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Text: And Scott Wells, Chief Executive Officer of Clear Channel Outdoor Americas, will participate in the Q&A portion of the call.
These statements include management's expectations, beliefs and projections about performance and represents management's current beliefs.
There could be no assurance that management's expectations, beliefs or projections will be achieved or that actual results will not differ from expectations.
During today's call, we will provide certain performance measures that do not conform to generally accepted accounting principles.
They provide a detailed breakdown of foreign exchange and non-cash compensation expense items as well as segment revenues and adjusted EBITDA, among other important information.
For that reason, we ask that you view each slide as William and Brian comment on them.
This is our third quarter conducting the call remotely.
And once again, we ask that you bear with us in case there are any technical issues during the call.
It has certainly been an unprecedented year for many of us and like you, I'm sure we continue to feel the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business.
But in the past quarter, we've also seen how robust our business is and how strongly it recovers as and when some kind of normality returns.
We delivered better than expected consolidated revenue in the third quarter with reported revenue down 32% compared to the prior year, a substantial improvement compared to the 55% decline we reported in the second quarter.
Excluding China and FX, the decline would have been 27% better than the low 30% decline guidance we have provided in early August.
Our performance in Europe was better than anticipated and well demonstrated the resilience of our medium.
As audiences returned to the streets, our advertisers returned to our medium.
US performance also showed sequential improvement and was in line with our expectations.
At the same time, we continue to implement initiatives to align our operating expense base with revenues.
As a whole and in the context of the pandemic, the results in the third quarter, especially in Europe were certainly encouraging.
We are continuing to leverage our investments in digital screens, in technology and in our footprint to manage through the crisis and ensure we have the flexibility to deal with the uncertainty as governments across all our markets deal with the ongoing challenges of COVID-19.
Our focus on continued investment for long-term growth is well as demonstrated by the recent announcement of our winning the contract for the rights to advertise in the New York and New Jersey airports.
We are proud and excited to have won this significant tender and I congratulate Scott Wells and his team in securing it.
I'll talk later in more detail about the contract and our confidence in its value to our business.
Now as we look ahead, based on the information we have as of today, we expect a slight sequential improvement in the Americas revenue and adjusted EBITDA margin in the fourth quarter.
However, we are not able to provide fourth quarter guidance for our European segment.
The recent mobility restrictions in our European markets, most notably in the UK and France in the past 10 days have created volatility in customer booking activity significantly limiting our visibility.
I'm proud of the incredible work our team has done and continues to do to reinforce our solid foundation and drive operational efficiencies in the face of rapidly changing business conditions.
Moving on, I'll provide an overview of our business, the current environment and views on where we see the out-of-home market going from here.
So please turn to Page 4.
In the Americas segment, year-over-year revenue was down 32% in the quarter, which is an improvement compared to the 39% decline reported in the second quarter.
Our Americas business is centered around the top 20 markets, which contributed to the significant growth we were delivering up to and including the first quarter of this year prior to COVID-19.
However, even though our audience levels are returning to normal, the largest markets in the top 20 are those most impacted by advertisers pulling back on our out-of-home spending, especially on the East and West Coast, where national advertisers are most likely to be focused.
Please turn to Page 5.
Europe supported revenue was down 13% against prior year and excluding foreign exchange adjustment was down 18%, which as I noted at the beginning of my remarks is a substantial improvement compared to the 62% decline we saw in the second quarter.
The improvement in digital, which accounts for approximately 30% of European revenue and declined 17% excluding FX impact was even larger due to the speed at which advertisers were able to launch campaigns as business quickly returned once lockdowns were eased.
As I've stated in the past, our investment in digital is a key component of our strategy.
Our digital network is a dynamic medium, which enables our advertisers to engage in real time, tactical, contextual and flexible advertising.
I'd call out the strength of our sales team across Europe, we've done an excellent job responding with agility.
As markets opened up, our audiences were moving around again and advertiser interest returned.
We also benefited from our strategic focus on roadside locations, which historically account for about two-thirds of our total European revenue and are far less affected by COVID-19 driven restrictions than the transit environment which account for approximately 10% of our European revenue.
Our UK business was a great example of this, where about 80% of revenue is historically from roadside inventory.
Since mid-July, up until the recent announcements of new restrictions, our customer booking activity actually exceeded bookings made in the same period last year.
