Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings 2024 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I'll now turn the conference over to your host, Eileen McLaughlin. Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good morning, and thank you for joining our call. On the call today are Scott Wells, our CEO, and David Saylor, our CFO. They will provide an overview of the 2024 second quarter operating performance of Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings, Inc., and Clear Channel International, BV. We recommend you download the 2024 second quarter earnings presentation located in the financial information section of our investor website 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 UK and Europe, will join Scott and Dave during 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 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 the earnings presentation. Also, please note that the information provided on this call speaks only to management's views as of today, August 7, 2024, and may no longer be accurate at the time of a replay. Please see slide four in the earnings presentation, and I will now turn the call over to Scott.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join us today. We delivered second quarter consolidated revenue of $559 million, an increase of 5.2% or 5.4%, excluding movements in foreign exchange rates. with growth in our America, airports, and Europe North segments. Our performance reflects healthy demand from advertisers across the majority of our markets, with notable strength in our airports and Europe North segments. We also benefited from solid execution across the range of ongoing initiatives aimed at broadening our revenue base. Following record first quarter revenue in the America segment, our second quarter results came in at the low end of our guidance due to softness in the national marketplace, particularly in the medical services and media entertainment verticals. In the current quarter, we are seeing improving business trends, including in national, and remain on track to achieve our full-year guidance. We mentioned in our Q1 call that results this year might be lumpy and weighted to the second half, and that is how the business is developing. We believe advertisers are increasingly recognizing the value of our digital billboard platform now reaching over 70% of U.S. adults monthly in our served markets, as well as our data and analytics capabilities, which enable us to target particular audiences and effectively measure advertisers' campaigns. In addition to generating increased revenue from our digital and programmatic initiatives, we're also continuing to attract business through our website and expanded sales team, as well as through our direct outreach. The direct business has been instrumental in building relationships with brands across all channels. All of these efforts have the impact of effectively scaling our platform and expanding our revenue sources while offsetting some of the industry-wide softness in national. Our airports business remains strong. 2024 has been a historic period for travel marked by nine of the 10 busiest days in TSA history with air travel hitting a record in July. The surge in travel is expected to continue through the remainder of the year and into 2025, putting us in a strong position to continue to leverage our premium assets to drive ad dollars. Europe North delivered another great performance, with healthy growth continuing in the current quarter, led by the strength in Sweden and the UK. Turning to our outlook, Dave will expand on the details later, but I want to highlight that we have modestly increased our full year consolidated revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and AFFO guidance, given the strength in airports in Europe North. On the M&A front, negotiations for the sale of Europe North remain ongoing. The team is performing very well, executing the focus strategy we laid out several quarters ago, creating optionality and de-risking the business. For instance, their trailing 12 months operating leverage has been outstanding, with segment-adjusted EBITDA growth of 21% on revenue growth of 9% versus the prior period, excluding movements in foreign exchange rates. We remain committed to exiting Europe at a price that reflects the value being delivered by this business, based on the continuing improvement of these assets. In the meantime, the funds we generate from our European businesses can be used to continue strengthening our cash position and further enhancing our European profit engine. Separately, in our LATAM sale process, we are making good progress and will provide further updates in due course. Finally, it's important to note that even before we complete these asset sales, we believe we are turning the corner on cash generation. We expect AFFO in the second half of 2024 to outpace our discretionary capex for the same period and expect this to improve in 2025. This creates an option to start to organically delever our balance sheet. We believe this is a significant milestone in our journey to enhance shareholder value. So overall, we're pleased with the ongoing progress our team is making in executing on multiple initiatives to monetize our technology and broaden our revenue streams. And we're encouraged with the momentum we're seeing in our business. With that, let me hand the call over to Dave.