Last week’s conference call marked the debut of the new  Clear Channel Outdoor executive team.  Some highlights.

William Eccleshare, Chairman and CEO Clear Channel International on the benefits of focus

I think as a fully-focused, pure-play outdoor business, it’s going to enable us to perhaps concentrate a little more than we have been able to in the past on some areas of investment.

Scott Wells, CEO Clear Channel Americas on leverage.

I think I have a partial response to that.  and that is, from the beginning and I’ll go back to the incoming Board making the statement that addressing the capital structure, including reducing leverage, was a top priority.

CFO Rich Bressler on Procter and Gamble’s spending shift.

I think they had their highest profit in eight years. And over the last three, four months, Marc Pritchard has been very public talking about this shift, of a reallocation of media mix and dollars into both the outdoor business and into the radio business in terms of their total media mix and saving some money on the bottom line.

So, I would say, whether you’re on the outdoor side or the radio side, we’re all benefiting from this overall shift in people’s view of mix models.

CFO Rich Bressler on why Clear Channel Outdoor’s corporate overhead dropped from $36 million during the first quarter of 2018 to $30 million in the first quarter of 2019

The main difference is the royalty fee allocation didn’t occur in this quarter and it did occur in the same quarter of the prior year.

Insider’s take:  A focus on an out of home business without the distractions of running a streaming, events and radio business.  No more royalties, licensing fees and dividends to iHeart.  An ability to reinvest cashflow into the business.  All good.

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