iHeartMedia, Inc. (IHRT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Okay. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm pleased to introduce Bob Pittman, Chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia; and Richard Bressler, the COO and CFO of the company. Welcome, gentlemen.

Thank you.

Maybe just to start off, we could start off with your revenue guidance calls for 17% to 19% growth in the first quarter. Can you walk us through the puts and takes, underlying the growth projections?

Well, look, we've not broken it down with any guidance beyond that. But I think that we continue to see the trends that we've been seeing, which is a return of I wouldn't use the word normality necessarily, but return to trends, people spending, consumers are back, advertisers are spending behind them. And we've seen little to say that, that's going to change. I know there's war in Ukraine. There's some -- maybe there's a second surge. But we think whatever has got higher gas prices, whatever is going on, we see the surge of people to get back to their life is sort of overwhelming the impact of any of the other macros there.

Okay. During the past year, we've seen a resurgence in advertising across all media. Can you talk about what you're currently seeing as it relates to ad trends and your outlook for recovery over the course of '22, both on the digital and the broadcast side?

Well, I think we -- again, without giving guidance, I think we're seeing the same thing that we talked about. We're seeing continued momentum. We gave a guidance for Q1, and we're seeing strength across all platforms.

Okay. All right. And not to be a dead horse on the ad trends. But just curious, when you see -- when you look at inflation and supply chain issues impacting your clients. Are you seeing that in your business? Any kind of changes that you've recently seen there?

Well, again, I think inflation is we're not a company that has in cost of goods, we don't have supply trucks. We don't have goods we're selling per se. We do see some of the inflation in wages, which I think we're managing well. And to a certain extent, we may wind up being a beneficiary. It may again push prices up. And historically, media has tended to benefit a bit from inflation. Rich, I don't know if you want to add to that?

Yes. I mean the other thing I might add is that -- and just to remind everybody, from a category standpoint, we're incredibly diversified, right? So we don't have any 1 category that's more than 5% of our revenues, no one advertise more than 2% of our revenues. And I think what our job is, is to really go where the money is. And again, we don't talk details, but if you take something like the streaming services, that's become a major category for us that wasn't there a couple of years ago. So that's -- there are all the puts and takes, but they may be different advertisers, but we feel great going forward.

Okay. Great. And can you talk about your confidence in the broadcast side of the business returning to pre-pandemic levels. And do you think radio can still grow top line? Or should we view it as more of a stable business with digital delivering the growth?

Well, I think the better question is what on earth would keep radio from continuing to grow past '19 levels. If you look at what drives advertising, ultimately, do you have any users there, are they engaged? And I look at iHeart, our broadcast radio reaches about 90% of Americans every month. The only 2 companies that come close to that are Google and Facebook with slightly less reach. When you talk about TV, the biggest TV network is NBC, reaches about 50% of Americans every month, slightly more than half of what we do. The biggest cable network, which I think right now is USA Network, I think, reaches 28% is the number. The next largest broadcast radio company is Odyssey, I think they reached 36% of Americans. So when you reach 91% of Americans and that's our -- with our broadcast radio, you just say, what on earth would -- why wouldn't you use that? What's derailing? If you look at every medium that's had a decline, whether it's newspapers or TV, et cetera, it's because their usage dropped off and advertising followed. And I think when you look at the second trend, which is every advertiser today is looking for new efficiencies. And when you look at efficiency, the beneficiaries should be the people who have the lowest price for the same impact. And radio and TV have historically, and I think same true today, delivered about the same impact at the same weight level, in terms of sales for advertisers. And yet, today TV is 4x the price. So to get the same thing you're going to spend 4x as much for TV. As we begin to develop unified buying systems where advertising agencies can now plan all media together instead of in silos, we're going to benefit from that. And I think as you see pressure on advertisers to get more efficient and to find efficiencies and costs, we're going to benefit from that. So I think radio is in a pretty good spot. And it's sort of hard for me to think of the reasons why it wouldn't continue to grow. Easier for me to think about all the reasons why it is continuing to grow and why there's real help in that growth number for Multiplatform Group. Now our digital is growing faster, digital, including podcasting. So over time, we do expect the relationship of digital and our Multiplatform Group, which is radio and events primarily to change positions but that's only because of the differential in growth rate, not because one is going down.

