iHeartMedia, Inc.

Good afternoon. My name is Audra and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the iHeartMedia first quarter 2025 earnings call. Today's conference is being recorded. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star one again. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mike McGinnis, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join us for our first quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining me for today's discussion are Bob Pittman, our Chairman and CEO, and Rich Bressler, our President, COO, and CFO. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, management will take your questions. In addition to our press release, We have an earnings presentation available on our website that you can use to follow along with our remarks. Please note that this call may include forward-looking statements regarding our financial performance and operating results. These statements are based on management's current expectations, and actual results could differ from what is stated as a result of certain factors identified on today's call and in the company's SEC filings, including our recent 8 filing. Additionally, during this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release, earnings presentation, and our SEC filings, which are available in the investor relations section of our website. And now I'll turn the call over to Bob.

Thanks, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. I know all of you are trying to read the tea leaves on this advertising marketplace in this uncertain environment, and so are we. At this point in time, we're seeing generally stable ad spend, but we, of course, continue to monitor it closely due to the lack of visibility. Even with that lack of visibility, let me remind you that over the past few years, we've repeatedly shown our ability to take quick and decisive action on both cost and growth opportunities for the benefit of both the immediate and long-term, and to leverage new technologies that significantly reduce our operating expenses without reducing our capabilities. We remain committed to identifying opportunities across our organization to operate more efficiently and take advantage of new and evolving technologies like programmatic and AI, which are critical to delivering short-term results and long-term growth, even during periods of economic uncertainty. Now, let me jump to the financial results. In the first quarter, we generated adjusted EBITDA of $105 million, flat to prior year, and consistent with our previously provided guidance. Our consolidated revenue for the quarter was up 1% compared to the prior year quarter, above our guide of down low single digits. Excluding the impact of political, our consolidated revenue was up 1.8%. Turning to our individual operating segments, the digital audio group generated first quarter revenue of $277 million, up 16% versus prior year. The digital audio group generated first quarter adjusted EBITDA of $87 million, up 27.8% versus prior year, and the digital audio groups adjusted EBITDA margins were 31.4% compared to 28.5% in the prior year, making continued progress toward our stated goal of achieving adjusted EBITDA margins in the mid-30s. Within the digital audio group, our podcast revenue grew 28% compared to prior year, well above our revenue guidance above high teens. We're beginning to feel the flywheel effect of being the strong number one in podcast publishing. Our podcasting financial discipline and our focus on the high margin podcast publishing sector continue to fuel what we believe is the most profitable podcasting business in the United States and to accelerate our growth. Importantly, our podcasting EBITDA margins remain accretive to our total company EBITDA margins. Our non-podcast digital revenues grew 8.7% compared to prior year. Turning now to the multi-platform group, which includes our broadcast radio, networks, and events businesses. In the first quarter, revenue was $473 million, down 4.2% versus prior year, and excluding the impact of political advertising, revenue was down 3.4%. The multi-platform group's adjusted EBITDA was $70 million, down 9.3% versus prior year. Let me share with you a data point from this quarter, which we believe illustrates the progress we're making in moving our broadcast radio business back into growth mode. Included in our multi-platform group is our premier broadcast radio networks business, which sells broadcast radio advertising with national reach instead of market by market or local advertising. Our premier broadcast networks revenue returned to growth in Q1 and was up 2.1% compared to prior year. We believe this is an important indicator of the growing strength broadcast radio has among national advertisers and evidence of the progress we're making in returning broadcast radio to revenue growth. Additionally, we continue to increase our share of the radio industry advertising revenue pie. In the first quarter, iHeart grew to 40% of the advertising revenue in markets measured by Miller Kaplan. Given our audience reach, plus the investments we've made in ad tech and data, Coupled with the fact that we have the largest sales force in audio, we expect that share growth to continue. Turning to the audio and media services group, revenue was $59 million, down 14.2% year-over-year, and adjusted EBITDA was $16 million, down 33.3%. And most of that decline was driven by CATS television. Excluding the impact of political, the audio and media services group revenue was down 11.8%. In summary, we believe we're demonstrating one, our ability to generate positive financial results, even in an uncertain environment. Two, our continued podcast outperformance as we cement our number one leadership position. Three, our commitment to reignite growth in our broadcast radio business. And four, that our modernization program remains on track to generate 150 million net savings in 2025, driven primarily by technology and AI. And now I'll turn it over to Rich.

