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Operator
Good morning and welcome to Town Square Media's third quarter 2022 conference call. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded and your participation implies consent to such recording. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. With that, I would like to introduce the first speaker for today's call, Claire Yenneke, Executive Vice President.
Claire Yenneke
Thank you, Operator, and good morning to everyone. Thank you for joining us today for Town Square's third quarter financial update. With me on the call today are Bill Wilson, our CEO, and Stuart Rosenstein, our CFO and Executive Vice President. Please note that during this call, we may make statements that provide information other than historical information, including statements relating to the company's future expectations, plans, and prospects. These statements are considered forward-looking statements under the safe harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements. These statements reflect the company's beliefs based on current conditions, but are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, including those that are detailed in the company's annual report on Form 10-K and 10-K-A filed with the SEC. We may also discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income, and adjusted operating income, which we may refer to as profit in our remarks. Such non-GAAP financial measures should be used in conjunction with all the information contained in the quarterly, year-end, and current reports available on our website. I'd also encourage all participants to go to our corporate website and download our investor presentation, as Bill will reference some of those slides during our discussion this morning. At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Bill Wilson.
Bill Wilson
Thank you, Claire, and thank you all for joining us this morning. Without question, we all continue to live in unprecedented times. From the persistence of COVID-19 and the war in Eastern Europe, to continued macroeconomic uncertainty headwinds and resulting challenges to media companies. However, because of our differentiated and unique position as a digital-first local media company focused exclusively on local markets outside of the top 50 cities, Town Square achieved our Q3 guidance and set an all-time Q3 revenue and Q3 profit record, and in turn drove strong cash flow growth in the third quarter. and we expect that our strategy will enable us to continue to deliver positive results in the coming quarters. Simply put, our business model allows us to weather economic downturns, when they do occur, better than most. Approximately 50 percent of our revenue and 50 percent of our profits now come from digital solutions, which historically performed better during an economic downturn than broadcast advertising. Approximately 40% of that digital revenue is recurring digital subscription revenue, not tied to advertising trends. Even during the worst of COVID, Town Square Interactive delivered revenue and profit growth. Additionally, because we are not in the large top 50 markets, the majority, over 90% of our advertising revenue is local advertising, which historically is less volatile than national advertising, particularly during an economic downturn. For example, National broadcast advertising revenue continued to be extremely weak in the third quarter, with revenue down in the mid-teens compared to prior year. That decline doesn't hurt us as much as others because national advertising now only accounts for approximately 5% of our total revenue. Overall, we believe that we are very well positioned to perform during a downturn or a recession, no matter the duration and severity, a belief which is supported by our 2020 performance during the worst of COVID as well as our rebound to record profits in 2021. To demonstrate that point, even in the current environment of macroeconomic uncertainty, the Town Square team continues to consistently deliver strong record-setting top-line and bottom-line results across all business segments. I am especially pleased to share our third quarter results with you this morning. To start, our net revenue overall was up a very strong plus 8.4% to approximately $121 million, end up plus 7.5% ex-political. And our adjusted EBITDA increased a strong plus 6% to approximately $31 million. There are two really important takeaways here that I want to share with you. One, third quarter revenue and EBITDA were both well above 2019 levels. And two, both net revenue and adjusted EBITDA represented the highest Q3 revenue and highest Q3 adjusted EBITDA that Town Square has ever achieved. Town Square achieved these results because as I noted before, we have transformed into a highly differentiated digital first local media company focused on communities outside the top 50 markets. As I highlighted on slide 11, over 50% of our revenue is digital. 