Q4 2019 Earnings Call

All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question. During this time simply press Star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question press. The pound key. Thank you Mr., Mike Mobile you may begin your conference.

Thank you good morning, and thanks, everyone for joining us our call will begin with comments from President and Chief Executive Officer, Tom Harty, followed by local media Group, President Patrick Mccreery, <unk>, Chief Financial Officer, Joe Shred It.

Remarks. This morning will include forward looking statements and actual results may differ from our forecast.

Some of the reasons are described at the end of our news release that was issued earlier this morning and in some of our FCC filings.

Certain financial measures that we are discussing on this call are expressed on a non-GAAP basis and have been adjusted to exclude the impact of special items.

Reconciliations of these non-GAAP measures are included in our earnings release, which is available in the Investor Relations section of Meritas Dot com.

Finally, an archive of the call will be available on our website. Later this afternoon now I'll turn the call over to Tom Party.

Thank you very much Mike and good morning, everyone.

I hope you've had the opportunity to see our news release issued earlier this morning.

Fiscal 2019 marked our first full year of owning and operating the assets acquired from timing.

And weve been laser focused on integrating what we believe is the best portfolio of National media brands in the industry.

Our National Media group delivered on many of the key elements of our acquisition plan, including improved comparable advertising performance in every quarter of fiscal 2019.

Of particular note, we generated comparable advertising revenue growth in the fourth quarter that included double digit growth in our digital business, along with low single digit growth in print advertising revenues at the legacy timing titles.

As a reminder, advertising revenue revenues at these titles were declining in the 20% plus range when we acquired them.

Our team and our business had been have made significant progress.

Our team also made significant strides in achieving the cost synergies associated with the acquisition.

Through the end of fiscal 2019, we have realized 430 million of cost synergies and have a clear path to 565 million in our first full two years of operating post acquisition at the same time, our local media business delivered its third straight year of record performance, including an all time high of 103 million of political advertising revenue.

Additionally, we continue to increase retransmission profit contribution and significantly grew our digital business from a capital structure perspective, we strengthened our balance sheet by paying down $825 million of debt and we grew our dividend by 5.5% in fiscal 2019.

Notably our current dividend yield.

Hundred 17 year history.

Importantly, our audience reach is now $115 million or 90% of all American women.

We are a top 10 digital media company with 150 million average monthly unique visitors, we now possess the leading position in food lifestyle parenting home and entertainment categories.

And have a formidable position in the beauty fashion and luxury categories. Our flagship people brand is the crown jewel of our brands.

People reaches nearly 100 million adults or 40% of all adult Americans across all media platforms.

It reaches more consumers than the combined audiences for the Oscars Golden Globes and the Emmys.

Last month people dotcom serve 76 million unique visitors according to Comscore.

Independent research is confirming the strength of our new portfolio.

And its most recent brand tracking study performed in May the highly respected advertiser perceptions surveyed 300 large advertisers with an average advertising spend of $27 million.

Meredith ranked number one among all media companies for owning trusted brands that drive women to action, we ranked fourth as both an important media company to do business with as well as owning a brand portfolio that's effective for reaching a broad audience, we trailed only Google Disney and Facebook in these important categories.

Compared to fiscal 2017, our last full year before the time Act timing acquisition, we've nearly doubled revenue and adjusted EBITDA, our sources of revenue or more diversified as well.

For example, consumer related revenue most of which is contractual now accounts for nearly half of our total revenue.

This is compared to one third five years ago.

At the same time digital advertising revenue now makes up a third of all National Media group advertising revenue compared to just 16% five years ago that said, we acknowledge the challenges we face that resulted in a reset of EBITDA expectations for fiscal 2019 and going forward.

Foremost it took longer than expected to turn around advertising performance with the legacy timing brands.

Additionally, the number of low margin magazine subscriptions, we encountered inside the legacy timing brands were more than anticipated both issues required additional investment spending and impacted our EBITDA generation.

Once recognize we tackle these issues head on and we are confident in the plan and approach, we're taking in fiscal 2020 and beyond.

