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spk04: Your conference will begin momentarily. Please continue to hold.
spk24: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Urban One's 2022 year-end earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session and instructions will be given at that time. During this conference call, Urban One will be sharing with you certain projections and 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 July 7, 2023. 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 in 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 12 p.m. Eastern Time, 7-7-2023 on Until 1159 p.m. 7-14-2023, callers may access the replay by calling 866-207-1041 within the U.S. International callers may dial direct 402-970-0847. The replay access code is 801-9907. Access to live audio and a replay of the conference call will 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'll now turn the call over to Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer of Urban One, who is joined by Peter D. Thompson, Chief Financial Officer.
spk16: Thank you very much, Operator. And we also have Jody Drew, the Chief Financial Officer for TV1 with us, and Chris Simpson, who is the General Counsel of the company, is also joining us. Finally, our year-end earnings report in the middle of the year. Thank you, everyone, for bearing with us as we got through an unexpected lengthy audit. But we're Happy to report that the year, you know, ended as expected with us right on top of our year in guidance of $165.6 million of EBITDA. Leverage is below four times, which, you know, was a great outcome. And, you know, we indicated that that was our goal and that's where we landed. A couple things just to give you highlights before I turn it over to Peter. You probably also know and seen in the press release, we monetized our MGM National Harbor investment. We did that in April. It ended up being a fantastic investment for us. We invested $40 million of cash in the project. We ended up pulling that $40 million out in dividends over the length of time that we held it. And then our equity investment in the end is worth $137 million. So it's probably roughly a four and a half times our money investment. Why did we do it? We did it because we thought that their 2022 performance was, number one, a high watermark for the property. That was not expected. It was well ahead of where we had expected it to be. We also felt that given the macroeconomic environment and a number of other things, that it probably was not particularly likely that we were going to do better than that going forward. Things can happen. We don't know for sure. But that was our calculus. The third thing is that you know, on that $137 million, we were earning approximately $8.8 million of dividends, which is about a 6.4% return on the value of it, since a tremendous return on $40 million, but on $137 million, it's just a 6.4% return. And we thought that we could do better, you know, than 6.4% investing that capital in other things. And The first place we started was, even though we're not doing better, is with U.S. Treasuries where we're getting about 5% on that money. So the fact of the matter is we're not giving up a ton of current income right now, holding that in Treasuries, and we're sitting on a bunch of cash right now as we live through an uncertain economic time. hoping that, you know, the uncertainty actually moderates, feels like, you know, maybe there's not going to be a recession, but who knows. And we've got a number of things coming up where we may need to deploy that cash, you know, whether it's, yeah, debt, continued debt buybacks, which, you know, we haven't been doing, you know, particularly since we hadn't filed our financial statements, but I haven't checked in a minute, but last I checked, our bonds are yielding like 10%, north of 10%, 10.3%. So even that is a better investment than just continuing to hold the equity and get a 6.4% return. We are in the process of gearing up to run another referendum in Richmond for our casino project with our new partner, Churchill Downs. We believe that there is an exceptionally high likelihood that we will be running that referendum. We've got some public assurances by the Virginia Senate budget negotiators that a Richmond referendum or this casino referendum being blocked to potentially move to Petersburg is a non-negotiable item for them. That was recently in the news press in Virginia. So we've got some real support there. City Council has voted it out. We're at the Virginia Lottery now for approval, and then we'll go to the circuit court to get the referendum scheduled. Early vote would start September 22nd of 2023. Friday, September 22nd, on Election Day, would be November 7th. So if we're successful with the referendum, we'll obviously need cash in order to fund that. Although the partnership in Richmond is different now. We are not the sole equity provider at this point in time. It's a 50-50 equity investment with us and Churchill Downs. They're a great, well-capitalized company. The CEO is very engaged in this. We couldn't be luckier to have them as a partner. We also recently, I don't want to say recently, a few months ago announced the acquisition of four Houston radio stations from Cox Media Group. We expect for $27.5 million. We have also signed agreements to spin off two stations that we can't own because we'll be over the limit. for a total of $10.5 million. So we're going to be into that acquisition for about $17 million and some change. We expect that that cash flow from that acquisition will equate to at least $5 million as we step into it. So a very attractive multiple that we were able to acquire that once you factor in the amount of money that we've got for the spends. We also think that there are a number of other potential radio acquisitions that are out there. Right now, the radio companies are trading kind of like in the fives in terms of an EBITDA multiple. And so if you were to buy radio at a five and a half times multiple, you're talking about close to a 20% return, which is also better than our 6.4% that we were getting on the MGM investment. So there are a number of things that we think that we can do, you know, going forward that will ultimately net us a better return. So whether it's paying down debt, you know, at 10%, whether it's buying radio in the fives, you know, that nets you at 20%. Getting referendum one and investing in the Richmond Casino is another. There is a process going on that you guys have probably seen in the business press where Paramount is looking to sell the BET Media Group, which includes BET and VH1. Our name is never mentioned, but we are involved in that process with a number of other parties. Still doing our diligence on it. Don't know where we land, but we're engaged. We think that we have exceptionally complementary assets with the TV1 and Clio assets that could potentially create a lot of value. However, we remain disciplined from an acquisition standpoint. We're fully aware of the challenges that the pay TV ecosystem has. One of the reasons why we think that finding scale in this business could make a lot of sense as well. So we're doing our work and staying engaged on that. 2023 guidance. We are expecting 2023 EBITDA to come in better than our 2019 pre-pandemic EBITDA if you go X MGM dividends. So that's our goal. We feel pretty good about being able to achieve that. We're, you know, thinking leverage will continue to be below four times, you know, call it three seven-ish, you know, by the end of the year. And given the macroeconomic backdrop, I think we'd all feel pretty good about that as an outcome should that come to pass. So with that, I am going to turn it over to Peter Thompson to go more specifically into the numbers.
spk17: Peter Thompson Thank you, Alfred. Before we get into the numbers, let me talk a little bit about the delayed filing and the MGM restatement. Since the inception of the MGM deal, we've been carrying our stake in that as an equity investment at that cost. However, once the put option that we had became exercisable, we should have reclassified the investment as a debt security available for sale. So really it's a technical change in how we should have carried it on the balance sheet. And once you end up in that bucket that it's a debt security available for sale, you should then revalue it every quarter. And we didn't do that. And obviously, we knew what it was worth, and I think we've done a decent job of telling our investors what it's worth, but the put crystallized that. So the end state value of $136.8 million was known, but we had to go and hire an outside valuation specialist to appraise the asset for each quarter of 2021 and 2022 using multiple methodologies, which took some time to work through. Separate from this, but also contributing to the delay in filing, our auditors required additional documentation around the company's ASC 606 revenue recognition policies. And that required us to bring in a consultancy firm to write a bunch of technical accounting memoranda. We're not a big shop. We didn't have the resource to do that internally. And so we had to go and find someone to write those technical accounting memos for us. And then finally, there was significantly increased substantive audit testing around journal entries and other things as a result of a lack of reliance on internal controls that in prior years had been deemed sufficient but weren't this year. And all of that meant that it took many additional weeks of work to get the accounts signed off, which had been frustrating both for the company and the investors. I thank you all for your patience and support. I've been speaking to as many of the investors as I can just to try and keep people appraised of what's going on, and we appreciate you being patient and bearing with us while we work through all that. Turning to the numbers themselves, consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $31.7 million for the quarter, which was down 2.3% from last year. Full-year consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $165.6 million, in line with the company's guidance, and up 10.2% year-over-year. Fourth quarter consolidated net revenue was up 1.6% year-over-year. Indianapolis radio acquisition added approximately $4.2 million, and there was the absence of the beach cruise event, which generated $7 million last year in the fourth quarter. Normalizing for those two things, net revenue was up 3.9% or down 1.4%, excluding $6.6 million of incremental political advertising. Net revenue for the radio segment increased 23.8% year-over-year and by 14.1% on a same-station basis. According to Miller Kaplan, and on a same-station basis, our local ad sales were on par with the market at minus 1%, and national ad sales outperformed. We were up 41.9% against a market that was up 17.4%, helped by heavy political spending and also our corporate sales effort. We recorded $8.1 million in net political ad revenue, of which $7.2 million was radio, compared to $1.5 million in prior year, Government and public was our biggest radio advertising category for the quarter, up 97.6%. Healthcare was up 53.6%. Auto was up 86.3%. Retail was up 12.7%. And entertainment was up 8.9%. Services, financial, telecoms, food and beverage, travel, and transportation were all down in the quarter. Q1 of 2023. Radio revenue excluding digital was up 2% on the same station basis, or up 3.1% same station excluding political. Q2 is currently pacing down 5% excluding digital on a same station basis. We're down 0.9% excluding political. So we're holding well on a same station basis ex-political. Net revenue for Reach Media was $11.9 million in the fourth quarter compared to $12.3 million last year, excluding the cruise event. Adjusted EBITDA was $3.1 million, down from $3.8 million in the prior year. The whole year, adjusted EBITDA increased by 13.3% to $15. Net revenues for our digital segment increased by 24.1% in the fourth quarter to $24.2 million. The direct sales team had an exceptionally strong finish to the year, driven by continued demand to reach black audiences at scale and increased mid-term political revenue. Just to leave it at that, it was $1.9 