Q4 2021 iHeartMedia Inc Earnings Call
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the operator today's conference will begin momentarily until that time your lines will again be placed on music hold thank you for your patience.
[music].
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the I Heart Media Q4, 2021 earnings conference call.
At this time all participants are in listen only mode. After.
After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session to ask a question. During the session you will need to press star one on your telephone please.
Be advised that today's conference is being recorded.
If you require further assistance. Please press star Zero I would now like to turn the conference over to Mike Mcginnis head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead Sir.
Good morning, everyone and thank you for taking the time to join US on our fourth quarter 2021 earnings call. Joining me for today's discussion are Bob Pittman, our chairman and CEO and rich Bressler, our president CLO and CFO at the conclusion of our prepared remarks management will take your questions. Please note that in addition.
And to our press release, we have an investor presentation that you can use to follow along with our remarks before we begin let me quickly cover the safe Harbor statements on slide two during this call we will make forward looking statements, including the current and expected impact of COVID-19 on the company's liquidity financial position and results of operations. These est.
Knits are based on the current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties actual results could materially differ from these expectations and assumptions and these risks and uncertainties are discussed in more detail in our filings with the SEC. During this call we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures reconciliations between our GAAP and <unk>.
non-GAAP financial measures can be found in our earnings release or in the investor presentation available on our website and now I will turn the call over to Bob Thanks, Mike and good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining our fourth quarter 2021 earnings conference call. We're delighted to report another strong quarter and wrap up a very strong year, which we see as <unk>.
Evidence of the progress we've made and the continuing digital transformation of the company in 2020 . One we achieved a number of important milestones both financial and operational the reflect the success of our company's transformation into a data led digital business with important new platforms like podcasting all built upon the flywheel effect of the <unk>.
Gail and unparalleled reach of our broadcast radio assets and the only unified AD Tech stack and audio advertising. We believe were poised for continued success in 2022 and beyond and that our Q4 and full year 'twenty 'twenty. One performance is strong evidence of that momentum before rich takes you through the detailed.
Also the fourth quarter I want to touch on a couple of key points first our revenues continued their strong performance in the fourth quarter, while driving margin expansion in both of our two key segments. Our fourth quarter consolidated revenue grew 14% compared to prior year, you may recall that our guidance was an increase of 10% versus prior year excluding <unk>.
Political Q4 revenue increased 25% versus prior year importantly for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic our quarterly consolidated revenues exceeded their pre pandemic comps with Q4, 2021 revenues up 3.5% when compared to Q4 2019, we generated adjust.
At EBITDA of 294 million for the quarter, an increase of 11% versus prior year, while generating 52 million of free cash flow for our segments in Q4, 2021 our multiplatform group adjusted EBITDA margins were 34% and our digital audio group adjusted EBITDA margins were 36% both.
Of which represent year over year margin expansion second we continued to deliver industry leading growth in our digital audio group and the momentum continues the digital audio group grew Q4 revenues by 59% versus prior year and within that group podcast revenue was up 130% versus prior year and digital X pie.
<unk> revenue was up 36% versus prior year to put those results in context. According the Magnum and Q4 2021 we significantly outperformed the podcasts industry growth of 30% and the digital ex podcasting industry growth of 20% continuing our trend of outperformance compared to the industry in Q4 22.
Any one digital revenues represented 26% of total company revenues compared to Q1, 'twenty 19, when they represented under 10% and in Q4 2021 pod casting revenues alone represented almost 10% of total company revenues clear evidence of our digital transformation and in January .
According to pod track I Heart media was again the number one podcast publisher in the U S. Now with more downloads in the next four largest publishers combined finally, the multiplatform group, which includes our broadcast radio networks and events businesses continues to demonstrate that it is also a growth engine for the company in both revenue and.
Earnings Q4 revenues grew by 9% versus prior year and when excluding the impact of political Q4 revenues increased 17% versus prior year.
We're confident that we will reach our 2019 multiplatform group revenue levels and continue our growth past that point and here's why we believe certain key advertising categories will continue the recovery to pre pandemic levels like auto entertainment and retail and others like pharma continue their strong growth and there are also new ad categories.
