National CineMedia Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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August 5, 2024

There are 6 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good day, and welcome to the National CineMedia Inc. 2nd Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. And at this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Chan Park, Senior Vice President of Finance. Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon. I'm joined today by our Chief Executive Officer, Tom Lisinski our Chief Financial Officer, Ron Ying. I would like to remind our listeners that this conference call contains forward looking statements within the meaning of 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 as amended and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended. All statements other than statements of historical facts communicated during this conference call may constitute forward looking statements. These forward looking statements involve risks and uncertainties.

Speaker 1

Important factors that can cause actual results to differ materially from the company's expectations are disclosed in the risk factors contained in the company's filings with the SEC. All forward looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by such factors. Further, our discussion today includes some non GAAP measures. In accordance with Regulation G, we have reconciled these amounts back to the closest GAAP basis measurement. These reconciliations can be found at the end of today's earnings release or on the Investor Relations page of our website at operating results as they relate to the Q2 of 2024, which are largely similar to NCM Inc.

Speaker 1

Results. We are reporting NCM LLC's operating results to provide an accurate comparison to the Q2 of 2023 when we also reported NCM LLC's results, given fiscal year 2023 results were unconsolidated. Now, I'll turn the call over to Tom.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Chan, and good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our Q2 2024 earnings call. The cinema industry saw consistent momentum throughout the Q2 of 2024 as we entered into the summer. The box office brought in $1,900,000,000 driven by highly anticipated theatrical releases including Inside Out 2, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and Bad Boys: Ride or Die. Inside Out 2 earned the spot as the biggest movie of the first half of twenty twenty four and became the 2nd largest animated opening of all time, bringing in $469,000,000 in the second quarter alone.

Speaker 2

Inside Out 2 was also the first film since Barbie

Operator

to

Speaker 2

earn more than $1,000,000,000 globally. The first $100,000,000 opening in 2024 and Pixar's top grossing movie of all time. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes added to the success of its franchise, bringing in $168,000,000 16% higher than its last installment and finally the sequel, Bad Boys: Ride or Die brought in $165,000,000 with the 2nd highest R rated opening since Oppenheimer. Deadpool and Wolverine built upon the strong box office momentum from the last several months, taking theatrical movie going to new heights and boosting moviegoer enthusiasm. Although the lingering effects of the industry strikes reduced and postponed releases in the Q2, we were encouraged by the sequential improvement at the box office each month, Specifically, the 28% increase from April to May and the 75% increase from May to June reaffirmed that there is growing consumer demand for moviegoing, especially when the slate has broad demographic appeal.

Speaker 2

Inside Out 2 drew moviegoers of all the ages to the theaters, reminding them the joy they feel from cinema and sparking the success of many other films to over perform against expectations. Furthermore, June brought in nearly $1,000,000,000 at the box office, the best month year to date. We have seen the box office continue to accelerate in recent weeks with the massive success of Deadpool and Wolverine breaking numerous records, including becoming the biggest July opening of all time. We are highly confident that the box office will continue to build upon this momentum in the latter half of twenty twenty four and into 2025, as supply continues to normalize and with several highly anticipated films hitting the big screen. The box office from family friendly hits to new installments of franchise titles, cater to all demographics of moviegoers this quarter.

Speaker 2

Our core audience, Gen Z and Millennials, represented 70% of our viewership in the 2nd quarter with a cumulative reach of more than 30,000,000 individuals. Recent opening weekends of Inside Out 2 and Bad Boys commanded 51% 50% of the 18 to 34 year old age demographic respectively. So far this year, family friendly films including Inside Out 2, Kung Fu Panda 4 and the Garfield movie have had widespread success. NCM's audience includes these highly sought after groups with families comprising 58% of our moviegoers, ultimately expanding the reach for our advertisers. Gen Z comprised 40% of NCM's quarterly audience, demonstrating a strong 5.9 weekly rating throughout the quarter, 3 times the average weekly rating of the NBA finals and 10 times the average rating of the Stanley Cup finals.