As a result, we begin fiscal 2020 at a lower profit point than originally expected, which contributed significantly to the outlook we are providing.

Joe will provide a detailed fiscal 2020 outlook at the end of our call, but let me give you some initial color.

As we sit here today, we are encouraged with the current print and digital advertising trends in the National Media group.

We expect comparable print advertising revenue for the combined portfolio to be down in the mid single digits for the full year consistent with mirrors historical performance over the last eight years, that's where it's pacing now for the first quarter of fiscal 2020. Meanwhile, we expect digital advertising revenues to be up in the mid single digit range for the full year. It's currently pacing up 10% range for the first quarter of fiscal 2020.

So total comparable advertising print and digital combined will be flat to up slightly in Q1.

The turnaround in the National Media group advertising performance, along with continued strengthen our connection to 115 million Unduplicated American women is giving us confidence to make additional investments that we expect to produce long term revenue and profit growth.

These include.

Additional head count and initiatives to grow consumer related revenues, such as subscription acquisition E Commerce and Apple News plus.

Meredith first entered the ecommerce space with the acquisition of shop Nation seven years ago. Since then ecommerce revenue growth has been exceptional.

Strong stronger and offset a promising and it offers a promising opportunity excuse me.

By investing in content content Commerce expanded digital couponing and in new partnerships, we see the opportunity to continue growing strongly over the next three years.

We also plan to invest in new digital platforms more broke more robust video production and other activities that will drive increased consumer engagement.

The market for digital video related advertising is expected to grow 30% faster than non video display advertising and account for more than half of total digital display AD spending in 2019 and 2020 according to E marketer.

For Meredith digital video advertising accounts for less than 25%.

Of our total digital advertising revenue and we typically are sold out of our owned and operated video inventory.

We plan to grow our video inventory distribution and monetization both on our own leno platforms as well as third party platforms with a goal to achieving a greater share.

Both e-commerce and digital have been among the strongest fastest growing platforms in media in recent years.

The same is true with Meredith for example, five years ago, our e-commerce and digital activities generated less than $100 million of revenue today annual revenues from these activities are $500 million.

Shifting to our local media group, we will be cycling against a record $103 million of political advertising revenues generated in fiscal 2019.

While we anticipate some political advertising revenue and also increased retransmission and digital revenue. These will fall short of offsetting the absence of political advertising typical for a nonpolitical year.

With that introduction I will turn to review of our operating group performance in fiscal 2019, beginning with our National Media group.

Fiscal 2019 National Media group operating profit increased nearly 50% to 100 $126 million.

Excluding special items operating profit was $230 million and adjusted EBITDA grew nearly 80% from the prior year All records revenues rose nearly 50% to 2.3 billion.

These results exclude discontinued operations.

As you can see in our PNM filed this morning, we continue to make significant progress on the key initiatives that youve that we put in place.

Upon acquiring time inc. to integrate and maximize our new portfolio.

This is particularly true of our performance in the fourth quarter, which was the first full quarter since the acquisition closed that we owned the timing assets in both the current and prior year periods.

We said the integration of time, it would take time and while not without challenges we delivered on most aspects of our integration in fiscal 2019 to start we said we would improve the average print advertising performance of the acquired timing properties to mares historical levels.

Admitted lead progress on this goal got off to a slow start.

Calendar 2018 comparable advertising revenue at that legacy timing titles were down in the low 20% range considerably underperforming the expectations, we had at acquisition close.

However, we stuck with our plan and gradually saw a strong and favorable response from the advertising community that began to pay off as we move into calendar 2019.

Our advertising performance met our expectations in the third quarter and exceeded them in the fourth quarter as we delivered low single digit growth for the legacy timing titles.

Next we said we would improve the performance of the acquired digital properties to Meritas high levels.

Im pleased to say that our performance accelerated during fiscal 2019, and we grew comparable year over year digital advertising revenues in the low double digit range in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019.

Digital advertising revenues accounted for 34% of total National Media group advertising revenues in fiscal 2019.

As a reminder, these digital activities today engage approximately 150 million unique visitors per month, making us a top 10 player in the U.S.

