OUTFRONT Media Inc. (OUT) Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to Outfront Media's second quarter 2026 earnings call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Stefan Bison, SVP Investor Relations. Stefan, please go ahead.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our 2026 Second Quarter Earnings Call. With me on the call today are CEO Nick Bryan and CFO Matthew Siegel. After a discussion of our financial results, we'll open the lines for our question and answer session. 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 archive 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 filings, including our 2025 Form 10-K as well as our Q2-2026 Form 10-Q, which we expect to file tomorrow. We will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures on this call. Any references to OIBDA made 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 hand it over to Nick.

Thanks, Stefan, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We're excited to be here reporting our second quarter results, which came in better than we had anticipated when we last spoke in May. Given continued strong demand, focused execution, and a successful World Cup, which generated over $35 million of revenue during the quarter, and over $50 million overall. all. As you can see on slide 3, which summarizes our headline numbers, consolidated revenues were up 14%, driven by 32% growth in transit and an 8% growth in billboard. While consolidated OIBIDAR was up 29% to 160 million, and AFFO grew 45% to 121 million. As I just mentioned, these results include about $35 million of FIFA revenues, of which we believe approximately half were incremental to our typical business. Slide four shows our more detailed revenue results. Billboard revenues were up 8%. Included in our comparative billboard results for the final time is our previously announced exit of a large marginally profitable billboard contract in LA. as the revenues and expenses of this contract are still included in our reported 2025 financial statements. Excluding the billboard revenue generated by this contract, billboard revenue growth would have been up 9.4%. The strongest billboard categories in quarter two were tech, including the rapidly growing AI, legal, and medical. transit grew a robust 32 percent and was again led by new york mta which was up an impressive 48 during the quarter our strongest transit categories were tech entertainment and financial slide five shows our detailed billboard revenue on a reported basis digital billboard revenues were up 17.6%, and static and other billboard revenues were up 3.8% during the quarter. However, excluding the revenue generated by the exited contract, digital billboard revenues would have been up over 21%, and static and other billboard revenues would have been up 4.3%. We estimate that FIFA contributed approximately 19 million of revenue to our billboard results this quarter. Slide six shows our detailed transit revenue which grew over 32 percent during the quarter led by the MTA strength. Our digital transit revenues were up nearly 36 percent to about 68 million and static transit revenues were up over 29 percent. We estimate the FIFA contributed approximately 17 million to our transit revenues in the second quarter. Three of the FIFA related campaigns I would highlight from across our business are the New York, New Jersey host committee subway wraps of the tournament's local participants flags within the end with the New York subway system, Nike's complete takeover of the Bryant Square subway station, and the massive soccer player wallscape in Koch's hometown of Atlanta, which you can see on the cover of our slide presentation. Slide seven shows our combined digital revenue performance, which grew over 23% in the quarter and represented about 37% of total revenues compared to 34% in the comparable period last Even more impressive, excluding the aforementioned LA contract, digital revenues would have grown by 26%. Programmatic and digital direct automated sales increased nearly 50% during the quarter, representing 20% of total digital revenue, up from about 17% a year ago. Moving on, the breakdown of commercial and enterprise revenues can be seen on slide eight. Commercial revenues were up 15% during the quarter, driven by strength and technology, entertainment, and legal. Enterprise was up about 12% during the second quarter, with much of a strength being driven by tech, CPG, and health medical. Slide 9 shows our billboard yield growth, which was up 12% year over year for $3,344 per month, principally driven by a focused effort to establish higher rates across our assets and boosted by FIFA. Summing up, we are very pleased with our quarter two performance and confident that we will maintain this positive momentum into the second half, which I will discuss in greater detail later. With that, let me now hand it over to Matt to review the rest of our financials.

