I'm very pleased to have Scott Wells, President and CEO of Clear Channel Outdoor, and we're doubly fortunate, because Brian Coleman, the CFO, is here as well. I think it's just Scott's gonna give the presentation, short presentation, then we're gonna do a fireside chat, and then turn it over to Q&A. With that, Scott, all yours.
Thank you, Jason.
Yeah.
Thanks, thanks for having us. It's great to be here. We, we do have just a couple of slides. We know that, the audience is in a variety of places about knowing our story, so we wanna just give a little bit of a high level. I'm gonna read the safe harbor statement. No, we'll skip, let's skip through that. So this is a, this is just a snapshot of our business, and it's, it's an important snapshot 'cause we're in the midst of transforming our portfolio, and I'll just- I'll focus you on the right-hand side of the slide, which shows our 2022 revenue and EBITDA. And what we're in the process of doing is focusing down on the blue and orange segments of the business.
We've made some good progress in divestitures in Europe, have sold a couple of geographies, have one in Spain teed up and going through regulatory approval. We have France teed up and going through a process unique to France around the Works Council and things along those lines. But that will leave us with effectively our Europe North segment, and that strategic review is ongoing. We've been busy this year. In addition to our transactions, we extended and amended and extended our liquidity lines, and we just recently did a bond issuance that we went out with a $500 million plan. But the demand for it was such that we did $750 million.
Brian will talk a little bit about that, when we're in the Q&A section, just in more detail. And we've continued to invest in the business. We're continuing with our digital conversions, and doing a lot of investment in digital technology. One of the things about out-of-home that we think is an incredibly attractive part of it is the resilience. This is a global picture. The blue is the kind of traditional out-of-home, the orange is digital. So you can see the rapid growth in digital globally. And this is the whole market, this isn't just us. But you can see that, you know, outside of some modest step-backs along the way and a very tough step-back in COVID-19, this has been a very steady growing business.
And we think that dynamic is a dynamic that we'll see going forward, and we're not alone thinking that. This is Magna's viewpoint of the world. Again, the blue here is looking at 2010 to 2019, and the orange is looking forward 2020 to 2027, looking at actuals and at Magna's projections. And what you can see is that, you know, out-of-home, over on the right, is of all the traditional media in the dotted boxes, it's the fastest growing segment, both in terms of what's actually happened and what's projected. And that, you know, digital out-of-home is actually outgrowing online, you know, properties. Kind of has been at parity with them in recent years and is projected to outgrow them in coming years. So we think it's a growthful medium.
It's really the last broad reach medium that's reliable across the universe of traditional media, and we feel good about the prospects. Just about our company, I'm not gonna go through all of this, but as we focus down, we're gonna have a very attractive pool of assets that are very difficult to replicate. We are a leader in the application of technology in the business, both to digitization of the assets, as well as bringing data and analytics, programmatic buying capabilities, things along those lines. It's a very diverse customer base. We're about 65% local, 35% national, with national defined as going through the big agencies. So we have a good mix of demand.
You know, technology is transforming everything that we do. We've made some real strides there, and we think we've got a very strong team. So with that, nickel tour of what we're about, I'm gonna hand it to you, Jason, to fire away with any questions.
Do the Q&A. All right, I don't think I've told you this story, but many years ago, I was viewed on the buy side as the bear in the outdoor space. And, I won't bore you with why I was bearish, but the line that always stuck with me is this: I was on the phone with this investor, and he said: "How can you be bearish on outdoor?" I said, "I don't know. The world's just changing really fast. Advertising ecosystem is changing really fast." He said, "Jason," he said, "you know, there's billboards in the movie Blade Runner, right? So we're gonna be okay." That always stuck me, struck me as, something that was true. So I like your long-term growth targets there, at least Magna's numbers. Here's my question.
I think of you guys in sort of three buckets: the strategic review you talked about, just operating the core U.S. business, and then the third bucket is sort of reconversion, right, ultimately. I'm gonna just go through in that sort of order.
Okay.
