Second Quarter 2018 A. H. Belo Corporation
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THOMSON REUTERS EDITED TRANSCRIPT Q2 2018 A. H. Belo Corp Earnings Call EVENT DATE/TIME: AUGUST 09, 2018 / 2:00PM GMT THOMSON REUTERS | Contact Us 1 ©2018 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. 'Thomson Reuters' and the Thomson Reuters logo are registered trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies. AUGUST 09, 2018 / 2:00PM GMT, Q2 2018 A. H. Belo Corp Earnings Call CORPORATE PARTICIPANTS Grant S. Moise A.H. Belo Corporation - Executive VP, President & Publisher of The Dallas Morning News Mary Kathryn Murray A.H. Belo Corporation - CFO, SVP, Treasurer & Assistant Secretary Robert W. Decherd A.H. Belo Corporation - Chairman, CEO & President Timothy Michael Storer Distribion, Inc. - Co-Founder, CEO and President CONFERENCE CALL PARTICIPANTS Chris Mooney Jonathon Fite PRESENTATION Operator Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Second Quarter 2018 Financial Results Conference Call. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. And I would now like to turn the call over to Katy Murray, the Chief Financial Officer of A. H. Belo Corp. Please go ahead. Mary Kathryn Murray A.H. Belo Corporation - CFO, SVP, Treasurer & Assistant Secretary Good morning, everyone. This is Katy Murray, Chief Financial Officer of A. H. Belo Corporation. Welcome to our Second Quarter 2018 Conference Call. I am joined by Robert Decherd, Chairman, President and Chief Executive officer of A. H. Belo Corporation; Grant Moise, Publisher and President of The Dallas Morning News; and Tim Storer, President of Belo and Company, who are all available for Q&A. Before the market opened yesterday morning, we issued a press release announcing our second quarter 2018 results. We have posted this release on our website under the Investor Relations section. Unless otherwise specified, comparisons used on today's call measure second quarter 2018 performance from continuing operations against second quarter 2017 performance from continuing operations. Our discussion today will include forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those statements. The company assumes no obligation to update the information in this communication except as otherwise required by law. Additional information about these factors is detailed in the company's press releases and publicly available filings with the SEC. Finally, today's discussion will include non-GAAP financial measures. We believe that non-GAAP financial measures provide useful supplemental information to assist investors in determining performance comparisons to our peers. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable financial measures based on our segment reporting presented in accordance with GAAP are provided on our website under the Investor Relations section. Before I review the quarter, I wanted to remind everyone of the 2 new accounting pronouncements we adopted effective January 1 of this year. The first is Topic 606 regarding revenue recognition. We adopted a modified retrospective approach, which means we are not restating historical financials but are adopting this prospectively starting with the first quarter of the year. The primary impact for us is that we will now be reporting certain revenues on a net basis as opposed to a gross basis. I will be calling out the impact to this quarter in my commentary shortly. The second pronouncement change is where we record net periodic pension expense or benefit. We have adopted a retrospective approach, and all prior periods have been restated to reflect pension expense or benefit below operating income or loss versus including the expense or benefit above the line in operations. For both of these items, we have provided detailed information in our GAAP to non-GAAP reconciliation, again, provided under our website under the Investor Relations section. THOMSON REUTERS | Contact Us 2 ©2018 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. 