Good day, everyone, and welcome to Nexstar Broadcasting Group's 2016 First Quarter Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. All statements and comments made by management during this conference call other than statements of historical fact may be deemed forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and projections about future events. Forward-looking statements include information preceded by, followed by or that includes the word guidance, believes, expects, anticipates, could or similar expressions. For these statements, Nexstar claims the protection of the Safe Harbor for forward-looking statements contained in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The forward-looking statements contained in this communication, concerning, among other things, the ultimate outcome and benefits of any possible transaction between Nexstar and Media General and timing thereof, and future financial performance, including changes in net revenue, cash flow and operating expenses, involve risks and uncertainties, and are subject to change based on various important factors, including the timing to consummate the proposed transaction; the risk that a condition to closing of the proposed transaction may not be satisfied and the transaction may not close; the risk that a regulatory approval that may be required for the proposed transaction is delayed, is not obtained or is obtained subject to conditions that are not anticipated, the impact of changes in national and regional economies, the ability to service and refinance our outstanding debt, successful integration of Media General including achievement of synergies and cost reductions, pricing fluctuations in local and national advertising, future regulatory actions and conditions in the television stations' operating areas, competition from others in the broadcast television markets, volatility in programming costs, the effects of governmental regulation of broadcasting, industry consolidation, technological developments and major world news events. Unless required by law, Nexstar undertakes no obligation to update…

Thank you. And we'll turn first to Marci Ryvicker with Wells Fargo.

Morning. A couple of questions on core. I assume that you would have been up low-single if you did not have the retrans dispute. If you could just comment on that? And then secondly, can you talk about core spot in the second quarter, if that's also up low-single? Tom Carter - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: I'll take the first part, Marci, and pass it off to Perry with the rest. The short answer is yes, we would have been up slightly if it hadn't been for that disruption. Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: And as it relates to second quarter, I know there is this perception running around that there is a slowdown that's going to occur in the second quarter, second half of the year, but what we're seeing is exactly the opposite of that. If you look at April, May and June, we are seeing sequential builds in core revenue through the second quarter. And while it's not done yet, we still have two months to go, I would expect our second quarter results to look a lot like our first quarter results as it relates to core, over-delivering on political, distribution, digital. So, all within the bandwidth of our expectations and we hope yours.

Now, some of the companies you've reported suggested that the second quarter political numbers will be lower than the first quarter because of how strong the first quarter primaries were. Should we expect the same thing for you guys in the second quarter versus the first for political? Tom Carter - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: I think they'll be comparable to slightly down perhaps. But I think that's just more the cadence of the primaries. Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: We have, after today, four presidential primary contests that will be conducted, but we also have, from this point to the end of the quarter, 16 state and local primaries, which are decoupled. Many states decouple the presidential primary from their state and local. And by example, Nevada has got the statewide primary for the Senate race. We've already got over $1 million on the books for that race. And that contest will be adjudicated on June 14. So we have 16 statewide races in addition to the four presidential primaries still yet to be conducted in the second quarter. So our expectation is political will be in the same neighborhood as our first quarter results.

Got it. Thank you so much.

Next we'll move to Aaron Watts with Deutsche Bank.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. First one, just on auto advertising. Curious if you're seeing the OEMs devote a greater portion of their ad budget to digital versus television? Or maybe more relevant, mandating that a greater percent of the co-op ad spend provided to the regional and local dealers must go towards digital? Obviously, that could potentially put some pressure on what the dealers spend on your stations. So just curious what you're seeing there. Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Sure. Aaron, in the first quarter, we saw local dealer spending, which was up approximately 3% and the category flat. So there was less Tier 2 money obviously as part of the total. I don't know that I would call it a trend. I think it's really by nameplate. Have we seen that happen with Nissan? Yes. Have we seen that happen with Chevrolet, and Lexus, and Honda, and General Motors? No.

