3Q 16 Earnings Call Transcript
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Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Call Company: Gray Television, Inc. Conference Title: Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Call Moderator: Hilton Howell Date: Tuesday 8th November 2016 Operator: Good day and welcome to the Gray Television Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference to Hilton Howell, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead, sir. Hilton Howell: Thank you, operator. Good morning everyone. As the operator mentioned, I’m Hilton Howell, the Chairman and CEO of Gray Television. Thank you for joining us this morning for our Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Call. As usual, I’m joined today by our Chief Legal and Development officer, Kevin Latek and our Chief Financial Officer, Jim Ryan. We will begin this morning with a disclaimer that Kevin Latek will be provided – Ken Kevin Latek: Thank you - thank you, Hilton. Good morning everyone. Certain matters discussed on this call may include forward-looking statements regarding among other things future operating results. Those statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results in the future could differ from those described in the forward-looking statement as a result of various important factors. Such factors have been set forth in the company’s most recent reports filed with the FCC and included in today’s Earnings Release. The company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Gray uses its website as a key source of company information. The website address is www.gray.tv. We will post both an audio recording and a transcript of this call on our website. We also will post an updated [inaudible] to the website later today. Included on the call, will be a discussion of non-GAAP financial measures; and in particular, broadcast cash flow, broadcast cash flow less corporate expenses, operating cash flow, free cash flow and certain leverage ratios. These metrics are not meant to replace GAAP measurements but are provided as supplements to assist the public in their analysis and evaluation of our company. We include reconciliations in a non-GAAP financial measures to the Page | 1 Ref 3802414 08.11.2016 Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Call GAAP measures in our financial statements that are available on our website. And now we turn the microphone to Hilton. Hilton Howell: Thank you, Kevin. First I want to note that since our last call Richard Hare has joined our Board of Directors. Richard is the Senior Vice-President and Chief Financial Officer of Carmike Cinemas. Carmike is a NASDAQ listed company – one of the nation’s largest motion picture exhibitors. He brings more than 25 years of financial management experiences, and we are delighted to have him on our board. We begin this call by reviewing our results for the third quarter, and our guidance for the fourth quarter. After Kevin and Jim provide additional color and detail on the bigger issues, I will address this morning’s other announcement of the new stock buy-back program. We will be fairly brief in our remarks today because we want to provide as much time as possible for questions before many of you switch to Nexstar’s call at 10:00 am. Let me begin with the good news – first, as you saw in the release, we posted record levels of revenue in broadcast cash flow in the third quarter. Total revenue increased 35%, and broadcast cash flow increased 60% compared to the third quarter of 2015. On a combined historical basis, which adjusts for the effect of acquisitions, we posted a 12% increase in total revenue and a 24% increase in broadcast cash flow compared to the third quarter of 2015. Equally noteworthy, is that our broadcast operating expenses – excluding network reverse comp fees – actually decreased from the year earlier period. We have saved about $10 million this year on national sales representative fees, and our September refinancing should save about $12 million in interest payments annually over the next several years. It is always difficult to preserve core revenue levels during the third and fourth quarters of a presidential year due to displacement by the Olympic Games and especially by political advertising. We are, therefore, pleased that we managed to maintain our core at essentially the same level as third quarter, 2015 when we had very little political revenue and no Olympic Game revenue. This achievement is the result of aggressive efforts at the stations to maintain advertising levels and bring back a portion of the core advertising that moved to the side lines in anticipation of strong political displacement. The Page | 2 Ref 3802414 08.11.2016 Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Call big news, of course, is political – or more correctly, the lack there of. Everyone has read in the press and heard from our peers about the unprecedented challenges and unusual aspects of this year’s races. As late as the beginning of September, our research still made us feel very comfortable that the fund-raising levels over the summer and historic issues at stake – including control of the United States Senate, the Supreme Court – would ensure that we would at least match our 2012 record level of pro forma political revenue of $144 Million. However, the situation deteriorated very quickly in mid-September with several negative developments and a few positive ones. When our visibility went to zero, we could not remain comfortable with our political guidance; and we, therefore, communicated our honest assessment by withdrawing that guidance. As Kevin will explain, while we are very disappointed in the results; we take comfort in the fact that our shortfall resulted entirely from the lack of political money entering Gray’s markets rather than a failure of execution by our stations. Now that the election is almost behind us, we see local and national advertisers seemingly sitting on the side lines a bit more and a bit longer than usual this late into an election quarter. We hope that the negativity and uncertainty can be refuted by what may be surprisingly more resilient underlying macroeconomic trends. Kevin will now address the political environment in more depth, and Jim will provide more color on our financial results and guidance. As I mentioned, after they finish, I will address the buy-back announcement – Kevin. Kevin Latek: Good morning. I begin with a question on everyone’s mind – “What the heck happened?” The answer is fairly straightforward – the money simply did not enter our market as expected. Candidates on both sides of the presidential contest this year spent far less than their 2012 predecessors. In addition, neither political party spent any significant money supporting their nominee with advertising; and many of the super pacs skipped the race entirely. The lack of dollars and often the lack of a polling advantage resulted in far less presidential dollars entering traditional swing states like Virginia, Colorado, Wisconsin and Michigan. We own multiple stations in each of those states. Historically presidential spending has been between 25 and 33% Page | 3 Ref 3802414 08.11.2016 Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Call of our total with roughly half spent by each side. Using the midpoint of that range for our 2012 pro forma political revenue totalled $144 million. History suggests that we should’ve booked about $21 million from each side in the presidential contest and about $102 million in non- presidential money this year. Instead, our presidential spending total was 66% less than what history predicted. The GOP side was down tremendously despite a long primary season with about 69% less spending than expected. Still, the Democratic presidential candidates and issue money were also down this year with a total decrease of about 62% less spending than we would have expected. We also expected down-ballot races would make up for any shortfalls in the presidential races, with highly contentious Senate races in places such as Colorado, Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin; and, especially, considering that control of both the Senate and Supreme Court appeared to be in play. Likewise, we expected expensive races for governor in places like Indiana, North Carolina and West Virginia as well as continued healthy spending in the House, state and local races and potentially even from controversial and expensive ballot fights. As you’ve heard from some of our peers already, many – if not most – of the contentious Senate and governor races seemed to significantly cool off just as fourth quarter began; and even lower races did not bring out as much spending as expected. In the end, aggregate political revenue from down-ballot races for us totalled about 30% less than the expected level. The decline hit Gray’s swing states particular hard, and we own multiple stations in most of the historically purple states. In particular, political revenue in 2016 fell by the largest percentages from 2012 level in the traditional swing states – Colorado down 32%, Nebraska down 50% – Ohio and West Virginia, where are stations broadcast into both markets – both states down 50%. Wisconsin down 62%, Michigan down 82% and Virginia down 91% from 2012. For comparison sake, six Senate races occurred in the foregoing states in 2012 – we had just three Senate races in these states in 2016. The political report card is not all bad news, to the contrary, we have been able to confirm that these revenue losses – while unexpected and large – were not the result of a failure in execution by our stations. We subscribe to independent market audits conducted by a public accounting firm. These Page | 4 Ref 3802414 08.11.2016 Third Quarter 2016 Earnings Call independent audit reports provide match set data for 2016 and 2012 across 23 Gray markets and looks like a cross section of large and small markets as well as legacy and recently-acquired markets.