OUTFRONT Media Inc.

Good day and welcome to today's Outfront First Quarter 2023 Earnings Call. Today's conference is recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Mr. Stéphane Bisson. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon, and thank you for joining our 2023 First Quarter Earnings Call. With me on the call today are Jeremy Mail, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Matthew Siegel, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. After a discussion of our financial results, we'll open up the lines for a question and answer session. Our comments today will refer to the earnings release and a slide presentation that you can find on the investor relations section of our website, outfront.com. After today's call is concluded, a replay will be available there as well. This conference call may include forward-looking statements. Relevant factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements are listed in our earnings materials and in our SEC filings, including our 2022 Form 10-K, and our March 31, 2023, Form 10-Q, which we expect to file this week. We will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures on this call. Any references to OIDDA made today will be on an adjusted basis. Reconciliations of OIDDA and other non-GAAP financial measures are in the appendix of the slide presentation, the earnings release, and on our website, which also includes presentations with prior period reconciliations. Let me now turn the call over to Jeremy.

Thanks Stefan, and thank you everyone for joining us today. We're pleased to share our first quarter results, which illustrate the resilience of our sales performance. On a February call, I mentioned that while the year started off slower than we had hoped, business was picking up, and I'm happy to report the pace continues. As you can see on slide three, which summarizes our headline numbers, total consolidated revenue grew 6% during the quarter, which reflects solid growth in the core business some tuck-in acquisitions, and an almost $6 million one-time benefit related to a small number of billboard condemnations. Excluding this benefit, revenues would have been up mid-single digits in Q1 ahead of our low single-digit guidance. A decade ago, this type of in-quarter improvement would not have been possible. But given the flexibility provided by our increased digital footprint, Our clients are now able to book and post ads quickly and efficiently in the quarter for the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA declined year-over-year, largely driven by transit, and AFFO was down given this lower EBITDA, higher interest expense, and the timing of maintenance capex. Slide 4 shows our segment revenue results. with total US media increasing 6.3% on a reported basis year over year. Other, which consists mostly of Canada, was essentially flat versus the prior year on an as reported basis, and up 7% on an organic constant dollar basis. On slide five, you can see the components of our US media revenues. Billboard grew 8%, with good performance in most of our markets, that we should call out New York and Miami as being particularly strong. Nearly every category in Billboard was up year over year. Transit revenue was essentially flat versus last year, given the tough comparison created by the legalization of sports betting in New York in 2022. Digging a bit deeper, it's worth noting that our below-ground revenues, which includes subway displays, were up year over year, reflecting our continued digitization. However, these gains were offset by lower above-ground display revenues. The details behind our local and national revenues in our U.S. business can be seen on slide six. As you can see, local growth outpaced national this quarter, up nearly 10% year over year, compared to national's 1.3%, which reflected the early weakness we saw from national that we discussed in February. Our local-national split was 60%, 40% in the quarter, a bit higher than our typical 55-45, given the particularly strong local growth. Slide 7 shows our U.S. billboard yield, which grew a healthy 6% year-over-year to just under $2,500. Similar to last year, Our yield growth was primarily driven by rate, with strong demand for our most premium inventory pushing average prices up. Slide 8 highlights our continued strong digital performance, with digital revenue growing 9% in the quarter and representing nearly 30% of our total revenue, up almost 100 basis points from last year. As you can see, billboard and transit both contributed relatively evenly both up approximately 9% versus 2022. Slide 9 illustrates the resilience of our static revenues, which grew nearly 3% year-over-year. This growth was driven by billboard, which was up 4% year-over-year. Static transit revenues were down year-over-year, given the decline in above-ground revenues. So let me now hand over to Matt to review the rest of our financials in more detail.