Entravision Communications Corporation

Greetings and welcome to the EntraVision second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Kimberly Astukian of Investor Relations. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Entrevision's second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Joining me today are Walter Ulloa, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, and Chris Young, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, I must inform you that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ. Please refer to Entrevision's SEC filings for a list of risks and uncertainties that could impact actual results. This call is the property of Entrevision Communications Corporation. Any redistribution, retransmission, or rebroadcast of this call in any form without the express written consent of Entrevision Communications Corporation is strictly prohibited. Also, this call will include non-GAAP financial measures. The company has provided a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most comparable GAAP measures in today's press release. The press release is available on the company's website and was filed with the SEC on Form 8-K. In addition, all pro forma figures including revenue, operating expenses, and consolidated adjusted EBITDA noted throughout the prepared remarks include the contributions of Media Donuts and 365 Digital in the prior year period. I will now turn the call over to Walter Ulloa, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Kimberly, and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us for EntraVision's second quarter 2022 earnings call. EntraVision's performance in the second quarter capped off a strong first half of 2022. Net revenue for the second quarter totaled $221.7 million, up 24% year over year. On a pro forma basis, revenue increased 16% over the prior year period. The continued growth of our digital segment, combined with improvements in our core television and audio businesses, drove the strength during the quarter. For the six months ended June 30, 2022, revenue totaled $418.9 million, up 28% year-over-year. On a pro forma basis, revenue for the first six months of 2022 increased 20% over the prior year period. Similar to the quarter, year-to-date revenue benefited from growth in our digital segment, as well as improvements in our core television and audio businesses. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA totaled $22.5 million for the second quarter, up 26% year-over-year. What is so impressive about our second quarter EBITDA growth is that we had $5.4 million of non-returning revenue from the prior year same period, and we still managed to grow EBITDA 26% in the quarter. For the six months ended June 30, 2022, consolidated adjusted EBITDA totaled $40.6 million, up 27% year-over-year. Even as our top line continues to grow, we have successfully maintained a lean cost structure, having right-sized our expenses over the last few years. Despite current macro conditions, we do not currently see a need to make any additional expense cuts. That said, expense management will continue to remain core to our operations as it undoubtedly drives our EBITDA free cash flow and ability to provide returns to our shareholders. Speaking of shareholder returns, I am pleased to announce that our board of directors has approved a cash dividend for the second quarter of 2022 of two and a half cents per share, payable to shareholders on September 30th, 2022. During the quarter, we also continued buying back shares under our $20 million share repurchase program. bringing the total repurchase to date to approximately $11.3 million. With that as a background, let's take a further look at each of our three segments, beginning with our largest digital. I'm very pleased to report that during the second quarter, all of our digital units delivered solid revenue growth while at the same time reporting positive operating margins. Digital segment revenue represented roughly 78% of consolidated revenue the second quarter, and totaled 174.4 million, up 34% year-over-year. Top achievements for the segment during the quarter included our strategic territorial expansion within Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa, as well as the success of our mobile performance business led by Smatics. Entrevision's digital mission is to continue building a global digital marketing sales operation in emerging territories where a critical mass of connected consumers exists together with a large and growing advertising industry. Based on these criteria, we have expanded across multiple territories and continents, both organically and through strategic tuck-in acquisitions. At present, Entrevision's digital operations span 35 different countries and service over 7,000 clients. To deliver upon this mission, our digital operations provide two main offerings. The first is our commercial representation service, for some of the world's leading social and technology platforms. In this business, due to our phenomenal sales teams who provide staffing, onboarding, and workflow services, we continue performing strongly. The second offering entails our mobile user acquisition solutions that include cutting-edge proprietary technology, unique performance services, and dynamic creative optimization workflows. These mobile solutions are offered in Latin America, Europe, Africa, and Southeast Asia as standalone services. With that as a background, let me provide some examples of these services in action. Starting in Latin America, EntraVision Cisneros Interactive delivered solid results for the second quarter with revenue increasing 9% over the prior year, fueled by our commercial representation partnerships with Meta and Spotify. Turning to Meta in particular, on July 1st, EntraVision Cisneros Interactive officially expanded its partnership with Meta in Honduras and El Salvador. This brings our Latin American partnership with Meta to 11 total countries. As part of this expanded partnership, Entrevision Cisneros Interactive will provide strategic support, creative expertise, and content development for Meta advertisers in the region. Entrevision Cisneros Interactive has had great success in Latin America over the past five years, training more than 5,000 people, including agencies and advertisers, to leverage the Meta platform for their advertising needs. Our geographic expansion into our 10th and 11th Latin American countries is evidence of our historical success, and we are very excited to see our efforts unfold. Go-to-market events are already taking place throughout Honduras and El Salvador, with setup and training happening at each of our local offices. In Southeast Asia, Entrevision's Media Donuts also delivered very strong results, with revenue improving for the second quarter 57% year-over-year on a pro forma basis. EntraVision's Media Donuts revenue growth was largely driven by its success