Want to own high quality billboard assets at a 3x+ discount to peers?  Stroer is a German media company with 53% market share of the outdoor advertising market in Germany trading at a 3x discount to its best comp (Stroer = 7.8x 2014, JcDecaux 10.9x), and a larger discount to US peers (e.g. CBS which just IPOed at 12x).  ~80% of EBITDA comes from their German outdoor advertising business, which we think is a phenomenal asset that is arguably close to on par with assets in the US, and better than JcDecaux's assets.  About 10% EBITDA comes from their billboard business in Turkey, and another 10% comes from a billboard business in Poland and a small online advertising business.  The stock has been depressed for some time, more recently due to noise in Turkey which is a relatively immaterial part of the business.  Ultimately, we think the discount to peers is unwarranted, and that continued stregnth in the core German business, as well as continued momentum in the online business, will eventually drive a valuation closer to peers.  When Stroer IPOed 2 years ago, it IPOed at a valuation in excess of JCDecaux.  If it converges to the valuation of JcDecaux, the stock would have to go up 60% - if the discount merely closes modestly (to 9.5x), we think there's 40% upside.  Management is well aware of the discount to peers and also very aware of appetite for these assets in the US, and expect them to more aggressively ramp up marketing to US investors in the coming months which, combined with continued fundamental improvement, should drive a rerating. 

By way of background, unlike the US, the bulk of Europe does not allow for private businesses to put up billboards.  Rather, the bulk of billboard / outdoor advertising assets are owned by municipalities and awarded through a public tender process every 5-10yrs.  This is the way the bulk of JcDecaux's business works, as well as for Clear Channel and others who have substantial operations in Europe.  Because the business is done through public tender, the process is more competitive than in the US and margins tend to be lower.  This is one of among several reasons why it makes sense for the European billboard companies to trade at a discount to US peers, who tend to enjoy higher barriers to entry.  In Germany, however, there are both public tender and private contracts.  Stroer has the vast majority of private contracts, with over 15,000 contracts with individual landowners to put billboards on their properties.  Contracts are 5-10yrs, with no rent escalators, automatic renewals, and right of first refusal to match a competitor if someone tries to bid for the contract on renewal.  Their private business, which we estimate is about 50% of German revenues but the bulk of profits, is a phenomenal business - many of their contracts date back to the 80s, and there has not been any material new entrant to the space in years.  Because there is no material #2 to buy, and because Stroer has already locked up most private landowners with long-term, first right of refusal contracts, it's very difficult for a new entrant to break in. Stroer acquired most their smaller competitors years ago in the private space, such that the market is now basically a duopoly between JcDecaux & Stroer on the public side, and basically only Stroer on the private side.  Stroer's private business consists primarily of billboards (in their billboard segment) and train station advertising (in their transport segment).  Stroer has a long-term agreement with Deutsche Bahn for all train station advertising throughout Germany. This includes the Frankfurt train station (350k passengers per day), as well as the train stations in all major cities, many of which have 100-250k passenger/day    To put this in perspective, Grand Central has 500k passengers per day and the Frankfurt airport has 90k passengers/day.  Unlike the outdoor billboards, which are almost all static / scrollers, the billboards in train stations are increasingly becoming digital, which has the similar favorable economics that people call out in us names.   As a side note, outdoor digital billboards have not taken off materially in Germany, in part because the billboards are much closer to the roads / where people are, meaning you need higher quality screens (read: more expensive) to ensure the picture doesn't appear pixelated.  Eventually, Stroer should have the same opportunity others do to digitize their outdoor boards.

The second part of the Outdoor business is the public, which is made up of 4,000+ 10-15yr contracts with local municipalities.  Unlike the private boards, which often times aren't in prime locations, the bulk of the prime locations in Germany are owned by the municaplities.  About half of Stroer's revenue comes from their public contracts, but these are materially less profitable.  Stroer uses their private network to subsidize their public network, allowing them to build out better density and use the prime locations to sell their higher margin public locations.  This business consists of a combination of public billboards, street furniture, and bus advertising.  The main competitor in this business is JcDecaux, who doesn't have a private network in Germany and thus often has trouble earning satisfactory margins in Germany V. Stroer who can subsidize their public tenders with their high margin private boards. After several years of infighting on contracts, Stroer and JcDecaux recently have started to play more nice.  In a recent large municipal contract, JcDecaux bid on the Street Furniture and didn't even bid on the billboards, and Stroer bid on the billboards but not the street furniture - longer-term there is clearly upside if Stroer doesn't use its might as much to buy market share, and if the two play together a bit more constructively, which there are increasingly signs of.

A few more random tidbits from our dilligence:

**Estimated by advertisers that Stroer touches 15% of the population each day, one of the only options other than television that can reach that many people if you want to do a big branding / awareness campaign

**Outdoor should take share from traditional media spend (magazine & newspaper), which is unusually high as a % of total spend relative to other European countries & the US As those media decrease in relevance and reach. 

**On the public side, a lot of the market share split between JcDecaux and Stroer is on a city by city basis - there are certain "monopolistic" cities where Stroer literally controls all outdoor advertising (between public & private), and others where JcDecaux dominates through their public tender biz (but Stroer still participates on the private side)

**One of the other big differences between Stroer's business and the US operators is their mix of local advertising revenue.  Historically, Stroer has earned the bulk of their revenue from national advertising campaigns rather than local campaigns targeted based on proximity to a certain shop or location.  The company has historically had 90% of it's business "campaign based" rather than "sign based" (e.g. exit 232 for McDonalds). The company is working this year on building out a larger local salesforce to attract more of this lucrative, stickier business.