Gray Media - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 2025 revenue of $0.782B was 1% above the high end of guidance and beat S&P Global consensus; diluted EPS came in at -$0.23 vs consensus of -$0.49, helped by lower-than-guided operating expenses and stronger-than-expected political advertising.
• Core advertising fell 8% YoY due to Super Bowl mix (FOX vs. 2024 CBS footprint) and one fewer selling day; retransmission revenue was resilient (-1% YoY) and above the high end of guidance.
• Management raised liquidity and reiterated deleveraging focus: reduced principal debt by $17M; AR securitization expanded to $400M; revolver increased to $700M; first-lien and total leverage ratios ended at 2.92x and 5.48x, respectively.
• Q2 2025 guide: core ad down mid-single digits vs Q2 2024, political $2–3M, retrans $369–$371M; FY 2025 tax cash payments reduced to $48–$68M from $80–$100M prior—expense containment exceeding the $60M run-rate provides a key support; declared a $0.08 dividend.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Revenue and expense outperformed: “results… finished much better than our guidance on both revenues and expenses” with revenue above high end and operating expenses 1% below the low end of guidance.
• Political advertising surprised positively: Q1 political revenue of $13M vs guide of $2–$4M, driven by Wisconsin Supreme Court race and special elections; “we’re pleasantly surprised with what’s going on right now in political”.
• Cost containment progress: broadcasting operating expenses declined YoY for the first time since COVID; network affiliation fees declined for the fifth consecutive quarter; management believes cost actions now exceed the $60M annualized run-rate.

What Went Wrong

• Core advertising down 8% YoY due to Super Bowl mix and one less selling day; consumer discretionary categories (auto, restaurants, department stores) remained soft amid tariff and interest-rate uncertainty.
• Net loss attributable to common stockholders of $22M vs $75M income a year ago, with Adjusted EBITDA down 19% YoY due to cyclical political decline and prior-year non-recurring BMI gain.
• Corporate expenses rose 13% YoY to $26M; management noted normal variability and ordinary-course raises across ~9,700 employees.

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Gray Media Q1 earnings call. If you know you'd like to ask a question, you may join the queue at any time by pressing *1 on your telephone keypad. Again, that's *1 to join the question queue. Without further ado, I will now turn the program over to our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Hilton Howell Jr.

Hilton Howell (Chairman, and CEO)

Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone. As Operator mentioned, this is Hilton Howell, Chairman and CEO of Gray Media. I want to thank all of you for joining our first quarter 2025 earnings call. With me here in Atlanta, as usual, are all of our executive officers: Pat LaPlatney, our President and co-CEO; Sandy Breland, our Chief Operating Officer; Kevin Latek, our Chief Legal and Development Officer; and last but not least, Jeff Gignac, our Chief Financial Officer. Also, as usual, we will begin with a disclaimer that Kevin will provide.

Kevin Latek (Chief Legal, and Development Officer)

All right. Thank you, Hilton, and good afternoon, everyone. Today, we filed with the SEC on Form 8-K, our earnings release and an updated investor slides. Later today, we will file with the SEC our quarterly report on Form 10-Q. These materials will all be available on our website, which is www.graymedia.com. Included on the call may be a discussion of non-GAAP financial measures, 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 valuation of our company. Further discussions and reconciliations of the company's non-GAAP financial measures to comparable GAAP financial measures can be found on our website. All statements and comments made by management during this conference call, other than statements of historical fact, should be deemed forward-looking statements.

These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results in the future could differ from those described in the forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors that are contained in our most recent filings with the SEC. We undertake no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. I turn the call back to Hilton.

Hilton Howell (Chairman, and CEO)

Thank you, Kevin. Today, we are very happy to announce that our results for the first quarter of 2025 finished much better than our guidance on both revenues and expenses. Total revenue in the first quarter of 2025 was $782 million, a decrease of 5% from the first quarter of 2024, and 1% above the high end of our guidance for the quarter. Total operating expenses before depreciation, amortization, and gain on disposal of assets in the first quarter of 2025 were 1% below the low end of our previously announced guidance. Net loss was $9 million in the first quarter of 2025 compared to net income of $88 million in the first quarter of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA was $160 million in the first quarter of 2025, a decrease of 19% from the first quarter of 2024.

