Daniel Osley: Thanks. We'll kick things off here. For those who don't know me, my name is Daniel Osley. I'm an analyst at Wells Fargo, and I have the pleasure of welcoming Scott Wells, CEO of Clear Channel Outdoor, for our next fireside. So thank you, Scott, for joining us.
Scott Wells: Thanks, Daniel. Good to be here with you.
Daniel Osley: Thanks.
Daniel Osley: So maybe to kick things off, with 3Q Earnings, to be collective optimism from both you and your peers around out-of-home trends broadly. So can you further help to unpack what's driving the strength you're seeing, particularly on the national side?
Scott Wells: Yeah, I mean, I think there's a few things going on. You know, specific to us, we have new inventory that we're just now lapping. So we did pick up that New York contract that has been a big driver in our financials all this year. So that's a factor for us, and that is not kind of like new money to the sector necessarily, although we've grown it. The broader trends... You know, Q3, we kind of knew coming into this year that it was going to be a back half-loaded year, or we had a pretty good idea that it was going to be a back half-loaded year with how people were talking about their marketing agendas. And the kind of big things are, you know, auto insurance getting back into the space, pharmaceuticals growing. That has been something that... was just an us trend that is now an industry trend because the largest of the players has branched out and moved to markets that we're not in. AI has been a theme, and tech more generally has been a theme. Banking and financial services have been going gangbusters this year, and a lot of that was stuff we had reasonable visibility to. I think the magnitude of AI has been greater than we expected. I think pharma has been somewhat bigger than we expected. And probably auto insurance has come back more than we might have expected. But there is an undertone to all of this that people are recognizing the role we play in the media mix and that we truly are kind of the last place to go for mass reach. And that is not lost on marketers, even in an age where one-to-one is really valued. Now that one-to-one might be your one to a bunch of bots is definitely on people's mind, and it's a conversation we're having with a lot of big marketers. So touch wood, we'll see those trends continue into 2026. It seems like it from the early dialogues we're having with people.
Daniel Osley: Great. And definitely want to circle back on a couple of those topics in a little while. Sure. You know, maybe staking on 26, based on the conversations you're having with advertisers, what gives you confidence that the strength that you're seeing in some of these verticals continues into next year? And I guess if you can level set how the conversations you're having today compare to the conversations you were having at this time last year.
Scott Wells: Yeah, I mean, we do, you know, probably high 40s percent of our sales on PERMs. And so those get negotiated between now and kind of February. And so we're in the relatively early innings. It's encouraging. We're seeing good increases. We're seeing some new advertisers come into the category. And we're not seeing very many pulling back. There, of course, are always examples of people pulling back. But if I look at the grower versus shrinker, It's a positive ratio in a pretty meaningful way at this stage. And again, we're early in the dialogue. But you look at some of the macro things that are going to drive next year. You know, you've got the 250 with, I can never get the right technical word for the birthday of our country. That's going to have an impact in a bunch of markets, particularly up in the Northeast. You've got FIFA, which is going to be something else. And it's very much on point with what we're trying to do in terms of surrounding events and being part of the experiential marketer toolkit. And that's probably something I should have mentioned in my first answer. There is more and more interest in us. I talked about our earnings call, the success we had around the US Open. Marketers are more and more looking to include out of home in experiences, whether it's big sporting events, whether it's big conferences. Dreamforce always has a lot of advertising associated with it up in the Bay Area. All of the different concert events. There's a lot of event activity. Early days still on the 2026 piece, but I think that coupled with some of the category dynamics that are carrying over that I described in terms of auto insurance and pharma gives me a pretty good feel that we're headed for a solid year next year.
Daniel Osley: That's helpful. And you touched on the World Cup as being a pretty material event next year. Can you walk us through any sales you've already made ahead of that? Are you currently going after advertisers? Are you able to package that inventory around that time differently? And any help that you can frame the potential benefit of that specific event next year?
Scott Wells: So it is still somewhat early in the planning. I think the games are going to be announced in December in terms of who's playing where and exactly when in the opening rounds. Obviously, the later rounds are determined by who wins. But what I'd tell you is FIFA approaches things in a very decentralized way. So you're engaging with the sort of planning group in each individual host city. And those host cities are competing with each other. And so, you know, some of our host cities butt up against each other. I mean, you think about greater Philadelphia and greater New York, you're bumping. And so as you would imagine, there are a lot of guidelines they're not necessarily rules because nobody has the authority to actually make them rules but so from the advertiser community you have the people who are the official sponsors who are slated to get some preferential treatment and then you have the people who want to be part of it who maybe are not official sponsors and since we are a very physical asset you can imagine how you navigate those two things. And airports will be working in concert with our roadside folks to kind of optimize. It's not something I'm going to guide to, but I think it's going to be something we'll be talking about over the course of the first half of next year for sure.
