Is CEO Mary Berner’s turnaround at Cumulus working? As she closes in on her two year anniversary in September, Berner sounds cautiously optimistic. “As our Q1 results demonstrate, we have arrived at a financial inflection point in our turnaround. We are now starting to see the positive impact those efforts have had on our financial results.”
Berner said Cumulus gained ad share in every month of the quarter, adding, this performance was accomplished in a radio market that was down 2-3% for the quarter. Berner also commented that Westwood One had a significantly positive performance in the quarter.
“It’s not a coincidence that the business had its best quarter in years just about a year after we brought in a single leader at the top who has a comprehensive view of and accountability for the entire network business. That perspective has not only helped us make considerable progress in rationalizing contracts, an area where we believe there are further opportunities still, but it’s also supported improved sales effectiveness. For example, in our business development effort which we began building last year in response to the challenged transactional market environment and which is now starting to bear fruit. We also see further opportunity for gains driven by the replacement of our network traffic and billing system later this year which will improve our visibility into inventory over time, allowing us to execute a much better yield management strategy than we can with our current systems.”
