comScore, Inc.
Q1 2015 Earnings Call Transcript

Published: 5 May 2015

[Operator:]

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the First Quarter 2015 comScore Earnings Conference Call. My name is Matthew, and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. We will conduct a question-and-answer session towards the end of this conference. And, now, I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Mel Wesley, Chief Financial Officer. Please proceed, sir.

[Melvin F. Wesley:]

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to comScore's earnings call for the first quarter of 2015. I'm Mel Wesley, comScore's Chief Financial Officer, and with me today is Serge Matta, President and Chief Executive Officer. Before we begin, please allow me to read the following disclaimer regarding our use of forward-looking information and non-GAAP financial measures. During the course of today's call as well as during any question-and-answer periods that may follow, representatives of the company may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 regarding future events or performance of the company that involve risks and uncertainties, including, without limitation, expectations as to opportunities for comScore, including customers, markets and partnerships; expectations as to the strength of comScore's business, including the growth and composition of comScore's customer base and renewal rates; expectations regarding comScore's products, including new releases and features, their quality relative to competitors and the potential benefits of particular products; expectations regarding the strategic and economic benefits of certain strategic relationships, such as there is with Google, WPP/Kantar and strategic acquisitions; expectations as to the financial effects of comScore's expected divestiture of certain business lines and related impairment losses; assumptions regarding tax rates and net operating loss carry-forwards; and forecasts of future financial performance for the second quarter and full-year 2015, including related growth rates, exchange rates and assumptions. Such statements are only predictions based on management's current expectations. Actual events or results could differ materially from those predictions due to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those identified in the documents comScore files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Those documents specifically include, but are not limited to, comScore's Form 8-K filed earlier today relating to this call and comScore's Form 10-K for the period ending December 31, 2014. We caution you not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements included in these presentations, which speak only as of today. We do not undertake any obligation to publicly update any forward-looking statements to reflect new information after today's call, or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. In addition, we may also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures in the course of our presentation. You will find in our press release and on our Investor Relations website, a reconciliation of non-GAAP financial measures discussed during today's call to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure. The link to our Investor Relations website is ir.comscore.com and our results are posted under Press Releases. We have a presentation posted on our IR website under Events & Presentations that corresponds to our comments today and will be helpful as you follow along. With that, I will now turn the call over to Serge.

[Serge Matta:]