<unk> customers that are continually added to the mix like crypto currency players in sports betting will also continue to take share from competitors in the radio advertising space. According to Miller Kaplan, we continued to outpace our broadcast competitors and expect to continue to take share there looking more broadly across the media landscape. We believe the T V.
Ma'am represents an important growth opportunity for us as well AD supported TV reach continues to decline down to 54% reach for the largest broadcast television network and just 32% reach for the largest cable network compared to I heart radios broadcast radio audience, which reaches 90% of Americans every month Brian .
Cast radio in General and high Heart media, specifically is the most efficient and effective way for an advertiser to provide the missing reach and any T. V centric advertising campaign. We've also developed the capabilities for our broadcast radio assets to participate in the 160 billion dollar digital Tam through the utilization of data and view.
<unk> solutions, including our smart audio product finally, with NR Multiplatform group, we expect our events business to not only recover to pre pandemic levels, but to grow from there given the pent up consumer demand for live events and experiences and our ability to build new live and virtual events.
These financial results. We're reporting today are a reflection of the continued successful execution of our strategy and the momentum of both our multiplatform and digital audio groups. As recent studies have shown consumers now spend more time with audio than they do with linear TV and the advertisers are following that trend with an increased allocation.
The audio advertising, we believe that our consumer reach is the number one audio company in America with a leading position in broadcast radio podcast publishing and digital radio supported by an unmatched Salesforce and AD tech capabilities set us up to benefit from those trends in a way no. Other company is capable of.
And we will continue to build new platforms for our brands and creators to serve consumers and advertisers using our unique assets to build a strong position in web three the med averse in Ftes and tokens as the market opportunity develops and now rich will take you through more details of our earnings and a look ahead into Q1. Thanks Bob.
Everyone as I take you through our results, you'll see the consistency and stability of our financial performances and we believe we have the assets to maintain that predictable growth going forward.
Turning to slide 13 of our Investor deck, our consolidated revenues were up 14% year over year exceeding our guidance for the quarter of up 10% year over year. We are also pleased with our continued sequential revenue improvement against 2019 highlighted by our revenue in Q4, which was up 3.5 person.
Compared to 2019.
Our direct operating expenses increased 17% for the quarter.
Driven primarily by the significant increase in revenue, which drives higher content and profit sharing expenses third party digital costs and expenses related to the return of local and national live events.
Our SG&A expenses increased 10% for the quarter driven by increased employee compensation expenses, resulting primarily from higher variable bonus expense based on strong financial performance and higher sales commissions due to high revenue.
As a reminder, in 2020, the vast majority of our employees did not get paid a bonus and as a result, you'll see all corporate expenses increase year over year. In addition increased head count from the investments in our fast growing digital businesses contributed to the increases in SG&A.
Increase in both direct operating expenses and SG&A expenses will partially offset by decreases in employee compensation and other expenses, resulting from the monetization initiatives and cost reduction initiatives taken in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our fourth quarter GAAP operating income was 123 million compared to an operating income of $112 8 million in the prior year quarter, and our fourth quarter. Adjusted EBITDA was $294 2 million compared to $265.5 million in the prior year quarter.
If you turn back to slide four I'll provide additional color on the performance of our operating segments and as note. There are additional slides in the investor presentation on our segment revenue performance.
Digital audio group revenues were 59% year over year, and adjusted OIBDA was up 65% year over year.
Within the digital audio group is our podcast business, whose revenues grew 130% year over year and our non podcast in digital revenues, which grew 36% year over year, we continued to expand our digital audio group margins in the fourth quarter. They were 36% 140 basis point.
Improvement year over year.
Won't be platform group revenues were up 9% year over year, continuing our sequential improvement compared to 2019, and adjusted EBITA was up 20% year over year.
Multi platform group adjusted EBITDA margins also continued their improvement Q4, 2021 margins were 34%, a 300 basis points compared to Q4 2020 of 31% reorder.