Moving on to Page 6, and the Americas business.
With the outlook in the Americas improving, we remain cautiously optimistic for the near term.
Our longer-term focus remains on returning to growth, which we believe we can achieve in 2021.
As we enter the fourth quarter, our visibility remains limited.
However, we have shifted from playing defense to playing offense, leveraging the investments we've made, and continuing to make in technology.
Even with the uncertainty created by the recent COVID-19 spikes, we believe our organization is in a stronger position to manage through the instability in the market.
In light of that instability, we have expanded our client direct selling initiatives.
Our focus is on selling creative ideas as opposed to specific billboard locations.
As advertisers work to realign their advertising campaigns, we have found that CMO's are more willing to jump on a Zoom call to hear a great idea.
Our ability to get a foot in the door is improving all the time.
We continue to demonstrate to advertisers how our RADAR suite of solutions can help us help them.
The audience levels are returning to normal, but travel patterns have changed.
Audiences are spending more time close to home and less time in city centers, but they're still out and about.
With RADAR, we're able to quickly to adjust to these new travel patterns to help our customers understand the best inventory and roadways on which to reach their customers, we target those customers via our mobile ad and measure the success of the campaign.
More specifically, in the fourth quarter, we are seeing continued sequential improvements in our business.
For the first time since March, we've beaten comps in the number of weeks so far this quarter.
In our national business, the number of RFPs is improving and is close to 2019 levels.
Local continues to improve and we are seeing continued strength in our perm [Phonetic] inventory.
We're currently in the renewal season and most are keeping their locations.
That said, we are still waiting for more data to better understand the strength of the holiday season relative to previous years as advertisers continue to delay buying decisions.
Our largest category business services is holding up well, and is performing at levels equal to last year.
We are seeing increases in beverages, with the continued weaknesses in amusements and entertainment.
Additionally, our revenue generated by our programmatic platform has rebounded faster than the rest of our business, although programmatic is still a small percentage of total revenue.
Moving on to Page 7 for a review of the Americas technology initiatives and new contracts.
During this past quarter, we continue to invest in technology and our digital footprint in America.
We added 19 new digital billboards this quarter for a total of 57 new digital billboards this year, giving us a total of more than 1,400 digital billboards.
We also partnered with Tremor Video to enhance our RADAR offering, which now provides advertisers a coordinated out-of-home and all screen video solution that seamlessly extends into TV, digital or social video campaigns that reach consumers when and where they're ready to engage with brands.
This is just the latest of enhancements to the RADAR suite, and we expect to continue to add customer friendly capabilities to RADAR in the coming months.
In addition, our data analytics capabilities expanded with our recently announced rollout of a new audience impressions methodology for airport adverstising, developed in partnership with the industry measurement body Geopath, this innovation provides advertisers a more precise understanding of consumers advertising Journeys and behaviors as they traverse airports.
The new methodology marks a shift from measuring campaign fully based on passenger count toward a more robust understanding of audience behavior and consumers' likelihood are being exposed to advertising in airports, using the same Geopath data that is used to measure audiences in the traditional roadside out-of-home sector.
The data will become available to advertisers through Geopath as well as through RADAR.
As I mentioned at the start, we are also delighted that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Board has awarded us the largest airport advertising contract in the US to transform JFK, LaGuardia, Newark and Stewart airports into world-class digital media platforms.
This is a landmark win for us and demonstrates our confidence in the underlying fundamentals of our business and our focus on long-term profitable growth opportunities beyond the temporary impact of the pandemic.
The contract is for 12 years and is contingent upon execution by both parties, which we expect to occur in mid-November.
We anticipate the contract will go into effect December 30, 2020.
We worked with the Port Authority to align our interests with contract terms that set the stage for both parties to achieve their goals under the current conditions and for years to come and it has the potential to become the new industry model.
The deal contains a two-year transition period to account for the impact of COVID-19 and the traffic recovery at Port Authority airport.
The actual MAG due each year, as well as capex spend after the two-year transition period will be dependent upon total passenger traffic.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey airports are gateways to the world.
And as the region and travel recover, we believe our team is best used to lead its historic transformation.
With the addition of these high-value marquee airport assets to our footprint, brands will have the unique one-stop shop ability to execute campaigns that reach consumers as they drive, walk or fly throughout at the New York and New Jersey metro area.
Moving on to Page 8.
