Radio One (ROIAK)

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Radio One's (ROIAK) CEO Alfred Liggins on Q4 2015 Results - Earnings Call Transcript
Feb. 26, 2016 3:23 PM ET| About: Radio One, Inc. (ROIAK)
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Operator

Welcome to Radio One's Fourth Quarter Conference Call. I've been asked to begin the call with the following Safe Harbor statement.

During this call, Radio One may share with you certain projections or forward-looking statements regarding future events or its future performance. The company cautions you that certain factors including risk and uncertainties referred to in the 10-Ks, 10-Qs and other reports periodically filed at the Securities and Exchange Commission could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those indicated by its projection or forward-looking statements.

This call will present information as of February 25, 2016. Please note that Radio One disclaims any duty to update any forward-looking statements made in this presentation.

In this call, Radio One may also discuss some non-GAAP financial measures and talking about its performance. Its measures will be reconciled to GAAP either during the course of this call or in the company's press release, which can be found on the Web site at www.radio-one.com. An audio replay of the conference call will also be available at Radio One's corporate Web site at www.radio-one.com under Investor Relations section of the web page. The replay will be made available on the Web site for seven days after the call. No other recordings or copies of this call are authorized or may be relied upon.

I'll now turn the conference over to Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer of Radio One, who is joined by Peter D. Thompson, the company's Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Liggins?

Alfred Liggins

Thank you very much, operator, and welcome to the fourth quarter results conference call, which obviously is also our 2015 year end conference call. We've had a year that we're proud of because we had a lot accomplished, particularly with the buyout of Comcast as a TV One stake and the refinancing of our debt, particularly ahead of the market turmoil and TV One's continued strong performance in 2015 led by an increase of ratings by about 15% and an increase in our affiliate fees, we finished the year with about $125.5 million of EBITDA.

The bad news is our radio business, which most of you on the call know was soft. And a large amount of that was ratings related of which we've gotten turned around. And we're showing improving ratings continuing into first quarter. However, we still haven't been able to hit the inflection point yet on monetization.

TV One's performance is offsetting radio's poor performance, but 100% of our focus at this point in time is stabilizing the radio business, and then, growing that cash flow. We've made some progress in a number of markets, but two of our big markets, Houston and Atlanta, and one of our middle markets, Indianapolis, continue to struggle, so the focus is there. Washington is doing fantastic. And actually Baltimore in Q1 is also really stabilizing and I'm very happy with that trajectory.

We're going to talk a bit more about TV One in 2016 after -- right before we get to question-and-answer. But, I'm going to turn it over to Peter who's going to get into the details of the numbers.

Peter Thompson

Thank you, Alfred.

Net revenue was relatively flat for the quarter ended December 31, 2015 at approximately $109.4 million. An increase in affiliate revenue from our cable television segment was offset by declines in the radio and interactive divisions. And a breakout of revenue by source can be found on page five of the press release.

Net revenue for the radio division was down 9.1%. Our Dallas and Washington DC clusters showed the most significant revenue growth in the fourth quarter. However, this was offset by declines in other clusters, most notably in Houston, Atlanta, Baltimore and Indianapolis.

From the fourth quarter, local revenues was down 8.8% and national revenue was down 6.2% for our radio stations. According to Miller Kaplan, the radio markets in which we operate were down 2% for the quarter compared to minus 7.3% for our clusters.

(continues 10 pages)
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