Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Clear Channel Outdoor Holding Inc's 2022 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call. My name is Alex, and I'll be coordinating the call today. If you'd like to ask a question at the end of the presentation, you can press star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, you may press star 2. I'll now turn the conference over to your host, Eileen McLaughlin, Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our call. On the call today are Scott Wells, our CEO, and Brian Coleman, our CFO. Scott and Brian will provide an overview of the 2022 first quarter operating performance of Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc. and Clear Channel International, BD. We recommend you download the investor presentation located in the financial section on our classroom site and review the presentation during this call. After an introduction and a review of our results, We'll open the line for questions, and Justin Cochran, CEO of Clear Channel Europe, will participate in the Q&A portion of the call. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that during this call, we may make forward-looking statements regarding the company, including statements about its future financial performance and its strategic goals. All forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, and there can be no assurance that management's expectations, beliefs, or projections will be achieved or that actual results will not differ from expectations. Please review the statements of risk contained in our earnings press release and our filings with the SEC. During today's call, we will also refer to certain performance measures that do not conform to generally accepted accounting principles. We provide schedules that reconcile these non-GAAP measures with our reported results on a GAAP basis as part of our earnings release and the earnings conference call presentation. Also, please note that the information provided on this call speaks only to management views as of today, May 10th, 2022, and may no longer be accurate at the time of a replay. Please turn to page four in the investment presentation, and I will now turn the call over to Scott Wells.

Scott Wells Good morning, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join today's call. The acceleration in the recovery of our business that we saw during the fourth quarter of last year continued into the first quarter. We delivered consolidated first quarter revenue of $526 million, a 42 percent increase over last year's first quarter. Excluding movements in foreign exchange, first quarter revenue was up 45 percent, a solid performance despite the Omicron challenges we saw in January. We also delivered a that Brian will discuss later in the presentation. Our strong top-line performance reflects continued broad-based demand from advertisers, with particular strength across our digital footprint in the Americas and Europe. I'd like to thank our team members around the world for their commitment to building our business. We appreciate their great work. Underlining the recovery in our business coming out of the pandemic, we're continuing to make progress in leveraging our technology investments to innovate and modernize the solutions we offer and expand the pool of advertisers we can pursue. We believe that through becoming a data-driven visual media powerhouse, we can strengthen our financial position as well. During the first quarter, digital revenue rose 68% in the Americas and was up 99% in Europe. excluding movements in foreign exchange rates compared to the first quarter of last year. Our digital footprint has been particularly valuable during recent periods where uncertainty has been elevated among advertisers. Our digital boards have provided them with the flexibility to book later in the cycle, while we've benefited from our ability to move quickly to launch campaigns and lock in business with shorter lead times. Looking at our digital footprint, in the U.S., we deployed 13 large format digital billboards during the quarter, adding to our total of more than 1,500 digital billboards. Combined with our smaller format digital displays at airports and on shelters, we have a total of more than 3,900 digital displays domestically. And in Europe, we added 979 digital displays in the first quarter for a total of over 18,500 displays now live. As I mentioned on our last call, I want to share some color on the two pillars of our strategy centered on improving customer centricity and driving executional excellence. Our customers are focused on faster, easier, and data-driven campaigns. We developed Radar, which we've highlighted in the past, to deliver the suite of data-driven solutions our customers demand. We've made our business easier to buy through our investments in programmatic solutions, opening up our platform to a broader base of digital media buyers. And throughout the pandemic, we focused on utilizing technology to make the processes involved in winning and launching campaigns faster. On that point, we're automating the processes involved across the campaign cycle, from identifying opportunities all the way through installation or activation of the creative, which is significantly reducing the time involved in pursuing, winning, and executing on contracts. For example, we continue to improve and modernize the system software and process infrastructure supporting the installation of campaigns, from optimizing installation routes to updating the proof of performance tools that provide our customers with the ability to verify in real time that their print and digital campaigns have been executed. This not only creates efficiencies in our organization, but it also allows us to deliver value faster to our customers. Looking ahead, in the current quarter, we're seeing healthy demand across our business. In the U.S., our bookings are strong, and we are seeing growth in all regions, as well as in our airports business. Both national and local are pacing up double digits, and we are well ahead of 2019 performance. In Europe, since January, the revenue in each month has improved when compared to 2019, and we expect that to continue in Q2, with revenue approaching pre-COVID levels. Brian will provide an overview of our second quarter guidance in his prepared remarks. Finally, as we execute on our core operating strategy, we're also evaluating creative token acquisition opportunities that will further strengthen our presence in the U.S., while moving forward in evaluating strategic alternatives for our European business as part of our focus on optimizing our portfolio. And with that, let me now turn it over to Brian to discuss our financial results, as well as our guidance.