Stagwell Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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August 1, 2024

There are 3 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good morning from Stagwell's Global Headquarters in One World Trade Center New York, and welcome to Stagwell Inc. Earnings webcast for the Q2 of 2024. My name is Ben Allinson, and I lead the Investor Relations function here at Stagwell. With me today are Mark Penn, Stagwell's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer and Frank Lanuta, the Chief Financial Officer. Mark will provide a business update and Frank will share a financial review.

Operator

After the prepared remarks, we will open the floor for Q and A. You're welcome to submit questions through the chat function. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that the following remarks include forward looking statements and non GAAP financial data. Forward looking statements about the company, including those related to earnings guidance, are subject to uncertainties and risk factors addressed in our earnings release, slide presentation and the company's SEC filings. Please refer to our website, stag1global.com/investors for an investor presentation and additional resources.

Operator

This morning's press release and slide deck provide definitions, explanations and reconciliations of non GAAP financial data. And with that, I'd like to turn the call over to our Chairman and CEO, Mark Behn.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Ben. Thank you to everyone joining us for our earnings call. The state of the Stagwell business is strong and getting stronger. We're on the verge of renewed growth spurt as new business is climbing, client pullbacks seem over and the political season is heating up. The results for first half of this year puts us in solid shape to make or exceed guidance for the year as multiple sizable wins occurred late in Q2 and in the 1st month of Q3 that significantly strengthened our position for H2.

Speaker 1

Importantly, the industry and its consultants and gatekeepers are now beginning to view Stagwell differently. They see us increasingly as a full on competitor to the majors and we are receiving far more opportunities that are in the 10,000,000 plus range. Last year, by this time we had 1, this year we've had 11 of them. We are also very much a tech company's tech company. And our client roster includes the biggest names in technology collaborating with us on how they can integrate AI into their consumer experiences.

Speaker 1

The result is a record smashing $113,000,000 of net new business this quarter and LTM net new business of $324,000,000 significantly ahead of expectations. The win of both Chevy and Cadillac from General Motors for Creative was the largest single win in the company's history. But the major wins have continued into Q3 with about another $50,000,000 of wins, including Ferraro at Anomaly, as well as with a significant global provider, hopefully to be announced soon. These wins have come essentially at the mid year and will start to be reflected in the Q3, coming on top of what we've seen in Q2. In addition to GM, we've had major wins in the Q2 with Target, Macy's, Delta Airlines and Zales.

Speaker 1

Further, the changes in the political landscape have supercharged our opportunities there as voters have again become fully engaged. We expect over 50% growth year over year in advocacy. We achieved $671,000,000 of revenue or 6% growth in the 2nd quarter. This growth is led by 42% growth in advocacy, 13% in the Stagwell Marketing Cloud, 9% growth in creativity and communications, 5% in performance media and data. Digital transformation posted 2% growth.

Speaker 1

We remain confident over time it will get back to double digits as AI projects come. Demand from technology companies is continuing to pick up as these AI projects begin to ramp. Earlier this week, we took a step to integrate 2 of our agencies, Instrument and Left Field Labs, into the code and theory network. This completes the process of scaling up engineering resources across Stagwell to take on bigger digital transformation projects. Our EBITDA came in at $86,000,000 for the quarter.

Speaker 1

It's important to recognize that in addition to acquiring companies, we are making significant investments in internal development and growth. On an apples to apples basis, we spent an additional $10,000,000 on new business pitches, travel, entertainment, our cans experience and other one time compensation expenses. On an overall basis, we are spending about $20,000,000 a quarter on these growth initiatives, and they're paying off with the new larger wins and with the Stagwell Marketing Cloud growth. On average, our top 25 client now spends about $24,000,000 annually with us. Let me say that our Cannes initiative, which hosted over 7,400 industry participants, athletes like Travis and Jason Kelsey, and even a private 90 minute chat with Elon Musk was a complete success.