Thank you, Mel, and good morning, everyone. We have a lot to cover. I will begin with a brief overview of the quarter and provide details on the April 1 closing of the transaction we announced on our last call with WPP/Kantar. I'll then report on some key operational highlights from what has been a very quick start to the year. I'll then turn it over to Mel to provide a detailed review of our financial performance before we take your questions. So let's begin. On slide four, comScore delivered another quarter of strong revenues and strong profitability. This reflects continued positive momentum across our business and the strength of our partnerships, which continue to grow in number and impact. On a pro forma basis, first quarter 2015 revenue was $87.1 million, up 15% over last year, with a strong revenue growth despite the negative effects of foreign currency. For example, on a constant currency basis, our pro forma revenue would have grown 19% over last year, an additional $3.5 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $21.3 million, a 25% year-over-year increase, and a 24% adjusted EBITDA margin, reflecting the significant operating leverage we have in the business and our focus on managing expenses. Adjusted EBITDA margin for the same quarter last year was 22%. During the first quarter, we added 40 net new customers for our overall business, for a total of 2,585 customers. We added 54 net new customers to our Media Metrix Multi-Platform service, also known as MMX MP, for a total of 560 customers. Approximately two-thirds of these Multi-Platform customers also bought Mobile Metrix and/or Video Metrix during the same quarter, continuing a trend that I've highlighted before. We see this as validation that customers place significant value on our entire suite of service offerings, and continue to embrace our market-leading products that measure the multi-platform world. In addition, we believe there's continued upside for MMX MP, as just under 50% of Media Metrix customers buy MMX MP in the markets where it's available today. We expect to see this penetration rise in existing multi-platform markets, even as we expand the markets we serve with this product suite. Our contract renewal rate for the entire business with existing customers again remained above 90% on a comps and dollar basis. Moving to slide five. Immediately following the end of the first quarter on April 1, we closed the WPP transaction that was announced on our last earnings call. In connection with that closing, we issued a total of 6.04 million shares of common stock. Here's how the share issuance calculations break out. The tender offer launched by WPP around the time of our last earnings call ended on March 20 and resulted in a sale of only 33,000 shares. As such, per our agreement with WPP, we issued, on April 1, 4.44 million shares of stock to them in exchange for $205 million. We also issued 1.6 million shares, again, on April 1, of stock to them in exchange for an international cross-media strategic alliance with WPP's Kantar Group, and to acquire Kantar's Nordic-based Internet audience measurement businesses. I'm also pleased to announce that our board recently authorized a total share buyback program of $150 million, with the primary purpose of offsetting dilution on the WPP transaction. We expect this program to begin this month and to run for 12 months. Of course, we will closely monitor and evaluate the progress of the program in the coming quarters and take steps we believe are appropriate to reduce dilution. This clearly shows our strong commitment to continue to return capital to our investor base. Moving to slide six, I know everyone listening to this call is aware that we are seeing rapid changes in the digital media, television and advertising ecosystems. The forces of this disruption include the rapid emergence of the multi-platform consumer, who connects with media across multiple devices and platforms; the ubiquity of video and television that's reaching consumers through increasingly digital channels and challenging existing business models; and third, the rise of advertising automation, which is changing how advertising is bought and sold. We've built comScore to take advantage of these secular trends as we pursue our mission of making audiences and advertising more valuable. As we said before, we are focused on, one, expanding our cross-media offerings globally; two, extending vCE market leadership, including display, video and mobile on a worldwide basis; three, integrating comScore data into the places clients use them and a focus on our data into programmatic platforms and client workflows; and fourth, focusing on execution and continue to return capital to our investor base. Now we'll share some updates on our efforts against these priorities. Let's start with vCE. We've been building great momentum this year with vCE and our relationships with advertisers and agencies. In Q1 2015 we saw a 44% year-over-year increase in the number of vCE campaigns run by clients. And several of our top vCE advertisers have doubled the impressions they are running through vCE. We are fortunate enough to have all 25 of the top 25 global advertisers using vCE. Again, all 25 of the top 25 global advertisers use vCE. These includes brands such as P&G, Unilever and Nestle among others. We're making great progress innovating in vCE for video and for mobile. And we will be announcing key product enhancements in the next few months. Mobile continues to accelerate and we increased our vCE Mobile client base by nearly 40% in Q1. As such, we are announcing today that Mobile vCE in the U.S. reported on a daily basis will be available in a syndicated manner starting June 1 of this year. A key priority for us is expanding our vCE momentum globally and by the end of this quarter we will launch vCE 2.0 in nine additional international markets. vCE 2.0 which went live in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Spain in 2014 dramatically expands the demographic data available to use, allowing us to conduct more granular studies and measure smaller campaigns. It also brings improved in-flight optimization and details on ad placement, enhancements which allow vCE to folds (11

[Melvin F. Wesley:]

Thank you, Serge. I will now provide more detail regarding our first quarter results. Revenue in the quarter was $87.1 million on a pro forma basis, up 15% versus the same quarter last year. We are pleased with our revenue growth despite foreign currency exchange rate headwind. If exchange rates against the U.S. dollar remain constant from the same quarter last year, our Q1 pro forma revenue would have been $3.5 million higher, generating a growth rate of 19%. Subscription revenue in the quarter was $79.9 million on a pro forma basis, up 17% versus the same quarter last year. Subscription and project revenue represented 92% and 8% of total revenue, respectively. Revenue from existing customers was $78.9 million on a pro forma basis, up 15% year-over-year and representing 91% of total revenue. During the quarter, we also added 40 net new customers, bringing our total customer count to 2,585 on a pro forma basis. Our international revenue on a pro forma basis also continued to grow despite foreign currency pressure, up 2% year-over-year and representing 26% of total revenue. On a constant currency basis, international revenue was up year-over-year by approximately 17%. Moving to margin and expenses on a GAAP basis, our gross margin was 71.5%, up from 69.5% for the same quarter last year. The higher gross margin is primarily attributable to operating model leverage from revenue growth. Selling and marketing expense increased to $27.3 million, up $1.3 million from the same quarter last year. Selling and marketing expense for Q1 represented 31.3% of revenue compared to 33.9% for the same quarter last year. The increase in expense was driven by $1.6 million of stock-based compensation from the November 2014 market-based grant. The decrease in selling and marketing expense as a percentage of revenue was primarily due to operating model leverage from revenue growth. R&D expense increased to $80 million (27

