollars of storm related costs in the southeast sgna expenses rose under three million dollars or four point three percent due to higher commissions and network costs these expenses combined with the two percent billboard revenue growth jeremy described earlier led to billboard adjusted or rising nearly six million dollars or almost four percent we are pleased to see billboard adjusted or bit of margin increased by 80 basis points year over year to 40.3 percent turning to transit on slide 12 in total transit expenses were up 1.4 million year over year transit franchise expense was up under a half a million dollars or less than one percent as contractually obligated increases to the MTA were partially offset by lower payments to other franchises. Posting maintenance and other expenses were up just under $2 million due primarily to maintenance and utilities costs and higher compensation. SG&A expenses fell by approximately $1 million or 5% primarily due to lower professional fees. Combined with the 9% transit revenue growth described earlier transit adjusted orbiter rose over 8 million dollars with the 22 million dollars of adjusted orbiter generated in the quarter it is nice to see the segment return to profitability for the full year while on transit i'd like to take a moment to update some of our expectations for the new york mta in 2025. our mag payments to the mta will step up by about four percent this year to approximately $156 million given the New York City CPI escalator contained within the contract. We will continue to account for our MTA franchise expense on a straight-line basis throughout the year. As we mentioned on our last call, our initial build-out of the MTA digital network is substantially complete. We expect to spend around $35 million this year, principally to replace the aged and broken screens looking forward we currently expect that this spend will be in the same range annually through the end of the contract in 2030. Per our quarterly analyses we remain confident the contract will be both oiboda and cash flow positive through the end of this period slide 13 shows the company's combined billboard transit and corporate adjusted oiboda in the fourth quarter we consider this an important measure given these represent essentially the entire company moving forward corporate expense rose by about two million dollars primarily due to higher compensation and professional fees combined with the billboard and transit orbit i covered earlier adjusted orbit a total of about 155 million dollars up eight and a half percent from the comparable measure in the prior year period turning to capital expenditures on slide 14 q4 capex spend was 18 million dollars including about four million dollars of maintenance spent for the full year total capex was about 78 million dollars including six million dollars related to our divested canadian business for 2025 we expect to spend approximately 85 million dollars of capex about 35 million dollars of this total will be for maintenance which includes 10 million dollars to replace aging digital billboards we commenced our installation of digital boards in 2007 and while many of our earliest installations still look great, we believe replacing some of these older screens with new state-of-the-art technology will help drive revenue growth. Looking at AFFO on slide 15, you can see the bridge to our Q4 AFFO of $119 million. The improvement is principally driven by higher billboard and transit OIBDA and lower interest expense partially offset by lower other OIBDA, all of which was related to our now divested Canadian subsidiary. As Jeremy mentioned earlier, we ended 2024 with $308 million of AFFO, nicely ahead of the guidance we provided at the start of the year. For 2025, we currently expect reported consolidated AFFO growth in the mid-single-digit range, driven principally by improvement in OIBITDA. Please turn to slide 16 for an update on our balance sheet. committed liquidity is nearly 700 million dollars including almost 50 million dollars of cash about 500 million dollars available via our revolver and 140 million dollars available via our accounts receivable securization facility as of december 31st our total net leverage was 4.7 times down from 5.4 times at the end of 2023 and well within our four to five times target range. We remain comfortable with our debt stack with our next maturity not until late 2026. Turning now to our dividend, we announced today that our board of directors maintained the 30-cent cash dividend payable on March 31st to shareholders of record at the close of business on March 7th. We spent approximately eight million dollars on acquisitions during the quarter, bringing our total for 2024 to just under 20 million dollars. We also spent around 24 million dollars in cash and non-cash consideration to buy the outstanding 49 percent non-controlling interest in one of our consolidated subsidiary joint ventures, increasing our total spend on adding assets to over 40 million dollars. Looking at our current acquisition pipeline, we expect our 2025 deal activity to remain at a similar level to those seen in the last couple of years.

In closing, we accomplished a lot last year and are fully focused on delivering a great 2024 with that let me turn the call over to our interim ceo nick bryant thank you matt before sharing some of my thoughts i know this is where we traditionally provide quarterly guidance so i'll share our current thinking on the first quarter which is that we expect quarter one revenues to be slightly up relative to last year with billboard flappish and transit up in the mid single digits. This guidance excludes Canada. It excludes the headwind created by the exit of the New York MTA billboard contract in the fourth quarter of last year. It creates about a two-point headwind to our billboard growth and about a 1.5-point headwind to our total growth. Now I'd like to share some of my thoughts about Outfront. In the two weeks since starting in the ceo role we've had a smooth leadership transition i've met a lot of talented people and i've learned much about the company on a more detailed and operational level what i see is a differentiated organization that is distinct from the pack and has significant additional potential to unlock i'm focused on amplifying the impact of out of home expanding our share of us ad spend and accelerating our digital capabilities i'm just getting started but see a very promising road ahead building upon the strong foundations that germany has created over the last 11 years

and with that operator let's now open the line for questions thank you we will now begin the question and answer session if you would like to ask a question please press star followed by one on your telephone keypads. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, press star one. And as a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking a question, and we will pause here briefly as questions are registered. The first question is from the line of Jason Bazinet with Citi. You may proceed.

