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Lamar Advertising Co (LAMR 1.57%)
Q4Â 2018 Earnings Conference Call
Feb. 20, 2019, 9:00 a.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
See all our earnings call transcripts.
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Excuse me, everyone. We now have Sean Reilly and Keith Istre in conference. Please be aware each of your lines is in a listen-only mode. At the conclusion of the company's presentation, we will open the floor for questions (Operator Instructions).
In the course of this discussion, Lamar may make forward-looking statements regarding the company, including statements about its future financial performance, strategic goals, plans, and objectives, including with respect to the amount and timing of any distributions to stockholders. Our forward-looking statements involve risk, uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond Lamar's control and which may cause actual results to differ materially from anticipated results. Lamar has identified important factors that can cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in this call in the company's fourth quarter 2018 earnings release and its most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K as updated or supplemented by its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K. Lamar refers you to those documents. Lamar's fourth quarter 2018 earnings release, which contains information required by Regulation-G regarding certain non-GAAP financial measures was furnished to the SEC on Form 8-K this morning and is available on the investors section of Lamar's website, www.lamar.com.
I would now like to turn the conference over to Sean Reilly. Mr. Reilly, you may begin.
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Stephanie, and good morning everyone. Welcome to Lamar's Q4 and Year End 2018 Earnings Call. I'm very pleased with the way we closed out 2018. Q4 organic growth was 5.6%, a number we haven't seen at sometimes and is quite gratifying. This brought our full-year organic growth to 3.4% and importantly drove our AFFO per share to levels that exceeded our expectations. Full year AFFO per share for 2018 ended up at $5.50 a share, easily exceeding our guidance. Same-board digital performance continues to shine, up 10.8% in Q4 and up 7.1% for the full year. We continue to add digital capacity as quickly as possible, adding over 220 units in 2018 and targeting a goal of 250 units in 2019. In the course, we closed on the Fairway transaction in December. The integration of the Fairway asset is going well. Indeed the $4 million in promised synergies are already largely in place and we're looking forward to significant contributions from the new assets to our 2019 AFFO per share growth.
Turning to our AFFO per share guidance for 2019, please note the range provided in our release is $5.67 per share to $5.83 per share. The midpoint of the range reflects 3% proforma topline growth and 2% proforma expense growth. Our full year pacings are actually stronger than 3% and as of today positions toward the top-end of that range. (inaudible) Q1 2019 guidance, Q1 guidance, pacings are softer than 3%, let's call it 2% and some change. We had one major advertiser shift several million dollars around and while there is spend as much or more with us for the full year, a chunk fell out of Q1 and moved to the rest of 2019. So again, midpoint of 2019 AFFO per share guidance reflects 3% pro forma growth full year pacing presently north of that, Q1 pacings are presently south of at 2% and can change. Keith will give you some color on expected Q1 expenses which will come in a little heavier than 2%. However, we are confident that when we close out 2019, expenses for the full year will come in around the familiar 2% range.
Keith?
Keith Istre -- Chief Financial Officer
Good morning, everyone. As Sean mentioned, fourth quarter was really strong organic revenue, EBITDA growth as such organic expense growth was up 5%. On our last earnings call, you stated that we expected our Q4 expenses to be higher than our usual 2%. This is primarily due to the additional bonuses and sales commissions because of the strong revenue growth in the quarter. For the full year 2018, organic revenue growth, as Sean said was 3.4% organic EBITDA growth was 4.9% and organic expense growth was 2.2% which is our normal range of somewhere between 1% and 2% on expense growth. Free cash flow for 2018 after dividend was $110 million. We expect something similar in 2019. We had mentioned earlier in the press release that the company was planning on asking the Board to increase the dividends for '19 by 5% and we will have that Board Meeting on February 28 and hopefully they will approve that.
We expect organic consolidated expense growth in Q1 of '19 to be approximately 4%. Two things that contribute to that number. Number one, Q1 '18 expense growth, if you will recall was negative 1.1% last year and secondly, there are some one-time expenses that (inaudible) Q1 related to the Fairway acquisition that we closed on December 21st of 2018. For the full year, our internal budget projections call for consolidated organic expense growth of 2%. To help you with the model, our CapEx budget for '19 is $128 million in total, $80 million in growth CapEx and $48 million in maintenance CapEx. We are projecting cash interest expense to be approximately $148 million, cash taxes at the TRS will be approximately $10 million. TRS is our Taxable REIT Subsidiary.