Let's start with the strategic review. Can you just walk through all of those Europe South close dates real quickly, and just to make sure that we're all on the same page about when you expect them to close? And just maybe fill in a little bit of, like, why are the close dates so different? I mean, some of them happened really quickly, some of them, it seems like we're gonna have to wait till sometime next year. So... Just start there.
Sure. So, Switzerland we announced in December of last year, and it closed in March of this year. Italy, we announced in May and closed in May.
Okay.
And Spain, we announced at the same time, it was the same buyer, but that one won't close until 2024, and the difference between Italy and Spain is because of regulatory review.
Okay.
So Spain needs to go through a full process, and there's no sort of prescribed timeline on that. You know, we, we think it'll be in 2024. We don't think it'll be later than 2024, but we really don't know. You know, it could be early 2024, it could be late 2024. We're sort of going on the premise that it'll be probably toward the later part of 2024, just given the dynamics in the Spanish market. And then with France-
Sorry, can I just pause?
Sure.
When you say dynamics in the Spanish market, is it that the pro forma entity has so much market share that there's some... It's gonna take a lot of regulatory questions and back and forth, or is it more just-
I think it-
say the Spanish regulatory process a little slower than it is somewhere else?
Yeah, I think it's not any one thing, but it does have to do with the relative size of the entity-
Okay
... going forward. But, I am definitely not going to define anything about market positions in a-
Okay
... you know, a fireside chat-
Understood
... with Citi. But that is the underlying reason, and it just, you know, some transactions, you know, we actually went through with a much different strategic position. We went through regulatory review in Switzerland, and that's what took the 4 months-
Okay
... between December and,
Okay
... and March to have that happen, and that was with, you know, it really an adjacent, it was hardly even a competitive consolidation. They had a very small out-of-home business, but it was more of a traditional print advertising company that acquired our assets in Switzerland. And then the last piece is France, which we announced the exclusive negotiating partner shortly before earnings. I don't remember if it was July or August, but we expect that that will close in Q4, and that's driven by normal closing process. It's a relatively big business, so you've got all of the normal closing accounts that you have to work through and that sort of thing.
And more particularly, there is a Works Council review in France, and so the employees get a chance to interview the buyers. There's a whole back-and-forth data collection process. It's unique to France, and so that's what drives that. But that will not be subject to a regulatory review because it's essentially a new entrant-
Okay
... you know, into the marketplace.
Okay. So I'm gonna... I guess for all of these asset sales that have been announced, and some of which haven't closed, I don't think the market's looked at any of those as saying, "Oh, that's a de-leveraging transaction," right? It was more just strategically, we don't want to be in this business as you sort of glide towards reconversion. When people think of Europe North, is it the same sort of answer, that it's not really... De-leveraging isn't part of the objective function?
Yeah, I mean, we would love for these to be de-leveraging transactions. But when you have a debt multiple like we do, and you look at what European assets trade for, the odds of it being a de-leveraging transaction are pretty long.
Okay.
We've been pretty clear, I think, in all of our communication on this, that this is a truly strategic move to simplify the footprint-
Yeah
... simplify the overhead, as opposed to, something that's gonna lead to de-leveraging. But it's an important first step, to being able to, to then focus our energy on really optimizing the U.S.-
Right
... and how to take the U.S. to a whole another level.
Okay. Well, let's talk about taking the U.S. to a whole another level. You laid out some pretty interesting long-term targets about a year ago. I think it was 4%-6% top line growth, 7%-10% Adjusted EBITDA growth, 10%-20% AFFO growth on that 2022-2025 timeframe.
Yep.
Is there anything that's transpired in the last year that would cause you to say those aren't reasonable multi-year targets?
There really hasn't, and I, I've got to stick here with what we communicated in our last earnings-
Sure
... which, you know, I think we were very clear that the only changes in our guidance, that there were two parts. So let me walk back to our beginning-of-the-year guidance, which was that we didn't change anything about those long-term targets in February. In our most recent earnings, we confirmed, and at that time in February, we gave guidance for the year. We confirmed at our last earnings that the only changes we made in our guidance for the year was to take out Switzerland and Italy because they're gone.
Yep.