I just had a quick question. Given the congestion tax in New York City and this work from home push or back to work push by some of the financial institutions, are you seeing any sort of incremental interest among advertisers for the New York MTA contract? Or would you say that the tone is very similar to what it was last here?

Hi, Jason. It's Matt. Thanks for the question. First, the congestion pricing, obviously controversial. We'll see where that goes. For us, the MTA was one of our drivers last year of revenue growth and EBITDA. I think revenue grew about 12% and so far it's off to a pretty good start in the first quarter of 2025. So I'm not sure it's caused by congestion pricing or back to work or just the good work from our sales force and greater focus but uh uh we're pleased with the last you know year and a half or so of uh performance there that's great thank you thanks the next question comes from the line of cameron mcvay with morgan stanley you may proceed hi thanks uh i guess just first uh you know when you're what in your view was driving the the softer-than-expected local ad growth in the fourth quarter.

Was that vertical-specific at all? Any color there would be helpful. And then second, for Nick, curious, as you've joined recently, what you're most excited about and what you see as the biggest opportunity out front in the near future.

Sure, Cam. I'll give you the soft ad growth. You know, local, we had very, very solid comps back in 23, so we're lapping that, you know, certainly getting more focused and picking up some macro uncertainty in the environment around, you know, post-election and things, and probably impacting some of our mid-sized business customers uh but we see uh better pacing in the second half of this year obviously numbers are smaller still but uh uh we do see a pickup you can see that from our our affo guide uh with that i'll pass it to nick for uh what he's excited about yeah i think that um you know it's uh

is a great question because there is um as of now as i said sort of got more involved in the depth of the resources it just gives me that confidence that while our portfolio has always been focused and is built around the top 25 dmas our portfolio strength is very much supported by the strength of our internal creative resources i'm discovering an excellent creative agency that's um fully available and active across so many of our most significant brands supported by a digital innovation lab that's really offering those significant brand advertisers who really are seeking to find a way to be very progressive in their digital marketing that offers them to integrate the digital out of home within their overall campaigns. And I started to see which a data set that enables us to really be active on a full funnel basis. I mean, the out of home industry has always been famous and recognized with brand building prowess the ability to really build fame and familiarity for some of the biggest brands in the world and we have apple and netflix and hbo and louis vuitton and those brands um they care about brands they also care about performance and ensuring that now you know we're leveraging our our richer data sets and especially in the digital out of home space and in those strengths in format like transit it just gives me greater confidence that we can be that full funnel performance capability from awareness to consideration to transaction and how we you know continue to you know build on that and uh that that excites me greatly because it's obviously extremely necessary for those significant marketeers who want to maintain the strength of brand and deliver performance results i hope that answers your question it does thank you the next question comes from the line of daniel osley with wells fargo you may proceed hi thanks uh so your peers have reported seeing some choppiness and

national ads growth but your results would suggest that you aren't seeing the same so can you speak in more detail on what's driving the strength that you're seeing in national and what your expectation is moving forward and then uh you gave us your expectations for q1 but how should we think about revenue growth the remainder of the year and what are some of the major puts and takes that we should uh that we should consider thank you uh thanks daniel obviously i can't comment though what our peers are seeing um you know we're seeing you know we think pretty good uh national performance and picking up, uh, as we go through the quarter, um, you know, we have, uh, um, you

know, we give guidance for, um, you know, we have different, different DMAs in our, our, our markets. We have a strong, uh, strong Super Bowl, uh, you know, in New Orleans, it helps our national business, um, uh, nationally performing well in transit in the MTA. So that's, I think, while contributing to us that may not be helping our competitors or our peers as much. As far as the rest of the year, I mentioned we see better pacing as we go through the year. Obviously, the back half of the year is still low in numbers, but we see better visibility. We don't like to give full-year revenue guidance, but we can take from our AFFO guide that we do think we have better quarters than the first quarter in front of us.

The next question comes from the line of Lance Vitonzo with TD Cohen. You may receive.

