Clear Channel Outdoor Pops on Divestment Progress, Deleveraging Promises
Shares of Clear Channel Outdoor Holdings (NYSE: CCO) jumped 15% on Wednesday after the out-of-home advertising company announced solid third-quarter results and revised its full-year outlook. Clear Channel also made significant progress in divesting non-core assets and deleveraging its balance sheet.
Clear Channel's headline numbers didn't look great at first glance; third-quarter 2023 revenue grew 4.7% year over year (or 2.7% excluding currency exchange), to $526.8 million, translating to a net loss from continuing operations of $51.1 million (or roughly $0.11 per diluted share). Analysts, on average, were looking for a narrower loss of approximately $0.08 per share, but with a revenue decline of 0.9%.
Clear Channel has been busy deleveraging its balance sheet by divesting non-core assets over the past year -- starting specifically with what it considered its entire "Europe-South segment," which now meets the criteria to be reported as discontinued operations. The company sold its business in Switzerland for cash proceeds of $89.4 million in March, then followed in May with two deals to sell its businesses in Italy and Spain for a total of just over $69 million. Then Clear Channel completed the sale of its France business for 42 million euros just last month (with the buyer, Equinox, also assuming a 28.125 million euro state-guaranteed loan held by Clear Channel France).
Source Fool.com