Recall that last year's first quarter included the $110 million gain on the sale of our interest in BMI, the very strong Super Bowl results across our large CBS station portfolio, and an extra billing day during leap year. Political advertising was obviously lower than the first quarter of 2024, yet first quarter of 2025 political finished well above our expectations for an off-cycle year. In addition to these operating results, we continued to make progress in strengthening our balance sheet the first quarter. During the first quarter, we continued to prove our commitment to deliver by reducing our outstanding indebtedness by an additional $17 million. We finished the first quarter with a lower leverage ratio as defined in our senior credit agreement from where we began the year. We will continue to use our free cash to reduce our leverage, respectively.

On March 31, 2025, we announced the extension and increase in size of our accounts receivable securitization facility, along with an increase in the size of our revolver. This enhanced liquidity allows us to continue executing on our deleveraging plan. I am particularly proud of the support that we have received from so many of our commercial banking partners and their confidence in our future. As noted in our press release this morning, our board of directors declared the usual $0.08 per share quarterly dividend. By now, everyone is aware of the new regulatory tone coming from Washington. Like always, the board will consider capital allocations each quarter in light of opportunities to deploy capital for growth. Operationally, we continue to enhance our local content offerings in the first quarter of 2025.

We continue to enter into new sports rights agreements to bring more local sports back to our local stations. In just two years since announcing our innovative deal with the Phoenix Suns and Mercury, we now have our own local and regional sports deals covering nearly 80% of all of our markets. These broadcasts are, of course, in addition to the professional sports provided by our network partners. The combination of our premier local news franchises with local sports makes our local stations even more relevant and more valuable than ever. Our stations and our people continue to receive national recognition for their outstanding journalistic efforts. We recently announced a host of awards across our group. WANF in Atlanta and WBUE in New Orleans both received nominations for the 46th Annual News and Documentary Emmy Awards in Outstanding Regional News Stories. Investigative category.

WIBW in Topeka, Kansas, won the prestigious Service to America Award for small market television for their campaign, Hear Me, See Me, highlighting mental health issues. WANF in Atlanta, WAVE in Louisville, and Investigate TV, Gray's national investigative unit, all received national Headliner Awards. Lastly, our very own Sandy Breland, sitting to the right of me right here, was named the 2025 John F. Hogan Distinguished Award winner by the Radio Television Digital News Association for her unwavering dedication to journalism and freedom of the press. The momentum at Assembly Studios also continued in the first quarter of 2025. The new CBS soap opera called Beyond the Gates, which debuted in February, has seen strong ratings and created a buzz not only on site at Assembly but across our large portfolio of CBS network stations.

We are thrilled, absolutely thrilled, to be hosting many other high-profile movie and streaming productions at Assembly Studios and are constantly working to bring more productions to our sound stages. Outside of the Assembly Studio gates, we are working with other companies who are actively investing their time and their money to bring to life other parts of our Assembly Atlanta development. We expect to have more announcements about these exciting plans later in 2025. As we have said repeatedly, we have seen tremendous interest from potential development partners who could contribute their financial resource and development expertise to accelerate value creation at Assembly Atlanta. We've had a very busy start to 2025, and we are excited about the expanding avenues to enhance the value of all of our businesses. At this time, I'd like to ask Pat to address our operations.

Pat LaPlatney (President, and Co-CEO)

Thank you, Hilton. On our fourth quarter call, we spoke about the cautious tone among our advertisers, especially within the automotive category. The daily developments regarding trade and tariffs have continued to foster uncertainty among advertisers and hindered our ability to forecast as we've done in recent years. Yet, despite this backdrop, we're pleased with our first quarter results. As expected, our core advertising revenue for the first quarter of 2025 finished down 8% versus the first quarter of 2024, and right in the middle of our guidance range. Remember, about half of our declining core, our $9 million, is attributable to the Super Bowl airing on our 33 Fox channels in 2025, compared to our 54 CBS affiliates in 2024. On the positive side, our Fox channels are up 50% versus the prior Fox Super Bowl, with $9 million of core ad revenue in 2025.

