Gray Television, Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for holding. Your call will begin momentarily. Once again ladies and gentlemen, thank you for holding. Your call will begin momentarily. The End Thank you. Thank you. The End Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Gray Television Q1 2024 earnings call. If you know you'd like to ask a question, you may join the queue at any time during the call by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. Again, that's star 1 on your telephone keypad to join the question queue. And without further ado, I will now turn the program over to Executive Chairman and CEO, Hilton Howell, Jr. HILTON HOWELL, JR.:

: Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our first quarter 2024 earnings call. With me here in Atlanta are all of our executive officers, Pat LaPlatene, our president and co-CEO, Sandy Breland, our chief operating officer, Kevin Latech, our chief legal and development officer, Jim Ryan, our chief financial officer, and for the first time as an officer of this company, Jeff Gignac, currently our Executive Vice President of Finance. And as you all know, on July the 1st, Jeff will succeed Jim as the Chief Financial Officer of Gray Television, after Jim serving 26 years in that chair, and by my count, over 100 public earnings calls. As usual, we will begin with a disclaimer that Kevin will provide.

Kevin O' Thank you, Hilton. Good morning, everyone. Ray uses its website as a key source of company information. The website address is www.gray.tv. We filed our quarterly report on Form 10-Q with the SEC today. Included on the call may be discussion of non-GAAP financial measures, and in particular, adjusted EBITDA, leverage ratio denominator, and certain leverage ratios. These metrics are not meant to replace GAAP measurements, but are provided as supplements to assist the public in its analysis and evaluation of our company. Included in our earnings release as well as on our website are reconciliations of these financial measures to the GAAP measures reported in our financial statements. Certain matters discussed in this column may include forward-looking statements regarding, among other things, future operating results. Those statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results in the future could differ from those expressed in any forward-looking statements. as a result of various important factors that have been set forth in the company's most recent reports filed with the SEC, including our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q and our most recent earnings release. The company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Now I return the call to Hilton.

Thank you, Gavin. Once again, Gray Television has begun a new year in an excellent and strong position. It's a testament to the power of our high-quality local news operations that our television stations grew core advertising revenues by 4% over the first quarter of 2023. We are extremely pleased with these superb results from our fantastic in-house sales and business development teams. Throughout our markets, we are leveraging our intensive sales training and development efforts with our high-quality advertising platforms to deliver results for our advertisers. Our first quarter core advertising results reflect growth in categories including automobile and national that have been challenging in the past. We appear to be growing not only revenues, but also growing our share of advertising budgets. For the first quarter, the net income attributable to common shareholders was 75 million, or 79 cents per diluted share. Our adjusted EBITDA was 197 million, an increase of 21% from the first quarter of 2023. Meanwhile, we continue to focus on debt reduction, and on April 1, we used $50 million of our cash on hand to prepay portions of our term loans, as debt reduction and deleveraging remains a top priority for our company. In the first quarter of 2024, our TV station's core advertising business was higher on a pro forma basis than the first quarter of 2019. Importantly, we're guiding to 2024's full year core advertising revenues to beat 2019's full year core revenue on a pro forma basis, despite what we expect to be a large amount of displacement caused by very strong political advertising revenue later this year. Speaking of political revenue, we believe that Gray will undoubtedly, as it always has, again earn more than its fair share of political advertising revenue this year. Number one and number two stations that are hyper-local news-focused have historically over-indexed on political revenue within their markets because these stations deliver the audience that matters to campaigns, and no one delivers that better than gray television. In the first quarter, our political advertising revenue was slightly lower than our political advertising revenue in the first quarter of 2020 on a pro forma basis. This should not be a surprise to anyone because 2024 did not feature the same highly competitive presidential primary contest as the country experienced four years ago. We still expect political advertising revenues for the full year to be strong and will materialize later in the year as well. In fact, consistent with expectation, we are currently guiding for political advertising revenue in the second quarter of 2024 to range between 55% and 72% higher than the second quarter of 2020 on a pro forma basis. Overall of the seven most competitive presidential swing states, Gray's station covers all the markets in three big states, Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada. And it has, and we have a very strong presence in three of the four remaining states, North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In addition, Gray has leading local news stations in nine of the 11 states with governor's races and 26 of the 34 Senate races, including many of the most competitive governor and Senate races in the country. Finally, all of our markets have House of Representatives, and many markets involve competitive primaries or general elections triggered by historic wave of House resignations. All of our markets also have down-ballot races, and some appear likely to have very contentious referendums on the ballot this year as well. Given this unparalleled exposure to competitive races, we expect that our political advertising revenues will come in at a very large and healthy amount in 2024, which will support our efforts to reduce our total debt. Finally, I'm thrilled to confirm that Gray has essentially completed the construction of assembly studios. and the larger infrastructure work for Assembly Atlanta. We began this project, as many of you know, a few years ago when interest rates were low and demand for studio space in Georgia was white hot. We saw then and still see today immense value for Gray in owning a multi-use development close to Buckhead that is anchored by world-class studio production facilities and a premier tenant under a long-term lease. By last spring, as the capital markets began to become more challenging and Hollywood strikes came into focus, we determined that it would be prudent to pause capital expenditures at the assembly site after completion of the studios portion. And that's exactly what we did. As of the end of the first quarter of 2024, approximately 95 percent of our projected total of capital expenditures for assembly studios and assembly Atlanta net of reimbursements are now behind us. As you all know, late last year, NBCU commenced its long-term lease for two-thirds of the assembly studios portion, and the studios are now contributing revenues to the totality of Gray Television. Today, we are still in the early innings of what we believe will be a decades-long valuable cash flow contributor to our company. We will continue to carefully evaluate strategic opportunities to unlock the immense value that the investments we have created for our stakeholders, including through collaborations with outside partners for additional development at Assembling. There is no question that the tremendous reach and efficiency of our local broadcast television industry is still getting rediscovered and reaffirmed by audiences, advertisers, sports leagues, and sports teams. Wall Street, however, seems to be missing this universal message. We therefore remain personally and professionally very disappointed that this company remains so undervalued given our operational success and near-term and long-term opportunities. We will continue to focus on executing and delivering for our viewers, our employees, and our investors. Pat will now provide some more color around our successful start to 2024.

Thank you, Hilton. Looking at our first quarter financial results, it should be clear that great stations are continuing to find and attract strong advertiser demand for our market-leading local television stations and premium brand-safe digital products. Throughout our markets, local businesses are doing generally well. We believe local businesses are tuning out the political and geopolitical noise to focus on finding customers, moving their products, and selling their services. In fact, during the first quarter, our new local direct business, which is our local sales force finding a customer that's new to Gray, continued to break records set just a year earlier. In the first quarter of 24, our new local direct business brought in 18% more revenue than the first quarter of 23. which itself was 8% higher than the first quarter of 22. These strong results continued into April 24 just last month, which delivered 14% higher new local direct business than April of 23. Meanwhile, our digital businesses are also very healthy. In the first quarter, we set new records for engagement with digital audiences, as well as double-digit growth in digital revenue. As we continue to expand our connected TV and fast channel offerings, And as consumers increasingly find our content on those platforms, we are seeing significant growth in this space. In fact, our station, CTV, fast revenue more than tripled over the same period last year. Our first quarter results also benefited from our successful efforts to bring professional sports back to our broadcast stations. In addition to broadcasting the full season of games for the Phoenix Suns across Arizona, our coverage in Georgia and Louisiana allowed us to bring the NBA's Atlanta Hawks and New Orleans Pelicans games to their local fans in all of the markets located in those states and some adjacent markets. In total, we partnered with eight NBA and three WNBA teams this season to expand their reach while also bringing new viewers and new advertisers to our local stations. The impressive ratings that Gray's broadcast of basketball games have generated, as well as those of our peers, confirms the reach of local broadcast television for professional sports fans, teams, and leagues. And looking ahead, we are upbeat about our core advertising guidance for the second quarter, despite a range that shows modest growth against a strong comp to 2023's second quarter. It's important to remember that we're facing tough comps because Q2 of 2023 was very good. In last year's second quarter, we posted 4% growth in core advertising revenue on a year-over-year basis compared to an average 4% decline across our publicly traded broadcast peer group. We excelled last year in part on having the NCAA Final Four and a couple of one-time only advertising campaigns that will not recur on our broadcast channels in the second quarter of 24. Thinking ahead to the summer, we're excited about the Summer Olympic broadcast from Paris on our NBC affiliates that cover about 11% of U.S. TV households. We currently anticipate generating 15 to 20 million of advertising revenue related to those broadcasts in the third quarter of this year. We already have approximately 6 million of advertising revenue booked for the Olympics. Our core advertising revenue consistently performs above average because we have the largest and most watched news teams in the majority of markets, and we intend to maintain that leadership. Our content attracts audiences on linear television, on connected television, and on virtually every other platform that exists. We are a content-first company. And for a few high-profile examples of our recent successes in this area, I turn the call over to Sandy Breland.

Thanks, Pat. Beyond the numbers, Gray has continued to deliver exceptionally well from an operational perspective. Late in March, we announced that CBS had retained Gray's in-house news research and consulting group, which we call our to provide market research and news consulting services to all 14 of CBS's owned and operated television stations. This first-of-its-kind partnership between a network and an affiliate group's news research division began on April 1st. We are thrilled to partner with CBS stations on this news research venture. In the past few weeks, we've also made other important announcements that I would like to highlight briefly. On January 26th, the Columbia Journalism School honored Gray's TV's Investigate TV Unit and WANF our CBS station here in Atlanta, among the 15 winners of the 2024 DuPont Columbia Awards for their joint multi-part investigative series, The Sixth, which exposed a critical shortage of public defenders in Georgia and many other states where defendants can languish in jail for months, even years, awaiting trial. On April 8th, Gray's Local News Live, a streaming news network that provides live news coverage from Gray's television markets and our D.C. bureau, streams continuous and, frankly, excellent coverage of the total solar eclipse from Gray's D.C. Bureau and local reports from more than 20 markets along the path of totality, from KGNS in Eagle Pass, Texas, to WAGM in Fresco, Maine. It was pretty cool. Last September, we launched a new daily 30-minute news magazine, Investigate TV+. Since then, The show built audience throughout its first season with an average of 25% growth in adults 18 plus across all gray markets. This kind of ratings growth for any new syndicated program is rare in today's world. Moreover, the show is drawing higher audiences than nearly all primetime cable news and cable entertainment programs, as well as many syndicated programs on broadcast television. even though it only reaches 36% of U.S. households at this time. The program clearly has found an audience, so no surprise we're thrilled to renew Investigate TV Plus for a second season. We also recently launched a Spanish-language version of this highly successful show in 26 of Gray's Telemundo markets. 2024 has begun very well, due in large part to the great work of our content professionals. Earlier, Hilton talked about how important it is for us to own and operate highly rated television stations. The selected accomplishments I've highlighted here this morning are evidence that our employees are doing what it takes for us to maintain our station's high rankings and put us in a position to continue to over-index in this year's political advertising relative to other stations and platforms in our markets. I now turn the call to Evan.

