Exhibit 99.2
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MEREDITH CORPORATION
CONFERENCE CALL
MARCH 8, 2000
JENNY:
Good morning. I'm Jenny McCoy, manager of investor communication for Meredith
Corporation. With me are Bill Kerr, chairman and chief executive officer; Suku
Radia, our chief financial officer; Steve Lacy, president of the new
Interactive and Integrated Marketing Group, and Tom Ferree, our corporate
controller.
Bill will discuss today's announcement in more detail, with Steve Lacy
addressing the creation of our third business group. Then, we'll respond to
your questions.
Before they begin, let me remind you that we'll be discussing forward-looking
information that is subject to certain risks and uncertainties based on
management's current knowledge and estimates of factors affecting the company's
operations. Actual results may differ materially from those currently
anticipated. Factors which could adversely affect future results include, but
are not limited to, changes in advertising and consumer demand, paper prices,
postal rates and other adverse economic conditions nationally, regionally or in
specific local markets. A complete description can be found on page 22 of our
fiscal 1999 annual report.
At this time, I'll turn the program over to Bill.
BILL:
Thanks, Jenny. And thanks to those of you listening to today's call. As I
believe most of you know, earlier this morning we announced a number of
strategic initiatives designed to position Meredith for significant growth.
Our plans include four key elements:
First, we are creating the Meredith Interactive and Integrated Marketing Group
to complement the company's existing Publishing and Broadcasting Groups.
We've appointed Steve Lacy as president of this group, reporting to Chris
Little, who will add the title of corporate senior vice president and continue
responsibility for our Publishing Group. As many of you know, Steve has served
as our Chief Financial Officer since February 1998 and is being succeeded by
Suku Radia, who joined us on March 1.
This new group strategically aligns the high growth areas of integrated
marketing, database operations, and interactive media -- key drivers to
increasing shareholder value over time. We already are an industry leader in
integrated marketing in terms of the number of clients, the depth of their
activities and the measurable results we've achieved together. This continues
to be an area of tremendous growth potential. And we are putting a full-court
press behind it.
We believe the lessons learned from the Internet are about linkage,
connectivity and integration both for our marketing partners and our consumers.
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I believe the creation of a third business group is an important event in the
history of our company. It demonstrates our commitment to expanding our role
as one of the country's leading media and marketing companies and ensuring our
place as a key content provider in the new Internet-related world. And, for
us, this is not only about creating new stand-alone businesses, but also about
embracing the Web in the fabric of our traditional businesses.
Our second initiative is the expansion and acceleration of our Internet-related
efforts on a company-wide basis. This will involve several important
strategies, which Steve will discuss with you in a few minutes - strategies
designed to grow revenue and profits for our company.
To move forward with these initiatives, the company has committed up to $100
million for investments in Internet and E-Commerce activities, continued
development of our consumer database, and investments in strategic alliances
and partnerships. We are also planning to back our efforts with at least $10
million annually in marketing support through advertising in our magazines and
at our television stations annually.
Third, we are implementing a series of consumer marketing initiatives designed
to increase the profit contribution of our circulation programs. This involves
several steps that I will outline in detail following Steve's comments.
And fourth, we are closing certain operations that no longer fit our business
objectives.
Now let me provide some background on these announcements.
The 1990s were a period of outstanding growth for our company. During this
time, we built Better Homes and Gardens into the overwhelming leader in its
field, we launched eight subscription magazines, we acquired seven television
stations, we forged a market-leading position in integrated marketing, and we
developed the media industry's most comprehensive database.
These strategies of creating valuable new and improved businesses -- and
exiting those not core to our mission -- have yielded outstanding financial
results, with double-digit compound annual growth rates in earnings per share,
operating profit and EBITDA. Our return on equity, stock price and operating
profit margins have grown dramatically over the last ten years.
As you know, we've been articulating three major growth strategies. We are
focused on leveraging the power of our valuable brands; on developing content
across multiple platforms; and on extending our marketing competencies.
