Airports and Europe-North drove a good fourth quarter for Clear Channel Outdoor.  Here are the results of the Clear Channel Outdoor 4Q 2024 earnings release, Clear Channel Outdoor 4Q 2024 Investor Deck and conference call.

• Revenue increased 12% to $632 million due to increases in airports and Europe-North.  Airports revenue was up 44%.  Europe-North revenue was up 18%.  America revenue was up 0.5%.
• Clear Channel Outdoor’s America group (e.g. US billboards) was flat during the fourth quarter of 2023.

• Consolidated Adjusted cashflow increased 9% to $190 million due to increased revenue.
• Clear Channel Outdoor’s execs project 6-12% revenue growth for the first quarter of 2024 and 3-6% revenue growth  for the full year 2024.
• The company had $5.4 billion in debt at December 31, 2023 with a weighted average cost of debt of 7.5%.

CEO Scott Wells says Europe and Latin America sales are in the works

We’re continuing with the sales process of our businesses in Europe North segment and we have commenced the process to sell our businesses in Latin America as well as evaluating related paths to optimize our cost structure the goal is to streamline our organization to focus on our U.S. markets…

CFO Brian Coleman on what’s up and what’s down in America
Business services and pharma verticals were up in the quarter while auto and media entertainment were down.   The majority of our markets delivered growth with the south central and southeast regions having the strongest results. Northern California has improved relative to earlier in the year although it was still down in the quarter.

Billboard Insider’s take:  Leverage is too high but performance is improving.  Billboard Insider notes that if the Clear Channel hits it’s guidance projection of $550-585  cashflow for the full year 2024, Debt/Cashflow will still be 9-10.  Insider considers this to be twice the sustainable level of leverage of 5 times cashflow.  Here’s hoping the board considers US asset sales after Europe North and Latin America are sold.  The market liked what it heard.  Clear Channel Outdoor stock closed up 5.3% on a day when OUTFRONT grew 1.5%, the S&P 500 declined 0.3% and Lamar declined 0.5%.

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