Lee Enterprises, Incorporated

Welcome to the Lee Enterprises 2026 third quarter webcast and conference call. The call is being recorded and will be available for replay at investors.lee.net. At the close of the planned remarks, there will be an opportunity for questions. Participants accessing this call by webcast may submit written questions through the platform and they will be answered during the call as time permits. Any remaining questions will be followed up on after the call. A link to the live webcast can be found at investors.lee.net. I will now turn the call over to your host, Jared Marks, Vice President, Finance.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today. With me on this morning's call are Nathan Bekke, President and Chief Executive Officer, Josh Rinehults, Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, Joe Battistoni, Chief Revenue Officer, and David Hoffman, Chairman of our Board of Directors. Earlier today, we issued a news release announcing preliminary results of our third fiscal quarter of 2026. The release and accompanying presentation are available at investors.lee.net. As a reminder, this morning's discussion will include forward-looking statements based on current expectations. These statements are subject to certain risks, trends, and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ. Such factors are described in this morning's news release and in our SEC filings. We will also reference certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the tables accompanying the release. With that, I'll turn the call over to our Chairman, David Hoffman.

Thank you, Jared. Good morning. I'm excited to join you all again today and speak on behalf of the company. Last quarter, I spoke about Lee's next chapter, a company that is more focused, more accountable, and more deeply connected to the communities we serve. This quarter, I'm pleased to say we have continued to make meaningful progress against that vision. We delivered a very strong quarter, generating $5 million in net income and another quarter of adjusted EBITDA growth. I'm highly encouraged by the momentum we're building. Our results reflect disciplined execution across the organization, and they reinforce our belief that Lee is on the right path. Since our last call, we've continued to connect with our communities through our town hall events. Nathan, myself, and various leaders have spent time with readers, advertisers, community leaders and our own employees, reaffirming that local journalism still matters very deeply. Those conversations have provided valuable insight into how we can better serve our communities while strengthening our relationships with local stakeholders, identifying opportunities to grow readership and advertiser partnerships and ensuring our newsrooms remain focused on the issue that matter most locally. Those aren't one-time visits, but rather an ongoing commitment to listening, learning, and building stronger community connections that will support both our journalism and long-term success. Another theme I emphasized in our last call with at least transformation is more than just improving our operations. It's about building capabilities that differentiate us in the marketplace. and recently we've announced an important milestone that reflects exactly that. Since our last earnings call, Lee has entered into a long-term management agreement with Hoffman Media Group. Hoffman Media Group is the premier medium network for a fluent, influential trend setting and forward-thinking audiences and has built an impressive portfolio of trusted local media brands serving some of the nation's most sought-after markets. Like Lee, the organization believes deeply in the importance of local journalism and strong community engagement. What makes this partnership meaningful is that it represents an endorsement of the platform the Lee team has built. Lee has transformed itself by strengthening digital capabilities, optimizing operations, and building an experienced management team capable of operating complex, local media organizations. This agreement recognizes that those capabilities have value beyond Lee's owned portfolio. Rather than simply growing through ownership, we're now creating opportunities to grow through our expertise. It's another way to leverage the investments we've already made, expand our reach, and create value for shareholders while remaining disciplined in how we deploy capital. Just as importantly, This partnership reflects our shared commitment to preserving and strengthening local journalism. Both organizations believe healthy local news organizations are essential to healthy communities, and we're excited to work together to continue serving our communities for years to come. Before Nathan provides some additional detail on the agreement, I'd like to close my comments by reiterating how pleased I am with this quarter's results and the direction of the company. We continue to execute our strategy with discipline, preserve financial flexibility, as you'll see from Nathan's presentation, and position leave for long-term growth. I want to thank our employees across the organization for their hard work and dedication. Their commitment to our communities is what makes our progress possible. I just want to tell you that I am over the top impressed with our management team, and I'm over the top impressed with the results we had in this quarter. And as you may know, we did national searches to find the best people to run the newspaper and we found that those people existed internally and we promoted them. And it was a really a great decision as you'll see by these results. With that, I'll turn you over to our Chief Executive Officer, Nathan.