Anyway that's about it. Sean?
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Great. Thanks, Keith. I'll touch on a couple of metrics that we commonly call out on this call and then I'm going to talk about a couple of initiatives we're doing there. I think you're going to find it interesting.
So I mentioned digital and the account with the Fairway acquisition, we acquired 149 and we added organically above again a little over 220 in 2018. So that brings our year-end '18 total digital (inaudible) to 3,220. Again, our goal for '19 is at 250, more given that we are seeing such strong same board performance. National and local, please note the co-political local service number is a little bit skewed for that reason, but Q4 local increased 8.1%, national increased 3.1%. Regarding political in Q4, it added about 1%, a little over 1% to that 5.6% organic growth for the quarter was right around 4.5%. For the full year, political added about 0.6% to 0.7% to otherwise organic growth.
Verticals some real strong performance obviously in the fourth quarter. I would point out, hospitals up 8.8%, education up 8%, financial up 9%. Here is an outlier, insurance was up 82%, that's the loss(ph)small numbers, but (inaudible) did pop into our top 10 advertisers for the first time in a while. Auto for Q4 was down too and I want to pause and think with you a little out-loud about what's going on with auto. Last year, we hired a consultant to help us do a deep dive into local auto dealer vertical. Through that effort, we developed some insight into how this business model is changing, how they are viewing the ad spend across all media and how they view out of home. As you know, all other media are struggling with the declining auto ad spend. These insights helped us rollout some initiatives targeted directly at the local auto dealers early this year and the early results are promising. Auto for us Q1 is pacing up 3% and as you know it's down from most other verticals and interestingly it's pacing up 4.5% for the full year, that's early here, but this is against the backdrop of declining auto has been in other platforms. So I look forward to giving you updates on that how it progresses through the year, but again early returns are promising.
Number two, 2019 looks to be the year when programmatic automated buying begins to bring digital dollars to our platform in a way that will make real incremental contributions to our pro forma growth. We have expanded our number of partners in this endeavor from one to four to go after these dollars and we made the necessary investments last year to make sure our platform is truly plug-n-play and again I look forward to updating you on our progress in this programmatic initiative, as the year move along as well.
With that Stephanie, happy to open it up for questions. Stephanie?
Questions and Answers:
Operator
Thank you, Sean. We will open the floor for questions. (Operator Instructions) The first question from David Miller with Imperial Capital.
David Miller -- Imperial Capital, LLC -- Analyst
Yeah, hey guys. Congratulations on the stellar results. Couple for you, Sean. So on the Fairway integration, how would you characterize like how that's going so far and how do you think that integration so far is different than some of the other acquisitions that you guys have done, say over the last two or three years and then also and maybe Keith, you want to chime-in. I've got, if you have an end of year digital board count of 3,220 and that means at least by models you installed 336 digitals in 2018, which would be a record for installation in 2018. Do I have that number right. And then I have a follow-up. Thanks.
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Sure. Thanks David. Let me hit the digital thing real quick, I think you may be completing(ph)the one we acquired with the ones we built organically. Yes. So with Fairway we acquire -- let me give you that number again, 149.
David Miller -- Imperial Capital, LLC -- Analyst
Okay. There it is.
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
And regarding Fairway(ph)-- on the integration of Fairway it's going very, very well. Typically the low hanging fruit is on the expense side and that happens pretty quickly and as I mentioned those common synergies are largely in place and going fine and then usually there is a little list on the topline as we bring sort of a different philosophy of sales management and sales and how we go about going after new business to the platform and that takes a little longer and that will happen over the next let's call it 12 to 18 months, but the $4 million that we noted when we released the transaction that's again largely in place, because it's largely on the expense side.
David Miller -- Imperial Capital, LLC -- Analyst
Okay. And then I would be remiss if I didn't say to Keith, congratulations on your retirement. We will miss you. You were wonderful to work with over the years.