Okay. To the extent there is some dollars that may shift towards digital, are you able to capture any of that with some of your offerings? Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Sure. I mean, it's our attempt to do that. What we try to do is offer products that are offered in syndication but, say, you can do business with people you know locally. Automotive as a percent of our ad supported revenue, as you know, is in the mid 20%s. As a percent of our digital ad supported revenue, it's a number substantially less than that. So we do have opportunity to grow in automotive on digital, and our teams are working to try and make that happen.

Okay. And then my other question, a little bit bigger picture, but if you could help remind me – when I read about Hulu or others of the ilk launching or potentially launching skinny bundles that would include broadcast stations, where does Nexstar fit into that in terms of getting compensated? Who's negotiating? Is it you? Is it the network? Just maybe some color around that? Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, each of the, let's call, them non-traditional MVPDs are separate circumstances. But I think the important thing to know there is whether we negotiate directly with Hulu or our network partners negotiate direct on our behalf, it is still the local station, the local license holders' control over whether they negotiate a deal or opt into a deal. So the grant of rights remains with the local station for the broadcasting or the streaming of that programming within our DMA. So we are an important part of this, and whether the networks negotiate, as many have on behalf of Sony Vue, and allowing us an opt in or opt out or whether we negotiate directly, I think the outcome is generally the same. We don't agree to deals that we don't think are good deals and are deals we're comfortable with, whether we negotiate them directly or whether we opt into a deal somebody else has negotiated.

Okay. Helpful. Thank you.

Now I'll move to Kyle Evans with Stephens.

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. Tom, you ripped through the same station numbers very rapidly. If I heard correctly, the same station digital growth was better than the overall total digital growth. Could you walk us through some of the digital trends in the quarter, and maybe compare and contrast local versus some of your national operations? Tom Carter - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Sure. Well, we don't have much in the way of national, but I think really what you're referring to is Yashi and the programmatic side was slightly down for the quarter. And then obviously, the local side was up substantially as was LAKANA, which is our CMS business, providing the services to other publishers during the quarter. So the growth was pretty consistent, not a big difference between same station and total.

And can you talk about the down programmatic piece of the business? I know it's volatile and it's ... Tom Carter - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: I was going to say, some of it is volatility. Also we've seen some marketplace dynamics change specifically with regard to availability of advertising. Some of the private networks and the private exchanges have tightened their availability of advertising, which has affected placement agents like Yashi in terms of availability to access that inventory.

Got you. And you guys put up a really nice retrans number in the quarter, and that's on 45% sub-renewal. You have another 45% coming. Is there any reason to believe you can't get the same bump in per sub monthly pricing on the next 45% that you got on the 45% you just got done with? Tom Carter - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, it's difficult to say because obviously, there's a lot of variables that go into that. What we have said is we think that the percentage same station growth will decline slightly, but that's just the law of large numbers coming into play. It's not necessarily indicative of what's happening in the rates, but we can continue to meaningfully grow the dollars on the retrans and we don't see any storm clouds on the horizon that are going to prevent that.

Okay. Thank you.

John Janedis with Jefferies, please go ahead.

Thank you. Perry, maybe a little bit of a follow-up. You talked about the $24 million in retrans synergies from the Media General deal. And I just wanted to ask you, with consolidation on the distribution front, will there be any impact on your retrans revenue when those deals come up for renewal in terms of rate harmonization that we should be thinking about? Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Short answer is no. We do not anticipate any bumps in the road. We have acquired over 60 stations in the last – since 2011. So in the last four-and-a-half years or four-plus years, invoked our after-acquired clauses and had 100% harmonization, if you will, of the acquired station's rates with ours. So we don't anticipate any issues there on a going forward basis. Tom Carter - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: And John, just to remind you, there is some consolidation going on on the broadcasting side as well, which allows us greater scale. And we believe negotiating leverage with them. So, part of the whole reason for the Media General transaction was to make it a fair fight.