The audio and media services group revenue was down 35% on a reported basis, excluding the impact of political revenues in this segment were up 7% year over year.
On slide 19, there is a summary of our debt at quarter end, we had approximately $5 4 billion of net debt outstanding which includes a cash balance of $352 million.
We also continued to improve our net debt to adjusted EBITDA leverage as a reminder, the turns of our debt structure include no material maintenance covenants and there were no material debt maturities prior to 2026.
We are continuing to actively monitor market conditions, and we will optimize our capital structure as opportunities arise.
In the fourth quarter, we generated $52 million of free cash flow.
We also successfully executed against our previously announced savings initiatives as a reminder, our pre COVID-19 monetization initiatives achieved $100 million run rate target as of mid 2021, and we successfully replicated the majority of the previously announced 200 million dollar post Covid savings.
Well.
In 2022, we expect significant revenue adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow growth and.
And we would like to provide the following specific guidance.
Starting with Q1, our January consolidated revenues were up 18.3% compared to 2021 for the first quarter, we expect revenue to be up approximately 17% to 19% year over year.
In addition to being a cash taxpayer in 2022 as previously announced we will continue to have supplemental capital expenditures broader complete our high ROI real estate consolidation project and as a result, we expect our capital expenditures to be between 150 and 165 million.
And in 2022, we expect to make significant progress towards our previously announced leveraged chartered approximately four times.
Bob I would like to thank our employees without whom this journey would not be possible.
Communities, we serve and our business partners.
We appreciate you joining our fourth quarter earnings call and now we will turn over to the operator to take your questions.
If you would like to ask a question. Please press star one on your telephone keypad again that star one to ask an audio question. Your first question comes from the line of Stephen <unk>.
Hall with Wells Fargo. Please state your question.
Thanks, Good morning.
Rich thanks for that outlook on the leverage targets I was wondering if you might just be able to unpack may be the two primary components for us. So you know we've got adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow generation would love, maybe a little bit of color on how we think about each of those as contributors to deleveraging. This year and then on multiplatform I was wondering if you could talk a little.
About smart audio you talked about the tech stack that you built.
I'm curious what percentage of multiplatform revenue, where spot is being done through smart audio it's probably a question I'm going to ask every quarter. So I just thought I would keep an eye on that that the thank you.
Thanks, David first out when we've talked in the first one.
With respect to our leverage target.
Theres two pieces as you articulated in terms of driving.
What we're our objective is to get to four times.
Debt to EBITDA leverage I think you can see we've made significant progress even from Q3 to now and throughout the full year and I think to put that in context in terms of 'twenty. One what we've always said is the value creation of reinhart and charge a drop in the equity value that we.
We do drive a lot of equity value by just paying down our debt I think we'd all agree with that mechanically and we've made significant progress and we intend to make significant progress again.
Towards achieving our goal of 4.0 on leverage ratio and I think that's going to come from really two areas again, we havent given full year guidance, but we expect to have significant EBITDA growth for this year and we expect even with.
Becoming a full cash taxpayer and along with the capital expenditure guidance. We gave today, we expect to see significant increase in free cash flow. So both of those pieces moving forward and then finally I would just add one thing to make sure measured clear when we get to about four times as a company.
Bob myself and the rest of our independent board members will take a step back and we will say okay.
We wouldn't returning.
Value to shareholders and equity shareholders due to pay down debt at a levered capital structure and now we take a step back and say okay. What's the next step in <unk> capital structure life in terms of a return on equity value to shareholders. So.
And one final piece I'll add before turning it over to Bob on your second question now as a reminder, also we have the 1 billion and $4 58 to be as good as the soft call in March in China that may come up.
No.
Soft call in May I'm, sorry.
So that may come up later as a question and just your western Shored were monitoring that situation like we are with the rest of our capital structure, but that's another lever we have.
To pull that will create value for all of our shareholders.
And I think going to the smart audio question.
Smart audio continued to as you might imagine, although it's a small piece of the total revenue continues to outpace the revenue growth of the multiplatform group again, indicating the power there and smart audio again, then that suite of services is used not only to generate money directly through the smart audio line, but also where.