We brought in the upper end, just reflecting on the fact that this has not been as robust a year as it might have been. So we're not out of the gate as fast as we ideally would've been, because 2023 has not been the year that we might have hoped and dreamed, but it's also not been a train wreck of a year.
Right.
I wouldn't say it's knocked us off that-
Okay
... off that path.
Anything you'd add, Brian?
I think the only thing I'd say is that is over that three-year period.
Yeah.
And so we knew there'd be some headwinds in 2023, and so when somebody looks at it and says, "Well, 2023 hasn't contributed its proportional share-
Yeah
... to that three-year run," that's okay.
Okay.
We didn't expect it to.
Okay, that's great color. So people have been talking about a recession for a year and a half, I think, almost.
Since March, I think, of 2022.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
It's weird.
We wound up for it. We're ready.
That's right, you guys are all ready. But it doesn't feel like a recession, right? It's just a little bit of softness around the edges. I mean, that's pretty much what we've picked up so far. Nothing's really changed on that front, has it?
I certainly don't feel like I could declare a recession. There are verticals that have pulled back in their spending. The ad market is not as robust as it was a year ago.
Yeah.
But I think to characterize it as a recession would be kind of aggressive.
Verticals where you'd say you've seen strength and where you've seen some weakness?
So, from our point of view, we are seeing good strength in business services. That's probably our most robust local market, and that covers everything from, you know, copy centers to, like, lawyers-
Okay
... with lawyers probably being one of the really strong growth areas. We've seen good growth in pharma. It's a small vertical for us, but that's an exciting area that we think has a lot of potential, and that we've done a lot of the legwork to unlock that category with our data and analytics. And I think that's a building success story for us that is illustrative of what we're trying to do in a couple of verticals. We've seen very good growth in travel-oriented verticals. So amusements, hotels-
Yeah
... restaurants, things along those lines. The weaker ones have been technology. That's been softer. Auto insurance has not bounced back. You know, we complained a lot about auto insurance in 2022. It was our weak vertical all year that year, and we had some reason to think that we would see some pickup this year, and it has not. So that remains an area of opportunity, 'cause I think that they will benefit from getting back in out-of-home . 'cause I think they have a lot of characteristics that make them a good match.
Isn't there something from an insurance perspective that sort of... I don't know the exact nuances in this. A buysider sent me some email that explained this. Were there, like, restrictions on what the insurance companies can do, or something about not being able to pass through rate or something?
There was an issue after COVID, where when people started leaving their houses again, they started having a lot more accidents.
Okay.
So, insurance, if you remember during COVID, some of you maybe got these checks. A lot of insurance companies were actually sending checks back to their customers because during the core of COVID, traffic was down so much that their claims were way down. But when you came out of COVID, you had the dynamic of more accidents, and if you remember, the supply chain in automotive was, like, totally screwed up for a while.
Yeah.
Parts got really expensive, and so in just about every geography, their rate base was all screwed up. Their costs were through the roof. They hadn't increased rates. In fact, if anything, they'd taken them down because for a while they were good.
Yeah.
They're highly regulated, so they had to, they had to build the rate base back up. That's why we thought we might see more of them this year.
I see.
But I think it has been inconsistent, and I think the supply chain problems have persisted, and so we are seeing on various media, insurance advertising coming back, but it hasn't come back as much.
Okay.
And so hopefully as that normalizes, I do think that that's a COVID hangover-
Okay
... of some level.
Interesting. You still expect the fourth quarter to be better than the third quarter this year?
Yeah, I mean, from what we're seeing right now, I think the guidance we gave on Q3 was gonna be not terrific, but Q4 was gonna be better than Q3 is right.
Okay. Okay. So we did some work, I don't know, maybe six months ago, where I, I went back and I just took 10 years of... This is all U.S. data only.
Okay.
I took you guys, your U.S. operations, and two of your big U.S. competitors that are REITs, and I just rolled up all the data. I just said, "Okay, here's what the growth was." I don't know, something like 4.5 or something, roughly, top-line growth. What surprised me is maybe 40%-45% of that came from tuck-in acquisitions, 40%-45% of that came from digital conversions, and only about 10%-15% of it came from ex M&A, ex digital conversion. Does that— I mean, did we do the math wrong? Does that seem about right to you?