Daniel Osley: That's helpful. And are you seeing some of the same optimism that you've talked about on the national side in some of these larger categories Similarly, on the local side as well, you know, our local advertisers, are you seeing the same green shoots there versus national?
Scott Wells: Yeah, I mean, our local business has been really, really consistent. And there are a number of competitive things playing out that are advantageous to us. I know the legal category can be one that is... little tricky to talk about but there's a lot of competition in that space and they've become very sophisticated buyers so you know that dynamic I think is is a very strong one you know we've seen some retail and restaurant pullback with some of the consumer uncertainty and So it's not all unicorns and rainbows, but the picture overall is one that people are looking to grow their businesses. I do think that there are a lot of local brands that are looking to put their stakes in the ground. And you look at what we're doing with In-Flight Insights. That is allowing us to actually pick off search traffic customers because you're you're getting the kind of data and insight along the way. And so think about it from a retailer perspective or a visit a city perspective. You can go in and have a conversation with them and say OK you know a few weeks into your campaign we're going to be able to give you very detailed statistics of the impact this is having. And the ones who have tried it have been really pleased with what they've seen. And the trick for us right now is getting that trial broader and then turning it into repeating categories. But I can point to a number of six and even small seven-figure deals that we've done on the back of that capability that I think is going to be increasingly important in our space.
Daniel Osley: Great. You recently called out strength in both New York City and San Francisco. So maybe starting with New York, can you speak to the performance you've been able to drive on the MTA billboard contract versus maybe your initial expectations?
Scott Wells: Yeah. So in New York, we are well ahead of the bid that won us the opportunity. So I called out on our earnings call that it'll be cash flow positive this year. We weren't necessarily sure it would be cash flow positive in year one. We had modeled it that way, but it is comfortably there, which is great. A number of the signs we've beaten the records on for annual bookings, so the early returns suggest that the team's off to a really good start with it.
Daniel Osley: And does that MTA billboard inventory tie into airports at all? Are you seeing cross-sell opportunities with specifically the Port Authority airports?
Scott Wells: Yeah, I mean, they're not. Certainly they aren't linked. But they're part of a value proposition of, you know, we talk with our customers all the time about, you know, walk, drive, fly, that, you know, we want to intersect your consumer at every point in the journey. And in New York, we have a fantastic story with that of, you know, the airports plus a lot of great inventory heading into the city and then Times Square. So you have, like, a really robust... story that you can share with marketers. So yeah, we're definitely selling that, but I have to be very precise that it's never linked. It's always a compliment, if you will.
Daniel Osley: Understood. And then moving to San Francisco, can you help us better understand how the incremental demand you've seen drives revenue growth in that specific market? So does higher demand lead to stronger CPMs? Is it better sell-through of inventory? And then can you help to unpack how the programmatic channel contributes to all of that?
Scott Wells: Yeah, so the supply-demand dynamic in San Francisco is very positive for us right now. It's like completely the opposite side of the coin, you know, in 2023. So very recently it was a very different story. The way that it manifests, you know, I think I talk about this pretty frequently, but our inventory in every market has a strong Pareto in the sense that a few of the most marquee locations drive a differential amount of the revenue. And by the way, those were probably all sold in 2023 as well, where the incremental demand, when you have a supply-demand imbalance like we do at this moment, it then pushes things on to other assets, whether that's on highways that are a little farther away, maybe not between SFO and downtown, maybe they're south of SFO, maybe they're over on the Oakland side of the water there. And so it manifests itself both in greater occupancy of all the inventory and then, yeah, absolutely on the marquee units, the rates get bid up. We don't generally do flat-out auctions, but we do very often have dialogue. For these marquee assets, we will usually have a few people in reserve that are interested And sometimes those people will say, hey, I'm willing to, like, you know, bid quite a bit more than what I bid last time. So the market sort of sorts itself out. But it's both an occupancy thing and a rate thing. Both are acting in concert.