Speaker 1

It continues to boost our share of voice, now 5 times our market size, and recognition in the industry as a marketer who knows how to market as we bring together sports, sports sponsors, technology and creativity. I want to call out Vasudu, our Chief Brand Officer and her team who are leading a multi agency task force, including Team 72 on Sunny, Code and Theory and others that worked in collaboration to show how effective we can be as marketers through this experience. This moment is a critical inflection point for the company. First, we are seeing success in our core strategy of scaling up to achieve larger client assignments as the key to long term growth. 2nd, we are advancing our plans to bring on a DSP and SSP to give clients maximum flexibility in media placement as we build a unique content management platform to be known as Stack Over Live.

Speaker 1

And third, we are deepening our commitment to a global footprint that can unlock larger global assignments. We're in the process of a significant expansion into the Middle East with 2 acquisitions and the appointment of the 1st senior advisor in the region. We've announced a deal to acquire leaders based in Tel Aviv, which expands our social media capabilities and technology and it joins the Stagwell Marketing Cloud in offering full and self-service influencer marketing campaigns. Further announcements in the larger Middle East region are underway. Our technology initiatives are progressing well.

Speaker 1

We reached a critical milestone in our partnership with Google Cloud this quarter, launching new AI powered features across our portfolio in several marketing cloud products, which were built using Google Cloud infrastructure and AI, including its Gemini models. WonderCave, our innovative text messaging based marketing platform, saw remarkable growth of 145 percent year over year as brands and advocacy organizations leverage this technology to engage a wide variety of consumers with 1 on 1 conversations at scale. In the quarter, the Stagwell Marketing Team picked up notable work with Doctors Without Borders, CarMax and PayPal. Smart Assets, our newest start up, into its first financial product line. In the Q3, we are launching our Harris Quest series of products, which allows Harris customers to undertake do it yourself surveys and our new survey panel, Unlock Surveys, is gating steam.

Speaker 1

Our Around augmented reality experience is expanding its presence in stadiums across baseball, soccer and football, bringing on major sponsors, including Target and Disney. We've established unique partnerships with performance driven tech players in our space, including Nexon, whose immersive suite of data solutions is now being integrated into our Stagwell ID Graph solution. We're also partnering with Anzu to help marketers capture the opportunity in immersive in game advertising. The collaboration will be led initially by Code and Theory Network and expand to other firms who are sharpening their capabilities in the gaming category. Internally, we are investing heavily in AI and other tech products as a central innovation function.

Speaker 1

We've completed an initial assessment of needs and established a multi year roadmap for products and internal efficiency tools that will enable our companies to capture the opportunities afforded by AI transformation. We're already applying AI to tasks like processing hundreds of thousands of media bills we receive each year. And in corporate, we focused on AI applications to our central finance unit, improving our overall ability to stay ahead of us. We continue to implement our cost efficiency measures. We will have about 13,000,000 dollars of leases that will fall off our rolls this year and we are rightsizing HR, finance and technology departments across the company to generate approximately $30,000,000 of additional savings by next year.

Speaker 1

We have kept our comp to revenue ratio in line and even reduced it from last year significantly. We're keeping our long term costs in line and improving productivity while we invest in growth. As to the planned disposition mentioned on prior calls, we had 18 1st round bidders, so a transaction in the next few months is progressing and if consummated will again point to the undervalued nature of our portfolio. We're on track for a solid year in 2024 and these wins along with our multi year growth efforts will position us well going into 2025. SAGO was started only 8 years ago and it's been public for just 3 years and we continue to grow and mature against our strategic goals and vision of transforming marketing with the right blend of technology and creativity.

Speaker 1

Today's net new business number is confirmation we are on track and that the best is yet to come. Now I'll hand things over to Frank Lenuto, our Chief Financial Officer, to walk you through some of our financial results in more detail.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Mark. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to discuss our second quarter results. As a reminder, you would like to ask a question after prepared remarks conclude, please feel free to submit them through the chat function. Led by record breaking net new business and robust growth in our creativity and communications, advocacy and performance media and data capabilities, Stagwell delivered solid 2nd quarter financial results. For the quarter, we reported revenue of $671,000,000 an increase of 6% as compared to the same period in the prior year.