By the way, just 2 quick adds. One is just to be clear, Multiplatform's growing right now, right? Just so you see growth back in the numbers. And I think Bob's companies were obviously going to grow beyond '19 as we look into the future. The second point I'd make is we have, and I'm sure we'll come to it, a fully integrated audio tech stack, right? So we have the capabilities to make our broadcast inventory look like digital. So with all of our platforms, advertising can come to us, they can plan their campaigns. We monitor their campaigns and then we can report out on their campaigns. And those capabilities, starting with our Multiplatform and when you think about broadcast and traditional radio, we didn't have those 18 months or 2 years ago. So we are a different company going to market.

And I think 1 more point on Rich's, if I can -- is in that tech stack we have, we have the only unified audio tech stack, meaning we now have broadcast with streaming, digital with podcasting all in 1 platform. So if you're looking for an audience, you can find them seamlessly across all the opportunities, which I think now puts broadcast into the digital TAM, which is, what, $160 billion of ad revenue, which has been our goal for broadcast radio for the past few years.

That's interesting. Can you talk maybe more about how your discussions with advertisers have evolved as you've given them these other opportunities or -- and you've gone towards this Multiplatform strategy?

Strategically, one of the most important things we did is we built out the multi-platforms is instead of building a dedicated sales force for each platform, we said the world is going to be seamless. Everybody wants to unify it all. So we build out tools for our sellers and training for our sellers. So any seller, anywhere can sell anything. So when we bring podcasts to market, we have 1,500 sellers, the biggest sales force in audio that's behind podcasting. No wonder we're doing so much better than everyone else. When we have digital streaming radio, we're able to put all of our sellers against that. When you've got an advertiser that we find in Memphis, Tennessee or Jackson, Mississippi, what has historically been a local seller finds an advertiser who wants to buy national advertising, they can sell it to them. Heretofore, they go, "Well, I really don't sell that. I only sell local and you walk away from opportunities. So I think we've change that. And I think the impact for us will be felt across all the platforms and the company as a whole.

Anything specifically you could talk about in terms of how you're expecting this political cycle to unfold for you guys? Rich, you want to...

We expect it to be -- that we have no reason to believe it's not going to be a strong political year. We're not no Nostradamus. We're reading all the same press that everybody else is reading, but whether it's the candidates or issues advertising, and just as a reminder, I think in the last election cycle, we did about $160 million, $165 million of political revenue. And again, to reiterate 1 point, we're coming into this cycle with more capabilities, what Bob just articulated, in terms of the audio tech stack. So we haven't given any predictions out there, but we expect it to be strong.

I think also, remember, with political advertising, we're also talking about issues advertising that goes along with that. And I think this year is going to be especially vibrant for that as well. So we should be a beneficiary of that.

I remember when you guys were going through the process of becoming a public company, again, you talked a lot about how you're basically going -- you were looking way beyond just the local radio advertising pool and getting to brand advertising. And you've touched on that a little bit. But can you be -- can you talk a little bit more about the progress you've made against those goals and...

Sure. Sure. When I got to the company, we were basically selling radio advertising to media buyers who wanted radio. We realized that there are a large portion of advertisers, especially the larger ones, to have a marketing need and they're looking for a marketing solution, agnostic to what medium they use or what company delivers for them. So we built out the capabilities to sell marketing solutions. And I would say probably half of our advertising today is not straight media. It has some component of some marketing solution tied to it. And if you look at the delta between us and we can measure it in radio companies, there's the Miller Kaplan measurement, which shows us and our share against the general radio market. we've continued to grow share. And I think one of -- part of that delta is the fact that we are indeed selling a different way. Also the fact that we come to market with, we already reached 91% of Americans with our broadcast radio alone. And the next largest company is kind of -- in the broadcast space, audio space is going to reach 36% and the digital players even smaller. So they have to be a part of somebody else's plan, we're large enough to deliver the whole plan within our 4 walls. That, I think, gives us a distinct advantage in talking to them.

