iHeartMedia, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to iHeartMedia's third quarter 2025 earnings call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, we will have a question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Mike McGinnis, Head of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join us for our third quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining me for today's discussion are Bob Piven, our Chairman and CEO, and Rich Bresler, our President, COO, and CFO. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, management will take your questions. In addition to our press release, we have an earnings presentation available on our website that you can use to follow along with our remarks. Please note that this call may include forward-looking statements regarding our financial performance and operating results. These statements are based on management's current expectations, and actual results could differ from what is stated as a result of certain factors identified on today's call and in the company's SEC filings, including our recent 8K filing. Additionally, during this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release, earnings presentation, and our SEC filings, which are available in the investor relations section of our website.

And now I'll turn the call over to Bob. Thanks, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. In the third quarter, even though 2025 is a nonpolitical year, we generated just an EBITDA of $205 million, slightly above the midpoint of our previously provided guidance range of $180 to $220 million in flat the prior year. Our consolidated revenue for the quarter was at the high end of our guidance of down low single digits and was down 1.1% compared to the prior year quarter. Excluding the impact of political, our consolidated revenue was up 2.8%. Turning to our individual operating segments, the Digital Audio Group generated third quarter revenue of $342 million, up 13.5% versus prior year, above our previously provided guidance of up high single digits. The Digital Audio Group generated third quarter adjusted EBIT of $130 million, up 30.3% versus prior year, and the Digital Audio Group's adjusted EBIT margins were 38.1% compared to 33.2% in the prior year. And we're making continued progress toward our stated goal of achieving full-year adjusted EBIT margins in the mid-30s. Within the Digital Audio Group, our podcast revenue is in line with our guidance of up low 20s, It grew 22.5% compared to prior year as we continue to feel the flywheel effect of our number one audience position in podcast publishing, according to PodTrack. We believe we have the most profitable podcasting business in the United States, and importantly, our podcasting EBITDA margins remain accretive to our total company EBITDA margins. In Q3, approximately 50% of our podcasting revenue was generated by our local sales force, up from about 11% in Q3 of 2020. demonstrating the unique advantage of having what we believe is the largest local sales force in media with a presence across 160 markets in addition to our strong national sales force. In the third quarter, our non-podcast digital revenue grew 8% compared to prior year. Earlier today, we announced an exciting new partnership with TikTok that will bring TikTok creators into iHeart's ecosystem. This partnership will include a slate of podcasts from TikTok creators, a dedicated broadcast radio station available across the country, and expanded access to our live events, starting with a 2025 Jingle Ball Tour, which will deepen creator engagement across audio and video platforms, open new monetization opportunities through integrated sponsorships and cross-platform distribution, and reinforce iHeart's unique position at the intersection of culture, content, and scale. Turning now to the multi-platform group, which includes our broadcast radio networks and events businesses. In the third quarter, revenue was $591 million, down 4.6% versus prior year, and in line with our previously provided guidance range of down mid-single digits. Excluding the impact of political advertising, multi-platform group revenue was down 2.5%, and the multi-platform group's adjusted EBITDA was $119 million, down 8.3% versus prior year. As we mentioned last quarter, historically we've seen that the largest advertisers and advertising agency groups are a good indicator of what's to come, and we continue to see growth in the performance of the top 50 advertisers and the four largest advertising agency groups for both the multi-platform group and the total company. These results give us confidence that our plan to return the multi-platform group to revenue growth is on the right track. And what gives us further confidence in our ability to get the multi-platform group back into growth mode is that it all starts with audience. We have more broadcast radio listeners today than we had 10 years ago and even 20 years ago. Our challenge is one of monetization. A key component in meeting that challenge is to make our broadcast inventory transact like digital, unlocking a significant monetization opportunity for the company and which will greatly benefit our broadcast revenues. On last quarter's call, we announced the hiring of Lisa Coffey as our Chief Business Officer, and I'm happy to report she's already making real progress, including last week's announcement of our programmatic audio partnership with Amazon, which provides advertisers using Amazon DSP access to iHeart's vast audio portfolio. Our non-podcast digital inventory will be available immediately, and our podcast and broadcast radio inventory will follow in 2026. One of the essential components of our programmatic capability is the digital iheart audience database which includes the radio simulcast listening on our digital services this enables our targeting measurement and attribution tools to bridge between broadcast impressions and digital identity enabling broadcast inventory to transact in dsps alongside streaming video and display in essence making our broadcast radio inventory look like digital inventory it's important that we continue to grow and improve the proprietary audience database And part of our investment in this initiative includes partnering with third parties through non-cash marketing plans aimed at increasing our digital audience and engagement. And in turn, we provide meaningful marketing for those partners as part of this relationship. Looking at our cost structure, we're still on track to generate 150 million net savings in 2025. Rich will get into more detail, but I want to take this opportunity to announce that we have taken actions that will generate an additional 50 million of incremental annual savings beginning in 2026. As a reminder, we run the company with a relentless focus on maximizing the efficiency of our operating structure, including using new technologies like AI-powered tools and services. Now let me share with you what we're currently seeing in the ad market. We're feeling similar momentum to what some of the other ad-supporting companies have discussed. Right now, spending is holding up and discussions with advertisers are positive. At the same time, the government shutdown does add a level of uncertainty. This year continues to be an important one for iHeart. The company continues to make significant progress in the growth of our digital business. We're seeing important signs of improvement in our broadcast business, specifically in the strength of our HoldCo and our biggest national advertising partners. We're making progress in our sales monetization efforts, which we expect to have wide-ranging implications for iHeart, and we remain committed to our culture of innovation and efficiency. And now I'll turn it over to Rich.