Daniel Osley: And just based on where we're sitting today, I'd be remiss not to ask a question about the L.A. market. So I know that's been one that's – still trying to recover from some of the issues, specific issues of that market. But how can you talk about, or can you talk about the potential recovery that you're seeing or any green shoots that LA may be experiencing at this point?
Scott Wells: Yeah, I mean, LA started the year in a rough place with the fires and with all of the repercussions that were associated with those. Obviously, media and entertainment changing and has changed you know not as much production is happening in LA and so what what we've seen is that media and entertainment for us as a category is down this year but the impact on LA has been differential because they've actually diversified a little bit where they're where they're spending it's not necessarily Just New York and L.A., like it was a few years ago, they're actually spending in Florida, they're spending in Georgia, they're spending in Texas as production goes to some of these other places. And so some of the budgets end up associated with that. And I think in general, production budgets are tighter than what they were, and so the amount of spending. I think of L.A. as it hasn't had as tough a year as San Francisco had in 2023, but As a result of where things were headed in 2023, one of the things we really focused on in San Francisco was building out the local sales base and making sure that we were doing a better job of activating at the local level. And that's part of what is making things great right now is that we have more feet on the street, we have more activity, more dialogues with advertisers. We started that in L.A. during the writer's strikes and have built out the team nicely. I think the key for us is going to be to take it to the next level. They've done a good job, but for us to be having as good a year as we are as a company, despite the difficulties L.A. is having, is just a testament to how well everybody else is doing.
Daniel Osley: Can you remind us how big of a market L.A. is, maybe in terms of the percentage of its total revenue?
Scott Wells: Well, it's our biggest, and it's probably right around 10%, 10% or 11%. I want to say it's like $140 million in a good year. So, yeah, it's big.
Daniel Osley: Maybe moving to more positive topics, but you've been a leader in expanding into underpenetrated ad verticals, specifically on pharma, as you mentioned before. But can you give us an update on how pharma spend is trending, and are there any additional verticals that you're looking to expand to as maybe opportunities cease to exist?
Scott Wells: Yeah, I actually, so this is a big, big part of our growth story is the sophistication we're getting in verticals. So on pharma, you know, we went from kind of one partner four or five years ago who went through a pretty torturous validation process but is now the scale partner that is spending, you know, across the industry, you know, I'm not going to name names or give specific counts, but we're in double digits of people that we're in dialogue with, which was not the case this time last year. So I think we're at that point where, especially with some of the uncertainty around television, I don't want to over-present that because I think people get over-excited about what's happening with pharma advertising and TV, but I think that is causing people, especially seeing reputable brands having success with us, that there's nothing marketers like more than to follow a playbook that has gotten other people results. And I think we're, so as a result of that, we're at the kind of getting traction stage of developing that category. I think for us, we have invested against beverages, particularly alcoholic beverages, That's been a reasonably good story. They were an important category before, so it wasn't all greenfield. We have recently invested against autos, and I think autos have a lot of potential because I think how autos really worked with search, particularly at the tier three level, is something that we have some solutions that might be good alternatives to. So automotive is an area we're focused on. I think the next couple You know, we've done a lot with higher ed in the airports, and I think that we do a lot with higher ed at the local market levels. I think that's an area – that area is becoming increasingly competitive and is something that, you know, universities want to tell their stories. And, you know, I think another really big one, and this one is a direct search replacement strategy, are the travel – you know, visit city X type, you know, every city down to very small cities have budgets for this. And we have been strategic about going after a few big ones, but we've never really marshaled the whole weight of our portfolio. And between what we have in airports and what we have in a lot of the biggest cities in the U.S., we have a pretty amazing story to tell there. And so I think those are the verticals that we have in front of us. And I do think that that's going to be a big part of how we grow this business.
Daniel Osley: That's really helpful. And maybe going back to the comment you made on not getting too optimistic on potential linear disruption coming up or showing up on out of home, but you know, you did speak at your investor day about a potential disruption of search and linear as being sources of upside to your growth. And I'm sure the industry kind of writ large, but you know, have you seen evidence to date? You know, are you in conversations with advertisers? Is this a topic that's coming up? You know, obviously as, linear media continues to degrade. Are you seeing that benefit today?