And by the way, what when we made those statements, we probably were close to zero digital revenue back then, 3, 4, 5 years ago, we did well over $800 million of digital revenue, which is podcasting, social extensions, websites throughout the company. So I think we've made great progress. And you've got to be -- the bulk of that revenue is clearly coming out of the digital TAM. So as Bob noted earlier, our ability to tap into the $160 billion digital TAM which goes to digital, by the way, and the broadcast side out there that enables us to have the growth rates that we're talking about.

And if you look again at outperformance, we've substantially outperformed the podcast marketplace in terms of our revenue growth and the digital minus ex-podcasting growth as well. So I think we're continuing to gain share in all of these sectors.

Maybe we can shift to the cost side for a bit. In response to the pandemic, you work to reduce costs in addition to your pre-pandemic cost transformation and modernization plans. What inning are we in for taking costs out of the business and driving efficiencies? And how should we think about the longer-term profitability and margin structure of digital multi-platform?

Well, let me start, and then I'll let Rich give specifics. I don't think we're necessarily inning because I would imply the game is over. But I think as part of our operation, we're every day looking at what technology is there today or what have we discovered that allows us to get efficiency. And some of it is taking a company that was incredibly decentralized and centralizing certain functions to improve the quality and lower the cost. For example, do we need a promo director in 160 markets, meaning 160 promo directors? Or can we take a small fraction of that, but have better quality people managed by great promo people, servicing 160 markets and having that service on demand all the time, we think that's a better model. And what functions does that go to sales, service, promotion, programming, et cetera, and we are constantly looking at how do we get better and better at that because it has a quality improvement and the cost savings. And again, technology is transforming the way we do business, that we have had human beings doing work today that AI can do that a machine can do. It's more cost efficient, it's probably -- and it frees our people up to do what humans do better, which is creative thinking, innovation and puts the machines on the road work and we're going through that transformation. That's still in progress. And I suspect, as we think we're getting to the end of that, we're going to find there's a new piece of technology, and we started all over again. So it's sort of a continuing process.

By the way, and just to add to that and think about what we're doing now with our real estate footprint, right? And I know other companies are also but we're going to cut our real estate foot from by about half pre-pandemic to where we are today. And you've seen, yes, some increases on our capital expenditures last year, some slight increases that we've talked about going out for this year, but that results in significant cost savings within the cost guidance that we've already given out there. And so those efficiencies are just a way of life for us to Bob's point about what inning are we in? It was interesting as we went through the pandemic and started to come out. People said, "Oh my god, what are you going to get back to 30-plus percent margins on Multiplatform Group? Well, EBITDA margins for Q4 were in the mid-30s, 35%, 36% out there, incremental dollar flow on those margins was if you exclude some of the events we had in Q4, which we didn't have in Q -- last year, at the same time in terms of returns to live events, we're 75% to 80% in incremental budgets we always talked about. So again, that's our objective. How do we bring the most down to the bottom line. And then on digital, we're up in the mid-30s. And we said this people project out, assume we're going to be at mid-30s EBITDA margins going forward. I don't know of any digital business at scale in the media space that's operating at mid-30 EBITDA margins there.

Wow. You mentioned podcasting a bit already, that's been an area of significant growth for you guys. Can you talk about the strategy overall, how you've been able to take a leadership position in this part of the audio industry and what the keys are to establishing sustainable competitive advantage in the future in podcasting?