million for the quarter and $21.8 million for the year, up 24.1% year over year. Our radio, reach, and digital segments, so our audio business, had combined Q4 adjusted EBITDA of $28 million for the quarter, up 12% year-over-year. We recognized approximately $49.7 million of revenue from our cable television segment during the quarter, a decrease of 8.2%. Cable TV advertising revenue was down 8.4%, with a favorable rate volume impact of $900,000 offset by unfavorable time invariance of $1.7 million, free video on demand, and $1.6 million unfavorable ADU burnout. Cable TV affiliate revenue was down by 7.4%, with a favorable rate increase of $1.2 million being offset by $2.4 million of net return, $650,000 of increased support. Cable subscribers for TV1, as measured by Nielsen, finished Q4 at $46.5 million, That's $43.6 million at the end of Q3. And Clio TV had $41.8 million for the awesome subs. We're having trouble hearing us. Oh, really? Okay. Sorry, I just heard that the sound quality is poor. We turned the air conditioning off here and moved the microphones around. Hopefully that will be better. We recorded approximately $2.6 million in investment income from our stake in the MGM National Harbor property for the quarter, up 30% from prior year. Operating expenses excluding depreciation, amortization, impairments, and stock-based compensation were approximately $104.2 million in fourth quarter to $105.6 million in Q4 of 2021. Event expenses decreased by $6.9 million due to the absence of the REACH cruise event, which returned in May of this year. Cable TV content amortization decreased by $5.3 million, and the non-cash charge for the CEO's employment award decreased by $3.5 million. Employee compensation increased by approximately $5.6 million, including incentive compensation across the organization for superior annual performance against plan. Revenue variable expenses increased $4 million, Travel, entertainment, and office expenses increased by $2.2 million. And outside services, including contract, talent, and consulting fees, increased by $2.5 million. About $3.3 million of those increased expenses were in relation to the Indianapolis radio acquisition that was included in those totals. Radio operating expenses were up by $4.8 million. The Indianapolis cluster add in just over $3 million of that increase. Expenses related to revenue increases such as sales commissions and bonuses drove the rest of the increase. Reach operating expenses were flat except for the cruise event. Operating expenses in the digital segment were up 36.9%, driven predominantly by variable expenses related to traffic acquisition costs, which were up $2.3 million, and ad production and marketing, which was up $2 million, and content and streaming music royalties, which was up by $1.7 million. Cable TV expenses were down $4.9 million, with content amortization expense down by $5.3 million due to some write-downs in prior years that didn't recur. Operating expenses in the corporate and elimination segment were down by 4.7%. It was a favorable variance of $3.5 million for the non-cash TV1 employment award charge, which was offset by increases in employee compensation, including annual performance bonuses, outside legal fees, third-party software license fees, T&E, recruiting and marketing. For the fourth quarter, consolidated broadcast and digital operating income was approximately $47.6 million, an increase of 7.9%. During the quarter, the company repurchased $25 million of its 2028 notes at an average price of approximately 86.4%, resulting in a net gain on retirement of approximately $3 million. An additional $25 million of the 2028 notes was repurchased in the first quarter of 2023 at an average price of approximately 89.1%, bringing the total gross debt balance down to $725 million today, down from $825 million at the start of 2022. So we've now paid down $100 million of the debt. Interest expense decreased to approximately $14.6 million for the fourth quarter, down 8% from last year due to the debt pay downs. The company made cash interest payments of approximately $625,000 in the quarter, including the accrued interest on the retired notes. and the semiannual interest payment was paid on February 1, 23. A non-cash impairment of $10.3 million was recorded for our radio market broadcasting licenses in Cincinnati, Dallas, Houston, and Raleigh, and also for our Philadelphia market goodwill balance. Provision for income taxes was approximately $3.9 million for the quarter. The company paid cash taxes in the amount of approximately $1.1 million. Net income was approximately $856,000, or 2 cents a share, compared to $5.3 million, or 10 cents a share, for the quarter of 2021. Capital expenditures were approximately $1.5 million. The company repurchased 13,577 shares of Class B common stock in the amount of $57,000. As of December 31st, 22, total gross debt was $750 million. The ending unrestricted cash balance was $94.9 million, resulting in net debt of approximately $655.1 million, which compared to $165.6 million of LTM reported adjusted EBITDA, gives a total net leverage ratio of 3.96 times. Pro forma for the Indianapolis acquisition, total net leverage was 3.91 times. On March the 8th, 2023, the company issued a put notice with respect to 100% of its interest in the MGM National Harbor LLC. On April 21st, 2023, we closed on the sale of the put interest. The company received approximately $136.8 million of proceeds at the time of settlement. During the quarter end of March 31st, 2023, the company also received $8.8 million representing the company's annual distribution from MGM National Harbor LLC. with respect to fiscal year 22. Proforma for the MGM put total net leverage was 3.21 times, including $145.5 million of cash receipts from MGM and excluding the LTM, just to be the for the MGM stake of $8.8 million. On April 11th, 2023, the company announced it had signed an asset purchase agreement with Cox Media to purchase a Houston radio cluster Urban One will divest two stations to comply with FCC ownership regulations. Transactions subject to FCC approval and is anticipated to close either late in the second quarter or early in the third quarter of 23. And until that time, we and CMG will continue to operate our respective stations. And then finally, with the MGM proceeds, our current cash balance today is approximately $235 million. And with that, I will hand back to Alfred.
spk16: Great. Thank you. Operator, I'd like to open the line up for Q&A, please.
spk24: Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do have any questions, please press 1, then 0 on your telephone keypad. You'll hear an indication you've been placed into queue, and you may remove yourself from queue by repeating the 1, then 0 command. If you are using a speakerphone, we ask that you please pick up your handset before pressing any buttons. Again, for questions, press 1, then 0 at this time. We will first go to the line of Aaron Watts with Deutsche Bank. One moment while we open your line. You may go ahead.
spk13: Hi, guys. Thanks for hosting the call. Good to hear from you. I've got a couple. Peter, sorry to ask you to do this, at least for me. Your line was a little choppy at the beginning of your comments. Could you repeat what, on the radio side, what your kind of same station core advertising performance was in 4Q, 1Q, and then also what you said 2Q was pacing at?
spk17: Yeah, so let me go back. Q1 of 23... Excluding digital, which is what we report, the radio segment was up 2% on the same station basis. Excluding political, it was up 3.1%. As reported, it's probably going to look like it was up about 11% the first quarter because of the Indianapolis acquisition. The second quarter is pacing... down 5% of the moment on the same station basis. But obviously political there's, there's a fair amount of political last year, a couple of million dollars. So excluding that same station, we're pacing down to 0.9%. The second quarter on radio as reported, because we're layering in the on top of that, we're probably looking more like we're going to be up probably low to mid single digits.
spk13: Okay, got it. Thank you for repeating that. Hey, sorry, Aaron.
spk17: And then on the radio segment, on a same station basis, 14.1% up for fourth quarter.
spk13: Great. And as you sit today, guys, how is the environment feeling to you as you're entering July here relative to what you felt in the first half of the year? Any... any rays of light coming through in terms of advertising, advertiser willingness to spend, whether it's on the local or national level, or does it feel relatively steady with what you had been feeling in the kind of April, May, June timeframe?
spk16: Yeah, look, there's definitely an advertising recession going on. I mean, I was at the Cannes Lion Advertising Conference, you know, a few weeks ago, And you hear it from the big holding companies. And it's particularly taken root in national. So you're seeing that come through with people who have national ad platforms. Local feels stronger. But you watch the news, CNBC, the economic data is still really strong. But just because advertisers are pulling back, not sure they're pulling back because they're worried about something that's coming or exactly why, but there's definitely an ad recession going on. We're still feeling a level of strength due to interest in diverse-owned media. We're definitely still feeling that. It doesn't mean that we're not seeing less demand, but we're doing better than our non-diverse-owned peers. One of the reasons why we also felt it would be good to be sitting on a lot of cash at this point in time, don't know exactly what's going to happen, But I feel if there's a recession, it'll be a mild recession. I think we're already in an advertising recession. We may not be in an economic recession at this point. And our radio business is going against some significant political headwinds. We have $20 million worth of political headlines.
spk17: It was 13 last year. That was the prior presidential cycle. It was about 13. Still significant.
spk16: Significant. We're preparing to be okay regardless of what the economy does, but I would say I feel better about where things... are going today than I did in January.
spk13: Okay, that's helpful context. Thank you for that. Second question, and I'm sorry if you already disclosed this, but with the stations you're picking up from Cox, are you able to share what the multiple you paid was on that purchase?
spk16: No. I mean, we paid... you know, we paid 27 and a half million dollars, you know, I think I just said that, you know, we think, you know, with, you know, with ad backs and things of that nature, that we'll have at least $5 million of EBITDA. Yeah, yeah. And so I don't know if you caught up with the net spins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So So, um, uh, So let's say their EBITDA was less than $5 million. We think with ADBACs we'll have at least $5 million. And when I say ADBACs, duplicate expense stuff that we can take out day one. And there's not a lot of it, right? We're not changing formats. But what was a surprise for us, to be honest with you, because we modeled something else, was we – Well, we, we were able to, um, you know, get out of the two radio stations, you know, um, for, you know, uh, an acceptable price, right. You know, and, and we didn't know what the marketplace was going to be like. Yeah. And, um, and we were able to find two buyers and, and, and got what we thought were, you know, not amazing prices, probably low watermarks for stations in Houston, but given the M and a. activity in radio, period, is pretty tepid. We felt pretty good about the sales there, and so we're going to be in to Houston for about $17 million. Okay. Thank you for that.
spk13: And one last question. You've mentioned your liquidity a couple times, and it is a nice cushion to have given the uncertain economic backdrop. As you move forward here, you've bought back bonds, but you also have this potential casino project. How should we think about the uses of that cash, whether it's debt pay down, going towards a casino initiative, or potentially more M&A activity, whether that's on the radio side or otherwise?