So the interesting thing on us, so you started this as of 2013? That-
Yeah, I think that's right.
Is that the right-
I think that's right.
We divested a bunch of markets in the U.S. in 2015 and 2016.
I think I adjusted for that.
So-
I think I adjusted for that.
Well, if you adjusted for that-
Yeah
... 'cause that would be my number one-
Okay
... my number one adjustment for you. And then I think the other adjustment relating to us is that we really haven't done appreciable M&A.
Okay.
Our growth rate would be lower than what you quoted-
Yep
... during that time.
But your mix would be more-
But when you think about our mix, it would probably be 55/45, 60/40, digital conversion and baseline.
Okay.
But recognize that that baseline is being attrited, 'cause, I mean, you're talking about a decade. So in a decade, that's probably 1,500 digital conversions, which means that's 1,500 top-flight printed signs that are out, and then in most cases, you have to give up a couple of other signs in order-
Yeah
... to get the right to convert the 1,500.
Yes.
So that baseline has actually attrited, you know, maybe 5,000 signs to do. It's not like for like, because other than the 1,500, the 1,500 are, like, top-flight signs-
Yeah
... that get converted to the digital, and they become what amplifies that growth.
Yep.
You have to give up a certain amount of square footage typically in order-
Understood
... to do the conversion. So, you know, if you netted all of that out, maybe it's 50/50.
Okay.
But your math's not crazy.
Okay.
It's just we would be negative on the tuck-in acquisition.
Understood. Understood.
Yeah.
RADAR and data clean rooms. Can you talk a little bit about RADAR? 'Cause I'm, I know what it is in theory, I just can't tell how big it is, if it's like aspirational, if it's actually like needle moving in terms of what's actually happening on the ground. So maybe explain what RADAR is and then maybe-
So RADAR is our suite of data and analytics tools that you append to the industry standard counts. So don't think of it as a counting system, think of it as giving you digital insights, digital equivalent insights. So being able to look into the profile of your customers. We break it into four pieces. There's a piece that we call RADARView, which is just a planning tool. So think of it as like a big visualization that you can go in and say, "I want women who are in a certain age group, who drink a lot of coffee, and have two kids," and you can then have that give you a heat map of all of our signs to show you in the relevant area, which ones over-index to that audience.
That is probably used in 60% of our deals.
Oh!
It is very common as a starting point, and it is something that our account executives find very, very powerful. So that's RADARView, and it's free. We don't charge for that. We then have RADARProof, which is a whole set of different ways to attribute what happened. So if you're a retailer, did the person come to your store? If you're an app, did they download your app? If you're a drug, did they get a script related to it?
Yeah.
This is all anonymized. We have very, very good privacy characteristics because we are serving mass audience. You know, you're not-
Mm-hmm.
Each of these signs is serving thousands of people, and so-
Yeah
... you don't have the problem, like particularly like with that script one, you don't have a problem of it being a one-to-one, you know, privacy situation. And so with that, you know, RADARProof, we do not use anywhere near as much as RADARView, but it is absolutely central to our business development strategy.
Mm.
So we've added things based on... You know, a couple of years ago, we started calling on advertisers directly, and one of the things-
As opposed to what? Going through an agency?
As opposed to going through... Well, so locally, you've always called on them directly.
Okay.
But for national, for the big advertisers, we almost always were doing most of the work through the agency.
Okay.
We started going to brands in sweet spots, direct, and so that's where we've driven our RADAR roadmap, is off of what those folks have been asking for. And so this has been central to us developing, you know, particularly pharma in the most recent one, but we developed IRI capability, the app download capability we did in conjunction with a couple of tech companies. So it's been developed around those, and it's part of our business development strategy.
Okay.
So it's important to that. We have a thing called RADARConnect, which is literally just selling mobile ads to people who've been exposed. So again, each of our signs, you have a catchment area around the sign. It's called a viewshed. People go through the viewshed. If you've seen the sign, you get served an ad on your phone, and it has the same creative, ideally, and then that, you know, leads to... It's basically free money for the advertiser because their click-through rates tend to be four or five times more than what they are if you do just the mobile ad alone.