Okay. Got it. Thanks, Tom. And then just separately, based on your timeline for Media General, does that imply you could announce some detail around the divestitures by the end of the second quarter? And then on Rio, can you give us a sense of the potential revenue impact? Tom Carter - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: I'll take the divestiture question. The short answer is yes, we would expect to have something done really in the next month or six weeks, and then roll that out as appropriate. Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Yeah. We're working hard on the divestiture markets. And it's been a very robust process, which has been a pleasant surprise I think to all of us. And our plan would be to hopefully announce those divestiture market agreements prior to our shareholder vote. And all of that we would hope would happen in the second quarter. As it relates to Rio, Rio on our NBC affiliates – NBC affiliates are our second largest revenue producing group of stations. So our expectation for Olympics is a mid-to-high seven-digit gross revenue number. Some of that will be political because of the timing. But on an all-in basis between digital and over the year, we're looking for a number that's in the mid-to-high seven digits of revenue.

Great. Thanks very much.

Next we'll turn to Dan Kurnos with The Benchmark Company.

Great. Thanks. Good morning. Just going back to core quickly, we've covered most of it. But maybe, Perry, if you could give us some of the other puts and takes category-wise? What's performing well and what's not? And then just with the Digital Mirror launch, just – maybe some higher level thoughts there on if it's sort of a requirement now from an increasingly multi-screen world to have this kind of an offering? Or if you're just getting out ahead of this and trying to put out more of a programmatic effort on the digital front? Thanks. Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: On categories in reviewing the first quarter, of our top-10 categories, these seven were up. Flat to up I guess I should say/ Auto, fast food, furniture, attorneys, medical healthcare, paid programming as well as services, which is kind of a catch-all category. The three categories that were down versus the prior year, I think we discussed were tools, cable advertising for obvious reasons, and then the retail category was slightly down. So that's our top-10 category. As it relates to Mirror, this is the – we view this as a product that's kind of a forced multiplier, that if you're running a spot in a football game for an F-150, you can geographically and demographically target within our market, folks who we believe are watching that football, have self identified as truck drivers or truck fans and football fans, and send a message out to them, hey, you're watching this game and go on down to your local Ford dealer and register for a trip to an upcoming Dallas Cowboys home game. So it's an opportunity to mirror the broadcast message with geo and demo targeting data, which we see as a force multiplier. It is the first of its kind out there as a product. We see it as an opportunity to create added value and enhance advertisers' messages, increase their effectiveness and kind of reach the holy grail of one-to-many and one-to-one marketing almost at the same time. So it's in the testing phases within the Nexstar portfolio, and we hope to be able to report results of those tests, but I can tell you that with some of the advertisers and portfolio managers that we've spoken with, they're very excited to learn more about the product. Now, will they actually use it? Time will tell. But we believe it is an investment in ourselves, an investment using our technology, creating products within the companies that we own that will further magnify advertisers' messages in an increasingly fragmenting environment. And we think that's good for everyone, including ultimately our shareholders.

Great. And then I'm sure I probably know the answer to this, but even though all we've gotten at this point is just the initial clearing target. Any thoughts on impact on closing as it relates to the spectrum auction? Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Nothing other than what's been publicly said, and that the auction will begin on May 31, and expecting a couple of rounds of bidding per day, and there'll be 52 rounds in total if needed. So the process will begin in earnest at the end of the month, and no one will be allowed to say anything about it until it's over. But I think we have said that we will be a participant in the auction or at least the registered certain stations to participate in the auction and we'll make dollar-denominated judgments everyday as that auction is conducted as to whether (41:47) inventory into the auction is in the best interest of our shareholders.

Great. Thanks, guys.

