Started. So, come on in. Just in time. Thank you. Sure. Hi, everyone. I'm Lance Vitanza, Senior Media Analyst at TD Cowen. I'm delighted to have Clear Channel here with us this afternoon, specifically David Sailer, the CFO, and Bob McCuin, Chief Revenue Officer of the Americas. For those of you that don't know, David has ascended into the CFO role all of three months ago, but- Yeah. He was the- Not even. Not even. But he was the CFO of Clear Channel Americas for a decade before that, so certainly a lot of familiarity- Yeah. With these assets and with this balance sheet. Bob, I think you joined Clear Channel Americas in 2015. Right. So again, I think we've got the right guys on the stage to talk today. I'd like to start off actually, I'm gonna go into sort of the problem areas. Sure. Mm-hmm. You know, as I think about, I like to talk first about the sort of the, the regions, the markets, or the specific geographies. So I know that last year, and it wasn't just for Clear Channel, it was for the, anyone in outdoor advertising that was in Los Angeles, that was in the Bay Area, that was in Chicago, had difficulties, or at least those were weighing on things. My sense is that at least the first two of those three have improved this year. I'm not so sure about Chicago. So could we talk about, you know, what happened in those markets, how they're recovering, how important those markets are for you relative to your peers? Absolutely. I can start off with that, and I know you're absolutely right, and it was definitely more weighed towards the West Coast. I'd say, I mean, last year in 2023 was. It was a tough year, and it was an interesting year, where you started off slow. As you got into the second quarter, things looked to turn around, and then when the summers hit, it's almost like the agencies went on vacation. But specifically region-wise, San Francisco was definitely the hardest, and yes, media and entertainment was definitely a part of that on the West Coast, but it was more than that for San Francisco, and I'd probably take the group. When coming out of COVID, obviously, everyone was depressed, and San Francisco came back pretty quick. Like, it was a good recovery. End of 2021 into 2022, it was doing really well, and then it was less about ad sales, it was just the, the city of San Francisco, the lawlessness, the violence, just... I mean, everyone was watching the news. It, it wasn't good. And our shelter business is in the city center, and that really hurt us. It was down, you know, every quarter. If you looked at our 10-K back in, you know, in 2022, you know, San Francisco was our number two market. It's now, it's not. Like, it was, it was a tough year for, for, for the, for the market, and it was really more in the city of San Francisco. The surrounding suburbs weren't great, but it wasn't terrible. I mean, you know, the, our billboard business on our highways wasn't bad. It was in the city, it was the shelter business. It is starting to perk back. The technology vertical, and it was actually very strong in the first quarter for 2023, but it's not gonna come back the way it was that quickly. It's going to take time, and there is still softness in the city of San Francisco from a national standpoint. In 2023, people didn't want to be a part of it. Like, you know, the advertisers didn't want to be a part of, you know, the news story that was going on. The city itself has done some good things from a city council standpoint to combat the crime, and it's getting better, but there's still a little bit of a stigma attached there with the national business, so that hasn't come back as solid. When I think about the West Coast, first quarter was good. Media and entertainment, obviously, you know, the writer strikes ending has been helpful, and I think that should be a tailwind to us as we get into third quarter and fourth quarter, because that's really where you saw the bulk of that last year. Not sure if there's anything you'd want to expand upon. That was a good overview. I would add on to San Francisco, you asked the question. It is a really important market for us, and it really hurt us last year. I mean, our coverage in San Francisco is very, very strong. We have the airports, right? As David talked about, we have the inventory in the neighborhoods. We've got inventory on the Bay Bridge. So for us to have a market like that be challenged was a pretty big headwind. We're seeing business come back. It's coming back a little faster locally, and I think David talked a little about the national. And in some of that lens is, I think the perception and reality, right? The... If you go to the neighborhoods where a lot of our inventory is in and around downtown San Francisco, it's very strong, it's very busy. The national advertisers, I don't think, have that lens, but the local advertisers do. David talked a little bit about technology, really drives our market. Yep. So we're seeing that back. You drive around, you see it. We're optimistic that it'll be a good rebound story for us this year, but the national recovery is gonna lag a little bit there. David covered media and entertainment. You know, it was a decent start to the year for us in