Thank you, Bob, and good afternoon. Our Q1 2025 consolidated revenue was up 1% year over year above the guidance we provided of down low single digits due to March coming in slightly better than we were expecting in both our multi-platform and digital segments. Let me provide you with some additional granularity on our advertising revenue performance this quarter. As a reminder, we have no advertising category greater than about 5% of our total advertising revenue, and no individual advertiser that is more than 2% of our total advertising revenue. In the first quarter, our top five largest advertising categories in terms of total revenue were healthcare, financial services, home building and improvement, entertainment, and auto. In terms of gains and declines in absolute dollars, as you can see on slide nine, the four largest gains in the first quarter were professional services, tech and telco, beauty and fitness, and education. And the four categories that declined the most were restaurant, auto, gambling, and political. Our consolidated direct operating expenses increased 4.4% for the quarter. This increase was primarily driven by a higher variable content cost associated with the growth in our digital business, including higher podcast profit sharing expenses and third-party digital costs, partially offset by a decrease in employee compensation costs in connection with our modernization initiatives taken in 2024. Our consolidated SG&A expenses decreased 1.1% for the quarter, driven primarily by our modernization initiatives, including decreased employee compensation costs, partially offset by an increase in employee health and benefit expenses, including the reestablishment of the 401 matching program during the first quarter of 2025 and additional bad debt expense. We generated first quarter gap operating loss of $25.4 million compared to an operating loss of $34.7 million in the prior year quarter. We generated first quarter adjusted EBITDA of $105 million flat to prior year and at the midpoint of our previously provided guidance range. Before I turn to our segment performances, I wanted to spend the moment on the modernization initiative we announced on last quarter's call. As a reminder, these actions will generate net savings of $150 million in 2025 when compared to 2024, and our Q1 results included the benefit of $27 million of net savings. This quarter, we have included a slide in our investor presentation, slide five, that provides a few different ways of identifying the cost savings, including by segment, function, and type. Hopefully, this level of granularity is helpful as you update your models. Turning now to the performance of our operating segments, and as a reminder, there are slides in the earnings presentation on our segment performances. In the first quarter, the digital audio group's revenue was $277 million, up 16% year-over-year, and above our guidance of up low double digits. The Digital Audio Group's adjusted EBITDA was $87 million, up 27.8% year-over-year, and our Q1 margins were 31.4%, up from 28.5% in the prior year. Within the Digital Audio Group, our podcasting revenues were $116 million, which grew 28% year-over-year and well above the guidance we provided of up high teams. Podcasting's strong Q1 performance, with its high EBITDA flow-through, help expand the segments Q1 adjusted EBITDA margin by nearly 300 basis points compared to prior year. Our first quarter non-podcasting digital revenue grew 8.7% year-over-year to $161 million. The multi-platform group's revenue was $473 million, down 4.2% compared to the prior year, and in line with our guidance of down mid-single digits. Excluding the impact of political revenue, Our multi-platform group revenue was down 3.4%, adjusted EBITDA was $70 million, down 9.3% from $77 million in the prior year quarter. Multi-platform groups adjusted EBITDA margins were 14.8% compared to 15.6% in the prior year quarter. Turning to the audio media services group, revenue was $59 million, down 14.2% year-over-year, and adjusted EBITDA was $16 million, down 33.3% from $24 million in the prior year, and most of that decline was driven by CATS television. Excluding the impact of political, the audio and media services group revenue was down 11.8%. At quarter end, our net debt was approximately $4.6 billion. Our total liquidity was $569 million, and our cash balance was $168 million. our quarter-ending net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio was 6.5 times. In the first quarter, our free cash flow was a negative 80.7 million, essentially flat to the negative 80.9 million in the prior year quarter. As a reminder, Q1 is our seasonal low point for free cash flow in the year, and we expect to generate positive free cash flow in each of the remaining quarters in 2025. With Bob's comments on the advertising marketplace as a backdrop, Let me now turn to our second quarter guidance. We expect to generate second quarter adjusted EBITDA in the range of $140 to $160 million compared to $150 million in the prior year. We expect our consolidated Q2 2025 revenue to be down low single digits compared to prior year. Our April pacing was down 2% compared to prior year and down 1.4% excluding the impact of political. Turning to the individual segments for Q2, we expect the digital audio groups revenue to be up low double digits with podcasting revenue expected to grow in the low 20s. We expect the multi-platform groups revenue to be down mid to high single digits. And we expect the audio media services group revenue to be down approximately 5% due primarily to the impact of political advertising. The full year guidance we issued last quarter did not contemplate the current macro volatility we are all seeing. Therefore, for us to hit our full year guidance, we will need some positive movement in the macro and improvement to the uncertainty in the back half of the year to avoid the possible negative impact on the advertising marketplace for audio. Now we will turn it over to the operator to take your questions. Thank you.