Well, sure. Look, at our core, we are content creators. We know how to make great programming. And I think we've used our scale not to not only build great programming, but we've also have the ability to promote the product because if you got a great show, people have to find out about it. Heretofore, you really had to go to Apple and beg them to promote your show to try and get people to know about it. In our case, we have so many hit shows that we can get a hit show to promote the other hit show almost like a franchises in the movie business. And then we also use our broadcast radio. There's this nice give and take between our broadcast radio and podcasters that they'll often -- the broadcast stations will often run podcast as specials on the radio. Well, what it does is, of course, teaches the audience about podcasting, promotes the podcast and gives them content. So the podcast group wins, the radio group wins. And again, we are able to have these podcasts that people, I think, are envious of in terms of how fast we can make a podcast. We a year ago, 18 months ago, we were sort of neck and neck in terms of downloads with NPR. Today, last month, we have more downloads than the next 4 publishers combined, which I think is NPR, The New York Times, NVC and Wondery, which is Amazon. And I think having that kind of delta -- and by the way, it tends to be accelerating. Allows us to have first look at any podcast that comes to market. We have great partnerships with the NFL, NBA, Shonda Rhimes, which -- she's only in 2 places. He's got our video on Netflix or audio with iHeart. We've had Malcolm Gladwell, who moved over to our platform. And then we have shows that have no profit participants that we just build from scratch and having that array puts us in a unique position. Podtrac, which is the rating service for podcasting publishers, ranks has 19 content categories. We're the only publisher that has ranked product in all 19 categories. And I think that diversity puts us in a great position to create the product. Once we have the great product, the challenge is how do you monetize it. And again, being able to talk to the advertiser about all things audio, including podcasting, puts us, I think, in the driver's seat there. And whereas many companies are talking about podcasting is going to be profitable. We have an EBITDA margin on our podcasting that's greater than the overall margin of the company. So it is accretive to the company.

Bob, the only thing I might add to that. And we have it in probably the most engaged medium that any of us have ever seen that have been running media companies for a long time. I think the numbers are something like 90% of people that start a podcast have it on all the way through. And by the way, you do have skip features on podcasting, similar features you have on video, which most people say, "Well, but there's no skip features. Yes, there are. And about 50% of people that started podcast listen every word all the way through. And what that has started to do is resonate with advertisers. Because just to remind us all, historically, podcasting was a DR, a direct response inventory, when the pool is $400 million, $500 million of advertising dollars. As we came into broadcasting and bought more mainstream advertisers like the Procter & Gambles, the T-Mobiles into podcasting. I think last year, the U.S. pool was a little over $1 billion, U.S.-based advertising for dollars and projected out 3, 4, 5 years from now, we supposed to get about $5 billion out there. And we participate in 2 ways on that vector. One, we're getting the benefit of the whole pool going up; and then two, as Bob mentioned earlier, we are significantly outperforming the podcasting industry, so we'll continue to take share.

And I think to Rich's point, the reason why we want the big advertisers there is they paid a higher CPM than the DR folks. So we're bringing -- we're getting a better return on the same inventory by just putting different advertisers there in addition to the other growth factors.

Can you talk about the cost structure a bit for podcasting. I mean to make a podcast, obviously, it doesn't cost anything intrinsically because it's just recording someone's voice, but you have profit participations with the A-List talent. There's presumably compensation for even the lower levels of talent below that top layer. So I guess I'm just curious on how the economic -- if we could -- if you could help us understand the economics of your podcasting business or that part of the business. That would be great.

Well, we have a fixed cost component. I wish it was as easy as we just recorded put it on the air. We actually have researchers. We have producers, we have editors that really take a podcast and whip it in the shape. So it sounds great on the air and it's a hit podcast. We have a number of people that are really great talent, but come to us because they need a great producer to help them have a great podcast. So that's a competitive advantage for us. That's sort of fixed cost. And the bigger we get, you will see some of those fixed costs go up, but obviously, at a much lower rate than the amount of revenue we're growing, hence, margin expansion. In terms of the cost, when we do something like the NBA or you do Malcolm Gladwell or Shonda Rhimes, we're doing it as a partnership and there is -- we split the money with them. When we do other podcasts that we own, we typically have no proper participation. We hire some host to do it. And we've got the full range but we have the financial discipline. And by the way, the luxury of being #1, which means we get first look on most stuff is we're not going to do one where we can't make money. And by the way, if we can't model out how we can make money, on the show. And by the way, do it at a margin that's better than our overall margin. I can't imagine anyone else can since we have such a size advantage and such a monetization advantage. So we are keeping ourselves in the mode of we love revenue, we love market share, but we love it in search of more profits, and we're not interested in profitless prosperity.