From a category perspective, automotive came in as expected, down to high single digits. For the second quarter, auto is still tracking down to high single digits as we continue to see the uncertain macroeconomic conditions impacting advertiser confidence. We think continued high interest rates also are weighing automotive demand. Other categories linked to consumer discretionary spending, like restaurants and department stores, were soft, while more essential categories like education and financial services performed better. From client conversations, we also believe that some categories saw a "beat the tariff effect," including automotive. There were a few bright spots. Legal was up a couple of points and has grown to a low double-digit category for us. We have a dedicated team focused on the travel and tourism vertical that, while a smaller category, grew nicely on a year-over-year basis and continues to trend higher.

Digital was again up double digits, which is encouraging. Finally, our new local direct business grew slightly in the first quarter of 2025. Given the economic uncertainty, we're very pleased that our multimedia sales teams are continuing to grow our new advertiser base. A very bright spot in the first quarter of 2025 was political ad revenue. Our guide for the first quarter of 2025 was $2 million-$4 million, while our actual results came in at $13 million. Most of this revenue was generated in the competitive Supreme Court race in Wisconsin, where our stations cover most of the state. We saw meaningful spending in the Florida Panhandle in the race for Matt Gaetz's former congressional seat. We also benefited from a few special elections in the first quarter.

Finally, we are seeing the political ad buys now for primaries that are a year away and, in one case, for a general election that is 18 months away. Hilton touched on our sports efforts, with 80% of our footprint now carrying local sports. That equates to 90 of our television stations. We are very excited to watch that part of our business grow. Providing guidance for the second quarter of 2025 or for the year in the current environment is particularly challenging. Based on current conditions, we are guiding second quarter core ad revenue to be down mid-single digits. The NCAA Final Four and Championship game on CBS provided about a $5 million benefit in early April. Across categories in the second quarter, we are seeing a mixed bag, with some categories like automotive and restaurants pacing lower, and some pockets of strength still in legal, consumer goods, and entertainment.

Jeff will now address the key financial developments.

Jeff Gignac (CFO)

Thank you, Pat. As Hilton mentioned earlier, reducing leverage remains our top capital allocation priority, and we made more progress in the first quarter. We finished the quarter at 2.92 times secured leverage and 5.48 times total leverage, each as defined in our senior credit agreement. We're optimistic that the more relaxed regulatory environment that has been discussed extensively the last few months could present opportunities to accelerate our deleveraging efforts through M&A later this year. Going forward, we and the board will continue to evaluate our capital allocation priorities in light of our financial position, capital needs, and other appropriate factors each quarter. On March 31, we increased our AR securitization facility funding availability by $100 million to a total of $400 million and extended the maturity to March 31, 2028. Pricing on the AR facility increased slightly by 15 basis points to SOFR plus 125.

At the same time, we increased our revolver availability by $20 million to a total of $700 million. Together, these facilities provide access to over a billion dollars of availability, which we can use to address any challenges or opportunities that present themselves. Historically, first quarter is the lowest cash generation quarter of the year. Nonetheless, we were able to reduce the principal amount of our outstanding indebtedness by $17 million through a combination of PAR repayments and open market activities. At quarter end, we had $240 million remaining on our debt repurchase authorization, and we will continue to be nimble and thoughtful as to when, where, and how we deploy our liquidity to utilize this authorization. As previously reported, starting in April of this year, we believe we are now exceeding the $60 million annualized run rate of cost savings from last fall's cost containment initiatives.

We expect to see the benefits of those actions as we move through 2025. Recall that there is very little, if any, of that benefit reflected in our current leverage ratio calculations, as outlined in our senior credit agreement. In fact, our first quarter 2025 total operating expenses decreased versus first quarter of 2024, despite some normal inflationary-type growth working in the opposite direction. Our Q2 guide is that expenses will remain below inflationary levels. It is the first time since the COVID slowdown that we posted lower first quarter broadcasting operating expenses than we had in the prior comparative year period. First quarter of 2025 was also the fifth consecutive quarter in which our network affiliation fees did not exceed the levels of such fees in the comparative prior year quarter. This concludes my remarks, and I'll now turn the call back over to Hilton.