Thanks Nick and good afternoon everyone. Please turn to slide 10 for a more detailed look at our billboard expenses. In total, billboard expenses were up nearly $15 million, or approximately 7% year over year. Zooming in on lease costs, these expenses were up $6 million, or about 5% year over year. This increase was driven by higher variable lease costs and contractual escalators on fixed leases, partial offset by $4 million of savings related to the exited large billboard contract in Los Angeles. Excluding the impact of the L.A. portfolio exit, billboard property lease expense would have been up about 9%. Posting maintenance and other, or PMO, expenses were up about $3 million, or almost 8%, due to higher production expenses and higher compensation-related expenses, partially offset by lower site-related costs. SG&A expenses grew over $5 million, or about 8%, due to higher professional fees, including software and technology expenses, and an increase in the allowance for bad debt from higher sales activity, partially offset by lower credit card usage by customers and lower compensation related expenses. The $15 million increase in total billboard expenses were more than covered by the strong growth in billboard revenues Nick described earlier, leading to billboard-adjusted OIBA are increasing by over 13 million dollars or 10 percent. Now turning to transit on slide 11, in total transit expenses were up eight million dollars to just over eight percent year over year. Transit franchise expense was up six percent to 66 million dollars due primarily to higher variable transit franchise expenses driven by higher transit revenues outside New York and the annual inflation adjustment and the minimum annual guarantee for the MTA contract. Let me take a minute before discussing the rest of transit segment to clarify the accounting treatment regarding the New York MTA. We will continue to book annual transit franchise expenses at the minimum annual guarantee, which in 2026 is $161 million, including the final year of the 2020 amendment. We will record this expense on a straight line basis evenly each quarter. This approach will continue until we expect to recoup the entire cost of the digital investments we have made since the commencement of deployment in 2018 and reflects the financial statement impact of our 2023 transit impairment. Please refer to our earnings press release and 10Q for additional details on the MTA. Returning to our discussion of transit operating expenses, PMO costs were up just over $2 million or about 12% due to higher display production costs driven by higher profile creative initiatives during the FIFA World Cup and higher posting and rotation costs. SG&A expenses were up $2.5 million or about 14% due to higher professional fees, including software and technology expenses, higher compensation related expenses, including commissions, and higher allowance for bad debt, partially offset by lower credit card usage by customers. The $8 million increase in total transit expenses was far eclipsed by our exceptional 32% transit revenue growth described earlier, leading to transit-adjusted OIBDA improving by about $26 million during the quarter to $33 million. Slide 12 shows the company's adjusted OIBDA in the second quarter. Corporate about $3 million due to higher compensation-related expenses, including severance, and the impact of market fluctuations on an unfunded equity-length retirement plan offered by the company to certain employees. Combined with the billboard and transit OIBERTA, total consolidated adjusted OIBERTA totaled about $160 million, up 29% compared to last year. Before moving on, given our robust revenue performance and strong outlook for this year, I'd like to mention some important growth investments we have accelerated into 2026 to support our ambitious revenue targets for this year and beyond. First, we are investing even more in digital growth. We are reinforcing our programmatic sales team and the experienced sales leaders to ensure that we capture as much of this growing revenue stream as possible. We have also expanded our data analytics function, hiring a chief data officer late in the second quarter to partner with our research and insights team to advance our audience intelligence and measurement solutions in order to meet industry expectations. Second, we are investing in our people. We have expanded the platform tools and training available to our workforce to improve both efficiency and effectiveness. Tools such as Salesforce, our proprietary IRL nav, and an integrated marketing cloud will minimize time spent on repetitive administrative tasks and maximize time spent engaging with clients. And we will continue investing in our HR function to ensure we attract, retain, and develop the best possible talent to be a world-class media organization. As a result of these strategic investments, we expect our SG&A expense growth rate to outpace our revenue growth rate for the remainder of 2026 to help drive exceptional revenue performance in 2027 and beyond. Turning now to capital expenditures on slide 13, Q2 CapEx spend was about $17 million, including about $6 million of maintenance spend. We added 51 new digital boards in the quarter and expect to add a total of about 125 in the full year. For 2026, we still expect to spend approximately 90 million dollars of capex in line with a historical level of about five percent of revenue. About 30 to 35 million dollars of this total is expected to be for maintenance. Looking at AFFO on slide 14, you can see the bridge to our Q2 AFFO of 121 million dollars. The improvement is principally driven by higher adjusted oiboda. Based on our results thus far, our expected revenue growth for the remainder of the year, and the ongoing investments in our business, we now expect that our reported 2026 AFFO will grow in the low 20s percent range relative to our reported 2025 AFFO of $338 million. Included in this guidance is the previously noted maintenance capex, interest expense of approximately $145 million, and a small amount of cash taxes. Also, our outlook reflects both the strength of the underlying business and the NTA accounting treatment discussed earlier. Please turn to slide 15 for an update on our balance sheet. Committed liquidity is nearly $600 million, including about $30 million of cash, around $500 million available via a revolver, and $50 million available by accounts for receivable securization facility. As of June 20th, our net total leverage was around four times at the bottom end of our four to five times target range. During June, we refinanced our $650 million of 5% notes due in 2027, the new issuance of $500 million of senior unsecured notes due in 2034 priced at 6% flat with the balance funded through a draw in our accounts receivable facility and cash on hand. Turning to our dividends, we are pleased to announce today that our Board of Directors raised our quarterly cash dividend by 10% to $0.33 per share, payable on September 30th for shareholders' record, the close of business on September 4th. We spent just over $11 million in acquisitions during the quarter, and looking at our current acquisition pipeline, we continue to expect our 2026 full-year deal activity to be similar to levels reached in recent years. With our leverage trending to low end of our range and increasing cash flows, we expect to be more opportunistic in our deal activity going forward. With that, let me turn the call back to Nick.