Can you talk about depth versus breadth as you think about the podcasting content slate? I mean.

Sure. We fortunately have both. We have the biggest podcast network for the Black community Black Effect. We have the biggest for the Latino, which is My Cultura. We also have the biggest travel, the biggest crime, the biggest sports. And so we are deep in terms of what we do and we're broad. We're the only, as I mentioned before, the only podcast publisher that has ranked product at all 19 categories. And instead of doing one-off shows, which a lot of folks are doing, we look at everything as a slate. When Will Ferrell came in, we didn't just do Ron Burgundy. We did a whole comedy slate with Will Farrell to put it together. When we did a show with Charlamagne tha God, we didn't do a 1 show, we did a -- we used him to build a slate for the Black community. And that's really been the strategy, and I think it's turned out to be absolutely the right strategy because going to your point, it gives us -- we both have breadth and we have depth. And when we go to an advertiser, we can talk to them about sports, not a sports show.

Can you talk about -- I mean you threw out some of the numbers, Richard already on podcasting, crossing $1 billion in advertising. Can you talk about what you're seeing in terms of ad trends now in podcasting and I don't know if you'd be willing to share it, but I would love to hear what CPMs for some of the top-rated shows are, if you can talk about that.

Well, we -- it pretty much low in the lines, as I said, with everything we said earlier. I mean the trends are, as Bob articulated, the bigger advertisers are coming in, they're being bigger dollars. And by the way, they're not just committing to higher CPMs because of the effectiveness of the meeting, they're just taking bigger parts of their budget and put it to their -- and so if you think about what we just highlighted before, going from a category that was $300 million, $400 million, $500 million a couple of years ago, U.S.-based advertising podcasting to projections of $5 billion over the next 4 or 5 years. I think we will take a step back as well, where is that going to come from. But when you kind of take it apart and think about the component pieces, it makes sense out there in terms of that growth. And we would have been way under shut if we had projected out or thought about, gee, what does the future look like of podcasting revenue. And on CPMs, just -- I'll give a general comment, they're as high as CPMs as we saw it at the height of Black online video out there. And so -- and that makes a lot of sense because the consumer engagement numbers, I just mentioned earlier, and therefore, the effectiveness of the advertisers.

Okay. It sounds like -- you obviously said you're only making podcast where you can make money. Can you talk overall about the profitability for podcasting as it compares to digital music for you guys today and where you see that kind of trending over time?

Well, I think when you look at podcasting, our podcast margin, adjusted EBITDA margin is higher than the overall margin of the company, that's the only numbers we've given publicly. But -- and I don't think there's any other company that's reported podcast numbers that's reported anywhere near profit or a meaningful profit on their podcasting. I mean it's quite a gulf between us and everyone else. And I think that has to do with our scale, it has to do with how we structured the business and has to do with the monetization machine and promotion machine we have that no one else really has.

And 1 point I was going to mention earlier, I think pod is -- Bob talked about our overall strategy. Another part of our overall strategy is make our podcast available anywhere to anybody on any platform that's out there to get the widest distribution. And we also accept anybody's podcast overall on our platform, too. And so just as a reminder, there's publishers and distributors in podcasting and all the money is on the publishing side. So all the stats that Bob just gave in terms of whether it's categories or most podcast here with more than 1 million downloads. Those are publishing podcast stats, and that's where the money comes from.