Finding increasingly that the data analytics associated with smart audio are finding their way into.
A lot more buys and a lot more discussions with advertisers so remains really important.
The whole point for us for future growth not only in digital but probably is significantly in the multi platform group as we make that inventory much more digital life.
And we were trying to in your question in Q2 redemption.
Broad audience.
Sounds good thank you.
Your next.
It comes from the line of Steven Li with Goldman Sachs. Please state your question.
Hi, Good morning, two if I could first thanks for the commentary on January revenue grasp I was wondering if you could maybe talk a little bit more about advertising trends and activity as it trended across digital and multi platform in four Q and into one Q digital appears to maybe have gone a little bit faster than you were expecting in <unk> I'm curious if that's a trend that we could.
Extrapolate or if there's anything unique to four can you maybe COVID-19 that we should consider and then.
Could you talk a little bit more about some of the recent trends you're seeing across your AD verticals and what verticals are over indexing on what verticals are under <unk> and under indexing.
And which of those do you think are most likely to see improvement over the first half of the year. Thank you.
Well, let me hit the second part.
<unk> first and then I'll, let rich take the.
First part you have there.
I think in terms of what we're seeing with advertisers as well.
Saw some advertisers pulled back some during a pandemic some double down during the pandemic and so we've sort of seen are.
Not necessarily an impact from.
The way you might've expected look at headlines and certainly nothing like we saw the first year. The pandemic. So we remain optimistic that the country and advertisers are just beginning to take all of this in stride and we're not seeing the kind of disruption we've seen in the past in terms of across verticals I think we haven't broken out verticals, but I would.
To remind you that we have no category this more than 5% of our revenue no advertiser single advertising more than 2% of our revenue. So we have a very diversified revenue base, which allows us I think as anytime you get a shock to the system within reason, we probably see a corresponding benefit.
Allison tends to mitigate that risk of that yeah and.
And Stephen just on the just on the revenue trends.
Look it up pretty much as we talked about in Q4 here, we really haven't seen any.
Any slowdowns in the.
Overall revenue trends and just as a reminder.
That January tends to be one of our slow months of the year.
Just yes, historically and it's also a little bit the war small numbers compared to the last part numbers, which again, there's nothing new here.
Historically Budd.
You see the guidance, we gave out the Q1 coming out and quite frankly, particularly tied into a Bob said without specific categories, but and you know part of the reasons, we really don't talk a lot about categories as Chris has certain categories go down here with our job to find the other categories.
And bring our offerings to them and find the revenue streams revenue.
Our revenue streams, there so not much to add to that.
Great Thanks for that color.
Your next question comes from the line of Ben Swinburne with Morgan Stanley . Please state your question.
Thank you good morning.
I wanted to ask about your technology platform. Following the Triton acquisition and integration and also I saw you made an interesting investment in a company called sounder around brand safety and just how you think about the podcasting business really scaling from here beyond host Red ads to more programmatic in radio like ads.
And how the sort of I heart audience network compares to other options in the market, obviously companies like Sirius XM and Spotify are building marketplaces as well. So I'm wondering if you could sort of talk about how you see your portfolio versus theirs.
And I just had one question on expenses either for the first quarter or for the year any help in thinking about expense growth on the on sort of a fixed cost basis or whether the employee base and compensation levels. In Q4 are a good run rate just trying to think about.
All the work you've done on the expense base over the years is that now largely the structural change is largely done and now we're looking at more normalized expense trends going forward. Thank you well.
Well, let me hit the podcast question Aldo Richard his he expense.
I think on podcast.
Our podcast business is really built at the end of the day on our strength as a publisher.
<unk> that we publish and control.
That number of podcast and again it's.
Sort of interesting trajectory pattern was 18 months or so ago, we were neck and neck with MPR today. We are in the last contract. We had four we had more downloads than the next four podcast publishers combined that kind of strength gives us a lot, but we think of strength and building marketplace.