Our third strategy was to grow our high margin consumer related revenues by leveraging our expanded brand portfolio.

Fiscal 2019 consumer related revenues accounted for 46% of our total National Media group revenues in fiscal 2019.

Up from 41% in the prior year, our consumer revenue activities, our diversified and mostly contractual. These include our magazine subscriptions paid products brand licensing efforts lead generation and affinity marketing initiatives.

We see enhanced digital first opportunities going forward.

Particularly E Commerce, and Apple News plus as reminder, the economic benefits to Meredith from Apple News plus flow from four areas.

Guaranteed minimum payments royalty based on time consumer spend with our brands on the platform cost savings, including lower subscription acquisition expenses and lower magazine production expenses overtime and innovative advertising opportunities on the Apple news plus platform.

Our fourth strategy was to sell non core media assets, Joe will discuss our progress in a few moments before he does I'll turn it over to our local media group President Patrick Mccrary for an update.

Thanks, Good morning, everyone.

Fiscal 2019 local media group operating profit grew nearly 50% from the prior year.

Adjusted EBITDA grew 43% and revenues grew 25% all were record highs.

Looking more closely at fiscal 2019 performance total advertising related revenues grew nearly 30% to 538 million driven by strong demand for advertising.

Political advertising revenues were 103 million, we generated significant revenues from our stations in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Saint Louis Kansas City.

Nonpolitical advertising spot revenues were down in the low single digit range.

This was due primarily to the very strong demand for political advertising will first half of the year.

From a category standpoint declines in the automotive and retail advertising categories were partially offset by growth in professional services median home services category.

Consumer related revenues increased more than 15% to $317 million due to growth in retransmission fees for cable and satellite television operators.

These increases were partially offset by higher payments.

Networks.

During the year, we continue to aggressively pursue a series a well defined strategies to deliver growth. These include increasing our connection to the 30 million us households that we reach.

Our ratings performance was strong throughout fiscal 2018 for example during the most recent may rating period, our stations in eight out of our 12 markets ranked number one or two sign on to sign off.

Additionally, the number of pay TV subscribers across our markets was approximately even in fiscal 2019 compared to the prior year driven by growth in over the top subscribers.

Second we delivered growth in our digital platforms. This was driven by a full year contribution from M&A targeted media.

Additionally, traffic grew in the low double digits to an average of 19 million unique visitors per month, that's football team.

Third we grew retransmission revenues.

Fiscal 2019, we successfully renewed key distribution network affiliation agreements. This included retransmission consent agreements with Cox Communications, and Comcast Corporation as well as network affiliation renewals were all five of our thoughts affiliated stations into fiscal 2023.

Further in fiscal 2020, we will renew and nearly 60% of our 10 million MPPD subscribers.

Some of our affiliation agreements are longer term this will allow us to grow net retransmission.

Let me also add addressed the current situation regarding cash which accounts for less than 10% of our total audience.

Clearly, it's just trying to use current negotiations with local broadcasters to help get stellar legislation renew.

This strategy shows a total disregard for their subscribers using in response to try and advance dishes legislative agenda, we've presented dish with very reasonable contract terms and we hope this doesn't withhold college in professional football games from their subscribers.

Finally, we are launching new programs and expand our reach by leveraging people the biggest brands acquired from timing.

Our new weekly television show based on the strength of the people brands has been very well received by audiences and advertisers alike.

As a result, we have committed to launching the show in daily syndication in the fall 2020, beginning with distribution costs, all 12 of our local television markets.

We are actively speaking with other broadcast station owners about carrying the show.

Now I'll turn it over to Chief Financial Officer, Bill So in.

Thanks, Patrick and good morning.

I'll begin with the financial highlights from our press release this morning.

Total company revenues from continuing operations grew more than 40% to $3.2 billion.

Earnings from continuing operations were $129 million compared to $114 million and excluding special items in both periods earnings from continuing operations increased more than 50% to 223 million.

Adjusted EBITDA grew 67% to 706 million.

And these results includes money brand, which we pulled in from discontinued operations after deciding to retain the brand.