Speaker 2

Net revenue excluding pass through costs increased 2% for the same period to $554,000,000 We generated record net new business of $113,000,000 in the quarter, approximately 31% higher than the previous high for the prior 11 quarters since our merger. This brings our trailing 12 month net new business total to $324,000,000 another record and the 6th consecutive such quarterly increase. This was driven by a strong new business pipeline of increasingly larger global pitches. The average size of our wins increased 65% year over year, driven by a 57% increase in business deals above $1,000,000 a positive indicator that our offering is resonating strongly in the marketplace. Turning to revenue by capability.

Speaker 2

For the 2nd consecutive quarter, revenue grew in 4 of our 5 principal capabilities. Performance Media and Data delivered $78,000,000 in revenue, an increase of 5% over the prior year period. The growth was driven by continued strength in the consumer products and financial sectors and was further supported by a recent return to growth in technology over the past couple of quarters. Creativity and communications delivered a $317,000,000 of revenue, an increase of 9% over the prior year period, driven by our advocacy business, which grew 42% year over year to $72,000,000 We expect accelerating performance in advocacy in the second half of the year as we wrap up the convention season and move towards the general election in November. Excluding advocacy, creativity and communications grew a noteworthy 7%, driven by new wins in the consumer products, retail and communication sectors.

Speaker 2

Digital transformation continued its recent return to growth in the Q2 with revenue increasing to $163,000,000 a 2% improvement over the prior period. This has been driven by strong performance and advocacy as the political year ramps up. Across verticals, we've seen improving trends in technology driven by a combination of growth in existing customers and new wins, as well as within the consumer space, which includes the recent AOR win with Fogo De Chao. Stagro Marketing Cloud posted $65,000,000 in revenue, an increase of 13% year over year, driven by advocacy and our travel media business, which improved 19%, driven by stronger growth in the communications and retail sectors. And lastly, consumer insights and strategy reported $48,000,000 in revenue, a decline of 2% as compared to the comparable period last year, but reflecting a sequential improvement from Q1 as we begin to put the Hollywood strikes behind us.

Speaker 2

Quickly looking at our geographical breakdown, the U. S. Saw revenue growth of 7% in the second quarter. This has been driven by robust growth in advocacy, creativity and communications and our performance media and data capabilities. International revenue grew 3% year over year, driven by continued expansion in the Middle East and Latin American markets.

Speaker 2

Turning to costs. We made a conscious decision in the Q2 to invest in several initiatives aimed at building and converting our revenue pipeline into new business. Our sport beach event at Cannes in 2023 was a big success, contributing to the record breaking net new business wins we've reported over the last 12 months. Given the positive trend, we increased our investment in the Sport Beach franchise this year. While still too early to quantify the success of this year's event, the level of new business opportunities coming out of the festival is unprecedented.

Speaker 2

We've also increased our investment in select new business opportunities. We are now tracking to be invited to more than $1,400,000,000 of pitches in 2024. Our other G and A costs are inclusive of certain unbillable customer expenses. These costs tend to grow in line with our net revenues. For both the 2nd quarters of 2023 2024, our unbillable costs as a percentage of net revenue remained stable at approximately 6%.

Speaker 2

The increased investment in growth and client service costs pushed our G and A expenses modestly higher in the Q2 by approximately $5,000,000 to $113,000,000 This included approximately $3,000,000 in incremental T and E expense. This results in G and A to net revenue ratio of 20.4%, an increase of 60 basis points versus the prior period, although largely in line with our historical ratio. During the quarter, we awarded limited bonuses to Keytalent, which reduced adjusted EBITDA by approximately $5,000,000 Our staffing to net revenue ratio excluding bonuses improved 50 basis points over the prior year to 62.8 percent as well as improving sequentially by 140 basis points. We continue to focus on controlling our labor costs closely, while meeting the requirements of growing revenue. Our goal is to maintain a staffing to net revenue ratio of 60% to 65% throughout the year.

Speaker 2

And lastly, during the Q2, we maintained our investment in the Marketing Cloud of approximately $14,000,000 Continued investment in our digital capabilities is integral to our strategy and remains a major investment priority for us as we work to build an industry leading suite of tech products for the modern marketer. As a result, Stagwell delivered $86,000,000 in adjusted EBITDA in the 2nd quarter. This represents a 15.5% margin on net revenue. Excluding our cloud investment, our 2nd quarter adjusted EBITDA margin would have been approximately 18.3%. Moving to the balance sheet.