spk16: Look, when we win this casino referendum... We, you know, we're going to have to write a, you know, it's not certain exactly what the equity check, you know, will be. It's 50-50 right now. But, you know, let's assume that it's $80 million, you know, for each us and Churchill, and let's assume you put some debt on it. We may not go that route, you know, depending on how expensive project financing is. So, we may need to write a slightly bigger check. But assume that that's going to be something that we will spend cash on starting in Q4, beginning with closing on the land acquisition. And then I think we sit back and just look at stuff opportunistic. I mean, the good thing is that our bonds trading at a discount call it 90 or instant change or whatever, you know, 10.5%, right? So that's always, you know, that's a good use of capital at that point in time. And if we can make, you know, some radio acquisitions that are, you know, are a better return than that, then we should look hard at that. But, you know, paying down debt, I mean, we're also starting to get into a strike zone, right? of leverage into threes, you get leveraged, you know, three and a half, you know, low threes, you're starting to get in the strike zone of, you know, what other kind of capital, you know, returns of capital do you look at? But we've got some significant projects on the plate right now that we need to see how they're going to turn out.
spk13: Okay. All right, great. I appreciate the time as always.
spk24: We'll next go to the line of Ben Briggs with Stonex Financial Incorporated. Go ahead.
spk14: Morning, guys. Thank you for holding the call and taking the questions. So a lot of mine got answered, but I still have a couple more here. So using your guidance, and again, thank you for providing guidance, you said that you expect to come in above where you were in fiscal year 19 while adjusting out the roughly $8 million MGM dividend that you received. So that gets me to roughly, let's call it like just north of 130 million of EBITDA. I just want to kind of sanity check that and make sure I'm doing my math right there.
spk17: No, I have 133.5 with MGM in, and MGM I think was 6.6. So I think it's like high 120, 126, 127. Okay, 126. Yeah. Okay, so 126, 127. And then if I subtract out, call it between 60 and 65 million of interest expense and some CapEx, it looks like you guys on an EBITDA minus interest minus CapEx basis.
spk14: should still be comfortably free cash flow positive in fiscal year 23. Is that a safe assumption?
spk17: Yeah, I've got a kind of mid-60s in free cash flow. Depending on where CapEx comes out, we've got a couple of big projects consolidating in Indianapolis and in Charlotte, but probably we don't get to spend all of that this year. So that's why mid-60s free cash flow is what we're kind of throwing out for this year.
spk14: okay perfect that's that's right around where i was getting to uh thank you and then the second question um so churchill downs uh thank you for the clarity on you know what size the equity check might be um and and a little bit about what your thought process is there could you give a couple more details on what the operations of that might look like so i know obviously with uh mgm casino That was very much you guys were essentially silent partners, not like you had a hand in operating the casino. You left that to them. Is the Churchill Downs project going to be similar, or are you going to be taking a more hands-on approach with this opportunity?
spk16: They'll be the operator. We're just going to own it 50-50 with them, and they'll be responsible for operating. However, they'll use their corporate expertise to work with us to build a management team locally at the property. You know, they've got a number of partnerships with other people, including, you know, one with Rush Gaming in Chicago and Best Plains. I think they've got one in Miami with Delaware North. I think it's Miami. So, you know, they've got – the good thing about them, they've got experience with having –
spk14: large partners meaning you know not somebody who owns 7% but somebody who owns 50% along with them right now so but we will be relying on them to be the operator okay got it got it okay thank you and then finally and I'm hoping you can answer this so obviously you just released the fiscal year 22 10k do you and I know this is officially the the fiscal year 22 conference call Um, do you know when, uh, you might release the first quarter 23, 10 cube?
spk17: Uh, we haven't said a day. I think we'll know more next week. We're just working through some stuff then on time in terms of timing of that. And obviously we're mindful of, uh, we got an extension from NASDAQ through nine 27. We don't want to take that length of time. But I think we'll put something out next week which will shed some light on that in terms of time and filing that.
spk14: Okay, great. Thank you very much for holding the call and answering the questions. Have a great day, guys. Thank you.
spk24: Our next question will come from the line of Matt Swope with Baird. Go ahead.
spk07: Good morning, guys. Peter, could you
spk06: Could you give us a sense for out of that large cash number you've mentioned, what the tax hit will be around MGM and any other sort of, you know, unexpected or unusual uses that we should think of coming out of that cash number?
spk17: Yeah, you just went a bit out as you said it, but I think you're asking is there any tax leakage on the MGM sale, right?
spk05: That's right, yeah.
spk17: Yeah, minimal because we got enough NOLs to cover it. So it's roughly $100 million gain. And what it'll do, it'll burn through our NOLs faster. So it probably accelerates us becoming a federal taxpayer from 2027 to 2026, somewhere in that region. So the good news is we'll have the cash on the balance sheet and there'll be minimal tax leakage.
spk24: And as a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you do have questions, please take this opportunity now to press 1, then 0 on your telephone keypad. We'll go next to the line of Brad Kern, a private investor. Go ahead.
spk08: Hi, thanks for taking the call, and I appreciate all the information today. First one is on the Richmond Casino. What's the likelihood, in your view, of a favorable investment? Are you doing any polling yourselves or tracking any sort of local polling that you can maybe give us some color on? And what work are you doing to improve local sentiment for the project among likely voters? In addition on the casino, it's a 50-50 partnership, but who's going to be controlling the decisions? Should you decide? I think it has your name on it, so who are you? Who's going to be making the decisions when you get down to the tough ones?
spk16: There will be joint decisions. If we disagree, there's a dispute resolution mechanism. But we're 50-50 partners, and we've got to agree. Otherwise, we go to our dispute resolution mechanism. We've got a 50-50 shot. The referendum, we lost it 50.85 to 49.15. Sentiment continues to be divided in the city. And we got to do a better job of telling voters how the money that the casino will generate is going to be spent. We didn't do that last time. We've got to work with the city on that. That's not our unilateral call. I think that we've got to articulate the other aspects of the resort, not just the casino part, the entertainment vehicle. We've got to do a better job of getting out our voters. But it's 50-50. I've always said that people should look at our company as a baseline. and decide whether or not they're comfortable with our existing operations and our balance sheet and look at the casino as upside, like gravy. And so that's where we sit.
spk08: Okay, that's helpful. So assuming that is approved, what do you anticipate the payback will be on the casino and sort of for modeling purposes In terms of number of tables and slots and gross gaming revenue across each of those, are there some preliminary figures you can throw out?
spk16: You should assume that the gaming revenue, this is, you know, the state has its own gaming analysis for each of the proposed casino licenses. There are five different jurisdictions. The one for Richmond, Virginia is a little better than $300 million of gaming revenue a year. And you can probably operate better than a 30% margin on that. So assume that the property would do $100 million of EBITDA, if not better. But as a minimum, I think you should assume it's $100 million. It could do better.
spk08: Okay, that's really helpful. And then on the radio and TV side, do you anticipate any potential slowdown in appetite for DEI advertising, particularly given the affirmative action ruling? What are you hearing from your advertising partners?
spk16: Everybody's asking that question, you know, and so my general perspective gut is that if the political climate changes significantly in the country, that sort of progressive and inclusionary politics will take a hit. However, I believe that many of the corporations that have committed to DE&I efforts, you know, believe in it and are doing it because it's good business in today's world. I mean, one of the things that you cannot run from is the changing face of America. You know, that's, you know, that's just what's happening, you know, black and brown and And now Asian populations are growing at a considerably faster clip, you know, than the traditional Caucasian population. And that's not, you know, that's not a race war. That's just the economics of the country, right? And so, you know, there will be different consumption patterns. for those populations and different types of consumption for media and how you communicate with them and talk to them, et cetera, they will become more and more of a force from a consumer standpoint. And it's no different than any other customer. You have to cater to that customer. And that's the conversation that I'm hearing. among advertisers now. But yeah, if the government doesn't give a hoot about diversity and inclusion, then I think there will be some corporations that will pull back on that. Because generally, government pressure or fear of some sort of government regulation or retribution causes good corporate citizenship yeah um he said but that's my general view but you never know you know i mean yeah i mean forgot who it was but you know donald trump on his way out the door pardoned i've got a number of rappers or whatever like you know i forgot who it was it was like who would have thought right Was it Little Wayne? I don't remember what it was. So maybe if he wins the presidency, maybe he'll all of a sudden decide it's a good business as well. You never know. But that's my view. I mean, look, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party right now has got a lot of people talking about fairness and equity and justice. And the traditional... faction of the Democratic Party is, yeah, those are things that we believe in too, right? And so that helps with this wave.
spk08: Okay, I appreciate that thoughtful response. On a related note, your core audience, are you seeing the sort of existential time for radio listenership and secular pressures there? Are you seeing better consumption trends? Can you just talk about consumption trends of your core audience versus competitors?
spk16: Everything in traditional media is going down and seeing less consumption. But radio feels safer and better and less... of and in less of a free fall, you know, then the pay TV ecosystem, you know, does. But I think what we're also seeing is with radio, we're, we're dealing with less rating points right now. But if you looked at our revenue, Peter, you did that analysis, our revenue is really kind of on par, or what was the analysis you did?
spk17: When you look at audio, looking across the radio segment reach and digital audio, we're still above pre-pandemic levels of revenue and EBITDA, despite the fact that the universe of listeners has gone down fairly significantly post-pandemic, as you might imagine, given different working patterns and commuting patterns.