[Operator:]

Thank you. And please standby for your first question. Is your line on mute, sir?

[Youssef H. Squali:]

Hello?

[Serge Matta:]

Yes. We can hear you.

[Youssef H. Squali:]

Sorry about that. Youssef Squali at Cantor. Hey, guys. Two quick questions.

[Serge Matta:]

Youssef.

[Youssef H. Squali:]

Yes, can you hear me?

[Serge Matta:]

Sure.

[Youssef H. Squali:]

All right. So the first question is around vCE. Serge, could you just does provide us with little more details about this minor delays that you mentioned with regards to the DoubleClick relationship? And I know you won't quantify it, but maybe can you just directionally tell us what growth rate that line of business showed sequentially, since I think in Q4 of last year you said it was in the low-single million dollars? And any update on the opt-in, opt-out or who is paying for it, Google or the client? Thanks.

[Serge Matta:]

Sure. Hey, Youssef. Why am I not surprised? On vCE/DoubleClick, in terms of the minor delays, it really is just a delay related to the interface to ensure that the numbers between what we're presenting on vCE within comScore system or what I've traditional called it the Reston service exactly mirrors or close enough to the numbers in the vCE/DoubleClick. It's a technical interface issue. It is not something I am overly concerned about, and we are fully expecting it to be launched out of beta in the early summer. Now what I did mention, which is really probably the more important piece of this puzzle is even with this delay, none of the economics have changed. So we still get paid during the beta period similar to what you guys have heard from us and have found out from the clients. Google is not charging during the beta period, and that will continue. As far as often opt-in, opt-out, honestly none of that has yet been decided because we really need to get out of beta. Once we get out of beta and then post then Google will probably test a couple of different options, and it's up to them to figure out what's the best option. And then finally in terms of momentum and how this business is doing, I have to tell you, it is surpassing all of our internal expectations. vCE is on track to continue to growing in high-double digits. It is something that we are extremely confident about, and we've not seen any slowdown at all. If anything, we continue to see more growth than we ever anticipated and some of the analyst estimates out there on showing what vCE growth rate is are pretty dead on in terms of 2015.

[Youssef H. Squali:]

Okay. And on the WPP ownership, are they up to 20% or are they still at 15%? Do you guys have any insight into that? Thanks.

[Serge Matta:]

As of April 1 or so -- we don't get updated numbers as you know, but as of April 1 or so, they were at 15%. I don't think they have yet gone up to 20%, but if they did, they may have gone in the past week and we won't know about it.

[Youssef H. Squali:]

Okay. Thanks a lot.

[Serge Matta:]

Sure.

[Operator:]

Thank you for your question. Your next question comes from the line of Robert Peck of SunTrust. Please go ahead.

