OUTFRONT Media Inc. (OUT) March 2026 Conference Transcript

Let's get started. Before we do, I'll read this. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley Research Disclosure website. If you have any questions, please reach out to your Morgan Stanley sales representative. Okay. My name is Cameron McVeigh. I cover advertising stocks here at Morgan Stanley. I'm pleased to welcome Nick Bryan, out front CEO, to the conference. Thank you. Thank you, Cameron. Nice to be here.

I appreciate that.

Great to have you here. Now, Nick, to get started, results have been pretty solid the past two quarters, and you described having good visibility into 2026. Your recent guidance is for double-digit AFFO growth and mid-single to high-single-digit first-quarter revenue growth. Could you walk us through maybe the key building blocks of the guide and what gives you confidence in the trajectory?

Well, we gave, well, thank you for that question. We gave very detailed background to our results on the earnings call. Matt went through that in detail. And I think ultimately if we talk about, you know, our guidance on AFFO, a lot of that stems from what we're going to be able to do on our way to be done and managing our costs based on ultimately the revenue. And when we look, you know, when I look at the run rate and I look at the forecast, and we have very rigorous pipeline meetings on a very frequent basis, and I can look at the individual categories. I'm just feeling very confident with what we gave as our guidance.

Maybe just to talk broadly about the out-of-home industry. We've seen out-of-home take some share from the more traditional mediums and digital start to grow and take share as well. In your mind, what do you think is the unique value prop of out-of-home, and what do you think will help see it, continued strength over the next few years?

Well, it needs to demonstrate its continued strength, because obviously over the last 10 years it's suffered, as any of the analog media, because it hasn't demonstrated its relevance and dynamism in terms of the brand building compared to the big tech giants who have sucked so much of our dollars out. Now, I think we're facing a very exciting time in its own way with AI. Not only is the AI becoming an industry vertical, there is a significant spending opportunity for us. You can see it on the way in from the airport here. Every single one of our boards is an AI board. There's nothing else. And it's not only just the new incumbents and the new players, whether it be in healthcare or finance or whichever, whether it be B2B or B2C. We've got the legacy companies looking to communicate that they have AI capabilities fully integrated. So we see that really, and we're seeing the strength of that in New York on the transit. But there's another dimension here that people aren't talking about, which is how AI is going to fundamentally change the nature of marketing and advertising. The agentic advertising world promises a bright future for the out-of-home industry because we are real. We are trusted. We are a public media. We can't be divided by algorithms. When you and I are driving down the highway, we will see the same board. And what you're going to see with AI and modern-day marketing, it's going to change your ability to prioritize your preferences and delegate what you're not interested in. So if you're interested in cooking and skiing, wine collecting, you're going to listen to the brands and the businesses that want to inform, educate, and inspire you. Everything else, you will delegate to your agent. And that will be, we already see now on open web, 60% of all traffic is bot driven. Let's watch that go. And then let's also combine AI slop that's turning the open web into a very strange space. And that will go to the wall gardens. So it's our time, and I'm trying to really lead from the front here as the industry leader, that this is our time to not be just talking about classic old-fashioned legacy out of home, but to talk about building trusted brands in real life. We're commissioning more research about the trust of the medium on the basis that if you trust the medium, you're going to trust the message. So out-of-home is real, whether it's on the bus, the transit, that billboard. Even if it's a digital billboard, it's in real life. And it's almost, you know, everyone already knows it's very, very high scale. It's high reach. But being a public media is going to be stronger. And we are already seeing evidence of a number of the biggest advertisers who care about brand. I'm not talking about the performance marketers. I'm not talking about, you know, the lead gen, credit cards, auto insurance. I'm talking about brand marketers who care about brand. They have spent so much with the tech giants, and they've been so focused on bottom of the funnel, they're looking to now focus more on building longstanding equity and brand building. And we need to be back there with a more modern, dynamic, relevant, and contemporary message in the context of the omnichannel activity, why the out-of-home medium is powerful, vital, and needs to be part of their sustainable brand building. Our industry association needs to have a louder voice. It needs to be more educated. And that is another reason why out front we're hiring a lot of ex-agency and a lot of our leaders are coming. The new leaders are joining from other media. They're not coming from the out-of-home industry. We don't need mono thinkers. We need macro thinkers. We need those people who can understand the power and potency of our medium in the context of all the other channels a marketer is going to use. So we see the AI developments, and we're in the early stage. We're only in the first couple of innings. But I personally see this as a huge opportunity for our medium.