media and entertainment. I mean, where our exposure is more in L.A. than it is in New York, right? In New York, we're more Times Square. We've got inventory, but it's more Times Square plus our airports. But we're optimistic that that can grow as well this year because we had strikes last year and a number of things, and the slate's not that great. Mm-hmm. There's still a real opportunity for us to grow, which we're driving towards. So, the movie calendar is still building, so that's a, you've got some legs behind you on that. That's a multiple year recovery? I think, right. I think what you're gonna see is what I'm hearing or what I'm reading, is that next year looks good for the slate of movies because obviously the gap, but we still believe that there's an opportunity to perform well this year, and that's what. Yeah, I agree. But you are right, that the movie slate, you know, from what I read, obviously, I'm not on the inside of that, but it sounds like for the end of this year into 2025- Yeah. It'll be strong. Just one follow-up on San Francisco, and you mentioned that you have a lot of shelter business, I think? Yeah. So, is the issue there that the advertisers didn't want to be there because they didn't perceive there was much traffic, or were you seeing vandalism, like what was happening with OUTFRONT in the New York subway? It's absolutely on the vandalism side. Oh, really? Yeah. No, it's a great product, but it is definitely more on the vandalism side. And just what was going on in the city, I mean, if you watch the news, the crime and whatnot, it's more the advertisers. And the people were there. Yeah. I mean, probably a little bit of a lesser extent than pre-COVID, but the audience was there, but just more being, the advertisers being associated with, with what was going on. And I think the city itself has done a nice job, and it's going in the right direction now. I was in the Bay Area in January, and I was surprised by how robust the environment felt in downtown San Francisco, in the neighborhood. So it seems like it had really come back. Yes. In fact, I hadn't been there personally during the midst of the stories and the maximum lawlessness, but it seemed like maybe the rumors of San Francisco's death were greatly exaggerated. So let's shift gears, and maybe you could spend a few minutes on growth opportunities and priorities. And I'm really thinking in terms of billboards versus street furniture versus transit. Okay. I mean, when you think about our businesses from an American standpoint, it's billboards. So if you look at our split on revenue, we're 74% bulletins, which is digital, and our printed signs. Another 12% is posters. So a majority of our inventory from an American standpoint is on the billboard side. When I think of transit, yeah, we have a smaller, you know, bus shelter business, which is probably around 3% of our revenue. But when I think of transit, I think of airports. Yeah. At a high level, when I'm thinking about our business, you know, from a growth opportunity, overall, just advertising for the out-of-home industry, I think of the pie in the U.S., it's a $350 billion pie. We're obviously a smaller percentage of that, but the advertisers that are spending in out-of-home, 60% of advertisers that are in that three-- that are in that 350 million, are spending in out-of-home. So I look at that 40% as, how do you attract them to the out-of-home space? And, you know, Bob, as a team, it's direct to client that is trying to do that outreach to get clients, and it's new clients, which is important, you know, a growth avenue. Of that 60%, they're only spending 5% of their ads, of their ad budget with out-of-home. That second bucket to go after is: how do you get that 5% higher? So it's your existing client base, and how do you drive that? Some of the initiatives that we're doing, and we'd always talk about digital. I mean, digital is a key component of our growth strategy. It increases our inventory, it gets us more inventory to sell each and every year. And I look at it, when I think of new business or new verticals, Scott talks a lot about pharma, how we're developing that, that pharma vertical, and those are new clients to the space. You know, Bob could talk to the same about the beverage vertical or CPG. Those are clients that are in our space, but how do you expand upon them? So I kinda look at those areas of, you know, how we're gonna grow the business. Yeah, and you anticipated one of my future questions, which was: are you sort of tapped out with your existing advertisers? And I guess that's the answer is no, because you're only getting 5%- Yeah. Of their advertising budget. So there's a huge opportunity, one would think, within your existing advertisers. And how do you go about tapping into that? I think there's a number of ways, and I'll- Okay. I'll tackle it. If you think about our business, there's local, and then there's national. And when you think about national, these are national advertisers that are buying out-of-home for very local and regional reasons, but they're national advertisers. So I'll kind of parse the two questions. On the local side, you know, really there's the path may be