Bill Wilson: Yes. Good morning. Good to hear from you, and thank you again for the question for Stu, because I think it’s very astute because it is a distraction, it’s noise as you characterize it because it’s noncash impairment, as Stu described and people should look at adjusted EPS, which, as to your point, most investors do, but sometimes there’s a headline out there that doesn’t take that into account. So I’m glad you highlighted that noise. In terms of TSI staffing and the challenges we faced. Really going into 2023 when we had a back-to-work mandate, those are behind us at this point. They definitely hurt us throughout 2023. There was I think I’ve detailed it on the prior calls throughout last year that there was a large number of people who just rejected the return to work mandate and look for other employment and moved on from Townsquare Interactive.
It was quite a percentage, particularly of our service organization who are used to working from home in essence from March of 2020 till the end of 2022. So obviously, a few years. I think what’s happened is as people have come back to work, which were people who were already existing on our team as well as new hires, they definitely see the benefit of the culture and being a part of a team with a common goal to help local businesses in cities outside the top 50. To your point, it’s our largest office in Charlotte. It’s by far the largest office. So it’s a lot of competition for roles, as you described, but we continue to be one of the best named employers and places to work in Charlotte. We actually just won that distinction for our Ignite digital advertising business as well, which we’re quite proud of.
So they were definitely issues. They were definitely part of the reason in addition to the macro headwinds and everything we’ve described in terms of inflation, wage pressures and interest rates throughout 2023. But we also had some self-inflicted wounds. And that’s why I have so much confidence and I wish I could share all the data points we’re seeing on a day-to-day basis and week-to-week. But that’s why I can sit here today and tell our investor base and our shareholder base and our debt holders that the rebound has begun at Townsquare Interactive, will return to subscriber growth in Q2, return to revenue growth in Q2 and we’ll return to profit growth in Q3 or Q4. And the team is the reason for that. It was definitely a setback to had people choose not to come back to work.
And as I’ve described, Jim previously is you can earn the right to work remotely. If you are a high performer and you choose to want to work a few days in and a few days out of what I would call a hybrid model, we allow that. But you have to be a high performer to earn that, and we respect that and I couldn’t be more proud of the Townsquare team. There’s always going to be times where we take a step back, we fall down, but we get up every time, we attack ourselves and no one’s done it better than the Townsquare Interactive team as we go into 2024. So appreciate the question, Jim.
James Goss: Okay. Just a couple of other ones. One follow-up on the TSI. Are there any new service offerings you are introducing or you can introduce that can sort of raise the ARPU in that sector? And the other question would be with regard to Ignite. It seems like that’s actually been the better performing digital element. I wonder if you might talk about the various specific growth components within Ignite that are really doing well right now.
Bill Wilson: Yes, I’d be happy to do that. So let me take those one at a time. So from a product and service and solutions offering at Townsquare Interactive, we have, over the past six months, introduced numerous new solutions for clients. And it wouldn’t so much, Jim, raised the ARPU. But these new products, including a robust CRM including the ability to text and e-mail market, including the ability to hook into QuickBooks and provide invoicing, set up appointments for contractors without having to take a call. All of these, I’d say, important elements for small businesses that they may either lack that today. We see a lot of people who don’t have any of these solutions or some of them have multiple providers for these solutions.
And we’ve been able to come in and say, hey, we can make it a one-stop shop and make it much easier for you. So previously, if you had a great website and you were ranking very high in Google, we may not have been the best partner for you. Now I can tell you, you can continue with your great website, your great placement in Google and Bing and Yahoo! and the search engine, but there’s a lot of other solutions we can provide your business so that you can operate more efficiently and more profitably by using Townsquare Interactive. So it’s actually broadened the pool of target customers at Townsquare Interactive as we went into end of last year, and particularly, we actually rolled this out. We trained at the end of last year, but we rolled it out in February in full four.
So I believe that’s going to be part of the reason you see the rebound at Townsquare Interactive in Q2 and onward is because of the product and solutions we’ve offered. And it’s a clear differentiator for us to integrate this all in-house with our tools. So again, I know it’s been a tough year in ’23 for Townsquare Interactive, but 2024 is the bounce back year. The headline numbers aren’t going to look positive because of the subscriber loss but you’re going to see subscriber growth return, revenue growth return and profit growth all return in 2024, which hopefully gives us much confidence to everybody on this call as it gives to me. And again props to Tim Pirrone and entire Townsquare Interactive team for taking that challenge running through walls and getting back to being a winning division of the company again.