Speaker 2

Additionally, over 45,000,000 of the hard to reach 18 to 34 year old demographic came to NCM Theatres, averaging a 5.0 weekly rating, almost 2 times the average prime time rating of the largest streaming platform. These trends are continuing into the Q3 as Deadpool and Wolverine sees the cultural spotlight, captivating young diverse audiences and outperforming Olympic coverage. With an impressive 20.7 rating over the 3 day weekend from the 18 to 34 year old age group, Viewership of Deadpool and Wolverine outpaced the opening ceremony by nearly 5 times, with strong ratings and an average consumer age of 30 comparing very favorably to broadcast average age of 63 and the largest streaming services average age of 41. It is clearer than ever why advertisers continue to turn to NCM. Before turning to the company's results, I want to touch upon some of the trends we are seeing with the premium video advertising marketplace, which is experiencing a multi year shift in spending away from legacy linear broadcast and cable networks.

Speaker 2

NCM solutions continue to compare favorably to the new ad supported streaming platforms given our demonstrated track record of delivering strong impressions and our ability to provide brands with impactful metrics. Due to these dynamics, cinema remains uniquely positioned given our track record of delivering hard to reach audiences at scale with synchronous viewing. Throughout NCM's differentiated and highly valued offerings, we continue to grow our client base across key national and local ad categories, demonstrating our ongoing attractiveness to advertisers who are following consumers to the movies in a shifting marketplace. Year to date, NCM has welcomed 11 new advertisers that have placed major cinema advertising campaigns. Additionally, our Silence Your Cell Phones courtesy partnerships were among the largest revenue drivers in our premium offering.

Speaker 2

Courtesy advertising was up 88% year over year driven by new travel and tech industry partners. Now to our results. NCM's revenue continues to significantly outperform both the box office and attendance levels, reinforcing the appeal of our offerings. Specifically, the 2nd quarter box office was down 27% year over year and attendance dropped 31% over the same period. While NCM's total This quarter approximately 78% of the 2nd quarter's national revenue was attributable to longer term upfront commitments.

Speaker 2

Additionally, the scatter market continued to grow year over year, which helped offset the impact of the attendance loss. NCM saw strength across several categories this quarter with government, travel and automotive categories leading the way. Advertisers in government and the travel industry including booking sites, cruise lines, airlines and hotels continue to rely on cinema to reach high value customers as government accounted for 17% of total NCM ad spending this quarter and travel advertisers comprised approximately 16% of total ad spending. Several categories also demonstrated meaningful growth, including tech, which was up more than 6 times year over year, insurance up 89% year over year and government up 84% year over year. Our strong reach across young demographics drove meaningful contributions from automotive, which comprised 13% of total NCM national ad spending this quarter.

Speaker 2

This quarter, we saw automotive and government initiatives focused on EVs in particular, intentionally turning to NCM to target that elusive 18 to 34 year old audience that NCM delivers. The Q2 of 2024 represented the 2nd best quarter ever for our platinum advertising offering, only trailing the Q4 of 2019 with sales up more than 15 times compared to the Q2 of 2023. Interest in this offering continues to broaden as advertisers from several premier categories including government, entertainment and dining all utilized platinum advertising to showcase their campaigns in the Q2. Furthermore, interest in experiential marketing is leading to new opportunities to drive demand as demonstrated by the recent Nerds Candy campaign. This national on screen campaign, which was developed in house by NCM's creative team, brought the first ever holographic activation to select movie theaters in major U.

Speaker 2

S. Cities, featuring a holographic nerds gummy cluster. Success in these alternative formats continues to expand advertisers appetite to explore non traditional longer form or experiential advertising solutions. Regarding partnerships and sponsorships in the Q2 of 2024, one of the world's largest airlines joined NCM as the first ever official travel sponsor of our U. S.

Speaker 2

Young Lions Competition, which is open to the rising stars of the advertising industry who are also aligned with NCM's Gen Z moviegoing audience. We've also seen an uptick in sponsorships during the Noovie pre show, including custom branded content from a leading insurance, automotive, beverage and entertainment company. As we've said before, NCM has been at the forefront of revolutionizing cinema measurements through our data intelligence platform known as NCMX. Year to date, 43% of our current sales revenue is directly tied to our advanced measurement capabilities provided by NCMX. The power of NCMX to prove business outcomes continues to pay dividends as leaders in undershared categories such as pharma and quick serve restaurants realize NCM's ability to drive measurable results.