Thanks for taking the question. And Nick, I guess this one's for you. I'm just wondering, you know, the timing of your sort of stepping in as interim CEO is a little bit unexpected. I know that obviously the, you know, Jeremy's retirement was announced earlier and it seemed like there was going to be a process that was going to run. I'm just wondering if you could update us on And if there is a process ongoing, I believe you're still the interim CEO, if I've got that right. So could you update us on where things stand in terms of that process and, you know, how we should think about the transition period?

Yeah, well, to confirm, I mean, we did say the Board of Governors said there would be a process underway. There's been a subcommittee of the board formed, and that formal search process is underway. um i've been with the company on the board for a considerable period of time uh i'm an in you know an industry veteran more on the buy side than the sell side having run many significant agency groups at the global level and jeremy and i you know we discussed that this the process you know it can take some time you can't always predict uh exactly the nature of that and the opportunity was to ensure that the company has you know the sort of broadest level of expertise let's say and resource and experience um that if we were doing that together during the period of the time that the search was ongoing um so that's my responsibility and that's my uh involvement while the subcommittee of the board continues working with one of the world's leading recruitment firms to you know follow the search so it's it's going on and uh we just felt for a number of different reasons with a rapidly changing industry uh and you can see the interest you know the consolidation of the holding companies occurring uh and the continued dominance of the tech giants that why wouldn't uh i if i had some uh time and availability and and uh you know excitement and enthusiasm for the business, which I've always had, to work together with Jeremy during this period. So that's what we're doing.

Very good. Thank you so much.

Okay. Thank you. The next question comes from the line of the Ian Zafino with Oppenheimer. You may proceed.

Hey, good afternoon. This is Isaac Salison on for Ian. Thanks for taking the question. Just a few questions on the transit business. If you could provide some color on what drove the strength in transit in the quarter. Is part of that strength because of the non-renewal of the loss-making contract previously? And then, secondly, I know you mentioned the expectations for growth in transit in Q1. So, I just wanted to better understand what you anticipate for growth more generally at the MTA or other transit markets this year. Thanks.

For us, as transit goes, the MTA drives the strength in the fourth quarter. You know, it came from the MTA, you know, strong. You know, National has been performing very well in all of transit, especially the MTA. Remember, in the fourth quarter, MTA always turns to profitability because we straight line the expenses throughout the year. the fourth quarter is the biggest revenue driver but i'd say uh just a good performance mta you know very large and that as i mentioned that's continuing uh in the first quarter um you know we haven't lost any material contracts we haven't added anything material but uh you know the portfolio is performing better than uh throughout 2024 and into 2025 than it did in 2023 certainly understood thank you thanks the next question comes from the line of Patrick

show with Barrington research you may proceed hi good afternoon I was just wondering if you could provide a little bit more detail on the pricing the strength and pricing that you mentioned earlier and then just on another question on the transit side if you could provide an update on like like where audience or i guess where ridership is across you know the portfolio of of contracts and how that stands with the various adjustments to like the minimum guarantees on some of the contracts and any sort of um yeah on the minimum guarantees and i guess the potential pressure on uh triggering some of those

Okay. First, on pricing, most of our yield growth was driven from pricing. So that's a good sign for us in the current environment. On transit ridership, I think throughout 2024, the MTA ridership was around 70 percent of where it was in 2019. It seems to be melting up maybe it's from congestion pricing maybe it's from back to work maybe it's just people are tired of uh taking ubers or taxis i think you know in january it was about 73 percent so the uh not back to where it was certainly but uh directionally good um then just uh you know performance you know transit does a better product than it's had in the past it's more and more digital and you All of our big franchises are digital. I think that's benefiting Transit as well. Other things on ridership, NTA, I mentioned it's our biggest. It's our closest recovering ridership to 2019. Some of the other franchises, D.C., Boston, San Francisco, are behind New York in their ridership recovery. Obviously, we watch them closely, but we're very pleased with the New York performance.

Okay, thank you.

Thanks, Ben. There are currently no questions registered, so as a brief reminder, it is star 1 to ask a question. There are no additional questions waiting at this time. I would like to pass the conference back for any closing remarks.

So, Jeremy speaking. Thanks very much for joining us today. Before signing off, what Stefan has informed me is my 43rd public earnings call for Outfront. I wanted to quickly thank all of you for your interest in Outfront and indeed the out-of-home industry over the years. I thoroughly enjoyed the engagement with the investment community over that time and I look forward to our paths potentially crossing again in the future. with that said i know that matt nick and stefan look forward to presenting q1 results to you in may and i'm extremely excited for the future trajectory of out front thank you very much that concludes today's call thank you for your participation and enjoy the rest of your day