[Robert S. Peck:]

Hey, Serge, congratulation. I was wondering if you could provide a little more color around what you're seeing from OCR on competitive side in the marketplace. And I know, question number two, there had been some concern about the reaction of Publicis maybe to the WPP investment. It sounds like in your prepared remarks that's not the case. Could you just give us a little more color around the relationship with Publicis from the Ad Age 100 (38

[Serge Matta:]

Sure. On Publicis, don't get me wrong, this was one concern that we all had. We've had a very tight relationship with all of the agencies, not just Publicis, but this was one where I personally took it on a mission to make sure that they understood that our independence is intact. The WPP, it's an investment. They don't have a board seat or a board observer and, as a result, we have seen all three of them, as mentioned in the script, WPP, Publicis and Omnicom, all increase their spend in Q1 over last year. So, while we were a bit concerned, so far we are pleased with the results. At the end of the day, it all comes down to, are they spending more or less? And, as a whole, they are spending more post announcement, which is something that we are very confident in. As far as OCR is concerned, they branded a new name now. It's Digital Content Ratings. Obviously they are a good competitor. We are seeing them in places as well, with our clients, but we are fortunate enough, like I mentioned, to have all 25 of the top 25 global advertisers using us, and we feel good about our future. But we obviously are not going to ignore the Nielsen OCR/DCR service, and we'll continue to monitor it very, very closely.

[Robert S. Peck:]

Thanks, Serge.

[Serge Matta:]

Sure. Thanks, Bob.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Jason Helfstein of Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

[Jason S. Helfstein:]

Thanks. A couple (40

[Melvin F. Wesley:]

Yes, I'll handle the first question, Jason, on the cash. So, yes, we did end with $40.9 million, which we reported. And then on April 1, we did get $205 million from the share issuance. And then, beyond that, obviously, we have transactions in process, so I can't comment on that. But hopefully that gives you a good data point. We did do some analysis in terms of looking at the buyback. And we were very comfortable that, even if we completed the buyback that we announced this year, which we anticipate it'll take 12 months, but let's say we completed it by the end of December, we'd still end the year with well over $100 million in cash.

[Serge Matta:]

And then on gross margin – and then I'll have Mel answer the international number – but on gross margins, absolutely, Jason, it was primarily attributed to vCE. And then also, parts of our custom business related to some times when our clients want access to our panel data assets, that also affected gross margin. So we saw an increase as a result, both on that piece and on vCE.

[Melvin F. Wesley:]

Yes, and Jason, could you just give me a little bit more detail on your question on International revenues?

[Jason S. Helfstein:]

Yes, if I'm doing the math right, if you take International and you adjust for currency...

[Melvin F. Wesley:]

Yes.

[Jason S. Helfstein:]

...it looked like the organic growth, so in other words the higher number, giving you back the currency drag, was about 17% growth year-over-year, right, so basically taking the $23 million, adding back $3.5 million of currency drag, was about 17% year-over-year. In the fourth quarter, if I take the $25.5 million plus $1.5 million currency, it's like 22%. So, it did look like it slowed from a year-over-year basis. I'm just curious if there's anything there, just noise in the numbers, or just kind of the way you...

[Serge Matta:]

Yes, I think it's noise. I think it's small base. It's also, I think, as you said, there is growth year-over-year. So I don't think there's anything there. Obviously, foreign currency has impacted that business but, other than that, there's really nothing else to talk about.

[Melvin F. Wesley:]

Yes, I think the small base, Jason, is really the answer. Obviously, one or two deals can swing that on a quarterly basis, just because it is a small base as compared to the U.S. business.

[Jason S. Helfstein:]

Okay, so basically not seeing really any – there's no macro concern or anything?

[Serge Matta:]

No, no, not at all.

[Jason S. Helfstein:]

Okay, thank you.

[Serge Matta:]

Sure.

[Operator:]

Thank you for your question. Your next question comes from the line of Todd Mitchell of Brean Capital. Please go ahead.

[Todd T. Mitchell:]

Hi. Thank you. Two questions, sort of bigger picture here. So, you're putting forth a multi-platform measurement for the bigger programmers right now. Both of your competitors – or other competitors are doing the same. Everybody's showing data, we can all make assumptions on kind of who's got the best methodology. But what I'd like to hear from you is, how do you think implementation is going to happen? Right now, a lot of these guys are using it in-house with their research, trying to pitch it to their own advertisers. When does this become standardized across the industry, and how does that happen?