That's great. I guess just to follow up on that point, the AI-driven, agentic sort of marketing budgets that you would expect to see the out-of-home medium capture, is that, you mentioned research, is that the tip of the spear to help aggregate the new view and then the increasing marketing budgets? What would you say is the main first point? It's a good question. It's a good question. It's both.

It is both research and measurement, which has always been an underbelly of weakness for our medium. It's also marketing. We need to do our own marketing, which is our own storytelling in the context of the agentic advertising world. Are we a factor of benefit? What role do we play? Let's start with a narrative that is strategic and on the cutting edge of insight and knowledge and understanding of our total media planning and buying and all channels. And then we need the measurement to reinforce it. You're exactly right. Our measurement, if you talk to so many of the biggest advertisers, I'm talking to you about the enterprise marketeers who have largely abandoned our media. I'm talking automotive, I'm talking CPG, I'm talking finance, healthcare, wellness. When I look at the size of their advertising spends in the U.S., we take but a sliver. and the reason is we have not been loud and active and deliberate about our communication to them on an industry vertical basis and then our industry measurement has been two weeks so a lot of the big brands you talk to they say too complex to buy too hard to measure i just can't be bothered with it right and actually one of the biggest challenges we face the complexity on planning and buying is as much on the local side that we now call the commercial side of the business, the local SMB, SMB in mid-market, but it's the agencies as well. People don't understand, and I can say this with the experience of being on the agency side for over 35 years, I've run the biggest agencies, and we have always got a headcount deficit, we're always trying to find a way to balance the economics of our own business with doing the right thing for the brands and the marketeers, which is about building brands and fueling growth. I mean, any agency and any media company, if you're in the advertising business, your obligation is to help build brands and fuel growth. And if that's at odds and you're a medium that shows up and I've got to call Lamar there and I've called Clear Channel over there and I've got some indies around Mississippi. I mean, if we don't make it, That's why we made our strategic acquisition a minority, but a significant acquisition in AdQuig. They are a leading independent platform capability, all media, all out of front, not just out front. And we, especially for the SMB side of our business, we want self-serve platform. I mean, if I think about our numbers and you think we're 55% commercial, of the commercial revenue, the bulk of it is coming from SMB. Why wouldn't that be self-serve? Why isn't that, why have I got any AE having any conversation with one gym owner in Boston about the board at the end of the road? I mean, that doesn't happen to Facebook or Google. So we are looking for opportunities to automate, simplify, and create this kind of, certainly that, close that gap between the action you take and the results you get. So measurement, I'm pleased you asked about that, Because the OAAA, as the industry association, has been taking, and they started it before I arrived a year ago on the scene, great steps to really recognize, embrace, and fix, fundamentally once and for all, an industry measurement issue. But let me be clear, that industry measurement issue is more about audience measurement. It doesn't deal with the issues of attribution, incrementality, media mix modeling. That tends to be more custom. If you're Mercedes-Benz or you're Glaxo or you're a new GLP, you're Weight Watchers, and you've come out of bankruptcy and you want to now demonstrate your business isn't just communities, but it's about the GLPs and about medical advice, you need the evidence. Not of the brand association. People have a very high brand awareness of Weight Watchers. They need to know this business is in a new business. What are the measurements to do with that? So measurement is a big part of our business. It's a huge opportunity for us, but let's not leave marketing behind. That's great.

And I guess just you brought up trying to capture some of this programmatic SMB, almost algorithmic ad spend and getting it more automated. Is the biggest roadblock currently just a lack of a platform for the local SMBs for you to capture that spend? And is that what AdQuick is providing?