2.5 times the industry average, and our digital business continues to deliver strong growth, up 17% in Q3 over prior year. The only area of disappointment in Q3, which continued into Q4, is our political advertising results. Unlike prior political cycles, our market footprint did not line up well this year with key political races. We do not own radio station markets where the most contested races are being held in 2022, like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Ohio, and Wisconsin, and therefore have not seen the typical political spend that we've received in prior years and that we expected this year. In the third quarter, political revenue of $1.6 million was well below 2018 levels by 31% and below 2020 levels by 64%. Year-to-date through September, political revenue of $3.5 million is nearly 20% below 18 levels and 47% below 2020 levels. Since Election Day has passed, we now have a fairly clear picture of Q4's political revenue, and it's also significantly below our initial expectations as well as 2018 and 2020 levels. Given our performance in prior political cycles, especially 2018 and 2020, as well as the political dollars raised for this election in 2022, we expected between $12 million and $13 million of political revenue this year. But we now believe political will finish just around $7 million. Stu will provide more detail in our guidance discussion shortly, but this is $5 to $6 million decrease in political revenue as a meaningful factor in our current Q4 and therefore full year outlook. Importantly, we believe that this is not indicative of future political cycles, and we expect our 2024 political revenue to return to historic levels. It is also important to note that the broadcast radio industry is seeing strength in political this year. So it is not a radio specific issue, but rather specific to our local markets and the lack of highly contested races. More importantly, political has nothing to do with the success of our underlying solid core digital businesses. As we have detailed in the past, Town Square's current and future growth engine is digital, which as I highlighted earlier delivered strong, profitable, double-digit revenue growth in the third quarter. Q3 digital revenue increased plus 17% year-over-year, and Q3 digital profit increased plus 7% year-over-year, with a Q3 digital profit margin of 29%. In total, 50% of our September year-to-date revenue and 49% of our September year-to-date profit came from our digital businesses. As outlined on slide six of our investor presentation, our digital revenue comes from two distinct segments. Town Square Ignite, our digital advertising solutions, and Town Square Interactive, our subscription digital marketing solutions. Third quarter digital advertising net revenue increased plus 21% year-over-year, And third quarter digital marketing solutions net revenue increased plus 10% year over year. And importantly, both digital segments have a profit margin close to 30% in 2022. And as we highlighted previously, we expect that even with additional investment to fuel our digital growth engines, the margins will remain in the high 20s. In total, we expect and we are reaffirming that our digital revenue will grow from $225 million of digital revenue on a trailing 12 month basis as of September 30th to a minimum of $275 million of digital revenue by 2024. Our digital businesses significantly differentiates us from other local media companies, particularly those that we compete with outside of the top 50 markets. And it was the primary reason we were able to recover so quickly from the COVID recession and not only returned to 2019 levels, but also quickly surpassed those levels as well. Townsquare's adjusted EBITDA returned to growth by the end of 2020, hit an all time high in 2021, and we're on track to deliver yet another record setting profit level in 2022, even with the national macroeconomic uncertainty headlines. Although Town Square has transformed into a digital-first local media company, with digital as our growth driver, we do love our local broadcast business. Our broadcast advertising revenue grew slightly in Q3, increasing plus 3% year over year, or plus 2% excluding political. However, as we continually note, our expectation is not to grow our broadcast business, but to keep it relatively stable. We view local radio as an extremely valuable asset with significant and attractive cash flow properties, unparalleled consumer reach, and an important and trusted local connection to our audience and communities, and thus a key component of our multi-platform, diverse local media business. We also view radio as a mature cash cow business and thus not a growth driver. Our growth driver has been and will continue to be digital. We continue to focus on maintaining our profitable cash cow radio business investing in our differentiated and strong digital businesses to fuel continued strength and digital growth, and using excess cash flow to reduce our leverage to below four times. As Stu will highlight, we have made considerable progress on net leverage, which has been one of our core priorities this year, reaching an all-time low of 4.5 times at the end of Q3 and will be even closer to four times by the year end. Now, I'll turn the call over to Stu who will go through our strong third quarter results and provide an update on our Q4 and full year outlook for everyone. Take it away, Stu.