And when you say what makes ours different from others is our marketplace is not just about the technology. It's about we have the product and now we can apply the technology to it to improve the monetization of it you're absolutely right that I think one of the big areas that people have monetize and certainly we have our post spin.
<unk> as you know we develop the technology early on to be able to dynamically and serve host red ads. So theyre not permanently associated with any one podcast, which allows us to again maximize that kind of revenue.
And we made the <unk> investment and built out our AD Tech stack because it became apparent that there is still going to be a portion of the podcast inventory, we're not going to be able to get through their traditional sales methods. Even though we have the largest AD sales group by a lot I think in audio.
That we've got the long tail of either old episodes.
Additional episodes or in many cases regional or small podcast, so we'd been able using our again the data and analytics suite is to build our audiences and buying those across the marketplace and again open the marketplace up to two other publishers as well using our footprint of our big published.
Podcasts.
As the Fulcrum point.
Hey, Dan just wanted to ask a quick follow up before we get to.
Rich just Bob do you see that third party publisher business is a big opportunity because it would seem like as Todd casting scales. Obviously, you can monetize your own IP really well, but there might be a big third party opportunity as well I was curious if you think that's a good business long term for IR.
It's an additional business it doesn't come with the same margins that are published.
Our products do and I think when you see the performance of our podcast business versus others, when we talking about profitability and the way others talk about it I think you've seen the financial implication of that so we're very cognizant of that but yes, I think there are opportunities for us to extend and by the way is also just a big opportunity for us to extend into the podcast.
<unk> inventory that we have not sold when we got a huge podcast we tend to sell it out, but we got a lot of small podcast.
Singles and doubles, we've also gotten some very big regional podcasts.
For one of our personalities that happens to be big in Detroit, but nowhere else and we've got an opportunity now to tie all those together and find money and then when we make that sale, we have a much better margin because it's a published podcasts.
It's just a sales rep deal sure.
Hey, Ben I, just want I just wanted to a couple of Sean's question, then I'll go right to expenses.
Yourself and obviously the benefit of everyone.
On the call because I know people are wildly busy so we try to continue to put more and more in writing that I think addresses that you could take away. If you look at the investor deck that we put out today whenever it has a chance there's a number of slides in the deck that go through and make the points that Bob talked about.
I would invite you to look at those in terms of quite frankly, the breadth of on podcasts.
Offering and our significant outperformance notch notch.
Not just recently, but over a consistent period of time and widening our lead there. So I would suggest everyone in terms of going through and kind of looking at those numbers because I think it should give you a lot of confidence that our significant outperformance on the revenue side for podcasting, which again remember we were up 130% in this quarter.
Casting revenue I think the industry was up about 30%. According to Magna are out there. The second thing I would say back to your question about pricing.
We put in a slide we've had a number of times that we've gotten good feedback on which highlights the audio tech stack that we built up over the years again I think what's important most about all this story, it's a story that Bob and I have been telling for number of number of quarters now and even maybe beyond a number of quarters. So there is a consistency to the story there is a.
Consistency to the numbers, so that consistency to the growth rates.
We are bringing down to the bottom line on margin.
We need to continue to share with all of our shareholders because again I'm not sure people fully appreciate it. This is not just one two or three or four quarters is kind of consistent story here and we feel very comfortable with this story going forward and finally I thought Bob mentioned this in his opening remarks, we also booked for the first time in a slide which broadens out your questions.
And are all with digital and then I think of all people you're particularly appreciate this is added to Q4 of this year, we had 26% of our company revenues with digital and in Q1 of 2019, 6% of all company revenues with digital so we have that in there. So as you guys think about doing things in <unk>.
Modeling things out.
It gives you an anchor it to do that and back to your question on expenses as we said in the script, yes, we have.
All the expense numbers, we put out there.
We have hit there baked into the numbers and we achieved everything in Q4 of this year you did notice our corporate number was a little bit higher because we had a full year bonuses. This year bonuses. This year consolidated as Bob articulated earlier, we didnt have any bonuses for the bulk of ours.
Our team.
