Gannett Co., Inc.

Every 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. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Matt Esposito, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today to discuss Gannett's fourth quarter 2024 financial results. Presenting on today's call will be Mike Reed, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Doug Horn, Chief Financial Officer, and Kristen Roberts, Chief Content Officer. If you navigate to the Gannett website, you will find that we have posted an earnings supplement in addition to our earlier press release. We will be referencing it today on the call as it provides you with additional detail on this quarter's performance and our full year 2025 business outlook. Before we begin, please let me remind you that this call is being recorded. In addition, certain statements made during this call are or may be deemed to be forward-looking statements as defined under the U.S. federal securities laws, including those with respect to future results and events and are based upon current expectations. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results and events to differ materially from those discussed today. We encourage you to read the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements in the earnings supplement, as well as the risk factors described in Gannett's filings made with Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to publicly update or correct any of the forward-looking statements made during this call. Please keep in mind all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise noted. In addition, we will be discussing non-GAAP financial information during the call, including same-store revenues, free cash flow, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, and adjusted net income attributable to Gannett. You can find reconciliations of our non-GAAP measures to the most comparable U.S. GAAP measures in the earnings supplement. Lastly, I would like to remind you that nothing on this call constitutes an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to purchase any interest in Gannett. The webcast and audiocast are copyrighted material of Gannett and may not be duplicated, reproduced, or rebroadcasted without our prior written consent. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Mike Reed, Gannett's Chairman and CEO.

Thank you, Matt. Good morning, and thanks for joining our fourth quarter earnings call. I am pleased to share with you details on our fourth quarter and 2024 full year performance and how we expect to build on our momentum in 2025. 2024 represented an important year of progress for Gannett. We executed strongly against our strategy and achieved a meaningful improvement in our key metrics. But more importantly, we set the foundation for anticipated long-term sustainable growth. We believe a real transition is underway, and our confidence is supported by several milestones that were achieved for the full year of 2024, including significant improvement in same-store revenue trends, full year growth and adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income attributable to Gannett and free cashflow. And a successful debt refinancing that simplified our capital structure, extended our debt runway and reduced potential future share dilution. It's important to take a moment and recognize how much we have accomplished in total across the past two years. Reflecting on our progress, Especially for those following along with the supplement, please refer to slide six. We've made significant strides across our key metrics. As highlighted on slide six, over the past two years, we have expanded our total digital mix from 35% to 44%, improved our bottom line by 52 million, and increased our cash provided by operating activities and free cash flow by approximately $60 million. Overall, the progress highlighted in our results underscores the traction we have gained and further validates our strategic plan. In 2024, adjusted EBITDA increased for the second consecutive year, while we simultaneously invested in our digital initiatives aimed at funding future growth. Our adjusted EBITDA growth, combined with a continued focus on optimizing our working capital, also resulted in our second consecutive year of free cash flow growth. Adjusted net income attributable to GANAP rose to $25 million, an improvement of $66 million versus a net loss of $41 million in the prior year. We also improved our capital structure and maintained a healthy balance sheet. evidenced by our solid cash position at year end. We are excited to carry this momentum into the year ahead. We expect 2025 to be our third consecutive year of adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow growth, along with ongoing improvement in our top-line trends. As a result, on a same-store basis, we are aiming to hit the inflection point to positive revenue growth during the year. At the core of our momentum is the execution of our digital revenue strategy. In 2024, total digital revenues increased 5% to approximately $1.1 billion. Three out of our four digital revenue categories experienced year-over-year growth. And as a result, total digital revenues increased to 44% of total revenue, up from 39% last year. In 2025, our expectation is that total digital revenues will make up 50% of our total revenue during the year, growing between 7% and 10% on the same store basis compared to 2024. And importantly, we'll begin to outpace the secular declines we see in our legacy print revenue. We have seen solid progress across several of our digital revenue streams And in the fourth quarter, total digital revenues continued to grow over the prior year period. One factor that has become evident in our transformation is the importance of scale. Recall that we have the largest digital audience in the nation, larger than any other content creator in the media space, according to Comscore. With 200 million average monthly unique visitors coming to our platform in both Q3 and Q4, and growing 7% versus prior year in Q4. This significant digital audience outpaced national TV brands, national publishing brands, and certainly the local publishing brands. And as we have built scale, we've also improved our engagement with that audience as we have achieved another quarter of double digit page view growth compared to the prior year period. Over the last 12 months, We have successfully grown this audience at scale, and moving forward, our focus will be on driving higher engagement and increasing the monetization of that audience. We believe there is significant potential to grow our total digital revenues by further personalizing the consumer journey through strategic tools and tactics, along with increasing the engagement, loyalty, and monetization of those consumers that come to our platforms. This is expected to unlock greater revenue opportunities through digital advertising, digital only paid subscriptions, e-commerce and video, which presents a major opportunity for us. Looking specifically at Q4, digital only paid subscriptions continued to grow year over year. Subscription volumes also rose sequentially every quarter in 2024. In Q4, digital only subscription revenue and digital-only average revenue per user experienced another quarter of double-digit year-over-year growth. We expect digital-only subscription revenue to be a meaningful contributor to the expected overall digital revenue growth in the near and long term. Opportunity remains as our penetration rates are below benchmark and our ARPU is still below market rates. So we see potential to unlock additional value through pricing optimization leveraging our full product portfolio and leaning in on local growth. Couple that with the outstanding work the content team has done to provide high quality journalism and broader content experiences, and we believe we have a strong value proposition for both our consumers and advertisers. We are also strengthening the alignment between our content and consumer teams to capture the significant potential to enhance retention and engagement, as well as drive growth in our local core businesses. To do this, we have repositioned our consumer division under Kristen Roberts' leadership. Since joining us as our Chief Content Officer, Kristen's content organization has made a remarkable impact on the domestic Gannett Media segment, evidenced by significant increases in audience growth, page views, and readership per story. As we head into 2025, we are confident we can replicate this success within our consumer division. I will now hand it over to Kristin to recap the team's accomplishments in 2024 and what you can expect in 2025. Kristin?