Claire
Thank you, Bill, and good morning, everyone. It's great to speak to everyone this morning. Before turning to our Q3 operating results, let me begin by making a note on our FCC licenses and non-cash impairments. As I covered on previous calls, given the way that these non-cash impairments are determined, we expect the value of our FCC licenses to continue to be written down over time. In 2022, as a result of rising interest rates, the assumptions that we used to evaluate our FCC licenses for impairment were negatively impacted. As a result, we took a non-cash impairment charge to our FCC licenses of $10.3 million in the third quarter. This write-down of a decade-old purchase price calculation has no bearing on our cash position, our operating revenue or expenses, our profitability, or our future prospects. There are nothing more than non-cash accounting charges affecting only the purchase price allocations made when we bought our radio station assets roughly a decade or more ago. Our third quarter non-cash impairment charges led to a decrease in net income of approximately $10.1 million in the third quarter to $2.8 million, or 13 cents per diluted share, as compared to $12.9 million in or $0.64 per diluted share in the third quarter of 2021. Adjusted net income, which we believe is a much more valuable measure as it excludes one-off items such as non-cash impairment charges and is detailed in the schedules to our earnings release, was $8.3 million, or $0.47 per diluted share for the third quarter in 2022. More importantly, let me now turn to our Q3 operating results. We are very pleased to report that the third quarter marked yet another strong quarter of growth at Town Square, leading us to deliver all-time record high Q3 revenue and Q3 adjusted EBITDA. And although political hasn't shaped up the way we initially expected, we're still able to deliver growth in our digital and broadcast businesses and achieve our Q3 guidance. Third quarter net revenue increased 8.4% over the prior year period, to a record-setting $120.6 million, within our third quarter guidance range of $120 to $127 million, despite the softness in political, auto, and national broadcast advertising. Third quarter political revenue of $1.6 million was below Q3 2018 political revenue by 31%. Excluding political, third quarter net revenue increased a strong 7.5% year-over-year. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA increased 6% year-over-year to a record-setting $30.9 million, achieving the middle of our guidance range of $30 to $32 million. TownSquare Interactive, our subscription digital marketing solution segment, demonstrated its consistency yet again, delivering another quarter of strong net revenue, profit, and net subscriber growth. In the third quarter, net revenue increased approximately 10% as compared to the prior year, supported by the addition of approximately 850 net new subscribers. Town Square Interactive's third quarter profit increased approximately 4% year-over-year to $6.4 million at a 20% profit margin. Town Square Ignite, our digital advertising segment, was the largest driver of growth in the third quarter and year-to-date periods. with net revenue increasing 21.3% in both periods. Digital advertising profit increased 8.7% in Q3, operating at a 30% margin. As Bill noted, although we view it as a mature cash cow business, our broadcast advertising net revenue increased 3.4% in the third quarter as compared to the prior year. Broadcast profit margins were 33% in Q3. Our other category, which is comprised of live events activity, generated $1.2 million of revenue and had a small loss of $238,000. As compared to the prior year, third quarter revenue in our other category declined $1.2 million due to the timing of certain events that were held in Q2 this year that were held in Q3 of last year. In the third quarter of 2022, we generated $9.1 million of positive cash flow from operations, up $2 million year over year. In the first nine months of the year, we generated positive cash flow from operations of $32.1 million, which was a $6 million decrease from the prior year period, entirely due to the timing of our interest payments. In 2021, we only paid $29 million of interest payments in the first nine months, due to the timing of our refinancing, as compared to $38 million this year. Prior to interest payments, we generated positive cash flow from operations of $70 million, a $4 million increase from the prior year period. We ended the third quarter with $27 million of cash and $530.8 million of total debt. Based on a trailing 12-month adjusted EBITDA of $110.9 million as of September 30th, our net leverage has declined to an all-time low of 4.54 times. We'd like to remind you that any benefit or provision for income taxes included on the face of the income statement is for GAAP financial statement purposes only. We maintain significant tax attributes, including more than $100 million of federal and state NOL carry-forwards and other substantial tax yields related to the tax amortization of our intangible assets. We continue to believe that we will not be a material cash taxpayer until the year approximately 2026. Our primary capital allocation priority after internal investment to grow our digital business is to reduce net leverage to approximately four times, which we will be approaching at the end of this year. Turning to our fourth quarter and year-end outlook, we expect fourth quarter net revenue to increase and be between $116 million and $122 million, which is 5% to 10% increase over the prior year. We expect fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA to be between $27.7 million and $30.7 million, which is a year-over-year increase of 8% to 20%. For the full year, now that our updated political estimates are expected to be $5 million to $6 million lower than previously forecasted, We expect that our revenue for 2022 will be between $459 million and $465 million. This represents a very strong year-over-year growth of 10% to 11% and 9% to 10% excluding political. We expect that 2022 adjusted EBITDA will be between 113 million and 116 million dollars. once again representing a very strong year-over-year growth of 8% to 10%. Most importantly, this Q4 and full-year revenue guidance will set an all-time high revenue record as well as an all-time company-high EBITDA record for Town Square. And with that, I will now turn the call back over to Bill.