Scott Wells: So we definitely have seen money come to our category from linear TV. And on search, it is top of mind for pretty much every marketer that I know, and I know quite a few of them. What's going on in their cost of acquisition in search is really different I mean, this is literally taking the playbook of the last 15 or 20 years and turning it on its head because this was always, even as it got more expensive on a CPM basis, the reliability of it, it was kind of like, I used to work at Dell a long time ago, but the small and medium business knew if they dropped a catalog, they got a bunch of demand. Like it was, you could literally do the math on it. That's how search, you know, was for, almost every marketer from the smallest marketer to, you know, the very biggest brands. And now it is a lot less reliable, the toolkit that they've used. It's not that it's stopped working entirely. It just is got, it's gotten a lot more expensive for your click-throughs. And so the trick on that, obviously we don't offer a one-to-one product that people can work with it. And so what our teams are working on are the value propositions to communicate how we can you know, basically take some of that search money and make what search you're going to do more effective by being visible in the world and being present. And there are a number of big brands, like not, this is not, I do think at the end of the day, this is a huge local opportunity, but the place we're manifesting it right now are kind of mid-sized and larger brands because they're more proactive about, you know, getting after it. And look, I think I'd, It's not going to be a direct one-to-one transfer, and we're going to have to demonstrate that we can deliver. This is going to be judged by the results that people get as they shift these budgets. But I think it's a real tailwind for this business going into next year.
Daniel Osley: It seems like part of that value proposition or part of proving out that value proposition is going to be on the measurement side. So can you touch on where you've seen progress on measurement from both a clear channel perspective and a broader industry perspective? As I know, this is an area you've worked tirelessly at. And I guess when would you start to expect progress on measurement to start to contribute to growth?
Scott Wells: So there's kind of two pieces in the measurement puzzle. There's the underlying currency, which is an industry thing. And there's the added value behavioral things, the things that you use to plan for particular audiences or that you use to do attribution. That's what Radar is, our Radar suite of tools, and that's where, like, In-Flight Insights comes out of that. And we're going to continue to innovate in that, and it has absolutely been central to us bringing pharma into the space. It's been pretty helpful in a number of other verticals. There are deals I could point to in automotive or in CPG that were a result of the behavioral part. But we have been hamstrung as an industry because we've had a metric system that is based on annual numbers. And so the statistics for a sign don't change based on seasonality. And you can imagine... you know, someplace near the shore in Maryland gets like a ton of people between June and September and not that many people maybe the rest of the year. And so what we are working as an industry is we brought in, so the OAAA, which I chair, and GeoPath, which a woman named Allie Broback chairs, brought our executive committees together we have sponsored an analysis going on and right now that's in the marketplace getting pricing on what a modern measurement system and so think of a system that's going to be a lot closer to real time a lot more Automated in terms of how it works and a lot more robust we should have pricing on that probably in January would be my guess and And the plan is to, assuming the pricing is something we can conceive of as an industry, the plan would be to trial it in several markets during the first half of next year, kick the tires, see how it works, see if the architecture needs to be adjusted, if there are things we need to add, things we need to take out to make it more efficient. And I would expect that that's something that the soonest it would be mainstreamed would be in 2027. To get there, it's not just me. It's not just the other big out-of-home companies, the big other media providers. It's the buy side, too. So we have to bring the agencies along. Everybody has to see it as a benefit. But so far, those voices have been heard in the scoping of it and the architecting of the solution. Who's going to pay for it is always an interesting question in marketing. And so, you know, we're going to have to work through that as the numbers come back. But I'm cautiously optimistic that, you know, 2026 will be the year where we bust out of the kind of place we've been.
Daniel Osley: Great. And I guess just thinking about How should we think about framing the potential upside to this measurement solution maybe getting solved or at least, you know, seeing some incremental progress here? You know, out-of-home has roughly been stable at 2% to 3% of the total U.S. ad market for quite some time. You know, we've talked about linear degradation. We've talked about search disruption potentially driving growth. But, you know, do you see this as a huge opportunity for out-of-home to capture a larger share of ad budgets?
Scott Wells: I think it's pretty fundamental to how marketers operate, having robust data. It will be like anything else in marketing, though. So I wouldn't think of it as it's a one-time, it's kind of like our pharma story, that it takes getting people to embrace it, trust it, and then see repeated success. And so if we're able to be in media map models beginning in 2027, it would probably be a modest tailwind. I think by the time you get to 28 and 29, you could see out of home. I mean, every 10 basis points is a whole lot of money. I think you could definitely see the trend of that moving in a good direction. Given that we haven't even done it yet and we haven't seen how good it is, I'm loath to give you too much of a, you know, it's going to double our share. I don't think it's that. I think it's the largest advertisers getting comfortable that the medium is contributing in their omni-channel deals. And our current system can't do that. The system we're envisioning can. You know, that's really, you know, there's a lot of money out there to be had, Daniel. That's completely fair. That's a lot of money.
