Beasley Broadcast Group, Inc.

Good morning and welcome to Biddley Broadcast Group's second quarter 2023 conference call. Now, I will turn the call over to your host. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone. Today's conference call and webcast will contain forward-looking statements about our future performance and results of operations that involve risks and uncertainties described in the risk factors section of our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, as supplemented by our quarterly reports on Form 10Q. Today's webcast will also contain a discussion of certain non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of Item 10 of Regulation SK. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures with their most directly comparable financial measures calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP can be found in this morning's news announcement and on the company's website. I'd also remind listeners that following its completion, a replay of today's call can be accessed for five days. on the company's website, www.bbgi.com. You can also find a copy of today's press release on the investors or press room sections of our website. At this time, it's my pleasure to turn the conference over to your host, Beasley Broadcast Group CEO, Caroline Beasley. Please go ahead, Caroline.

Thank you, Joe. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to review our 2023 second quarter operating results. Marie Tedesco, our CFO, is with me this morning. I'm pleased to present yet another successful quarter with significant improvements in both SOI and EBITDA and continued double digit growth of digital revenue. Reflecting our proactive initiatives to reduce expenses and permanently reduce headcount in 2022, we delivered a quarter where expenses were down 4.3% year over year resulting in quarterly SOI growth of 8.5% and EBITDA growth of 16.8%. Overall, revenue decreased 2.1%, and while we saw double-digit increases in both digital, which was up 14.8%, and network, which was up 32%, these were offset by softness in both national and local spot advertising. As in recent quarters, national remains challenged and for the quarter was down 11%. There was also softness on the local side with local spot down 3%. And this was a result of a soft local agency market with the local direct market being relatively flat. Looking more closely at the year over year costs, second quarter 22 had two events in our Tampa market, which did not return in second quarter 23. as well as company-wide political revenue of approximately $513,000 net of agency commission. Excluding those events and political revenue from the previous year, our revenue would have been flat year over year. Now, moving to the sports betting category, we recorded $3.4 million in the quarter. That's up 9.7% from the prior year, and sports betting represented 5.4% of total revenue for the quarter. Our growth in sports betting came from a surge in spending in Boston, which generated 1.5 million this quarter versus 170,000 in the prior year second quarter. We expect sports betting in Boston to remain strong in both third and fourth quarters as we begin a new Patriots, Celtics, and Bruins season. Elsewhere, Detroit and Philly recorded combined sports betting revenue of 1.5 million during the quarter. Now the ongoing success of our digital transformation was again highlighted in second quarter as digital revenue grew 14.8%. And this represented 19.4% of total revenue. That's up from 16.5% in the year ago second quarter and up from 17.3% in first quarter of this year. Our digital revenue comes primarily from the following. Number one, our owned and operated assets, with content creation driving the larger increase. And this has a higher profit margin for us. Third-party digital is number two, which is primarily FBM, SEO, Facebook, and Google, and of course comes with a higher cost. And number three, web services, which we began selling late last year. Our talented sales team has been able to combine our over-the-air and digital platform offerings to deliver marketing campaigns and brand solutions that work for our clients. Our continued strong digital revenue growth has moved us to within a few basis points of reaching the bottom end of our goal of digital accounting for 20 to 30% of total revenue this year. Now, breaking down the quarter's revenue trends. April was flat, May was down 1.6%, and June, which was a bit more challenging, declined 4.4% year over year. And as a point to note, same-station revenue was down 3%, same-station expenses were down almost 7%, and same-station SOI increased 14%. With strong results and a somewhat cautious outlook, we remain hyper-focused on reducing our leverage by continuing to grow EBITDA and reducing our debt. We took advantage of our bonds trading below par and reduced our debt by 3 million at the end of second quarter. and we're going to continue to monitor the market conditions to determine when we should repurchase our bonds going forward. With that, I'm going to hand it over to Marie, who has additional comments on the quarter.