Bill Wilson
Thank you, Stu, and thank you to everyone who joined us this morning. We greatly appreciate it. Our Q3 results... and our expected Q4 performance that Stu and I walked you through in detail today, demonstrate the consistency and the strength of Townsquare's transformation into a differentiated, digital-first local media company. I am pleased to share a few of the many key takeaways from our performance in Q3. One, net revenue overall was up a very strong plus 8.4%, and our adjusted EBITDA was up a very strong plus 6%. Not only were both well above 2019 levels, but also both net revenue and adjusted EBITDA represent the highest Q3 revenue and the highest Q3 adjusted EBITDA that TownSquare has ever achieved. Two, our digital growth engine in Q3 increased revenue plus 17% year over year and Q3 digital profit increased plus 7% year over year with a Q3 digital profit margin of 29%. In total, 50% of our September year-to-date revenue and 49% of our September year-to-date profit came from our digital businesses. Three, net leverage is at an all-time company low of 4.5 times on its way to approaching four times by the end of 2022. Due to our differentiated digital businesses, our focus on markets outside of the top 50, our competitive strengths, our strong cash flow generation, and with a strong focus on further deleveraging, we believe Town Square is extremely well positioned for continued and future growth. As always, I'm extremely proud of our Town Square team, whose hard work is the backbone of our success. Thanks again to all, and please do not hesitate to reach out if you have any more questions about Town Square. Operator, at this time, please open the line for any and all questions.
Operator
Thank you. We'll now be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad, and a confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Thank you. And our first question is from the line of Michael Kapinski with Noble Capital Markets. Please receive their question.
Michael Kapinski
Thank you. And thanks for taking the questions. And first of all, congratulations on your quarter. A nice achievement. I was just wondering if you can talk a little bit about your guidance for Q4, particularly on your revenues. You indicated that political is a little softer than expected, and that's understandable. A number of companies are having similar issues. I'm just wondering if you could just talk a little bit about maybe some of the individual line items and kind of give us a flavor of what you're seeing in terms of the cadence of the revenue growth in the digital businesses, particularly interactive. Is that revenue growth continuing at the double digit rate? And then Ignite would imply to me that there would be some issues in terms of economic sensitivity. And that line item was just wondering if you're starting to see anything there in terms of impact for what we're seeing in the general economy.
Bill Wilson
I appreciate that, Michael. Good morning. It's Bill. Thank you for your commentary. A few things. So in terms of Q4, I'll break it down in terms of the guidance. Obviously, on the investor deck and what Stu just walked through, it's slide 21 in terms of the revenue guide for Q4 is plus 5 to plus 10 percent, and the profit EBITDA guide is plus 8 to plus 20. So I'd say both should give a good sense that we're feeling quite good about Q4. And if we achieve this guidance, it'll be the record Q4 in terms of net revenue and profit, and it'll be the highest net revenue and profit year for the company. So getting back to your specific question about the line items, in terms of broadcast, my expectation is local continues to perform well. As we noted, I think, on the call, it was in the mid-single digits in terms of growth. And that is expected to continue in Q4. So Q4 from local looks similar to Q3. National could get a little worse. As we noted on the call, it was down mid-teens in Q3. And that was quite accelerated from actual growth in Q1, slight decline in Q2, to significant decline in Q3. As we highlighted on the call, thankfully for us, it's less than 10% of our advertising revenue and less than 5% of our total revenue. But we do expect to see that weakness continue into Q4. So what that means for broadcast overall is relatively stable. You know, I'd say similar to this quarter where we were, in essence, broadcast was plus one and some change ex-political. I would say broadcast for Q4 is probably flat, depending where national ends up could be low single digits. But I would, you know, guide to flat for broadcast just to be conservative for Q4. And then digital, you know, as we know, Broadcast is our mature cash business. When we have our five-year plan, we're not expecting growth in that line. We're going to continue to manage it as a mature cash cow business and align our expenses with revenue wherever that may fall over the next five years. And digital is our growth engine. So, We continue to see strong growth in digital, you know, up 17% in Q3, reaffirming our $275 million by the end of 2024. We expect double-digit revenue growth for TSI for the year. And then to your specific point about Ignite, and do we expect any slowdown or