Daniel Osley: And maybe moving over to the airport side, you know, you've continued to put up really strong numbers. There's really strong revenue growth at airports. But can you unpack the strength that you've continued to see and, you know, whether you're seeing advertiser demand for that specific medium continue to hold up?
Scott Wells: So far, so good. I think part of, you know, the thing that's been most pleasing from where I sit on airports is the profit flow through has been just phenomenal. And that is going to come under pressure. And I think we've been consistent talking about this on our earnings calls. But we are going to be going through a cycle of renewals. And whenever you do a renewal, the margins get worked down as part of that. But in terms of the interest in it by advertisers, it's phenomenal. I think that we talked about some of the tactical things we're doing in terms of exclusives and terminals and creative experiential activations, that is something that is an increasingly important part of people's marketing mix. And approaching these as similar to venues like stadiums and arenas, which is what we've been doing, is still in the early stages. And I think it's something that we can continue to grow. So I continue to believe that's going to be a good space for us. I think the growth rates will moderate just because we have been benefiting from a very extensive build out the last few years. But as we win some of the renewals and build back up, there's going to be new opportunities there. So I think this is a growth business for us. It's not something that we're going to drop everything and go chasing after because the margin profile on it is less attractive than the roadside business. But it's definitely a good part of the portfolio, and it provides a solution for advertisers that gets us in front of some very, very large budgets. So that's a helpful feature of it, too.
Daniel Osley: And given the success you've seen at airports, are you seeing more competition in these renewal RFPs that are coming up?
Scott Wells: You know, this has always been a competitive space. I don't know that it's differentially the case. It's not like there have been a whole bunch of new providers that have arisen. But, you know, there are a couple of very formidable competitors for U.S. airports, and we're not going to win every RFP.
Daniel Osley: Maybe moving over to margins at the America segment, just generally, how should we think about margin expansion from a broader basis? I know this year you had the headwind from scaling the MTA contract, but looking ahead, I guess, how should we think about incremental flow through revenue on billboards?
Scott Wells: Yeah, I mean, I think there's a few things that are going to contribute to that. I think... As we get the international deals behind us and we get the transition services behind us, we'll be able to fully start to realize some of the corporate expense savings that we've talked about. And I think that will be a meaningful tailwind for us over the course of next year into 2027. think that lapping the MTA which we picked up you'll remember the beginning of November last year lapping that is going to cause our site lease dynamic to normalize and no longer be the the big growth item that it's been and so that should help our flow through you know we we stand by the way we've characterized the business typically that if we can get growth north of three or three and a half you should see you know, the bottom line be accelerated relative to that. And I think that, you know, we're thinking that 4% or 5% top line and 6% to 8% bottom line is a reasonable way to think about, you know, the next few years with, frankly, next year probably being strong within that range.
Daniel Osley: And you mentioned on the airport segment with, you know, contract renewals coming up, potentially putting pressure on the margin structure there. Would you still expect margins to kind of hold in above 20%? I know that's the target you all have put out there.
Scott Wells: Yeah, I mean, that's definitely our target. There will be renewals that hit over the next few years that will hurt more than others. None of those are imminent. But yeah, so 20% is, you know, our target. And I think we'll be able to keep it in that range.
Daniel Osley: And as we're running low on time, I'll ask one final question. But in the past, you've mentioned exploring creative ways to address your leverage profile.
Scott Wells: You're asking the short one last.
Daniel Osley: Are you still evaluating opportunities to more quickly de-lever the balance sheet? And, you know, is there any update that you can provide on creative solutions that we may or may not see in the not too distant future?
Scott Wells: So we are absolutely doing a lot of work, and we have a number of parties engaged working with us on this. These are not easy. You'll recall the kind of principles we laid out of we want it to be a win for the equity, a win for the creditors, and a win for the business. That's not easy. But that is the principle that we're operating to of what good looks like. There's definitely interest, and we think there are opportunities, but we're not at a point that we have anything to announce. But we absolutely will be forthcoming just as soon as we're in a place where we're ready to do so. Great. Well, we'll leave it there. Thank you so much, Scott. I appreciate it. It's good to see you.