Keith Istre -- Chief Financial Officer
Thank you very much, David. I appreciate that.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Alexia Quadrani with JPMorgan.
Alexia Quadrani -- JPMorgan & Co. -- Analyst
Hi, thank you. Just a few question. First, I apologize if I missed it, but did you give us what the local was in the fourth quarter ex-protocol and then I just wanted to see if you had a sense of when you look at the pacings for Q1, kind of where the strength is national versus local and then I have one more.
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Sure. So local Q4 was up 8.1% and National Q4 was 3.1%. I don't have -- they expressed as a percentage of local but I have it is expressed political expressed as a percentage of total organic growth and that would be a little over 1%. So if you look at again 5.6% minus a little over 1% let's call the core growing at about 4.5%. I don't have a local, national number for you, yet for the first. So we'll have to just -- we'll have to wait till the next call.
Alexia Quadrani -- JPMorgan & Co. -- Analyst
And then just looking at Q1, you talked about the major advertisers sort of pushed off into the rest of the year, you guys tend to have pretty good visibility. It sounds like you're pretty convinced that there is -- you're going to see it materialize can you give us any color on your level of confidence of that and just and also to some political you had a great political year in 2018, I guess, did you see anything different from political spending in this past cycle that may, you have us look at political differently going forward?
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Sure. So that large advertising you can partly guess who they are. They have contracted with, these dollars are actually in billing so that's bad as verticals you can get and as of now they're contracted for slightly more than they contracted in 2018. It's just the timing of when that -- knowing it's going to come in. As we look at our pacings, pacings are pacings. They are a snapshot in time. Right now, we're pleased with full year pacings and we still have to sell in the period for the period and make the period if that meet(ph)to our folks every day, but things are looking good as we sit here today. The other question was about, Alexi what --
Alexia Quadrani -- JPMorgan & Co. -- Analyst
Political. You have such a great political year in 2018. I wonder if anything was different that you sort of learned about it, how are things differently going forward?
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Well, one thing we've learned is that if you really focus on a vertical, you can make a difference and we made a concerted effort to go after those dollars last year and it paid off. I will note that it's an odd year not, it's not an even year. What do we usually get in political in an odd year, we usually get the 22.5%(ph)and $3 million. So if you're trying to think about what's the gap Lamar needs to make, let's call it $7.5 million to $8 million, we're scrambling after and we feel good about making up if that's helpful.
Alexia Quadrani -- JPMorgan & Co. -- Analyst
Yeah. That's very helpful. Thanks so much.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Marci Ryvicker with Wolfe Research.
Marci Ryvicker -- Wolfe Research, LLC -- Analyst
Thank you. Couple of questions, first, Sean that 10.8%, I think same-board digital, did that have any political in it or is that total record?
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
We probably had some political in it Marci. I don't have it broken out, I can probably get it for you. One thing that politics seems to be about these days is tit-for-tat and our digital platform is pretty good at that, because they can change it as they want. It's a very responsible medium.
Marci Ryvicker -- Wolfe Research, LLC -- Analyst
And then can you tell us what percent auto is of your book as a category at this point?
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Yeah Let me turn to that real quick. So I am glad you highlighted auto because we're making a concerted effort in targeting that vertical this year in ways we haven't in the past I think it's going to bear fruit. So automotive is now 5% and as you know, historically it's been 6% and it's had (Technical Difficulty) and like I said, I am going to give you guys update, how are we doing there as the year progress, because I think that it's an important vertical across a whole lot of advertising platforms and we intend to get our share.
Marci Ryvicker -- Wolfe Research, LLC -- Analyst
Got it. And then the last one is either for you or for Keith. There were two one-time item in that guide reconciliations for AFFO and FFO. Can you just talk a little bit about that $15 million to $20 million one-time non-cash tax adjustment I think it's related Fairway and then the $11 million reclass from this revenue to something else, but just trying to figure out how that is impacting the AFFO guide?