Let me comment because of Covid in.
In 2001 and.
2020.
I would say on expenses and you saw our margins wound up I think give people always questioning Gee what are you getting back to the mid <unk> on margins in RB.
And we show that our multi platform for Q4 and question, we always get our margins sustainable in digital in the mid Thirty's, where most of the big digital players have no margin. So again, we're in the mid Thirty's here again, I think we actually have one margin point improvement over Q4 last year.
Which I think people are very pleased with and so we're going to continue to focus on how to make our operations more efficient and bring the flow through down to the bottom line that you saw both in digital and multi platform. This year. So long winded answer, but won't Tito expenses I do think it's a pretty good proxy for our run.
Like going forward, but that doesn't take away, we're not always looking for more efficiency and at the same <unk> to continue to invest in our high growth businesses like the ones, Bob and I just spoke about are particularly on the digital side.
Thanks, guys.
Your next question comes from the line of Jim Goss with Barrington Research. Please state your question.
Okay. Thanks, a couple of them. Firstly I was looking at I was wondering if you had any significant variance.
AD sales trends by market size since you cover a lot of market sizes, and whether you tend to see a lot of variance in terms of political spending since we'll be getting into that.
Very soon.
Well, it's interesting we start out by.
Unlike.
Broadcast radio company. So we have a national footprint, we're the only one that does.
When you look at our broadcast radio alone we have a 90% reach of the of the country consumers not overlap, but thats actually consumer reach in a month and so what that allows us to do is to be able to talk to advertisers about our national footprint with local execution, so as opposed to thinking about each market as.
Independent business units, we think about the markets is local execution for advertisers and it varies advertiser to advertiser as to which markets. They want whether they want all markets and we're able also to put that together with digital podcast audience is et cetera, and now with our smart audio suite of services, we are able.
Actually defined audiences that go through all of them, we've talked about it in our tech stack with the addition of the Triton acquisition, we now have the only unified electronic.
AD Tech platform and as a result, we now can find an audience and seamlessly go across everything from planned casting digital audio broadcast radio and I think that puts us in a unique position in the earlier question you know about our platform and how does that help us I think probably.
One of the most significant ways helps US is we're eight we've got this huge reach we've got these big audiences across all of our product lines and all of our platforms. It allows us to stitch. It all together and for an advertiser. If there is an advantage to someone who is able to seamlessly find those people wherever they are and I think thats.
A big advantage for us.
Are you, saying then that there is.
Our national platform.
A lot of market sizes tends to blur the distinction.
Trends at night.
Others might experience, whether it's small or medium or larger markets because yes, yes.
Yes, that's a really good point I think.
Yes is the answer and I think you began in the old days people in radio would talk about local advertising in national advertising.
We've talked about on the calls before that we have a strategy of any seller anywhere can sell anything we build out the training for that and we build out the electronic platforms to enable them to do it and to track it and so what that allows us to do with Florida. The line, we've got a local seller in Jackson, Mississippi can tell a national AD Cam.
Paying if they want to.
Or they can sell for market to three market it almost doesn't matter, where it's coming from that has been.
So even internally, we say what's national what's local it gets very blurry and I think again, we've taken a focus much more up whats the guy who's the advertiser what are they trying to accomplish and whats the best way to accomplish that using our assets and we have so many platforms now.
As you point out so many markets may no one's got a reach like we do.
I really puts us in a unique position and finally when you compare the reach there really three what I would call tier one reach vehicles in America, it's awesome, Google and Facebook, reaching about 90% of America.
Pretty substantial falloff from there and when you look at other audio players.
On broadcast radio it sort of half our size when you get the digital it's even lower than that when you look at a pure play like a spotify or Pandora. So it really puts us in a unique position and I think we built out both the company capabilities and our strategy based on that unique capability.
Jim It's rich I might just add.
One more thing to have Bob just said and I'll go back to shop, There just said before with Ben's question.
I think the other important point as you know at the end of the day, we're responsible for delivering Bob myself the rest of the detachment mean.