spk16: So I'm going to give some credit to one of the – CEOs, you know, premier CEO in the industry, Bob Pittman, I had a conversation with him in Cannes at this advertising festival, and we were talking about the radio business. And he hammers the point that radio still has 90% reach, even though the numbers may be small. There's a 90% reach in America, and reach in television, you know, continues to decline. Historically, advertisers have paid more for less in television. And I think Peter's analysis would say that we're doing pretty good on pricing versus where audience has gone. So that's a world we're living in. And I don't know what the answer is. Nobody except Netflix is making money in streaming right now. Maybe Discovery turns the corner here. I think they were supposed to turn the corner this quarter or next quarter. But people are starting to dial back on their investments in streaming. Radio is kind of hanging in there. But I... There was a time when I was a lot more worried about radio, and I felt really good that we were in the cable television business. Today, I feel really good that we're diversified among all of these things, and radio feels like it's hanging in there. And we're making our cable TV business hang in there right now with the way that we're managing it. But I do feel like we need to do something strategic there, whether it's picking up more distribution, programming investments, some sort of consolidation opportunity, because that landscape is changing. And so we've got to figure that out. But the good news is we're at a leverage level now where we're going to have time to do that. We're going to have time to make those investments. We're going to have time. We're not going to be under any pressure that will make us have to operate in a non-effective, non-strategic way. I think that we're going to have the runway to make the turn.
spk08: Sure. On the balance sheet, I mean, we've talked about the economics of the casino. So in the world where in the 50-50 shot where it doesn't go through, you mentioned on the call that it's leveraged in the low threes, that there's other forms of capital return you might be looking at. So how are you thinking about that versus potential strategic opportunities strategic actions on the radio and TV set or other industries, whether it's gaming or otherwise?
spk16: Look, we match everything for us. So strategy is often very overused in terms of a rationale as to why you do something. Strategy... Strategy has to be accountable to what your current return options are. I don't think you make a strategic decision and not match that up against what's the best use of capital. If we can buy our bonds and retire our debt and get a 10.5% return, there's no strategic decision that we would make that would net us a 5% return. We wouldn't do that. You just pay down your bonds, right? Because if it's strategic, then it should actually yield you an outside return, right? It should have you create value. And the value that it creates needs to be better than what else you can do with the capital. That's the lens under which we look at stuff. And it's worked for us. Does that make sense?
spk08: I guess I'm just wondering, is there a leverage level that you... I know the stock isn't terribly liquid. Is there a leverage level that you start to think about? You shift from debt reduction to whether it's share buybacks or... Maybe whatever it is to return that.
spk16: Yeah, maybe I mean, we were buying back shares last year, you know, yeah, then we bought back $25 million worth of shares at $5 and 30 cents.
spk19: Yeah.
spk17: And I go up, we said to come down, you know, but it's kind of, you know, given the macro that we're just, you know, we got some strategic options ahead of us, that'll be what that'll be on the plate at some point, but it depends on Depends on how revenue goes, how EBITDA goes, how we feel about it.
spk16: And the share buyback analysis goes through the same return rigor that buying a radio cluster does, us buying more cable assets, us investing in the casino. We're not going to buy back our stock and earn a 5% return over paying down our debt and earning a 10.5% return.
spk08: Okay, thank you. And last question for me is just a housekeeping. When you mentioned the 3.7 times leverage by end of year, is that, I assume that's net? We said 3.7. Right, 3.7. That's on a net basis? Yeah. And is that pro forma for any other uses of cash, or what are the underlying assumptions in the 3.7?
spk17: It assumes that we win the Richmond referendum and we buy the land that Alfred referred to in fourth quarter. So that cash goes out the door. Um, and it assumes that we close on the, uh, acquisition in Houston. So, so that's 17, net 17 million goes out the door as well, but we proforma and call it $5 million of, uh, of EBITDA from that transaction.
spk08: And no, no additional debt, um, buybacks in that number. No. Modeled into that number? Okay. Thank you. That's all my questions. I appreciate it.
spk24: We'll go next to the line of Matthew Sanchafer with Massaro. Go ahead.
spk16: Hi, guys. Thank you for sneaking me in here near the end. Just a couple of housekeeping questions. What are you guys planning to spend on content this year? That number was obviously pretty high in 2022.
spk17: Yeah, it was high in 22. I was just looking. I think mid-50s. Jody's here with us. He can speak to it if he'd like. But I think we're looking at cash. I've got on my sheet at least cash spend in the kind of mid-50s.
spk09: Does that sound right, Jody?
spk18: Say again, Matt.
spk09: Did you say mid-50s? I'm sorry. I'm having a little sound issue. Yeah, mid-50s.
spk17: Okay, great. I think it normalizes better than last year, a lot from a cash standpoint.
spk09: Okay, great.
spk16: Thank you. And were there any unusual cash expenses in the radio or digital segments in the fourth quarter specifically?
spk09: Because margins took a little bit more of a hit than I might have been expecting. And I'm sorry if we went through that during the first part of the call when the AC was on, but I missed it.
spk17: Yeah, they there were a few things matter. There was some noise in the number, so obviously we had the high watermark year, so bonuses were higher than they otherwise normally would be so so. There was some of that in margins in digital. We talked a little bit about the fact those were impacted by higher traffic acquisition costs. That was $2.3 million. Also higher content costs at digital and ad production costs. So those margins compressed. Other than that, there wasn't anything particularly material.
spk09: Okay, great. And then that mid-60s pre-cash flow number you mentioned, does that include the MGM dividend this year, or are you rolling that up into the sale price?
spk17: That is in the sale price, so that's not, so that mid-60s, hang on a second. Good point. Let me just double check before I speak on that. Shouldn't have, yeah, we have, actually, no, sorry, that does include it, Mike. That is rolled up into the 8.7 of receipts. It's in the mid-60s. Sorry. Okay.
spk09: And I guess just generally on the digital side of things, you mentioned a higher traffic acquisition cost.
spk16: There's some guidance for what looks like kind of persistent lower margins going forward. What do you think about that competitive landscape overall? It feels like, as you guys know, it feels like every radio station, and not just radio, obviously, but every radio station company has been trying to get into that business in a significant way. Yeah.
spk28: What do you think is driving the higher traffic acquisition costs?
spk16: Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Our digital business is different than, uh, everybody else's race business, uh, digital business. Um, you know, we, our digital business is largely as a content publisher, you know, where we sell, uh, video ads and display advertising, probably roughly 40% of our revenue, you know, this year would be, uh, digital video. Um, We've got some streaming revenues. I forgot what it was. I know it's at least 5%. I don't know if it's – excuse me, at least $5 million. I don't know if it's going to be a little higher. It's not 5.7. It's in the five. Yeah, and we've got a bit of podcast business, but the Cumulus and Odyssey models and our podcast-driven – iHeart has got their iHeart Media streaming platform, and they've got a big podcasting business. We're much more of a publisher. And then Town Square does digital services, right? So they act as a local small digital advertising agency for small, medium-sized clients in the market that they operate in. So our digital business is different than everybody else's. With that said, it's benefiting from still demand. We've got the largest African-American targeted audience in the space, so we're the scale player in that space. And I don't know what the progress is going for. I hope it continues to remain profitable. We've got to figure out how to see if we can grow that margin. Digital publishing is a tough business. You can see from BuzzFeed and Box and a bunch of these other companies, Vice, they're having a tough way to go. We've been doing better. We've got to figure out how to manage through that. But it's a better business than the podcasting business. Yeah, so in my viewpoint.
spk04: Okay.
spk16: Yeah. Great. Thank you.
spk18: Thank you, Matt. We'll go next to the – pardon me.
spk16: Yeah, it's 1106. As I said, we've got time for one more question.
spk24: We'll go to the line of Marlene Pereira with Bank of America. Go ahead.
spk26: Thank you for taking my call and squeezing me in. Most of them have been answered. But quick question. You had mentioned BET at the top of the call. So any other information on that or thoughts or what that could potentially look like in terms of the impact on leverage?
spk16: I mean, it's a competitive process. We're under an NDA. People ask us if we're interested in it. So I just figured I'd mention that we are in the process. I couldn't, you know, we're not, you know, far enough along on anything at this point in time to comment. And, you know, we wouldn't be allowed to comment anyway, you know, but I just get tired of people asking me, hey, are you guys, you know, looking at this? And so I decided to admit that we were, you know, but that's all the information I can give.
spk26: Got it. And then just a quick, you know, kind of reframe, you know, given the current environment overall, secular and cyclical, how high would you be willing to, you know, have your leverage in the current environment or what you kind of see the environment to be over the next year?
spk16: You know, look, we like our leverage, you know, four or below. Yeah, we like it here. If we have to write a $100-plus million check over the next 12 months for the casino, that could change our leverage profile. I'm sure Peter has the numbers, but $100 million goes out the door with no cash flow coming in for, call it, 24 to 30 months is going to raise your leverage. But I'm also assuming if we win a casino referendum that we're probably going to get some credit for that in our equity value. And who knows? Maybe we'll raise some more equity. Don't know how we'll think about that. But I would suffice it to say we sleep good at night when our leverage is below four. We like that.
spk17: Yeah, look, it probably pops up above four in Q1, excluding you know, the pro forma for MGM because the cash wasn't received until Q2. So I guess we'll get pro forma numbers in Q1. But excluding the pro forma, it's probably north of four. Then it drops down, you know, hopefully mid threes. And as Alfred said, we're hoping to finish about 3.7 times this year. Then if I look at our long-range plan, it's out in the low threes. And eventually in the mid twos, that's assuming we can hit our plan.
spk26: Got it. Sorry, if I could just put in one last one. Early on the topic call, you also had said kind of more generally that radio multiples are like five times, if I heard you correctly.
spk16: I mean, there's lots of comps out there. Last I looked, I thought the average radio multiple was kind of like five and a half or something like that. So, again, you know, that's, You know, that's what I think I remember saying. It's variable within that, right, depending on who you look at. Yeah. I think that was about the meaning.
spk26: Fair enough. Great. Well, thank you very much.
spk16: Thank you. Thank you, everybody. We'll look forward to talking to you, you know, at a point in the near future.
spk24: Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude your conference call for today. Thank you for your participation. and for using AT&T Event Teleconferencing. You may now disconnect.
