Earnings Labs

Saga Communications, Inc. (SGA)

Q4 2019 Earnings Call· Thu, Mar 12, 2020

$11.03

+0.32%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Saga Communications Fourth Quarter and Year End Earning Release Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Ed Christian, President and CEO. Sir, the floor is yours.

Ed Christian

Management

Tom, thank you so much and we will see you back at the end of the call. Sam is also on with me as historic as this has been. Sam, I wish that I could start the call by playing the Rogers’ theme song. It’s a wonderful day in the neighborhood. I am somewhat aggregated right now and I have to rewrite my remarks and do a number of changes on the spot here. But I will turn it over to you and just at least sit here and go to my special silent place, so that I am ready when you are going ahead.

Sam Bush

Management

I think that’s a good thing too. 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 10-K. This call will also contain a discussion of certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation for all the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure are attached in the selected financial data table. First, I strongly believe that what is going on this morning in our stock is not appropriate. Last I saw we trade down to a low of $21 per share today, we are now at $23.10 on 752 shares trading. This as I believe the overall market situation is an overreaction to the coronavirus and has no basis in Saga’s actual financial performance. And as Ed has already indicated, it’s extremely frustrating to all of us going on. As I reported in the press release, excluding political revenue, gross revenue for the fourth quarter and the total year were approximately flat with the respective periods in 2018. Political revenue for the quarter this year was $535,000 compared to $1.6 million for the quarter last year and $887,000 for all of 2019 compared to $2.9 million for all of 2018. Station operating expense remained a strong point with a decrease of $711,000 for the quarter and $1 million for the year. On a same station basis, our expense controls resulted in $1.7 million reduction in station operating expenses for the quarter and $4.7 million for the year. Free cash flow was $5.4 million for the quarter and $18.1 million for the year. Free cash flow for both the quarter and the year were down from the comparable periods in 2018 primarily due to the impact of the…

Ed Christian

Management

Thank you, Sam. I think I have regained some of my composure and we can move forward on that, at least for a little bit. You did a good job summing it up. And now I’d like to add a little detail and color to last year and Q4. As previously reported by our peers in the radio industry, it was not a progressive year. Here is what occurred at Saga. Some of you listening remember my Q4 and Q1 call last year, I mentioned that I was concerned about some small trends that we have noticed and we are ever watchful and indeed some acceleration occurred in certain trends. The causal effect was for us at Saga to sit down and begin to exercise a plan that we have put together and wrapped away if needed. It called for change in the way we did business and also a rededication of the community commitment for the two major parts of our business. The first part we noticed that there was a shift in acceleration in how national business was handled by the major groups. Essentially and we have spoken about this before, national business changed from a purchase of national advertising based on individual merits to a commodity sale. Again, we are going to repeat that. The business changed from a purchase of national advertising based on individual station merits through commodity sale. Essentially, bulk buying at rates that were shockingly low based on quantity. It was scale in action. The mantra was we have open spots in our inventory and will sell them at any price. We at Saga feel differently in past. We believe that if we step off our quality side and that’s to the quantity side we have made our first step into the river…

Sam Bush

Management

I believe everybody is dumbstruck by the market. We did a very good job as we normally do in our reporting. So I don’t have any questions that we haven’t already talked about. So I will turn it back over to Tom to wrap up the call.

Ed Christian

Management

Is it dumbstruck or struck dumb?

Sam Bush

Management

Well, I think either one of those would work well with what’s going on in the market.

Ed Christian

Management

What would they say in Indiana, Sam?

Sam Bush

Management

I don’t know. No comment.

Ed Christian

Management

Okay. Tom if you are there listening, you can wrap it up.

Operator

Operator

Thank you very much and thank you ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today’s conference call. You may now disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.