deterioration based on what you're hearing, probably from a macro uncertainty, as well as probably some of the tech companies We're not seeing that. So we expect Ignite to be again in Q4 double digit growth and therefore digital be double digit growth overall. It continues to perform quite well. I think the reality for us is even our digital advertising is so locally focused. And even in past downturns and recessions, digital advertising grew. So if there is a recession, our expectation is digital advertising continues to grow and And we continue to outperform the market based on A, having our owned and operated property on the web in terms of our websites and mobile apps, which reach 70% of the populations that we operate in. And then combine that with our first party data and the fact that we've got a ad tech platform on the programmatic side that is highly differentiated in our markets and that we're outside of the top 50 markets. We expect even in a downturn, if one were to occur, ignite, which is our digital advertising to continue to grow quite nicely. So I think I covered all of your multi-point questions.
Michael Kapinski
Yeah. Thank you for all that color. And in terms of your interactive business, I know a number of other companies are trying to move more strongly into the digital building the presence very similarly to what you've done in the interactive side of your business. I was just wondering if you're starting to see a little bit of increased competition. I know that you're in small markets with limited media presence, but I was wondering if you are starting to see a little bit more competition in some of your markets in your interactive business.
Bill Wilson
We've always had competition. It's usually been either a digital agency in town, local media companies that primarily white-label third-party solutions, as well as self-serve. For Town Square Interactive, we've always had competitions. As you know, Michael, that 60% roughly of our client base is actually outside of our radio footprint, 40% within, but primarily we're focusing outside the top 50 markets. So it's always been competitive. I think the fact that we bring this national scale with an average price point of roughly $300 and be able to drive such a significant return on investment, not only from a web presence, but as we've outlined on prior earnings calls, we really drive incremental customers to these businesses for a very small price point. And it's hard to do this in markets if you don't have scale and if you don't own the whole ad tech. So I think one of the key differentiators, as you point out, there's other local media companies who see this as an opportunity. I'd say the moat we have around this is, and we highlight this again in our investor deck, is the engineering team that builds our products, And the fact that we have these products all in-house allows us to serve the customers better and meet their needs. So we don't see any increased competition, but there's always been competition there. And, again, it's the fact that we've got this subscription revenue business that even in the depths of COVID grew every quarter. Subscribers, revenue, and profit I think also is highly differentiated for us. If there is a downturn, this is another differentiator for talent square that we've got this digital subscription business that continues to grow quite nicely.
Michael Kapinski
You mentioned auto in your presentation. I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about what is auto in terms of the percent of total revenues for the company and number of broadcasters and indicated that auto is kind of coming back for them was just wondering if you can kind of give us your thoughts about that category.
Bill Wilson
Yeah, so it's interesting. We don't see auto coming back currently. I did hear that from a couple of other people on the broadcast side. Auto is by far the weakest category for us. And that's not only in broadcast. It's actually the only category in digital advertising that is not growing. So I'll speak specifically to broadcast, but I think it speaks to, you know, in our markets, I don't think the supply has gotten to the smaller markets in America. I did hear some of the larger companies who are in the top 25, top 50 markets note that auto is back. And they also noted that supplies are back on the lot. We're not seeing that. So auto for us is actually down in Q3 compared to 2019, 40%. And that's similar to year to date. And we don't expect that to recover anytime soon, which is, as you just noted, I think different than what you're hearing from others. So when that does come back, that'll be a nice tailwind, but we're not hoping or expect, we're hoping for it, but we're not expecting that probably until the back half of 23 or even 24. So when we're modeling out the next, 12 months, we're not expecting auto to come back, uh, or even to grow, uh, until there's more inventory on our size market. So definitely different. I think it also speaks to the fact that, you know, we're the only local media company focused outside the top 50 markets. So a lot of the commentary you hear, uh, from others is quite different than what you hear from us.