Yes, at the SMB level, more in the SMB mid-market. But to answer your question, we, as a medium, have failed to keep pace with the way most media dollars are spent and traded in the U.S. today. In fact, globally. In the U.S. today, if let's say just these rough numbers, we're talking about $400 billion media spend. In the U.S., U.S. is the biggest market. It's a third of global ad spend. We're the biggest individual market in the world. 70% of that money is spent on digital. Of that 70%, over 80% is traded programmatically. And yet in our industry, we're less than 20%. We're direct. So when we're trading programmatically, and when we're accessing and selling through not just industry SSPs, not just selling through Vista and Place Exchange, but properly selling through Magnite, Pubmatic, Index Exchange. In fact, when we're better connected directly into the big DSPs, like the Trade Desk, like Google DV360, like Amazon Ads, when our digital out-of-home button, our banner, is up there with all the other CTV streaming, retail media, we're just another, but we're not just more. That's where our marketing is so important. We're just not more digital inventory. We're not just more digital impressions. Our digital impressions are real. They are real. They are almost, let's not say digital out of home, they're digital IRL. They're digital in real life media opportunities. So we still, even though we're going to be on the platforms and we're going to be better connected, and we've just made a bigger, we've just made a bigger, and I'm happy to share it today, we've hired Jeff Hackett, who's one of the most senior leaders at the trade desk. And he is coming in to run all digital sales and strategy everywhere, SMB, mid-market, enterprise, and the biggest strategic accounts. and clearly there's an economic advantage when our inventory and our data sets are fully integrated in the biggest of the platforms because then you're unlocking the spend because they're the ones buying it. And these programmatic trading desks, they're not just at the whole coast, they're inside the big clients as well. A lot of the biggest advertisers that we all know, the brands, they've taken that in-house and they have their own deals direct with the trade desk or directly with Amazon. And that's another reason why we also announced on the earnings call our strategic partnership with AWS, because Amazon Web Services is the cloud system of choice, and they are doing everything they can about plumbing and wiring for the biggest hold codes to ensure that usage and capacity is as high as it can be. So we're working with them. They gave us an infrastructure agency. We jointly are investing in Mad Connect, and they're helping us to make sure that our inventory is perfectly connected with the right data set into the whole code training desks. And we've already signed up one of the biggest whole codes. We've got another one on the books because they're interested. They're smart agencies and their clients are alive to the fact that the traditional pure play digital media environment is changing so fast because of AI. Where do they go? What do they do? That's why we need to show up loud and proud with a very clear point of view about the value and the measurement impact, to your point, of why they should be integrating digital out of home into what they do. Because for us, it's strategically important. It's 4% of our inventory is digital. It's over 40% of our revenue. I mean, it's profitable revenue. The economics. So if I'm putting the pressure on our real estate team, we have a great supply. Because our business is straightforward. It's supply and demand. I mean, we don't even have the complex element of being a media company in the middle to do with the creatives and the content. And all the challenges that come with that, our supply team have to really marry up with what they're doing to align with our demand. And the demand is digital. We just haven't been satisfying that as much as we can. As an industry, I'm not talking about out front. I'm talking as an industry, we haven't really lent into that form. You can ask Sean that because he was the one that bought that stake in Vista, what, seven years ago, eight years ago? So what has that done to change the trajectory? I know his numbers. We all know his numbers. We don't make the rules. The market makes the rules. Digital spending. I was at the IAB, their big leadership event out in Palm Springs at the end of January. To show up at the Internet Advertising Bureau, no out-of-home company has ever been there. No out-of-home, I mean, they were shocked. I talked to a number of the past CEOs of the IAB, and we're here because they're predicting 100% of all media will be digital within the next five years, and 90% will be traded programmatically. So we're either in that current or not. And by the way, they're having some amazing keynotes, and they're talking about the next phase of where we go with agentic advertising and the agentic marketing environment and how does that look for us. So we have, forget about the operational challenges our industry is facing, we have some bigger strategic opportunities or dangers coming towards us at high speed. And I and the leadership team out front, we see them, we see the AI development. I mean, San Francisco is almost full. I mean, when we look at now what's going on in New York Transit and New York, we've got AI campaigns. Tomorrow, Stefan and I, we have a lunch and a dinner with three different AI CEOs. One major legacy SaaS company that's integrating AI into what it's doing as well as two incredible challengers who have got significant money to spend. And these are virtual businesses that want to be real. They're really getting quite excited about their scale, their phone ringing, when they're testing the ability to build their brand in real life. we're going to lean into that comment.

That's great it's quite the opportunity coming up we believe I wanted to just follow up on the digital point, it's about 40% of the book with these digital tailwinds coming online and more digital conversions per year what's a long term target for you on the digital percentage?