with Twitter and TikTok along with strong mobile performance. Similar to our digital units, EntraVision Media Donuts continues to expand its geographic reach and during the second quarter broadened its operations into Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, and Cambodia. Latin America, Asia, and now Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa is amongst our most recent expansion territories, and we have been very pleased with our performance in this region. For the second quarter, EnterVision 365 Digital's revenue increased nearly five times that of the prior year on a pro forma basis. In May, EnterVision 365 Digital opened its operations in Kenya to serve local companies with advanced branding, performance, and other creative needs. Sub-Saharan Africa has over 500 million digitally connected consumers who are technologically savvy, making it a favorable region to further expand. Smatics, our mobile user acquisition programmatic ad tech platform, headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, also performed very well during the second quarter, with revenue improving 162% year over year. Smatics' highly competitive offerings remain a go-to for the gaming, fintech, and mobile delivery industries. In the second quarter, we continued to bring Smatics across the globe with territory expansion into Asia and Europe. We also unveiled several ad tech product performance enhancements, and debuted our new team of professionals solely dedicated to work on gaming apps and mobile performance. With many different digital brands now part of the Entrevision family, we have taken the important step of unifying all of our marketing communications under a single umbrella. To manage this entire process on a global basis, we have appointed our very own Karina Serda as Executive Vice President of Global Marketing. Karina will be an important part of our expansion effort, working closely with each of our global businesses on branding, messaging, sales, and training. We are excited to take this step in our marketing and sales operation with Karina's promotion. Now let's turn to our television segment, which comprise 15% of revenue for the second quarter. Television revenue was 32.4 million in the second quarter, down 5% compared to the prior year period. As noted last quarter, we anticipated our television revenue would decline this year, primarily to the discontinuation of three Univision affiliates at the end of 2021. Excluding those three Univision affiliate markets, total television revenue was up 11% year over year. Excluding those three Univision affiliate markets, and 2.8 million in political spend in the second quarter, core television advertising increased 1%. National core advertising revenue increased 1% and local core advertising revenue increased 1% year over year. The auto category continues to face pressures. Excluding the three discontinued Univision affiliations, auto ad revenues were down 3% in the second quarter year over year. While we initially believed the auto category would recover in the second half of 2022, But for a number of reasons, including high gas prices and continued supply chain disruption impacting inventory, improvement in this key advertising category is unlikely to happen in the second half of 2022. Nevertheless, strong performance in other ad categories has nicely offset the decline in auto. Excluding the three discontinued Univision affiliates that ended in 2021, travel and leisure, restaurants, retail, grocery, finance, and beverages had strong growth in the second quarter compared to the prior year. As a result of the current market conditions, national advertisements order cycles have shortened considerably, reducing our overall sales visibility. Fortunately, local ads have been fairly resilient with consistent sales cycles. Turning to political, it was certainly an encouraging quarter from a political advertising perspective. While we had initially anticipated approximately $11 million in total political ad revenue in 2022, Following a strong second quarter in which we generated 3.4 million in political ad sales in our television and audio units, we now expect full-year political ad revenues for television and audio combined to be $17 to $19 million. This impressive performance was primarily driven by the Nevada elections, the California online gambling initiatives, and the Texas primaries, all of which have recognized the importance of the Latino voting population. A particular note, in Texas, California, and Nevada, we are seeing more political advertisers reserving television spots closer to election day. This is a purchasing behavior we have not experienced to this extent with past election cycles. With regards to our ratings performance during May 2022 for adults 18 to 49 in early local news, our Univision television stations finished ahead of their Telemundo competitors in 12 of 14 markets. In late local news, we finished ahead of Telemundo competitors among adults 18 to 49 in 11 of 14 markets plus one tie. Additionally, our early and late local newscasts are ranked number one or two against English and Spanish competitors in nine markets, including ties. Lastly, let's speak to our audio segment, which comprised the remaining 7% of second quarter revenue. Audio revenue totaled approximately 14.9 million for the second quarter, up 6% year over year, primarily due to an increase in local advertising revenue. Excluding political spend of $628,000 in the second quarter of 2022, core audio revenue increased 2% versus the second quarter of 2021. The audio segment's cash flow generation was also strong and improved 8% in the second quarter as compared to the prior year. With regards to advertising categories, travel and leisure, retail, restaurants, product brands, finance, beverages, and entertainment all delivered strong growth versus the prior year period. Similar to television, auto audio advertising continued to struggle during the second quarter, delivering a negative 5% performance year over year. Looking at our audio segment ratings performance for the spring book, among Spanish-language radio stations, the Erazo y la Chocolata show is ranked number one in PM Drive in nine out of our 11 markets released for spring among Hispanic adults 25 to 54, including ties. and in six markets among Hispanic adults 18 to 49. Across our 11 owned and operated radio stations, the Rosalie La Chocolata show reached more than 469,000 Hispanics, 25 to 54. On our tricolor network, our midday programming ranked as a top choice among Latinos. During midday, La Plebe ranked as a top three Spanish language radio station in four of our six tricolored markets, released for spring among Hispanic adults 18 to 49, including Thais. Before speaking further, I will turn the call over to Chris Young, our CFO, to discuss our second quarter financial performance in further detail and to provide our third quarter pacing. Chris?