In Europe, where we are seeing a range of performances within our markets due to the resurgence of COVID-19 cases.
As I noted earlier, historically about two-thirds of our revenue in the region is generated by our roadside displays.
In October, we continue to see strength in our street furniture and billboard inventory, given the audiences were still on the street.
In contrast to continued weakness in transit, our largest categories FMCG and retail improved sequentially.
In addition, fashion and beauty are benefiting from the holiday season.
However, our visibility into November and December has been impacted by the spike in new cases and new restrictions, which have led some advertisers to pause their activity.
Of course, we are keenly aware of the recent developments around the second wave of COVID-19 in Europe and we are monitoring these closely.
While the new restrictions and the uncertain environment will impact our business in the near term, they are not expected to last as long nor are they as limiting in terms of movement as those we saw back in March and April.
As a result, we believe the second wave will have a much smaller impact on revenue in the fourth quarter than it did in the second quarter.
More importantly, the resilience of the business is clear.
When audiences return, out-of-home business comes back strongly.
And as I said earlier, in the UK and elsewhere, we've seen booking equal or better to the prior year in many weeks during the past quarter.
Turning to our European technology investments on Page 9.
In Europe, we continue to help brands navigate the audience and environmental impact of changing COVID-19 restrictions through the application of smart data.
For example, the UK's Return Audience Hub has become a go-to planning portal for advertisers.
As I mentioned last quarter, the hub monitors a huge anonymized mobile data set to learn and openly share how the portfolio is delivering audiences compared to pre-lockdown levels.
Clear Channel RADAR is now operational in both Spain and the UK and has further strengthened our ability to help brands engage audiences effectively as mobility patterns evolve.
We are seeing early benefits from our implementation of RADAR.
For example, in Spain, we've booked campaigns for PepsiCo using proximity to stores and more targeted audience demographic and behavioral data being able to respond to new audience behaviors and mobility patterns through the changes we are seeing as a result of COVID-19.
We continue to expand our digital footprint this year, adding 383 digital displays in the third quarter and 699 year-to-date for a total of over 15,000 screens now live.
As we continue to expand our digital reach across European cities, we are well positioned to deliver increased flexibility and enhanced contextual relevance at scale, improving our abilities in the brands' needs.
This is evidenced by the improving digital revenue trend in the third quarter.
Throughout our digital transformation, we are committed to making Clear Channel inventory more accessible to both new and existing advertisers.
As in the US, we are developing our programmatic capabilities at an increased pace while securing and expanding partnerships with a number of the leading supply side platform partners.
Most recently, in Spain, we successfully ran our first fully programmatic campaign to car brand Cupra in partnership with SSP Broadsign Reach.
Broadsign Reach is already live across Holland and Switzerland.
In the UK, we just announced the new programmatic partnership with SSP high stack.
Across Clear Channel outdoor, we strive to create products and provide services that excite and engage our consumers, communities, advertisers and business partners.
As a result, we believe we are well positioned to return to growth in 2021.
At the same time, we recognize the pressures of the current environment and we will continue to take steps to preserve liquidity, including balancing the need to defer capital expenditures, and reduce costs while still investing in strengthening our platform.
Please turn to Page 10.
Before I review our third quarter results, I want to remind you that during our GAAP results discussion, I'll also talk about our results adjusting for foreign exchange, which is a non-GAAP financial measure.
We believe this improves the comparability of our results to the prior year.
Additionally, as you know, we tendered our shares in Clear Media on April 28, and therefore our Q3 results in 2020 do not include Clear Media.
However, our results in Q3 of 2019 did include Clear Media's results.
Consolidated revenue for the quarter decreased 31.5% from last year to $448 million.
Adjusting for foreign exchange, it was down 33.1%.
If you exclude China and adjusted for foreign exchange, the decline in revenue was 27%, which was better than the low 30% decline we had projected in early August.
Our better than expected results are due to a stronger than anticipated rebound in Europe.
Consolidated net loss declined $77 million to $136 million in the third quarter of 2020 as compared to $212 million in the third quarter of 2019.
Adjusted EBITDA was $31 million in the quarter, down 78.4% and excluding FX, was down 78.9%.
Now on to Page 11 to discuss the Americas results.
The Americas revenue was down 31.8% during the third quarter from $328 million in 2019 to $224 million.