Speaker 2

To share one example, a leading QSR brand saw a 27% lift in foot traffic at their stores with 42% of those visits occurring within 24 hours of exposure to a cinema app. NCMX is the most powerful data platform in cinema and we continue to enhance its capabilities. Our proprietary suite of digital solutions now includes cutting edge innovations designed to enhance a brand's message before, during and after the movies. This includes introducing reminder messaging via NCMx Boomerang, NCM's new exclusive QR code enhancement product, moviegoer retargeting and the largest programmatic cinema capabilities in the industry, all powered by the most extensive Movie Gover database available. When a Movie Gover scans the QR code displayed in theaters, it will enable them to receive a text, email or calendar reminder to visit the respective advertisers website after the movie, increasing engagement and driving outcomes.

Speaker 2

We have already launched our first two campaigns with a leading automotive company and a global quick serve restaurant and we are excited for what is to come in the future. Additionally, this quarter, NCM announced the integration of its cinema audience data into the Nielsen all minute respondent level data, also known as AMRLD. Through this integration, agency decision makers will be able to compare cinemas effectiveness to other mediums further proving it is the premier platform for storytelling with the most attentive audience in the media. As a leader in the premium video advertising marketplace, we are excited for advertisers to see firsthand why we are positioned to reach sought after audiences. Looking ahead, we are focusing on new and innovative client solutions.

Speaker 2

Interest in our recently launched on screen programmatic offering surged in the 2nd quarter, unlocking new demand channels for NCM, including first time deals with leading brands in CPG, retail and automotive with expansions across other categories including government, tech and travel. As we continue to expand our programmatic reach, we expect it will drive sustainable business revenues for NCM. Specifically, this June was our highest grossing month for our onscreen programmatic offering since launching in February, including our largest deal to date and our 1st programmatic guaranteed deal with a leading automotive company. Programmatic's launch introduced a new option for advertisers who have not had historically purchased cinema directly, given NCM access to new agency buyers and parts of client budgets that were previously unavailable to us. Both private and programmatic guarantee deals have expanded NCM's client base by tapping into budgets earmarked for programmatic initiatives.

Speaker 2

During Q2, NCM had 44 unique advertisers across our on screen and in lobby programmatic offerings. As we look to the remainder of the year, there are more than a dozen programmatic deals in the pipeline and we're seeing momentum across scatter businesses as well. We're always exploring new paths to expand our pipeline and are actively working to integrate programmatic with additional platforms to further increase our coverage and provide enhanced solutions to our clients. Through our self serve offering, we are continuing to redefine the movie experience for advertisers through sponsored content, alternative distributions and experiential activations. For those unfamiliar with our self serve offering, it's the 1st fully automated self serve solution in cinema advertising that empowers local and regional companies to plan, buy, schedule and create their ads to run-in the big screen.

Speaker 2

In the second quarter, our self serve offering had 44 unique advertisers and we saw an uptick in all the aspects of the offering compared to the Q1 of 2024, with orders up 157% and sales up 141% quarter over quarter. Since its initial testing, our self serve program has delivered significant growth quarter over quarter and we expect it to continue contributing to higher commercial utilization across the NCM network. Before I turn the call over to Ronny, I want to take a moment to introduce the newest member of the NCM executive team. In May, Kathryn Sullivan joined NCM as our new President of Sales, Marketing and Partnerships. Catherine is a seasoned media executive and strategist, bringing over 3 decades of experience from PhD Media US, Omnicom Media Group, ABC Television and NBC Universal Media.

Speaker 2

In her role, Catherine is responsible for leading the development and execution of our go to market strategy to propel the next stage of growth across NCM's premium video advertising platform. Specifically, she oversees our sales and marketing strategy with a focus on improving utilization and expanding our reach as we advance NCM's continued transformation into a modern full funnel media solution. She has already started to make a major impact on NCM and we are extremely excited to have her on board at NCM. With that, I will turn the call over to Ronny to provide you with more details on our operating results and future outlook. Thank you, Tom, and good afternoon, everyone.

Speaker 2

2nd quarter saw the continuation of our strong execution and momentum in the advertising marketplace, driving results that exceeded our expectations for both revenue and adjusted OIBDA. We are pleased that our key fundamentals continue to improve with inventory utilization increasing significantly as advertising revenue per attendee reached $0.56 ahead of 2019 and significantly surpassing 2023 levels. In fact, this marks the highest second quarter advertising revenue per attendee since 2017. This was achieved through our focus on improving inventory management as impressions sold per attendee was up 27% year over year, while slightly increasing pricing. NCM LLC's total revenue for the 2nd quarter was 54,700,000 dollars exceeding our revenue guidance of $49,500,000 to 51,500,000 Total revenue for the quarter declined 15% year over year due to the decline in attendance and the contracted decline in beverage revenue, which was offset by improved per patron monetization.

Speaker 2

In fact, when excluding beverage revenue, total advertising revenue declined only 11% year over year despite a 31% decline in attendance. National advertising revenue was 41,700,000 dollars down 6% due to the drop in attendance over the same period, offset by significant 37% increase in revenue per attendee. The growth in per attendee monetization was a result of a 27% year over year increase in national advertising utilization as well as a 5% year over year increase in CPMs in the Q2 of 2024. Additionally, this quarter's national revenue per attendee of $0.45 was the highest 2nd quarter national revenue per attendee since 2016. Local and regional advertising revenue was $9,800,000 down compared to $13,400,000 the previous year.

Speaker 2

The decrease in local and regional advertising revenue was primarily attributable to the decrease in attendance. However, the local and regional team continue to focus on the monetization of its inventory and recorded a revenue per attendee of $0.11 for the Q2 of 2024, which was slightly ahead of both 2023 and 2019. Turning to the categories, we experienced increased activity in average deal size within apparel, technology and automotive. Local and regional also saw growing demand for its new programmatic offering. While still small, revenue for the Q2 exceeded expectations and continues to gain momentum.

Speaker 2

Beverage revenue derived from the ESA party's beverage agreement decreased 3,500,000 to $3,200,000 compared to the prior year. This decrease was due to the termination of the Regal ESSA in July of 2023 and the resulting discontinuation of their beverage revenue, combined with a decrease in the remaining ESA parties' attendance year over year. Turning to our expenses. 2nd quarter total operating expenses were $64,000,000 down 4% versus the same period last year. Excluding one time items, depreciation, amortization and non cash share based compensation, our adjusted operating expenses for the Q2 of 2024 were $47,100,000 down 9% year over year.

Speaker 2

The decline in adjusted operating The decline in adjusted operating expenses was driven by an 11% decline in theater access fees and affiliate expenses from lower attendance offset by higher per attendee fees. In addition, adjusted SG and A expenses of $20,300,000 were down 7% compared to the same period last year. The decrease in SG and A expenses was driven by 5% year over year reduction in personnel expenses as we continue to benefit from the $5,500,000 annual cost savings plan we executed at the start of the year. We are currently on track to achieve the full cost savings for the year. 2nd quarter adjusted OIBDA excluding non cash charges and one time items was $7,600,000 down compared to $12,500,000 in the same period the previous year, but considerably exceeding our guidance range of $3,500,000 to $4,500,000 Again, the decline in adjusted OIBDA was related to the 15% year over year decline in revenue and offset by 9% decline in adjusted operating expenses.

Speaker 2

Unlevered free cash flow for the 2nd quarter improved significantly to $6,700,000 compared to $900,000 in the same quarter the prior year, which reflected the absence of the restructuring expenses in the prior year. Year to date, NCM LLC's total revenue is $92,100,000 compared to $99,300,000 in the previous year. National advertising revenue increased 7% due to a 40% increase in national advertising utilization in the 6 months ended June 27, 2024 compared to the same period in the prior year. Local and regional advertising revenue decreased by 30% largely due to the lingering effects of the 2023 rider and after strike. NCM's adjusted OIBDA year to date is $1,900,000 compared to $1,600,000 the previous year.

Speaker 2

Turning to our consolidated balance sheet. At the end of the second quarter, the company had $56,800,000 of cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and marketable securities compared to $60,100,000

Operator

dollars at the end of the Q1 of 2024,

Speaker 2

while total debt balance remained unchanged at 10,000,000 dollars On our Q4 2023 earnings call, we announced that our Board approved a $100,000,000 share repurchase program. Since the launch of this program, we have repurchased nearly 2,100,000 shares for $9,800,000 at an average share price of $4.78 This also includes the redemption of Cinemark's common membership units of approximately 130,000 shares. We plan to continue opportunistically repurchasing shares at prevailing market prices over the next 3 years, while also strategically investing capital in growing our advertising network through new innovations such as programmatic and self serve. Turning to guidance. For the Q3 of 2024, we expect revenue to be between $56,000,000 $58,000,000 In addition, we expect adjusted OIBDA for the Q3 of 2024 to be between 6,000,000 and 8,000,000.

Speaker 2

The outlook for the Q3 assumes a continuation of the attendance trends we've experienced year to date due to the lower slate count offset by our improved execution increasing revenue per attendee. Looking to the remainder of the year, there is a lot to be excited about as the movie slate continues to recover and generate momentum heading into 2025. And as we further deploy new products such as programmatic and NCMX to reach new clients. While industry strike related delays linger, production is fully up and running again and we are bullish about the resurgence of film volume over the coming years. We most recently witnessed the huge success of Deadpool and Wolverine and for the remainder of 2024, we are particularly excited about the releases of Joker 2, The Lord of the Rings prequel, Mufasa: The Lion King and Gladiator 2.

Speaker 2

2025 promises another set of highly anticipated films including Captain America, Brave New World, Mission Impossible 8, Superman and Avatar 3. NCM is uniquely positioned to continue to make positive gains in utilization and attendee monetization as we move forward and the box office recovers in the later half of twenty twenty four and into 2025. Operator, please open the line for questions.

Operator

Thank you. And our first question today will come from Eric Wold with B. Riley Securities. Please go ahead.

Speaker 3

Thanks. Good afternoon, Tom and Ronnie. Thanks for taking my questions. A couple of questions. I guess one, you talked about on the self-service platform, you talked about the improvements you've seen with that sequentially since launching it and kind of the 44 unique advertisers.

Speaker 3

Any way you can kind of quantify how big that is right now, whatever range you want to give? But then also, are you seeing with the usage of the SellTERS platform, are you seeing kind of the average window between when advertisers are going to buy their spot. Is that shrinking such that you're going to fill up inventory that would have otherwise been, unsold and they can be more reactionary or are you mainly seeing no change in that, but just they're doing it more on their own versus using your services as a little bit more of a cost savings or is it both?

Speaker 2

So a lot of questions just to unbundle there quickly. Let me try to answer the second half first. So both programmatic and self serve help us allow advertisers to buy inventory closer to the actual airtime. So that's a good thing and it creates a lot of efficiency as well in terms of just the resources that we devote to it. So those are both very positive.

Speaker 2

And I can tell you that we're doubling down all of our efforts on self serve and on programmatic. It's definitely one of the highest priorities we have both from an allocation of people and resources over the next 6 months. Can't give you any specific revenue or metrics associated with self serve just yet. I think given that it's relatively new, same with ProDigmak, we will be in a position over the next couple of quarters to provide more specifics on that. And I think especially with Catherine Sullivan joining us and all of her experience in programmatic, we'll be able to give you a lot of insights on that, Eric.

Speaker 2

But I appreciate the question.

Speaker 1

That's perfect. And then just my thanks, Tom. And then my last question,

Speaker 3

I know you're only at this point providing Q3 or 1 quarter out guidance, but maybe now that we're past the upfront meetings and you have a firmer sense of the commitments coming out of that, which will start in Q4. Maybe just give kind of a postmortem of those meetings, kind of how you felt coming out of them, maybe some sense of revenue increase as that box office starts to improve heading into next year?

Speaker 2

So I think the upfront is still an active negotiation. I think we're about halfway through it, Eric. So for this call, we're not going to put a number and update on it. We'll definitely be able to do it next quarter. We are actively in it right now.

Speaker 2

What you have noticed so far from the major media companies is not a lot of specific so far as those deals are just getting wrapped up. We're obviously very competitive in the upfront. It's an important part of our business. But it's probably going a little slower this year from a timing point of view than it has in the past. But I can assure you come next quarter when we'll have completed the upfront, we'll give you a lot of specifics on it.

Speaker 2

And as you know, we've always created a lot of transparency around our performance in the upfront and in scatter. So we'll do that next quarter.

Speaker 3

Got it. Thanks, John.

Operator

And our next question will come from Jim Goss with Barrington Research. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

All right. Thank you. I'd like to talk a little more about the you to talk a little more about the Perpatron monetization improving. Did you what did you say the current level of national utilization is? You said it was up 27%.

Speaker 4

And you talked about a 5% increase in the CPM pricing attributable to it. How wide is the variance of pricing between, say, direct sales and programmatic and self serve? Is it considerable based on when you buy and how you buy it?

Speaker 2

I'm going to let Ronny deal with the specifics and then I'm going to chime in more. So why don't you answer that? Yes, so a lot of the better monetization, if you actually look at the actual total advertising revenue per attendee, again, it was down 11% year on year versus the attendance overall being down 30%, 31%. I'd say, again, a lot of that is just due to the ability to sell more through per unit or per attendee and also better at utilizing our inventory versus what our advertisers or agencies have contracted to do. So what was and we have actually done those improvements over the last three quarters now.

Speaker 2

And that's why you see or that's why our impressions per attendee, especially on the national side, is up 27%. This is again, we're not utilizing pricing to drive better utilization because pricing is up roughly 5% on a year on year basis. It's literally just better

Speaker 4

I was wondering if you could talk about the any shifts in the audience demographics you've noticed to either your benefit or detriment and trends in the time in which during which they're witnessing your ads. How are they getting are the audiences arriving at theaters any earlier or later than they had before? And maybe you benefit a lot from having a lot of the advertising post to the stated showtime and maybe that's part of the improved situation as well.

Speaker 2

Okay. So demographics first, I mean the one great thing about the cinema business, particularly cinema media is the consistency of our young platform in terms of demographics. No one delivers the young 18 to 34 year old demo better than cinema. And that has been consistent and in fact growing over time. And in a world where every marketer is anxious to reach that demo, Jim, no one does it better than us and no one does it more consistently than we do.

Speaker 2

If you compare our delivery on that demo to any of the major media networks in recent times, whether it was against sports or the Olympics, we are clearly the best way to reach those people today in terms of an attention grabbing ad to a young demographic. So we're really happy about that. Remind me of what the second half of your question was?

Speaker 4

Well, I was just asking about the arrival times relative to when your content is on display.

Speaker 2

So we do a good job monitoring this on a regular basis. The actual arrival times has been consistent for people for the last 2 years. And as you know, we have created a lot of inventory in almost every exhibitor in post Showtime advertising as well as platinum. But moviegoing ever since reserved seating has been entrenched has not really changed that much over the last 3 or 4 years. So the arrival times are what they are and clearly we were monitoring that for a long time.

Speaker 2

So we found a way to deliver the vast majority of that inventory in post shelling and platinum and we'll continue to keep doing that.

Speaker 4

And I guess the other part of that was when you shifted to having a lot of the advertising post the stated Showtime, has that effectively been effective in terms of increasing the viewership of your ants?

Speaker 2

Yes, it has, definitely. Remember, we did that back in 2019 in Q4. So it's been going on for a relatively long period of time. And we've seen a consistent growth in the delivery of impressions based on that new platform that we created in the Q4 of 2019.

Speaker 4

Okay. Thank you very much.

Speaker 2

You're welcome, Jim.

Operator

Our next question will come from Mike Keay with The Benchmark Company. Please go ahead.

