Urban One, Inc.

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

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

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

Thank you, Peter. Operator, could you open it up for Q&A first?

We will now begin the question and answer session. In order to ask a question, press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star one for any questions. Our first question will come from the line of Ben Briggs with Stonex Financial Inc. Please go ahead.

Good morning, guys. Thank you for holding the call and for taking the questions. Sure. Yeah, so a couple quick ones from me here. First of all, I'm looking at the margins here in your cable TV segment, and I'm noticing that even the margins have grown a bit. Am I right to infer that those are from this first round of cost-cutting initiatives that you guys did?

No, I think the pro... Yeah. Do you want to speak to it, Jody?

It's just a timing issue. We did get some savings on programming that will be real this year, but just timing of our marketing campaigns this year versus last year is what's giving you the positive flip.

Gotcha. Understood. Understood. And, you know, after this second round of cost cuts, I know you mentioned that they're going to happen kind of by the end of the third quarter, so expect to see them flow through results in the fourth quarter. Can you give any granularity on what we should expect to see and how we should expect to see those cost cuts flow through the financials?

Not yet. We haven't had it. We started the process. but we're not finished. That's the reason they haven't taken effect. I don't suspect it's going to dramatically change the current guide, and I think you'll see the majority of the impact come through for 2026, but I don't have that answer for you just yet. But since we've talked about it on the call last quarter, I wanted to point out that we haven't gotten there yet. But we wanted to go ahead and, you know, get the guide out there, you know, sort of irrespective of what that cost cut was, you know, was going to bring. I mean, you know, could it bring a million or $2 million in the quarter? You know, maybe we'll find out. We just haven't tabulated yet. But it's not going to take it to 70.

Right, right. Okay, got it, got it. Go ahead. And, Ben, just circling back on the TV1 margins, I'm looking at the full year projections and the margins are, yeah, flat essentially. So we're holding margins pretty well off of obviously a diminished revenue base. But the margins are not, margins are flat. But it's a good effort.

Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you. And then next thing and maybe the last thing from me is obviously there were 64 million of debt buybacks uh during the during the second quarter how are you guys thinking about debt buybacks obviously your uh your your bonds are trading a little up they're they're closer to 60 now uh than i think they were when you were buying them um are you guys planning on continuing those debt buybacks or maybe a pause now that uh the debt is rallied

Yeah, I think that our focus continues to be, you know, debt reduction and expense management, you know, so whether or not we're going to be back opportunistically Buying debt, you know, at this level remains to be seen meaning that, you know, one of the reasons why we wanted to get the, you know, our numbers out there so, you know, the market can have a, you know, a realistic view of where we're going to be, you know, this year. So, you know, we'll still see how it all plays out. The vast, vast, vast, vast majority of our cash, you know, is, you know, continues to be focused on our deliberations, you know. So don't have an answer of what we're going to do this afternoon or tomorrow in terms of buybacks, but our priority has not changed.

Understood. I appreciate that. That'll be all from me. I'll hand it over to others. Thank you again for the call. Thank you.

Once again, for any questions, press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad, and our next question will come from the line of Ken Silver with Staple. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thank you for the time. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Okay. Sorry about that. There's an echo on my end. Just a few questions. And you sort of just addressed this with the last caller. But your sales and marketing expenses on a consolidated basis were down a lot year over year in the second quarter. Is that like the new normal or are they going to like, I think you kind of, are they going to reverse a lot in the second half of the year?

There's a timing difference that Jody just mentioned for TV1, so there's some element of reversal there. But, I mean, we're just obviously tightening our belts across everything we can. I don't think there's going to be a major rebound on those.

Okay. And then I guess, I mean, if you're tightening sales and marketing a fair amount, like, I mean, are you seeing any sort of you know, unintended consequences negatively from, like, you know, top line, or you feel like that hasn't affected you?

It's almost the other way around. It's like the sales commission.

Yeah, exactly. It's variable, right? Yeah, we have not gone in and taken out, you know, sales people, you know, in our cost efforts. That's not, you know... And in fact, if anything, you know, in markets like Washington, D.C., you know, we're looking to defund, right? You know, we're, you know, so we're not, you know, sales is not an area where we're looking to take out a bunch of costs, right? Like, you know, it's really kind of we actually need to be reorienting you know, our efforts in the radio business to actually increase our digital, you know, our local digital revenue generation. So I think that cost reduction in that area has got to be largely related to just the revenue being down, right? Okay. Yeah.

I understand. I thought it was something marketing expenditure too. I got it. No, I understand. Okay, and then, Peter, I think I heard you say that a national radio, yours was down 22% on the quarter versus, like, a market down 11%. Is that right? And if that's right, can you maybe just talk about that a little more?

Yeah, so nationally we were down 23.6% against a market that was down 31%. So we've been struggling nationally with,

Big clients, big agencies, there's some... Yeah, so look, so we got a couple things happen. One, you got the national, the natural pressure, you know, on, you know, secular pressure on our businesses, cable television, broadcast radio, and national radio. Then you also have the pullback in DEI dollars, which, you know, have absolutely, you know, hurt our performance, you know. And so, yeah, it's a combination, you know, of those things.

And then we're also hearing about AI, you know, AI related.

Yeah. Including radio altogether, so. Yeah. So these, you know, these large language models that, you know, people are now using to do marketing campaigns are not, you know, they're emitting, you know, broadcast radio as part of it. We have to figure out what the solution is, you know, for that. But again, that's more the digital transformation, you know, that puts pressure on us.

Got it. Okay. Great. And then just lastly, On your ABL, I think it was undrawn, but is it fully available? Are there covenants? Can you just remind us?

Yeah, no, it's fully available to be drawn. There's a maintenance covenant, you know, fixed charge ratio covenant, which we are in compliance with. So if we needed to draw on it, we could.

What is the covenant?

I think it's one point. It's one ratio, and we're at 1.7 off the top of my head, so we've got significant headroom on that.

Okay, great. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. That's it.

And our next question comes from the line of Marlene Pereira with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thanks for taking the question. I was wondering if at a very high level you could just, Let us know how you're thinking about free cash flow for the remainder of the year and for the full year. One, obviously, given the reduction in the EBITDA, obviously, there should be some cost-saving elements in the second half of the year, although I know that's still to be determined. Also, has there been any tax benefits? Sorry if I had missed that, but just if you can provide some context, that would be great.

Sorry, what was the last bit? Tax benefits.

From the new legislation.

What new legislation?

I was wondering if there's any interest benefit from the Big Beautiful Bill.

Oh, I don't know.

Nothing on the interest side? Okay.

No. So we're projecting at the moment, if we don't do any more debt buybacks, we're projecting about a $95 million cash balance a year. $95? $95. Okay. So, obviously, you know, even with the lower EBITDA, we think we're going to generate some additional cash in the back half of it. What's the third part of the question? I've answered two.

That was it. Just, you know, any context on the moving parts, but that's helpful. So, thank you.

That will conclude our question and answer session. I'll hand the call back over to Alfred Liggins for any closing comments.

Great. Thank you, Operator. Thank you, everybody, for joining the call. As usual, we're available offline for any additional questions that you may not have a chance to ask. Thank you. Thank you, Operator.

Thank you, and this will conclude today's call. You may now disconnect.