At last week’s JP Morgan conference Lamar Advertising CEO Sean Reilly was asked “If Clear Channel were to sell assets what would Lamar be interested in?”  Reilly replied:

Yes, we’re staying pretty close to that situation. We’re monitoring it. What I can say is, we will not be the solution if they’re in search of one. However, they do have some very attractive assets that do look like Lamar land…about 5 or 6 years ago, we bought some assets from them. We did extremely well with them. And they have a collection of what you could describe as noncore. In their public filings, they actually list them as all other markets when they’re breaking out their revenue by market. It’s like the top 15 DMAs and then it says all other. Think about all other.

Billboard Insider’s take:  “We will not be the solution” means that Lamar has zero interest in Clear Channel Outdoor’s European assets and probably can’t buy some of the US markets due to antitrust issues.   Lamar purchased 5,500 faces in Seattle, Cleveland, Des Moines, Memphis and Reno from Clear Channel in 2016 for $458 million or 12.5 times cashflow.   The “other markets” which Reilly is talking about now consist of 12,123 Clear Channel Outdoor faces including 530 digital faces in small markets outside the top 15 DMA’s.   These assets had revenue of $253 million in 2022.  Apply a 45% cashflow. margin and a 12.5 times purchase price to those assets and you’re talking about a purchase price of $1.3 billion.

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