Thanks, Walter, and good afternoon, everyone. As Walter discussed, revenue for Q2 2022 totaled $221.7 million, an increase of 24% from the second quarter of 2021. For our digital segment, revenue totaled $174.4 million in the second quarter, up 34% year-over-year and up 22% on a pro forma basis as compared to Q2 of 2021. For our TV segment, total revenue was $32.4 million in the second quarter, down 5% year over year. Excluding political, core advertising revenue was down 20% year over year. However, excluding the revenue impact from the three discontinued Univision affiliates, total revenue increased 11% year over year. Retransmission revenue for the quarter totaled $9 million, which was down 3% year over year, mainly due to the loss of the three Univision affiliates. Lastly, for our audio segment, revenue totaled 14.9 million in the quarter, up 6% from the prior year. Excluding political, core audio revenue was up 2% over Q2 of last year. Operating expenses in the second quarter of 2022 totaled 47.4 million, up 14% from 41.4 million in the prior year period. Excluding operating expenses related to our media donuts and 365 digital acquisitions, Operating expenses were up 9%, primarily due to our revenue growth and increases in salaries. Corporate expenses increased by 16% to total $8.5 million for the quarter, compared to $7.3 million in the same quarter of last year. The primary drivers of corporate expense increases were increases in non-cash stock-based compensation expenses and salary expenses. During the second quarter, we repurchased approximately 600,000 shares under our $20 million share repurchase program, bringing our total repurchases to date to 1.8 million shares or a total of $11.3 million. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA totaled $22.5 million for the second quarter, up 26% from the $17.8 million in the prior year period. Free cash flow, as defined in our earnings release, was up 15% to $14.3 million in the quarter, or a conversion rate of 64% of adjusted EBITDA, compared to $12.4 million in the second quarter of the prior year. Net income attributable to common stockholders was up 8% to $8.5 million, compared to $7.9 million recorded in the prior year period. Diluted earnings per share for the second quarter of 2022 were $0.10 compared to $0.09 per share in the same period of last year. Excluding a non-cash charge of approximately $1 million relating to a change in fair value of contingent consideration, earnings for the second quarter of 2022 were $0.11 per share. Cash paid for income taxes was $6.2 million for the second quarter compared to $3.3 million in the same quarter of last year. The increase was primarily due to our making two quarters worth of tax payments during the quarter as opposed to just one in the prior year. Net interest expense was 1.6 million for the quarter, down 9% from 1.8 million in the same quarter of last year. Net cash interest expense was 1.2 million for the second quarter, down 27% compared to 1.6 million in the same quarter of last year. Cash capital expenditures for Q2 totaled 1.7 million. We remain on track for roughly $12.5 million in full-year cash capital expenditures. Turning to our balance sheet, cash and marketable securities as of June 30, 2022, totaled $184.2 million. Total debt was $210.8 million. Net of $75 million of cash and marketable securities on the books. Our total leverage as defined in our credit agreement was 1.4 times as of the end of the second quarter. Net of total cash and marketable securities, our total net leverage was 0.3 times. Turning to our pacings for the third quarter of 2022. As of today, revenue from our digital segment is pacing plus 24% over the prior year. Our TV segment is pacing minus 4% over the prior year period, with core TV advertising, excluding political, thus far in the quarter, pacing at minus 14%. As Walter noted, we expect our TV revenue to decline in 2022 from the discontinuation in 2021 of three of our Univision affiliates. That said, we more than make up for any TV revenue decline with our digital segment performance. Excluding the impact of our three discontinued Univision affiliates, TV is pacing plus 6%. Lastly, our audio segment is pacing plus 4% over the prior year period. with core audio, excluding political, pacing at a plus 1%. All in, our total revenue compared to last year is pacing at a plus 17%. With this, I will turn it back over to you, Walter.