In order to fully develop these strategies, we are announcing today a series of
actions to accelerate our growth and value creation. Over the last few years
we have developed significant experience and valuable insight from our
important marketing partnerships and our 26 Web sites. We've also had task
forces related to interactive media and our consumer database working for quite
some time. Today's announcement is partially a result of their planning and
recommendations.
Let me now turn the call over to Steve Lacy, who will provide some information
on the creation of the Interactive and Integrated Marketing Group and our
strategies going forward.
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STEVE:
Thanks, Bill. First, let me emphasize that the key issue we are addressing
with today's announcement is growing revenue for our company. We'll mention
some cost savings later, but our No. 1 priority in undertaking this
reorganization and committing to these investments is driving top-line growth.
I'm extremely excited about this new growth opportunity for the company.
Meredith has a tremendous and unique set of assets from which to expand this
business -- assets that many Internet start-ups would envy. For example:
- -- We have well-established publishing and broadcasting brands that have
earned the trust of readers and viewers over the last 100 years.
- -- We have a wealth of content that is delivered in many formats - from print
pieces such as magazines and books; to television programming that includes
more than 200 hours of local news each week and the Better Homes and
Gardens television show; to our branded Internet sites.
- -- Our consumer database contains more than 60 million names, with information
on 7 out of 10 U.S. home-owning households - the most extensive among
American media companies.
- -- Our publishing and broadcasting properties reach 75 million consumers
monthly - providing a tremendous cross-promotional opportunity.
- -- Our Internet presence includes 26 sites and a growing number of unique
applications to generate user traffic and registrations - critical for
revenue growth and circulation efficiencies.
- -- We have broad integrated marketing relationships with a number of America's
leading companies and brands -- including The Home Depot, Kraft and Nestle
and many others.
We are encouraged by our progress in integrating our resources to better meet
customer needs. Once again, this business re-alignment provides a sharper
focus on revenue growth -- a key factor in increasing shareholder value.
This brings us to what Bill described as the second element of today's
announcement: an expansion and acceleration of our Internet-related efforts on
a company-wide basis. Several strategies are involved.
First, we will create the premiere home and family Internet site, including the
development of vertical portals around our core content areas of decorating,
food, home improvement and remodeling. Employing a modular architecture, we
will use our flagship site -- Better Homes and Gardens.com -- as our launch
platform, with branded content available for our other publishing and
broadcasting sites.
Second, we plan further development of our 12 stations' web sites, including
their transformation into powerful local community portals. This strategy
leverages our already strong news and weather presence, as well as proprietary
classified applications such as cars.com, jobs.com and homefinder.com. A local
portal approach will expand our sites to include movie showtimes and reviews,
mapping, weather, live news and sports, restaurant listings, TV listings,
clubs, high school sports, community billboards and chat.
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Additionally, our stations are creating content for use in mobile web phone
trials, place-based video and by high-speed cable services. Our plan is to
expand these applications and transform the traditional TV broadcast model into
an interactive, digital community resource for viewers, advertisers and
commerce. We took an important step yesterday with our agreement to invest in
the iBlast Network.
Third, we will significantly expand our programs to reduce costs by shifting a
meaningful amount of traditional magazine circulation and renewal efforts from
the mail to the Internet. This links our Internet activities with the
circulation initiatives Bill will highlight in a few moments.
Fourth, we will expand our program of strategic alliances and equity
investments in Internet partners who can accelerate our development efforts.
And fifth, we will create and repurpose Meredith-branded content for use by
major advertising and marketing clients on the Internet.
Based on our Interactive efforts to date, we see many major opportunities for
revenue growth:
- -- First, the Web offers significant opportunities for growing advertising
revenue. This is the first new advertising medium in 50 years - and it's
real.
- -- Second, sponsorships and marketing partnerships are opportunities to
continue growth. As we continue to build compelling content and
significant traffic, along with a database of information and
registrations, we become far more compelling as an outlet for marketing
dollars.