Hilton Howell (Chairman, and CEO)

Thank you, Jeff. In closing our formal remarks, Gray is continuing to take necessary actions to make the investments needed to meet the challenges and seize the opportunities in our ever-changing industry. Our strong station portfolio provides incredible value to our advertising clients. We continue to enhance our balance sheet and financial flexibility, and our team is making creative and smart investments to expand and engage with our audiences. Perhaps most importantly, we are energized by the possibility that the government may at last allow local broadcasters to compete on a more level playing field with all of our competitors. We thank everyone for joining the call today. Operator, at this time, we ask that you open the line for questions for any of us.

Operator (participant)

Absolutely. At this time, once again, ladies and gentlemen, you can press *1 on your telephone keypad if you'd like to ask a question. That is *1 on your telephone keypad to join the question queue. Seeing several already in queue, first up, we have Dan Kurnos.

Dan Kurnos (Equity Research Analyst)

Great. Afternoon. Maybe we'll start Hilton and Jeff. Obviously, everybody's talking about DREG right now. I think we heard the word flexibility about 15 times in the prepared remarks. How creative could you guys get if you saw something attractive? What are the most attractive options to you in market if that were to change getting bigger? Would you have to sell anything? Maybe just I'll open it there, and then I'll ask a follow-up.

Jeff Gignac (CFO)

I think, actually, everyone's talking about the new Pope. I don't think they're talking about Gray's earnings.

Dan Kurnos (Equity Research Analyst)

You mean the new post-Donald Trump, Kevin?

Kevin Latek (Chief Legal, and Development Officer)

It wasn't me, so you're lucky. We're looking at lots of things, Dan, as is everybody else. We're looking for our smoke signals from Washington on what may be allowed. We're getting some good white smoke signals that the environment will be much better, allow us to probably enter into swaps to create new duopolies or improve our strategic position. We'll have to wait and see. As we've talked about, those are pretty complicated. We'll need government, probably need waivers or new rules to facilitate some transactions. We're actively pursuing everything, and I think our peers are all doing the same thing.

Dan Kurnos (Equity Research Analyst)

Can I ask you, Kevin? I mean, I think Perry kind of addressed this earlier with the Simington OPED piece, but you guys distinctly are in sort of the public lens, as it were, as you go into your reverse negotiations, your affiliate negotiations in the back half of this year with your fixed fee partners. I mean, I do not think anyone takes that number necessarily seriously, but it is a clear shot at the networks. Does it have any impact bearing on the outcome or your, as you address your affiliate negotiations?

Jeff Gignac (CFO)

We're not going to comment on Simington's piece. We'll leave that for other folks to do. What we would say is that we are encouraged by comments from the Chairman, from Commissioner Simington, and from others about the importance of local news and local broadcasters. It's a refreshing change of tone, and we think it bodes well for the future.

Dan Kurnos (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. I mean, those are my questions. I'll just say one last thing. Jeff, well done on the expense side. It looks like it's pacing much better than anticipated, so kudos on that front. Thanks, guys.

Hilton Howell (Chairman, and CEO)

Thanks, Dan.

Jeff Gignac (CFO)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

All right. Next up, we have Aaron Watts.

Aaron Watts (Analyst)

Hey, everyone. Thanks for having me on. Two questions. First, just a follow-up on industry consolidation. On the in-market opportunities that you may explore, can you remind us what type of margin lift you get from creating a new duopoly or improving your presence in any given market?

Kevin Latek (Chief Legal, and Development Officer)

Yeah. Aaron, I think we've talked about this, it seems like, 100 times in the last year. In our experience of creating lots of duopolies over the last 12 years, there is no number you can put on it. I appreciate other folks have been able to do that. We have bought from small family publishers. We've bought from private equity. We've bought Fox affiliate, and we've bought Big Three affiliates. We've bought in large markets, and we've bought in small markets. The margin improvement varies quickly based on what we are buying and what kind of market, the strength of our station and the strength of the other station. We're not, in our experience of having a number of duopolies across our company, I think we're somewhere, I think we have a few dozen of them.

