Urban One, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Urban One 2025 second quarter earnings call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. We will begin this call with the following safe harbor statement. During this conference call, Urban One will be sharing with you certain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or its future performance. Urban One cautions you that certain factors, including risks and uncertainties referred to in the 10-Ks, 10-Qs, and other reports it periodically files with the Securities and Exchange Commission could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those indicated by its projections or forward-looking statements. This call will present information as of August 13, 2025. Please note that Urban One disclaims any duty to update any forward-looking statements made in the presentation. In this call, Urban One may also discuss some non-GAAP financial measures and talking about its performance. These measures will be reconciled to GAAP either during the course of this call or in the company's press release, which can be found on its website at www.urbanone.com. A replay of the conference call will be available from 2 o'clock p.m. Eastern Time, August 13, 2025, until 1159 p.m. Eastern Time, August 20, 2025. Callers may access the replay by calling 1-800-770-2030. International callers may dial direct 1-609-800-9909. The replay access code is 3660282. Access to live audio and a replay of the conference will also be available on Urban One's corporate website at www.urbanone.com. The replay will be made available on the website for seven days after the call. No other recordings or copies of this call are authorized or may be relied upon. I will now turn the call over to Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer of Urban One, who is joined by Peter Thompson, Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Liggins, please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Also joining us is our... General Counsel Chris Simpson and Chief Administrative Officer Karen Wishart and our TV1 CFO Jody Dror. The earnings release, press release is out consistent with what's going on. Yeah, in the industry, it was a tough quarter. Albeit, you know, when Peter gets into the numbers, there are some adjustments that need to be taken into account that don't make the picture, you know, as dire. You know, one of those is a difference in the timing of our Tom Joyner cruise, which was in Q2 last year, but has been moved to Q4, and that's a big revenue number. And also there's a non-cash adjustment to the TB1 award, which has a significant impact on the downdraft on the EBITDA line as well. I think the big news, you know, is that we have revised our guidance for the year given the headwinds that we're experiencing down from the original 75 million which we had at the beginning of the year to a $60 million full year number. We have not instituted a second round of cost cuts, you know, and right-sizing as of yet. You know, that's something that, you know, we've focused on over the next 30 days and, you know, looked at Institute by the end of Q3, so it takes a step back to Q4. We, you know, have seen, you know, a bit of a moderation as I think you said last quarter in our TV business. Actually that's a business that is doing better than we originally had budgeted but the radio and the digital business and media in particular are undergoing significant headwinds. So with that I'm going to let Peter take you through the details and then we'll open it up for Q&A and talk about

This is in more detail. Thanks, Alfred. I'll just quickly run us through the numbers. So consolidated net revenue is approximately $91.6 million, down 22.2% year-over-year from the three-month end of June 30, 2025. Net revenue for the radio broadcast segment was $36.7 million, a decrease of 12.6% year-over-year. Excluding political, net revenue was down 10.3% year-over-year. According to Miller Kaplan, our local advertising sales were down 5.6% against a market that was down 11%. Our national ad sales were down 23.6% against a market that was down 13.1%. Our largest ad category was services, which was up 23.4%. It was driven by legal firms and legal services. Financial was also up 11.3%, and all of the other major categories were down. Net revenue for REACH media segment was $5.3 million in the second quarter, down 71.9% from the prior year, and adjusted EBITDA for REACH was a loss of $1.7 million for the quarter. Tom joined a cruise event, as Alfred said, was in the second quarter of 2024, and generated $9.6 million in revenue in Q2 last year. This year is gonna be held in Q4, so you have a revenue and a profit timing difference there for the quarter. Aside from the absence of the cruise revenue, client attrition and lower average unit rates drove the network advertising revenue decline. Now revenues for the digital segment were down 27.1%, Q2 at $10.3 million. The decline was driven by the loss of an exclusive third-party audio streaming deal. So that impacted us by $1.6 million of revenue, Direct and indirect digital sales