As William mentioned, this is an improvement over the second quarter results, which were down 39%.
Revenue declines and national and local, as well as digital, improved relative to the second quarter, while the decline in airports increased.
In general, our airport inventory is considered premium space.
So while advertisers did not immediately reduce the airport advertising campaigns in the beginning of the second quarter, they began pulling ads in the back half of the quarter, and into the third quarter.
Local, which accounted for 64% of revenue was down 27.6%, and national, which accounted for 36% of revenue was down 38.2%.
Digital accounted for 30% of revenue and was down 34.8%.
This compares to a 53.7% decline in the second quarter.
Our long-term contracts for print large format billboard, which we refer to as perms, continue to hold up well, even though total print ad revenue was down.
Both direct expenses and SG&A were down 19% in the quarter, primarily due to lower site lease expenses and lower compensation costs, as a result of the decline in revenue and cost reduction initiatives.
Adjusted EBITDA was $71 million, down 48% from the prior year.
As we have stated in the past, our business is a high fixed cost business, and although we are working on reducing expenses throughout the organization, the decline in revenue resulted in a larger reduction in adjusted EBITDA.
Please move on to Page 12 to review Europe.
Europe revenue was down 13.4%.
Excluding foreign exchange revenue, was down 17.9% in the third quarter.
This is a substantial improvement from the 62% decline reported in the second quarter, with all markets contributing to the improvement.
France was up in the quarter due to the new Paris street furniture contract in addition to a partial rebound in the underlying market.
Digital revenue accounted for 30% of total revenue that was down 16.6%, excluding FX, slightly less than the overall decline.
Adjusted direct operating expenses and SG&A expenses were down 8.9%.
The decline is due to lower site lease expense, in addition to lower compensation expense, primarily related to the decline in revenue, in addition to cost reduction efforts.
Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $8 million, due to the decline in revenue and high fixed cost base.
In August, we issued senior secured notes through our indirect, wholly owned subsidiary, Clear Channel International BV, which we refer to as CCI B.V. Net proceeds from the note offering provides incremental liquidity for our operations.
Our European segment consists of the businesses operated by CCI B.V. and its consolidated subsidiaries.
Accordingly, the revenue for our Europe segment is the revenue for CCI B.V. Europe segment adjusted EBITDA does not include an allocation of CCI B.V.'s corporate expenses that are deducted from CCI B.V.'s operating income and adjusted EBITDA.
As I just discussed, Europe and CCI B.V. revenue decreased $34 million during the third quarter of 2020, compared to the same period of 2019, $217 million.
After adjusting for an $11 million impact from movements in foreign exchange rates, Europe and CCI B.V. revenue decreased $45 million.
CCI B.V. operating loss was $38 million in the third quarter of 2020, compared to operating loss of $16 million in the same period of 2019.
On to Page 13 for a quick review of other.
Our other segment includes Latin America and Clear Media.
The 2019 results include Clear Media, which was sold in Q2 of 2020.
Latin America revenue was $7 million in the third quarter, down $15 million from the prior year.
The spike in COVID-19 in Latin America started later in the year, and it is taking longer to control the spread of the virus in Latin America.
Direct operating expenses and SG&A were $13 million in the third quarter, down $4 million from the prior year.
Adjusted EBITDA was a loss in the quarter.
Now on to Page 14 to discuss capex.
Capital expenditures totaled $26 million in the third quarter, down $34 million from the prior year, as we proactively reduced our capital spend to preserve liquidity and sold our stake in Clear Media.
Even with this substantial reduction, we did continue to invest in digital in key locations with 19 new digital billboards in the US, and 383 new digital displays in Europe.
Please move to Page 15.
Clear Channel Outdoor's consolidated cash and cash equivalents, as of September 30, 2020, totaled $845 million, including $417 million of cash held outside the US by our subsidiaries.
During the third quarter, we transferred a portion of the proceeds from the sale of Clear Media to the US.
Our debt was $5.6 billion, an increase of just over $500 million during the year, as a result of our drawing on our cash flow revolver at the end of March, and issuing the CCI B.V. notes in August.
Cash paid for interest on the debt during the third quarter was $147 million, up slightly from the prior year, due to the timing of interest payments, partially offset by lower interest rates.
The company anticipates having approximately $21 million of cash interest payments in the fourth quarter of 2020, and $350 million in 2021, including the interest on the new CCI B.V. secure notes, with the first interest payment in April of 2021.