Yes. And I think it would be careful because some people get -- start talking, publishing and platforms together. And right now, no one has figured out how a platform makes any money other than it's good for their app. I mean on the iHeartRadio app, if you listen to a pod guest on the iHeartRadio app, that probably makes you like iHeartRadio app a little better. We don't make any money from that. And likewise, when Apple's carrying podcasters now, doing some experiments with is there a market for subscription podcast, the answers don't appear to be yet. If it does, we have the biggest library that would be wonderful for us. And so I think you really have to keep your eye on the ball is where do you make money. And in between, there are people who are doing sales rep deals for podcast, which are not very profitable. And we have really shied away from it. We want to be the publisher because that's again where the money is and where the control is.

Is there -- is there anything that can -- I mean it sounds you've painted actually -- what sounds like a great picture for your podcasting business. And is there anything -- where are the risks? What could kind of go wrong and keep you from maybe realizing the vision that you're working towards?

I don't think -- and we have lots of discussions at a reasonably paranoid people. I don't see any risk on the horizon, which derails us. The question is how fast how quickly are we missing opportunities? How quickly can we get the Triton audio marketplace up? How fast can we get the iHeart audio marketplace up to pick up the long tail stuff? How fast can we get the new podcast to market? But it's really a question of how fast, how much, not whether.

Okay. Maybe just to hit on live events a little bit. Can you just talk about where you think we are in the recovery of live events and what your pipeline looks like there?

Public consumer is roaring back. We had a better year last year at the iHeartRadio Music Festival in the fall than we had in -- was it '19 the last year, we had done the festival. And there was an energy in the room and an overall sense and vibe that I think we haven't felt in years. We've got a great slate of products that are coming. We've got a, matter of fact, the awards next week, which will be in Los Angeles. We broadcast on the FOX TV network. And we're back to live and excited about it. And I think, by the way, if you look at other live businesses, Live Nation, et cetera, I think you're seeing indications that the consumer is done with staying in the house, and they are so ready to get out and responding to almost anything that's that out-of-home experience, too.

How are you thinking about free cash flow conversion this year and going forward, I think CapEx is a little higher than normal this year because of real estate, but can you just talk about maybe some of the moving pieces in the outlook there?

Sure. look, one is just an overall envelope. Even in -- during the eminent period of time, this company continued to generate real free cash flow. And I think that's a basis. We had a really nice free cash flow last year. Even with a slight increase in CapEx related to the real estate, which converts itself into savings. We should -- we're going to have a stronger free cash flow this year as we go forward. And that, by the way, is including becoming a full taxpayer as we go forward this year. CapEx will be a little bit higher also this year, but this will be the last year that you'll see CapEx a little bit higher with respect to the real estate rationalization that I just talked about earlier. And as we've stated publicly, with that free cash flow, we expect to make significant progress to our goal of 4x leverage this year. And just to be clear, that is like taking the free cash to pay down that leverage number. And as we all know, a leverage ratio is composed of 2 things: generation of free cash flow, reduction of debt and also growth in the EBITDA number there. And then when we get to about 4x, Bob, myself and the rest of the -- our fellow Board members will look and say, okay, what's the best way to get direct return of money to shareholders to create equity value, and we'll have a greater set of options at that point in time. But the 4x is important from our standpoint to really look to expand our shareholder base.

Okay. And what are your capital allocation priorities from here? Where does leverage stand? And when do you expect to get to your target at 4x?

We left the year at 6.6x, a dramatic improvement over the prior years, and we haven't given a date yet or a time period other than we said we'd make significant progress, which I think historically, everyone can do the math and see what kind of progress we're going to make this year.

Okay. And I guess, once you get to 4x, I mean, any commentary on how you think about capital allocation at that point?

Our capital allocation is going to be in line with our #1 priority, which is to drive the equity value of this company. I would suggest everything Bob and I have been talking about today is it's a goal or a tactic to get to the real ultimate objective with the real ultimate goal, which is to drive the equity value. And so we'll take a step back with our Board because it's ultimately, a Board of Director decision. It's not Bob and I are part of the board, but it's not our ultimate decision. And look at the ability, whether it's to buy back stock, pay a dividend, is there anything tuck-in? I mean we don't need to make any significant acquisitions when you reach more than 90% Americans out there and the level of engagement that we have. And I think if you look at our track history since Bob and I have been running iHeart, we've made a number of tuck-in deals, but all those deals have made the iHeart asset base that much more valuable.