Speaker 5

Thanks. Hey, Tom, Ronnie, Chan, Kathryn, nice quarter guys. I guess just a few questions here. On the Q2 fee, I mean, I heard your prepared comments, guys, but obviously, Q2, I mean, despite a nice little healing process towards the end of the quarter was brutal. And I imagine that a tenant didn't meet your expectations.

Speaker 5

Can you just, I guess, summarize real quick what was it that drove the upside in Q2? And how we should think about, I guess,

Speaker 2

the Q3 guidance? That's a good question. It's a good question, Mike. And then we'll get to your other questions too. It was pretty simple.

Speaker 2

When you think about how well we performed despite the attendance being down, it was driven really by higher utilization, better platinum sales, slightly increased pricing, incremental programmatic and a more diversified advertiser base. So those combined is what drove the higher revenue per attendee in the performance, which was really impressive against a relatively down quarter attendance and box office wise.

Speaker 5

Good. That's helpful. And then, I mean, are those are you taking those trends into Q3 versus Q3 sort of kind of conservative again, sort of build back the case, Tom, like, yes?

Speaker 2

Yes. I mean, our priority is obviously in utilization optimization. Obviously, we want to keep pushing platinum because of the high CPMs and try to make sure we at least retain pricing levels or grow them a little bit. And more importantly, what we've been doing more than ever is creating more and more of a diversified ad base. We added more than a dozen new advertisers past quarter and we have many more coming in, in the Q3 and towards the Q4.

Speaker 2

We're optimistic about the second half of the year. 3rd quarter is obviously going a very tough comparable with the barbed and hymer last Q3, but Q4 looks really good. So the whole second half from an attendance box office point of view looks very good compared to the prior year. So I think we've got a good set of titles lined up with a really good performance of our sales team, particularly on utilization and our platinum sales.

Speaker 5

Yes. Last question, you touched on upfront, Tom. I don't want to say you sounded guarded, but you didn't give us a lot of details. 2, obviously, Box was for the most part doing all that couldn't have been helpful for you. You're a great salesman, but I mean Q2 was rough and all the the box started working and everyone's excited.

Speaker 5

So I imagine through that progression it helped Catherine and her team and you in the upfront. And so sort of maybe more color there and then how you think about this macro picture that sort of day now possible recessions. You could sort of walk through the resilience of the box office and media buyers allocation and maybe how that could impact your upfront?

Speaker 2

I think Mike you were asking about the progression in Q2, which started off obviously really slowly, but grew towards the end. We were overly focused on making sure that even in a down quarter that our utilization was higher. And I think our record platinum sales also was a testament to the sales team being able to sell in any kind of an environment. We've got a really senior seasoned team that knows how to sell in any environment. In fact, we even had prices up slightly, was positive.

Speaker 2

But I think the way we brought new people into this business, new advertisers, new clients, is the most impressive thing. Even in a quarter where the box office was down pretty significantly year on year. So it's really a testament to the company's experience and just aggressiveness in optimizing the platform. That's really made me feel really confident about the second half of the year.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Tom. Appreciate it, guys.

Speaker 2

Good to talk to you, Mike.

Operator

And this will conclude our question and answer session. I'd like to turn the conference back over to Tom Lusinski for any closing remarks.

Speaker 2

Okay. Thank you all for joining us today and particularly thanking you for your support of NCM. Heading into the second half of twenty twenty four with really strong box office momentum, NCM's differentiated and high value offerings position us for continued growth at the forefront of this industry. We remain focused on our 2 pillars of utilization and inventory monetization as we demonstrate our unique ability to deliver young hard to reach audiences at an unmatched scale. As we continue to assert our position as a front runner in the premium video advertising space, we are very excited for what the future holds for NCM.

Speaker 2

Given the strong commitments from the studios, early industry analyst forecast and buzz from medium consumer select, we are confident that 20.25 will be the true indication of the box office's ultimate resurgence. I'd like to thank the entire NCM team for all their hard work and thank our shareholders for their support. See you at the movies. Thank you.

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. And you may now disconnect your lines at this time.

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Earnings Conference Call
National CineMedia Q2 2024
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