Moving on to Page 16.
As William touched upon, we continue to focus on managing our cost base and strengthening our liquidity and financial flexibility, while driving improvements in the top line trends that will return the business to its pre-COVID trajectory.
This includes our proactive steps to right-size the business.
In addition to the temporary cost saving plans we enacted in the second quarter, we've also initiated restructuring plans throughout the company.
Plans are expected to generate annualized pre-tax savings of approximately $32 million upon completion, with total charges for the plans in the range of $23 million to $26 million to achieve these savings.
While we remain confident the business will return to pre-COVID levels, we still don't have the visibility yet on timing.
Given the uncertainty, we felt it was prudent to take the appropriate steps to work to align the cost base with the current business environment.
Additionally, during the third quarter, as previously discussed, we issued $375 million in senior secured notes in August through our indirect wholly owned subsidiary CCI B.V.
We continue our site lease contract negotiations with landlords and municipalities to better align fixed site lease expenses, with reductions in revenues.
We generated rent abatements of $24 million during the third quarter and $53 million year-to-date.
We continue to benefit from compensation cost reductions through actions enacted in the second quarter, the majority of which are temporary.
We obtained European government support and wage subsidies of $7 million in the third quarter and $15 million year-to-date.
We eliminated and reduced certain discretionary expenses.
We deferred capital expenditures, as I just mentioned, and we deferred site lease expenses and other payments to optimize working capital levels.
From a liquidity standpoint given what we know today, we believe that we have sufficient liquidity, including the $845 million of cash at the quarter end, to fund the needs of the business as the economy and our business recover.
Please move to Page 17.
As William mentioned, in the Americas, we expect to see a slight improvement on a sequential basis in revenue and adjusted EBITDA margin.
In Europe, we saw a strong sequential improvement in the third quarter.
However, our visibility in the fourth quarter has been impacted by the recent mobility restrictions put in place in some of our largest European markets, most notably in the UK and France.
These restrictions have created volatility in customer booking activity, significantly limiting our visibility and ability to provide guidance.
As I mentioned, our team continues to work exceptionally hard through the challenging environment and we are seeing the results of our efforts.
We're encouraged by the way we've seen advertisers return to our inventory in the last quarter, demonstrating the resilience of our medium and the value of our locations.
They're benefiting from our continued investments in technology and expansion of our digital footprint and are proud of securing new contracts most especially winning the New York and New Jersey Port Authority airports.
We remain focused on the strong, medium, and long-term opportunities within our sector and are confident Clear Channel is well positioned to capitalize on these improving trends.
As I conclude my remarks, I want to reiterate a few things.
First, as Brian mentioned, the actions we took earlier in the year give us what we believe to be sufficient liquidity to manage through the pandemic, even with the spikes we've seen in the US and Europe.
Second, we will continue to identify both temporary and permanent costs reductions to better align our expenses with the current economic environment and expand on our restructuring plans.
Third, in the third quarter, we delivered better than expected results, with a strong rebound in Europe demonstrating the underlying resilience of our business.
In recent weeks, in both some European markets and the US, we have at times equaled or bettered prior year performance.
When infection rates decline and restrictions are lifted and our audience return, our markets come back.
Looking ahead, the course of the pandemic is still unclear with the second wave in Europe and continued uncertainty in the US.
Although, we expect the next few quarters to remain challenging, we believe in the underlying fundamentals of our industry and our business.
As both Brian and I said, given the resilience of our team, investments in our business, and strength of our platform, we expect to deliver a slight sequential improvement in Americas revenue and adjusted EBITDA margin in the fourth quarter.
We are not providing fourth quarter guidance for Europe, given the recent mobility restrictions creating significant volatility in our booking activity.
However, we remain cautiously optimistic that we will return to growth in 2021.
Lastly, as we've stated before, we always remain open to dispositions and opportunities that accelerate our path to creating enhanced value for shareholders.
However, given the current economic environment, our focus remains on continuing to own, operate and enhance the value of the current portfolio of assets in order to drive shareholder value as the economies rebound.
I look forward to providing updates regarding our progress.

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q3 revenue fell 31.8 percent to $223.7 million.
clear channel outdoor - committed to restructuring plans to reduce headcount with expected pre-tax annual cost savings of about $32 million.

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