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Marci, I'm going to let our corporate controller address that question obviously. As of January 1 of 2019, all companies have to comply with a new FASB rule concerning the capitalization of their leases out front clear as anybody that has lease obligations and it is a non -- we will capitalize lease obligations that will add about $1.3 billion in assets to our balance sheet and $1.3 billion in capitalized debt. It's not yet according to any of our credit agreements, which is a GAAP measurement similar to asset retirement obligations. And our AFFO calculation, it is an item that we do use to reconcile, again it's a non-cash item like depreciation, amortization. Do you want to add anything?
Unidentified Speaker --
Yeah. Marci, on on the lease accounting of $11 million, I'll grab a new contract currently (inaudible) and as release can be wealthy, so under revenue we have to capitalize, install cost and for non-purposes we would roll-out $11 million in the credit from direct labor throughout the years like probably over 10 months, not 10 months is the average life of our content, so it's a onetime event of our revenue portfolio, which change a lot, but we're treating it as non-cash for AFFO. So we think that non-Fairway adjustment has any effect in AFFO for the year.
Marci Ryvicker -- Wolfe Research, LLC -- Analyst
Got it.
Unidentified Speaker --
On the Fairway is strictly related to the fact that the direct company did elect REIT status in 2018. They are going to select in 2019 and when they do, they have to write-off deferred tax liability similarly like we did it, So that we are estimating between $15 million and $20 million will be exact benefit in the period their elect REIT status but (Technical Difficulty) accounting is now over and this is the way translating elect REIT status in 2019.
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
And just to clarify, none of these, charges or benefits will affect our EBITDA. Our EBITDA will be accounted for as we have always accounted for so it will be comparative apples-to-apples quarter-over-quarter, year-over-year for 2019.
Marci Ryvicker -- Wolfe Research, LLC -- Analyst
Thank you so much.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Eric Handler with MKM Partners.
Eric Handler -- MKM Partners -- Analyst
Good morning. Thank you very much for the question. I wondered if you could talk a little bit about how your acquisition pipeline is shaping up for 2019?
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
So we have about $240 million under various stages of agreement from under letter agreements actually under APA teed up for this year so it's going to be another active year in my opinion. You'll note just for to highlight that we raised $250 million in a fairly attractive high yield tack-on to one of our existing notes. It's for purposes of recharging our revolver, so that we would have the capacity to take care of the opportunities as they come in this year, but as of right now that's what it looks like and they are all very attractive and we certainly have the power to do it.
Marci Ryvicker -- Wolfe Research, LLC -- Analyst
Great. Thank you very much.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Jason Bazinet with Citi.
Jason Bazinet -- Citigroup Inc. -- Analyst
I think it was maybe four years ago, you all used to give sort of utilization and the rate. And if I remember correctly, if you win in the sort of the full economic cycle, if things got weak, utilization drop and pricing dropped and utilization came back and pricing came back and sort of the last chapter of the cycle. You guys put up just such good numbers. I was wondering if you could give any sort of qualitative, I don't need the precise numbers, how much of what you're seeing here more pricing versus utilization? Thanks.
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Sure. Good question. Just refreshing memory on why we started doing it. We moved from monthly revenue recognition to daily revenue recognition about that time, Jason and it just created wide noise in these rate and occupancy figures. They made them non-comparative, but that being said, it's pretty clear to me that the gains we are making today are primarily rate-driven. I would argue that even though we are in the cycle, our occupancy is normalized and pretty much is what it is and where it needs to be and where we're getting the gains is in rate.
Jason Bazinet -- Citigroup Inc. -- Analyst
Okay, thank you.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from Ben Swinburne with Morgan Stanley.
Ben Swinburne -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Thank you. Sean, I know it's always hard to have a direct sort of causal relationship between adding digital capacity and driving revenue. But I'm just wondering, given the strength of the business now and the growth in digital boards, if you could update us on how you think about that supply of inventory impacting revenue. You seem to be seeing a lot of demand in the marketplace, but I know at the same time, I'm sure you'd acknowledge to make sure you're balancing that not putting too much supply that impacts pricing. So just any update on sort of today's marketplace and the ability to drive more digital into your footprint?