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, Please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press star one again. We'll go first to Steven Lashek at Goldman Sachs.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Maybe two if I could. Bob Rich, just on the ad market, I know you mentioned the lack of visibility that's out there in the moment. I'm curious if you'd perhaps just add in a little bit of color to what you're seeing out there at the moment and conversations you're having with your ad partners. I'd be curious to what extent they pulled back after the tariff announcements over the last couple of weeks, to what extent you might be starting to see them re-engage over the last couple of days here, especially post this morning. And I'm curious to what extent or what do you think we need to get visibility of return to the ad market here over the next couple of weeks and months?

Well, I think the news like today is certainly helpful. And, you know, I think if you go back and look at the data point we had in for Premier Networks, which is really our national advertising, we're up over 2% for the quarter. I think that's sort of an indication that the bigger advertisers were hanging in there and, you know, taking this in stride. I think the risk has been in the small and medium-sized businesses, which were, I think, a little more subject to, you know, any sort of bad news. And, again, I think improving news like today helps that, and we feel better about it.

Yeah, I wouldn't have anything to add to that. And I think just in terms of what you're saying, I mean, we gave you the pacing numbers where we are through April, and, you know, again, you might, As I remind, we always remind all of ourselves every day of pacing is just a point in time. And just to remember, when we gave guidance in Q1, we said that we were up 5% in January, down about 7% in February in terms of pacing at that point in time or finishing January. We said we'd be down low single digits in revenue for Q1, and we were up 1%, as you saw what we reported today. That's why it's a data point, but again, it's just a point in time.

Got it. That's helpful. And then Bob, maybe a higher level question for you. I think you called out market share today in and around 40% of the industry. I think investors think of you as a market share gainer, but I would just be curious if you speak a little bit more about the state of the terrestrial radio industry today, and maybe what gives you confidence that you can take that market share from 40% today to something north of that over the next couple of years.

Yeah, I think that, look, I think that the fundamental issue with broadcast radio is we've got more listeners than we did 10 years ago. That the audience side of broadcast radio is just fine. This is a monetization issue that broadcast radio is facing. It's making the transformation from being a business that was sold as spots. And today it's moving to electronic and digital platforms. And I think we're making that transformation. Our ad tech stack is moving along as expected. Programmatics certainly beginning to emerge for broadcast radio as well. And I think probably the biggest argument for the share game is that given our size, You know, what you're finding, I think, especially with the larger advertising partners, is they want fewer partners, not more partners. And I think we are, you know, certainly would have to be partner number one. And, you know, what other partners they have in radio, I don't know. But I think that's probably beneficial to us if the industry consolidates.

Yeah, and Steve, I might just add just two very quick points. One of, as you look forward, if you kind of go back over the last, you know, whatever, you know, 8, 9, 10, 11 years, we've consistently taken share of the broadcast from a Miller Kaplan standpoint. So I think, hopefully, if you can get everybody comforted as they look forward, they can, from a credibility standpoint, we've taken share going back. And number two, you know, we have heard feedback, which was very good, about, okay, you talked about audience more. Can you give us data points in terms of broadcast? And that's what we shared with you today that Bob just articulated with respect to premier networks. Great.

Thank you both.

We'll move next to Sebastiano Petty at JPMorgan.