James Dix with Wedbush Securities. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks. Just two follow-ups. I think Perry, you mentioned that auto advertising is about in the mid 20s of your total core at the moment. How does that compare to similar point to prior economic cycles and do you see auto likely continuing to hold at that share or could that potentially lag a bit? Just interested in your views on that as a driver. And then secondly, just on the auction, when would you expect the next time that you're going to be able to disclose anything of substance on your participation or the auction overall? Thanks. Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Sure. As it relates to auto, I think we kind of went through the cycle that when credit collapsed and no one could get a car loan in 2009, the auto dropped to something that was approximately 15% of our television ad spend at its zenith prior to that collapse, it was 27% of our ad spend. We're not all the way back to the peak of where we were. We're kind of in the mid-20s right now, which would indicate there could be further expansion before we'd be testing new ground. But I think auto because it's such a major category and it kind of mirrors things that people buy on time, which also includes furniture and the retail and department stores. It's almost a proxy for advertising, and so I think as advertising grows, the automotive category will grow and I think it will certainly keep pace with its share of market currently of our ad supported revenue, and my bias would be to the upside that it will grow, and I guess time will tell. As it relates to the spectrum auction literally until the forward auction is concluded, there'll be no public statements. And their estimate that could be third quarter, fourth quarter and only the FCC will really know for sure. So I would not anticipate any authorized noise or information coming from any of the participants or the government until at minimum kind of mid-to-late third quarter, maybe fourth quarter in terms of the forward auction being completed and then I think we'll all be in a position to talk about it.

Great. Thanks very much.

We'll now move to Michael Kupinski with Noble Financial.

First, congratulations on your quarter. And most of my questions have been answered already. But my question really relates to the company's strategy post Media General merger. And correct me if I'm wrong, but you've been somewhat critical of companies seeking national digital platforms, which made straight from traditional broadcasting. And I was wondering in the new world for broadcasting that may be opened up by the new ATSC 3.0 standard, there may be a number of new business opportunities. And was wondering can you talk about your strategies to grow the business possibly in light of the new standard? Do they include new business initiatives outside of traditional broadcasting other than your local digital businesses? Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: We had about an hour long meeting yesterday talking about uses of the spectrum that are non-ad supported that we can potentially activate and effectuate here in 2016 even with the pendency of the auction. So it's something we talk about all the time. And I'm not critical of other companies' efforts. I'm just saying our cup of tea is local. We do local really, really well I think. And I hope you all think that as well. But that's what we – that's our strength. That's our skill set. And so doing anything of a national basis or trying to build some national platform, I think there are others that probably can do that better than we can. And we believe our spot in the ecosystem is perhaps superior to National Cable Networks at this point in time. And so that – those are just our points of view. I'm not critical of anybody else's points of view. That's what makes the world go round. But either before, during or after the transition to…

Perry, do you perceive the prospect of you offering a skinny bundle, a skinny cable bundle in your local markets? Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, I would say it's already awkward. I mean, just basically every cable company out there has a broadcast lifeline low-end service. And so that's kind of how cable started, and it still exists today. It's obviously not the most advertised package because there is more markup with more services and paid TV and pay-per-view and those kinds of things, but by franchise agreement, most if not all cable operators have to offer kind of the skinniest of bundles, which is kind of a broadcast lifeline service. And that exists today. It is a choice for consumers. And again, as I've said in many conferences, I grew up in Pennsylvania, when cable started, where cable started, and it started with a broadcast skinny bundle. It was only as the cable industry evolved that other layers got added to the cake, but it's the foundational part of the bundle, and I believe that in a skinny-only bundle, viewership goes up, advertising is more effective because there is less fragmentation the skinnier the bundle gets. And my belief is we will always be a part of the skinniest of bundles if those are to be commercially viable.

