Emerald Holding, Inc. (NYSE:EEX) Q1 2022 Earnings Conference Call May 9, 2022 8:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Hervé Sedky - CEO

David Doft - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Annick Maas - BNP Paribas

Saim Saeed - Berenberg

Operator

Good morning, and welcome to the Emerald Holding, Inc. First Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. During today's call, all parties will be in listen-only mode. Following the prepared remarks, the call will be opened for questions, with instructions to follow at that time.

Before we begin, let me remind everyone that this call will include certain statements that constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These include remarks about future expectations, beliefs, estimates, plans, and prospects. In particular the company’s statements about projected results for 2022 and 2023 are forward-looking statements. Such statements are subject to a variety of risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated or implied by such statements. Such risks and other factors are set forth in the company's most recently filed periodic reports on Form 10-K and Form-10-Q, and subsequent filings.

The company does not undertake any duty to update such forward-looking statements. Additionally, during today's call, management will discuss non-GAAP measure, which it believes can be useful in evaluating the company's performance. The presentation of this additional information should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for results prepared in accordance with US GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measure can be found in the company's earnings release. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded and a replay of this call will be available on the investors section of the company's Web site through 11:59 p.m. Eastern Time on May 16, 2022.

I'd now like to turn the call over to Mr. Herve Sedky, President and Chief Executive Officer. Sir, please go ahead.

Hervé Sedky

Thank you, Vikram and good morning, everyone. I'm thrilled to be speaking with you this morning to share our first quarter results, which clearly corroborate what we've been saying for more than a year, our business is back. Emerald's journey is a simple one. There are three reasons that make us excited about our future and our ability to deliver increasing shareholder value. First, we're returning to in sometimes exceeding pre pandemic revenues. While our business was obviously severely impacted by the pandemic, it's not coming back in a significant way. Our revenue is rapidly returning to normalize levels as our customers returned to our live events. We believe that roughly 25% of the trade shows we plan to stage in 2022 will likely exceed pre-pandemic revenues, which is a strong indicator for our recovery of our overall business. Second, our new products and services including events, content and technology, both acquired and organically launched, are generating additive, fast growing revenue streams that we expect will further scale our business beyond our pre-pandemic baseline. And third, we are generating substantial free cash flow, which at our current guidance level and share price represents a free cash flow yield of 14% on an as converted basis and based on our expectation of at least 70 million of free cash flow in 2022, notably before the benefit of any insurance proceeds.