Shifting to an update on our integration activities and asset sales.

From an integration standpoint, many other work streams put in place to capture cost savings are working well our fourth quarter accomplishments included completing the wind down of timing retail and integrating our disk digital asset management systems. Looking ahead to fiscal 2020, we will continue to execute against longer tail synergies that take time to achieve such as negotiating more favorable rates for longer term contracts that have not yet been up for renewal since the acquisition.

We sold sports illustrated brand during the fourth quarter fiscal 2019.

Recall that earlier in fiscal 19, we sold the time and fortune Mediabrands as well.

We realized proceeds of 430 million through the sale of these brands. We've used this cash to pay down $825 million of debt and our net debt stood at 2.3 billion at June Thirtyth 2019.

We continue to work on selling fan cited along with our interest and Viant and zummo and expect to reach successful kluge conclusion in the near future.

Now turning to our outlook for full fiscal 2020, we expect total company revenues to range from three to 3.2 billion.

Earnings from continuing operations to range from 197 million to $212 million and from $2.58 to $2.88 on a per share basis. These amounts do not include special items and our actual results may include special items that have not yet occurred and are difficult to predict with reasonable certainty.

We expect full fiscal 2020, adjusted EBITDA to range from $640 million to 675 million and adjusted earnings per share to range from $5.75 to $6.20.

As Tom mentioned, we've accomplished many of the acquisition related goals that we set for ourselves. We acknowledge that we are not where we thought we would be at this point in time.

As a result, we're resetting the EBITDA expectations for fiscal 20 and going forward.

Now this outlook is informed by the factors that Tom mentioned, but it's also informed by the completion of a rigorous budgeting process for fiscal 20. That's based on results. We have delivered since acquiring the time brands and businesses 19 months ago.

In addition to our internal processes.

Following and following the change in guidance that we communicated on our last earnings call in May.

We engaged outside support to one verify the cost synergies. We originally identified and determined that we had achieved them to help us identify additional cost synergies and three assist with the development of a zero based budget.

As a result of this work we can confirm that we achieved $430 million of synergies through fiscal 2019, which is actually more than we had originally expected, but when someone's reduces our 2020 expectations.

Finally, we have completed our fiscal 2020 budget with an increased rigor result of the zero based budgeting process. Our fiscal 2020 budget is informed by improved visibility into our financial performance now that we've completed the integration of the Meredith and time Inc. financial platforms, and I cannot overestimate the importance of finally being one financial platform.

That said looking more closely at the factors that bridge fiscal 2019, adjusted EBITDA of 706 million to the range that we see for fiscal 2020, we expect.

But the local media group will be cycling against $103 million of political AD revenue that is generated in fiscal 2019.

We generated $16 million of political AD revenue in the last non election year and it's reasonable to expect a similar amount in fiscal 2020 on the plus side, we expect higher profit contribution from retransmission consent fees.

And the National Media group, we have more moving parts on the plus side, we expect to deliver an incremental $135 million of synergies in fiscal 2020, we also expect to growth and digital AD revenues.

We expect print AD revenues to decline in the mid single digit range in line with Meritas industry Best Historic levels.

We expect lower contribution from consumer related revenues due primarily to the lower margin subscribers, we acquired with the legacy time Inc. brands and we also expect higher production and distribution expenses, including an expected postal rate increase.

Finally, we expect spending on strategic investments to be approximately $50 million in fiscal 2020. These investments are essential to growing our digital and consumer rate related revenues overtime.

Putting it all together, we see our local media group EBITDA to be approximately 60 to 75 million lower than the 318 million we delivered in fiscal 2019.

We see National Media group, EBITDA $10 million to $30 million higher than the $456 million, we delivered in fiscal 19, and we see corporate expenses roughly in line with fiscal 19.

Looking more closely at the first quarter of fiscal 2020.

We expect National Media group revenues to range from 535 million to $565 million.

Local media group revenues to range from 195 million to $200 million earnings from continuing operations to range from 20 million to 22 million.