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Great. Yeah. Thanks Ben. Great question. So I would start with fact that, as I've said in the past. Lamar is highly decentralized organization. Yield management takes place at the local level. So you've got 200 some odd professionals that run our profit centers that are gauging local demand because they have their finger on the pulse of local ad spend in a way that I could never replicate hearing bad news. So it's really the some with them -- 200 folks that have finger on the pulse of local ad spend drive this decision on how many boards get growth. Another check on making sure we don't get too far ahead of ourselves is those local managers that local management is held accountable for how the boards perform. And so that's sort of your checking balance on getting it right.
And then finally, as I've also said before because we're such a dominant provider of digital out-of-home in most of our markets, we can modulate supply in a way that meets demand just because in unit places where we're the only large format digital provider. So if we put all that together, we feel pretty confident that we can match-up supply with demand. You can follow-on for a while, sometimes we don't get it right and same board performance will reflect that and we can pause. I think you start to do that few years ago. So again it's a decentralized exercise, it's not something that happens by mandate or dictate from Baton Rouge. It is a truly an exercise of bottom-up not top-down.
Ben Swinburne -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Got it. And if I could just ask, Keith in your control or a couple of quick other number questions. One, Keith I don't know if you have the political number for Q1 '18 just so we know what we're comping against for the first quarter and then if you don't mind, just going back to the items on your AFFO build, the one-time tax adjustment in the ASC 842. I think what's happening here is that net income is benefiting from these two and then you're adjusting them out from net income to AFFO. Is that accurate? Just wanted to come back to the explanation you gave before and make sure we understand it correctly.
Unidentified Speaker --
Yeah, that's exactly right. The $11 million will be in direct labor and the other will be in the income tax line for Fairway.
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
That's for GAAP purposes, that will not be reflected in our press release for the next earnings call as a plus to EBITDA.
Ben Swinburne -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Okay. Is there any revenue impact from these?
Unidentified Speaker --
No.
Ben Swinburne -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Okay, thanks.
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
As far as the political in Q1 of last year, it was irrelevant. Most of the -- I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but I can tell you that bulk of the political spend came in the back half of last year, third and fourth quarter, mostly fourth actually.
Ben Swinburne -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Yeah, OK. Got it. Thank you all.
Operator
Thank you. Your next question comes from Drew Borst with Goldman Sachs.
Andrew Borst -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Sean, I was wondering if you could give us some color on geographic revenue growth, organic revenue growth for 4Q and whether there are sort of outliers plus or minus in terms of the regions?
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Sure. So you've heard me say this in the past that perhaps the flyover states aren't doing quite as well. Happy to report Q4 with the Midwest region was actually pretty strong, their revenue growth was up 7.3% which is nice, slightly behind the Western region which was the strongest in California and Oregon and Washington and Nevada. They were up 8.2%. The northeast was up 7.1%. So it's just sort of a bicoastal phenomenon, but it was nice to see the Midwest have a really good strong quarter. The oil patch is recovering Drew a little bit. You're probably reading about what's going on in the Permian Basin in Texas and the like. Our Southwest region was up 5.8%. So again, that was a pleasant to see. The Atlantic Coast was up 5.4%, Central region, which for us is kind of Tennessee, Ohio around in there with a 5.4%, but the region that struggled the most was the Gulf Coast that's Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. Couple of things going on there. While the Permian has recovered for the oil patch, the gulf has not and there is still some struggle in the economy for long the Gulf Coast that rely on strong activity in the Gulf of Mexico.
Andrew Borst -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Was that Gulf region still positive or was actually declining?
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Yes, still positive. It was 0.3%, up 0.3% (Technical Difficulty) performance, but the rest of the regions were quite strong.
Andrew Borst -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Yes. Seems pretty broad based with the exception of the gulf and maybe the oil patch a little bit. Another question I have for you. The CapEx guidance of $128 million. I know that's a little bit higher than you guys have been doing in the past. Could you explain maybe why it's ticking up a little bit this year?
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Sure. Well, digital, we're budgeting to put up $250 million, which is more than the last year's $220 million. So sum of it is that digital goal that we have, obviously if we don't give them all in the air, we won't be spending as much on that. The maintenance CapEx is a little bit higher than the previous couple of years, we have a 2008-2009 vintage digital rollout that is now leading replacement. So a little bit is falling into that, I would say those are the primary drivers.