'Thomson Reuters' and the Thomson Reuters logo are registered trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies. AUGUST 09, 2018 / 2:00PM GMT, Q2 2018 A. H. Belo Corp Earnings Call Yesterday morning, we reported a net loss attributable to A. H. Belo Corporation of $500,000 or a loss of $0.03 per share compared to a net loss of $800,000 or $0.04 per share reported in the second quarter of 2017. For the second quarter of 2018, we reported adjusted operating income for A. H. Belo Corporation of $2.7 million compared to adjusted operating income of $2.8 million reported for the second quarter of last year. Starting with this earnings call, I will be covering the financial performance of The Dallas Morning News and Belo and Company separately. Beginning with financial highlights for The Dallas Morning News. For the second quarter, we reported total revenue at The Dallas Morning News of $45.5 million, a decrease of $9.3 million or 17% when compared to the $54.8 million reported in the second quarter of last year. Approximately $2.2 million of this decline is attributable to the new revenue standard requiring certain transactions to be reported net versus gross. Adjusting for this change, total revenue declined by $7 million or 12.8%. Print and digital advertising revenue of $20.8 million in the second quarter of 2018 is down $7 million or 25.2% when compared to the $27.8 million reported in 2017. $2 million of the decline is due to the new revenue standard. Excluding the impact of the new revenue guidance, print revenue declined $5 million or 18.2% when compared to the prior year period. In addition, $800,000 of the year-over-year decline is related to the sale of The Denton Record-Chronicle in the fourth quarter of last year. Circulation revenue of $17.9 million in the second quarter of 2018 is a decline of $1.2 million or 6.1% compared to the second quarter of last year. Approximately $300,000 of the decline is the result of the new revenue guidance. Excluding the effect of new revenue guidance, home delivery revenue declined by $800,000 or 4.6% from the second quarter of 2017, and single copy revenue declined by $100,000 or 5.3% from the second quarter of 2017. The decline was primarily due to lower home delivery and single copy volume, partially offset by single copy rate increases. Approximately $300,000 of the home delivery decline was related to the sale of The Denton Record-Chronicle. As we have stated before, one of our highest priorities is to grow The Morning News paid digital subscriber base and digital subscription revenue. In the second quarter, our digital subscriber base grew by a net of 6,407 subscribers or 31.6% from the second quarter of 2017, ending this quarter with 26,677 paid digital subscribers. In the second quarter, we reported approximately $900,000 of digital-only subscription revenue, an increase of $300,000 or 46.5% over the same period in 2017. Other revenue decreased $1.1 million or 14.1% to $6.9 million for the second quarter of 2018. $600,000 of the decline is due to event-related revenue and $400,000 related to declines in commercial printing volumes. Total consolidated operating expense for The Dallas Morning News for the second quarter of 2018 was $47.3 million, a decrease of $9.6 million or 16.9% compared to the prior year. Excluding the $2.2 million decrease related to the adoption of the new revenue guidance, consolidated operating expense decreased $7.4 million or 13% when compared to the prior year period. The decline was primarily due to improvements of $4 million in employee compensation and benefit expense, $1.6 million in distribution expense, $1 million in advertising and promotion expense, $500,000 in newsprint expense and $300,000 in temporary service expense. Reflecting the new revenue standard, pension benefit, severance expense, depreciation and amortization expense and asset impairments, adjusted operating expenses for the second quarter of 2018 was $45.7 million, a decrease of $7.4 million or 13.9% compared to $53 million of adjusted operating expense reported in the second quarter of last year. The significant year-over-year improvement in adjusted operating expense was a result of cost reduction initiatives enacted early in 2017 that are now being fully realized. Adjusted operating income for The Dallas Morning News was $2.1 million in the second quarter of 2018, an improvement of $294,000 or 16.6% when compared to the $1.8 million reported in Q2 of last year. Turning now to financial highlights for Belo and Company. First, I'm going to review our GAAP and non-GAAP results and then provide some additional operational metrics on how Belo and Company is reviewed internally. For the second quarter, we reported total revenue of $5.6 million, a decrease of $2.6 million or 31.7%. Approximately $900,000 of this decline is attributable to the new revenue standard requiring certain transactions to be reported net versus gross. Adjusting for this change, total revenue declined by $1.7 million or 20.3%. Total consolidated operating expense at Belo and Co. for the second quarter of 2018 was $5.3 million, a decrease of $2.2 million or THOMSON REUTERS | Contact Us 3 ©2018 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Thomson Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters.