Saga Communications - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Q2 2025 net operating revenue declined 5.0% to $28.23M; operating income was $1.41M, net income was $1.13M, and diluted EPS was $0.18, reflecting continued softness in traditional broadcast categories and lower political advertising versus the prior year.
• Versus Wall Street consensus, revenue missed ($28.23M vs $28.55M*) and EPS missed ($0.18 vs $0.19*); EBITDA also came in below consensus ($2.68M* vs $3.45M*). Coverage remains thin (1 estimate), but these are modest misses. Bold emphasis reflects a potential near-term sentiment headwind. Values retrieved from S&P Global.
• Cost controls were a relative bright spot: station operating expenses fell 4.6% YoY; management expects FY 2025 station operating expenses to decline 2–3% YoY, aided by in-sourcing digital services and selective AI adoption (voice-to-voice imaging savings of ~$0.25M annually).
• Capital allocation is a key catalyst: non-binding tower sales negotiations (anticipated high-7 to low-8 figure proceeds) with intent to use a portion for buybacks; cash and short-term investments were $27.3M as of August 4, 2025; quarterly dividend of $0.25 declared for payment on September 19, 2025.
• Near-term set-up: Q3 pacing is currently down ~1% overall with September pacing up ~1.5%; interactive pacing is strong (+40%), while national is pacing down ~19.1%. Q4 faces a tough political comp (~$2.0M last year), a known headwind to watch.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Interactive revenue grew 7% in Q2 and 10% YTD, with 58% profit margin in Q2 and 55% YTD (ex-commissions), supporting the blended advertising strategy’s traction.
• E-commerce revenue rose 17% in Q2; online news initiative revenue increased 26% in Q2 (51% YTD), diversifying growth vectors beyond traditional broadcast.
• Execution on cost initiatives: bringing third-party digital services in-house and selective AI use (voice-to-voice imaging) drove ~$0.25M annual savings while preserving jobs, enhancing efficiency and margin resiliency.

What Went Wrong

• Top-line and earnings pressure: Q2 revenue fell 5.0% YoY; operating income declined to $1.41M (from $2.14M); net income of $1.13M was down from $2.50M a year ago; diluted EPS of $0.18 reflects the softness in traditional categories and political.
• Category mix remains challenging: Q3 pacing shows national down ~19.1%, with local direct down ~4.4% and local agency down ~0.8%; traditional broadcast verticals remain pressured in the near term.
• Political advertising normalization: Q4 2025 will lap ~$2.0M of political revenue from Q4 2024, creating a tougher revenue backdrop as the cycle shifts, a known headwind into year-end.

Transcript

Speaker 2

Welcome to Saga Communications' second quarter earnings release conference call. At this time, all participants have been placed on listen-only mode. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Christopher Forgy, President and CEO at Saga Communications. Sir, the floor is yours.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Paul. Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to join Saga Communications' 2025 Q2 earnings call. As always, we appreciate your continued support, your interest, and your participation in Saga Communications, which we believe is the best media company on the planet. Before my remarks, I will turn the floor over to Sam for our introduction. Sam?

Speaker 0

Thank you, Priya. As a reminder, this call will contain forward-looking statements about our future performance and results of operations that involve risks and uncertainties that are described in the risk factors section of our most recent Form K. This call will also contain or discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations for all the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure are attached in the selected financial data table. Now, Chris, on with the show.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Sam. You probably remember, Sam, during the most recent Saga Communications’ board meeting, the board of directors meeting, I received a text from Matt Bergoin. Matt served as Saga Communications' Director of Innovation and Growth and leads and oversees Saga Communications' transformational digital strategy that you've heard so much about. We call it blended advertising. In the text, Matt shared with me an experience he and the team in one of our Saga Communications markets were navigating through. This single client represented an opportunity to win $1.3 million annually. Although this type of account is atypical, we refer to this type of customer as a whale. Whales, frankly, are very complex beasts. Our opportunity to win this business was created in part by the failure of another broadcast company to deliver and fulfill the customer's needs and by the relationship our market manager had developed with this customer.

The fact of the matter is they trusted us to perform. Long story short, the problems that existed with the poor performance of the campaign were not of our doing, but the result of poor performance of other third-party providers the customer was using. Matt and his team provided an outline of the necessary changes needed and a roadmap on how to fix them. The customer left the meeting knowing their third-party providers were the problem. More importantly, they now had a partner, a partner in Saga Communications that knew how to identify the issues and how to fix them. In Matt's words, "They trust us implicitly." As they all left the meeting, the customer was talking about an additional campaign and ad buy they wanted us to put together for them. This account alone has the potential this time next year to be a $150,000 a month account.

Most who "know digital" could not have navigated this meeting. In fact, this client had already fired one broadcaster who knew digital. It is only because of Saga Communications' training and teaching of its leaders and media advisors over the past year and a half that we could have even had a seat at the table to discuss this type of money, let alone win the money and then coach the client on how to fix issues they were experiencing with other third-party providers. I read the entire text to our board of directors at this Saga Communications’ board of directors meeting, and their response was this: "Chris, what do you and your team need to run faster and more efficiently?" You see, this is a board who sees the opportunity and supports management's efforts to accomplish something that some have said can't be done. I guess we'll see.

In a moment, Sam will share details of Saga's Q2 and six months' 2025 performance. Are we delighted with where we are today? No, not at all. We should be doing better, but this isn't the 1990s or early 2000s where you can see that new grocery store chain is opening your market and you go out and sell a big schedule of remote and some antiquated promotion that has been done 100 times and get a windfall of cash. It just doesn't happen that way. We're now playing in the modern, ever-evolving digital age. It's now much more sophisticated and requires skills and abilities to play and to play fast. We are extremely optimistic. We're looking ahead to the near future. As you know, Saga still has $27 million in cash and short-term investments on hand and has a plan that is being forged and gaining traction.

Saga's digital culture continues to grow year over year, quarter over quarter, and month to month. In 2025, July is better than June, August is better than July, and September is better than August. Also, our digital percentage of total net revenue has also increased quarter over quarter from 13.6% to 15.6%. Recently, one of our hugely select third-party digital partners referred to Saga as one of their leading and fastest growing digital channel partners. Recently, I heard a quote that I think is appropriate not only for Saga but for everyone listening. It says, "Those forged by the fire of adversity become living symbols of unbreakable will." Ladies and gentlemen, the traditional broadcast verticals that have carried us for years have challenged the best. We're seeing signs that some of these traditional revenue verticals will return.

The degree to which they will return, as well as the timing of those returns, really remains to be seen. The truth is we have to sell our way out of this macro-downdraft and refuse the urge to cut our way out, where you're left with a shell of an organization with less people, less product, no process, no culture, and no performance. I've said it before. I'll say it again. Money comes from customers. We're going to continue to produce great content that works and continue to provide service to the community and create an on-air atmosphere conducive to the success of our media partners.

To do this, we must have talented, well-trained media advisors who are equipped to help these advertisers navigate through a fragmented and confusing marketplace where GAAP exists when tech meets human behavior, a marketplace full of frustrated buyers with unmet needs, a marketplace with more available money than ever known, and a marketplace that is ripe for disruption. This all takes time, money, commitment, and a resolve like no other. What do we need to go faster? Reduce unnecessary operating expenses to be more nimble, reinvest in research and development, and in our people to help support the efforts of our media advisors, continue to train our leaders and our media advisors to help them earn the trust of our advertising partners in the digital space, all the while continuing to bring value to our shareholders through accretive acquisitions, capital management, and capital allocation.

I've often thought of Saga Communications currently in its current state, in essence, as a cash-positive startup. We iterate and iterate again with speed, not wasting time or money, and we fail fast. When we succeed, we reinvest to become even faster. We repeat the good and eliminate the not-so-good. By being nimble, it allows us, when one of Saga Communications' markets experiences material success, like the example of the whale I cited earlier, we're able to push that success and process out to our other 26 Saga Communications markets and do it, not now, but right now. Sam, I'm going to turn it back over to you.

Speaker 0

Thank you, Chris. For the quarter ended June 30, 2025, net revenue decreased $1.5 million, up 5% to $28.2 million compared to $29.7 million last year. Station operating expense decreased $1.1 million, up 4.5% to $22.2 million for the three-month period. For the quarter, we had an operating income of $1.4 million compared to $2.1 million last year. Station operating income, a non-GAAP measure, was $6 million for the quarter compared to $6.4 million for the same period last year. Capital expenditures were $1.3 million for the quarter compared to $1.5 million for the second quarter last year. We had a net income of $1.1 million for the quarter compared to $2.5 million for the same period last year.

On a same-station basis for the quarter ended June 30, 2025, net revenue decreased $1.9 million, or 6.4%, to $27.6 million, and station operating expense decreased $1.5 million, or 6.4%, to $21.7 million. For the six-month period ended June 30, 2025, net revenue decreased $2.6 million, or 4.7%, to $52.4 million compared to $55 million last year. Station operating expense decreased $1.6 million, or 3.4%, to $44.2 million for the six-month period. For the six-month period, we had an operating loss of $889,000 compared to an operating loss of $274,000 last year. Station operating income, again, a non-GAAP measure, was $8.2 million for the six-month period compared to $9.2 million for the same period last year. Capital expenditures were $2 million for the six-month period compared to $2.6 million for the same period last year.

We had a net loss of $447,000 for the six-month period compared to a net income of $924,000 for the same period last year. On a same-station basis for the six months ended June 30, 2025, net revenue decreased $3.6 million, or 6.5%, to $51.2 million, and station operating expense decreased 5.7% to $43 million. Reflecting on operating expenses, it was good to see the 4.6% decrease in station operating expenses for the second quarter and the 3.4% decrease for the six-month period. This was largely the result of an increase in operating expenses of approximately $390,000 for the Los Ehad acquisition for the quarter and $1 million for the six-month period, as well as a decrease in paying station operating expenses of approximately $1.5 million for the quarter and $2.6 million for the six-month period.

The decrease in paying station expenses was primarily due to a reduction in compensation and compensation-related expenses, digital services expenses, as we are now doing some of our digital ad placement in-house, and bad debt expenses. Corporate expenses increased $70,000 for the quarter and $154,000 for the six months ended June 30, 2025. This did include an $89,000 expense in the quarter and $199,000 expense for the six-month period relating to a potential proxy contest initiated by a Saga shareholder. In addition to these expenses, there was also a lot of valuable time invested in working through this issue.

The decrease in other operating expenses for the six months ended June 30, 2025, compared to the same period in 2024, is primarily due to the sale of a non-productive alien station along with two translators in Asheville, North Carolina, and the shutting down of a non-productive alien station in Bellingham, Washington in 2024. The decrease in other income is due to a one-time gain in 2024 related to the sale of Saga's equity investment in BMI when the organization was closed. In addition to what Chris has already said and we'll talk more about shortly, I want to point out that for the quarter, total interactive revenue was up 7%, and for the six-month period, up 10%, with a 58% profit margin for the quarter and 55% for the six-month period, excluding sales commissions for the quarter and for the year.

While still in a decency from a total dollar standpoint, our online news and HD revenue, which rolls up into our interactive numbers, grew by 26% for the quarter and 51% for the six-month period compared to 2024. E-commerce revenue, which rolls up into our local direct numbers, grew by 17% for the second quarter and is up 8% for the six-month period. Pacing for the third quarter is currently showing improvement over Q1 and Q2's results. For the third quarter, we are currently pacing down approximately 1%, although we are seeing improvement inside the quarter as well, with September pacing up 1.5% as of now. Obviously, you know that these numbers fluctuate daily. Excluding political, we are pacing flat with last year for the third quarter. Last year, we had $312,000, $287,000, and $680,000 in political for the first, second, and third quarter, respectively.

The fourth quarter will be more of a revenue challenge from a political perspective, as we had almost $2 million in political revenues for the quarter in 2024. As Chris indicated, our interactive pacing is strong for the third quarter, being up 40% as of now. Also, as of now, we are seeing improvement, albeit not everything we want, but still improvement in our traditional broadcasting revenue categories as well. For the third quarter, the local direct is pacing down 4.4%, local agency is pacing down 0.8%, and national is the outlier, pacing down 19.1%. However, this year, we are seeing national come in later in the quarter than it ever has previously done. The company paid a quarterly dividend of $0.25 per share on June 27, 2025. The total dividend paid was approximately $1.6 million.

Today's Saga has paid over $138 million in dividends to shareholders since the first special dividend was paid in 2012, as well as we have bought back over $58 million in Saga stock. Further, as a part of our overall capital allocation plan for 2025, and as stated in the press release, Saga has entered into a non-binding negotiation to sell some of our tower sites. It is anticipated that these negotiations, if concluded, and we expect they will be, will result in proceeds from the sale in the high seven-figure or low eight-figure range and close before the end of the third quarter. We are also assessing the potential sale of other non-core assets with the intent to use a portion of the proceeds from these sales to fund stock buybacks, which may include open market repurchases, block trades, or other forms of buybacks.

All said, we believe Saga is in a strong financial position to improve profitability as our digital initiatives improve both local radio and interactive revenue. The company's balance sheet reflects $24.9 million in capital in short-term investments as of June 30, 2025, and $27.3 million as of August 4, 2025, which Chris has already commented on. We currently expect to spend between $3 million and $3.5 million for capital expenditures in 2025. We currently expect our station operating expense will be decreasing by 2% to 3% for the year as compared to 2024. This takes into consideration the expense reductions we are making in addition to any costs incurred as the expenses are reduced, as well as our continued investment in the ongoing revenue initiatives. We continue to anticipate that the annual corporate general and administrative expense will be approximately $12 million for 2025 compared to $12.6 million in 2024.

Chris, I'll turn it back over to you.

Speaker 1

Thank you, Sam. As a part of that significant expense reduction Sam referred to, we're bringing several of our third-party digital expenses in-house to save money, increase margins, and really to be more efficient. We're also selectively utilizing AI solutions for things like digital reconciliation of invoices. In the area of radio stations and voice and imaging, we are realizing $250,000 in annual savings by using voice-to-voice AI versus the third-party production providers used previously. A true example saves employees' jobs, money, and made us more efficient. What's the plan? Speed, reiteration, reduced expenses, reinvestment, research and development, capital allocation, capital management, and growth. That's the plan. Thank you again for your time and interest and support of Saga Communications, what we believe to be the best media company on the planet. Sam, do you have any questions?

Speaker 0

We did get a few questions, Chris. The first one, we did talk about Q3 pacing a little bit, and obviously, we will continue to let folks know as we see where pacing goes as we go into the future. We got the question in this year, and I talked about this last week. It says, "In terms of your digital business, many continue to report strong indications for the growth of this business." We've already reported today that we are seeing strong growth. We had strong growth in the second quarter and we're seeing very strong pacing growth for the first quarter. There is a second part to this question. Are you seeing any impact from customers on the recent decline in search traffic, and are there any implications on lower eyeballs to sites?

Speaker 1

I think part of that is a little bit of a misnomer, Sam. There aren't less searches being done, just more places to search. It's a little bit fragmented right now. When a client goes searching, it's fragmented as they go on the search. Our goal is to make sure that we are there when they are searching and where they are searching. We're committed to doing that, whether it's on Google, AI, or social. We really want to meet them where they are.

Speaker 0

Very good. The last question we received is, "Can we talk about capital allocations at this point?" I referred to that in my comments that we have looked in our non-binding negotiations to sell some of our tower sites, and we expect proceeds from that sale to be in the high seven-figure or low eight-figure range. We have a number of other somewhat smaller potential sites that we are looking at, as well as other opportunities to sell non-core assets. We have committed at a board level and to our shareholders that we are looking at what we will do with the proceeds from this and that some of the proceeds will go into stock buybacks, as well as obviously continuing the quarterly dividend. With that, Chris, I think we're good. Paul, I'll turn it back over to you to wrap up.

Speaker 2

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your time.