Wow, okay Long-term is sort of subjective. If I say our target, and I've been very clear with the leadership team, is 50-50. We want to book a 50-50. We want to book a 50% enterprise, 50% commercial. We want a book that is 50% static and 50% digital. Then I'm really getting into a happy place. And everything I'm putting in place with separating the sales org and developing the sophistication, and the sophistication of dealing in the commercial market is a different kind of value proposition and is dealing with the enterprise side of the clients. You want to engage with General Motors, with Coca-Cola, with Nestle, L'Oreal. These are different with the biggest industry verticals that we've identified, you've got to have the people who understand that world. When we do that right and that starts turning, so I think in my mind, and again, I'm going to be simplistic about it, that there's a 50-50 play here. And then, clearly, we should see some significant economic benefit of that because when you're buying, yeah, there's costs, and everyone's going to say there's greater costs of the programmatic take rates and the DSPs and the SSPs. Take rates are coming down, but there's no one selling that. We just need to have our inventory available to people.

So are there certain verticals, industry verticals, in which there's more of an opportunity to capture demand using either digital or programmatic buying and selling?

Well, I think there are. In a way, that's the beauty of programmatic. We did that analysis when we developed our six industry verticals that we were going to commit to this year, which isn't a particularly innovative approach. I mean, all the tech companies do it. They have their hoys. They have the heads of industry for retail, for CPG, for automotive. You know, we have our six. We're now going to have a subset. We've created our seventh now with AI. We're going to have an industry vertical and a hoi who's going to lead our AI practice. And when we look at programmatic, it is such a wide range of spenders. It is remarkable. There's not one particular category. We look in that because I can look at that on a daily basis, and I do. And I like to see, not every day, but every Tuesdays, which probably bothers my head of programmatic too much because I call him a lot about why if I've got a spend, I've got a small amount of spend that's coming on McDonald's, why can't that be five times as much? He's not able to really control it in the same way because it's whatever's coming in. And a lot of that is based on did you have the availability as a brand or an agency to buy digital out of home? And what's the opportunity around that? So I think that I see as an opportunity because a lot of the biggest brands in the avatar, it's not so much how they're spending, it's where they're spending. So are they spending static or digitalization in the conversation? It's an omni-channel world and you're using both. It's where you're spending. And no, you don't have to. We don't have to be in a situation to listen to Unilever. And the new CEO of Unilever come in and he came in, Fernando Fernandez, he was the CFO. He ran Latin America. He was the Unilever CFO. he has come in and now as a new CEO said we're going to get back to brand building we're going to shift 50% of our ad spend we're going to get back to as we're going to move from the bottom of the performance funnel we're going to shift 50% to the creators to the creative economy they're the ones with the influence they're the ones with the scale they're the ones with the reach well we have massive reach we have influence because the core of influence is trust we have real trust he didn't mention he was going to spend anything on ad at home He didn't say CTV, he didn't say retail media, he didn't say social, he didn't say search. He talked on his earnings call and has consistently talked about the creator economy and the influence of the credits. Well, we have now struck three partnerships with creative agencies because they and their creators love the out-of-home medium. So we're making the proposition of, say, URL and IRL. Come on, bundle it together. Let's work together. We've got so much opportunity that when the creators are involved, whether it be on the launch of a movie or a product or the products and the brands that they're launching themselves, that they can be more proactive. And we say, don't just try and build your brand online in the virtual world. Build your brand also in the real world. And it's resonating. But to be clear with you, they're not really having a conversation about is it a static board or a digital board. They just want the right board in the right place.

Nice addition to an omnichannel approach. for a lot of these marketers. Yeah, absolutely. Nick, I wanted to pivot to transit and talk about that a bit. We saw a seeming inflection recently, and I want to get your take on what's changed in the past six months or so and your outlook as we progress into 26.