Thank you, Matt. I'm pleased to report that we are seeing strong top-line growth in the third quarter. And from where we sit today, we expect quarterly revenue growth to be up in the high single digits year on year driven by about 20 growth in transit and mid single digit growth in billboard these figures include a 16 million dollar benefit related to the world cup with approximately 9 million booked in billboard and 7 million in transit 2026 is a transformative year for out front from operating as a legacy out of our media vendor into the premier platform company of IRL Media. We are immensely proud of the results we've delivered so far, although our work is far from complete. We continue to be laser-focused on executing our strategic imperatives while investing smartly to strengthen our business and further accelerate our future revenues and profits. We are creating a formidable growth engine with our revamped marketing team feeding our reorganized sales force with the highest quality leads. We have supercharged our sales engine by investing in industry-leading sales tools, such as AI-enabled integrated CRM in the marketing cloud, as well as advanced sales training. Our strategic investment in AdQuick is changing how we plan and sell, reducing the number of handoffs from audience discovery to proposal creation. to further accelerate our growing revenue we're also expanding our research and measurement team to consistently prove the immense value of our IRL solutions to that end we've hired an industry leading chief data officer Hugh Griffiths who has been tasked to leverage his decades of media agency experience to raise all standards of our medium's measurement and attribution capabilities I want to close with why we believe IRL media becomes more valuable, not less, in an AI-generated world. We commissioned Kantar to study consumer trust across media types, and the finding was unambiguous. Trust in digital content is eroding fast. When any image, post, or video can be machine-generated in seconds, audiences default to suspicion. And because online inventory is infinitely expandable, another feed, another ad unit, another AI-generated impression, that abundance is the very thing driving the trust erosion. Infinite supply collapses credibility and advertising is caught in the crossfire. Physical media works the opposite way. It's scarce by law and by geography. You can't simply build more of it. We believe that fixed supply paired with a rising demand for real-world engagement means the media value of physical inventory can only go up. This dynamic is playing out in real time. Drive through San Francisco today and nearly every other billboard belongs to an AI company. The same companies eroding trust online are turning to the one channel that cannot be faked because a billboard is public and real. and putting your name on one signals that your company is credible and trustworthy. To be clear, this isn't an argument against online media. It's an argument for smarter media planning. Out of home is a load-bearing wall, the credibility layer that makes every downstream digital impression more believable, while AI increasingly powers the targeting, planning, and measurement on top of it. That's the thesis behind our recent minority investment in AdWake, bringing AI-native workflows into physical campaign planning. I'll count our research back this up directly. Consumers rated the identical ad as dramatically more trustworthy on a billboard than on social media. This matters commercially as trust isn't a soft brand metric. 87% of consumers say they'll be paying more for brands than they trust. Trust has become a scarce commercial asset, and increasingly the real world is where it's built. That's our conviction heading into the second half of the year. As AI floods digital channels with infinite low-cost content, the brands that also claim a stake in the physical world will be the ones that stand out, and we're ideally positioned to help them do exactly that. And with that, operator, let's now open up the line for questions.

We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star 1 again. We ask that you pick up your handset when asking a question to allow for optimum sound quality. If you are muted locally, please remember to unmute your device. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Cameron McVeigh with Morgan Stanley. Your line is open, Cameron. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you. I was hoping you could comment on the strength and programmatic that we're seeing. Curious how conversations with advertisers are trending, what's been working, and how How much runway you might expect we have on programmatic going forward? And then secondly, on the higher SG&A cost, the hiring of a chief data officer, I think I would love to hear if there's any more on what drove this, why now, and where you expect to see the largest benefit going forward.

