Even though there seems to be a glimmer of hope that one of radio’s biggest companies may be turning the corner, CEO Mary Berner said on the Cumulus earnings call yesterday that they have not crossed the finish line yet. “While we’re certainly gratified to share tangible evidence that our turnaround strategy is working, we’re also acutely aware that to maintain our momentum, we can’t relax our execution against our foundational initiatives.” She then provided an update on some of the companies key metrics. Here’s what she had to say…
On Ratings: “We maintained our ratings share outperformances versus the market in PPM markets through March. This marks 6 straight quarters of considerable PPM ratings share growth. For the four book markets, we followed on from a year-over-year growth in the fall ratings book with year-over-year growth once again in the winter book which was just finalized last week.”
On the Cumulus culture: “We view turnover as an important operational metric for us judging the health of — cultural health of our organization. Through April, we’ve attained a new low for total turnover, 22%, down from the high 40s in mid-2015.”
On sales execution: “Our sales execution initiative has certainly contributed to the across-the-board market share gains I mentioned earlier. It’s absolutely critical, given the unsupportive industry dynamics, that we capitalize on our tremendous ratings performance to the full extent possible. To that end, we’re devoting considerable effort to five sales execution focal areas, talent, training and tools, sales analytics, platform growth products and tactics and digital.”
On Expenses: “Our biggest recent success has been the speed with which we’ve been able to reduce expenses without negatively impacting the top line. In Q1 2017 alone, excluding the impact of actions taken in 2016, we executed nearly 40 distinct expense reduction efforts which resulted in nearly $5 million of expense benefit in the quarter. Thanks to these actions, we were able to decrease expenses for the quarter by $1.3 million, more than offsetting the significant contractual expense escalations that are built into the business.