And a penny to a nickel on a per share basis, we expect fiscal 2001st quarter adjusted EBITDA to range from $122 million 227 million and adjusted earnings per share to range from 88 cents to 93 cents.

With that I'll turn it back to Tom to lead us into the QNX.

Thank you very much show, we are proud of our accomplishments in fiscal 2019, our national media team is making significant progress in turning around the business that was twice that size and our local media team continues to perform at a very high level in closing, while there's still more to do we've accomplished a great deal in fiscal 2019, we are encouraged by advertising trends both in our national and local media groups consumer revenue performance across the company, including response rates to our subscription offers the launch of Apple News plus platform, our growing ecommerce activity and continued growth in retransmission revenue and contribution.

As a reminder, we expect to renew 60% of our retransmission consent agreements in our next fiscal year now we'd be happy to answer any questions you might have for us This morning.

As a reminder, in order to ask a question. Please press Star then the number one on your telephone keypad to withdraw your question press the pound key well pause for just a moment to compound acuity roster.

Your first question comes from the line of Cow Evans with Stephens.

Hi, Thanks for taking my question Kyle Good morning.

I think we're all probably scratching our heads trying to reconcile what looks like a pretty conservative adjusted EBITDA guide with some kind of.

Optimistic trends, especially on legacy print time side.

You gave us the 50 million for strategic investments, but looking into kind of your guidance commentary from the release could you put some brackets around the impact of the higher production and distribution expenses and your efforts to fix those lower time subscription.

Margin problems.

Sure I'll ask Joe to try to reconcile for you and then I'll make a comment about our investments.

Kyle as we look at.

Reconciling the national EBITDA, if we if we take 2019 of 456 that we delivered obviously, we said we've got synergies positive of 135, we expect digital to contribute kind of mid teens EBITDA.

Obviously with print down mid single digits, that's about a 25 million dollar drag.

As we mentioned the investments are about 50.

On the lower margin.

Consumer revenue, that's about a 20 million dollar reduction year over year and then the remaining is.

A series of expenses that includes compensation adjustments and includes the postal increase and it includes some expectations on how your paper and production expenses, that's about $20 million.

Yeah, Kyle and just just one comment on on the lower margin subscription.

When time Inc., when we dug into time Inc., obviously in the last year and they had significantly pulled back on their investment and what we would call direct to publisher subscriptions. So over a period of time you make investments.

Deficit investments to acquire subscriptions and then you make money over the lifetime of that subscription.

Well when they are in a cash crunch. They went to what I would say less profitable longer term subs and pulled back on that investment in the range of about $20 million a couple of years ago. So this isn't the standard that Meredith stands up to because we look much longer term. So we're making some we made some investments last year and we continue to move forward to make some additional investments and what we would call direct to publisher subscriptions to improve profitability subs longer term.

Great you referenced growth in the legacy time business could you give a more specific update on.

People from a top line and margin perspective, and then are there some merits properties that are underperforming and driving kind of conservative looking fiscal 20 EBITDA guide.

Yes people is.

Took a little longer I think we gave a little some commentary last year about that.

Obviously, it was the whole timing portfolio was performing.

About the same in the beginning of last fiscal and then we made a strategic change in put actually one of our legacy leaders on to people in October of last year as it grew publisher and we started to see significant turnaround that business. So.

In the fourth quarter of.

Of of fiscal 19 that ended in June .

People was up in advertising.

What I would say is low single digit growth and as we mentioned in our guidance that we are seeing advertising trends that we saw overall from the fourth quarter are going to continue into fiscal the first quarter and people will perform again being up.

In that low single digit range and as we look out even further.

Part of it because of the comps and we look into our fiscal second quarter things look pretty good for people to so we believe we're going to have three consecutive quarters of year over year advertising growth for people.

On the Meritas side some of the Merit titles had a little tougher time in the fourth quarter.

We could say that since we are so large now we do see some shifting possibly between different titles.

But we've also been affected a little bit from in the food category and in the pharma category. This past year. So the merits was also against some tougher comparable from last year in our Q4.