through our RADAR suite of tools, which we have, and we'll talk a little bit about that, with a goal to understand more about audiences. So location is really drives the vast majority of the purchases in out-of-home today, right? Yeah. And that's, and that's beautiful, and we, we never wanna lose that, right? The power of location, particularly in this ad environment, is important. But understanding audiences and movement and mobility and where they, the people travel is the power for us to unlock, both on the local and the national side, larger buys and larger commitments. So if you think about a, just use an example of a QSR or, or a car dealer who said: "Look, I wanna put a sign or leverage out-of-home inventory within one to three miles of my store." But the people that travel to that dealership or that QSR have driven 10-15 miles. So building tools and building a story to have a conversation about understanding where the movement happened and how to get to them along the journey is something that out-of-home hasn't really tapped into at scale yet, and that's what we're working on. And when we can do that locally, that unlocks a bigger investment because out-of-home works. You know, it's unskippable. So all the beautiful things we talk about in this environment. So that's kind of on the local side. On the national side, David talked about, on pharmaceuticals. I mean, that's a vertical that spends very little to almost nothing in out-of-home, but they do when they have a conference. They think about out-of-home very tactically. "I'm doing a conference in Chicago. I I wanna buy your O'Hare assets. I wanna buy some other assets here." But they don't think about out-of-home as a bill—as, as, as a channel, like they think of television. So to do that, it requires potentially like a data set, what we're working with, with pharmaceuticals in unique ways to bring tools that they need to have to unlock that audience targeting. And it's, it's been very powerful. It's taken a long time to get there, but if we can unlock pharma, we can do more with CPG, we can do beverages. Those categories could really drive this industry forward on the, on the national side in particular. It's gonna, it's gonna take some work, but we're make—we're making progress. Well, you alluded to RADAR, and that definitely is an area that I wanted to sort of double-click on. Sure. Maybe you could just sort of start with the overview of what the product suite looks like and how you're sort of bringing that to bear. Yeah. So let me take a step back. So we developed RADAR, which is our... Really, if you think about it, it's a planning and attribution suite of tools, and we call it RADAR, and there's four tools within it. We built that out seven years ago because we believe that there is unlocked potential in out-of-home. We believe part of the challenges with marketers was marketers loved out-of-home, but they had a hard time understanding how to target audiences like they buy other media. And once they did buy it, they weren't sure of how to quantify the outcome, so there's the attribution piece. So RADARView is our planning tool... It allows you to go in and identify audiences, to plan out-of-home campaigns with data sets, profiles our inventory, indexes them, very similar to how other media is planned and bought right now. That's RADARView. That's available at our local teams, as well as our national teams. They can go to a customer, they can sit in front of them, they can pull up a map, and they can say, "You're looking for auto intenders in Dallas. Let me talk to you about the inventory that best directly targets them." It's a really, really powerful tool for us. That's RADARView. That's a planning tool we have. On the RADARProof side, that's the attribution model. It could be something as simple as understanding out-of-home's impact on footfall, measuring the impact of out-of-home on footfall. We've done things so as sophisticated as app downloads. We've done things, I've mentioned pharma, things we're doing, and we have partnerships with data clean rooms, with LiveRamp. So we have customers who come to us who want to use their data. That's fine. You know, we can work with them in a way where we onboard data, they onboard their data, and they do the measurement on their side. So it's really important you think about RADAR, and especially as the ecosystem of data is changing, you know, we have flexibility within the platform. So we have an attribution, we have our planning, we have RADARSync, which is what I just talked about, it's the ability for us to work with data sets. And then there's RADAR Connect, which is our, it's our digital marketing adjunct. It's a amplification. If you think about sequential messaging, it's pairing out-of-home with mobile or CTV. That's available to our local sellers today. It's been available to them for a number of years. We've trained them on it. I think about it as a way to deepen that CNA, that customer conversation, where we can really have discovery and growth. And it allows us to tap into verticals. You know, we've done work in the CPG side, tying into IHS Polk for auto or Nielsen Catalina. So we can do a lot with it. You