I would say that the margin improvement varies from a little to quite a lot. We do not see a precise range of a certain number of basis points because the variability is all over the place. We are not shopping in just one type of duopoly. We would like to see duopolies in many markets. Some of our best opportunities will be at both ends of the spectrum. We are looking to grow the company, deliver through transactions, improve the company's profile for the long term. We are not going to be focused on just trying to achieve a certain basis point uplift, or we will walk away.

Hilton Howell (Chairman, and CEO)

Aaron, this is Hilton. Let me add one thing to that. No matter what we would do with regard to in-market consolidation, it does a couple of things. It is inherently universally positive in terms of saving money. It also gives us, because we are so focused on the delivery of local news, local content, local sports, you got to give the audiences something to view. The consolidation allows us to compete with the really huge tech giants that are actually taking about 80% of the local ad market. Consolidation is an all-in-all positive for the entirety of the broadcast business. We are very excited. I think Kevin is hesitant because every deal is different, and every market is different. That is one of the things we love about this business.

From our standpoint, it allows us to do our core business, which is reporting local news, providing now, in the last two years, local sports and community involvement and connection.

Aaron Watts (Analyst)

Yeah. That makes sense. Thanks for that, Hilton. If I could ask just one more on the advertising side. As you sit today, are you seeing actual cancellations, or is it more just a hesitancy to book or delaying ad buys? Aside from lapping political crowd out that you had last year in the second half of this year, any reason for optimism in key core verticals that they can start to gain momentum as you roll into the back half of this year?

Pat LaPlatney (President, and Co-CEO)

Yeah. So, Aaron's pat on the first question, it's the latter. We're not seeing cancellations. We are seeing some hesitancy, but it's not in any way overwhelming. In regard to the second half of the year, look, the services categories, as we talked about, so legal, health, home improvement, those categories are now upwards of a third of our business. They are sort of less impacted by the tariffs. I think that's some reason for optimism. The reality is there's just so much uncertainty out there, it's really hard to forecast. I would say if there is a single category that has upside, I think it's political. We saw it in the first quarter. We're going to see some of it in the second quarter.

As we noted in our remarks, we're seeing some money for races that are a year, 18 months out right now. Breaking news here, we just saw some more this morning in the state of Georgia, which we, frankly, did not anticipate. I'm not sitting here to tell you I'm not ready to tell you that we're going to do as well in second quarter political as we did in first, but we're pleasantly surprised with what's going on right now in political.

Sandy Breland (COO)

Yeah. Aaron, Pat referenced this in his remarks, but despite the uncertainty and headwinds, we did grow our new local direct business in first quarter. That is really a credit to our strong sales teams and our training team that you have heard us talk so often about.

Hilton Howell (Chairman, and CEO)

Aaron, this is Hilton. Let me add one more thing to this too. Today's kind of a propitious day in a lot of ways, but the president announced a trade deal with the U.K. I think that is the beginning of the reestablishment of, hopefully, of stability with regard to all your guys' markets and to our ad market because so many of our clients are pulling back because they really do not know what the cost of goods sold or their products are right now. That makes anyone a little nervous to take an ad out and price what they are going to do for a new Chevy, all right? I think today is a great day. I think by the time we are at this call in a quarter from now, we are going to have a lot more clarity.

Aaron Watts (Analyst)

Yep. Makes sense. Okay. Thanks so much.

Pat LaPlatney (President, and Co-CEO)

Sure.

Operator (participant)

All right. Excuse me. Next up, we have Patrick Sholl. Before I turn it over to Patrick, I just wanted to remind participants, you can press *1 on your telephone keypad for questions. That is *1 to join the question queue. With that, Patrick Sholl, your line is now open.

Patrick Sholl (Research Analyst)

Hi. Thank you. Just circling back on political, can you maybe talk about some of the puts and takes between the 2026 cycle and the 2022 midterms that we should think about? Or if you have any overarching thoughts on the cycle, I realize that you're not.