Thank you, Sandy. Our retransmission revenues and network affiliation fees were largely stable despite headwinds and subscriber trends in the pay TV industry. Indeed, we recently announced that we have completed the renewals of retransmission consent agreements with cable, satellite, and telco operators who collectively represent more than 70% of the Big Four traditional MVPD subscriber base in a three-year renewal cycle that began in the second half of 2022. For a number of reasons and strong and loyal viewership of our news station, we completed all of those negotiations covering roughly 400 operators without a single blackout. We remain comfortable with the guidance provided on the February earnings call for stable retransmission revenues and network affiliation fees for full year 2024. The other topic I want to highlight is the increasing litany of positive developments involving the new transmission standard for broadcast signals called Next Gen TV. It was less than seven years ago that the FCC approved this first advancement in broadcast technology since the 1990s. Importantly, Next Gen TV deployment is already well ahead of HDTV and the DTV transition at the same seven-year mark. The first Next Gen TV did not go on sale until 2020. Yet by 2026, the Consumer Technology Association projects that next-gen set sales in the U.S. will exceed smartphone sales in the U.S. at the same six-year mark in the product lifecycle. To date, just four years after the first set, more than 10.3 million next-gen TV sets have been sold in the U.S., and there will be more next-gen channels available in 2024 than DTV channels in 2004. In fact, by 2026, fully 65% of TV set shipments in the U.S. are projected to include next-gen TV receiver chips. In addition to the successes with receiver rollouts, station transmitter buildouts continue, and the industry now delivers a next-gen signal reaching 75% of U.S. TV households. This milestone brings Gray and the industry much closer to being able to deliver the vastly improved picture and features for viewers, as well as new monetization opportunities for broadcasters. Indeed, just this past Saturday, our NBC affiliate in Louisville, Kentucky, WAVE, airs the Kentucky Derby. Broadcast Made History is the first major sporting event broadcast in the United States using Dolby Vision's HDR as part of next-gen technology. The progress in next-gen TV across broadcasters and technology companies is tangible and important. We expect there will be many more impressive achievements and milestones announced over the next few months in this area. This concludes my remarks. I now turn the call to Jim Ryan.

Jim Ryan Thanks, Kevin. Hilton Pat covered the key highlights of the quarter. As such, my remarks today will be very short. You will see a few changes in the definitions and metrics in our earnings release and 10Q today. These changes and potentially a few other changes next quarter result from comments that we received from the SEC recently. It's part of the agency's routine review and comment process that all public companies undergo every few years. Turning to our Q1 24 results, again, we're very pleased with our results, especially our plus 4% growth in core ad revenue. While the Super Bowl on our 50 CBS channels allowed us to generate 18 million of core ad revenue compared to 6 million on our then 27 Fox channels in 2023, the quarter benefited from broad-based advertising demand, with most categories being up, including services and auto. Our operating expenses, excluding depreciation, amortization, impairment, and gain, loss, and disposal of assets were better than our initial expectations, and we'll continue to monitor our expenses for additional efficiencies as we proceed through 2024. Demonstrating our commitment to debt reduction, we paid $50 million of revolver borrowings in February and prepaid an additional million of term loan debt on April 1st. These amounts are in addition to the routine quarterly term loan amortization of $3.75 million that we made in the first quarter. As of March 31, 24, our leverage ratio was 5.63 times And more importantly, our first lien leverage ratio was a very modest 2.34 times on a trailing eight-quarter basis, netting our total cash balance of $134 million and excluding the results of our unrestricted subsidiaries and our $110 million gain on sale of our BMI shares. And again, all of that's calculated in accordance with our senior credit agreement. Turning to our full-year guide, we are reaffirming the guidance of approximately $1.6 billion in core ad revenue for the year, and again, reaffirming our $1.5 billion of retransmission revenue for the year. We are reducing our broadcast operating expense guide for the full year to approximately $2.3 billion from the previous guide of $2.4 billion. We look forward to a very successful full year 24, including strong political ad spending later in the year. It's now time for me to introduce my successor as CFO. Jeff is the ideal person for this role, given his very close working relationship with Gray as a key banking partner for almost 20 years. I'm therefore very happy to turn the call over to Jeff.

Thank you, Jim. As Jim mentioned, with my prior firm, I was the lead debt banker for virtually all of Gray's market activity for a very long time, including the recent acquisitions of Raycom, Quincy, and Meredith. Incidentally, I was also the lead debt banker to Raycom and Quincy, among others. From that long history, I've learned the business and come to know the talented and dedicated management team at Gray. What attracted me to Gray is the exceptional set of assets and scale of the company. As you all know, the portfolio has number one and number two ranked local news stations in 102 out of 114 markets. At this time, Gray's large-scale M&A for foot expansion is complete, and the assets, key functions, and people are fully integrated. Today, you're seeing those results in our core business. When I first discussed the opportunity of joining Gray with Hilton, it was clear that deleveraging was his top priority, which aligned with my view. Delevering is good for our shareholders, for our debt holders, and for our employees. It's also how we position the company to capitalize on changes in the media landscape and the most straightforward way to increase our equity value. In that light, earlier this week, our board authorized spending up to $250 million of liquidity for debt repurchases, giving us another tool to implement our delevering plan in an efficient way. In late January, Gray took advantage of strong market conditions to launch a refinancing of the revolver and 2026 term loan. We successfully completed an amendment upsizing and extending the duration of our revolver with the banks who know us best, and we again thank them for their support. Obviously, the term loan marketing process became more challenging with news from three other media companies regarding their plans to bundle their sports rights into a new virtual MVPD, which was completely, completely misunderstood by the investment community in the first several days after its announcement. In the end, Gray made the decision to close the revolver and postpone the term loan refi process until the news cycle quieted down and we could capitalize on our positive outlook for 2024. Going forward, you should expect to see us act quickly when necessary, but always in a smart way to manage our capital structure. The company has been and will continue to be very thoughtful about the cost of capital as being measured over a period of time rather than at any specific point in time. And that's extremely important. Our current low secured leverage at 2.34 times allows us access to multiple pockets of capital in the public and private markets. We also expect significant cash from political advertising this year that will allow us to further reduce total indebtedness and extend our maturity profile. We believe that we can do all this in a way that is positive for all stakeholders. And lastly, as a new shareholder myself, I look forward to engaging further with all of our investors to maximize value for all of our stakeholders. And with that, I'll turn the call back to Hilton for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Jeff, and welcome on board. All of you with this perspective, there are challenges in the media business, most of which are not of our making, but many of which provide opportunities for us. What we can control are leading local franchises, expansion of digital ad sales, our retrans rates, expansion of sports content partnerships, implementing next gen TV, and probably most importantly, in the short term, where we deploy capital. All of those things are going exceptionally well. So operator, at this time, we ask that you open the line for any questions of me or anyone here at the table.

Absolutely, ladies and gentlemen. At this time, please press star one on your telephone keypad if you would like to ask a question. Again, that is star one on your telephone keypad to join the question queue. But first up, it looks like we have Daniel Kernow. Your line is now open.

Great. Thanks. Good morning. Nice start to the year, guys. Kevin, just a quick housekeeping. What's left this year, either by quarter or however you want to put it in terms of distribution renewals?

Good morning, Dan. We have a very small number of contracts with cable companies. cover about 30% of the big four traditional MVPD subs. Those will come up in the second half of the year.

Perfect. And then, look, the core You guys have been harping on this for a while. I don't think any of us years ago would have thought you guys would have beaten 2019 at this point. Pat spent a good amount of time detailing it, but is this sustainable? How do you guys think this trends from here, and what are you guys doing differently to get such massive outperformance? Hey, Dan, it's Pat. I'll start.

Look, at a private company from 2010 through 2019, we watched core deteriorate slowly but steadily, mostly with the auto category, for a long time. And to be ahead of 2019 now is, in my mind, pretty remarkable. Do I think it's sustainable? Yeah, I think we can continue to grow. I think that we now have a much more diverse basket of advertisers. If you go back to 18 or 19, auto was probably 25 or 30%. Today it's mid to high teens and services are a huge part of our revenue. And so I think we're in much better shape. I think the reasons for that, at least for Gray, it's our investment in training. It's our investment in going after or having a team that focuses on certain categories, verticals. We've had that team in place now for years, and the training in place probably eight years now. So it's paying dividends for us, and I think we absolutely have the capacity to continue to grow.

Yeah, and this is Sandy, Dan. The other thing I would add to that, we talk a lot about our laser focus on New Local Direct, and Pat talked about the increase over last year, but I will tell you, we challenge our stations, and they deliver month after month after month, continuing to set records there, and that's something we can control, And just one other point, we talked about the importance of strong content and strong ranked stations. That also gives us an advantage and a competitive edge there.

All right. Thanks so much. Appreciate it, guys. Thanks, Anne.

Next up, we have Aaron Watts. Your line is now open.

Hey, everyone. Thanks for having me on. I've got a couple questions. One on core advertising. Heard your comments around core and the tough comp you're up against in 2Q. Anything more you can kind of tell us on the underlying themes, areas of strength and softness, looking forward, and any reason for optimism ad trends can improve from here despite some of the macro uncertainties that seem to still be weighing on advertiser decision-making?

Yeah, again, so, you know, we're a sort of a Main Street company as opposed to a Wall Street company. I think, you know, early in our comments, what we're seeing is, you know, local businesses doing well and advertising with us at the end of the day. So, you know, looking at the categories, you know, auto was, you know, auto again had this long, steady decline into COVID. Then it came out of COVID pretty strong, started to level off a little bit. But the services sector for us is extremely strong. We had a bump with the gambling category, and now that's a little sort of lumpy. Some quarters it's up, some quarters it's down. But all in, if you look at the broad set of key categories for us, it's a good story. So, again, I think we're a better sales organization than we were a few years ago. And we've invested heavily in that area, and I think we can continue to grow. Sandy, do you have any comments on that?

No, I agree. And the nice thing, too, is we're seeing growth among multiple categories, not just auto, but legal in particular. We've done very well, and we continue to see that grow. Furniture, restaurants as well. So we're seeing it spread across multiple categories, that growth.

I think our scale also adds a significant benefit. You go back and look at the company five years ago, a very different company than it is today.