[Serge Matta:]

Sure. Hey, Todd. You said you had two questions. Was that the only one, or is there another one?

[Todd T. Mitchell:]

Well, then the other question is, I was going to ask you about this Proximic acquisition. You said it adds context and brings transparency to the programmatic buy. Can you flesh that out for some of us, what that actually means?

[Serge Matta:]

Sure. On cross-media, obviously we're very excited about formally launching our cross-media syndicated service later this quarter. We've been working extremely hard on it with the help of ESPN and the members of CIMM. That's something that it's taken us a while, don't get me wrong, because it is definitely complicated to integrate all the different data assets that we have. Obviously, we've integrated the Nielsen Audio data, we've integrated the set-top box data that we have, we've integrated the panel data, our mobile, desktop, our census data, so putting all of that together is no easy task for any company to do. So, obviously, we will be measuring not only reach and frequency, but also measuring the performance of ad campaigns across platforms. In terms of implementation, yes, right now the main buyers are within the research departments within the broadcasters. But for this to become a currency, we all know that we have to go to the agencies and the agencies need to adopt it on day one, and for this to go anywhere. Now, fortunately, we have very extensive and great relationships with all of the agencies, as we've mentioned earlier on this call. So we feel very good on where we are. But at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding, in the sense that we have to launch the service and then we have to go make sure that the agencies are starting to use it as their currency for trading, or else it's just a research tool that the research folks within each of the broadcasters just end up using it. So we are very well focused on the agency strategy. As far as Proximic, this was one of a very important transaction for us. We needed an ability. So when we built the comScore 14 years, 15 years ago, we had something called a client-focused dictionary, so it basically is a taxonomy on how we classify all the different sites on the Internet. So, for example, if you are on ESPN, you go to NFL, you go to sports, we go ahead and classify it is as a sports site. Yahoo!, Google, you name it. And that's a dictionary that we've built over the years. Now what we've realized over the past few years is that dictionary was perfect for audience measurement purposes. But it really wasn't granular enough for programmatic platforms. When you want to be trading, you don't want to be just trading on buyers of or interests of sports folks. You want to be able to go and say, these are folks that are interested in the NFL, in the draft, to a specific player, down to that level is what this acquisition provides us. So we're able to then apply that deep content categorization across all of our data assets across Media Metrix, vCE, Industry Trust, and then surface the data out there. So it becomes a lot more powerful than the categorization that we had with – which we had through the audience measurement tools.

[Todd T. Mitchell:]

Okay, thank you.

[Serge Matta:]

Sure.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Your next question is from the line of Shyam Patil of Wedbush. Please go ahead.

[Andy A. Cheng:]

Hi there. This is Andy Cheng in for Shyam. Thanks for taking my question. I just had two quick ones. First, can you just talk about how you are thinking about expanding your offering within DoubleClick? Right now you're providing the demo piece of vCE. So what's the opportunity to provide the viewability component and audit (48

[Serge Matta:]

Sure. So on DoubleClick, right now we're focused on obviously measuring the demographics within the DoubleClick service on desktop. We announced last quarter that we're rolling out mobile and some international markets with Google. We have a very close partnership with them and things are going well. While viewability, we understand they have a viewability product, we have our own viewability product as well, and our non-human traffic product as well. That to-date is not part of the overall deal that we have with Google. It doesn't mean that it couldn't be down the road, but to-date it is not part of the deal that we have with Google. But suffice to say, we have a very close partnership with them. On cross-media and the ramp up, obviously, we're taking it out of syndicated – on a syndicated basis later this quarter. We'll start talking to a lot of the broadcasters. We obviously have shared lot of the pre-data with them. We are getting a lot of feedback. This is going to ramp up in terms of revenue not a significant or material impact in 2015, but really starting to see an impact of it in 2016 and beyond. It's going to take time. We have no doubt that these are long sales cycles. There are seven-figure deals, and we know that we have our work cut out for us in terms of going after the broadcasters and the agencies. In terms of differences, in terms of methodology, we feel very confident. We are coming at it from a census-based approach. We're not looking at it based on our panel-based approach. We are looking at a combination of census-based approach from both digital and set-top box data and then applying a person-level sample which is what we were able to get through the consent decree that the FTC gave us. So it's a different approach. It's a different methodology, but it's a methodology that we've heard from our clients that is extremely well received. Now, again, it's still early days. The proof is in the pudding, but we feel very, very good about where we are.