Michael Kapinski
Thanks for the color. And last question, can, do you have any updates on the new office in Phoenix?
Bill Wilson
Yes, quite excited. So, um, we've got a few dozen people, um, already hired for Phoenix, and we plan to be opening that in March. The early indications of recruitment, which, as we noted on prior calls, was the primary reason. There's secondary benefits in terms of time zones and servicing clients out there. But the primary reason we opened the second location was actually for recruitment of talent. And the work we've been doing with the local universities there, as well as some local recruiters, has been beyond our initial expectations. So, you know, it's a year of investment, as we've always said, for our Phoenix office for Town Square Interactive. So we have always guided that. We will see increased growth in Town Square Interactive as we head into 2024 because of the investment we're making in Phoenix, and that office is planned to be open in March.
Michael Kapinski
Great. Thank you.
Bill Wilson
Thank you, Michael. Appreciate it.
Operator
Our next question is from the line of Jim Goss with Barrington Research. Please proceed with your question.
Jim Goss
Okay, good morning. Just following up a little bit more on the TSI issue, given the stability relative to the advertising side, is there a way to accelerate that growth any greater, any faster than you are, even with the Phoenix office and the dozen people you've hired already? or are you pushing on a string or incurring too many costs to have that happen?
Bill Wilson
No, that's exactly our plan. So as you noted, particularly with the, and good morning, Jim, the stability for this business, vis-a-vis advertising, if there is an advertising downturn in the macro environment, this is an area that is quite differentiated for us. And as it did in 2020 and 2021 will stand out. So again, We are investing aggressively in this business and believe that that investment will generate incremental revenue as well as incremental profit. So that investment, I'd say, has been modestly increasing since our last call as we ramp up Phoenix. For Q3, I think Stu highlighted, and it's in the investor deck, that we're still operating at a 29% margin with Townscore Interactive, as is our digital Ignite advertising business, and broadcast is 30%. And as I've noted on prior earnings calls, that we plan to operate our digital businesses in the high 20% margins. So as we can accelerate investment in Townsquare Interactive, that could dip down into 27.5, 28. But then you'll see that incremental lift in revenue and profit. But I don't think you'll see that just based on the cadence and the hiring plan, which is going to be a lot more aggressive once we actually have the physical space open at the end of March. So as we hire through Q2 and Q3, you may see some slight increase in acceleration of revenue, in particular in, say, Q4 of 23. But you won't see a dramatic difference until 24 in terms of revenue and profits. So we view it the same way you do, Jim, that this is a great business in terms of stability and growth. And it warrants increased investment because we're particularly in these markets outside the top 50 cities. have demonstrated for a decade now that we can outperform others in this space. Okay, thanks.
Jim Goss
With political, turning to that a minute, to parse out the change from expectations, of that roughly $5 million, how much was attributable to the third quarter versus the fourth quarter?
Bill Wilson
And, Stu, you could step in if needed, but I believe political was a couple million. I'd say a million and a half to two million below in Q3, probably right around two. And then I'd say four. My expectation was actually a little bit north of six, just given the strength of 20 and all the headlines around how much money had been raised. And I think what you're seeing with other broadcasters is, thankfully for the radio industry as well as TV, it's been a record midterms. It just was the exact opposite for us. So I'd say two in Q3 and four plus in Q4. I'll just gut check that with Stu. Is that what you were thinking, Stu?
Claire
You are absolutely spot on, Bill.
Bill Wilson
Thank you, Stu.
Jim Goss
Since there tends to not be a lot of displacement in radio, is most of that... like directly going into adjusted EBITDA? Or is there some variance there?
Bill Wilson
I don't know if I heard it correctly. Definitely the political doubt.
Jim Goss
Yeah, with the impact on adjusted EBITDA, it would be pretty similar to the impact on revenue since there is no level of replacement.
Bill Wilson
Yeah, I'd say 90% of it, you know, low 90% would fill right into our adjusted EBITDA. That's exactly right.
