Good day and welcome to Entravision's Fourth Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note this event is being recorded.I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Walter Ulloa CEO. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Ailee. Good afternoon everyone and welcome to Entravision's Fourth Quarter 2019 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me on the call today is Jeffery Liberman our President and COO; and Chris Young our Chief Financial Officer.Before we begin I must inform you that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ. Please refer to our SEC filings for a list of risks and uncertainties that could impact actual results.This call is the property of Entravision Communications Corporation. Any redistribution retransmission or rebroadcast of this call in any form without the expressed written consent of Entravision Communications Corporation is strictly prohibited. Also this call will include non-GAAP financial measures. The Company has provided a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures in today's press release. The press release is available on the Company's website and was filed with the SEC on Form 8-K.Our fourth quarter results were adversely impacted by revenue declines in our television and audio business segments compared to the prior year due primarily to the absence of political revenue modestly offset by a slight increase in our digital revenues and a significant increase in cash flow from our digital business in the fourth quarter.Looking beyond the general business environment, our balance sheet today continues to be solid with approximately $138 million in cash and marketable securities on the books, versus a total debt of approximately $218 million. During the fourth quarter, we're also active in buying back stocks at approximately 802,000 shares repurchased at an average price of $2.73 per share. We also continue to return capital to our shareholders through our quarterly dividends.Now turning to our financial performance, revenues decreased 14% to $70.8 million in the fourth quarter.…

Thank you, Walter, and good afternoon everyone. Walter has discussed, net revenue for the quarter was down 14% to $70.8 million compared to [indiscernible]. Operating expenses decreased 1% to $44.2 million consolidated to adjusted EBITDA decreased 47% $11.1 million. For the year, net revenue was down 8% to $273.6 million compared to $297.8 million we generated in 2018. Operating Expenses decreased 2% to $173.4 million and consolidated adjusted EBITDA decreased to $41.2 million.For our TV division, revenues in the fourth quarter decline 19% to $36.9 million primarily due to the absence of approximately $7 million in political revenue in the prior year period, which did not return. Excluding political core TV ad revenue was down 7% for the quarter. Retransmission consent revenue for the quarter was $8.7 million and was up 1% over the prior year period. Radio net revenue for the quarter was down 17% to $13.9 million compared to $16.8 million in the same quarter last year. Decrease in a radio segment was primarily due to decreases in both national and local advertising.Core radio revenue, excluding approximately $1.6 million in political revenue in the second quarter of last year was down 9% in the fourth quarter. Digital net revenue for the quarter improved by 1% to $20 million compared to $19.8 million in the second quarter of last year. The improvement was primarily due to growth achieved by our core programmatic platforms Smadex in our international markets.Operating expenses decreased 1% to $44.2 million for the three month period ended December 31, from $44.6 million in the prior year period. The decrease was primarily due to a 9% decrease in our digital expense slightly offset by 3% increase at our radio division arising from an increase in severance costs. Corporate expenses for the quarter were up 2% to 7.9…

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator instructions] And your first question today comes from Michael Kupinski with NOBLE Capital Markets.

First, did you do about $1 million in television, political in the fourth quarter? Is that the right number?

No, political was about 200,000 in the fourth quarter, Michael.

And can you talk about the amount of political that was booked so far in the first quarter?

We have approximately 4.6 million of political on the books for Q1. For television and about 794,000 of census dollars which we also include as part of our political number; and for radio, we've got about $630,000 booked for Q1 in political and about $364,000 in census, which as I said it also included political.

And just remind me, I think you said that the World Cup contributed about 1.9 million last year?

About 1.9 million in revenue, early in 2018.

2018, right. And then in terms of the ratings in radio, have they kind of stabilized? Have you gotten a couple of positive books at this point? Or what are you seeing? And where are you seeing the most impact from on your radio side?

The ratings have certainly stabilized, I mean, the market that we've paid the most attention to just because of its size is Los Angeles and we've seen tremendous improvement in Los Angeles. We consolidated our signals in Los Angeles over one format, Jose, that's proven to be a very good decision.Our talent continues to form it at highest level. Erazno y La Chokolata, which is our afternoon drive show in Los Angeles and other 15 markets or 14 markets, is number one in LA and I think its number one in 10 of the other -- of the remaining markets. So, we're really pleased with the progress that show is making.And then, or continues to make. And then our El Genio Lucas, which is our morning show, among Spanish-language radio shows is number two in actually every demo in, when we compare it with the other Spanish-language radio stations in the market. And then Piolin, which is a midday show is number 4 against Spanish-language radio stations in Los Angeles. And again, the Piolin show is I think, in 10 of our market is number one in its time period.We're pleased that a lot of the improvements we made that we've made in programming in 2019. As I said earlier, we've taken about $8 million out of our cost structure for the unit. And we think that's going to be certainly that's going to contribute greatly to increase cash flow in the business. Lastly also as part of that, reduction in expense, we adjusted our strategy around our national sales effort and we've engaged with Eastman, and they will be, they're managing all of our national radio sales efforts.Not only do we believe this, not only this result in a sales and expense savings, but also more importantly, we believe that we're going to see increased revenue in our radio business or audio business over the next 4 quarters.