Hilton Howell (Chairman, and CEO)

Let me just say this. All we know is what we know, right? So what we saw at the last midterm, we did not get anywhere near the kind of ad buys that we are seeing this time around. Whether or not that is going to continue, we do not know. I mean, political is the world's worst category to predict. But when we were here four years ago at the last midterm, we did not have these big orders. And they are coming in daily. Depends on the market. But across our portfolio, we are getting political ad buys left and right, and big ones.

Patrick Sholl (Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you. Maybe just on the affiliate reverse comp negotiations coming up this year, just how should we think about those when we see some of the subscriber trends for the MVPDs starting to at least moderate, with some of that in part being influenced by the access to the network streaming services perhaps influencing some of that? How should we think about that affecting some of these reverse comp negotiations?

Kevin Latek (Chief Legal, and Development Officer)

Pat, it's one of the talking points in a conversation. We discuss the value we bring. They discuss the value that they bring. We discuss our concerns with exclusivity and investments in their DTC products. They discuss their concerns with us. It's all just part of the conversation. Those conversations are ongoing and making progress. There are a lot of things that are discussed. You've hit on one of the topics that is discussed.

Hilton Howell (Chairman, and CEO)

We're very hopeful that we will renew with all of our network affiliate partners. It's just we got a lot of them up this year, and so there's a lot of open questions. We are very hopeful that we will get it renewed and that, hopefully, it can be a win-win for both the networks and for the affiliate partners.

Patrick Sholl (Research Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

All right. Next up, we have Craig Huber.

Craig Huber (Analyst)

Thank you. I want to ask about Assembly Atlanta. Can you just give us a little more flavor here on how things are going to sign up new tenants, etc.? I mean, I think you spent, what, upwards of maybe $600 million on this. When do you think you're going to start to get a proper return on this? Just talk me through how you're thinking. I know it's a tough environment, but just talk me through when you think you might start to get a turn-off this quarter.

Hilton Howell (Chairman, and CEO)

I think it's rolling through as we speak, actually. We probably have somewhere near eight, maybe nine productions that are actively shooting at Assembly. It's roughly between 2,100—we're guessing this—2,100 and 2,600 folks on the lot. It's really exciting, as I mentioned, last quarter. Two of the shows that are shot at Assembly are airing on our CBS portfolio and our NBC portfolios. Those would be—I mentioned in my opening comments—Beyond the Gates on CBS, a new daytime soap opera, which we're extremely proud of. Also pretty very excited about is Grosse Pointe Garden Society that airs on our NBC affiliates across the country. That's in addition to a tremendous number of productions that are being shot that'll be going to streaming or to theaters and all the rest.

It was very clear in terms of what we were going to do that we had to get the film production business up and maturing. While the studios have been open for a year, honestly, the truth of it is, Craig, it was last August when all the strikes kind of came to a sort of final fruition before we even got anything in to get going. While we had a long-term lease with our partner, NBC Universal, the strikes just slowed down everything in Hollywood nationwide. We have not really been operating for a year. Also, in my opening comments, we have an added 80 acres that is going to be opening up for us.

One of the places that we know will be out there that we will be monetizing at the very beginning of 2026, hopefully with the World Cup, is our band shell and the park that's out there because we'll be hosting watching parties for the World Cup for the Atlanta audiences here in the city. Of course, Atlanta is one of the semifinal host cities. There is a tremendous number of other opportunities that we have to fully invest and produce the income on that $600 million. You got to remember, that number includes the purchase of all the land, not just the studio portion. If we had prorated it out and said, "All right, this is the 50 acres, and this is the revenue we're getting out of the amount of the studios," that's one return.

There's a lot of returns that are going to be arriving as we finish out what we're doing in what I call phase two. We're going to be very slow about that. We don't feel any rush. Sometimes we think these decisions that some real estate folks do is a little bit precipitous. We're going to be cautious and make sure we're doing the right thing. I think you're going to be impressed with what you hear through the course of this year.