No more priority is to create value for our shareholders and so we've been building out these capabilities, we have whether it's between the multi platform and the reason why Bob mentioned that I pointed out the audio tech stack, which is highlighted I think the reason we highlighted our investor deck I think the reason why it's important that we mentioned.
For context, what digital was part of the overall company's revenue Q1, and what it is today, we get all that as context to say, okay. We identified investing in digital we identified podcasts.
Following the consumer following the advertisers and then I think we've just consistently put some pretty significant increases on the board and expect to continue to do that going forward again, we didn't give specific guidance, but we did say if you look back to what we.
We said in the earnings remarks, a few minutes ago substantial growth in revenues substantial growth in EBITDA substantial growth in free cash flow a substantial improvement.
To getting to four times, which Bud light the leverage ratio as a data point for what I said earlier, but all the pieces that I talked about how do you get to that revenue.
Good expense nine for generation of free cash flow manifest itself into that accelerated rate of getting to four times and like I said one of the reasons, you'll never hear us talk about different categories, where individual advertisers or by the ways big and small markets.
Because the company is called either and then Theres only one stock that's there which is D. R Horton shocks.
Okay.
Thanks, a couple more quick one quick one.
Networks and broadcast radio tend to track one another pretty well networks lagged a little this quarter relative to the radio group.
Right.
You know say why that might have been the case.
And secondly, you mentioned more time spent with audio is how much linear TV, which I think you've said a number of times in the past.
But when you talk about linear TV does that partly reflect just the shift to streaming.
And how would it compare to all TV viewing and then the other issue with radio has been personnel listening, which FEMSA legs.
By quite a bit and maybe you can talk about the trend there too.
Sure look on our broadcast radio let me start with that.
We get about 30 minutes, a day of listing thats more than social.
That's more than.
<unk>.
That's more than search.
So it is.
Quite significant and I think.
<unk>.
Macro picture. This company, we don't really have an audience issue. What we have is monetization issue and Thats, where we focused our resources. There are many like the television business fiber there I'd be worried about what am I going to do with this lost audience.
TV usage is not probably gone down much but switch to non AD supported viewership.
We're watching the streaming services and subscription basically all drama comedy scripted stuff has moved over there, leaving mostly reality and sports on on an AD supported television.
And I think as we look at our unique position I think we see opportunities that others don't.
And to your point about networks.
We are.
And the Q4 Premier network was down just a little bit, but our total traffic network was up so we see some are up some are down.
We think networks tracks exactly our broadcast radio because we sell at a different way and it's going for a different audience and has different characteristics to them.
Alright, well, thanks very much.
Thank you. Thanks your next.
Next question comes from the line of Dan <unk> with B Riley Securities. Please state your question.
Yes. Good morning, guys I appreciate you taking my questions once again, great job on the podcast side in the quarter.
Just I think youre going to be on sort of the growth rate.
It's going to be hard to continue to grow at a 100% plus quarter over quarter or year over year, rather so I guess, just if you had to isolate maybe one or two factors between CPM.
Rising AD fill rates more creators choosing to join the network something else, maybe I guess, which of those do you think is going to be most important here and driving that incremental podcast broker in 'twenty, two and beyond and then if you could just give us anything to try to frame up what that growth rate might look like and appreciate it. Thank you sure sure.
Look at the end of the day, we kind of flywheel effect going or being the number one podcast publisher and we know when you get this kind of lead in terms of the world. If you've got a great podcast idea you probably come to the leader first to see if they can do a deal and.
We probably do almost any deal that makes sense based on content or economics, and if we don't do the deal is probably because the economics don't work and we are delighted for it to go somewhere else and by the way if the economics don't work for us as the number one podcast publisher.
Really not working for anyone else and we don't want to get into business ever that slippery slope of profitless prosperity, we're not willing to do it margins are important to us and profitability is important to us.
So we continue to start there and I think in terms of <unk>.
Profitability and how we keep it going one as we increase the number of podcasts, we do to improve the performance of our biggest podcast I mean, when you look at how many of our podcast half a million plus downloads you see that growth trend as well three we're experimenting with different kinds of ad products.
