Sinclair, Inc.

Good day, everyone, and welcome to the Sinclair, Inc. First Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and we will open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Chris King, Vice President of Investor Relations at Sinclair, Inc. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining Sinclair's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. Joining me on the call today are Chris Ripley, our president and CEO, Lucy Rudishauser, our executive vice president and chief financial officer, and Rob Weisbord, our COO and president of local media. Before we begin, I want to remind everyone that slides for today's earnings call are available on our website, sbgi.net, on the events and presentations page of the investor relations portion of the site. A webcast replay will remain available on our website until our next quarterly earnings release. Certain matters discussed on this call may include forward-looking statements regarding, among other things, future operating results. Such statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results in the future could differ from those described in the forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors. Such factors have been set forth in the company's most recent reports as filed with the SEC and included in our first quarter earnings release. The company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Included on the call will be discussion of non-GAAP financial measures, specifically adjusted EBITDA. These measures are not formulated in accordance with GAAP, are not meant to replace GAAP measurements, and may differ from other companies' uses or formulations. Further discussions and reconciliations of the company's non-GAAP financial measures to comparable GAAP financial measures can be found on our website. Let me now turn the call over to Chris Ripley.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Beginning on slide three, we're off to a solid start to the year despite the macroeconomic uncertainty all around us. Our total media revenue was in line with our expectations. Once again, we reported what we believe will be among the strongest core advertising performances among our broadcast peers in the first quarter. Total advertising revenues were within our guidance range, excluding the impact in the quarter from an acquisition by Compulse. Distribution revenues increased by $15 million year over year, and while subscriber churn moderated slightly, the improvements have not yet caught up with our guide, which led to distribution revenues coming in $2 million below our guidance. Media expenses were better than expected, driving adjusted EBITDA comfortably above the high end of our guidance range. Turning to slide four, our ventures portfolio continues to transform away from our minority investment holdings as we look to position the portfolio for more majority-owned assets over time. Ventures benefited from $10 million of cash distributions and invested $38 million in the quarter, including approximately $30 million for an acquisition by Compulse. Ventures' cash balance was $354 million at quarter end. After completing our comprehensive refinancing of SCG in February, we continued to carefully examine potential uses of Ventures Cash which may include potential share purchases or other shareholder friendly activity. On slide five, I wanted to highlight a key announcement we made last week regarding the hire of Jeff Blackburn as chairman and CEO of Tennis Channel. Jeff comes to us after a storied 20 plus year career at Amazon, where he was the prime architect of the company's expansion into streaming and sports, while also developing and building Prime Video, Prime Studios, Amazon Music, Amazon's advertising and marketplace divisions. He will lead Tennis Channel's strategy to expand its digital and streaming footprint and deepen audience engagement in order to position Tennis Channel for its next phase of transformative growth and long-term value creation. As the latest example of such growth, just this morning we announced the formation of a new business unit to operate a groundbreaking partnership with the ATP, WTA, and participating U.S. tournaments to create a unified opportunity to purchase a single, comprehensive sponsorship package that covers the entire country. This morning, Verizon was announced as the first sponsor sale with category exclusivity in the 5G wireless space. We are excited to have attracted a media executive of Jeff's stature, and we view the Tennis Enterprise sponsorship announcement as an example of the growth and long-term value creation that we're committed to delivering in the quarters and years to come. With that said, let me now turn it over to Rob to continue the discussion about our broadcast business.