Jeff Gignac (CFO)

Yeah. Craig, it's Jeff. If I could just address it from a financial point of view. In terms of getting the rest of the studios leased up, the number of inquiries are plentiful. We do not want to announce anything specific until we have a signed lease. On an operational basis, it is contributing. Obviously, we'd like it to be higher, but it's contributing at this point. You can see in our guide, both for first quarter and this quarter, that on a net basis, we think that it will be zero additional capital investment. There are some returns coming as we transition some parts of the public use to the government. There is some rebate money that comes in from that. On a net basis, we think it's capital neutral this year. Every time we sign a new lease, it's real estate.

It's a high contribution on each additional lease that we get signed.

Craig Huber (Analyst)

I appreciate that. Maybe can you maybe give us a sense of what percentage of the square footage is leased out at this point, if you're willing?

Hilton Howell (Chairman, and CEO)

It's about—I mean, I think we're operating at about a 75%-80% occupancy rate. We have another 20% that we can fully fill up. I don't know what's going to happen. I mean, the president made tweets on Sunday about foreign tariffs, but the requests that we have are legion. We're taking them step by step.

Craig Huber (Analyst)

Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you, guys.

Operator (participant)

All right. Next up, we have Alan Gould.

Alan Gould (Managing Director)

Thanks for taking my question. First, for Kevin, how much of an impact would allowing Gray to directly negotiate with the virtual MVPDs have on your net pretrans revenue? And then I have a follow-up after that.

Kevin Latek (Chief Legal, and Development Officer)

It would be—I would say this. The delta between what we charge, the traditional MVPD, and what we get paid from the networks on the virtuals is significant. I'm not sure if the law changed today that we would have the ability to, tomorrow, renegotiate those virtual agreements at the higher rate without also paying some more to the networks. I don't know what this sort of net impact would be. The gross impact would be significant.

Alan Gould (Managing Director)

Okay. And then a follow-up on the Atlanta Assembly. I'm just curious. It's been in production for—it's been operational for about a year. You say you're 75%-80% booked up. I'm just wondering why the guide for production companies' revenue is basically flat year over year.

Hilton Howell (Chairman, and CEO)

We don't really update it based until we get signed leases, so.

Jeff Gignac (CFO)

Yeah. So production companies is the studio properties as well as some other production companies, Raycom and Tupelo Media. And when we compare where we're at until we have signed new business on either one of those, we're projecting—you can see what the guide is on a year-over-year basis.

Alan Gould (Managing Director)

Okay. Thank you.

Hilton Howell (Chairman, and CEO)

Yep.

Operator (participant)

All right. Next up, we have Steven Cahall.

Steven Fargo (Analyst)

Thank you. You talked about your, I think, biggest kind of deregulation opportunity is looking at swaps and duopolies. I'm just wondering if you're also open to something that's more strategic. I realize it would have to be equity-based given that with the balance sheet, you're probably not going to be paying cash for anything sizable. Are you open to finding opportunities, especially if it includes a lot of duopolies that are more structured on an equity basis? That's the first. Second, Jeff, just wondering with the increased capacity you have under the RCF and the accounts receivable, how much between that and free cash flow do you think you can do in debt repurchases this year, especially if you continue to see debt at attractive prices in the market?

Hilton Howell (Chairman, and CEO)

Steven, let me just begin a little bit. When we started our second big round of M&A, we actually did a lot of deals. The first one really was the HOPE transaction that we started with a higher leverage ratio, and we had deleveraging transactions that helped to delever the transaction. I think there's a lot of potential opportunities for us to do strategic transactions with a variety of different sort of structures. We're looking at all kinds of things. I think the first sort of opportunities would likely be, if we can find a way to get them to the finish line, would be swaps because that's just assets for assets. Those are always hard to get done. We're moving aggressively on all fronts.