[Andy A. Cheng:]

Thank you.

[Serge Matta:]

Sure.

[Operator:]

Thank you for your question. Your next question comes from the line of Andre Benjamin of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

[Andre Benjamin:]

Thanks. Good morning.

[Serge Matta:]

Good morning, Andre.

[Andre Benjamin:]

First question. I know you only have (51

[Melvin F. Wesley:]

Yes. Sure, Andre. So we've been consistently saying that we're going to be expanding adjusted EBITDA margin by at least 100 basis points a year. So that's still our goal, and obviously that's contemplated in our 2015 guidance, but it's also a goal for 2016, even though we didn't specifically guide for that. So, no change in that whatsoever. We believe we can do that and we can continue investing in the things that support the long-term pieces.

[Andre Benjamin:]

Okay. And then any updated thoughts on – I know cross-media covers (52

[Serge Matta:]

Yes. Sure. Again, Andre, we're going to be looking at it from a census-based measurement, not through panel-based. And the way we will be doing it – and by the way, for example, Roku, we've been measuring VEVO, for example, on Roku for the past since 2013 through a tagging-based approach. This is something that we've been doing now for, like I said, a year-and-a-half to two years. So it's not new to us. We've been measuring it. We are going to be including it into the measurement. It will be tag-based. We also have a different approach that we are exploring, not yet going to talk about it at this stage, but suffice to say, we feel very comfortable in measuring all of OTT.

[Andre Benjamin:]

Thank you.

[Serge Matta:]

Sure.

[Operator:]

Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Allen Klee of Sidoti & Co. Please proceed.

[Allen Klee:]

Yes. Hi. I was interested in hearing your thoughts on how you think about the market size or opportunity for what you're going after with the Kantar partnership?

[Serge Matta:]

Sure. So in terms of the Kantar relationship, their TV service is in over 40-plus countries and they are the dominant force in all of those countries in terms of measurement. Now, that said, like I said, they are this joint industry committee in a lot of these countries. We're going to go in and add our service, the cross-media service, with them. So it's going to be a service that sits on top of their existing revenue that they're generating, which is always the easy way to generate revenue. It's an existing client in an existing joint industry committee. But suffice to say, these things don't happen overnight. You have to get everybody comfortable with the methodology. You have to prove that the data is showing, so that's why we're focused on a pilot in Spain, and then what our plans are is once we have the data from the pilot, we'll roll it out and we'll show it to each of the JICs and to our clients across in every single country the power of the data, if we were to do it in those individual countries. So I'm not going to go ahead and sizing the opportunity for you, but in terms of revenue sizing, it's still way, way too early to determine that because these things take time, and that was a reason why when we signed with Kantar it was a 10-year exclusive relationship with them. So we know these things take time, but at least now we have a platform to get there, while before we did not.

[Allen Klee:]

Thank you.

[Serge Matta:]

Sure.

[Operator:]

Thank you very much indeed for your questions. I would now like to turn the call over to Mr. Mel Wesley for the closing remarks.

[Serge Matta:]

So, this is Serge. So thank you for your participation today. Our first quarter 2015 results reflect the momentum we've been building across our business. We continue to enhance the value proposition of our offerings and enter into strategic partnerships with leaders in digital media. We're extremely excited for the WPP/Kantar relationship that closed on April 1, and we will update you in the coming quarters on our progress. We remain focused on our key priorities, on the sharp execution of our strategy and on delivering value to our shareholders. There's never been a more exciting time at comScore. We look forward to speaking with you again on the next conference call. Thank you and have a good day.

[Operator:]

Thank you for joining in today's conference. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the presentation. You may now disconnect. Good day.