All right. Thank you. Thank you, Cameron. I appreciate the questions. Let me start with the first one. programmatic we see tremendous runway when we look at uh digital media nearly 80 percent now in the us i think 75 globally is traded programmatically we are 20 i think the out-of-home industry overall is less than 20 there are significant pools of appetizer dollars that sit with trading desks either within the advertiser or within big agency groups as well as independent agencies and they choose to trade plan and buy their digital media their online media programmatically it's the reason we invest we've been investing as matt talked about we hired a chief data digital and strategy officer in terms of sales and strategy from the trade desk and he's been looking at both strategy for pipes inventory technology making sure ad tech stack is as seamless as possible as well as the sales relationships both with the dsps and the leading ssps we have strong relationships with the industry ssps we see an opportunity to further extend those relationships and jeff hackett is leading that effort uh along with the with a further strength so we see significantly more upside on the way we can engage digital revenues through programmatic the reason why we hired chief our chief data officer now why we hired huge griffith is we're at a watershed moment in the industry where the industry has decided to after a pilot test to choose ipsos to go to the next standard of what our industry measurement is but it's not just audience measurement and reach curves it's understanding how data especially when it comes to digital is going to apply different first-party data capabilities as better as well as omnichannel strategy planning so our media could be more constructively and credibly integrated into overall campaign planning Hugh is a master of that he's come from the agency world he's got over 30 years of working with the biggest agencies and the biggest brands doing just that. So he, as a consequence of what has gone on at IPG and Omnicom, Hugh is someone I worked with 25 years ago at Universal McCann. I've watched his career develop and I've watched his expertise. And I realized that we would benefit significantly by having someone lead that way as we're seeking to engage with the enterprise marketeers. The most sophisticated marketers who are focused on audiences and reach curves that focus on business outcomes. So we need to engage at that level to have the credibility to ensure our media is integrated, not as an optional consideration within omni-channel campaign planning, but a fundamental platform. As I described earlier, I consider it the load-bearing wall. So those are the two reasons, and we see great upside on both.

Makes sense. Thank you.

Thanks, Cameron.

Your next question comes from the line of Alexey Filipov with JP Morgan. Your line is open, Alexey. Please go ahead.

Yes, hello. Thank you very much. You've talked about FIFA as a good opportunity to bring new advertisers into the segment. Now that the tournament is over, how is the progress there? Do you see clients remaining with you? That's my first question. And another, can you comment on macro? Your commercial revenue was up nicely, and that's likely a reflection of World Cup. But local was a bit softer than in first quarter. Any signs of macro weakness on the local front or not really? Thank you.

Thanks, Alexei. The first question you asked about the new advertisers, And it's something that we all know, you know, across this industry that the out-of-home medium has failed to demonstrate its level of efficacy with the most sophisticated marketeers. With those, if we think about those advertisers who are spending over $250 million a year in their advertising, we have the lowest share relative to the 2.5% that the medium takes is less than 1%. we see what we're calling the enterprise side of the business, the enterprise and the strategic accounts as being very important opportunities to engage and grow our share, whether it be on automotive, whether it be on pharma, whether it be on CPG. We have a number of those logos. We have a number of those relationships, but they're not as consistent across all their brands as we would life. That's why we developed our heads of industry practice within the enterprise sales division. So to focus on not just winning those accounts, but growing them is also very important. We also are really focused laser on retaining clients, really tracking the data to understand which clients in which category are either spending less or leaving the medium altogether together with us. So those are drives that we are very confident will strengthen, you know, our revenue going forward, both in terms of new logo and increases. At the macro level, you asked about, you know, if there were weaknesses at the commercial side of the business. Obviously, there has been a real benefit there from World Cup. There's also been a continued benefit there from AI and the AI companies who are now extending after their VC raises and whatever they're doing in San Francisco coming into other markets, whether it be into Boston, whether it be in Chicago and certainly New York City. So I would say that any slight lessening versus quarter, the first quarter on the commercial side has no impact on the drive momentum that we're experiencing. And I'm very confident you'll see it balanced for the second half of the year.

Thank you very much. And just, if I may, to confirm on MTA accounting, you still expect revenue shift in the fourth quarter so that the MTA cost will shift to revenue share in the fourth quarter?

No. It's Matt. We're going to account for the transit franchise expense on a straight line basis for the whole year and really for the foreseeable future in the years to come. um it's it's it's cleaner basically we're looking at our uh internal models on the mta uh we don't expect to recoup uh in the life of the contract the uh the money we've spent um and as you know in 2023 we took an impairment uh and so most of the uh the recruitment was already expensed back then so uh we are going to a straight line the mag this year which as mentioned the script is a 161 million dollars so about 40 million dollars a quarter uh and you'll see uh likely see a uh

a big margin uh gain in the fourth quarter thank you your next question comes from the line of jonathan navarette with td cohen your line is open jonathan please go ahead Thank you.

