Here are five things about Lamar Advertising Billboard Insider learned from reading  Lamar Advertising’s 2023 10-k.

Billboards, Billboards, Billboards

Lamar is all about roadside billboards.  Roadside billboards have averaged 88-89% of Lamar’s total revenue for the past 10 years.  The company’s highway sign logo business has accounted for 4-6% of revenue for the past 10 years.  Transit advertising has averaged 7% of Lamar’s revenue for the past 10 years.

Experienced managers.

Lamar has an experienced group of managers.  Here’s what the 10-k says about them:  “We believe that the experience of our regional, territory and local managers has contributed greatly to our success.  For example, our regional managers have been with us for an average of 32 years.”

Lamar loves easements.

Sean Reilly said this at an investor conference earlier this month: “We own a lot of the real estate under our digital boards and continue to be active doing that because it’s very accretive.”  Lamar owns the land under one of every 8 billboard sites.  It especially tries to get easements under digital billboards.  That’s part of the reason why real estate costs are only 16% of Lamar’s total revenue.

Lamar Advertising Billboard Sites (2019-2023)

More revenues and fewer people

Lamar has grown revenue by 4.7%/year over the past four years from $1.8 billion in 2019 to $2.1 billion in 2023.  During the same time, however, employees have declined from 3,600 during 2019 to 3,550 in 2023.  Lamar trimmed its workforce by 9% during covid and has been slowly adding workers since then.

Lamar Advertising Headcount (2019-2023)

Capital spending and acquisitions are down.

Capital spending and acquisitions declined almost 51% from $647 million in 2022 to $317 million in 2023.  The company expects capital spending and acquisitions to remain muted for one more year while it uses excess cash to pay down debt.  Here’s what Sean Reilly said earlier this March: “We are doing a slight tactical shift in our capital allocation this year.  Historically we do a lot of acquisitions with our free cash flow and we announced that we’re slowing down on the acquisition front because we want to pay off our term A indebtedness in our balance sheet which is due next February so we’re going to use a goodly chunk of our cash flow this year to take down that term A and then take down…our revolver.”

Lamar acquisitions and capexp 2019-2023 (millions)

To receive a free morning newsletter with each day’s Billboard insider articles email info@billboardinsider.com with the word “Subscribe” in the title.  Our newsletter is free and we don’t sell our subscriber list.

Paid Advertisement