You know, Aaron, I want to just add one other thing. And to the extent that they're on this telephone line right now, it's our people. Aaron, I mean, we give them the tools to do their job, and they execute. And one of the things I'm very, very proud of this company is we execute across the board. And at every moment, we do the right thing and carry it out. And it all comes down to the people that we have in our TV stations, in all of our 114 markets. Okay.

Yeah, thanks, Elton.

On the debt repurchase program, to date, I believe your focus has been on addressing that front-end term loan maturity, but you do also have debt trading at discounts to par value. How do you think about balancing attacking the nearest maturities with perhaps capturing greater discounts to further your deleveraging aspirations? Is this authorization

a sign of maybe being more open to repurchasing discounted debt securities than you've opened to previously?

Yeah, Aaron, I think you nailed it. I mean, it's a balanced approach. With the front end, you know, the short maturities, we'll have to address those in due course here, but we're not oblivious to the fact that we've got debt trading in the 60s, and it would be nice to capitalize on some of that to accelerate the deleveraging again, not sacrificing our liquidity position or the need in the near term, maybe re-approach the markets for the refi.

All right. Next up, we have Steven Cahill of Wells Fargo.

Your line is now open.

Yeah, thanks. I've got a few. So, Kevin, I was wondering if you could just talk about the structure of reverse comp on a medium term basis. It's something we've talked about before, but I think you're looking to potentially convert fixed programming fees to something that's more variable. Just wondering if you're having any early conversations around those and how you think those conversations may trend over time. And then, Pat, just to pick up on some of the advertising commentary, I think you're the first media company I've heard in about 18 months talk about national advertising being better So I'd love to know what's going on underneath the surface there for Gray. And then lastly, Hilton, so you've talked about how Wall Street is kind of missing the point about the business fundamentals. I know we can have a myopic view. I think a lot of the debate is just when there's going to be free cash flow that's available to the equity holder and how you can deleverage. So I'm wondering what you think about is potentially helping with deleveraging, whether you would look at asset sales, whether you would look at changes to the dividend or or whether you think you can get there purely organically. Thank you.

Thank you, Stephen. All right, Gavin, you want to start?

Yeah, Stephen, our network affiliation agreements are up on the following schedule. We have ABC up at the end of this year. We have CBS and Fox up in the second half of 25, and we have NBC up at the very end of 25. There's not really... I'm not aware of any precedent where a network and an affiliate group have opened a negotiation early and changed the terms early. At Gray, we've done countless negotiations with the networks. Typically, we buy something with an earlier expiration date, and we'll add years to other markets so that they all have a coterminous end. We don't reopen the existing contract. We live with whatever contracts exist until they expire, and then we roll into what has been negotiated either recently or sometimes two or three years in advance. Where we are now is we are not acquiring anything. All of our stations are on the same schedule with all four networks. We will likely talk with CBS and Fox a year from now. So I think there will be a lot of other broadcasters who we'll be talking to all the networks before we will, and we would expect that all broadcasters, including those who own the networks, are very aware of what's happening with cord cutting and will be adjusting the programming fees to reflect where RETRANS is at and the exclusivity of the content we're receiving. But we are not, I don't anticipate us other than ABC at the end of this year having any conversations on Any changes to our existing contracts until those contracts are over? And again, that's not until the second half of 25. Pat?

Yeah, so Steven, your question around national, we had a good quarter in first quarter for national. There were a number of categories that I think contributed to that. One that I'd point out would be consumer goods for us, which was up high single digits. You know, look, national for us is a much smaller piece than local, which we have more control over. But at the end of the day, you're going to see national, it's going to be a little bit lumpy, but this quarter was a very good one. And I think it's due in large part just to a sort of a broad, you know, number of categories that happen to be up in Q1.

All right, and Stephen, I guess I'm the last one here. So... Let me say that I read everything that you write, and I appreciate every comment that you have, some of which I greatly differ with, but I appreciate every word you write. That being said, we're going to do it the way Gray does everything else. We execute. And it's really simple. We don't intend to sell any assets. We see no panic. We are not concerned. We will operate our TV station, our other assets, and we are generating a huge amount of free cash flow. And we will use that to deleverage the company. We have no intentions. Our board has not even considered cutting the dividend or picking anything. Some of our competitors may have chosen to do so. Each company is their own best guide in that regard. Gray, as this quarter's results I think demonstrate, is a stunning company. We have spent 30 years assembling some of the finest assets. And the people around this table and talking to you today represent one of the greatest, in my judgment, media companies currently operating. And I think our results demonstrate that. So what we're going to do is go to work every day. We're not going to sell things. We're not going to blink. And we're not going to panic. And we're just going to reduce our debt, just like we've done for the last 30 years. We moved our debt ratio up to what we considered to be as high as we would ever like it to be due to the opportunities to acquire both Quincy and Meredith. And that completed a remarkable footprint for our company. And now we are enjoying the fruits of those efforts. And so we're just going to carry on.

And that's all there is to it.

All right, real quick, ladies and gentlemen, I want to remind you how to join the queue. You can press star one on your telephone keypad. Again, that's star one on your telephone keypad to join the question queue. The next step, we have Craig Huber. Your line is now open.

Great, thank you. I wanted to ask about the Assembly Atlanta project here. I mean, I think last call you guys talked about how the revenues you're starting to generate off that got delayed because of the Hollywood strikes and stuff. Just update us on your thoughts on when you think the full revenues will start coming through. It sounds like a 2025 event. That's my first question. I'll take a second one after that if I could. Sure.

Craig, this is Hilton. Let me see if I can answer that for you. Obviously, we have a long-term lease with the Universal Production Services Division of Comcast NBCU. And what that effectively does is create a financial 70% occupancy rate for all of our studios. The other 30% of not only assembly, but Third Rail Studios, which are two separate businesses, but all operated together, have always been producing, but we have had a lag in commitments. And what everyone has told me, it is because of a lack of actually getting greenlit due to a potential IOTC strike. By the end of the month of May, it is my understanding that that issue will either fully matriculate or it'll go away. And I think once that happens, I think we're going to have a great boom in terms of what we're doing, because the only issue that we have is getting TV productions that are getting quotes left and right, getting greenlit from Hollywood. And so I think that green light is going to come. And I think it's just a matter of time. In the meantime, we're in a remarkable position. We've got, I think, about four productions shooting currently. And... Our reviews from people using our studios have been superb. And so I anticipate that we will see a more fully leased out 100% sometime during the course of 2024 and then it will carry for obviously in future years.

Great. I appreciate that. And my other question, if I could ask, just longer term here, you guys have plenty of broadcast spectrum, of course, and with the continued role of ATSC 3.0. Just curious, when do you think you might start being able to monetize that to some degree? When can we start seeing somewhat of some material revenues off that? And I assume the whole thing will maybe be late this decade, but just maybe talk about what you're kind of doing on that front with the extra spectrum you have. Thank you.

Yeah, it's Pat. So I would say that we'll start seeing revenues probably first quarter of next year. In terms of material revenues, it's a little bit difficult to forecast it will be a matter of years. I'm not certain it'll be the end of the decade, though. I think it'll be sooner than that. So although I can't give you a hard and fast number there, but we'll start seeing money next year. And I think in a few years, the money will be meaningful.

All right. Next up, we have James Goss.

James, your line is now open.

Okay. Just one thing following up on what you just said. What sort of monetization efforts do you think can be made with NextGen TV? How will it come into play, do you expect?

So there's a number of different areas. One of the sort of primary is digital data delivery. So getting data into automobiles, taking data that gets offloaded from the cellular networks. There's a number of conversations that have been going on in that area for years. I think that'll probably be the first. But a little longer term, the new 3.0 standard gives us the ability to target ads, which can be a game changer. If all of our current impressions on linear television were targetable, that really changes the paradigm for local TV. And ultimately, that's where 3.0 leads us. It's going to take a little bit of time, but we'll get there.

OK. There was also a discussion earlier about fast channels and connected TV offerings. What sort of economic model are you pursuing along those lines?

It's an ad sales model, Jim, and while it's a small number today, we expect it to grow dramatically as we roll out more of our stations on the fast platforms. So we're in the early stages of rollout right now, and as you might guess, the more stations you roll out, the higher the In a rollout period, it's going to grow quicker than it would in a sort of a static period. So we'd expect that, again, small number today to grow significantly over the next few years.

Okay, one last one. Jeff mentioned, and welcome, Jeff, that Wall Street sort of misunderstood the sports JV impact And I wonder if you might expand on that a little bit. What do you think was the nature of the misunderstanding? And please clarify what we should understand about it.

Hi. Do you want me to take?

Either one of us can. I mean, I'll start and Kevin can correct me. But look, the sports JV, when it was first announced, there were very few details about what it meant as it relates to the existing distribution channels and who it was targeting, et cetera. If it is another avenue for us and another MVPD, virtual MVPD, using our programming, that should be a positive for us. So that, I think, is the crux of why I use the term misunderstanding on it, because it was declared as the latest way that we're going to get disintermediated. And in fact, it should help us to be part of the plan going forward.

Just to echo that, I think we probably fielded four dozen phone calls on the JV in two days, and a fair number of questions seemed to stem from the idea that this sports JV was going to have 14 linear channels, 12 cable, and then the reference to the two broadcast channels, Fox and ABC, somehow meant a national ABC network and a national Fox network that don't exist. Disappointingly, a lot of people did not understand that the way that broadcast networks work is that there are local TV stations that carry a certain number of hours a day of content, two hours a day for Fox plus sports and about 15 hours a day for ABC plus sports content. So, for example, if you're in Cedar Rapids and you want to watch Fox, you don't turn on the Fox network, you turn on the Fox affiliate owned by another broadcaster. If you're in Cedar Rapids and you want to watch ABC, you don't turn on ABC network. You turn on the ABC station, ABC-affiliated TV station in Cedar Rapids that's owned by Gray Television. People just seem to completely miss that. I think the comments from the networks to us privately and the comments publicly return people to the understanding that broadcast is different than a cable channel that's distributed to all homes at essentially the same time with the same content. And as that sunk in, people, I think, started to appreciate what really we said in the statement we issued that day, which was a virtual MVPD that carries local affiliates will compensate the local affiliates for their signals. And therefore, as we learn in many subsequent conversations, the target audience here is not to destroy the linear, The traditional MVPD sub-base contributes a significant amount of money in distribution for the cable channels that are distributed there, as well as the two broadcast networks. But it is going to target the core never crowd. So to the extent they're bringing in people that do not currently pay for television, that's incremental revenue for all of us. So if it's successful, it's incremental revenue, and that's a good thing. There are a couple, there are three or four virtual MVPDs today. One's already gone out of business, so this is, you know, another new virtual MVPD. There may be more in the future. It's a dynamic business, and, you know, the industry does not end every time somebody announces a new virtual MVPD, but it seems like that's what happened for that first week. So I think we are at the point where people understand now what a virtual MVPD is and how slim these offerings will be and that a virtual MVPD that carries Fox and ABC affiliates is a benefit to the Fox and ABC affiliates.