Well, the single thing that changed with our transit was our ambition around it and our belief that the transit medium is not just a moving billboard. It is part of the fabric and culture of some of the most exciting dynamic cities in the world. And when I arrived, and I've seen it having been on the board for a long period of time, and I know that everyone's going to have their points of view about the MTA contract, which was struck pre-COVID, But the NTA, forget about the contract, the medium is amazing. The medium is what moves between five and a half and six million people around New York every single day. So I realized very swiftly that the management team who were responsible didn't have the belief, didn't have the hunger, and didn't have the skills. So they left that day. And the new team that I found inside the organization, run by Victoria Motorshead and Ginger Labreck, Those two women leaders are amazing. They created the Transit Velocity team. Ginger comes from the marketing side. Jim's is on the sales side. Victoria's on the marketing side. And they together have created a powerhouse team. They meet with me. They meet on a bi-weekly basis. And they are responsible for the product marketing, the negotiation. We've changed the sales compensation structure. Transit is no longer an opt-in. It's an opt-out. And if you have to opt out on a significant brand campaign, they usually direct that to me. So we are seeing significant campaign. We've also, on the supply side, we've made sure that our inventory, wherever it is, in San Francisco, in Boston, in New York City, that we are maintaining the best visibility of our screens. And generally, we put the commitment behind it. So suddenly, we made all these changes as of quarter two last year. We had a significant reorganization, as you know. That was at the end of June last year. July 1, the new world started in the sales org. And transit suddenly had the elevation. As has done digital. Digital is taking a little bit longer because digital is a much more, in a way, a much more complex beast with the way you can sell DDA, programmatic. But the transit is a significant opportunity, and we weren't proactively, passionately, enthusiastically selling it. Now we are. So we were pleased to report on our results. We're even more pleased to report on our next results. But I'm not giving guidance on myself. I'm looking at you. Okay, there's no guidance involved other than it's now a well-run part of our business, and it wasn't before.

That's great. And on that point, I wanted to ask just how advertiser conversations are trending around transit. And what are they most focused on? Is ridership levels? Is that still a data point for them?

They've gone up. I mean, certainly in New York City. I mean, we're back. We're to 80% of pre-COVID. When I arrived, I think we were 72, 73. Certainly the congestion system has been put in place. It's helped a lot. But I just think it's safer. It's cleaner. Less rhetoric about it. And we are. But that hasn't been what's resulting in the uplift that we're looking at on a relative basis. that doesn't happen between 75 and 80 percent on a ridership situation that happens in fact you are really actively selling the medium and the advertisers and the other thing is they're excited because when we start talking we're talking less about classic out of home because you talk to a lot of the biggest brands you say out of home they're like okay granddaddy's out of home do i need it top of the funnel awareness i've got enough exposure no you you have the opportunity to create experiences, memorable, shareable experiences in real life. The transit media allows us to do more of that than the classic book. You see some of the experience we've created with new MTA. They're remarkable. I mean, when I think about the big Duolingo event we had, we had the ESPN, we wrapped the train, we had Bath and Body Works, they did the scent, we pushed the scent through the system. Some people didn't like it, I liked it but you know you have you had apple i wish we had done it i wish i could claim it they won the grand prix at can last year for their experience for severance in grand central station if anyone saw that i mean for four days they had the cast and the crew there but it was the amplification that's what is good fortune about our medium when we're creating these highly creative experiences and we're doing them in washington we're doing them in san francisco we're doing them in LA we're able to the the transit media owners are much more open to us doing the most remarkable things in real life and guess what those get amplified and there's no cost to that we don't pay for the social amplification and our clients are realizing that this combination it's not just the experience on the ground everyone knows that when you've been in New York and you try and go off 57th you see the Louis Vuitton I mean what they've created that is effectively a building site but they didn't because for seven years they're over the road while they do that they just didn't put up scaffolding they created something remarkable and everyone is clicking that every single day so transit we are really seen as our tip of the spear when it comes to powerful in real life brand experiences and that excites a lot of our brands because they don't buy in isolation they still carry on with doing their video they might be doing their ctv they might be doing their search and they might be doing their social but suddenly it's something special and it's about culture building it's why apple who's our biggest advertiser has loved this medium and has been so selective and choiceful and you all know it as consumers when you travel on any city in the world not just in the us they will choose and be very deliberate and they will pay to lock up the very best sites because they want to be present and they want to be visible and they're using the canvases in a very different way that's a scale billboards and we're able to offer that as well that's that's why i really i'm really proud and i like our portfolio because we are a premium brand in the key dmas in the u.s and in those environments we haven't shied away from transit now what we negotiated the contract for i'm not going to go back in time we can't turn back time what we can do is say that this contract is with us till 2030 and it's in the family and we're going to make the most of it as opposed to ignore it that's great nick i wanted to get your take on the the clear channel news of the you know take private and maybe just what you think of you know implications for the the broader industry and for out front specifically well for the broader industry i think is very good i think anyone who's demonstrating that they see a long-term investment in our media is a very healthy thing. I think it sends a very good message, and I'm looking forward to meeting their new leadership and aligning on some of the biggest industry challenges that we all need to fix and benefit from. For us specifically, no, there's no change. We were very clear at the outset. We were all set on the earnings call. I mean, who knows how this will evolve down the road? But my focus and my agreement with the board when I came in this time last year was to set the strategic imperatives to fix and really turn the taps on for this great business that we have and not be distracted by M&A. And with the circumstances around Clear Channel, and obviously every significant bank has been calling, but we're not at this stage. No, I can't see anything other than opportunity and positivity for our industry.