- -- The third opportunity is business-to-business services. We expect to have
a large number of homeowners archiving their home information on our sites,
so we know how often they remodel, what they spend, and how they researched
their alternatives. Marketers rarely have access to information this rich
about consumer purchases, providing us with excellent opportunities to form
strategic alliances and partnerships.
- -- Fourth, selected custom online publishing has been for us - and will
continue to be - an important source of revenue.
- -- And fifth, e-commerce opportunities also have significant revenue
potential. We believe that external e-commerce is a natural for sites in
home, food, and, perhaps most immediately, local classified advertising -
particularly used car sales and local auction opportunities.
Let me now turn the call back to Bill, who will describe the remaining elements
of today's announcement.
BILL:
Thanks, Steve. As I indicated at the outset, the third component of today's
announcement is a series of consumer marketing initiatives to shift our
circulation mix and increase the profit margin from our circulation efforts.
Let me provide some detail.
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First, as Steve indicated, we will expand our Internet-based programs to
encourage more consumers to use the Web to subscribe to and renew Meredith
magazines. Moving subscriptions to the Web has the potential to dramatically
increase our circulation margins, as it eliminates mailing costs related to our
subscription acquisition efforts. Across our magazines, we will mail about 60
million pieces in fiscal 2000. Even small share shifts can have a significant
profit impact.
We're encouraged by activity in this area. While absolute numbers are still
small, our rate of online-generated subscriptions has grown 15-fold since we
began this initiative. Importantly, many of these subscribers are people we
would not have reached through traditional mailing sources. Many are readers
who we are capturing earlier in their lifecycle. This bodes very well for the
future.
The second piece of our circulation initiative is increasing the volume of
direct mail in the near term. There are two primary reasons for doing this:
- -- First, the continuing success and growing sophistication of our database
activities now make it possible for us to mail effectively to a broader and
deeper universe of names. As we've said in the past, Meredith relies much
less on outside sources to generate subscriptions than our competitors.
Still, increasing direct mail solicitations will produce better long-term
circulation economics.
- -- Second, we want to get ahead of the curve on the impending postal rate
increase. We expect, if history holds, there will be a flood of mailings
in the last quarter of calendar 2000. To avoid clutter that may have a
temporary adverse effect on response rates, we plan to accelerate our
mailing schedule.
The economics behind these steps are sound. However, the shift to direct mail
has negative short-term accounting implications. As you may recall, with
outside sources - such as stampsheets -- the cost of the mailing is capitalized
and charged against income over the life of the subscription. With direct
mail, we record these costs at the time of the mailing in advance of the
recognition of the income.
A third circulation initiative is to enhance our single-copy sales efforts.
Unlike many companies in our industry, we have seen an increase in revenues
from single-copy sales during the last four years. We recently secured more
than 50,000 additional magazine checkout pockets at major retailers, bringing
our total pockets at retail to nearly 600,000. We believe this will contribute
to further revenue growth and continued improvement of our circulation margin.
Finally, from a circulation perspective, we plan to grow revenue by increasing
the frequencies and/or rate bases of several magazines. We plan to:
- -- Increase the frequency of MORE magazine to 10 times annually and its rate
base to 600,000 from the current 525,000.
- -- Increase the frequency of Renovation Style magazine to six times per year.
- -- Raise the rate base of Family Money magazine to 525,000.
- -- Increase the frequency of Paint Decor from semi-annually to quarterly.
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- -- In addition, we plan to formally launch Hometown Cooking and Antiques
Extra, two new titles we have been testing, as regular subscription titles.
These moves, again, are designed to foster long-term revenue growth.
The fourth major thrust of today's announcement involves focusing our attention
and resources on those franchises that have the best growth outlook and fit
with our strategy going forward.
To that end, we will close Cross Stitch and Needlework and Decorative
Woodcrafts magazines effective with the July-August issues. We believe the
editorial talent and resources used to create those publications can be used in
more promising growth areas.
While not part of the strategic moves articulated today, we also have decided
to close Crayola Kids magazine with the May issue.