All right, next up we have John Kornreich.

Your line is now open.

Two questions, I guess, for Jim. One, should we expect leverage to get a little bit under five by the end of this year? And secondly, can we be hopeful that net retrans, which by your forecast will decline by about 3% this year, could resume some small growth in 25 and 26?

Yeah, John, it's Jeff. I'll take the first one. In terms of leverage towards the end of the year, I don't think we quite get below five, but we should be getting into the low fours by the end of the year.

Low five.

Sorry, low five by the end of the year.

Low five. Sorry about that. Yes, low five. You had me excited for a minute.

Yeah, my apologies.

And the other question is, anybody can take it, I guess.

So this is Jim. and Kevin can provide a little bit more color. Given the pace of our sub-renewals after we finish the remaining roughly 30% this year, rate renewals, I mean, we have about 18 months where we don't have any retrans agreements up for renewal. So I think the retrans is going to be more stable in 25 months. And then I think as you get past 25 and into 26, 27, if we have an opportunity again to grow, Kevin, you can feel free to add more color.

Yeah, I think that's correct. The fixed fee network contracts were set at a time when we all anticipated that retrends would be in a different position, or I should say the traditional MVPD sub The numbers will be higher than they are today, and we fully expect that we will be resetting those prices when we renew in 2025, and that should allow us to return to net retrans growth going forward.

After 2025?

I would say after 2025. Whether it occurs in 2025 will depend on a couple of puts and takes with our renewals this year and sub-losses. Also, submigrations, subs that move from traditionals to the virtuals, just how that flows. So it's, I think this year we're looking at, we talked about, you know, stable to maybe low single-digit decline on that. Next year, there's still some puts and takes, I'd say. As we look over a number of years, we should see net retrans returning to a growth trajectory.

Kevin, what is your calculated sub-decline?

Gray's experience is fairly consistent with the overall industry. Our TV households break down to about 45% roughly in large markets, 45% in mid-sized markets, and the balance in small markets. And that skews a little bit more towards mid-sized markets than the overall U.S. population distribution. Our experience with the MVPDs is, I'd say, pretty similar to what you read overall in estimates for the overall industry.

Thank you very much for your answers.

Thank you, sir.

All right. Next up, we have Davis Hebert. Your line is now open.

Hi, everybody. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to ask a follow-up on the retrans because I think your guidance shows a mid-single-digit decline in the second quarter. And you just gave some data on cord cutting. But are you able to sort of segment out what the pressure is between cord cutting versus mixed shift of linear subs moving to virtual? Because I know YouTube has had, you know, some nice growth over the past couple quarters, Sunday ticket. So just wanted to ask for a comment there.

Yeah, I haven't really – thought through philosophically what's the bigger driver or what the relative breakdown is. The traditional MVPD subs are declining double digits. That's fairly well known. And the virtuals and the DTCs are growing at a pretty healthy clip. That's also fairly well known. So we're not immune to that at all, and we're exposed to it at kind of the same level as everybody else. We probably are a bit more exposed than others in terms of the price difference, the revenue difference we get from a traditional sub versus a virtual sub, because our traditional rates are at the high end of the industry. There are some broadcasters who probably are still looking at kind of parity between traditional rates and what we receive from the networks for the virtuals. I think that the large groups have had more success in driving their traditional retrends rates. Those who have higher rates are obviously going to have a bigger delta when they move to essentially the same fee that's paid to all affiliates and all markets of all quality levels. So we probably are a bit more exposed in that area. On the flip side, as those fees on the virtual side can move, closer to a market rate, Gray would benefit more than others. So we are all rolling in the same direction as an industry, meaning broadcast affiliates, to return our rights to us, that is, our ability to negotiate for the distribution of our signals on all platforms, not just all platforms minus three or four. And when we succeed there, which I unfortunately will not be quick because it's a Washington solution, Um, we will see, um, good, uh, good benefits for gray as well as the whole industry. Um, but I, you're following questions. We wouldn't say it can happen. And I can't tell you what anything's going to happen in Washington.

Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you for that. Now, if I could just follow up with one kind of all encompassing sports question. Um, I think one, I think broadcast is clearly offers an incredible reach medium. But you have NBC doing exclusive NFL games on Peacock. And so there seems to be some experimentation with doing exclusive sports on streaming. What sort of committals do you get from your broadcast partners in terms of keeping sports on the broadcast medium and limiting sort of that leakage to streaming services? And then my second question is on sports is what sort of feedback have you gotten on your sort of, you know, early innings distribution of local games, NBA, et cetera? What's been the feedback, I guess, from either fans or the teams themselves? Thank you.

Yeah, sure. To answer your second question first, I mean, the feedback's been extraordinary from the fans. you know, from the teams. And there's a really good reason for that. I mean, the numbers, the audience that we're generating for these teams is significantly above their, you know, their former levels or, you know, what they're currently doing, right? So in, you know, in Phoenix, we were up, you know, 70, 80%. In some of the other markets where we did smaller packages, we did some five and 10 game packages. in some markets the numbers were double or triple what they were on the current carrier. So obviously the teams are going to be excited about that, but the fans, many of which have been sort of disenfranchised over the last few years, are able to see their team, and it's a really exciting moment. And so the feedback's been extraordinary, not only from the fans but also from the advertisers. They're really excited to have those games reach the types of audiences that they're now reaching. As far as the networks and sports, they're dabbling in direct consumer with a small number of games. And a lot of the games, or the case of NBC, the vast majority of the sports they do is simulcast. So we're not, some of the audiences, there's a little bit of audience leakage there, but not a lot. And so we continue to be very, very effective in selling those podcasts high-profile sports properties. So, you know, I can't, as far as commitments go, I can't, you know, I can't get into that. But, you know, I think you're going to see some experimentation in that area. I think you'll see that with a number of the leagues. But I think that broadcast television, you know, has clearly illustrated its value over the last six months.

Yeah, Dave, just one additional point to that is that in, you know, Phoenix, the Suns are where we have the full commitment, the full season commitment. And, you know, in side-by-side games where games are carried on national cable, our local broadcast on our station just absolutely significantly higher ratings. People are turning to us to see the games. And the feedback has been fantastic from both the team and the fans. And Pat mentioned the small package of games that we had. Just to give you one example, so in New Orleans with the Pelicans, their ratings were up over 200% and over 300% in adults 25 to 54. So as you mentioned, Probably no surprise, we're getting great feedback from both the teams and the fans.

I think one other sort of interesting point there is that, you know, in Phoenix, where we have an independent station, KTVK, it's the number one billing station in that market. And for some context, if you go back 10 quarters, if you go back when we made the Meredith acquisition, Our CBS station and our KTVK, The Independent, were the number three and four stations in that market from a revenue perspective. They're now the number one and number two stations in the market. Now, in fairness, KPHO, the CBS, had the Super Bowl in first quarter, but KTVK is the number one station in Phoenix. So I think that tells you a little bit about the value and the impact of local sports and where that can head.

So we're excited about that. And certainly shout out to the team there. Absolutely. Sons and our team, AZ Family. Yeah.

Well, David, this is Hilton. You asked for some anecdotes. Let me give you a couple, just real quick. We took our board to Phoenix because we are really proud of what we're doing with the Sons and the Mercury. And took them to a game one Sunday afternoon, held our board meeting out there. And I walked in because the hotel we were staying in didn't have our independent on the television And I asked them if they could program it. And the guy that was sitting there behind the thing goes, are you part of the company that brought the sons to live free TV? I said, yeah, actually I am. And he goes, oh my God, I'm a college student. I can't afford to like pay X, Y, Z. The fact that you brought it back to free TV, it's unbelievable. That night we go up and we had all our board at a dinner and we were just talking about what we had done with the sons and where we were going to go to the game, et cetera, et cetera. And then, we freaking got three of our folks that were serving us our dinner applauding because we brought the suns back to the market. Now, if that doesn't tell you something, I don't know what does. Those are great anecdotes, and we are thrilled with our experience with the suns, and I think everybody in Arizona is too.

All right, and it looks like we have time for just one more question. So, Michael Kupinski, you'll be our final question.

Thank you. Most of my questions have been already addressed, but a quick one here. You've always prided yourself on local direct business, which has been just an incredible success for you. The agency business looked like it picked up in the last quarter, 48% of your revenue. I assume that's because of the pickup in national, but I was wanting to maybe provide a little color there if that was maybe a little political. Do you anticipate that the agency business will be a greater percent of total revenues as national recovers? And then maybe because of some of your initiatives like sports or targeting advertisers that have a broader geographic reach, I was just some thoughts of what you think agency business will be in terms of the quote unquote norm, local direct versus agency.

Yeah, so because we skew to midsize and smaller markets, we have a lower percentage of agency business than most groups. So I think that I wouldn't say that we think our revenue, the agency share of our revenue is going to grow significantly going forward. Again, I think the area that we control the most is local direct So, or control better is local direct. And, you know, Sandy may have some comments. Certainly political plays a part in that as well. Yeah, that's true. Right. For first quarter. Yeah. Yeah. So you'll see a lot of, you know, in a political year, obviously agency business goes up.

When the national is strong, it'll be agency side business too. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So we should just look for that to go up this year, but maybe kind of,

go back to more of a normalized in the 43 44 percent range going forward uh yeah it would go back to a more normalized range going forward yes okay all right thank you and with that we'll now turn the program back over to chairman howell for closing remarks thank you operator um before we close out this morning i just want to take a moment to thank jim ryan for his time with our company um i don't know if he's feeling a sense of great elation that this is his last earnings call. I know that he'll have other phone calls to talk to with you guys, but for, what, 26 years? And as I mentioned at the beginning, over 100 of these calls, he has been there, steady and true. And I greatly thank him for his time and service. And I will say, we still have him around to help us out for the next year. And I also want to welcome Jeff. Gignac to our company. I could not be more proud of that individual and the succession that we have accomplished. Jeff knows our company. He may know some parts of it better than the rest of us around this table. And now he's getting to know the people and the assets that create the financial numbers that all of you look at. And so thank you, Jim, and welcome Jeff. With that, we'll sign off for Q1 and we'll see you next quarter. Thank you.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your call. You may now disconnect your lines, and thank you very much again for joining us today. you Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. you Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Gray Television Q1 2024 earnings call. If you know you'd like to ask a question, you may join the queue at any time during the call by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. Again, that's star 1 on your telephone keypad to join the question queue. And without further ado, I will now turn the program over to Executive Chairman and CEO, Hilton Howell, Jr.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining our first quarter 2024 earnings call. With me here in Atlanta are all of our executive officers, Pat LaPlatene, our president and co-CEO, Sandy Breland, our chief operating officer, Kevin Latech, our chief legal and development officer, Jim Ryan, our chief financial officer, and for the first time as an officer of this company, Jeff Gignac, currently our executive vice president of finance. And as you all know, on July the 1st, Jeff will succeed Jim as the Chief Financial Officer of Gray Television after Jim serving 26 years in that chair, and by my count, over 100 public earnings calls. As usual, we will begin with a disclaimer that Kevin will provide.

Thank you, Hilton. Good morning, everyone. Gray uses its website as a key source of company information. The website address is www.gray.tv. We filed our quarterly report on Form 10Q with the SEC today. Included on the call may be discussion of non-GAAP financial measures, and in particular, adjusted EBITDA, leverage ratio denominator, and certain leverage ratios. These metrics are not meant to replace GAAP measurements, but are provided as supplements to assist the public in its analysis and evaluation of our company. Included in our earnings release, as well as on our website, are reconciliations of these financial measures. the GAAP measures reported in our financial statements. Certain matters discussed in this column may include forward-looking statements regarding, among other things, future operating results. Those statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results in the future could differ from those expressed in any forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors that have been set forth in the company's most recent reports filed with the SEC, including our most recent quarterly report on Form 10-Q and our most recent earnings release. company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. Now I return the call to Hilton.

Thank you, Gavin. Once again, Gray Television has begun a new year in an excellent and strong position. It's a testament to the power of our high-quality local news operations that our television stations grew core advertising revenues by 4% over the first quarter of 2023. We're extremely pleased with these superb results from our fantastic in-house sales and business development teams. Throughout our markets, we are leveraging our intensive sales training and development efforts with our high-quality advertising platforms to deliver results for our advertisers. Our first quarter core advertising results reflect growth in categories including automobile and national that have been challenging in the past. We appear to be growing not only revenues, but also growing our share of advertising budgets. For the first quarter, the net income attributable to common shareholders was $75 million, or $0.79 per diluted share. Our adjusted EBITDA was $197 million, an increase of 21% from the first quarter of 2023. Meanwhile, we continue to focus on debt reduction, and on April 1, we used $50 million of our cash on hand to prepay portions of our term loans, as debt reduction and deleveraging remains a top priority for our company. In the first quarter of 2024, our TV station's core advertising business was higher on a pro forma basis than the first quarter of 2019. Importantly, we are guiding to 2024's full-year core advertising revenues to beat 2019's full-year core revenue on a pro forma basis, despite what we expect to be a large amount of displacement caused by very strong political advertising revenue later this year. Speaking of political revenue, we believe that Gray will undoubtedly, as it always has, again earn more than its fair share of political advertising revenue this year. Number one and number two stations that are hyper local news focused have historically over indexed on political revenue within their markets because these stations deliver the audience that matters to campaigns and no one delivers that better than great television. In the first quarter, our political advertising revenue was slightly lower than our political advertising revenue in the first quarter of 2020 on a pro forma basis. This should not be a surprise to anyone because 2024 did not feature the same highly competitive presidential primary contest as the country experienced four years ago. We still expect political advertising revenues for the full year to be strong and will materialize later in the year as well. In fact, consistent with expectation, we are currently guiding for political advertising revenue in the second quarter of 2024 to range between 55% and 72% higher than the second quarter of 2020 on a pro forma basis. Overall, of the seven most competitive presidential swing states, Gray's station covers all the markets in three big states, Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada. And we have a very strong presence in three of the four remaining states, North Carolina, Michigan, and Wisconsin. In addition, Gray has leading local news stations in nine of the 11 states with governor's races in 26 of the 34 Senate races, including many of the most competitive governor and Senate races in the country. Finally, all of our markets have House of Representatives, and many markets involve competitive primaries or general elections triggered by a historic wave of House resignations. All of our markets also have down ballot races, and some appear likely to have very contentious referendums on the ballot this year as well. Given this unparalleled exposure to competitive races, we expect that our political advertising revenues will come in at a very large and healthy amount in 2024, which will support our efforts to reduce our total debt. Finally, I'm thrilled to confirm that Gray has essentially completed the construction of Assembly Studios and the larger infrastructure work for Assembly Atlanta. We began this project, as many of you know, a few years ago when interest rates were low and demand for studio space in Georgia was white hot. We saw then and still see today immense value for Gray in owning a multi-use development close to Buckhead that is anchored by world-class studio production facilities and a premier tenant under a long-term lease. By last spring, as the capital markets began to become more challenging and Hollywood strikes came into focus, we determined that it would be prudent to pause capital expenditures at the assembly site after completion of the studios portion. And that's exactly what we did. As of the end of the first quarter of 2024, approximately 95 percent of our projected total of capital expenditures for assembly studios and assembly Atlanta net of reimbursements are now behind us. As you all know, late last year, NBCU commenced its long-term lease for two-thirds of the assembly studios portion, and the studios are now contributing revenues to the totality of Gray Television. Today, we are still in the early innings of what we believe will be a decades-long valuable cash flow contributor to our company. We will continue to carefully evaluate strategic opportunities to unlock the immense value that the investments we have created for our stakeholders, including through collaborations with outside partners for additional development at Assembling. There is no question that the tremendous reach and efficiency of our local broadcast television industry is still getting rediscovered and reaffirmed by audiences, advertisers, sports leagues, and sports teams. Wall Street, however, seems to be missing this universal message. We therefore remain personally and professionally very disappointed that this company remains so undervalued given our operational success and near-term and long-term opportunities. We will continue to focus on executing and delivering for our viewers, our employees, and our investors. Pat will now provide some more color around our successful start to 2024.

Thank you, Hilton. Looking at our first quarter financial results, it should be clear that great stations are continuing to find and attract strong advertiser demand for our market-leading local television stations and premium brand-safe digital products. Throughout our markets, local businesses are doing generally well. We believe local businesses are tuning out the political and geopolitical noise to focus on finding customers, moving their products, and selling their services. In fact, during the first quarter, our new local direct business, which is our local sales force finding a customer that's new to Gray, continued to break records set just a year earlier. In the first quarter of 24, our new local direct business brought in 18% more revenue than the first quarter of 23. which itself was 8% higher than the first quarter of 22. These strong results continued into April 24 just last month, which delivered 14% higher new local direct business than April of 23. Meanwhile, our digital businesses are also very healthy. In the first quarter, we set new records for engagement with digital audiences, as well as double-digit growth in digital revenue. As we continue to expand our connected TV and fast channel offerings, And as consumers increasingly find our content on those platforms, we are seeing significant growth in this space. In fact, our station, CTV, fast revenue more than tripled over the same period last year. Our first quarter results also benefited from our successful efforts to bring professional sports back to our broadcast stations. In addition to broadcasting the full season of games for the Phoenix Suns across Arizona, our understated coverage in Georgia and Louisiana allowed us to bring the NBA's Atlanta Hawks and New Orleans Pelicans games to their local fans in all of the markets located in those states and some adjacent markets. In total, we partnered with eight NBA and three WNBA teams this season to expand their reach while also bringing new viewers and new advertisers to our local stations. The impressive ratings that Gray's broadcast of basketball games have generated, as well as those of our peers, confirms the reach of local broadcast television for professional sports fans, teams, and leagues. And looking ahead, we are upbeat about our core advertising guidance for the second quarter, despite a range that shows modest growth against a strong comp to 2023's second quarter. It's important to remember that we're facing tough comps because Q2 of 2023 was very good. In last year's second quarter, we posted 4% growth, in core advertising revenue on a year-over-year basis compared to an average 4% decline across our publicly traded broadcast peer group. We excelled last year in part on having the NCAA Final Four and a couple of one-time only advertising campaigns that will not recur on our broadcast channels in the second quarter of 24. Thinking ahead to the summer, we're excited about the Summer Olympic broadcast from Paris on our NBC affiliates that cover about 11% of U.S. TV households. We currently anticipate generating 15 to 20 million of advertising revenue related to those broadcasts in the third quarter of this year. We already have approximately 6 million of advertising revenue booked for the Olympics. Our core advertising revenue consistently performs above average because we have the largest and most watched news teams in the majority of markets, and we intend to maintain that leadership. Our content attracts audiences on linear television, on connected television, and on virtually every other platform that exists. We are a content-first company. And for a few high-profile examples of our recent successes in this area, I turn the call over to Sandy Breland.

Thanks, Pat. Beyond the numbers, Gray has continued to deliver exceptionally well from an operational perspective. Late in March, we announced that CBS had retained Gray's in-house news research and consulting group, which we call our to provide market research and news consulting services to all 14 of CBS's owned and operated television stations. This first-of-its-kind partnership between a network and an affiliate group's news research division began on April 1st. We are thrilled to partner with CBS stations on this news research venture. In the past few weeks, we've also made other important announcements that I would like to highlight briefly. On January 26th, the Columbia Journalism School honored Gray's TV's Investigate TV Unit and WANF our CBS station here in Atlanta, among the 15 winners of the 2024 DuPont Columbia Awards for their joint multi-part investigative series, The Sixth, which exposed a critical shortage of public defenders in Georgia and many other states where defendants can languish in jail for months, even years, awaiting trial. On April 8th, Gray's Local News Live, a streaming news network that provides live news coverage from Gray's television markets and our D.C. bureau, streams continuous and, frankly, excellent coverage of the total solar eclipse from Gray's D.C. Bureau and local reports from more than 20 markets along the path of totality, from KGNS in Eagle Pass, Texas, to WAGM in Fresco, Maine. It was pretty cool. Last September, we launched a new daily 30-minute news magazine, Investigate TV+. Since then, The show built audience throughout its first season with an average of 25% growth in adults 18 plus across all gray markets. This kind of ratings growth for any new syndicated program is rare in today's world. Moreover, the show is drawing higher audiences than nearly all primetime cable news and cable entertainment programs, as well as many syndicated programs on broadcast television. even though it only reaches 36% of U.S. households at this time. The program clearly has found an audience, so no surprise we're thrilled to renew Investigate TV Plus for a second season. We also recently launched a Spanish-language version of this highly successful show in 26 of Gray's Telemundo markets. 2024 has begun very well due in large part to the great work of our content professionals. Earlier, Hilton talked about how important it is for us to own and operate highly rated television stations. The selected accomplishments I've highlighted here this morning are evidence that our employees are doing what it takes for us to maintain our station's high rankings and put us in a position to continue to over-index in this year's political advertising relative to other stations and platforms in our markets. I now turn the call to Evan.