Can you discuss the economics of the JETS partnership and whether the opportunity is primarily direct revenue from the team or access to our broader pool of sponsors and advertising budgets? Thank you.

Thanks, Jonathan. Thank you for the question. Yeah, we're very excited about the JETS announcement with the official launch with today that we're the official media partner and we're the only at-home media partner within their practice is the way they sell their sponsorships and the way the Jets are looking to engage their sponsorships is not just in stadium or online you know this is we're very excited because this is a five-year deal and they have the wisdom to see the opportunity to ensure that the very best of our inventory within the footprint that they've identified completes their omni-channel media package so they're selling as well as you know to any of the significant brands that looking to engage they're the first NFL team and as far as we understand the first US pro sports team to include out of home in their packages so we're this this is important I talked about this I think not on last and it's called the one before that we see this kind of brand expansion the opportunity in sports in experiential with retail media these different areas where our in real life inventory can really complement whatever they're selling whether it's in store whether it's online how do they bundle it together so we'll we'll have more announcements uh to come but certainly you know to represent this very significant NFL team in New Jersey is something we're very excited about, but that's the reason we're doing it.

Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Scholl with Barrington. Your line is open, Patrick. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you. I was just curious if you could follow up on your commentary on your M&A pipeline and where you would look to target within making investments, whether that would be additional technology investments or expanding within your own markets or outside your markets or into different types of out-of-home inventory.

Hey, Pat, it's Matt. Thanks for the question. First, I'll give another shout-out to our balance sheet. We really feel we're in a good place with a lot of flexibility, which hopefully everyone recognizes without money burning a hole in our pocket. So we feel good. For the last few years, we've been really focusing on tiny tuck-ins as we've improved our balance sheet and got our leverage down. We've consistently looked at high-quality premium inventory, billboard inventory mostly, in our existing markets so we can tuck in and find hopefully both revenue synergies and some cost synergies. So we're going to continue to do that. We'll probably widen our aperture and look at more things, although we don't think we've missed anything over the last few years. We just think we'll go shopping a little more aggressively. And in addition, if there are attractive DMAs that we don't have that are available as a market, we would certainly look at those and consider a few that are maybe not in our portfolio, but we'd like them to be. As far as tech or other types of enablement, we made the investment in AdQuick a few months ago, and we would continue to do things like that that help our sales force or help the package of portfolio things that we sell, but our focus is really going to be on the billboards and expanding our existing great inventory.

Okay. Thank you. And apologies if I missed this earlier, but on the incremental benefit you talked about on the World Cup, how much of that was existing advertisers expanding their share to like of spending on out of home beyond where you would expect them to going forward versus newer advertisers that you don't think would return in that level in the future?

Pat, so for our World Cup money, as Nick mentioned, we identified a little over $50 million. About half of that, we believe, is incremental by incremental, either higher prices than we would have expected without the World Cup or some of our interim experiential inventory or some higher occupancy. A lot of the investments were from existing customers or ours or foundation. We haven't kind of pieced together how much is new. We haven't disclosed that, but there are a few new customers. And as Nick pointed out earlier, we hope to keep them as ongoing customers. We haven't disclosed how many dollars are from new customers just yet.

I'll jump on and add to that because I think this is also a significant opportunity that whether existing brands who have been with us that wanted to double down because they were FIFA sponsored either at the enterprise level or a team sponsor or they were new brands and we know who they are, we're tracking them. It's your opportunity to say welcome to the medium. And if the medium was important for you to develop those live physical experience It could be shared what this is something that should be continuing to build your brand equity with trust and credibility. So we are not going to miss the opportunity and imagine, oh, that's gone for four years and now we just move on to Super Bowl, you know, and then we have the Olympics. And no, every one of these episodic, significant growth opportunities are an opportunity for us to maintain and build on that momentum.

Thank you.

We have reached the end of the Q&A session. I will now turn the call back to Nick Bryan, CEO, for closing remarks.

Thanks for joining us today. We hope to see and meet many of you at the various conferences and events that Matt, Stefan, and I, as the three musketeers, will be attending over the next coming months. But for those of you who we don't meet along the road, we certainly really look forward to presenting our quarter three results to you in November. So genuinely, thank you for your engagement, and we'll talk to you soon.

This concludes today's call. Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect.