Welcome to the Emerald Expositions fourth quarter 2018 earnings conference call. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be opened for questions with instructions to follow at that time. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. David Gosling, SVP, General Counsel and Secretary. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate your participation today in our fourth quarter 2018 earnings call. With me here today is Phil Evans, Emerald's Interim President and CEO, and the company's Chief Financial Officer, and also Kevin O'Keefe, Executive Vice President. As a reminder, a replay of this call will be available on the investors section of the company's website through 11:59 P.M. Eastern Time on February 21st, 2019. Before we begin, let me remind everyone that this call may contain certain statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These include remarks about future expectations, beliefs, estimates, plans, and prospects. Such statements are subject to a variety of risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated or implied by such statements.
Such risks and other factors are set forth in the company's most recently filed periodic reports on Form 10-K, Form 10-Q, and subsequent filings. We do not undertake any duty to update such forward-looking statements. Additionally, during today's call, we will discuss non-GAAP measures, which we believe can be useful in evaluating our performance. The presentation of this additional information should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure can be found in our earnings release filed this morning on Form 8-K. Now I'll turn the call over to Phil.
Thanks, David. I'll start by reviewing our fourth quarter and full year 2018 results. We'll then turn to our strategy for 2019 and the outlook for the year. At that point, we'll open up the line for your questions. As David just noted, with me here today is Kevin O'Keefe, who took over the leadership of our New York NOW, National Stationery Show, and SURTEX shows in 2018 and has been the leader of our ICFF event for many years. Kevin will join me in answering any questions you may have relating to New York NOW. Beginning with our fourth quarter financial performance, revenues increased by $25.5 million or 81% over the fourth quarter of 2017, benefiting from strong organic growth and the contributions of several recent acquisitions.
Organic revenue growth for the quarter, adjusting for the timing difference related to our Digital Dealer Fall event, was approximately 19%, which strongly benefited from the new Outdoor Retailer Winter Market show and two other fourth-quarter event launches. Our adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter increased by $5.5 million to $8.5 million, as compared to $3.0 million in the year-ago quarter, reflecting the contributions of acquisitions and our fourth-quarter launches. Acquisitions contributed $17.1 million of revenue in the fourth quarter. In mid-November, we staged the Boutique Design New York, or BDNY show, which is the flagship asset in the portfolio we acquired from ST Media in October. It increased revenue over the prior year's show by a low double-digit %. Overall, we were satisfied with the performance of our newly acquired events, which was in line with our pre-acquisition expectations.
To conclude my comments on the fourth quarter, we booked a non-cash impairment charge of $104.3 million on our trade name and customer-related intangible assets in connection with the annual impairment review of our indefinite lived intangible assets that we do each October 31st. During 2018, we enhanced our reporting capabilities and changed the basis of the impairment assessment for trade names from a total company aggregate calculation to asset groups that more closely align with the individual brands. As a consequence of our more detailed analysis and certain changes in the business impacting the inputs and the valuation calculation, we booked an impairment charge in the fourth quarter for certain intangible assets where the book value exceeded fair value at October 31st, 2018.
Turning next to our financial performance for the full year 2018, we grew revenues by 11.4% to $380.7 million, or by 9.3% if you factor in the insurance proceeds we received in 2017 to replace lost revenue as a result of the disruption caused by Hurricane Irma. Acquisitions contributed revenues of approximately $32.1 million in 2018, and organic revenue growth was approximately 1.1%, or 0.8%, including the revenues of the discontinued Interbike Show in both years. Adjusted EBITDA for the full year 2018 increased by 3.2% over the full year 2017 to $162.9 million, driven mainly by the contributions of our November 2017 acquisition of CPMG and our 2018 acquisitions of Technology Brands and BDNY, both of which staged events late in the year under our ownership.
Our adjusted EBITDA margin for the full year 2018 was 42.8%, compared with 45.3% in 2017, after adjusting for the insurance proceeds received in 2017 in place of lost revenue due to Hurricane Irma. This 250-basis-point reduction reflected several factors. First, there was some adverse margin mix effect within our portfolio, driven largely by our recent and growing acquisitions, which came with somewhat lower margins of approximately 30%. Second, we decided to make some additional investments in our events. Last, we incurred incremental public company costs relative to 2017, partially reflecting an annualization of those costs incurred in the prior year. Adjusted net income for the year of $100.2 million was up 24.8% versus 2017, benefiting from a lower interest expense and a reduced effective tax rate. While 2018's adjusted diluted earnings per share of $1.33 represented an increase of 19.8% over 2017.
Free cash flow for 2018 was $100.4 million, which decreased by $7.4 million, or 6.9%, over 2017. This reduction partly reflected lower cash receipts for 2019 events received in 2018 than was received for 2018 events in 2017, including lower receipts for NY NOW, National Stationery Show, ASD, and the absence of receipts for the Interbike event that staged in 2018, but won't stage this year. In 2018, we used our free cash flow, plus $40 million from borrowings on our revolving credit facility to close two acquisitions for a total consideration of $71.2 million, to pay four quarterly dividends totaling $21.0 million, to pay down outstanding principal on our term loan by $25.7 million and to repurchase $19.4 million in shares of our common stock.
Of note, we repurchased approximately 1.6 million shares at an average cost of $11.94 per share, as we believe that our shares were trading below their intrinsic value. Turning to debt and leverage, we finished 2018 with net debt of $556.0 million, representing a net leverage ratio of 3.4 times our 2018 adjusted EBITDA, calculated in accordance with our credit agreement. All in all, 2018 was a mixed year for Emerald. Amongst our best-performing trade shows in 2018 were the Kitchen and Bath Industry Show, CEDIA Expo, Hospitality Design Expo, International Pizza Expo, ICFF, Couture, and our military shows. We also saw good growth from our Outdoor Retailer franchise as it moved from a two to a three-show cycle. In total, we launched six new events last year.
Additionally, we were pleased with the results of our M&A program, adding events in the hospitality industry and various digital and event assets in the installed technology and security sectors. In both cases, complementary to existing assets in our portfolio. We also saw the early benefits of our 2017 fourth quarter acquisition of CPMG, a series of innovation-focused, hosted by events for executives in the retail, restaurant, healthcare, and hotel industries. At the same time, we faced challenges in several of our largest brands, which proved to be a headwind to organic revenue growth. As noted on previous earnings calls, we experienced revenue declines in 2018 in our NY NOW and ASD shows, plus difficult circumstances specific to the bicycle industry, which impacted our Interbike show in September. Outside of our trade show portfolio, our other events category increased significantly due to the first contributions from our CPMG acquisition.
We saw slight organic growth for this category due to a CPMG new launch in the fourth quarter that offset the previously discussed disappointing performance from our HOW Design Live conference in the second quarter. Our other marketing services products, which comprised approximately 7% of our revenues in 2018 and an even lower percentage of our profit, declined in revenue by a low double-digit percentage, excluding assets that were included in our 2018 acquisitions. Looking forward to 2019, the B2B events industry remains a highly relevant and attractive one, with strong financial characteristics and good growth opportunities. In fact, the Globex 2018 report, released by AMR International in November 2018, projects average annual revenue growth in the U.S. exhibitions market of 3% to 3.5% through 2022. Against this backdrop, we've strengthened our portfolio through growth-enhancing acquisitions in 2017 and 2018.
That said, as you're aware, several of the assets in our portfolio have recently underperformed against our own growth targets and against the overall growth of the industry due to a combination of both external and internal show-specific factors that we've previously discussed on these calls. To help restore the long-term positive growth trajectory of the business, we've made changes to our management team, resources, and execution strategy within several brands. First, during 2018, we made a number of management and structural changes aimed at strengthening the brand leadership teams and improving local decision-making and performance accountability. We've also added and plan to add more new resources and capabilities, particularly in marketing and sales, which we expect will have a meaningful impact on our organic revenue growth over time.
One of our key hires in the fourth quarter of 2018 was Johanna Morse, who has more than 20 years of experience in conference management and joined us as senior vice president, conference development. Johanna is already improving the content and attendee experience at our conference events and enhancing the education component of a number of our trade shows. Second, we've set aside additional funding to enhance the event experience and value for our exhibitors and attendees. We've ramped up our attendee marketing efforts to find and deliver more and better attendees for our exhibitors. Are selectively adjusting our attendance criteria for our shows to ensure participants are of the highest quality and meet the commercial objectives of our exhibiting companies.
For the attendees, our investments include enhanced educational and networking opportunities, as well as additional show floor amenities such as music, refreshments, lounges, and charging stations, more transport, improved signage and decorations, and additional greeters. Our targeted initiatives will likely take at least one show cycle to start to see a noticeable return on our investments. Third, and specific to our two NY NOW shows, we've made the tough but necessary decision to fundamentally reposition the brand for success in the future. To provide some perspective on NY NOW's relevance to our overall portfolio, we expect the winter and summer shows in aggregate to generate approximately 9% of our overall revenues. A modestly lower proportion of our profit this year, after absorbing the 2019 repositioning impacts.
As a reminder, NY NOW is the leading U.S. trade show for independent home goods and gift-oriented retailers and designers, featuring innovative and design-forward products in the home, lifestyle, gift, and handmade categories. At NY NOW, we're reinvigorating our home category, which has been the main source of performance softness in recent editions. Creating a globally inspired, design-driven home section that's already beginning to attract unique exhibitors and the highest quality of attendees to improve this key section of the show. In the lifestyle category, we're more actively curating our exhibitors, and in the winter show, we replaced a section of the category with our co-located National Stationery Show, which was moved up from its previous May timing.
In the upcoming August 2019 NY NOW show, we will replace some of the lifestyle exhibitors with our small JA Summer Jewelry Show, which will add a high-quality, attractive event alongside NY NOW and support our upscaling strategy for the brand. We have significant confidence in the changes being implemented at NY NOW under Kevin, who has almost tripled the size of our ICFF High End and Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York City since taking over responsibility for that show six years ago. Turning to the NY NOW event that staged last week, we're pleased to report that attendance was up approximately 20%, thanks to our investment in attendee marketing and the benefits of the co-located National Stationery Show. Feedback coming out of the event was markedly stronger than recent editions.
While it takes time to build momentum, given our twice-a-year show cycle, these are important leading indicators that are very encouraging. Although we were happy with the market reaction to the show, we did experience a revenue percentage decline in the high teens. It's important to note that approximately a third of this decline reflected our decision to more actively curate parts of the lifestyle category in order to make room for our National Stationery Show. As part of the overall strategy to reestablish NY NOW as the preeminent home, lifestyle, and gift show in the U.S., we've added several prestigious new brands in the home category, such as Tom Dixon and Atelier Swarovski. We continued and extended the show floor enhancements of features that we introduced in last summer's show.
Importantly, the look and feel of the show was dramatically better than last year. There was a palpable buzz of excitement on the show floor. While the show's revenue decline, excluding the effect of our aggressive curation, was in line with the summer 2018 show, as we anticipated, our feeling coming out of the show is that we've successfully turned around the perception of NY NOW for many in the marketplace. As a result, we're optimistic that we will see an improvement in the revenue trajectory for the 2019 summer show. Kevin, who's here with me today, is the architect of this transformational NY NOW strategy and can answer questions and offer more detail on the initiatives which are being implemented in a few minutes. Turning to our busy first quarter calendar of shows.
Surf Expo Winter improved its performance trend over last year, settling at flat in revenues versus 2018. We saw good growth in Sports Licensing and ISS Long Beach shows, as well as The Original Miami Beach Antique Show, which was back at the Miami Beach Convention Center after two years at a temporary venue. A couple of weeks ago, we staged the Outdoor Retailer Snow Show in Denver. This was the second of our two shows for the 2018-2019 winter buying season, following on from our new November show.
Although our revenue at this latest January edition of OR is expected to be down by a mid-single-digit percentage versus last year's January show, our total revenue for this winter season's two shows, the recent November and just completed January events, versus last winter season's single January show, is projected to be up by more than 40%, which demonstrates that our industry customers are adopting the three-show format to meet their product development and introduction decision needs. The mood and the energy of the show floor was excellent, and we've received strong positive feedback from many exhibitors and attendees. Looking ahead, the next major show on the calendar is the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show, which takes place next week. KBIS continues to be one of our strongest performers and is expected to increase revenue this year by a high single-digit percentage.
The show rotates every few years between Orlando and Las Vegas and will be in Las Vegas for 2019 and 2020 after staging in Orlando for the last two years. We continue to enjoy the benefits of robust market conditions and our mutually beneficial co-location with the National Association of Home Builders International Builders' Show. Lastly, let me provide an update on our ASD Market Week Show, which takes place in Las Vegas in a month's time. Our current pacing suggests that excluding our small SourceDirect category, the show will be flat in revenues, a notable improvement over 2018, with continued growth in the show's largest category of Value and Variety, partly offset by modest softness in the 2 largest category, Style and Beauty.
Our SourceDirect section, which houses many exhibitors who fulfill the international sourcing needs of certain ASD attendees, has been disproportionately hit by the current trade tensions between China and the U.S. Overall, at ASD, we're pleased that our sales and marketing initiatives and our investments appear to be improving the brand's revenue trajectory. Let me now shift to our full year 2019 guidance that was outlined in our earnings release issued earlier today. Total revenue for 2019 is projected to be between $378 million and $390 million, representing a decline of 0.7% to growth of 2.5%. This range includes between $11 million and $13 million of incremental revenue in 2019 from our second half 2018 acquisitions. While we may complete additional acquisitions in the year, consistent with our past approach, we have not incorporated any impact from these into our full year guidance.
We're projecting organic revenue growth to be between a decline of 1.7% and growth of 1.1%, which reflects our good visibility into our first half performance and a broad range of assumed potential outcomes for the second half of the year, particularly relating to the revenue trends in our New York NOW and ASD shows in the summer, the outcome of the second edition of our Outdoor Retailer November Show, the performance of our other marketing services products, and the relative success of our launch program. We anticipate good revenue growth in many of our brands, offset by an expected revenue decline for the two New York NOW shows of between $5 million and $8 million in aggregate, partly reflecting our conscious decision to more tightly curate and reposition the New York NOW event.
Without the NY NOW decline, our organic revenue growth rate guidance would range from growth of 0.6% to growth of 2.8%. As it relates to our other major brands, the midpoint of our guidance assumes a low single-digit decline at ASD, mainly driven by the U.S.-China trade situation, although we're obviously working to exceed that. We expect the three Outdoor Retailer shows to be slightly positive in revenue in aggregate versus 2018, as the prior year included the large single winter event in January 2018, and also benefited from the new November event. It's encouraging that we've received early orders for the November 2019 show from several influential brands, including Patagonia and The North Face, neither of whom participated in the inaugural 2018 event.
With regard to launches, we currently have 4 new events scheduled for 2019, and we're exploring several other potential opportunities for later in the year. Additionally, there are a few events that took place in 2018 that will not repeat in 2019. The largest of these, by far, was our Interbike show, as we previously disclosed. In aggregate, these events contributed approximately $6.2 million in revenue in 2018 and an estimated $2.5 million in adjusted EBITDA. Turning to adjusted EBITDA, our 2019 guidance is between $140 million and $150 million, representing a decline from 2018's adjusted EBITDA of $162.9 million.
The key factors driving this decline, in addition to the impact of discontinued events, are the repositioning of NY NOW for future growth, where the previously noted estimated revenue decline is expected to largely flow through as a profit decline versus 2018, and the deliberate decision to ramp up investment in our show experiences and in marketing and sales resources in several of our brands. In aggregate, this program of incremental initiatives totals more than $9 million. We believe this is the right time to make these investments to position Emerald for improved revenue growth in 2020 and beyond. Based on the timing of our acquisitions in 2018, which in the case of BDNY, was just before its two largest events took place, we recognized a significant portion of the full year profits for the acquisitions in 2018, and the incremental profit in 2019 is relatively modest.
Turning to adjusted net income, we expect to report between $76 million and $88 million, reflecting a projected increase in interest expense due to higher average rates and a slightly increased effective tax rate. Based on our assumptions for the change in the number of shares outstanding, we expect to report adjusted diluted EPS between $1.02 and $1.20 for the year, which would represent a decrease of between 9.8% and 23.3% versus 2018. Lastly, our free cash flow guidance reflects our adjusted EBITDA expectations and our modestly higher cash interest and cash taxes projections, offset by the higher cash flow contributions of our 2018 acquisitions, lower non-recurring other items, and lower CapEx. We expect free cash flow to be in the range of $80 million to $90 million, a reduction of between $10.4 million and $20.4 million versus 2018.
Our business is very cash generative, even during a year when we're making conscious investments to improve our longer-term prospects, we would expect our free cash flow to resume growth in the coming years. Turning to M&A, we were again pleased with our activity in 2018. The nature of acquisitions is by definition episodic, but we've reliably bought high-quality businesses for between $60 million and $100 million annually at accretive multiples. 2018 was no different. We continue to see and review many opportunities in the market and are selective with respect to which we pursue. Having said that, it should come as no surprise that in the very short term, you might expect to see a slowdown in our activities. I would caveat that we will always be opportunistic with our acquisition activity. There are several reasons for this near-term slowdown.
First is a desire to have the entire Emerald organization focused on maximizing the benefits of the incremental investments we're making to strengthen our business. Second is the recognition that we're in the process of hiring a new CEO, and it would make most sense to wait to have that person's input in the process. As noted, however, we'll continue to evaluate high-quality businesses that meet our financial and strategic criteria. If they make sense for our portfolio and the valuation is appropriate, we will pursue them. Let me conclude by saying that our management team is optimistic about the future of our portfolio and our company. Emerald has the benefit of being comprised of a large and diversified portfolio of events, each of which is driven by different end market and specific factors.
There is strength in a large part of our portfolio, though certainly there are several discrete pockets, which happen to be at our larger events, that are currently experiencing weakness. We're making bold moves to improve a number of our largest brands and enhance their future growth prospects. We're confident that we're making progress towards stabilizing our NY NOW and ASD brands. We're making the necessary investments to provide for the continued health and growth of the total portfolio. We'll continue to be disciplined in our capital allocation strategy and remain focused on creating shareholder value.
What this means is a consistent return of capital to shareholders in the form of regular quarterly dividend payments, pursuing attractive acquisitions that meet our strategic and financial criteria, potentially using surplus cash to return cash to shareholders via special dividends or to pay down debt, and potentially buying back our shares when they're trading materially below their intrinsic value. Lastly, we're excited with the CEO candidates that have been interviewed thus far, who come from both inside and outside the events industry. While conversations are ongoing, we're hopeful we'll be in a position to announce the appointment of our new CEO in the coming months. Let me ask the operator to please open the call for questions.
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment please while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from the line of Seth Weber with RBC Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.
Good morning. This is Emily McLaughlin on for Seth today. Just a question on the comment about lower cash receipts for future shows received in the fourth quarter. Is there anything to read into there? Are renewal rates meaningfully lower than they were a year ago?
No, this is Hi, Emily.
Hi.
This is Phil. As we talked about the Q1 shows, we have a decline in the NY NOW and NSS shows, it really is entirely related to that. If we actually look at renewal rates for 2018, they were slightly improved over 2017. I think it's specifically related to one or two shows.
On the marketing side, are you starting to see any stabilization there? Is any of the digital knowledge that EH Media brought to the table having any impact on the legacy business yet?
The other marketing services piece is obviously, it's a challenge because it's largely print advertising. As you point out, we're in the process of using the skills and products and techniques that the EH Media brands brought with them. I've seen several recently of the initiatives being adopted in some of our other brands. I saw Healthcare Design the other day doing some of that. We're optimistic that we can benefit from that. It really is going to take some time to do that. We're definitely optimistic.
Okay. One last one, if I may. Just any update on the pricing environment? I think you guys have talked about 2%-4% a year in the past. Does that still hold?
Broadly, that still holds. As I've explained in the past, we make those decisions at a show level based on all the other factors relating to a show, and it blends out to be in the range that you just said, and that's pretty much the same thing. We're very mindful of the individual conditions, the individual markets of each of the shows, and that's what we take into account when we're doing the pricing.
Understood. That's all for me. Thanks for the time.
Thanks, Emily.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Mueller with Robert W. Baird & Co.. Please proceed with your question.
Good morning. You've got Nick Nikitas on for Jeff. Just looking at the adjusted EBITDA decline and the incremental investments in sales and marketing, Phil, that you called out. Are these things that you guys would view more as one-time investments for 2019 or potentially more of a structural change to your events where maybe you need to require a higher level investment or an enhanced offering for attendees going forward?
Thanks, Nick. They really aren't one-time in nature, I would say. Of the $9 million we call out, about half of that is experiential and attendee-related. That would be things like design spaces and lounges and education and refreshments. Those are things that what we've really learned a lot through the New York NOW exercise of investment and changing the view of that show in the market, is that these things actually make a difference, that people appreciate them. We got an email unsolicited from one of the tabletop exhibitors at New York NOW, who mentioned a bunch of these things and noticed that we'd introduced them at the shows and said what a refreshing difference it was and what a rebirth of the show it was.
About half of what we're doing is experiential, and obviously, we could change those things over time, but we think those things are important. The other pieces are around about a third of the total relates to marketing and sales heads largely, because we see the opportunity to grow faster, and to kind of fuel the growth over time. Those things will continue, and that will drive growth going forward. The other piece, math-wise is a sixth, that's around attendee initiatives to attract better or more attendees. There's nothing specific that isn't going to be something we do and continue to do as we go forward.
Okay. That's helpful. Just on the other side or the flip side of things, do you think you can drive any incremental revenues from the investments in 2019? Are these really multiyear revenue enhancements that you're feeling kind of the buildout of the costs in 2019 specifically?
We're really not anticipating that we'll get much of a pickup in 2019. As you can imagine, particularly, on ASD, New York NOW, which is probably a third of the investment, we're already selling the summer shows, and by the time we've continued our program of investment, we'll really be selling the 2020 events. I think that's when we expect to start to see the pickup and we're being pretty cautious about the impact on 2019.
Okay. Just shifting to NY NOW. Nice to see the attendance uplift, that's a pretty big number. Is that something that is in the early stages of benefiting exhibitor trends, but it's being more than offset by the show changes you're implementing? Is the exhibitor improvement something that would likely take until 2020, given how early bookings are?
This is Kevin. Well, I guess the best way to describe what happened at NY NOW is that Super Bowl Sunday, we had 10,000 people show up in the first two hours. The shock positive experience to exhibitors was quite strong. The reaction by exhibitors who expected a different result, not quite so positive result, was exuberant. Also on the part of the attendees. I think that, we will see that attendance gain will help us to bring the summer show in flash to previous year, it really gives us the momentum to, as we move into 2020, create an entirely new and much more vibrant event.
Okay. Just given the second year of kind of somewhat substantial declines, some more near-term improvement in ASD, is it just a product mix difference between the two shows where you saw a quicker rebound on ASD, or is there something from the sales changes you've implemented with ASD that could potentially be leveraged at NY NOW going forward?
This is Phil, in case you can't tell the difference between Kevin and Phil. The issues at ASD and NY NOW are very different. They're in different markets. The modest declines that we saw at ASD were kind of much less in 2018 than what we saw in the summer at NY NOW. I do think there are similarities with sales and marketing approaches and some of the initiatives we've taken and some of the experiential things that are going on. Those are somewhat parallels, the end markets are quite different, the issues are quite different.
Just last one for me. The trade tensions comment impacting ASD was something that necessarily wouldn't have jumped out initially. Is that being felt in any other events throughout the portfolio? I guess similar question for government-related shows and the recent shutdown.
In the nature of kind of the world we live in, we have a lot of shows with products, is that a lot of products are made in China. There is more broadly, an impact on cost potentially for some of our exhibitors. The place where in ASD, we have a particular sourcing category, which is a single-digit percentage of the revenue of that show, and so that's more directly affected. There's modest effects and at least concerns at some of the other shows, but it really isn't translating into anything from a revenue perspective at this time. It's really more kind of a conversation and slight concerns that if it continues and if it ramps up and if it gets ugly, then it'll affect the input costs for exhibitors.
We're not really seeing it, other than in the ASD event, kind of translating into revenue at this point. On the shutdown, pretty much, we have some military shows, but those kind of excluded pretty much from the impact of the shutdown, and we haven't really seen any impact anywhere else of any real note.
Okay. Thank you.
Okay. You're welcome.
Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ashish Sabadra with Deutsche Bank. Please proceed with your question.
Thanks. I'll just follow up on the NY NOW show itself. The turnaround expected in 2020, when you expect a revenue growth improvement, are your expectation as we'll see more exhibitors come in or existing exhibitors start spending more money? How do you think about the turnaround, or is it both of those?
I'll let Kevin do the second bit. The first bit is really, from a guidance perspective, you might think that our guidance is fairly wide, and that's really because there are a number of second half shows where we feel like we've seen the inflection point on NY NOW and ASD, we definitely think that we're on the right trajectory, and things will get better. We're not pointing to growth specifically in 2020 at this point. Hopefully, we'll get to that point, be able to talk about that later in the year. Kevin, what else you want to add?
Well, I think relative to New York NOW, the section that was most impacted over time in terms of exhibitor content was home. What we had done with the introduction of wrapping New York NOW around Retail Renaissance, this new sweeping trend in the marketplace, and in bringing in Transcend and experiential spaces on the floor designed by the top interior designers in New York and Transcend Talks. I mean, the reworking of the show was so dramatic that those many hundreds of returning exhibitors who came to look at it was very positive. Not only that, but we engaged all of the top showrooms here in New York. People like Roche Bobois and B&B Italia, Lalique, and Christofle, people that have never been involved with New York NOW before, are very interested in it. The nature of that home event is changing dramatically.