Operator
Okay. Thank you, Jim.
Jim Goss
TV broadcasters. I'm curious, when did you tend to – when did you sense that this was becoming evident, that some of the dollars were shifting out of certain of the markets where you had expected there to be some exposure?
Bill Wilson
Yeah. You know, when we were – there may be a little bit of delay. I apologize. When we reported last time, you know, we were, I guess, a month into Q3 and we were being told just based on all the dynamics that I described in terms of the amount of money raised, as well as the amount of money being spent, that we were expecting Q3 this year to be higher than Q3 of 18. And obviously, you know, we were 30% down versus 18, 64% down from 20 in Q3. So it's pretty, pretty dramatic. And then even when we headed into Q4, obviously about 40 days ago, we were still being guided based on our rep firm, Katsu is a great, great partner of ours, that they still anticipated us to make that up. They were like, you know, there was an expectation that we could see a lot more money in October to make up for the shortfall of Q3, but that clearly didn't pan out. You know, it was, as I noted on my, uh, my comments, my prepared comments, uh, it was incredibly disappointing to end at roughly 7 million when we were expecting, you know, 12 million, 13 million plus. So, uh, kind of realized, I'd say we recognize, you know, each day of October, as that went on, we're like, you know, this isn't, we're not seeing a catch up. And not only are we not seeing a catch up Q4 is underperforming our expectations just versus Q4 of 18 and 20. Um, So it really didn't hit us until October that the reality set in.
Jim Goss
Okay, thanks for that. Last thing I'd ask, does your ad sales staff who manages the local and national broadcast ads also have any involvement in the digital ad sales, or is that entirely that ad tech platform you've talked about?
Bill Wilson
Great question, Jim, and I appreciate your commentary on the call. So I think one of the differentiators for us, A, we have a world-class local sales team, and importantly, we've been investing in that sales team. We have more employees today than we did in January of 2020 prior to COVID. So we were quite specific that we were going to protect our teams, as you probably recall, even in the depths of COVID where other broadcasters were doing significant furloughs and rifts. We did not do that. And it really benefited us coming out of COVID and setting an all-time record profit in 21 and what we expect to be an all-time revenue and profit in 2022. And so our local sales teams are not only the best of the best, but they sell all of our products. So to your specific question, they sell our local broadcast advertising. They can sell across the nation through our technology on a national perspective. And they sell all of our digital advertising. And they offer clients a great web presence and ROI for Town Square Interactive in terms of incremental traffic through search engines and things like that. So we believe one of the core philosophies and recruitment vehicles and training mechanisms for our company is The fact that we can walk into a local business and, in essence, provide them a full suite of solutions from top of funnel, broad reach, you know, obviously radio is number one reach medium in America, all the way down the funnel to conversions and paid search and form fills and things like that. We believe, and I think our results continue to demonstrate, really differentiate us and provide great return on investment for our our clients and local businesses. And I think our core philosophy, one of our mission points is treat customers like you treat a friend, because if you do that, you'll have a lifetime partner. So going back to your question, we think it's really important that our salespeople are trained on and have solutions throughout the marketing ecosystem. So that includes broadcast advertising, digital advertising on our owned and operated networks, as well as programmatically As we've discussed on prior calls, a big growth for us is social from a digital perspective, as well as connected TV has been growing extremely nicely as cord cutting accelerates. We're able to sell into a medium that five, ten years ago we had no place to be in, and it's part of the fastest growing local advertising ecosystem. Our sales staff locally sells all of those products and is one of the reasons that we're posting such strong results. All right.
Jim Goss
Well, thanks very much. Appreciate it very much.
Bill Wilson
Good to hear from you, Jim. Thank you.
Operator
Thank you. We've reached the end of a question and answer session. I'll turn the call over to Bill Wilson for closing remarks.
Bill Wilson
Appreciate it. Thank you all for dialing in this morning. We appreciate you taking the time to hear more about our progress and transformation at Town Square. We look forward to updating you on our full year results
Operator
in early March have a great day this will conclude today's conference you may disconnect your lines at this time we thank you for your participation
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