Thanks, Chris. As I previously highlighted, we are very pleased to see continued growth across all our digital platforms. In just the past two years alone, our digital segment revenue has grown by over 13 times. As I mentioned on our last call, we made a strategic investment in Jack of Digital. which has an exclusive commercial partnership with TikTok in Pakistan. Jack of Digital taps into a market of over 100 million connected consumers and is part of a vibrant emerging economy with strong advertising spend. These elements fit ideally with the core aspects of our digital mission that I spoke about earlier. Not only are we entering into representation partnerships with new social and technology platforms and new territories, but we are also cross-leveraging organically our current partnerships from one region to another. For example, we expanded our partnership with the in-gaming advertising platform Anzu, which we now represent through Entrevision 365 Digital in South Africa, Entrevision Media Donuts in Southeast Asia, and Entrevision Cisneros Interactive in Latin America. Another example is our recent exclusive partnership between Entrevision Cisneros Interactive and Televisa Univision. EnterVision Cisneros Interactive has been appointed as the exclusive advertising sales partner for VIX, the over-the-top platform of Televisa Univision in 10 Latin American markets. Given our solid balance sheet, we remain active and continue to look for opportunities to invest or acquire companies that will further enhance the digital services we provide to our growing global customer base. As we look to the second half of 2022, we believe that political advertising spend will will also be a key driver of revenue growth. While we expected strong political growth in 2022, the amount spent by the political industry in the first two quarters, still months away from the midterm elections, was a very pleasant surprise. This increase in political ad spend provides further evidence that both political parties understand the importance of Latino voters to local and national elections. In fact, a study by the Pew Center found that in battleground states in the 2020 election, as a share of eligible voters, Latino voters grew more than any other racial or ethnic group. We believe this bodes well for our television and audio segments in the back half of this year as political parties rev up their ad spending to the midterm elections. While macro conditions, including inflation and recessionary concerns, may pose some challenges to the broader markets as we progress through 2022, with a strong balance sheet, streamlined expense structure, and a team of some of the best professionals in our industry, EntraVision is well positioned for continued success. I want to extend my gratitude to our EntraVision teams around the world for their continuous efforts and performance, and I want to thank our shareholders for your support. That concludes our prepared remarks. Chris and I would like to open up the call for your questions. Operator?

