Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Saga Communications Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Warren Lada, interim President and CEO at Saga Communications. Sir, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Holly, and welcome, everybody, to our third quarter 2022 earnings call. Joining me today is Sam Bush, our Chief Financial Officer extraordinaire, who's been with us for a million years, somewhere thereabouts; and also Chris Forgy, Senior VP, Operations. And you have not heard my voice for over 4 years. I used to do these calls when I was the Chief Operating Officer for Saga. And due to the very sad, unfortunate circumstances that we are in today relative to our Founder, Chairman, CEO passing in August, I am back on again on an interim basis. And I'll have a little bit more to say about that a little bit further down the line. You've heard Ed talk about the word saga, which is loosely translated in Icelandic as a never-ending journey. And one person's journey is now over, and that's Ed. And we do deeply miss him. It feels very different not having him around. And the loss is palpable. That said, I will tell you, and you'll hear more about this, that our company is extraordinarily solid, stable, in good shape, doing the right things the right way. And all of us continue to do those sorts of things that we did from the day that Ed passed to today. So the news is good. And the news is positive moving forward. You'll hear more about this. But let me turn it over to Sam, and he can tell you more detail about the actual quarter and then we'll come back to you afterwards. Sam?

Thank you, Warren. 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 tables. First, I want to take a minute, as Warren did, to recognize the loss of Ed Christian, Saga's Founder, Chairman, President, CEO and inspirational leader since Saga was founded in 1986. It's not only a loss for Saga but for the entire radio industry. This earnings call actually is my 100th call that I will have participated in since joining Saga as CFO in 1997. It will only be the second one that I have done without Ed. And that -- and all this week, that's been amazing me that 98 of 100 calls were the 2 of us together. As all of you have heard and know from past calls, Ed never liked reporting adjusted numbers. However, it is important that we do so, and we did so in the press release for this quarter as the purely reported numbers do not reflect Saga's strong operational performance as well as our extremely strong financial strength. With that in mind, for the quarter ended September 30, 2022, net revenue increased 3.9% to $30 million compared to $28.8 million last year. Gross political revenue during the quarter was $858,000 compared to $256,000 for the same period last year. Without political, gross revenue increased 2.3%. Station operating expense increased 2.8% to $22.3 million for the 3-month period. Station operating income increased 4.1% to $8.9 million. Operating income was $1.1 million and free…

Thank you, Sam. Let me just go on with a little story, which is how I felt when I was asked to come back and fulfill the interim President and CEO position. And the first thing I would tell you is that it truly, truly has and is an honor to do this. I've been with Saga for 32 years now. They've been fantastic 32 years. When I retired, I was appointed a Board member and have been an active Board member for the past 4.5 years. On the day I walked into Ed's office, I sat on the sofa with the lights off because it was just filled with so many good memories about conversations I had with him, decisions that we made together, the growth of the company and so on and so forth. But I kind of was, honestly, a little bit of a basket case that first day. I walked out of the office. I wandered around the halls, talked to everybody in the office. On day 2, I finally turned the lights on, and I sat on my desk. And by about noon, I began to feel like the Maytag repairman. If you remember that ad campaign for some time ago, the Maytag repairman was the guy who because Maytag manufactured, according to them at least, such a fantastic washer and dryer, he really didn't have too much to do. So he sat around waiting for somebody to call to fix the washer and dryer. It's kind of an exaggeration, but I kind of felt a little bit like the Maytag repairman on the second day that I was here, which is really a testament to the strength of our operation and to the way it has been managed and run for its entire history.…

Thank you, Warren. As Sam has pointed out a couple of different times, I'm serving as the color commentary to you, as a play-by-play guy, Warren. So I'll give a little color to some of the things we've talked about. And I'll keep my remarks brief. However, I would be remiss if I didn't address Ed's passing and the impact that it's had in the context of our operations. When a beloved forever leader like Ed Christian is lost, the members of that leadership team sometimes find themselves lost as well, "Where do we turn? Who do we go to? Oh, my gosh, what are we going to do now?" Not in Saga. We have the strongest, most capable leadership, not I think, I know, I've ever been around in my 24 years in Saga without question. Our culture is so established and ingrained in the hearts and minds of our people that they're all moving ahead in a north compass, I would call it, with a renewed sense of purpose and resolve to finish what we started and what Ed was not able to finish with us. This type of resolve and behavior is a tribute to our ongoing Saga culture. And it's strong, as Warren pointed out, and it's a credit to the leadership of our team in our markets. We have a picture that hangs in all of our general managers' markets that we sent out to all of them. And the picture hanging on the wall simply says, "We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails." And so we deal a lot in the things that we can control. We call them the controllables. And there are really three revenue silos that we look at from that perspective. And one is local direct…

Thank you, Chris. Sam, do you have any questions or -- from the people on this call?

Yes, we did get some questions sent in ahead of time, questions about local versus national, political revenue, digital revenue, fourth quarter pacing. All of these, I think, we've already answered or addressed in your comments, my comments, Chris' comments. We did get a couple of questions, which I'll address now. One was about acquisitions and what the market for acquisitions are and what we're seeing in the market. And I would tell you as Ed did in the second quarter as well, something very similar, that the market for acquisitions is not currently very active, mostly due to the turbulent economic conditions that exist throughout the economy. It's very difficult to establish a sale or a purchase price, given that market turbulence. That said, we will always look at acquisitions anytime that they make sense and would be accretive to the company. Ed ingrained in all of us, and all of us here have been here quite a while, Ed has ingrained in all of us how to look at acquisitions, not just as where you're going to be when you make the acquisition relative to it being accretive, but where you're going to be in 6 months, 12 months, 5 years, 10 years relative to that acquisition. And that philosophy and that ingrained thought process has not changed and will not change going forward if the market does open up and present appropriate acquisition opportunities. We also got a question that we had not addressed so far about dividends and stock buybacks and how we consider them. And we've got several questions on that, as you can imagine. But we have done both dividends and stock buybacks in the past. And our Board will continue to consider both these methods of returning value to shareholders in the future. Both of these avenues are considered regularly at Board meetings, between Board meetings and conversations here with thought given to what our stock price is, what the stock float is, what the trading patterns have been, what our cash balances are, what acquisition opportunities are there and a lot of other things that go into that consideration. And I believe if you stay tuned as shareholders for the near future, you'll continue to see and hear more on these subjects as you have recently with the special dividend we just did of $2 million that was paid on October 21, along with the $2 million -- sorry, $2 per share that was paid on October 21, along with our regular quarterly dividend of $0.25 a share. And with that, I think we're in good shape to wrap up. And Holly, we'll turn it back over to you to let you wrap up the call.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. 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 participation.

Thank you, Holly.