Speaker 2

We continue to allocate capital efficiently to maintain a strong financial position. Starting with deferred acquisition consideration, we reduced obligations by approximately $43,000,000 from the end of the second quarter last year to $71,000,000 at the end of the Q2 in 2024. We remain on track to reduce our DAC obligations to approximately $40,000,000 by the end of the year. We also acquired 7,800,000 shares during the quarter at an average price of $6.30 per share for approximately $49,000,000 Our existing buyback authorization as of quarter end has $65,000,000 in remaining availability. CapEx and capitalized software for the quarter was $17,000,000 and broadly in line with our targets.

Speaker 2

We improved cash flows from operations by $70,000,000 in the first half of twenty twenty four relative to the same period a year ago, driven by improvements in our working capital management. As a result, we ended the quarter with $136,000,000 in cash and $334,000,000 outstanding under our revolver with a leverage ratio of 3.5 times. We continue to target a year end leverage ratio of 2 to 2.5 times. And finally, we are reaffirming our full year 'twenty four guidance as follows. Organic net revenue growth is expected to be between 5% to 7%.

Speaker 2

Organic net revenue, excluding advocacy, is expected to be 4% to 5%. Adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $400,000,000 to $450,000,000 We expect to deliver approximately 50% free cash flow conversion and adjusted earnings per share is expected to be between $0.75 $0.88 That concludes our prepared remarks for this morning. I will now turn the call back over to Ben Allinson to open the Q and A portion of the call.

Operator

Thank you, Frank. Just a reminder, if you have any questions, please do submit them via the chat button at the top of the screen. We're going to start with a question here from Jason Kreyer at Craig Hallum. Can you talk a little bit about the changes in trends for new business wins? You've landed a record deal with 72 in anomaly, saw a big uptick in larger wins this quarter.

Operator

What do you think is driving Stagwell's success in some of these larger engagements?

Speaker 1

I think overall, Stagwell is really being recognized now as the challenger holding company. I think we've established our image and brand. We held a recent meeting with search consultants and they gave us the feedback that we've put together just this incredible combination of talent and technology that really has a growing place in the marketplace. And I think that as we kind of roll out here over time, the word is spreading. And what we're really finding is more and more consultants and brands are coming to us and giving us larger and larger opportunities.

Speaker 1

That is the whole strategy of Stagwell as the challenger holding company and as we scale up into more countries and more capabilities.

Operator

I think just following on from the question about new business wins, Barton Crockett at Rosenblatt just asked, when do you see some of these big wins positively impacting the revenue trajectory? And how do you feel about some of the pipeline for more wins potentially in the second

Speaker 1

half of the year? Sure. Many of these wins came just at the end of the quarter. At the GM 1, I think, was like June 26 or so. And so these will come into play in Q3.

Speaker 1

We expect that these wins are really all online in Q3. And as I said, we had another significant ramp of wins that probably won't come online this month, but will really start to come online next by next month. But we're seeing now that the clients took a long time to make decisions, but once they make the decisions, they want to get going.

Operator

Turning to advocacy and a question from Mike King at Goldman. With regards to political ad spending and targeted fundraising, could you maybe talk a little bit about whether we've seen some increased activity in the last month or so, given obviously some recent changes in the dynamic in the race?

Speaker 1

Yes, we've seen 20% to 30% increases in the last month or so. Voters really thought the presidential race was over. They were pulling back. And now with the changes that happened on the Democratic side, voters have reengaged. As you can see in the polling, it's a competitive race.

Speaker 1

And of course, when it's a highly competitive race, it could go either way. Spending, as I always say, goes somewhat to infinity. And so, I think you're seeing increasing engagement and expenditures on all sides.

Operator

Perfect. Digital transformation, can we talk a little bit about some of the trends we're seeing in DT, maybe project spend? Obviously, been a little bit of a challenge at some point here today. But what's kind of giving us confidence maybe in the back part of the year seeing the acceleration there?

Speaker 1

I think that we're seeing some of our kind of most advanced properties and designers already helping tech companies figure out how consumers should interact with AI. Look, the big expenditures in technology is obviously AI. And I think all of the tech companies and the brands are experimenting with what the best way for that technology to be deployed. So we feel that that's going to really kick off years years of enhanced digital transformation work. It's not here yet.