Thank you very much, sir. At this time, we will be conducting our question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. We have a first question from the lineup, Michael Kopinski with Noble Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Congratulations on a strong quarter. I have a couple of questions. I know that you recently expanded your footprint in Latin America. I was just wondering, have you now expanded what I would consider the low-hanging fruit? What are the opportunities still left in Latin America? What countries do you still think you might be able to expand into. If you can just give us a sense of the opportunity to grow outside of the regions that you currently have.

Michael, it's Walter. Yes, we did expand in our META partnership in two new territories in Latin America. As far as what else might be available to us, that's something that... that META has to decide. We work very closely with them. We do the best we can to represent their platform in all of our Latin American markets. And like I said, we certainly try to mirror their professionalism and give the platform the best representation possible. Beyond that, we are in contact with them regularly, and we're always looking for new opportunities in other parts of the world to represent Meta.

You know, and I know that, you know, a lot of investors focus on the U.S. economy and how that's, you know, affecting advertising, particularly national advertising. I was just wondering if, you know, given that you are in such strong growth markets and in such a strong growth industry in digital and a lot of these other countries, Are you seeing any weakness coming from any particular regions around the globe, just what we are seeing in the United States and what's happening?

Well, I think this inflationary condition in the United States is worldwide, and it certainly has. It dampens people's ability to consume more or spend more, so Certainly, I think the issues that we're facing here in the United States with a slowdown in consumer spending is prevalent throughout the world. I got you.

Is there any particular region that you're noticing that weakness, you know, that I guess are softening of the growth that you're seeing in digital?

No, no, not at this time. I mean, you know, we monitor all of our markets, our territories as closely as we can. and try to get a good sense of where the market's headed. But right now, we're not seeing any, I'll call it, any weakness. But we'll continue to monitor it. I think the economic situation, not only in the U.S., but in the world, is something that will continue to change and be more volatile than we would like.

And then my last question, obviously, you have a pristine balance sheet, lots of cash, which is in a great position to be in, especially if we are headed into recession. There are a lot of media companies out there that are very leveraged. What does it look like at this point? Are you seeing anything that's now crossing your desk that may have, you know, when the economy was looking pretty strong? you know, just kind of like looking at the pipeline of opportunities. And then if you can just talk a little bit about where you're seeing the opportunities. Are they in the digital space or are they, you know, in other areas that you might consider?

Well, I think you were dropping off there a little bit, Michael, so I was having trouble hearing all of your questions. But, you know, we spend a lot of time analyzing the opportunities in the digital space. That's something that's kind of a constant that runs through the company. You know, we continue to look at opportunities in, you know, all parts of the world, particularly those opportunities that complement our current infrastructure that we've put in place.

Gotcha. At this point, you wouldn't be looking at media like traditional media like television or radio or other things of that nature.

Well, you know, it has to be something really compelling. I mean, once in a while things come across our desks here on the traditional media side, and we look at it closely and we evaluate it and see if it can contribute to our growth. And if it can't, then we move on. But that's the same approach we use with any digital opportunities as well. You know, how well will it fit into the current strategy of the company with regards to our digital assets, what's the culture like of the new company that we might be looking at, and most importantly, what are the prospects for growth? Gotcha. All right, that's all I have.

Thank you.

Thank you. We have a next question from the line of James Dix with Industry Capital Research. Please go ahead.

Hey, gentlemen. A couple questions. I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, over the past quarter you had a couple conference presentations where I think the message was that you were still comfortable with the business outlook that you had going into the year. Now that you've reported your second quarter results, would you speak to that again? I mean, do you still feel basically the similar level of comfort with your business outlook that you had going into the year?

We do, James. We like what we see so far in the current quarter, and then fourth quarter obviously is still a long ways out, but we're still tracking to what we had budgeted as far as at the end of last year.

Okay. And you've announced since then a few territorial expansions, which you've talked about earlier in the call. Would results from there be incremental to that expansion?

Would they be incremental? No, probably not. That potentially could serve as an offset if there is any perceived weakness with the core operations. So we're sticking with that number and not really adding anything incremental from those two new territories. Okay, got it.