But certainly you have the ability under the new standard to offer your own skinny bundle. I mean, that – I was wondering if you would ever venture off into offering your own pay service. Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: On an à la carte basis? I -

Yeah. Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: That's a little more difficult than meets the eye to establish a billing relationship with your consumers, and that's one of the ways the bundle works so well. And I'm not sure that people would necessarily buy every television station in the market on an à la carte basis. I think they'd realize pretty quickly, A, I've got to have broadband to do that; B, if I want all the stations in the market, I'll just put an antenna outside if I don't want to pay for anything. And 12% of our viewers do that today. 12% of the households we reach with our broadcast signals on the main set do not consume us via a pay service. So I'm not sure – that sounds more like a solution chasing a problem. So I'm not sure it would be commercially viable nor that there would be an inherent advantage to that because the pricing would have to be within market or people would go consume it another way. So I'm not sure there is a distinct advantage, and I think there is a hell of a lot more overhead in that proposition than we have today.

Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it.

We'll turn to Tracy Young with Evercore.

Hi. I just wanted to follow up again on the acquisitions that impacted in the quarter. So you said West Virginia is not acquired, but you're paying a time brokerage agreement, you're getting a time brokerage agreement? And then also North Dakota, have you closed on those yet? Tom Carter - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Yes. Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: We have closed on North Dakota, and we closed on the CW in Des Moines. West Virginia, we began operating those stations under a time brokerage agreement in December of 2015. So we do have a full quarter of their impact in the 2016 first quarter. Tom Carter - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: But on same-station basis, West Virginia and North Dakota are excluded.

Got it. Okay. And then again, just going back to Yashi, are you seeing any improvement in Q2, or is there any seasonality in that business? Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Oh, yeah, it's an ad-supported business. There's definitely seasonality, as I think we reported the highest month in their history of the company was December of 2015 and first quarter was lower. And so it is a seasonal business. It is a lot like any other advertising. And yes, I would say we are seeing sequential improvement in Yashi, and knowing that programmatic is volatile for all the reasons that Tom mentioned and it is a relatively small piece of our entire digital portfolio, but to the space we need to be in, we need to learn because potentially it has applications to the television side of our business in terms of programmatic. So it is not a – it is not a driver of our results. It is a component of our results, but it's something that the board and I and Tom O'Brien and his team spend time on because obviously we want it to outperform our expectations rather than perform at or under our expectations. So we are seeing improvement in process. We're opening new exchanges. So, with the closure of LiveRail, we had to find other sources for inventory. We've opened our own exchanges and open to new exchanges to source quality video inventory and to eliminate and minimize the amount of non-human traffic that could be present in those results. And so that's a work in progress for every programmatic company out there, including the largest you can think of, but it's also a work in progress for us. But I feel like we're making great progress in that regard.

Great. Thank you very much.

Next up is Jim Goss with Barrington Research.

Thanks. I have a couple as well. One, just going further on the digital versus broadcast since you're making this effort in both, I've gotten the sense that there's some increase in dissatisfaction with some of the digital ads because of what you've said, non-human traffic and that sort of thing. What is your read on that? And do you – as you have a push and pull between the two, do you think it's reinforcing your traditional media more than making digital that much more necessary? Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: I don't think, Jim, it's a zero-sum game. People talk about measurability issues with Nielsen and viewer assignment and how the numbers aren't good. And then you go over to digital side and I've seen estimates of 30%, 40%, 50% of all digital traffic is fraudulent. I think marketers are taking their measure of that. And I don't think it's an either/or, which is why we're in both businesses. And if you look at – I place a lot of credence on purchase funnel behavior because we're here to help people sell stuff. And they use television for brand awareness and model awareness, and then the closer they get to the point of purchase, the funnel widens for research on the Internet. Television is still dominant. But if you look at the two things that influence how people buy stuff, it's TV and Internet, and TV and digital. And we're in those businesses because we do two things, our central formation, we produce local content and we help local businesses sell stuff. And so the tools to do that are television and Internet, and I don't see it as an either/or or a zero-sum game. And I think most of the marketers that we deal with don't see it as a zero-sum game. They see they need to have presence in both, and that's why we're in both.