Speaker 1

It's beginning to trickle in. We're beginning to get some significant assignments. We've got a $7,500,000 assignment just in the last month about how best to have AI interact with consumers from big tech companies. And I think that at a certain point here, I don't know whether it'll be Q3 or by Q1 of next year, I expect the floodgates to open on digital transformation. It has to.

Speaker 2

Great.

Operator

Maybe just playing with that a little bit. Cameron McVeigh, Moore Stanley. Just a quick question here on Techlines. What are kind of maybe some of the things we're hearing from them about spending tensions in the second half of the year?

Speaker 1

I think the competition for AI is on. I think that unlike one company that has social and another company that has work productivity software and another company, you're seeing real all on competition here for both cloud services and AI services. And that means tech companies are going to be spending really significantly to try to get competitive advantage here to really stake out their place in the marketplace.

Operator

Just flipping a little bit to the SAGL Marketing Cloud,

Speaker 2

a question from Mark Zagodowicz,

Operator

your benchmark. He has what's your most promising SaaS or DaaS revenue opportunity you think over the next 12 months? And can we quantify this?

Speaker 1

Well, look, I think immediately you're seeing our text messaging platform being used both by advocacy and brands, right, as taking off. And I think that, again, oftentimes there are little things that people don't see that as you've seen in some of the sales and others that really have significant hidden value. I think we're spending a lot of immediate time on the research components. We just bought actually at an auction great technology that comes with about $9,000,000 of revenue that we picked up for less than $1,000,000 But we believe that the most promising area here right now is the rollout of the research products. We've got about 130 large corporate clients at the Harris Brand Terminal.

Speaker 1

We're adding do it yourself research. We're adding AI based analysis to it, and we're rolling out those products. But again, we've also just bought leaders, which comes with another significant raft of new business and another influencer platform. And I think we're really beginning then secondarily to get all of our communications products together. But I think the emphasis right now that I have for the next few months is getting the research products fully out the door.

Speaker 1

I think that has the most immediate promise.

Operator

Another question is from time from an investor. And this is just talking about the second half of the year and the implied inflection in the business, the acceleration in organic growth in the second half of the year. The question really is what gives us that confidence in that inflection in organic revenue growth and that acceleration in the second? What are some of those key drivers?

Speaker 1

Well, look, I think there are 3 key drivers. Number 1, as I think I've emphasized in the call, we have had a flood of business wins at the end of the second quarter, highlighted by the first time by wins that include tens of 1,000,000 of dollars at the same time on a multiple basis. 2nd, a lot of media and media margin is loaded in the back end. And 3rd, a lot of the political season is loaded in the back end. So I think those three developments, I think give us confidence to reaffirm our guidance and kind of move forward with what I think are going to be a really good next two quarters based on those three fundamental factors.

Operator

I think the last question here and just a quick one on Sport Beach and the successes of the event. The question is from Jeff Van Sinderen at B. Riley. What do you like to emphasize at Sport Beach if you're going to do it in 2025? And maybe what are some of your intentions?

Operator

Effectively, what are some of the inputs, I suppose, into potentially increasing investment, changing investment in that event that's obviously been successful

Speaker 1

We're going to do a full review of kind of how to move forward with what has been created in Sport Beach. It lives almost as a unique brand within our brand now that brings together sports and brands and technology and creativity. And I think it may live beyond just Cannes

Speaker 2

in a

Speaker 1

way and take on a life of its own. So stay tuned as we kind of carefully look at how we develop it. Again, as I always say, the old joke about shoemaker has no shoes, but instead we are a shoemaker with shoes. I think we that Sport Beach has been proof that when our companies work together, they can produce some amazing marketing. And I think that that was a it wasn't just an experience for clients.

Speaker 1

It was an experience that clients could take away and say, wow, this is the kind of company I want working for our brands.

Operator

Well, that brings us to the end of our Q2 earnings call 2024. Thank you very much for joining us. We'll look forward to talking with you again later

Speaker 2

on in the year. Have a good one.

Speaker 1

Thank you.

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Stagwell Q2 2024
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