Thank you, Sandy. Our retransmission revenues and network affiliation fees were largely stable despite headwinds and subscriber trends in the pay TV industry. Indeed, we recently announced that we have completed the renewals of retransmission consent agreements with cable, satellite, and telco operators who collectively represent more than 70% of the Big Four traditional MVPD subscriber base in a three-year renewal cycle that began in the second half of 2022. For a number of reasons and strong and loyal viewership of our news station, we completed all of those negotiations covering roughly 400 operators without a single blackout. We remain comfortable with the guidance provided on the February earnings call for stable retransmission revenues and network affiliation fees for full year 2024. The other topic I want to highlight is the increasing litany of positive developments involving the new transmission standard for broadcast signals called Next Gen TV. It was less than seven years ago that the FCC approved this first advancement in broadcast technology since the 1990s. Importantly, Next Gen TV deployment is already well ahead of HGTV and the DTV transition at the same seven-year mark. The first Next Gen TV did not go on sale until 2020. Yet by 2026, the Consumer Technology Association projects that next-gen set sales in the U.S. will exceed smartphone sales in the U.S. at the same six-year mark in the product lifecycle. To date, just four years after the first set, more than 10.3 million next-gen TV sets have been sold in the U.S., and there will be more next-gen channels available in 2024 than DTV channels in 2004. In fact, by 2026, fully 65% of TV set shipments in the U.S. are projected to include next-gen TV receiver chips. In addition to the successes with receiver rollouts, station transmitter buildouts continue, and the industry now delivers a next-gen signal reaching 75% of U.S. TV households. This milestone brings Gray and the industry much closer to being able to deliver the vastly improved picture and features for viewers, as well as new monetization opportunities for broadcasters. Indeed, just this past Saturday, our NBC affiliate in Louisville, Kentucky, WAVE, airs the Kentucky Derby. Broadcast Made History is the first major sporting event broadcast in the United States using Dolby Vision's HDR as part of next-gen technology. The progress in next-gen TV across broadcasters and technology companies is tangible and important. We expect there will be many more impressive achievements and milestones announced over the next few months in this area. This concludes my remarks. I now turn the call to Jim Ryan.

Jim Ryan Thanks, Kevin. Hilton Pat covered the key highlights of the quarter. As such, my remarks today will be very short. You will see a few changes in the definitions and metrics in our earnings release and 10Q today. These changes and potentially a few other changes next quarter result from comments that we received from the SEC recently. is part of the agency's routine review and comment process that all public companies undergo every few years. Turning to our Q1 24 results, again, we're very pleased with our results, especially our plus 4% growth in core ad revenue. While the Super Bowl on our 50 CBS channels allowed us to generate $18 million of core ad revenue compared to $6 million on our then 27 Fox channels in 2023, the quarter benefited from broad-based advertising demand, with most categories being up, including services and auto. Our operating expenses, excluding depreciation, amortization, impairment, and gain, loss, and disposal of assets were better than our initial expectations, and we'll continue to monitor our expenses for additional efficiencies as we proceed through 2024. Demonstrating our commitment to debt reduction, we paid $50 million of revolver borrowings in February and prepaid an additional million of term loan debt on April 1st. These amounts are in addition to the routine quarterly term loan amortization of $3.75 million that we made in the first quarter. As of March 31, 24, our leverage ratio was 5.63 times And more importantly, our first lien leverage ratio was a very modest 2.34 times on a trailing eight-quarter basis, netting our total cash balance of $134 million and excluding the results of our unrestricted subsidiaries and our $110 million gain on sale of our BMI shares. And again, all of that's calculated in accordance with our senior credit agreement. Turning to our full-year guide, we are reaffirming the guidance of approximately $1.6 billion in core ad revenue for the year, and again, reaffirming our $1.5 billion of retransmission revenue for the year. We are reducing our broadcast operating expense guide for the full year to approximately $2.3 billion from the previous guide of $2.4 billion. We look forward to a very successful full year 24, including strong political ad spending later in the year. It's now time for me to introduce my successor as CFO. Jeff is the ideal person for this role, given his very close working relationship with Gray as a key banking partner for almost 20 years. I'm therefore very happy to turn the call over to Jeff.

Thank you, Jim. As Jim mentioned, with my prior firm, I was the lead debt banker for virtually all of Gray's market activity for a very long time, including the recent acquisitions of Raycom, Quincy, and Meredith. Incidentally, I was also the lead debt banker to Raycom and Quincy, among others. From that long history, I've learned the business and come to know the talented and dedicated management team at Gray. What attracted me to Gray is the exceptional set of assets and scale of the company. As you all know, the portfolio has number one and number two ranked local news stations in 102 out of 114 markets. At this time, Gray's large-scale M&A for foot expansion is complete, and the assets, key functions, and people are fully integrated. Today, you're seeing those results in our core business. When I first discussed the opportunity of joining Gray with Hilton, it was clear that deleveraging was his top priority, which aligned with my view. Delevering is good for our shareholders, for our debt holders, and for our employees. It's also how we position the company to capitalize on changes in the media landscape and the most straightforward way to increase our equity value. In that light, earlier this week, our board authorized spending up to $250 million of liquidity for debt repurchases, giving us another tool to implement our delevering plan in an efficient way. In late January, Gray took advantage of strong market conditions to launch a refinancing of the revolver and 2026 term loan. We successfully completed an amendment upsizing and extending the duration of our revolver with the banks who know us best, and we again thank them for their support. Obviously, the term loan marketing process became more challenging with news from three other media companies regarding their plans to bundle their sports rights into a new virtual MVPD, which was completely, completely misunderstood by the investment community in the first several days after its announcement. In the end, Gray made the decision to close the revolver and postpone the term loan refi process until the news cycle quieted down and we could capitalize on our positive outlook for 2024. Going forward, you should expect to see us act quickly when necessary, but always in a smart way to manage our capital structure. The company has been and will continue to be very thoughtful about the cost of capital as being measured over a period of time rather than at any specific point in time. And that's extremely important. Our current low secured leverage at 2.34 times allows us access to multiple pockets of capital in the public and private markets. We also expect significant cash from political advertising this year that will allow us to further reduce total indebtedness and extend our maturity profile. We believe that we can do all this in a way that is positive for all stakeholders. And lastly, as a new shareholder myself, I look forward to engaging further with all of our investors to maximize value for all of our stakeholders. And with that, I'll turn the call back to Hilton for some closing remarks.

Thank you, Jeff, and welcome on board. I'll leave All of you with this perspective, there are challenges in the media business, most of which are not of our making, but many of which provide opportunities for us. What we can control are leading local franchises, expansion of digital ad sales, our retrans rates, expansion of sports content partnerships, implementing next gen TV, and probably most importantly, in the short term, where we deploy capital. All of those things are going exceptionally well. So operator, at this time, we ask that you open the line for any questions of me or anyone here at the table.

Absolutely, ladies and gentlemen. At this time, please press star one on your telephone keypad if you would like to ask a question. Again, that is star one on your telephone keypad to join the question queue. But first up, it looks like we have Daniel Kernow. Your line is now open.

Great. Thanks. Good morning. Nice start to the year, guys. Kevin, just a quick housekeeping. What's left this year, either by quarter or however you want to put it in terms of distribution renewals?

Good morning, Dan. We have a very small number of contracts with cable companies. cover about 30% of the big four traditional MVPD subs. Those will come up in the second half of the year.

Perfect. And then, look, the core You guys have been harping on this for a while. I don't think any of us years ago would have thought you guys would have beaten 2019 at this point. Pat spent a good amount of time detailing it, but is this sustainable? How do you guys think this trends from here, and what are you guys doing differently to get such massive outperformance? Hey, Dan, it's Pat. I'll start.

Look, at a private company from 2010 through 2019, we watched core deteriorate slowly but steadily, mostly with the auto category, for a long time. And to be ahead of 2019 now is, in my mind, pretty remarkable. Do I think it's sustainable? Yeah, I think we can continue to grow. I think that we now have a much more diverse basket of advertisers. If you go back to 18 or 19, auto was probably 25 or 30%. Today it's mid to high teens and services are a huge part of our revenue. And so I think we're in much better shape. I think the reasons for that, at least for Gray, it's our investment in training. It's our investment in going after or having a team that focuses on certain categories, verticals. We've had that team in place now for years, and the training in place probably eight years now. So it's paying dividends for us, and I think we absolutely have the capacity to continue to grow.

Yeah, and this is Sandy, Dan. The other thing I would add to that, we talk a lot about our laser focus on New Local Direct, and Pat talked about the increase over last year, but I will tell you, we challenge our stations, and they deliver month after month after month, continuing to set records there, and that's something we can control, And just one other point, we talked about the importance of strong content and strong ranked stations. That also gives us an advantage and a competitive edge there.

All right. Thanks so much. Appreciate it, guys. Thanks, Anne.

Next up, we have Aaron Watts. Your line is now open.

Hey, everyone. Thanks for having me on. I've got a couple questions. One on core advertising. Heard your comments around core and the tough comp you're up against in 2Q. Anything more you can kind of tell us on the underlying themes, areas of strength and softness, looking forward, and any reason for optimism ad trends can improve from here despite some of the macro uncertainties that seem to still be weighing on advertiser decision-making?

Yeah, again, so, you know, we're a sort of a Main Street company as opposed to a Wall Street company. I think, you know, early in our comments, what we're seeing is, you know, local businesses doing well and advertising with us at the end of the day. So, you know, looking at the categories, you know, auto was, you know, auto again had this long, steady decline into COVID. Then it came out of COVID pretty strong, started to level off a little bit. But the services sector for us is extremely strong. We had a bump with the gambling category, and now that's a little sort of lumpy. Some quarters it's up, some quarters it's down. But all in, if you look at the broad set of key categories for us, it's a good story. So, again, I think we're a better sales organization than we were a few years ago. And we've invested heavily in that area, and I think we can continue to grow. Sandy, do you have any comments on that?

No, I agree. And the nice thing, too, is we're seeing growth among multiple categories, not just auto, but legal in particular. We've done very well, and we continue to see that grow. Furniture, restaurants as well. So we're seeing it spread across multiple categories, that growth.

I think our scale also adds a significant benefit. You go back and look at the company five years ago, a very different company than it is today.