I think that big change this time, and I think a 20% lift in attendance was significant. As we look forward to summer, it's going to be much stronger in terms of stronger attendance. I think that the big show and the momentum's going to push us into 2020 as we evolve into a different, much better event that's all based on New York NOW being the indispensable resource for the independent retail in the United States. I'm very positive about the view towards 2020.
Okay. No, that's helpful. Maybe just a follow-up question. One of the concerns investors have is the fact that even if the attendees go up, the challenges is more around our exhibitor side, where a lot of the exhibitors might be struggling, or they may have changed the way their marketing budgets are allocated. Have you seen any of those trends in the marketplace or any color on that front? Thanks.
No, not at all. I mean, the trade show model is one which is extremely effective when done well. As a salesperson, I've been in sales for such a long time, really the face-to-face is the most effective way to sell. I think an email no longer works. You really can't call people because they won't take the call. If you don't meet them face-to-face, you really can't get it done. When you can put the right content together on the exhibition side, all of those attendees will come, and it works extremely well for both parties. If anything, exhibitors and companies will invest more in trade shows because it is a model that works, but you must always be cognizant of best content to deliver best attendance. While you do that, you have a very successful model that can do nothing but grow.
That's helpful. Thanks again.
Thank you. Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. Our next question comes from the line of David Chiu with Bank of America Corporation. Please proceed with your question.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just overall, what growth assumptions are embedded to guidance for each of the segments?
That's a difficult question to ask. I'm not sure I'm actually capable of answering that easily. When you say segments, do you mean trade shows and other marketing services and other events, or what do you mean, David, in that question?
Yeah, exactly. Just what you just mentioned, Phil.
Okay. It's tough to say other than, let me kind of characterize where we are. The trade show kind of piece of the business, which is obviously the bulk of the business, that really is dependent on how the shows go in the middle of the year. As I said in the prepared remarks. Well, we have ASD, we have NY NOW, we have the Outdoor Retailer shows, and launches. Those will really kind of determine the level of growth in the trade show part. We know first quarter, NY NOW is down. We know KBIS is up. We know Outdoor Retailer is down slightly. We've given you kind of a lot of the pieces in the first quarter. Our full year is fairly broad in terms of the guidance from probably a small decline to fairly reasonable low single-digit growth.
On the other marketing services, we're fairly, I wouldn't say pessimistic, but we're fairly realistic about the likely trajectory of that. We certainly have that as an expectation of decline. Modest decline. We do have, as I was telling, I think it was Emily earlier on, we're working through some things that hopefully will give us some better opportunities there. The other events piece, the CPMG acquisition that we did, it's great business. They're growing nicely. They're launching one event, certainly in 2019, that they've already pretty much sold out. We're optimistic that there'll be some decent growth in the other events part of the book portfolio. Which is also a part that Johanna, who I mentioned in the prepared remarks, is helping us kind of grow that part of the portfolio as well. I think the trade show portfolio, we're optimistic. We're cautiously optimistic.
In the guidance, we've looked, as you'd expect, at kind of the range of the potential outcomes.
Okay, great. That's helpful. You highlighted the recent ASD winter was flat and then expected it to be down in 2019. Was that just purely on the China trade tension? Maybe you can speak to kind of underlying, would you have expected it to be up?
I said it was flat if you exclude the SourceDirect section. The expectation is it'll be slightly down overall. We would've expected it to be flat. Actually, the SourceDirect category has been a growth category in the past. If that had grown at the rate at which it had been doing over several years, then we could've eked out a little bit of growth. We think that the things that we've implemented there in the sales and marketing areas, and the stability of the team, and the quality of the team that we have now is getting us to a point where we can have more confidence in the results of those shows.
Okay, great. That's very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. We have reached the end of our question and answer session. I would like to turn the call back over to Mr. Evans for any closing remarks.
Thank you, Michelle, thanks to everyone for joining the call today. Thanks, Kevin, for joining me here. Clearly, 2018 was a challenging year, and we still have work to do in 2019. As you probably heard, we're cautiously optimistic that we've reached the inflection point for NY NOW and ASD. We feel really good about the investments we're making to drive improved growth going forward. Personally, I feel more optimistic about our situation than I probably have done for a while. I'm really excited about the state of the business that the new CEO will inherit. I'm really looking forward to the next stage of the company's growth and the company's success. Thanks again for joining us, and I'll hand back to the operator.
Thank you. This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation, and have a wonderful day.