Crayola Kids is a well-respected publishing franchise with great editorial,
design and advertising staffs. Unfortunately, we have major strategic
differences with the Crayola Kids licensor - Binney & Smith - regarding how the
magazine should be managed, leading to a decision to close it.
We are very encouraged that the business strategies mentioned earlier will be
instrumental in driving shareholder value. However, there are some short-term
financial implications and I would like to spell them out.
As I mentioned earlier, we have committed up to $100 million for operating and
capital investments in Internet and e-commerce activities, continued
development of our consumer database and investments in strategic alliances and
partnerships.
We anticipate that incremental spending related to these activities will impact
fiscal 2000 fourth quarter earnings per share between 2 and 3 cents.
Investment spending related to the circulation initiatives I mentioned today is
expected to impact fiscal 2000 fourth quarter earnings per share by 8 to 10
cents due, again, to accounting rules that require expensing these costs at the
time of mailing rather than over the term of the subscription. One-time
charges for the write-off of nondeductible intangibles, severance payments and
other charges related to the magazine closings will cost between 35 and 37
cents in the fiscal 2000 fourth quarter.
We believe the overall impact of these actions will be in the 45 to 50 cent per
share range for the fiscal 2000 fourth quarter.
Looking to fiscal 2001, we expect our incremental Internet investment will be
10 to 15 cents per share for the year, while the incremental circulation
investments will be 8 to 10 cents. It's still to early for us to be able to
provide guidance on our operating performance for the fiscal 2000 fourth
quarter. As is our policy, we'll provide that information during our third
quarter conference call on April 19.
And finally, from a financial perspective, we have repurchased more than
550,000 shares to date in the third quarter of fiscal 2000, compared to 400,000
shares in the first six months of the year. At current market prices, we
expect our share repurchase activity to continue at an accelerated pace. We
currently have approximately 2 million shares remaining under existing
repurchase authorizations.
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Before we close out our formal remarks and get to your questions, I would
simply like to discuss the strategic objectives I presented at our recent board
meeting. They were:
- -- Strengthen and enhance our position as the leading home and family
publisher.
- -- Grow our significant broadcasting business.
- -- Build a leadership position in interactive media and integrated marketing.
In order to accomplish these three goals, we need to drive revenue growth.
It's the common thread running through all three.
As Steve and I reiterated earlier, we believe Meredith can marry the great set
of assets it possess with new technologies to produce revenue growth.
We have highly-coveted brand recognition in our core content areas of
expertise. While we have done a great job leveraging these brands to drive
revenue in the traditional publishing areas, there are tremendous opportunities
for similar growth over the Internet, on television and in the digital
spectrum.
We have the reach - 75 million American consumers each and every month and a
database with information on 70 percent of U.S. home-owning households. We
offer advertisers and marketing partners unparalleled opportunities to reach
people likely to spend money on their products.
We have great content - on both the Publishing and Broadcasting sides - that
can attract people to our sites and be repurposed for use by our clients. This
presents enormous opportunities for revenue growth.
We have existing relationships with top-notch clients such as The Home Depot,
Kraft, Nestle, Wal-Mart and many others. Every day we are finding new ways to
work with them to reach American consumers. There is plenty of room for
significant revenue growth here.
So, if there is one theme I would hope you take away from today's call it is we
are taking these actions fundamentally to drive revenue growth.
Lastly, I want to mention once again our long-term financial objectives that
you are so familiar with. We are committed to achieving over time:
- -- double-digit earnings per share growth;
- -- double-digit EBITDA growth;
- -- and maintaining a high return on equity.
We believe the moves announced today will be instrumental in achieving our
stated objectives and fueling a period of impressive growth and expansion.
Some of you will recall that Meredith was in such a position in the early
1990s. At that time, we performed careful analysis, established demanding
financial objectives and made important strategic decisions. The result was a
period of strong financial performance and stock price appreciation. We
believe we're again setting the stage for long-term success. We're extremely
enthusiastic about Meredith Corporation's future.
With that, we will be happy to answer your questions.
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