But overall, we think the portfolio as we've been saying for a number of years, we feel confident that the combined portfolio print portfolio will perform at that minus mid single digit range and obviously, we have fluctuations quarter by quarter, but thats. Our long term view on it's what we've seen historically and we believe now that we've got the timing portfolio performing there.

Great last one and then maybe I'll get back in the queue.

Last quarter, you guys sounded like you were on interested in selling your LNG is.

To me it seems like you're either a buyer or seller in this market and I don't see it.

Clear way for you to grow your TV station footprint any change in thinking on their strategic fit their TV stations.

You know when we love our television business it generates enormous amount of cash for us as we said Patrick and his team just had their third consecutive year of record profit contribution to the company. We've been laser focused on the integration of time, Inc., which obviously was the biggest acquisition in the company's history.

We're focused on our balance sheet and paying down our debt and obviously the local media group helps us in that area and then we're seeing some finally after a long time, we're seeing some opportunities with our national brands crossing over to our local brands as Patrick said with the launch of people TV syndicated show next year. So we are looking to increase shareholder value overtime. We've always said that we would look at strategic opportunities for both businesses.

But this time as as your first question was we are very pleased with our local media group stations and we're not looking to sell them.

Okay. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of Eric Katz with Wolfe Research.

Good morning.

No once you've run run through your budgeting process and school 20 can you maybe size smoker investments within the 50 buckets for the year and is there anything new identify since the last earnings call.

So the the fifth we Joe identified said about $50 million of investment.

I would bracket this down by two components, mostly first being digital so we're looking to get this digital business growing and we are making about a $30 million of that 50 million will be in the digital area.

Really related to kind of three main areas.

The first being our platform were making a significant investment in our in our content system, we want to have a unified.

CMS. So we can maximize revenue growth and opportunity that will be completed we're in the middle of that that will be completed by the end of this fiscal year.

As I mentioned on their mind My remarks video is a huge part of that so about a third of that investment will be in the video creation area and then finally data. So data video and then our platform and infrastructure related to digital the other piece of the balance is really going to be in our consumer area as I mentioned in our core subscription business, we're making investments there for the long term for a piece of that and then we have this growing growing very nicely e-commerce business and performance marketing and obviously, the Apple news plus platform take some investment for us to get that product converted in over into the Apple format. So we've been making some investments last year and that will continue this year, so about $50 million in total in those areas.

As far as the digital side I believe on time as a public company there were shooting for $100 billion in digital.

That's on the Conger somewhere in the 500.

General viewpoint on where you see this going over the next few years. Thanks.

We believe that our guidance has been.

We're giving mid single digit growth in digital advertising for the fiscal year, even though that in the last quarter, we saw a double digit growth of 10% and as we gave guidance going forward in Q1 were going to see about 10%.

It's a little fickle we've had.

Different quarters, where we've been up and down so, but we are long term view for this fiscal year is about 5% growth and hopefully a little better if we can get some of these digital investments in content creation going on the digital consumer piece of the business, which is part of that $500 million. We're growing in the high double digit range from a revenue perspective in the E Commerce area affinity marketing. So you put it together and I think it's still in that kind of high single.

Digit range from a growth perspective close to a double digit growth perspective, when you put together, but this business now is significant $500 million and.

From an EBITDA perspective, you're talking about margins of.

20%, so a very robust business that we're leaning in and investing in.

In the time numbers, Eric obviously included the brands, we've sold as well as by end, which is held for sale. So those numbers would have to come out of the time numbers and on on the advertising piece you know on a comparable basis last quarter ending Q4 on a comparable basis. We are up in advertising. So digital the digital growth outstripped the print decline and we see that happening again in Q1 so.

Pots some positive trends.

Great. Thank you.

Your next question comes from the line of David Davis, Hebert with Wells Fargo Securities.

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the question just a couple on the balance sheet.

Joe I Wonder if you could share with us your your leverage as of fiscal year end and you mentioned.

And interest in paying down more debt. So just kind of curious what we should expect on that front knowing the progress you already made and the last fiscal year was was.

Very productive so just some comments on our balance sheet. Thank you.