Is mobile advertising the one category that can break the – like the total domestic ad spending out of the relationship that's traditionally ahead with GDP and sort of morph into other categories of marketing, and basically expand the overall category rather than just making a market share gain? Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: Well, yeah, I think by example, we don't break the results out specifically because it's a fairly small company. But Kixer, which is our programmatic digital mobile video monetization company, their results were up 28% in the first quarter. And that's incorporated into LAKANA's results, which were again ahead of budget. But that company is on track for considerable growth because it specializes in the mobile space. They also have a machine learning element to it which I think has application across our other programmatic companies, across our other digital platforms that we think it was a jewel of a buy and a company that not only has tremendous growth potential but can help our other companies, digital companies, be stronger and smarter about how they do things. We believe that much in the technology. So I think you're right. Mobile is the – no one is monetizing mobile at the same percentage that mobile is being used to view digital video, and that includes every company you know, ours included. And therein lies the opportunity. And again, that's where we look at a product like Yashi Mirror that we can also run through Kixer to specifically address mobile video as well. I think all of these things are cumulative, and we're there to provide solutions for advertisers, and we have to have our hand in as many – on as many tools as possible I think to generate superior results.

Okay. And one other item separately. With regard to the auction, if you are to put certain of your properties into that mix, is it – would the motivating factors be things like a sense of getting a value that you might not necessarily get if you were to sell something outright, or is it an opportunity to reposition the portfolio since you'll sort of be at the max and you may still want a different mix and have opportunities to make additional acquisition to get back to the max in different markets? Or what other elements do you think would be in mind? Tom Carter - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, I'd say those are some of them. Obviously, we make dollar-denominated decisions in our economic animals here. A lot of it goes into the market, the station, its affiliation or non-affiliation. Are there other Nexstar stations in that market that we can channel share with? So there are a lot of ingredients that go into baking the cake. But having said that, we do have a reserve price on every one of our stations, and that reserve price is at or above its intrinsic value as an ongoing business. So every day at 4 o'clock, you tell us what our cash flow is worth, and we can then translate that into what that station is worth and make an economic judgment based on that in addition to some of those qualitative factors that are market-driven as well as specific station attributes.

All right. Thanks. That's very interesting. I appreciate it.

We'll now move to Barry Lucas with Gabelli & Company. Barry L. Lucas - Gabelli & Company: Thanks for squeezing me in. Appreciate it. If we look at the pace of retrans and another 45% of the sub base renewing in this year, so 2017 should be a lot harder. Maybe a comment on two elements of the same coin, which would be the pace of your network renewals and your outlook for net retrans growth going forward. Tom Carter - Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President: Well, I think we – in our presentation on a Nexstar-only basis, we've said what our cadence of renewals are. And there's a pretty backend loaded renewal schedule that is past year-end 2018. We only have the FOX affiliates up for legacy Nexstar in – at the end of 2016. So that will affect 2017. But again, FOX, of the four major networks, is the lowest percentage of our affiliations. And then after that comes ABC, then CBS, then NBC. So we're in a very favorable spot, we believe, for the next two years or three years. And just to reiterate what we have said in the past and none of this has changed, we expect double-digit net retrans growth, if you want to think about it that way, net retrans being retrans revenue less affiliate expense to continue for the next three years to four years. Barry L. Lucas - Gabelli & Company: Great, Tom. Thanks for that. Last item for me would be, it seems like the FCC has gone toward the outer edge in terms of the amount of spectrum that they want to clear as part of the auction. I was hoping one of the two of you can opine on what you think that might do to…

And gentlemen, there are no other questions in the queue. So I'll turn the conference back to you for any additional or closing remarks. Perry Sook - Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer: All right. Well, I'd like to thank everybody for joining us today. Be on the lookout for our S-4 going effective and our shareholder vote, all of which we hope will happen here in the second quarter, and as well as divestiture announcements. And I hope we'll have all of that in the rearview mirror before we gather again in three months' time. So thank you very much for joining us this morning, and have a great day.

With that, we'll conclude today's conference .Thank you, everyone, for your participation. You may now disconnect.