And then our last one is RADARSync, and RADARSync is what leads into the data clean rooms, and it's when we actually hand our exposure data to an advertiser to merge with their first-party data, and that happens in a, in a data clean room . It happens in a totally anonymized way. And so you have the ability to make these connections without anybody being able to identify the individuals involved. And the data clean room in particular is important as a vehicle for our programmatic business-
Yeah
... because many of the advertisers that do programmatic don't use out-of-home currently, and this gives them a way to actually hold out-of-home accountable, and they can use it for their planning, they can use it for their attribution because they, they have their own methodologies. And so that's what it's for. So it, it is - think of it as generally like a sales enabler and/or something that is causing us to be able to bring new accounts into our business. That's really what the, the purpose of it is.
Okay.
We feel very good about the ROI. It has not been a lot of money, and it has definitely brought in... You know, we have a monthly dashboard we're looking at in terms of new accounts brought in. It has brought in many times what we've invested in it.
You said something, I think it was on the last earnings call, maybe it was the one before that, I don't remember, where you were talking about how you look at some of the behavior of marketers in Europe, and it's pretty different from the behavior of marketers in the United States. I think you brought up packaged goods as an example, which I thought was like, just one of the most interesting things I'd ever heard about outdoors. Can you just remind us what you said about that, what your observation was, and just speak to whether or not there is an opportunity to sort of tap some new verticals in the U.S. based on what you've observed in Europe?
Well, yeah. It's interesting because it really speaks to how localized the execution of out-of-home is. Because the behavior of packaged goods companies in Europe and frankly, you know, in Latin America, too, I mean, and I think in Asia, while we were in Asia, it was the same dynamic. Out-of-home is much more routinely used by packaged goods companies in all those geographies except the U.S., because in the U.S., they prefer television.
Hmm.
And so, there's another reason for it. It's because the assets in those countries are much more. They're much closer to point of sale. And so what-
The outdoor assets.
The outdoor assets.
Okay.
So, so think of it as, you know, you're going down a high street in London, and you walk by a bus shelter that has an ad for an ice cream bar, and the next store is selling that ice cream bar.
Got it.
So that's why the packaged goods folks prefer it that way. But the reality is that our medium actually works very similarly here, just Americans travel a lot farther than Europeans as they're shopping. I mean, we have lots and lots of data on this-
Yeah
... in terms of the sort of exposed and then the action that happens. And so we're gradually building that case study with the packaged goods, 'cause it's literally the same companies, it's the same CMOs.
Yeah.
But yes, it's the, it's the U.K. team versus the U.S. team. But in the U.S., everybody loves producing a video. Everybody loves to, you know, have the, have the shot that they can then put on all their different video assets and out-of-home just does not, it's not the, the core of their, their budget, but we're working with them to demonstrate why it should be. So I think it's a huge opportunity, and we have a lot of evidence. I mean, we can go in and say, "Look, we know how much of your budget in the U.K. you're spending on this. Like, come on now." And that conversation actually works. It's not, it's not a... When you're talking to the brand, the agency, it's a little bit of a different story.
Yeah.
But the brand itself, if you can get to the brand leader, you can actually get traction on that.
I can think of some cities, though, in the U.S. that feel more like London, right? Like, do you see any sort of skew where in-
There's probably-
Like Lincoln Park-
I mean, in New York City-
Chicago, New York
...there, there is greater use of out-of-home in New York City than in London. As a percent of total ad spend, New York has higher ad spend on o ut-of-home than London does.
Interesting.
But that, the New York is the exception that proves the rule. It's, there's really not another city quite like... I mean, San Francisco has some characteristics, Boston has a little-
Yeah
... there are parts of Miami, but for the most part, in the U.S., you're talking about people in cars.
Yeah, understood. Okay. Reconversion, this is my third topic. So this, I guess maybe this is for you, Brian.
I got the look, didn't I?