You know, Aaron, I want to just add one other thing. And to the extent that they're on this telephone line right now, it's our people. Aaron, I mean, we give them the tools to do their job, and they execute. And one of the things I'm very, very proud of this company is we execute across the board. And at every moment, we do the right thing and carry it out. And it all comes down to the people that we have in our TV stations, in all of our 114 markets. Okay.

Yeah, thanks, Elton.

On the debt repurchase program, to date, I believe your focus has been on addressing that front-end term loan maturity, but you do also have debt trading at discounts to par value. How do you think about balancing attacking the nearest maturities with perhaps capturing greater discounts to further your deleveraging aspirations? Is this authorization

a sign of maybe being more open to repurchasing discounted debt securities than you've opened to previously?

Yeah, Aaron, I think you nailed it. I mean, it's a balanced approach. With the front end, you know, the short maturities, we'll have to address those in due course here, but we're not oblivious to the fact that we've got debt trading in the 60s, and it would be nice to capitalize on some of that to accelerate the deleveraging again, not sacrificing our liquidity position or the need in the near term, maybe re-approach the markets for the refi.

All right. Next up, we have Steven Cahill of Wells Fargo.

Your line is now open.

Yeah, thanks. I've got a few. So Kevin, I was wondering if you could just talk about the structure of reverse comp on a medium-term basis. It's something we've talked about before, but I think you're looking to potentially convert fixed programming fees to something that's more variable. Just wondering if you're having any early conversations around those and how you think those conversations may trend over time. And then Pat, just to pick up on some of the advertising commentary, I think you're the first media company I've heard in about 18 months talk about national advertising being better So I'd love to know what's going on underneath the surface there for Gray. And then lastly, Hilton, so you've talked about how Wall Street is kind of missing the point about the business fundamentals. I know we can have a myopic view. I think a lot of the debate is just when there's going to be free cash flow that's available to the equity holder and how you can deleverage. So I'm wondering what you think about is potentially helping with deleveraging, whether you would look at asset sales, whether you would look at changes to the dividend or or whether you think you can get there purely organically. Thank you.

Thank you, Stephen. All right, Gavin, you want to start?

Yeah, Stephen, our network affiliation agreements are up on the following schedule. We have ABC up at the end of this year. We have CBS and Fox up in the second half of 25, and we have NBC up at the very end of 25. There's not really... I'm not aware of any precedent where a network and an affiliate group have opened a negotiation early and changed the terms early. At Gray, we've done countless negotiations with the networks. Typically, we buy something with an earlier expiration date, and we'll add years to other markets so that they all have a coterminous end. We don't reopen the existing contract. We live with whatever contracts exist until they expire, and then we roll into what has been negotiated either recently or sometimes two or three years in advance. Where we are now is we are not acquiring anything. All of our stations are on the same schedule with all four networks. We will likely talk with CBS and Fox a year from now. So I think there will be a lot of other broadcasters who we'll be talking to all the networks before we will, and we would expect that all broadcasters, including those who own the networks, are very aware of what's happening with cord cutting and will be adjusting the programming fees to reflect where RETRANS is at and the exclusivity of the content we're receiving. But we are not, I don't anticipate us, other than ABC at the end of this year, having any conversations on Any changes to our existing contracts until those contracts are over? And again, that's not until the second half of 25. Pat? Yeah.

So, Steven, your question around national, you know, we had a good quarter in first quarter for national. There were a number of categories that I think contributed to that. One that I'd point out would be consumer goods for us which was up, you know, high single digits. You know, look. National for us is a much smaller piece than local, which we have more control over. But at the end of the day, you're going to see national, it's going to be a little bit lumpy, but this quarter was a very good one. And I think it's due in large part just to a sort of a broad number of categories that happen to be up in Q1.

All right. And Stephen, I guess I'm the last one here. So Let me say that I read everything that you write, and I appreciate every comment that you have, some of which I greatly differ with, but I appreciate every word you write. That being said, we're going to do it the way Gray does everything else. We execute. And it's really simple. We don't intend to sell any assets. We see no panic. We are not concerned. We will operate our TV station, our other assets, and we are generating a huge amount of free cash flow. And we will use that to deleverage the company. We have no intentions. Our board has not even considered cutting the dividend or picking anything. Some of our competitors may have chosen to do so. Each company is their own best guide in that regard. Gray, as this quarter's results I think demonstrate, is a stunning company. We have spent 30 years assembling some of the finest assets. And the people around this table and talking to you today represent one of the greatest, in my judgment, media companies currently operating. And I think our results demonstrate that. So what we're going to do is go to work every day. We're not going to sell things. We're not going to blink. And we're not going to panic. And we're just going to reduce our debt, just like we've done for the last 30 years. We moved our debt ratio up to what we considered to be as high as we would ever like it to be due to the opportunities to acquire both Quincy and Meredith. And that completed a remarkable footprint for our company. And now we are enjoying the fruits of those efforts. And so we're just going to carry on.

And that's all there is to it.

All right, real quick, ladies and gentlemen, I want to remind you how to join the queue. You can press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Again, that's star 1 on your telephone keypad to join the question queue. The next step, we have Craig Huber. Your line is now open.

Great, thank you. I wanted to ask about the Assembly Atlanta project here. I mean, I think last call you guys talked about how the revenues were starting to generate off that got delayed because of the Hollywood strikes and stuff. Just update us on your thoughts on when you think the full revenues will start coming through. It sounds like a 2025 event. That's my first question. I'll take a second one after that if I could.

Sure, Craig. This is Hilton. Let me see if I can answer that for you. Obviously, we have a long-term lease with the Universal Production Services Division of Comcast NBCU. And what that effectively does is create a financial 70% occupancy rate for all of our studios. The other 30% of not only assembly, but Third Rail Studios, which are two separate businesses, but all operated together, have always been producing, but we have had a lag in commitments. And what everyone has told me, it is because of a lack of actually getting greenlit due to a potential IOTC strike. By the end of the month of May, it is my understanding that that issue will either fully matriculate or it'll go away. And I think once that happens, I think we're going to have a great boom in terms of what we're doing, because the only issue that we have is getting TV productions that are getting quotes left and right, getting greenlit from Hollywood. And so I think that green light is going to come. And I think it's just a matter of time. In the meantime, we're in a remarkable position. We've got, I think, about four productions shooting currently. And... Our reviews from people using our studios have been superb. And so I anticipate that we will see a more fully leased out 100% sometime during the course of 2024. And then it will carry for obviously in future years.

Great. I appreciate that. And my other question, if I could ask, just longer term here, you guys have plenty of broadcast spectrum, of course, and with the continued role of ATSC 3.0. Just curious, when do you think you might start being able to monetize that to some degree? When can we start seeing somewhat of some material revenues off that? And I assume the whole thing will maybe be late this decade, but just maybe talk about what you're kind of doing on that front, the extra spectrum you have. Thank you.

Yeah, it's Pat. So I would say that we'll start seeing revenues probably first quarter of next year. In terms of material revenues, it's a little bit difficult to forecast it will be a matter of years. I'm not certain it'll be the end of the decade, though. I think it'll be sooner than that. So although I can't give you a hard and fast number there, but we'll start seeing money next year. And I think in a few years, the money will be meaningful.

All right. Next up, we have James Goss.

James, your line is now open.

Okay. Just one thing following up on what you just said. What sort of monetization efforts do you think can be made with NextGen TV? How will it come into play, do you expect?

So there's a number of different areas. One of the sort of primary is digital data delivery. So getting data into automobiles, taking data that gets offloaded from the cellular networks. There's a number of conversations that have been going on in that area for years. I think that'll probably be the first. But a little longer term, the new 3.0 standard gives us the ability to target ads, which can be a game changer. If all of our current impressions on linear television were targetable, that really changes the paradigm for local TV. And ultimately, that's where 3.0 leads us. It's going to take a little bit of time, but we'll get there.

OK. There was also a discussion earlier about fast channels and connected TV offerings. What sort of economic model are you pursuing along those lines?

It's an ad sales model, Jim, and while it's a small number today, we expect it to grow dramatically as we roll out more of our stations on the fast platforms. So we're in the early stages of rollout right now, and as you might guess, the more stations you roll out, the higher the In a rollout period, it's going to grow quicker than it would in a sort of a static period. So we'd expect that, again, small number today to grow significantly over the next few years.

Okay, one last one. Jeff mentioned, and welcome, Jeff, that Wall Street sort of misunderstood the sports JV impact And I wonder if you might expand on that a little bit. What do you think was the nature of the misunderstanding? And please clarify what we should understand about it.

Hi. Do you want me to take?

Either one of us can. I mean, I'll start and Kevin can correct me. But look, the sports JV, when it was first announced, there were very few details about what it meant as it relates to the existing distribution channels and who it was targeting, et cetera. If it is another avenue for us and another MVPD, virtual MVPD, using our programming, that should be a positive for us. So that, I think, is the crux of why I use the term misunderstanding on it, because it was declared as the latest way that we're going to get disintermediated. And in fact, it should help us to be part of the plan going forward.

Just to echo that, I think we probably fielded four dozen phone calls on the JV in two days, and a fair number of questions seemed to stem from the idea that this sports JV was going to have 14 linear channels, 12 cable, and then the reference to the two broadcast channels, Fox and ABC, somehow meant a national ABC network and a national Fox network that don't exist. It's disappointing that a lot of people did not understand that the way that broadcast networks work is that there are local TV stations that carry a certain number of hours a day of content, two hours a day for Fox plus sports and about 15 hours a day for ABC plus sports content. So, for example, if you're in Cedar Rapids and you want to watch Fox, you don't turn on the Fox network, you turn on the Fox affiliate owned by another broadcaster. If you're in Cedar Rapids and you want to watch ABC, you don't turn on ABC. network, you turn on the ABC station, ABC-affiliated TV station in Cedar Rapids that's owned by Gray Television. People just seem to completely miss that. I think the comments from the networks to us privately and the comments publicly return people to the understanding that broadcast is different than a cable channel that's distributed to all homes at essentially the same time with the same content. And as that sunk in, people, I think, started to appreciate what really we said in the statement we issued that day, which was a virtual MVPD that carries local affiliates will compensate the local affiliates for their signals. And therefore, as we learn in many subsequent conversations, the target audience here is not to destroy the linear, The traditional MVPD sub-base contributes a significant amount of money in distribution for the cable channels that are distributed there, as well as the two broadcast networks. But it is going to target the core never crowd. So to the extent they're bringing in people that do not currently pay for television, that's incremental revenue for all of us. So if it's successful, it's incremental revenue, and that's a good thing. There are a couple, there are three or four virtual MVPDs today. One's already gone out of business, so this is, you know, another new virtual MVPD. There may be more in the future. It's a dynamic business, and, you know, the industry does not end every time somebody announces a new virtual MVPD, but it seems like that's what happened for that first week. So I think we are at the point where people understand now what a virtual MVPD is and how slim these offerings will be and that a virtual MVPD that carries Fox and ABC affiliates is a benefit to the Fox and ABC affiliates.