I will add, James, just to what Chris said. It takes a while to develop these countries. It doesn't happen overnight. So it'll be at least a six-month to a year process before we start to see some real returns on all of our work.

Okay, okay. And then your digital revenue, I would say, maybe was a little bit below what I was expecting in the quarter. I know previously you had mentioned a few headwinds you might have been seeing. Are there any headwinds that you would call out for digital that you saw in the second quarter?

Any headwinds?

No. I mean, we still like what we're seeing. Maybe the meta business, the growth has subsided a little bit. We are comping against tougher numbers deeper into the year last year. So that directionally is something that we're tracking. But no, otherwise, we like what we're seeing.

Okay, great. And then one housekeeping thing, as far as television, I think at the end of your pacing discussion, you talked about pacing up 6%, excluding the three affiliate changes you had at the end of last year. I just want to be clear. Is that a pacing for core advertising or all revenue? That includes political. Okay. But is that an advertising-only number, or is that a total revenue number?

It's an advertising-only number, including political, but not including trends.

Okay, great. And then the pace of the buyback was a little bit slower in the second quarter than the first. Anything, any particular reason for that, or was that just kind of the breaks of the windows and things like that?

Well, you know what, we're, We're watching the market carefully. We had a 10B51 in place with specific buying criteria. Oftentimes that criteria was never hit. We'll look at tweaking that when the windows open and seeing if we can make more progress on that front.

Okay. And then the last one from me is, are you seeing or do you think that this digital business is seeing any impact from the strong U.S. dollar in various markets? I know you've indicated in the past that I think most of your media representation contracts are denominated in dollars, but I still wonder about some of the advertisers just locally there, whether they're feeling any pressure from the strong dollar and whether that's flowing through at all to your partners and therefore to you, or do you think that's really a non-issue?

I think it's a non-issue. Look, it's something clearly we're watching, but it's tough to say whether that's really happening or not. But right now, I think it's safe to say we continue to like what we see.

Okay, great. Thanks very much.

Thank you.

Thank you. We have next question from the lineup. Lisa Springer with Singular Research. Please go ahead.

Hello, gentlemen. Robert Maltby filling in for Lisa Springer. A couple questions. Firstly, in light of the headwinds experienced in the internet and digital, notably Facebook or Meta, as we now call them, Snapchat, Roku recently, how have you been able to navigate those extreme headwinds and What are strategies you may deploy to address the near future versus that? And secondly, is there a consideration or a thought about untethering the lower growth assets, namely radio or television, from the higher growth digital assets and businesses, possibly in the form of a, I don't know, a tracker or a spinoff?

Thank you. It's Howard, right? Robert. Robert, thank you for your question. There's no discussion here internally to divest or spin off any of our broadcast assets. As you may know, we've been certainly executing those assets for a great period of time, but we still see growth in the Latino market. It's one of the most I'll call it dynamic segments of our population. You can see what's happening in political. We're seeing more political dollars than ever in our history. A lot of that's due to the growth of the Latino voter electorate, which both parties now are continuing to invest more in. No, that's not in the plans. As far as our... Our digital business, we continue to provide, looking to provide a better service to not only the platforms that we partner with, but also our advertisers. And that means more training for our sales professionals, more training for our advertising and agencies and clients, better data. We're working right now on a product where we're going to provide to our to our advertisers and agencies. It'll give them a lot more data on their campaigns. We're certainly gonna use that data to help them better execute their campaigns. And in the end, we think this will result in more sales for them. So that'll be a benefit to us as well.

Blocking and tackling. Hello?

Do you have any further questions, Robert?

Oh, thank you.

Thank you very much.

No further questions. Thank you.

Thank you. We have a next question from the line of Edward Raleigh with EF Hutton. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my question. I think I heard that core TV basings were down 14%. I was just wondering if you could Maybe break that down between the national and the local level for me.

Yeah, the national and local are both pacing down 9%, and then you've got political reversing all of that.

Okay, gotcha. And congrats on the close of the Jacket digital acquisition. I'm wondering how material the effect of the acquisition will be on the financials going forward.

Yeah, it will be negligible this year. It's a small acquisition, not material, but we do expect high growth out of that operation over time. We're excited about it. But no need to re- or just to change your models at this point.