Sure leverage at June Thirtyth was 3.3 times.

We expect next year as I mentioned, we've still got some of the assets that are held for sale.

We're expecting somewhere around 70 to 75 million add expecting debt pay down somewhere in the 5% to 7.5% range next year.

Obviously continued focus.

5% to 7% of the of the outstanding net debt.

Okay. So 150 to 175 $150 million to $175 million of additional debt pay down.

Okay, and any change to your leverage target over time.

No no we're still like to run the business somewhere around that two times level.

Okay, great. Thank you so much.

And your next question comes from the line of Jason Bazinet with Citi.

Thanks, I just wonder if I could just ask maybe a bigger picture question.

Well I, just try and bridge.

The simple financials.

Between the 565 of cost cuts that you laid out by the end of fiscal 20 sort of historical.

Our local media group EBITDA say 15 to 18 was at least 200 million each year that gets me to about 765.

And if I back out the adverse political ads of 100 million or so that you talked about that gets me about where your guidance is in turn that gets me to $665 million, which is sort of in the mid point of your guide.

And it just seems like what's the implication of that.

If I just step back from it is all of the legacy National Media Group EBITDA all of the legacy time EBITDA.

As just sort of disappeared.

And so and so my question is and it gets even more confusing because the revenues that you guys guided to is sort of in line I would say with at least our model and probably street expectations. So what what is the big picture thing I missing I, just don't I don't understand this guidance at all even though I heard all the.

Detail you gave us seems like there is a half a billion dollar question.

Yes, Thanks, I don't understand yes, yes, I think and maybe Joe can pile on with the bridging in the numbers but.

We acknowledge that our guidance for 20 years below our expectations below the street Tech expectation. So we've looked at the guidance numbers and we do that and and I'll address kind of some of the factors that are affecting that in a second but just wanted to address the reason why we did this acquisition is that scale really matters from in the media business and we've created an incredible audience reach that I outlined in our.

In my comments, we also wanted to create financial scale and financial diversification. So their audience reach now is.

180 million Unduplicated Americans were a top 10 digital player.

We reached 150 million unique visitors huge digital business total company revenues and EBITDA are nearly double what legacy Meredith was and.

Our expectations for next year in fiscal 20, the EBITDA will be three times, what the legacy Meredith was from the National Media group perspective, and Weve diversified away from just being advertising driven where five years ago. We were a third of our business now we're from a consumer perspective now are basically half.

So the factor is this the patient was a little sicker than we expected when we acquired it and we've kind of outlined that the advertising piece of it was a lot worse than we expected we had two years before we acquired it with their mismanagement the business was down 25% year over year.

In print advertising and then we had a slower start because our advertisers. It takes some time to do that and so the base of that advertising business is much lower than what we expected at the acquisition.

And then also from a digital advertising perspective as you go back even though that we're seeing.

Double digit growth today.

The beginning of the year, we saw digital was basically flat. So we had expectations that digital was going to be growing kind of at that mid to high single digit range.

And then the subscription business as we've talked about that they were hoarding cash and not investing in the business. So.

The the base piece of the business was actually just that much lower there are some accounting issues, where you know the six so six going into the weeds, the new revenue recognition actually pushes out.

EBITDA for the future, but I'll, let Joe kind of outlined some of the some of the buckets I think okay, Tom hit on them Jason.

We went back and looked.

At our acquisition models back in the late 2017, and said where is that time business.

No.

Their print AD revenue running down more than 20% all during fiscal or calendar 18.

It was a couple of hundred million of reduction and revenue on the print side.

Digital was flattish, which.

None of US expected digital will be flat in calendar 18, and then as Tom mentioned, the lower margin on circ.

When we did our bridge from that original acquisition plan to our latest forecast those three areas print digital and circ.

Accounted for over 350 million of EBITDA declined from that original acquisition plan and it was really the as Tom said the expectations versus the reality business that came in.

Okay all right.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Jason.

So that concludes our questions for today, we appreciate everyone's time and look forward to catching up and moving forward into fiscal 2020. Thank you very much.

This concludes today's conference call you may now disconnect.