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Podcasting in the first quarter coming through better than expected, you know, second quarter guide Rich talks about, or, you know, you're going to continue to acceleration in the, you know, 20% range bus. Help us think about what's underlying that. Obviously, you guys have been a leader in, you know, podcasting for quite some time, but we hear the narrative about, you know, consumption moving to video and video podcasting, YouTube now a larger player in the market. So any color around what's driving that and, you know, how you guys continue to accelerate that top line. And then one other kind of more thematic, broader kind of question. I think, Bob, you said healthy for the market to consolidate. Maybe thinking about consolidation from a different angle. There is a fair bit of focus on broadcast deregulation in the local TV space. How might radio be impacted if there is a loosening up of ownership rules? Does that change how you guys view yourself as a buyer or seller of assets? Thank you.

Well, let me start with why podcasting. I think it starts with the fact that we've got the podcast people want to listen to. We've got a large podcast audience and it's growing. If you look at PodTrack, which measures podcast listening, not only do we do extraordinarily well overall, pretty substantial lead over the second largest podcast publisher, but we've also got it diversified across all 19 categories of podcast listening. It's measured by contract. So I think it starts with that. And second, when you get into how are people looking at podcasting, the vast majority want to listen to podcasts. Are there some people who prefer to watch a podcast? Well, I think at that point, it's not really so much a podcast as much as it is a video show. And certainly there's That goes on, look at the success of YouTube, but I don't think that's the podcasting business per se. I mean, I understand that YouTube would like to take some of that podcasting revenue, and I don't blame them, but I think, again, the consumer is spoken. And so although we look at it and watch it carefully, I think we're in exactly the right position to feel very good about it.

Yeah, Sebastian, just on your first question, just made a pickup on one thought. you know, articulated. And just as a reminder, you know, from a strategic standpoint, a number of years ago, which obviously turned out to be an important decision for us, we didn't go behind the paywall. We wanted to make sure all our podcasts were, you know, available anywhere. We carry everybody else's podcast. We just want to get the biggest inventory, and we want to monetize the most efficiently. And Bob talked about, you know, within our company, we've got, you know, approximately 1,000 sellers. on the ground that are selling everything anywhere, anytime, and that includes podcasts. So you really have a thousand person ad sales force spread out across the United States and our 150 plus offices selling. We've talked about our ad tech that we've built up over the years, the ability to place ads and monitor them and to report on them across all of our platforms. So, again, you know, when you look at this is not just something we started three or four days ago or three or four months ago or three or four years ago. And I think you're seeing the cumulative effect. And quite frankly, I think, you know, most importantly, with all the capabilities we have, is the demand that we have out there. And if you see it, you know, the efficiency and the effectiveness of podcasts, and I know we've said this before, is, you know, bigger advertisers or our biggest advertisers are have only recently, over the last couple of years, really started to start with podcasting. And the reason why that's so important is bigger advertisers spend bigger dollars there.

And look, I want to add one other point is, and we've talked about it before, but it's worth repeating here, that podcasting is probably radio on demand, just like Netflix is probably TV on demand. It's an adjacent business to radio. So we have a natural advantage here. not only have an advantage in terms of creation and knowing how to do it and having the resources to do it, but we also have this incredible promotional vehicle called broadcast radio where we're able to advertise these podcasts, promote them, talk about them to an audience that is very audio-centric anyway and understands what we're doing here. So, again, I think that is the sort of natural advantage for us.

Yeah, and by the way, just on your second question, I think it's something with respect to, you know, regulation, whether it's any of the license industries. I guess you're asking about FCC license industries. Obviously, none of us have noticed the dominance of rural reading, the same press, but, you know, from our standpoint, we already reached, you know, 90% plus of the country, 90, 10 Americans. Bob highlighted... Our greatest, in terms of our strength, is that our broadcast listening is high than it was 10 years ago out there. So we've got a great footprint within the U.S. I don't see anything of that that will affect our operating strategy at all. Thank you both.

We'll move to our next question from Aaron Watts at Deutsche Bank.

Hi guys, appreciate the expanded slide deck and thanks for taking the questions. I've got two if I may. First on the cost, was the 27 million of cost savings you mentioned for first quarter run rate or actual impact in the quarter? And how should we think about the cadence of the balance of the savings coming through the rest of the year? Any lumpiness on the way to 150 at your end?