Okay. All right. Great. Thank you, guys.

Thanks, Ed.

Thank you.

Welcome.

Thank you. We have next question from the lineup, Howard Rosenskrantz with Value Advisory. Please go ahead.

Hi, Chris. Hi, Walter. Good to be back on your calls. Thank you. Good to have you back. Good to hear your voice. Thank you. I just wanted to get first clarification on that, on that, on that pacing's number. You said it was a minus 14%, but that includes the, uh, uh, the affiliates you lost in TV, right? That is correct. That's correct. Okay, so I believe you said pro forma. It's plus 6%, and that includes political, and I guess political is probably crowding out core, so we probably shouldn't get into a deeper breakdown on that. Is that fair?

That's fair, yeah.

Inventory is getting crowded. Okay, so my question is regarding digital. So you said, so if I have it correctly, so in the second quarter, digital was up 34%, and pro forma, it was up 22%. Is that right?

Yes, I believe that's right. Are you looking for prior year numbers to reconcile?

No, not looking to reconcile. So it was up 22 pro forma. So then you said that Q3, the pacing is plus 24%. So just can you give us a ballpark of sort of what that's running pro forma in digital?

Yeah, that is basically, that is what's not quite pro forma, but the only acquisition that had yet to be tucked in at that point last year was 365 Digital. Very small. And that's a very small deal, Howard, so that percentage won't likely change on a pro forma basis.

Okay, so that's certainly encouraging, particularly that. And then I'm going to go back to the tail of what I think was the singular question I've If you addressed it, I apologize. So basically, social media is having a tough go. Now, in part, I believe it reflects that one social media vehicle is eating the pie of another social media vehicle, but that's just my general perception. maybe there's just an industry-wide slowing in social media. I'm asking for your color in general on that. So with the slowing, is there a share change? Is the social media spend just getting spread out more? Or is it just a slowdown in social? Maybe I better ask that first.

Well, I think it's a combination of factors. I mean, if you look at the reports that have come out recently from the big tech platforms, it's a combination of competition, certainly. And I think just overall, the economic condition that they're looking at is changing quarter to quarter. So I think those are the two biggest factors. The macro and the competition.

Okay, so it's both factors. So then my question to you is, on a global basis, or specifically in the markets you're competing in, I guess it's foremost, the biggest market is, if I'm not mistaken, far and away the biggest market is Latin America. And I know you have representation with Meta. I don't really know what your representation is, Meta vis-a-vis TikTok. But are those mediums losing share like they are in, you know, again, is it that there's TikTok taking from meta? Are you seeing the same sort of conditions there? So you would see, because based on your pro forma growth, it doesn't seem like like you are being impacted as of yet. So is it not the same in those global markets?

Well, I think a couple of things. One, you know, we focus on emerging territories with a strong connected consumer base. And so our markets that we operate in are maybe not as mature as the bigger markets that we the platforms that we're all aware of operating, Meta, Google, et cetera. So that might be part of it, and that there's still more growth left in our markets. But certainly we're all fighting for the ad pie, so it's fierce.

Okay, and do you expect, I don't know if it's seasonality or... or it's just continued Q2Q growth to, I would assume, to continue to drive your EBITDA on a quarter-to-quarter basis higher, because I assume your margin, I figured, was about 7% in digital, so I assume there's really going to be, I doubt there's margin compression on the near horizon, so Is it fair to say that that should drive up, there should be some nice flow through and drive up the EBITDA Q2Q meaningfully?

Yes. Digital margins for 7.3% Q2. We expect that to continue to ramp up. Q4 is the peak quarter for digital. And sequentially, yeah, revenue is expected here internally to continue to improve quarter by quarter for the balance of the year.

Gentlemen, thank you very much and glad I'm back. Thank you. Thanks, Howard.

Welcome back. Glad you're back too, Howard. Thank you for your questions. So thank you again, everyone, for joining us today on our second quarter call. We look forward to sharing our progress with all of you in the third quarter when we – on our third quarter call in November when we'll announce our third quarter earnings. Operator?

Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.