spk21: We're sorry. Your conference is ending now. Please hang up. Hello. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
spk24: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to Urban One's 2022 year-end earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session and instructions will be given at that time. During this conference call, Urban One will be sharing with you certain projections and 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 July 7, 2023. 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 in 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 12 p.m. Eastern Time, 7-7-2023. until 1159 p.m. 7-14-2023. Callers may access the replay by calling 866-207-1041 within the U.S. International callers may dial direct 402-970-0847. The replay access code is 801-9907. Access to live audio and a replay of the conference call will 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'll now turn the call over to Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer of Urban One, who is joined by Peter D. Thompson, Chief Financial Officer.
spk16: Thank you very much, Operator, and we also have Jody Drew, the Chief Financial Officer of the TD1 with us, and Chris Simpson, who is the General Counsel of the company, is also joining us. Finally, our year-end earnings report in the middle of the year. Thank you, everyone, for bearing with us as we got through an unexpected lengthy audit, but we're Happy to report that the year ended as expected with us right on top of our year in guidance of $165.6 million of EBITDA, leverages below four times, which was a great outcome, and we indicated that that was our goal and that's where we landed. A couple things just to give you highlights before I turn it over to Peter. You probably also know and seen in the press release, we monetized our MGM National Harbor investment. We did that in April. It ended up being a fantastic investment for us. We invested $40 million of cash in the project. We ended up pulling that $40 million out in dividends over the length of time that we held it. And then our equity investment in the end was worth $137 million. So it's probably roughly a four and a half times our money investment. Why did we do it? We did it because we thought that their 2022 performance was, number one, a high watermark for the property. That was not expected. It was well ahead of where we had expected it to be. We also felt that given the macroeconomic environment and a number of other things, that it probably was not particularly likely that we were going to do better than that going forward. Things can happen. We don't know for sure. But that was our calculus. The third thing is that you know, on that $137 million, we were earning approximately $8.8 million of dividends, which is about a 6.4% return on the value of it, since a tremendous return on $40 million, but on $137 million, it's just a 6.4% return. And we thought that we could do better, you know, than 6.4% investing that capital in other things. And The first place we started was, even though we're not doing better, is with U.S. Treasuries where we're getting about 5% on that money. So the fact of the matter is we're not giving up a ton of current income right now, holding that in Treasuries, and we're sitting on a bunch of cash right now as we live through an uncertain economic time. hoping that, you know, the uncertainty actually moderates, feels like, you know, maybe there's not going to be a recession, but who knows. And we've got a number of things coming up where we may need to deploy that cash, you know, whether it's, yeah, debt, continued debt buybacks, which, you know, we haven't been doing, you know, particularly since we hadn't filed our financial statements, but I haven't checked in a minute, but last I checked, our bonds are yielding like 10%, north of 10%, 10.3%. So even that is a better investment than just continuing to hold the equity and get a 6.4% return. We are in the process of gearing up to run another referendum in Richmond for our casino project with our new partner, Churchill Downs. We believe that there is an exceptionally high likelihood that we will be running that referendum. We've got some public assurances by the Virginia Senate budget negotiators that a Richmond referendum or this casino referendum being blocked to potentially move to Petersburg is a non-negotiable item for them. That was recently in the news press in Virginia. So we've got some real support there. City Council has voted it out. We're at the Virginia Lottery now for approval, and then we'll go to the Circuit Court to get the referendum scheduled. Early vote would start September 22nd of 2023, Friday, September 22nd, and Election Day would be November 7th. So if we're successful with the referendum, we'll obviously need cash in order to fund that. Although the partnership in Richmond is different now. We are not the sole equity provider at this point in time. It's a 50-50 equity investment with us and Churchill Downs. They're a great, well-capitalized company. The CEO is very engaged in this. We couldn't be luckier to have them as a partner. We also... recently I don't want to say recently a few months ago announced the acquisition of four Houston radio stations from Cox Media Group you know we expect for twenty seven and a half million dollars we have also signed agreements to spin off two stations that we can't own because we'll be over the limit for a total of ten and a half million dollars so we're going to be into that acquisition and for about $17 million and some change. We expect that that cash flow from that acquisition will equate to at least $5 million as we step into it. So a very attractive multiple that we were able to acquire that once you factor in the amount of money that we got for the spends. We also think that there are a number of other potential radio acquisitions that are out there. Right now, the radio companies are trading kind of like in the fives in terms of an EBITDA multiple. And so if you were to buy radio at a five and a half times multiple, you're talking about close to a 20% return, which is also better than our 6.4% that we were getting on the MGM market. investment. So there are a number of things that we think that we can do, you know, going forward that will ultimately net us a better return. So whether it's paying down debt, you know, at 10%, whether it's buying radio in the fives, you know, that nets you at 20%. You know, getting our referendum won and investing in the Richmond Casino is another There is a process going on that you guys have probably seen in the business press where Paramount is looking to sell the BET Media Group, which includes BET and VH1. Our name is never mentioned, but we are involved in that process with a number of other parties. Still doing our diligence on it. Don't know where we land. But we're engaged, and we think that we have exceptionally complementary assets with the TV1 and Clio assets that could potentially create a lot of value. However, we remain disciplined from an acquisition standpoint. We're fully aware of the challenges that the pay TV ecosystem has. One of the reasons why we think that finding scale in this business, you know, could make a lot of sense, you know, as well. So we're doing our work and staying engaged on that. 2023 guidance. We are expecting 2023 EBITDA becoming better than our 2019 pre-pandemic EBITDA. If you go X MGM dividends. So that's our goal. We feel pretty good about being able to achieve that. We're thinking leverage will continue to be below four times, call it 3.7-ish by the end of the year. And given the macroeconomic backdrop, I think we'd all feel pretty good about that as an outcome should that come to pass. So with that, I am going to turn it over to Peter Thompson to go more specifically into the numbers.
spk17: Thank you Alfred. Before we enter the numbers, let me talk a little bit about the delayed filing and the MGM restatement. Since the inception of the MGM deal, we've been carrying our stake in that as an equity investment cost. However, once the put option that we had became exercisable, we should have reclassified the investment as a debt security available for sale. So it really is a technical change in how we should have carried it on the balance sheet. And once you end up in that bucket that it's a debt security available for sale, you should then revalue it every quarter. And we didn't do that. And obviously, we knew what it was worth. And I think we've done a decent job of telling our investors what it's worth. But the put crystallized that. So the end state value of $136.8 million was known, but we had to go and hire an outside valuation specialist to appraise the asset for each quarter of 2021 and 2022 using multiple methodologies, which took some time to work through. Separate from this, but also contributing to the delay in filing, our auditors required additional documentation around the company's ASC 606 revenue recognition policies. And that required us to bring in a consultancy firm to write a bunch of technical accounting memoranda. We're not a big shop. We didn't have the resource to do that internally. And so we had to go and find someone to write those technical accounting memos for us. And then finally, there was significantly increased substantive audit testing around journal entries and other things as a result of a lack of reliance on internal controls that in prior years had been deemed sufficient but weren't this year. And all of that meant that it took many additional weeks of work to get the accounts signed off, which has been frustrating both for the company and the investors. And I thank you all for your patience and support. I've been speaking to as many of the investors as I can just to try and keep people appraised of what's going on. And we appreciate you being patient and bearing with us while we work through all that. Turn into the numbers themselves. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $31.7 million for the quarter, which was down 2.3% from last year. Full-year consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $165.6 million. in line with the company's guidance, and up 10.2% year-over-year. Fourth quarter consolidated net revenue was up 1.6% year-over-year. The Indianapolis graveyard position added approximately $4.2 million, and there was the absence of the beach cruise event, which generated $7 million last year in the fourth quarter in 2021. Normalizing for those two things, net revenue was up 3.9%, or down 1.4%, excluding $6.6 million of incremental political advertising. Net revenue for the radio segment increased 23.8% year over year, and by 14.1% on a same station basis. According to Miller Kaplan, and on a same station basis, our local ad sales were on par with the market at minus 1%, and national ad sales Outperformed, we were up 41.9% against a market that was up 17.4%, helped by heavy political spending and also our corporate sales effort. We recorded $8.1 million in net political ad revenue, of which $7.2 million was radio, compared to $1.5 million in prior year. Government and public was our biggest radio advertising category for the quarter, up 97.6%. Healthcare was up 63.6%. Auto was up 86.3%. Retail was up 12.7%. And entertainment was up 8.9%. Services, financial, telecoms, food and beverage, travel, and transportation were all down in the quarter. Q1 of 2023. radio revenue excluding digital was up 2% on a same-station basis, or up 3.1% same-station excluding political. Q2 is currently pacing down 5% excluding digital on a same-station basis. We're down 0.9% excluding political. So we're holding in well on a same-station basis ex-political. Net revenue for REACH Media was $11.9 million in the fourth quarter compared to $12.3 million last year, excluding the cruise event. Adjusted EBITDA was $3.1 million, down from $3.8 million in the prior year. In the whole year, adjusted EBITDA increased by 13.3% to $15.4 million. Net revenues for our digital segment increased by 24.1% in fourth quarter to $24.2 million. The direct sales team had an exceptionally strong finish to the year, driven by continued demand to reach black audiences at scale and increased mid-term political revenue. Just to leave you with