Aaron, thanks for that, and thank you for the comment on the slides. So the 27 you shouldn't think about as run rate. Again, you have to think about our costs and, you know, costs kind of supporting revenues that you'd expect them to kind of decay speed along with the business. But I think at a high level, if you thought about them 27 in Q2, and then 40 per quarter each of the next three quarters. That would be kind of, you know, to think about those costs. And that comes basically to the 150.

Okay, that's helpful. And, Rich, should the revenue environment slow? I know that's not what we're hoping for, but if it happened, are there additional cost rationalization opportunities that could be identified?

Yes. You know, I think, you know, one is we did in the deck, as you pointed out, I think it's slide five, that goes through some more details, of course. So, you know, I think what's important about that slide is that people look at it and look at the number of levers that Bob and I and the rest of the management team can focus on. And I think also, you know, Bob mentioned in his opening remarks that we've, you know, repeatedly, I think since we've been here, shown the ability to look at opportunities. By the way, a big part of that is just constantly looking at taking advantage of AI technologies, making things more efficient for both medium and long term, leveraging new technologies. And at the same time, make sure we've been talking about podcasting, make sure we continue to feed our winners and continue to feed our growth opportunities. And I think that balance is why you're seeing, you know, just as a tangible example, what you're seeing in podcasting revenue growth.

Okay. That's helpful. If I could squeeze one last one in and, again, appreciate the time. Nielsen updated its ratings methodology recently. I'm curious your early observations on that and whether the new way of looking at listenership is resonating with advertisers.

Well, I think the most important thing is that, and we're excited about it, is that Nielsen is making it a priority to try and capture all the listening that's really happening. Not only is that important in terms of it shows us more listeners, but as advertisers do these econometric models, the media mix models. What's important is that when they see a signal of a purchase, a buy, they look back and see what caused it. If Nielsen is under measuring our listening, they don't show that person, makes it worse. We don't get credit and someone else gets credit for what we did. So I think it's a step forward with Nielsen in terms of let's make Nielsen more representative and more accurate. for us to use, not only in terms of pricing and selling our products, but also in terms of the value for the submedia mix models. Thanks, Bob. Thanks, Rich.

Thank you, Erin.

Next, we'll move to Patrick Stroll at Barrington Research.

Good afternoon. Thank you. I was just curious if you could talk a little bit on the adoption of transacting programmatically, if there's any sort of you know, difference across categories and how that contributed to the Premier Network's revenue transition.

You know, I don't think at this point it was material in terms of the performance of Premier. I think that was probably more of an indication of how did the big national advertisers that are buying national footprint look versus the SMBs. But we continue to make great progress. As you know, we've already pretty much got our – digital inventory up and running on most of the important platforms for programmatic and seeing some revenue coming in there. The big push for us is to get our broadcast inventory up on these as well, and I think we're making good progress there.

Yeah, and I think, you know, we announced last quarter, in addition to being in Magnite, about getting our broadcast, just to be clear, inventory into DB360 and Yahoo, and we can continue to work with the other DSPs and, you know, and recognize in terms of where the advertising marketplace is going, and we're adapting to that.

Okay. Thank you. And maybe just one last on podcasting. On the growth in the quarter, I guess, how much of that comes from just increased rates on the impressions you're delivering versus, you know, growing the amount of impressions?

It's both. I would say it's, you know, if you think about it, just, you know, apples to apples year over year, that there's nothing unusual out of any one-time item in the numbers. It's just both coming from both volume and from rates on both. But, you know, remember, we've got such a wide purview in terms of the number of podcasts we have, the number of of downloads from our biggest downloads to smaller downloads out there. And we have, as I'll repeat it, we have 1,000 people selling it every single day out there selling podcast along with the rest of our products. So it's a combination of both.

Okay. Thank you.

Great. Just I'll pause for a second, make sure there are no other questions. And if there's not, thank you very much on behalf of Bob, myself, the rest of the management team. And we, along with Mike McGinnis and the team, are available for any follow-up questions. Thank you all.

And this concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.