All right, next up we have John Kornreich.

Your line is now open.

Two questions, I guess, for Jim. One, should we expect leverage to get a little bit under five by the end of this year? And secondly, can we be hopeful that net retrans, which by your forecast will decline by about 3% this year, could resume some small growth in 25 and 26?

Yeah, John, it's Jeff. I'll take the first one. In terms of leverage towards the end of the year, I don't think we quite get below five, but we should be getting into the low fours by the end of the year.

Low five.

Sorry, low five by the end of the year.

Low five. Sorry about that. Yes, low five. You had me excited for a minute.

Yeah, my apologies.

And the other question is, anybody can take it, I guess.

So this is Jim. and Kevin can provide a little bit more color. Given the pace of our sub-renewals after we finish the remaining roughly 30% this year, rate renewals I mean, we have about 18 months where we don't have any retrans agreements up for renewal. So I think the retrans is going to be more stable in 25, And then I think as you get past 25 and into 26, 27, if we have an opportunity again to grow, Kevin, you can feel free to add more color.

Yeah, I think that's correct. The fixed fee network contracts were set at a time when we all anticipated that retrends would be in a different position, or I should say the traditional MVPD sub The numbers will be higher than they are today, and we fully expect that we will be resetting those prices when we renew in 2025, and that should allow us to return to net retrans growth going forward.

After 2025?

I would say after 2025. Whether it occurs in 2025 will depend on a couple of puts and takes with our renewals this year and sub-losses. Also, submigrations, subs that move from traditionals to the virtuals, just how that flows. So I think this year we're looking at, we talked about stable to maybe low single-digit decline on that. Next year, there's still some puts and takes. I'd say as we look over a number of years, we should see net retrans returning to a growth trajectory.

Kevin, what is your calculated sub-decline? of late?

Ray's experience is fairly consistent with the overall industry. Our TV households break down to about 45% roughly in large markets, 45% in mid-sized markets, and the balance in small markets. And that skews a little bit more towards mid-sized markets than the overall U.S. population distribution. Our experience with the MVPDs is, I'd say, pretty similar to what you read overall in estimates for the overall industry.

Thank you very much for your answers.

Thank you, sir.

All right. Next up, we have Davis Hebert. Your line is now open.

Hi, everybody. Thanks for taking the questions. I wanted to ask a follow-up on the retrans because I think your guidance shows a mid-single-digit decline in the second quarter. And you just gave some data on cord cutting. But are you able to sort of segment out what the pressure is between cord cutting versus mixed shift of linear subs moving to virtual? Because I know YouTube has had, you know, some nice growth over the past couple quarters, Sunday ticket. So just wanted to ask for a comment there.

Yeah, I haven't really – thought through philosophically what's the bigger driver or what the relative breakdown is. The traditional MVPD subs are declining double digits. That's fairly well known. And the virtuals and the DTCs are growing at a pretty healthy clip. That's also fairly well known. So we're not immune to that at all, and we're exposed to it at kind of the same level as everybody else. We probably are a bit more exposed than others in terms of the price difference, the revenue difference we get from a traditional sub versus a virtual sub, because our traditional rates are at the high end of the industry. There are some broadcasters who probably are still looking at kind of parity between traditional rates and what we receive from the networks for the virtuals. I think that the large groups have had more success in driving their traditional retrends rates. Those who have higher rates are obviously going to have a bigger delta when they move to essentially the same fee that's paid to all affiliates and all markets of all quality levels. So we probably are a bit more exposed in that area. On the flip side, as those fees on the virtual side can move, closer to a market rate, Gray would benefit more than others. So we are all rolling in the same direction as an industry, meaning broadcast affiliates, to return our rights to us, that is, our ability to negotiate for the distribution of our signals on all platforms, not just all platforms minus three or four. And when we succeed there, which I unfortunately will not be quick because it's a Washington solution, Um, we will see, um, good, uh, good benefits for gray as well as the whole industry. Um, but I, your following questions can be one second happen. And I can't tell you what anything's going to happen in Washington.

Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you for that. Now, if I could just follow up with one kind of all encompassing sports question. Um, I think one, I think broadcast is clearly offers an incredible reach medium. but you have NBC doing exclusive NFL games on, on Peacock. Um, you know, and, and so there seems to be some experimentation with doing exclusive sports on streaming. What sort of committals do you get from your broadcast partners in terms of keeping sports on the broadcast medium and, and limiting sort of that leakage to streaming services? And then my second question is on sports is what sort of feedback have you gotten on your sort of, you know, early innings distribution of local games, NBA, et cetera? What's been the feedback, I guess, from either fans or the teams themselves? Thank you.

Yeah, sure. To answer your second question first, I mean, the feedback's been extraordinary from the fans. you know, from the teams. And there's a really good reason for that. I mean, the numbers, the audience that we're generating for these teams is significantly above their, you know, former levels or, you know, what they're currently doing, right? So in, you know, in Phoenix, we were up, you know, 70, 80%. In some of the other markets where we did smaller packages, we did some five and 10 game packages, in some markets the numbers were double or triple what they were on the current carrier. So obviously the teams are going to be excited about that, but the fans, many of which have been sort of disenfranchised over the last few years, are able to see their team, and it's a really exciting moment. And so the feedback's been extraordinary, not only from the fans but also from the advertisers. They're really excited to have those games reach the types of audiences that they're now reaching. As far as the networks and sports, they're dabbling in direct consumer with a small number of games. And a lot of the games, or the case of NBC, the vast majority of the sports they do is simulcast. So we're not, some of the audiences, there's a little bit of audience leakage there, but not a lot. And so we continue to be very, very effective in selling those podcasts high-profile sports properties. So, you know, I can't, as far as commitments go, I can't, you know, I can't get into that. But, you know, I think you're going to see some experimentation in that area. I think you'll see that with a number of the leagues. But I think that broadcast television, you know, has clearly illustrated its value over the last six months.

Yeah, Dave, just one additional point to that is that in, you know, Phoenix, the Suns are where we have the full commitment, the full season commitment. And, you know, in side-by-side games where games are carried on national cable, our local broadcast on our station just absolutely significantly higher ratings. People are turning to us to see the games. And the feedback has been fantastic from both the team and the fans. And Pat mentioned the small package of games that we had. Just to give you one example, so in New Orleans with the Pelicans, their ratings were up over 200% and over 300% in adults 25 to 54. So as you mentioned, Probably no surprise, we're getting great feedback from both the teams and the fans.

I think one other sort of interesting point there is that, you know, in Phoenix, where we have an independent station, KTVK, it's the number one billing station in that market. And for some context, if you go back 10 quarters, if you go back when we made the Meredith acquisition, Our CBS station and our KTVK, The Independent, were the number three and four stations in that market from a revenue perspective. They're now the number one and number two stations in the market. Now, in fairness, KPHO, the CBS, had the Super Bowl in first quarter, but KTVK is the number one station in Phoenix. So I think that tells you a little bit about the value and the impact of local sports and where that can head.

So we're excited about that. And certainly shout out to the team there. Absolutely. Sons and our team, AZ Family. Yeah.

Well, David, this is Hilton. You asked for some anecdotes. Let me give you a couple, just real quick. We took our board to Phoenix because we are really proud of what we're doing with the Sons and the Mercury. And took them to a game one Sunday afternoon, held our board meeting out there. And I walked in because the hotel we were staying in didn't have our independent on the television And I asked them if they could program it. And the guy that was sitting there behind the thing goes, are you part of the company that brought the sons to live free TV? I said, yeah, actually I am. And he goes, oh my God, I'm a college student. I can't afford to like pay X, Y, Z. The fact that you brought it back to free TV, it's unbelievable. That night we go up and we had all our board at a dinner and we were just talking about what we had done with the sons and where we were going to go to the game, et cetera, et cetera. And then, We freaking got three of our folks that were serving us our dinner applauding because we brought the suns back to the market. Now, if that doesn't tell you something, I don't know what does. Those are great anecdotes, and we are thrilled with our experience with the suns, and I think everybody in Arizona is too.

All right, and it looks like we have time for just one more question. So, Michael Kupinski, you'll be our final question.

Thank you. Most of my questions have been already addressed, but a quick one here. You've always prided yourself on local direct business, which has been just an incredible success for you. The agency business looked like it picked up in the last quarter, 48% of your revenue. I assume that's because of the pickup in national, but I was wanting to maybe provide a little color there if that was maybe a little political. Do you anticipate that the agency business will be a greater percent of total revenues as national recovers? And then maybe because of some of your initiatives like sports or targeting advertisers that have a broader geographic reach, I was just some thoughts of what you think agency business will be in terms of the quote unquote norm, local direct versus agency.

Yeah, so because we skew to midsize and smaller markets, we have a lower percentage of agency business than most groups. You know, so I think that I don't I wouldn't say that we think our, you know, our revenue, the agency share of our revenue is good to going to grow significantly going forward. Again, I think, you know, the area that we control the most is local direct. So, or control better is local direct. And, you know, Sandy may have some comments. Certainly political plays a part in that as well. Yeah, that's true. Right. For first quarter. Yeah. Yeah. So you'll see a lot of, you know, in a political year, obviously agency business goes up.

When the national is strong, it'll be agency side business too. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. So we should just look for that to go up this year, but maybe kind of, go back to more of a normalized in the 43, 44% range going forward?

Yeah, we'd go back to a more normalized range going forward.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

And with that, we'll now turn the program back over to Chairman Howell for closing remarks.

Thank you, Operator. Before we close out this morning, I just want to take a moment to thank Jim Ryan for his time with our company. I don't know if he's feeling a sense of great elation that this is his last earnings call. I know that he'll have other phone calls to talk to with you guys, but for, what, 26 years? And as I mentioned at the beginning, over 100 of these calls, he has been there, steady and true. And I greatly thank him for his time and service. And I will say, we still have him around to help us out for the next year. And I also want to welcome Jeff. Gignac to our company. I could not be more proud of that individual and the succession that we have accomplished. Jeff knows our company. He may know some parts of it better than the rest of us around this table. And now he's getting to know the people and the assets that create the financial numbers that all of you look at. And so thank you, Jim, and welcome Jeff. With that, we'll sign off for Q1 and we'll see you next quarter. Thank you.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your call. You may now disconnect your lines and thank you very much again for joining us today.