were down by $1.2 million. Just at EBITDA, it was a loss of $0.1 million compared to a profit of $2.7 million last year. We recognized approximately $40.1 million of revenue from our cable television segment during the quarter, a decrease of 7.5%. Cable TV advertising revenue was down 4.2%. Total day delivery declined 12.5% for persons 25 to 54% and that was offset by an increase in CTV and third-party platform revenue share. Cable TV affiliate revenue is down 11.7%, driven by subscriber churn, which was partially offset by an increase in subscriber rate and the launch of Now TV. Cable subscribers for TV1, as measured by Nielsen, finished the second quarter at 34.3 million, compared to 35.6 million at the end of Q1, Clio TV had 33.7 million Nissan subscribers. Operating expenses, excluding depreciation and amortization, stock-based compensation and impairments of goodwill and intangible assets, decreased to approximately $78.1 million for the quarter, a decrease of 16.3% from the prior year. The overall decrease in operating expenses was primarily due to the absence of the Reach Cruise event, which had $8.4 million of expenses in the second quarter of last year. Other notable expense decreases include corporate professional fees, overall payroll expenses, and cable TV advertising expense. A non-cash credit of $6.2 million was included in the prior year expenses for the reduction in the value of the CEO's TV1 award. And that compares to a charge of $0.7 million, which was included in this year's second quarter total. So that caused an unfavorable variance of $6.9 million year over year, which was non-cash. Normalizing for this, adjusted EBITDA was down $8 million year over year. And further adjusting for the timing of the Tom Joyner fantastic voyage, EBITDA was down approximately $7 million year over year. Radio operating expenses were down 7.8% or $2.5 million, driven by lower employee compensation and fewer station event expenses. Reach operating expenses were down by 55% due to the absence of a cruise event. Operating expenses in the digital segment were down 8.4%, driven by lower employee compensation. Operating expenses in the cable TV segment were down 19.6% year over year, driven by lower programming content amortization, lower marketing campaign expenses, and lower employee compensation expense. Operating expenses in corporate were up by approximately $2.1 million. Third-party professional fees were significantly down from last year. However, the non-cash compensation related to the TV1 award that I just mentioned increased by $6.9 million. Hence, the overall corporate expense was up. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $14 million to the second quarter, down 51.7%. Consolidated broadcast and digital operating income was approximately $25.7 million, a decrease of 25% year-over-year. Interest and investment income was approximately $0.6 million in the second quarter compared to $1.8 million last year. Decrease was due to lower cash balances and interest-bearing investment accounts. Interest expense decreased to approximately $9.7 million in Q2, down from $12.4 million last year due to lower overall debt balances as a result of the company's debt reduction efforts. The company made cash interest payments of approximately $0.8 million in the quarter, and during the quarter, the company repurchased $64 million of its 2028 notes at an average price of 51.8% of par, bringing the balance to $492.3 million as of June 30th, 2025. We recorded $130.1 million in non-cash impairments in Q2 against the carrying value of the FCC licenses in all of our markets with the exception of Baltimore and goodwill impairment for certain reporting units in the radio broadcasting segment and digital segment. Due to the decline in the forecast cash flows in Q2, continued to decline in the radio industry generally, the company prospectively changed the useful life of the FCC licenses from indefinite lives to finite lives in tangible assets, effective June 1, 2025. We recorded amortization expense of approximately $1.3 million for the three months ended June 30, 2025. Benefit from income taxes was approximately $21.4 million at The company paid cash, income taxes, net of refunds in the amount of $0.2 million. Capital expenditures were approximately $1.2 million for the quarter. Net loss was approximately $77.9 million, or $1.74 per share, compared to a net loss of $45.4 million, or $0.94 per share, for the second quarter of 2024. During the three months ended June 30, 2025, the company repurchased $226 of Class A common stock in the amount of approximately $369,000, average price of $1.63 per share, and we purchased 200,549 shares of Class D common stock in the amount of approximately $117,000 and at an average price of 59 cents per share. As of June 30th, 2025, total gross debt is approximately $492.3 million. Our ending unrestricted cash was $85.7 million, resulting in net debt of approximately $406.6 million, which compares to $79.1 million of LTM reported adjusted EBITDA for total net leverage ratio of 5.14 times. And with that, I'll hand it back to Alfred.