Andrew Borst -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Okay. And then just lastly, can you remind us how much visibility you have into full year revenue. I think in the past you used to talk about maybe somewhere around a quarter of the full-year revenue maybe being sort of booked, you have visibility on is that kind of what you have at this point for '19?
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
We're actually as we closed out January was right at 50% booked to that goal.
Andrew Borst -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Okay. That's great. And that's pretty consistent from prior years?
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Yeah. That for the last five, six years, it's been right around 50% as we close out January and that's we can take a real good snapshot of how the year is going to turn out. If I go back further in time, go back maybe 16 years that number used to be around, I'd say 65% would be booked, but a greater percentage of our contracts back then were 12 months. And as the great recession cycled through we that leaner and meaner product customers had get a shorter notice and quicker turnarounds and that number started up 50 and it stayed there really I'd say since the great recession.
Andrew Borst -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
Okay, great. Appreciate the color. Thanks so much.
Operator
Thank you. Our next question comes from George Smith with Davenport Asset Management.
George Smith -- Davenport Asset Management -- Analyst
Hey, good morning. You guys seem to have momentum right now that a lot of other mediums do not and I am trying to figure out this is just general economic strength or if you're seeing renewed interest in the category given disruption that we're seeing elsewhere or do you sense that they are even new types of buyers coming into the medium, maybe driven by digital or organic disruption we're seeing in other areas?
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Great question. So let me start by just saying that one of the things it's driving at home is the fundamental fact that our audience is growing. More people are spending more time in their companies than ever before. They are spending more time out of home, they are interacting with our medium more than ever before. So kind of starts there and that other local media that are struggling with our audience, their audience is either becoming fragmented or they're turning away and that's moving to our benefit to some degree. I can tell you that there are certain categories that are using us in lieu of other media that they used to use. I would point to for example in the service category that's attorneys and accountants and the like that used to use the Yellow Pages, currently Yellow Pages don't exist and coming back and services quite frankly our fastest growing vertical right now.
Our digital platform is also making us responsive to the needs of advertisers in a way that is causing them to steer dollars our way. Clearly, amusement entertainment and sports is fast growing in our book and it's primarily because digital so responsive to their needs if they have time sensitive or price sensitive information that need to get out right away. They can use us in a way they haven't been able to before and I would argue that some of those categories used to rely on radio more because of the way radio to be responsive to their needs and as radio listenership dwindles, they are coming to us. So those are some of the factors that are resulting in out-of-home being a growth medium where a lot of other local media are struggling.
George Smith -- Davenport Asset Management -- Analyst
And do you see in discussions with some of the bigger buyers, are they generally making bigger buys or even broader buys in terms of geography blanket more of the country or any and as you know, the pricing is obviously going up, how about any change to contract duration?
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
We did have some large customers commit earlier in '18 further by in '19 and also by a little longer, but I would say that you need to keep in mind that we are intensely local, 77% of our business is local and that book is built by the some affect of thousand local account executives touching that 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 local customers. So it's really sort of that sum effect. So I would point more to, if other local media continue to struggle with their audience. It can only mirror(ph)a benefit.
George Smith -- Davenport Asset Management -- Analyst
Thank you very much.
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. There are no additional questions at this time. I'd like to turn it now to Mr. Reilly for closing remarks.
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Well, great. Thank you all for listening and thank you for your interest in Lamar. And as I mentioned in the press release we are looking forward to a solid 2019. Thank you all.
Operator
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. That concludes today's presentation. You may now disconnect.
Duration: 39 minutes
Call participants:
Sean Reilly -- Chief Executive Officer
Keith Istre -- Chief Financial Officer
David Miller -- Imperial Capital, LLC -- Analyst
Alexia Quadrani -- JPMorgan & Co. -- Analyst
Marci Ryvicker -- Wolfe Research, LLC -- Analyst
Unidentified Speaker --
Eric Handler -- MKM Partners -- Analyst
Jason Bazinet -- Citigroup Inc. -- Analyst
Ben Swinburne -- Morgan Stanley -- Analyst
Andrew Borst -- Goldman Sachs -- Analyst
George Smith -- Davenport Asset Management -- Analyst
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