know, we still have to get the buy-in through the agencies, and that's the part that we work through. That's why David said I have a team of folks that are working direct to client as well as agencies. But it's exciting, and we definitely feel like we've got a toolset that allows us to do some things that are very different. So, just a couple of follow-up. Yeah, of course. On the attribution side, in particular, if I'm, maybe this is the right example, maybe it's not. Sure. But if I'm McDonald's and I've got a billboard advertising- Mm-hmm. Whatever the special is, you know, how would you describe the ability to convey to McDonald's? Sure. The efficacy of the billboard that they just are paying you for? Sure. So if it's, if they wanna understand the impact of out-of-home to drive people to actually go to McDonald's, that's a very basic footfall study. We can do that today. We leverage our RADAR platform, and we do measurement lift on that, and it's similar in most media, and for us, it's a very good fundamental. Now, if they want to tie that into an actual sale, possible, but it gets a little more complicated. We can actually do that. I mentioned IHS Polk. At one point, our conversations with auto dealers was, "I want to understand exactly OOH exposure, my investment, and how many people it drove to my dealership." And then we did that, and it was positive, and we talked a little bit more. So, but actually, I want to know how many of those people then made a purchase. Then we had to work with a third party, like IHS Polk, right? To, to do that matching. So that's the sophistication that's possible. And Lance, I would say that it has been a journey to educate our teams. It's a really great journey. I love it, and our customers on what we can do. Every conversation is met with, "I love out-of-home, but I didn't know you could do that." This is a Clear Channel opportunity. It's an opportunity for the industry to get beyond that 4%-5% David is talking about. Well, and so how far down that road are we? Are we halfway to where you wanna be, or are we a third of the way? Are we two-thirds of the way? And- It's hard, hard to gauge it- Yeah. Because the- There we go about. The finish line is moving. I mean, I would have probably answered it differently, and then they said: I want to tie, you know, visitations to dealerships now to actually sales. So, look, I'd say we've got the right foundation in place. We might be halfway there, I don't know. But we're pretty far along to do the things we need to do today to have those game-changer conversations, and that's what's exciting. I wanna make sure we leave time for the balance sheet, but before we get to that. Sure. So when you add all this up, and we haven't even talked about programmatic... but, you know, how would you, maybe this is more for you, David, but how would you sort of think about, how would you have us think about the kind of the medium to longer term revenue, organic revenue growth potential of this business? I mean, I know that a couple, you know, you've, you've had your Investor Day, but as you look at what's going on now from a technology standpoint, from a consumer standpoint, what are your thoughts there? What should we model? I mean, look, we don't have, we have our guidance out there for the full year, so I won't go into specifics, but we always talk about this business, you know, as a GDP plus type of business from an at-home space. But I also think you're gonna have quarters where you'll outperform, where a couple things will hit when you talk about pharma or whatnot. And then, look, you're gonna be tied from an economic standpoint, so, you know, you won't, it's not gonna be as steady, but I think overall, you're a GDP plus type of company. Okay. And then on the CapEx front, can we talk a little bit about that? So the question that I usually get, which I don't think is a great question, but I'm gonna ask it anyway, is, you know, talk about the split between maintenance and growth CapEx. Sure. But I also would—I'd be interested personally in understanding CapEx as a percent of revenue as you go from digital to, you know, to legacy, just static displays, and as we think about airports in particular, where essentially part of your bid is a commitment to invest a lot of money into the displays, so. Yeah. There, it's very different, and you know, from a simple answer on growth versus maintenance, it's roughly 70/30, and that's pretty similar across all the segments. And when you're talking about growth, if I'm looking at it from an American standpoint, you're looking at the digitals you're putting in the ground. It could be converting a digital, it could be some of your digital replacements. You know, printed, you still put printed signs in. It's not as frequent, but you'll still put—I mean, you'll put in printed signs. And then really, the maintenance part of the job is just we have 40-something or close to 50,000 structures in the Americas segment. Things break. Yeah. Catwalks, you got to paint them, certain things, you got to keep them safe for your, the installers climbing up the pole. So that, that's from a maintenance standpoint. As far as when I'm thinking about spending