Yeah, exactly. A little bit. What—just paint... I understand that your leverage has to come down before it makes any sense-
Yeah
... right, to convert to a REIT. But is the vision that you sort of organically get there via EBITDA growth, or it's a combination of EBITDA growth and using cash flow to pay down debt? Or does it also include shrinking the size of the U.S. business to sort of get to the, you know, by selling some assets that would allow you to de-lever to get there sooner? And my follow-up that I wanna link to this is: Do you think about the sort of time value of money of REIT conversion?
In other words, clearly preserving the totality of your U.S. assets makes sense, but if that means it's 12 years before you can convert to a REIT, how do you think about the math of, is it better to have a company that's half the size that REITs tomorrow, as opposed to the full size that REITs in 12 years? Does that make sense?
It does.
Okay.
I think I'll start with the back end and then kind of feed into some of the things and-
Okay.
There's a number of value or potential values of becoming a REIT.
Okay.
But one of the most important things is the potential tax benefits-
Yeah
... that accrue to a company that's a REIT. We actually aren't missing out on that today. You know, we've made the 163(j) election, that gives us the ability to lift the interest deductibility cap on the proportion of interest that's generated from debt associated with our real property. So our U.S. business, the assets that you would REIT, it's actually, you know, in the same area as the REIT election is. That proportion will actually grow as you dispose of international assets, because your real estate assets as a proportion of the total will grow. So if you think about the benefits with respect to, to-
Yeah
... managing federal income tax, we're not missing out on it. In fact, we're actually elongating that benefit.
Yep.
That being said, we intend to grow the company, we intend to grow free cash flow, we intend to grow taxable net income. So there will be a time where that will outpace our deductibility, and we would become a material federal income taxpayer, but we're not missing out on it today.
Understood.
Now, there may be other benefits in terms of your shareholder base, in terms of some of the benefits you get in, you know, M&A world and different things.
Mm-hmm.
But, but the big tax benefit, we're not missing out on. So that, that time value, yeah, you're losing the time value of money. I don't think it's a material part of the decision today.
Okay.
That, that doesn't mean to say we're not thinking about it. We think about it all the time. Our, our two domestic, you know, peers are both REITs. We wanna be on a pathway to preserve the option to convert to a REIT. Indeed, when the company was separated from iHeart, we were done in a way that, that cost NOLs, but preserved the ability to convert to a REIT within the next decade. Otherwise, we would have had to avoid.... So then the big question is, is, well, ultimately, how do you get there? And, and I, I think the short answer is, there's probably a lot of, a lot of little things that you need to do, including things in the categories that you mentioned.
Okay.
You know, fundamentals, you gotta grow the core business. We've made the statement that that's the Americas and the airports business. We're going to, you know, go through a strategic review. We're going to rationalize the European assets. And while that may not be de-leveraging, you know, on the surface, when you do the math, for the reasons that Scott mentioned, there are benefits, and maybe, the way that I look at it, secondary de-leveraging impacts. For example, you don't have that constant CapEx commitment that you have in Europe just to maintain the portfolio.
Yeah.
We are going to have... If we go through the process and we are successful in a disposition, we are gonna have excess asset sale proceeds come back. How do we deploy those? So I do think that we're gonna have an aggregate reduction in the amount of debt that's outstanding. And by the way, it's been the Americas business that's serviced that debt for the past decade. We haven't had material repatriations that were from operating cash flow generation and maybe from asset sale or-
Yeah
... or debt raises, but not, not from operating cash flow generation. So I think that's, that's the first thing that you focus on, and that's, that's focusing on the, on the core business and growing that business.
Yeah.
In terms of, you know, things you can do in the capital market space, you know, we keep our options open. Not that it's de-leveraging, but it does impact the runway that you have. We did a successful extension of our revolvers earlier in the year that Scott mentioned. That was one of the big three goals that we had. We went out, and we did the debt raise. That addressed, you know, roughly a third of our 2026 maturity of term loans. But what it also did was enable us to apply proceeds to the term loans in a way that was beneficial to us. Two examples are, one, we prepaid our amortization.
So from a liquidity or a cash flow perspective, we now have $20 million more, or $5 million per quarter of amortization that we've avoided.