Michael, Jeff here. I'd like to mention that on a core pace basis, or core performance basis, we did improve each quarter of the year as our ratings did gain some strength in.

And then, you have a legal issue with one of your stations. I think it was performance royalty. Can you give an update on that?

Well, the performance -- it's a matter that's being litigated and that's all I'll say. It's been -- it's in litigation and its non-material.

Regardless of the outcome, we're not expecting any scenario the outcome to be doing material to our operations.

Can you have insurance for that basically is what I think, right?

That's correct.

And then just in terms of the recent ownership changes that Univision, can you give us any thoughts about that? How that might impact you at all?

I'll just make a brief comment. Chris or Jeff has comes to for me, but it's too early. We don't know much about the new leadership all that will suddenly learn more as time goes on, probably meet with them. Look, I think it's probably a positive step in the right direction here for Univision. We greatly depend on them for their, from our programming. And so anything that will improve. We believe in steps that will improve that programming delivery, we think is good, so more to come.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Gordon Hodge with Tracker Research.

Good afternoon. I just got a question. Just to clarify the $8 million of expense that's come out of the audio cost structure. Was that actually realized last year? Or is that -- I assume that's more of a run rate given the changes with Katz are shifting to Katz is that though --

No, the majority of that $8 million of cost reduction is a result of programming contracts that we've negotiated or renegotiated.

Great. Okay,

Realized.

Okay, excellent. And so just thinking about the shift to Katz, so the way that would work is you'll pay them a commission basic -- your rep fee, that's right. And in mean -- then have you I presume there would be your national sales force would essentially either be reallocated somewhere else or disappear. Is that correct?

That's correct.

Yes, I got it. Okay. So, so more expense probably coming out going forward.

That $8 million that I referred to an expense reduction is includes the --

Includes that, okay, includes that some of that in there, right. Okay, perfect, got it. That's it. I just wanted to clarify. And then, so anyway, it sounds encouraging. The pacing certainly sounded encouraging even down one with TV on a core basis still sounded pretty good. Is there in that number much of an increase on the return side? It wasn't significant.

That is just advertising.

And then, just as your board kind of gets together and thinks about the dividend, which I know you approved for March. And then thinks about buybacks and other ways to deploy capital what has become a very uncertain time. I'm just wondering with whether --sort of what are the dynamics that you think about in terms of having cash is sort of a safety cushion of things I'll breaks loose or vice versa. Are you -- could you have plenty of cash? Or just sort of how do you think about the balance of things? And how much do you have left on the buybacks that you could execute if you wanted?

I'll just comment briefly on the dividends that as it is.

Yes, it's a great yield, that's for sure, terrific yield.

And just to kind of add to your comment about, how we see the future? We were confident of the year. We're off to a really good start in first quarter. We've made a number of changes throughout 2019, not only in our media group or broadcast business, but also in our digital business. And we continue to fine tune our management team. Just and the process of adding new management talent and in talent taxes, which is one of our most important markets.Certainly, pleased with what we've done. There been a lot of work by many people from getting that operation to operate at its optimum capability. So, again, I'm pleased with the with all the work we've done, it was certainly difficult, but we're through it and will continue to find tune that the first quarter looks very strong and then of course, we'll see what happens as we go through the year.

Right, and just to really reiterate, we do have a stock buyback program in place. And what we're trying to do is take a balanced approach between returning capital to shareholders and just paying down debt and then scoping out the landscape for opportunistic well opportunities as it may arise, so we're not going full bore into any direction just because we want to be on the side of caution.

That's a good point by Chris. We're going to continue to be take a balanced approach to work through the future here via to acquisitions be a stock buyback etcetera.

Is there a stock buyback -- refresh my memory, if there's an authorization, are we through that authorization? Or is that we still have a ways to go yet?

We still have a ways to go with that plan in place and we'll refresh that. The window opens up next week and we'll refresh that next week and we'll keep that program running.

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Walter Ulloa for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Ailee. We look forward to reporting our first quarter earnings results in the early May. Thank all of you for participating in our fourth quarter and 2019 earnings conference call.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.