that, it was $1.9 million for the quarter and $21.8 million for the year, up 24.1% year over year. Our radio, reach, and digital segments, so our audio business, had combined Q4 adjusted EBITDA of $28 million for the quarter, up 12% year-over-year. We recognized approximately $49.7 million of revenue from our cable television segment during the quarter, a decrease of 8.2%. Cable TV advertising revenue was down 8.4%, with a favorable rate volume impact of $900,000 offset by unfavorable timer variance of $1.7 million, free video on demand, and $1.6 million unfavorable ADU burnout. Cable TV affiliate revenue was down by 7.4%, with a favorable rate increase of $1.2 million being offset by $2.4 million of net return, $650,000 of increased support. Cable subscribers for TV1, as measured by Nielsen, finished Q4 at $46.5 million, That's only $3.6 million at the end of Q3. And Clio TV had $41.8 million for the awesome subs. We're having trouble hearing us. Oh, yeah? Okay. Sorry, I just heard that the sound quality is poor. We turned the air conditioning off here and moved the microphones around. Hopefully that will be better. We recorded approximately $2.6 million in investment income from our stake in the MGM National Harbor property for the quarter, up 30% from prior year. Operating expenses excluding depreciation, amortization, impairments, and stock-based compensation were approximately $104.2 million in fourth quarter to $105.6 million in Q4 of 2021. Event expenses decreased by $6.9 million due to the absence of the REACH cruise event, which returned in May of this year. Cable TV content amortization decreased by $5.3 million. And the non-cash charge for the CEO's employment award decreased by $3.5 million. Employee compensation increased by approximately $5.6 million, including incentive compensation across the organization for superior annual performance against plan. Revenue variable expenses increased $4 million. Travel, entertainment, and office expenses increased by $2.2 million. And outside services, including contract, talent, and consulting fees, increased by $2.5 million. About $3.3 million of those increased expenses were in relation to the Indianapolis radio acquisition that was included in those totals. Radio operating expenses were up by $4.8 million. The Indianapolis cluster add in just over $3 million of that increase. Expenses related to revenue increases such as sales commissions and bonuses drove the rest of the increase. Reach operating expenses were flat except for the cruise event. Operating expenses in the digital segment were up 36.9%, driven predominantly by variable expenses related to traffic acquisition costs, which were up $2.3 million, and ad production and marketing, which was up $2 million, and content and streaming music royalties, which was up by $1.7 million. Cable TV expenses were down $4.9 million, with content amortization expense down by $5.3 million due to some write-downs in prior years that didn't recur. Operating expenses in the corporate and elimination segment were down by 4.7%. It was a favorable variance of $3.5 million for the non-cash TV1 employment award charge, which was offset by increases in employee compensation, including annual performance bonuses, outside legal fees, third-party software license fees, T&E, recruiting and marketing. For the fourth quarter, consolidated broadcast and digital operating income was approximately $47.6 million, an increase of 7.9%. During the quarter, the company repurchased $25 million of its 2028 notes at an average price of approximately 86.4%, resulting in a net gain on retirement of approximately $3 million. An additional $25 million of the 2028 notes was repurchased in the first quarter of 2023 at an average price of approximately 89.1%, bringing the total gross debt balance down to $725 million today, down from $825 million at the start of 2022. So we've now paid down $100 million of the debt. Interest expense decreased to approximately $14.6 million for the fourth quarter, down 8% from last year due to the debt pay downs. The company made cash interest payments of approximately $625,000 in the quarter, including the accrued interest on the retired notes. and the semi-annual interest payment was paid on February 1, 23. A non-cash impairment of $10.3 million was recorded for our radio market broadcasting licenses in Cincinnati, Dallas, Houston, and Raleigh, and also for our Philadelphia market goodwill balance. Provision for income taxes was approximately $3.9 million for the quarter. The company paid cash taxes in the amount of approximately $1.1 million. Net income was approximately $856,000, or 2 cents a share, compared to $5.3 million, or 10 cents a share, for the quarter of 2021. Capital expenditures were approximately $1.5 million. The company repurchased 13,577 shares of Class B common stock in the amount of $57,000. As of December 31st, 22, total gross debt was $750 million. The ending unrestricted cash balance was $94.9 million, resulting in net debt of approximately $655.1 million, which compared to $165.6 million of LTM reported adjusted EBITDA, gives a total net leverage ratio of 3.96 times. Pro forma for the Indianapolis acquisition, total net leverage was 3.91 times. On March 8, 2023, the company issued a put notice with respect to 100% of its interest in the MGM National Harbor LLC. On April 21, 2023, we closed on the sale of the put interest. The company received approximately $136.8 million of proceeds at the time of settlement. During the quarter end of March 31, 2023, the company also received $8.8 million representing the company's annual distribution from MGM National Harbor LLC. with respect to fiscal year 22. Proforma for the MGM put total net leverage was 3.21 times, including $145.5 million of cash receipts from MGM and excluding the LTM, just to be the for the MGM stake of $8.8 million. On April 11th, 2023, the company announced it had signed an asset purchase agreement with Cox Media to purchase a Houston radio cluster Urban One will divest two stations to comply with FCC ownership regulations. Transactions subject to FCC approval and is anticipated to close either late in the second quarter or early in the third quarter of 23. And until that time, we and CMG will continue to operate our respective stations. And then finally, with the MGM proceeds, our current cash balance today is approximately $235 million. And with that, I will hand back to Alfred.
spk16: Great. Thank you. Operator, I'd like to open the line up for Q&A, please.
spk24: Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do have any questions, please press 1, then 0 on your telephone keypad. You'll hear an indication you've been placed into queue, and you may remove yourself from queue by repeating the 1, then 0 command. If you are using a speakerphone, we ask that you please pick up your handset before pressing any buttons. Again, for questions, press 1, then 0 at this time. We will first go to the line of Aaron Watts with Deutsche Bank. One moment while we open your line. You may go ahead. Hi, guys.
spk13: Thanks for hosting the call. Good to hear from you. I've got a couple. Peter, sorry to ask you to do this, at least for me. Your line was a little choppy at the beginning of your comments. Could you repeat what, on the radio side, what your kind of same station core advertising performance was in 4Q, 1Q, and then also what you said 2Q was pacing at?
spk17: Yeah, so let me go back. Q1 of 23... Excluding digital, which is what we report the radio segment was up 2% on the same station basis. Excluding political, it was up 3.1%. As reported, it's probably going to look it's going to look like it was up about 11% the first quarter because of the Indianapolis acquisition. Second quarter is pacing down 5% at the moment on the same station basis. But obviously, political, there was a fair amount of political last year, a couple of million dollars. So excluding that same station, we're pacing down 0.9% for second quarter on radio. As reported, because we're layering India on top of that, we're probably looking more like we're going to be up probably low to mid single digits.
spk13: Okay, got it. Thank you for repeating that.
spk17: Hey, sorry, Aaron. And then on the radio segment, on a same station basis, 14.1% up for fourth quarter.
spk13: Great. And as you sit today, guys, how is the environment feeling to you as you're entering July here relative to what you felt in the first half of the year? Any... any rays of light coming through in terms of advertising, advertiser willingness to spend, whether it's on the local or national level, or does it feel relatively steady with what you had been feeling in the kind of April, May, June timeframe?
spk16: Yeah, look, there's definitely an advertising recession going on. I mean, I was at the Cannes Lion Advertising Conference, you know, a few weeks ago, And you hear it from the big holding companies. And it's particularly taken root in national. So you're seeing that come through with people who have national ad platforms. Local feels stronger. But you watch the news, CNBC, the economic data is still really strong. But just because advertisers are pulling back, not sure they're pulling back because they're worried about something that's coming or exactly why, but there's definitely an ad recession going on. We're still feeling a level of strength due to interest in diverse-owned media. We're definitely still feeling that. It doesn't mean that we're not seeing less demand, but we're doing better than our non-diverse-owned peers. One of the reasons why we also felt it would be good to be sitting on a lot of cash at this point in time, don't know exactly what's going to happen, But I feel if there's a recession, it'll be a mild recession. I think we're already in an advertising recession. We may not be in an economic recession at this point. And our radio business is going against some significant political headwinds. We have $20 million worth of political headlines.
spk17: It was 13 last year. That was the prior presidential cycle. It was about 13. Still significant.
spk16: Significant. We're preparing to be okay regardless of what the economy does, but I would say I feel better about where things... are going today than I did in January.
spk13: Okay, that's helpful context. Thank you for that. Second question, and I'm sorry if you already disclosed this, but with the stations you're picking up from Cox, are you able to share what the multiple you paid was on that purchase?
spk16: No. I mean, we paid... you know, we paid 27 and a half million dollars, you know, I think I just said that, you know, we think, you know, with, you know, with ad backs and things of that nature, that we'll have at least $5 million of EBITDA. Yeah, yeah. And so I don't know if you caught up with the nav spins. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So So, um, uh, So let's say their EBITDA was less than $5 million. We think with ADBACs we'll have at least $5 million. And when I say ADBACs, duplicate expense stuff that we can take out day one. And there's not a lot of it, right? We're not changing formats. But what was a surprise for us, to be honest with you, because we modeled something else, was we – Well, we, we were able to, um, you know, get out of the two radio stations, you know, um, for, you know, uh, an acceptable price, right. You know, and, and we didn't know what the marketplace was going to be like. Yeah. And, um, and we were able to find two buyers and, and, and got what we thought were, you know, not amazing prices, probably low watermarks for stations in Houston, but given the M and a. activity in radio, period, is pretty tepid. We felt pretty good about the sales there, and so we're going to be in to Houston for about $17 million. Okay.
spk13: Thank you for that. And one last question. You've mentioned your liquidity a couple times, and it is a nice cushion to have given the uncertain economic backdrop. As you move forward here, you've bought back bonds, but you also have this potential casino project. How should we think about the uses of that cash, whether it's debt pay down, going towards a casino initiative, or potentially more M&A activity, whether that's on the radio side or otherwise?