them, I'll stay on Americas first, and then I'll go to airports. I mean, we, we've targeted roughly, you know, 90-100 digitals a year. And that really, when I think about that, it's a pipeline of assets. It's and it's. When you think about sales, you have a pipeline. When you think about your digital from a real estate standpoint, it's really a pipeline. Every market, we're looking for the best returns. What are the best boards to convert, and where can you put in organics? That's probably a two to three-year process by the time you find a location to actually selling it. It's the permitting process, it's the building process, so it takes a little bit of time. But that's kind of where we've been. Last year, I think we put in about 116. Mm. It was a little bit higher last year. I mean, it was, it was around that number. And that's kind of- You know, I feel like that is kind of the progression we'll do. From an airport standpoint, that's a little bit different. And I guess the last thing I'd say about Americas, the question people will ask is, "Well, you know, how much runway do you have?" When you think about our assets- In terms of digital conversion? Yeah. They'll say: "Oh, you know, what's your runway? Are you in the first inning, the second inning?" 5% of our assets are digital, 30% something of our revenue is digital. So there is, there is still a lot of assets out there. There's a lot of runway to continue building. And the biggest thing for me is we—you want to build the assets, and you want to make sure you have the sales capacity to sell them. You want to make sure you keep that in line. For airports, it's a little bit different. Airports is a higher percentage of digital. They're in the 50s, and you're in the high teens from an asset standpoint. But the way that will turn over is, your basic airport deal is 10 years. Some might be a little bit less, you know, some could be a little bit more. But as you renew airports, either you're renewing or you're getting a new airport, you're going to put a digital program into that airport. And yes, digital are in the airports today, but an airport that's going to come up for renewal, probably, that inventory probably hasn't been refreshed in quite some time. So as those cycles cycle through, they're going to be the airport's going to be more digital. The airports like digital. We like it as well, in the sense, it's... If the airports like it, because it's cleaner, but for us, it's really, it's a quality asset to sell. And we will also mix in printed from a digital standpoint, but I also think it's just more efficient for even from a dollar standpoint. Like, upfront, you have to pay for it, but when you think about a digital sign in, in the airports, it's very easy to change that copy. And it's actually hard to change copy in an airport because there's only a limited amount of time you can be in that airport to actually change it from a printed standpoint. So we like digital, it's clean, the airports like it, but that percentage will continue to grow over time as we renew and also gain new airports. So in terms of billboards versus airports, where do you expect to spend more money in terms of digital deployments? Definitely on the Americas segment. More of our CapEx spend will be on the Americas segment. It's a higher-margin product. Sure. But it's also just a result of, you know, the airports we're going after. We have a capital plan, we have a long-range plan, so we know the airports that are going to be coming due. We know the airports we're going to go after, and if you look at it historically, we actually have less airports today than we did five years ago, but our revenue five years ago was around $200 million. You know, our guidance this year is $350 million. So we actually have less airports, but I think we're more strategic about it, more focused. I'd say one thing we've done over the last several years, which I think has been huge to the airports team, which Bob is a big part of, is we're utilizing the Americas sales force to sell into our airports. So there's great synergies there. It's just more folks selling into the airports, and that has helped in a big way. So, I think you said on the billboard side, 5% of the boards are digital and 30%+ of the revenues- Yep. Is digital. On the airport side, 50% of the board- Yeah, a little bit higher than that. Plus 50% are digital. Is that 90% of the revenue then that's coming from—in the airports? Is, Is, is virtually all the revenue at airports coming from the digital, or no? No, no. No, absolutely not. A large... And it's the same thing on the printed side, on the printed side, on the Americas side. There are clients that want digital and printed. Yeah. There are some clients that just want printed. They want to own that piece of real estate, either on the highway or somewhere in the airport. So no, it's, there's definitely demand on both sides. Have the economics changed in terms of what it costs you to either build a billboard, a digital billboard, and maintain it, or to convert a static display to a digital display, those IRRs that you've talked about historically? No, no. I mean, from a dollar standpoint, yeah, electricity has gone up in certain parts of the country, but overall, the procurement teams have done a really nice job on the cost of the structures and the cost of the boards. And usually, as technology gets better, there's usually savings. Okay. I mean, coming out of COVID, with inflation, there was a little bump up. That was probably the first time, you know, in my ten years, where there's a little bit, you know, increase. But overall, no, I think the numbers that we went through on Investor Day are very similar. 