That can go into the podcast.
You're exactly right I think the podcast industry as a whole is adding more inventory is very very low compared to what we see in radio there is of course, the long tail, which.
We get out two ways, we get at it through having any seller anywhere selling anything including podcasts now which gives us by far the biggest sales force selling podcasts, but we also as we talked earlier.
The tech stack and the investments we've made in terms of being able to get at that.
Long tail.
Inventory begin to sell audiences. In addition, two titles.
It becomes very important we have huge titles, whether it's from the NFL or will Farrell, our shonda rhimes.
The biggest now black network.
Product with with the Black a factor with Charlie in the guide as our as our partner there that we've got so much we can do but we've also got audiences. So when we're looking for specific audiences and we can find them now in podcast, Inc. We can also link them to digital audiences digital audio audiences and link them to.
Broadcast audience as well, providing a scale on top of the podcasting. So I think all of those things contribute to the growth and.
It's interesting the podcast usage just continues to increase in America. It has surpassed the reach of the big streaming music services like a like a spotify or Pandora and continues to grow so we get.
The question is will it one day have the same kind of reach its broadcast radio.
I don't know, but I, certainly think it's got that kind of engagement and got that kind of popularity.
So we are.
Both fueling and benefiting from it.
What I might just add just a couple of points.
You talked about.
In terms of the growth in the numbers.
Just to remind everybody, yes, we were up 130% Q on Q3, I'm, sorry, Q4, and I think Q4 is a critical indication whether tower company or anybody else you should look at Q4 to give you confidence as you go into 2022. So it's not like we just changed the page understood.
Current date out there, but just remind that we were actually up 148% for the year.
So Washington, Josh the 130% for one quarter. It is I'm going to keep using this word again again and again it is a consistency and predictability.
To our revenue growth and bring things down to the bottom line.
That would be great that investors continue.
Focus on the second thing I would say Bob highlighted in terms of yes, you can drive all the podcast and revenue in the world, but if you don't have the sales force and the efficiency to bring it down to the bottom line and again, if you look at our margins and what kind of conversion ratios for both digital and multi platform.
Youll see that we have said this is a great business in terms of generating value and incremental advertising revenue dollars and we've demonstrated that again and just the last piece on that much in terms of the pool of money that's out there yes.
If you look out four or five years and you look at whether it's.
Price Waterhouse a madden.
E marketer because there's so many people doing projections.
Not saying take any one project because we don't take any one projections, but they are pretty much coalesced around a 345 billion.
Podcast the pool of revenue, which I think is up from about north of $1 billion again U S advertising dollars podcasting revenue from 'twenty. One so whichever number you believe or whatever you think that pool of money gets there. It is I think we can all agree it's very significant growth going forward and let me add one more thing because.
Because we didn't highlight it in the call, but I think it's worth noting as we're increasing our share of the podcast revenue Pie. In addition to the pie growing the second factor for us is increasing our share of it.
And that outperformance based on the on the Magna number gives you a pretty pretty clear indication of how we're doing that so although we havent given guidance for podcast revenue going forward. We have said we are in.
And we expect to continue to increase our share of it. So we do get that flywheel flywheel going as well and finally in terms of some comfort about the growth of podcast revenue is look at the engagement numbers.
Almost anyone you want to look at whether listening to the whole thing how long they spend how many episodes Theyre now listening to is clearly that's an engagement that the advertiser is very interested in because messages get occurred and the impact this great and indeed when people are measuring the impact of advertising through podcasts is.
Pretty dramatic too so I think all of those things give us confidence that this is a this is a great growth area for us both in terms of the.
Marketplace for podcasting growing and also our vector for growth at both in terms of product and in terms of monetization.
With that we'd like to think.
Thanks, I'd like to thank everyone.
For the support for taking the time today to listen to the <unk> story.
Bob myself, Mike Mcginnis and the team are available.
Follow up question, John we're always here and again, thanks to the tunnel support.
Thank you for participating in today's conference call. You May now disconnect your lines at this time.