spk16: Look, when we win this casino referendum... We, you know, we're going to have to write a, you know, it's not certain exactly what the equity check, you know, will be. It's 50-50 right now. But, you know, let's assume that it's $80 million, you know, for each us and Churchill, and let's assume you put some debt on it. We may not go that route, you know, depending on how expensive project financing is. So, we may need to write a slightly bigger check. But assume that that's going to be something that we will spend cash on starting in Q4, beginning with closing on the land acquisition. And then I think we sit back and just look at stuff opportunistic. I mean, the good thing is that our bonds trading at a discount call it 90 or instant change or whatever, you know, 10.5%, right? So that's always, you know, that's a good use of capital at that point in time. And if we can make, you know, some radio acquisitions that are, you know, are a better return than that, then we should look hard at that. But, you know, paying down debt, I mean, we're also starting to get into a strike zone, right? of leverage into threes, you get leveraged, you know, three and a half, you know, low threes, you're starting to get in the strike zone of, you know, what other kind of capital, you know, returns of capital do you look at? But we've got some significant projects on the plate right now that we need to see how they're going to turn out.
spk13: Okay. All right, great. I appreciate the time as always.
spk24: We'll next go to the line of Ben Briggs with Stonex Financial Incorporated. Go ahead.
spk14: Morning, guys. Thank you for holding the call and taking the questions. So a lot of mine got answered, but I still have a couple of more here. So using your guidance, and again, thank you for providing guidance, you said that you expect to come in above where you were in fiscal year 19 while adjusting out the roughly $8 million MGM dividend that you received. So that gets me to roughly, let's call it like just north of $130 million of EBITDA. I just want to kind of sanity check that and make sure I'm doing my math right there.
spk17: No, I have $133.5 with MGM in, and MGM I think was $6.6. So I think it's like high 120, 126, 127. Okay, 126. Yeah. Okay, so 126, 127. And then if I subtract out, call it between 60 and 65 million of interest expense and some CapEx, it looks like you guys on an EBITDA minus interest minus CapEx basis.
spk14: should still be comfortably free cash flow positive in fiscal year 23. Is that a safe assumption?
spk17: Yeah, I've got a kind of mid-60s in free cash flow. Depending on where CapEx comes out, we've got a couple of big projects consolidating in Indianapolis and in Charlotte, but probably we don't get to spend all of that this year. So that's why mid-60s free cash flow is what we're penciling out for this year.
spk14: Okay, perfect. That's right around where I was getting to. Thank you. And then the second question. So Churchill Downs, thank you for the clarity on, you know, what size the equity check might be and a little bit about what your thought process is there. Could you give a couple more details on what the operations of that might look like? So I know, obviously, with MGM Casino, That was very much you guys were essentially silent partners, not like you had a hand in operating the casino. You left that to them. Is the Churchill Downs project going to be similar, or are you going to be taking a more hands-on approach with this opportunity?
spk16: They'll be the operator. We're just going to own it 50-50 with them, and they'll be responsible for operating. However, they'll use their corporate expertise to work with us to build a management team locally at the property. You know, they've got a number of partnerships with other people, including, you know, one with Rush Gaming in Chicago and Best Plains. I think they've got one in Miami with Delaware North. I think it's Miami. So, you know, they've got – the good thing about them, they've got experience with having –
spk14: large partners meaning you know not somebody who owns 7% but somebody who owns 50% along with them right now so but we will be relying on them to be the operator okay got it got it okay thank you and then finally and I'm hoping you can answer this so obviously you just released the fiscal year 22 10k do you and I know this is officially the the fiscal year 22 conference call Do you know when you might release the first quarter 23 10Q?
spk17: We haven't set a date. I think we'll know more next week. We're just working through some stuff then in terms of timing of that. And obviously we're mindful of we got an extension from NASDAQ through 927. We don't want to take that length of time. But I think we'll put something out next week which will shed some light on that in terms of time and filing that.
spk14: Okay, great. Thank you very much for holding the call and answering the questions. Have a great day, guys. Thank you.
spk24: Our next question will come from the line of Matt Swope with Baird. Go ahead.
spk07: Good morning, guys. Peter, could you
spk06: Could you give us a sense for out of that large cash number you've mentioned, what the tax hit will be around MGM and any other sort of, you know, unexpected or unusual uses that we should think of coming out of that cash number?
spk17: Yeah, you just went a bit out as you said it, but I think you're asking is there any tax leakage on the MGM sale, right?
spk05: That's right, yeah.
spk17: Yeah, minimal because we got enough NOLs to cover it. So it's roughly $100 million gain. And what it'll do, it'll burn through our NOLs faster. So it probably accelerates us becoming a federal taxpayer from 2027 to 2026, somewhere in that region. So the good news is we'll have the cash on the balance sheet and there'll be minimal tax leakage.
spk24: And as a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you do have questions, please take this opportunity now to press 1, then 0 on your telephone keypad. We'll go next to the line of Brad Kern, a private investor. Go ahead.
spk08: Hi, thanks for taking the call, and I appreciate all the information today. First one is on the Richmond Casino. What's the likelihood, in your view, of a favorable investment? Are you doing any polling yourselves or tracking any sort of local polling that you can maybe give us some color on? And what work are you doing to improve local sentiment for the project among likely voters? In addition on the casino, it's a 50-50 partnership, but who's going to be controlling the decisions? Should you decide? I think it has your name on it, so who are you? who's going to be making the decisions when you get down to the tough ones?
spk16: There will be joint decisions. If we disagree, there's a dispute resolution mechanism. But we're 50-50 partners, and we've got to agree. Otherwise, we go to our dispute resolution mechanism. We've got a 50-50 shot. The referendum, we lost it 50.85 to 49.15. Sentiment continues to be divided in the city. And we got to do a better job of telling voters how the money that the casino will generate is going to be spent. We didn't do that last time. We've got to work with the city on that. That's not our unilateral call. I think that we've got to articulate the other aspects of the resort, not just the casino part, the entertainment vehicle. We've got to do a better job of getting out our voters. But it's 50-50. I've always said that people should look at our company as a baseline. and decide whether or not they're comfortable with our existing operations and our balance sheet and look at the casino as upside, like gravy. And so that's where we sit.
spk08: Okay, that's helpful. So assuming that is approved, what do you anticipate the payback will be on the casino and sort of for modeling purposes? in terms of number of tables and slots and gross gaming revenue across each of those, are there some preliminary figures you can throw out?
spk16: You should assume that the gaming revenue, this is, you know, the state has its own gaming analysis for each of the proposed casino licenses. There are five different jurisdictions. The one for Richmond, Virginia is a little better than $300 million of gaming revenue a year. And you can probably operate better than a 30% margin on that. So assume that the property would do $100 million of EBITDA, if not better. But as a minimum, I think you should assume it's $100 million. It could do better.
spk08: Okay, that's really helpful. And then on the radio and TV side, do you anticipate any potential slowdown in appetite for DEI advertising, particularly given the affirmative action ruling? What are you hearing from your advertising partners?
spk16: Everybody's asking that question, you know, and so my general perspective gut is that if the political climate changes significantly in the country, that sort of progressive and inclusionary politics will take a hit. However, I believe that many of the corporations that have committed to DE&I efforts, you know, believe in it and are doing it because it's good business in today's world. I mean, one of the things that you cannot run from is the changing face of America. You know, that's just what's happening, you know, black and brown and And now Asian populations are growing at a considerably faster clip, you know, than the traditional Caucasian population. And that's not, you know, that's not a race war. That's just the economics of the country, right? And so, you know, there will be different consumption patterns. for those populations and different types of consumption for media and how you communicate with them and talk to them, et cetera, they will become more and more of a force from a consumer standpoint. And it's no different than any other customer. You have to cater to that customer. And that's the conversation that I'm hearing. among advertisers now. But yeah, if the government doesn't give a hoot about diversity and inclusion, then I think there will be some corporations that will pull back on that. Because generally, government pressure or fear of some sort of government regulation or retribution causes good corporate citizenship yeah um he said but that's my general view but you never know you know i mean yeah i mean forgot who it was but you know donald trump on his way out the door pardoned i've got a number of rappers or whatever like you know i forgot who it was it was like who would have thought right Was it Little Wayne? I remember what it was. So maybe if he wins the presidency, maybe he'll all of a sudden decide it's a good business as well. You never know. But that's my view. I mean, look, the progressive wing of the Democratic Party right now has got a lot of people talking about fairness and equity and justice. And the traditional... faction of the Democratic Party is, yeah, those are things that we believe in too, right? And so that helps with this wave.
spk08: Okay, I appreciate that thoughtful response. On a related note, your core audience, are you seeing the sort of existential time for radio listenership and secular pressures there? Are you seeing better consumption trends? Can you just talk about consumption trends of your core audience versus competitors?
spk16: Everything in traditional media is going down and seeing less consumption. But radio feels safer and better and less... of and in less of a free fall, you know, then the pay TV ecosystem, you know, does. But I think what we're also seeing is with radio, we're, we're dealing with less rating points right now. But if you looked at our revenue, Peter, you did that analysis, our revenue is really kind of on par, or what was the analysis you did?
spk17: When you look at audio, looking across the radio segment reach and digital audio, we're still above pre-pandemic levels of revenue and EBITDA, despite the fact that the universe of listeners has gone down fairly significantly post-pandemic, as you might imagine, given different working patterns and commuting patterns.