Jeff Gignac (CFO)

Yeah, Steven. I think there's a little bit of interrelation between the two questions. I mean, we can do some of the smaller—we can do some of the smaller transactions. There's a plentiful number of opportunities out there to look at. If there's something that's strategically important to us, I wouldn't rule us out as a cash buyer on some of that. In addition to, as Hilton said, the guiding principle for us is potentially using M&A to delever. That can be a combination of—for the right transaction, it can be a combination of things. In terms of where we go directly with the extra proceeds, I think it's wherever we can get the most bang for the buck. This morning, it appears that a lot of people beat us to market on being able to go buy back debt. Yeah, we'll look.

We'll see where things settle out. We have the liquidity. We are obviously managing the capital structure, I think, in a very judicious way. We'll continue to do so and be mindful of near-term maturities relative to longer-term opportunities to capture larger discounts.

Hilton Howell (Chairman, and CEO)

Steven, it all goes back to every deal is different, right? Because there are different synergies with each different transaction.

Steven Fargo (Analyst)

Thank you.

Operator (participant)

All right. Seeing only one question left in queue, I'll remind participants, you can press *1 on your telephone keypad if you would like to join the queue. That is *1 to ask a question. The final one in queue so far, David Hamburger, your line is now open.

David Hamburger (Research Analyst)

Hi. Thank you very much. I have two questions. One's a follow-up to the last question. First, the cost-cutting effort, I believe, Kevin, you had mentioned that you've realized $60 million, or at least you have seen visibility to the $60 million in reduction of costs. I'm wondering if you could just elaborate. It looks like costs were down nominally in the first quarter. It looks like second quarter not down very much. When start to see that kind of in the station expense line item? Is there an opportunity to drive costs down even further than that?

Jeff Gignac (CFO)

Yeah. It's Jeff. David, I'll take it. Others can weigh in as well. Yeah. We have taken all of the actions that made up the $60 million that we announced. When we say we have achieved or even exceeded that $60 million number, everything we identified has been implemented. Now you will see it flow into the numbers. I would say some of the cost items are not perfectly linear. We said at the beginning of this exercise that the goal here was to get expenses ideally to be negative, but also at a minimum get below inflationary levels. Our guide for second quarter is below inflationary levels. We're continuing to evaluate it every day.

If there are other things that we see that are out there, there is a sense of everybody understands the importance of it as we run the business, especially with the top-line trends. We are not stopping just because we "achieve the number." We will see that flow through prospectively as we move through the year. There are not plans at this point where there will be a second round of announcements of any wide-ranging things. I mean, it will be continuing to optimize the business, frankly, just being good stewards of the business and thinking about how we manage it over time.

Hilton Howell (Chairman, and CEO)

I guess just with corporate expenses, it looked like it was up a little bit year over year. Is there anything kind of notable there particularly?

Jeff Gignac (CFO)

I wouldn't say anything that's notable. I mean, they can bounce around a little bit. Things aren't always perfectly linear. So nothing really notable. It could be a couple of million. It can bounce around throughout the year.

Hilton Howell (Chairman, and CEO)

Just finally on the AR securitization, it looks like you drew on the $100 million in the quarter. The cash balance for the company is up to $210 million. It looks like notwithstanding the $17 million of debt, you reduced the vast majority of that sitting on the balance sheet. Is there anything near-term for which you require kind of more elevated cash balance on the balance sheet?

Jeff Gignac (CFO)

No. Look, the AR facility is also a revolving facility. It is a very nice source of inexpensive liquidity for us. You have seen what we have done in open market and PAR repayments of debt. We have some smaller maturities, regular amortization stuff later this year, and a small maturity next year. We will see where things are at in terms of where to deploy it next, whether it is more open market repurchases or some of it gets used along the way if we identify interesting tuck-in type acquisitions. To more directly answer the question, we do not need $200 million of cash sitting on the balance sheet. It is not—we can either pay down the AR facility or deploy it elsewhere as we see opportunity.

David Hamburger (Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you very much.

Hilton Howell (Chairman, and CEO)

All right. Thank you, operator. Thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. I know you guys have had a lot to listen to because I know0 there have been calls sort of on the hour, every hour today. We really appreciate you spending time with us. We look forward to talking to you next quarter.

Operator (participant)

With that, ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your call. You may now disconnect your lines. Thank you again for joining us today.