Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:CCO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

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Steven Cahall : Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Our next question comes from Aaron Watts from Deutsche Bank. Aaron, your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Aaron Watts : Hi. Thanks for getting me in. Just two questions for me. Covered a lot of ground today. In the U.S., what are some of the key factors driving the relative softness of the print format versus digital? Is that being driven by some of the specific verticals you’ve called out that are soft at the moment, or the specific markets you’ve talked about that are maybe weighted more towards print?

Scott Wells: So that’s a very micro question. I’m going to give you a macro answer because of time, and also I don’t know that it will actually help that much. The drivers of what’s going on in print are the overall factors that we’ve got going on. The markets that are down are a little more weighted to print than other markets. I think a lot of not having auto insurance come back as much as we had hoped for this year has been a drag on print. That would be the only incremental thing I’d name to the kind of overall challenges in the U.S. But we look at this very closely market to market, and I think those macro characterizations are the big ones.

Aaron Watts : Okay. Got it. And then secondly, as you close out 2023 and roll into 2024, and as digital continues to expand in importance, can you remind us how to think about the margin profile of digital versus the legacy static boards for the Americas platform? And at this stage of the rollout, should we think about each new digital board added as margin accretive? Or if not, what are the mitigating factors there?

Scott Wells: So, yes, I mean, digital, there’s a lot packed into that as well. But we always do try to secure the ground underneath our digital signs and/or get a long-term lease when we convert them. They are inherently a higher margin product. But our roadside business, our America business is a high margin product overall, outside of the spectaculars and a few urban locations. So you should think of it as a margin tailwind, but it’s not a tsunami. I guess that’s the pithy way to put that one. All right. I think we are going to shift. Go ahead, operator, please.

Operator: Yes, I was just going to comment. We don’t have any further questions. So I will hand back to you for closing remarks. Thank you.

Scott Wells: Great. And thank you, everyone, for joining us today. I know that we’ve been able to say we’re improving our guidance on the strength of airports in northern Europe. And our investors are most interested in America. When I look at year-to-date in America, I just want to remind everyone of a couple things. On the revenue side, more than half our markets have grown for the year. And one market accounts for almost twice of our total decline year-to-date. That’s one market is accounting for twice the total decline. In addition, we’re seeing double-digit growth in programmatic for the first time since early this year. And category — this is moving in the right direction. On the EBITDA side, we’re coming out of the long absorption of the large contract that we refreshed this year and have almost fully lapped the one-time abatements related to COVID.

So couple that with the demonstration of our ability to get hard things done in our portfolio, the performance of our airports in Northern Europe teams, and the focus areas we shared throughout the call, we believe there’s a lot of reasons to see brighter days ahead for CCO. With that, we’ll wrap it up. Thank you all, and we’ll talk with you again next quarter.

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today’s call. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect your lines.

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