spk16: So I'm going to give some credit to one of the – CEOs, you know, premier CEO in the industry, Bob Pittman, I had a conversation with him in Cannes at this advertising festival, and we were talking about the radio business. And he hammers the point that radio still has 90% reach, even though the numbers may be small. There's a 90% reach in America, and reach in television, you know, continues to decline. Historically, advertisers have paid more for less in television. And I think Peter's analysis would say that we're doing pretty good on pricing versus where audience has gone. So that's a world we're living in. And I don't know what the answer is. Nobody except Netflix is making money in streaming right now. Maybe Discovery turns the corner here. I think they were supposed to turn the corner this quarter or next quarter. But people are starting to dial back on their investments in streaming. Radio is kind of hanging in there. But I... There was a time when I was a lot more worried about radio, and I felt really good that we were in the cable television business. Today, I feel really good that we're diversified among all of these things, and radio feels like it's hanging in there. And we're making our cable TV business hang in there right now with the way that we're managing it. But I do feel like we need to do something strategic there, whether it's picking up more distribution, programming investments, some sort of consolidation opportunity, because that landscape is changing. And so we've got to figure that out. But the good news is we're at a leverage level now where we're going to have time to do that. We're going to have time to make those investments. We're going to have time. We're not going to be under any pressure that will make us have to operate in a non-effective, non-strategic way. I think that we're going to have the runway to make the turn.
spk08: Sure. On the balance sheet, I mean, we've talked about the economics of the casino. So in the world where in the 50-50 shot where it doesn't go through, you mentioned on the call that it's leveraged in the low threes, that there's other forms of capital return you might be looking at. So how are you thinking about that versus potential strategic gains? strategic actions on the radio and TV set or other industries, whether it's gaming or otherwise?
spk16: Look, we match everything for us. So strategy is often very overused in terms of a rationale as to why you do something. Something, you know, strategy... Strategy has to be accountable to what your current return options are. I don't think you make a strategic decision and not match that up against what's the best use of capital. If we can buy our bonds and retire our debt and get a 10.5% return, there's no strategic decision that we would make that would net us a 5% return. We wouldn't do that. You just pay down your bonds, right? Because if it's strategic, then it should actually yield you an outside return, right? It should have you create value. And the value that it creates needs to be better than what else you can do with the capital. That's the lens under which we look at stuff. And it's worked for us. Does that make sense?
spk08: I guess I'm just wondering, is there a leverage level that you... I know the stock isn't terribly liquid. Is there a leverage level that you start to think about? You shift from debt reduction to whether it's share buybacks or... Maybe whatever it is to return that.
spk16: Yeah, maybe I mean, we were buying back shares last year, you know, yeah, then we bought back $25 million worth of shares at $5 and 30 cents.
spk19: Yeah.
spk17: And I go up, we said it come down, you know, but it's kind of, you know, given the macro that we're just, you know, we got some strategic options ahead of us, that'll be what that'll be on the plate at some point, but it depends on Depends on how revenue goes, how EBITDA goes, how we feel about it.
spk16: And the share buyback analysis goes through the same return rigor that buying a radio cluster does, us buying more cable assets, us investing in the casino. We're not going to buy back our stock and earn a 5% return over paying down our debt and earning a 10.5% return.
spk08: Okay, thank you. And last question for me is just a housekeeping. When you mentioned the 3.7 times leverage by end of year, is that, I assume that's net? We said 3.7. Right, 3.7. That's on a net basis? Yeah. And is that pro forma for any other uses of cash, or what are the underlying assumptions in the 3.7?
spk17: It assumes that we win the Richmond referendum and we buy the land that Alfred referred to in fourth quarter. So that cash goes out the door. And it assumes that we close on the acquisition in Houston. So that net $17 million goes out the door as well. But we pro forma and call it $5 million of EBITDA from that transaction.
spk08: And no additional debt buybacks in that number? No. Modeled into that number? Okay. Thank you. That's all my questions. I appreciate it.
spk24: We'll go next to the line of Matthew Sanchafer with Massaro. Go ahead.
spk16: Hi, guys. Thank you for sneaking me in here near the end. Just a couple of housekeeping questions. What are you guys planning to spend on content this year? That number was obviously pretty high in 2022.
spk17: Yeah, it was high in 22. I was just looking. I think mid-50s. Jody's here with us. He can speak to it if he'd like. But I think we're looking at cash. I've got on my sheet at least cash spend in the kind of mid-50s.
spk09: Does that sound right, Jody?
spk18: Say again, Matt.
spk09: Did you say mid-50s? I'm sorry. I'm having a little sound issue.
spk18: Yeah, mid-50s.
spk17: Okay, great. I think it normalizes better than last year, a lot from a cash standpoint.
spk16: Okay, great. Thank you. And were there any unusual cash expenses in the radio or digital segments in the fourth quarter specifically?
spk09: Because margins took a little bit more of a hit than I might have been expecting. And I'm sorry if we went through that during the first part of the call when the AC was on, but I missed it.
spk17: Yeah, they are. There were a few things matter. There was some noise in the number, so obviously we had the high watermark year, so bonuses were higher than they otherwise normally would be so so. There was some of that in margins in digital. We talked a little bit about the fact those were impacted by higher traffic acquisition costs. That was $2.3 million. Also higher content costs at digital and ad production costs. So those margins compressed. Other than that, there wasn't anything particularly material. Okay, great.
spk16: And then that mid-60s pre-cash flow number you mentioned, does that include the MGM dividend this year, or are you rolling that up into the sale price?
spk17: That is in the sale price, so that's not, so that mid-60s, hang on a second. Good point. Let me just double check before I speak on that. Shouldn't have, yeah, we have, actually, no, sorry, that does include it, Mike. That is rolled up into the 8.7 of receipts. It's in the mid-60s. Sorry. Okay.
spk16: And I guess just generally on the digital side of things, you mentioned a higher traffic acquisition cost. There's some guidance for what looks like kind of persistent lower margins going forward. What do you think about that competitive landscape overall? It feels like, as you guys know, it feels like every radio station, and not just radio, obviously, but every radio station company has been trying to get into that business in a significant way. Yeah.
spk28: What do you think is driving the higher traffic acquisition costs?
spk16: Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Our digital business is different than, uh, everybody else's race business, uh, digital business. Um, you know, we, our digital business is largely as a content publisher, you know, where we sell, uh, video ads and display advertising, probably roughly 40% of our revenue, you know, this year would be, uh, digital video. Um, We've got some streaming revenues. I forgot what it was. I know it's at least 5%. I don't know if it's – excuse me, at least $5 million. I don't know if it's going to be a little higher. It's 5.7. It's in the five. Yeah, and we've got a bit of podcast business, but the Cumulus and Odyssey models are podcast-driven. iHeart has got their iHeart Media streaming platform, and they've got a big podcasting business. We're much more of a publisher. And then Town Square does digital services, right? So they act as a local small digital advertising agency for small, medium-sized clients in the market that they operate in. So our digital business is different than everybody else's. With that said, it's benefiting from still demand. We've got the largest African-American targeted audience in the space, so we're the scale player in that space. And I don't know what the progress is going for. I hope it continues to remain profitable. We've got to figure out how to see if we can grow that margin. Digital publishing is a tough business. You can see from BuzzFeed and Box and a bunch of these other companies, Vice, they're having a tough way to go. We've been doing better. We've got to figure out how to manage through that. But it's a better business than the podcasting business. Yeah, so in my viewpoint.
spk04: Okay.
spk16: Yeah. Great. Thank you.
spk18: Thank you, Matt. We'll go next to the – pardon me.
spk16: Yeah, it's 1106. As I said, we've got time for one more question.
spk24: We'll go to the line of Marlene Pereira with Bank of America. Go ahead.
spk26: Thank you for taking my call and squeezing me in. Most of them have been answered. But quick question. You had mentioned BET at the top of the call. So any other information on that or thoughts or what that could potentially look like in terms of the impact on leverage?
spk16: I mean, it's a competitive process. We're under an NDA. People ask us if we're interested in it. So I just figured I'd mention that we are in the process. I couldn't, you know, we're not, you know, far enough along on anything at this point in time to comment. And, you know, we wouldn't be allowed to comment anyway, you know, but I just get tired of people asking me, hey, are you guys, you know, looking at this? And so I decided to admit that we were, you know, but that's all the information I can give.
spk26: Got it. And then just a quick, you know, kind of reframe, you know, given the current environment overall, secular and cyclical, how high would you be willing to, you know, have your leverage in the current environment or what you kind of see the environment to be over the next year?
spk16: You know, look, we like our leverage, you know, four or below. Yeah, we like it here. If we have to write a $100-plus million check over the next 12 months for the casino, that could change our leverage profile. I'm sure Peter has the numbers, but $100 million goes out the door with no cash flow coming in for, call it, 24 to 30 months is going to raise your leverage. But I'm also assuming if we win a casino referendum that we're probably going to get some credit for that in our equity value. And who knows? Maybe we'll raise some more equity. Don't know how we'll think about that. But I would suffice it to say we sleep good at night when our leverage is below 4.
spk17: We like that. Yeah, look, it probably pops up above 4 in Q1, excluding you know, the performer for GM because the cash wasn't received till Q2. So I guess we'll get pro forma numbers in in Q1. But excluding the pro forma is probably north of four, and it drops down, you know, for, you know, hopefully, mid threes. And as Alfred said, we hope and finish about 3.7 times this year. And if I look at our long range plan, it's, you know, it's out, it's out in the low threes, and eventually in the in the mid twos, that assuming we can hit our plan.
spk26: Got it. Sorry, if I could just put in one last one. Early on the topic call, you also had said kind of more generally that radio multiples are like five times, if I heard you correctly.
spk16: I mean, there's lots of comps out there. Last I looked, I thought the average radio multiple was kind of like five and a half or something like that. So, again, you know, that's, You know, that's what I think I remember saying.
spk17: It's variable within that, right, depending on who you look at. Yeah. I think that was about the mean, yeah.
spk26: Fair enough. Great. Well, thank you very much.
spk16: Thank you. Thank you, everybody. We'll look forward to talking to you, you know, at a point in the near future.
spk24: Ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude your conference call for today. Thank you for your participation. and for using AT&T Event Teleconferencing. You may now disconnect.
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