2023 was a little depressed from a revenue standpoint, but over the course of time, I'm not seeing a big difference. Okay. So that, by the way, we have some buffer time on the back end of that. Okay. So we're going to make it to zero. We're not done. So in terms of the balance sheet and some strategic considerations, you know, obviously, this is the, you know, the million-dollar question. Yeah. How would you describe your comfort level with your current liquidity position? I'd love to get your thoughts on how rapidly you think that Clear Channel can delever organically. Yep. And then from there, we can talk about what strategic options- Sure. .Y ou may have. Sure. From a liquidity standpoint, when we ended the first quarter, had $193 million of cash. We had just about an equal amount of credit line availability, so our liquidity was a little bit less than $400 million. So definitely comfortable from that standpoint. When I look at, you know, where we are from a leverage standpoint, you know, organically, you know, we have to grow the business. I mean, growing the top line, growing EBITDA, you know, every $25 million of EBITDA is two turns. So that's paramount. It's all the things Bob's talking about. You know, all the, from a strategic standpoint, we have to do that. The next thing I would talk about is just the processes we have going on in Europe. You know, and I'm sure folks have heard on the earnings call. You know, we mentioned on the earnings call, we're in negotiations right now. So you know, for that deal, you know, proceeds from, if that transaction goes through, would obviously go down to pay down BV notes. We're also. We have a process going on in Latin America, which we also spoke about on the earnings call, and we're talking with several counterparties on Latin America. It's a little further behind. It started later than the Europe process. Much smaller in scale, but we have parties that are interested in the platform. We have parties that are interested from a country standpoint. We've obviously sold Europe South. Spain is still in the regulatory review. But from a proceeds standpoint, when those come in the door, the BV notes will get paid down. You know, we can shelter a lot of the proceeds from our best investment in CapEx, or we actually can do acquisition if we want to go to the route from an EBITDA standpoint. So I think they'll definitely be growing organically, going through the Europe process. There'll be some liability management with the proceeds that come in. And then your next question just getting to it. Once you're at that point, I do think as you start paying down absolute debt from the things I just mentioned, and you're growing the business, you know, your equity value, maybe your multiple goes up, because now we're a U.S., U.S.-centric business, higher margin, a little bit simple. You know, we've talked about in the past, obviously, you know, the corporate structure gets a little bit smaller. And you'll get a little bit more on the equity side, and then I think it opens the door for a lot of things to do, either with equity, some kind of financial instrument, could there be a JV? I think there's a lot of tools that we're gonna—we're thinking about today that obviously, we have to get past the processes first in Europe and Latin America to really go after the debt. And we have to look at it both ways from an organic standpoint of growing the business, and then just what can we do, you know, outside, I'd call it non-operational, to look at leverage. But it's obviously, you know, super important to the company. Well, and the last question that I think I have time for is, domestically, are there any opportunities- Mm. Whether that be asset swaps or outright sales? I mean, could you, in theory, peel off $100 million of EBITDA, I mean, still leave you with $400+ million- Yep. Sell that for a big multiple, revalue the portfolio up, and, you know, pay down a bunch of debt. I mean, is that something that you would consider? I mean, trust me, folks come to us all the time. We have wonderful assets, great markets, you know. Yeah. Folks would love to buy them. But in the U.S. right now, our tax basis is really low. So yes, we can definitely get a good multiple, and I would not bet against that. But I think the hit we would take from Uncle Sam is gonna kinda level the playing field. Your leverage is here, and yes, you can get that multiple, but at the end of the day, what you're paying in taxes might not do the job. But look, I say that, and that's how I'm looking at it now. We will always open to listen. You know, if there's something out there that makes sense, we would always entertain, but that's kind of-