That's great. I want to also ask about the World Cup. Coming to the U.S. this summer, how should we think about timing of spend? maybe any key verticals that are more excited about the, you know, the events, and, you know, maybe, if you can, any sort of yield uplift that you would potentially expect from the World Cup?

Well, I was just, I was only smiling when I'm thinking about, you know, the clients and the client categories. I think there's many more client categories who would love to get involved in the World up the FIFA sponsorship regulations and rules are pretty, you know, they have to be abided by in the host cities. It doesn't mean that we're not working with other brands. We might not be FIFA sponsors in other parts. But the other exciting part is we are tracking. We have a FIFA task force. We're very clear. We're tracking because this obviously, you know, it goes to the end of July and then we're done. So we need to capitalize on it. We have our FIFA sponsors, we have our team sponsors, and we've already, we can see the kind of commitments coming in from the Coca-Cola free delay. We can see, we can also see the host cities. We've struck agreements with six of the host cities that we will help represent and discover alternative or let's say episodic inventory opportunities like we did at the Super Bowl. We did it this year. It was more significant in New Orleans. We were able to do it last year. But where we can find, let's say, the inventory that's going to supplement what we have to sell. When it comes to our inventory, we have got a very clear focus, and our pricing and packaging team have pulled all inventory out in those key host cities that we believe are the premium for the sponsor brands. That's what we're selling. No one can be buying that. it starts first and foremost with us talking with the FIFA sponsors. So we're getting good traction. We set ambitious targets. We're tracking well.

I want to see if you would give you the opportunity for any closing remarks as we're almost at time.

Well, thank you.

And thanks again for the opportunity to speak with you.

My closing remarks are that I love this medium. I think it's really pure. I love the fact it's a public media I love the fact that in a world of the highly personalized algorithms and the world of division that has been spread and occurred, not just in this country and the circumstances around that that our medium can also do good when it comes to purpose, when I think about some of the pro bono and the charitable and the experiences we did like Dear New York in New York City where we removed in the MTA, where every single ad was removed for the period of our exhibition. I love brands. I love marketing. I'm a big believer in brand building. I believe that it's certainly in the West too much of everything, too many goods, too many services. You either, as Philip Kotler said, you're either a brand or a commodity. So if you want to be a brand and you believe in the value of having the brand as a place of trust, as a premium pricing, as evidence of your story, then you need to find the medium that are trusted. I believe the future, because of AI, is going to be less about analog media versus digital media. It'll be about trusted environments versus mistrusted ones. We are going to be investing significantly to demonstrate the remarkable trust, connectivity, and scale of this great medium, in which case it should not have fallen, as it has done in the US in the last decade, from 4% of media spend to 2.5% of media spend. I have an ambition to lead the industry to get this back up to 5% of media spend. In China, it's between 6% and 7%. The advertising industry has only existed in China for the last 30 years. Their medium is fragmented. They're a massive market. They have huge regions. Why is Germany 9%? Why is the UK increasing? Australia's gone from 4% to 6%. And yet we, as an industry in this market, And I know we're fragmented, and I know we have measurement issues, and I know all this. We're out of time, so I'll shut up now. But I believe this medium has failed. It's been undervalued and poorly sold, and it has the greatest potential of any media out there. Thank you for your time.

Perfect. Nick Bryan, thank you so much.