And if you look at where we have spent money in the past, we bought Stuff Media, which became the basis for our podcast business. I think everyone, I think we paid $50 million for it, turns out to be probably one of the great investments we've ever made. Jelli acquisition was to enable our broadcast radio to look like digital for us to be able to sell a broadcast radio advertising a new way. Triton has enabled the audio tech stack. Voxnest again, marketplace for podcasting. So each one of those pieces, I think, have been a great return for us. And so we have a very high bar on acquiring anything, but it's all about value creation and pretty immediate value creation for the company.

Yes. Can you talk a little bit -- you mentioned those acquisitions and you had mentioned the tech stack earlier. Can you help us understand better just how your tech stack helps you to differentiate you from some of your kind of key alternatives, if you will, for advertisers?

Well, I think there is no equivalent of Google DoubleClick for audio. And so it was wide open in terms of the opportunity. And having the biggest audio player by far, us, we're able to make a marketplace by putting our inventory into it. So okay. So what do we lack? We lack the marketplace. We need the platform to build it. So we had all the components ready to go, except for the platform. And I think the demand in the marketplace is advertisers are looking to reach an audience. They're looking to reach them in the most efficient way. And so by putting broadcast, putting streaming digital, digital and demand and podcasting all together on 1 platform. So I could seamlessly find the audience and buy the inventory, maximizes the opportunity for both the advertiser and for the content publishers, us. And so I think we unlock value for us. We unlock efficiency for the advertiser, which is, to me, the win-win. And again, putting the pieces together, we already had a couple of pieces in place, adding this on top of it with the Triton marketplace, I think, allows us to be we think the winning marketplace. I don't think anybody else has either the technology, nor do they have the inventory that we have, which allows us to make a robust market.

Okay. And by the way, the one -- if you look at our financial results, how they manifested itself, the growth we've had in Multiplatform and the significant outperformance compared to the rest of the radio broadcast industry and then just the absolute dollar growth we've had in digital with and without podcasting and outperformance in both of those categories, both the podcasting side and the digital side without podcasting from a revenue standpoint, I think really is a proof point of kind of the investments we've made and the differentiated factor we have in the company.

Okay. All right. We're close to the end, I mean, did you want to make any closing comments or anything you wanted to kind of emphasize before we wrap up?

I think we were talking about macro pictures, I think we're talking -- one of the things we really have to talk about is audio, that audio is incredibly hot right now, and it's hot for a number of reasons. I think one of the big reasons the audio is hot is that the consumer is filling up every minute of their day now with something. There used to be a time when people had peace and quiet, got nothing going on. No one has that. They're filling it up on the moment they wake up to the moment they go to bed. They've already filled up every bit of their day if they want to watch something. If you want to watch 1 show, yes, it's a zero-sum game. You have to give up another show. But since we're going against this non-media time, we're able to expand the amount of time with audio. There's a work study done last fall, which showed that audio has now surpassed TV in terms of usage every day. There is more usage to radio than there is to social every day, radio than there is to social. And so we're in a very hot sector right now with the consumer driving it. My experience have been around TV, Internet, cable networks, et cetera, is advertising follows the consumer. And I think you're going to see that the opportunity here, again, follows the consumer. We intend to drive it as fast as we can. And we intend to also focus on the profitability of it, as we drive it with -- as Rich and I have talked about before, we're not interested in profitless prosperity. We're interested in how do we get the most efficient business out of this opportunity. And I will tell you, looking around the world right now, audio looks like it's in the -- its moment. and people are talking about it. And companies that heretofore have been video companies are now talking about. We're getting into audio. So it's suddenly the thing to get into, just like online video was the thing to get into about 10 years ago. And so it's nice to be at that moment and to have the assets to deploy it well.

Great place to stop. So thanks very much, Rich and Bob. Appreciate your comment.

Great. Thank you so much.

Thank you.