Mm.
We also used the Dutch auction mechanism that's embedded in our term loan agreement to save about $5 million, and retain that cash on our balance sheet. So these were all little pieces of things that we can do to kind of increase the runway, increase liquidity, you know, set the table for us.
Okay.
You've mentioned a couple of things that are really, I would put more in the M&A category, right? You know, and how important is that? I think our focus right now is clearly the attention on our international assets and getting to a point where we have the core group that we're focused on. And we wanna keep an open mind on all of the assets that we have. I think with respect to the domestic assets, we obviously have to look at it in totality. You know, what ultimately are your after-tax benefits of doing that? Is it de-leveraging? How does it impact the platform? And I would say our priority right now is to continue to focus on the international assets.
but, you know, we do think that we, we have a, we have a path to becoming simpler, growing that simpler base, continuing to do a lot of little things. I think, Scott, you described it earlier as hitting some singles-
Mm.
... hitting a number of singles and advancing the runner. And then maybe that opens up further opportunities to do other things.
Okay.
I ran through that really quickly. I, I'm sure you have something you want to add or maybe something I missed, but that's, that's kind of the way I see it, Jason.
Super. Super helpful.
Yeah.
No, I mean, I think that that's the right description, and that $20 million of extra liquidity. I mean, if you think about what happened to us with interest rates and our term loan, so we've taken a third of it out to push 2026 out, but we've also fixed it essentially at a wash with where the term loan is now. It, when we first started the process, we thought we'd get a little more savings, but probably saved an eighth of a-
Yeah
... 1/8 of a point, relative, but it's now fixed. So to the degree rates go up, we're gonna be impacted less. And that had a huge impact on us because in 2023, we will have spent $75 million more in interest as a result of interest rates going up.
Yeah
... even with, you know, that not even being the majority. It's just, it's big numbers-
Right
... that we're talking about. And that $75 million, you know, if you reference back to our September Investor Day a year ago, we talked about the business generating sort of 40 or 50 incremental EBITDA each year in the U.S., so additive, you know, as you go. So that's like a year and a half of-
Right
... of that process, and if you look at how things have played out, that is sort of what has been added to our time to cash flow positivity.
Yeah.
And as we get to cash flow positivity, which that amortization is a step in that, in that direction that, that will help with that, that's gonna be where you start to see the, the flywheel catch as we start being able to pay things down. Maybe we get a little more involved in M&A. There's a variety of things that, that you can do. And we do have, we do have a lot of tools that we can, that we can use to, to accelerate that. I don't think anyone should be expecting that we think we've got a dozen years to get to where we wanna be, at a REIT, nor do I think it, it requires that.
I mean, if you just do the math off of the $40 or $50 million incremental that you can do, sort of growing the business and expanding the footprint, doing more digital, that sort of thing, that's how you get there.
Super helpful.
The only, only thing I would say is just let's remember that even though floating rates increased greatly and it was a headwind, we benefited from really, really low floating rates for a long time, so-
Yeah, we did.
Yeah, so just wanna throw that out there, I'd say.
Well, well said.
That's what it is. Well said. Well, thank you both for your time.
You bet.
I thought that was super great. I don't know if there's any questions in the audience? We're happy to take them if you do have any questions. Oh, yeah.
Sorry.
Can you just wait for the mic? Thanks.
Just in that last comment, your all your adjustments with the floating rate loans and et cetera, what does the free cash flow profile look like, you know, in the next couple of years, just with your, you know, all your product enhancements and divestitures and adjustments?
Yeah. So we, you know, we expect to continue to burn cash for a couple more quarters. But I think given the guidance that we've provided, and barring anything unexpected, you know, we would expect to turn to free cash flow positive in 2024. Now, there's a lot in that, right? And you know, interest rate stability is part of it. But, you know, I think, you know, we would expect our cash trough probably to be, you know, mid-2024, and then, if the businesses continue to perform, we would expect to turn free cash flow positive later in the year.
Any other questions? Okay, great. Scott, Brian, thank you so much for the time.
Thanks, Jason.
Great. Yeah, I appreciate it.