Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Saga Communications Fourth Quarter and Year-End Earnings Release Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Chris Forgy, President and CEO at Saga Communications. Chris, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Tom, and welcome to all of you and thank you to all of you who've taken the time and interest in learning more about Saga today and Saga tomorrow. In a moment I'm going to turn it over to Sam Bush. You'll notice that Sam will be unusually chatty this morning and for very good reason. So with that, Sam, I'd like to turn it over to you.

Thank you, Chris. This call will contain forward-looking statements, 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. As all of you have heard and know from past calls, Ed never liked reporting adjusted numbers, actually none of us do. However, it is important that we do. So, again, for the year and due to Ed's passing last August, and the impact of his passing on our third quarter results. The purely reported year-end 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 December 31, 2022, net revenue increased 3.3% to $30.1 million compared to $29.2 million last year. Gross political revenue during the quarter was $1.9 million compared to $886,000 for the same period last year. Without political, gross revenue increased a little less than 1%. Station operating expense increased 5.9% to $22.9 million for the three-month period. Station operating income decreased 4% to $8.5 million. Operating income and free cash flow were approximately flat with the same period last year at $4.9 million and $3.8 million, respectively. Net income for the quarter was $4.3 million, which compares to $3.7 million for the fourth quarter last year. For the 12-month period ended December 31, 2022, net revenue increased 6% to a $114.9 million compared to a $108.3 million for the same period last year. Gross political revenue during the full year was $3.6 million compared to $1.8 million for the same period last year. Without political,…

Thank you, Sam, for another 30 minutes, but I think you'll find that I'm going to be equally as chatty. It seems to be a chord of electricity running through Saga Communications and it's been expressed to me that our leadership team and our members of our teams across the country have expressed that to me as well and to others. And so, they're feeling it at the market level. I was asked recently what my thoughts are on the future of the radio business. It's a loaded question. Not something you want to be asked at a cocktail party. My response was really quite simple. My reply was, unfortunately, I really can't speak for our broadcast brethren. I don't have any control or influence over their behavior, but I can speak to the future of Saga, and that's what I'd like to do with you today. Again, thank you for your time and attention. Saga has been referred to recently as the new-look Saga. And I just want to be clear that Saga has always has been and always will stand on the culture we've worked so diligently to build and protect. We call it consistent, sustainable growth. Saga's live in local, serving all of our customers, our community, our advertisers, our listeners, our shareholders, and our employees. Those are all of our customers. We've often said the degree to which you serve your customers is directly attributable to your financial success. Our employees are the key to keeping our customers, as well as to our financial success, and I think you heard some of that in Sam's explanation just moments ago. As a result, we've really set forth on a mission to arm our employees with the resources necessary. So when these economic headwinds subside, we'll come out…

Absolutely.

So it is no surprise, everyone, that four out of five of those surveyed said that they are satisfied with the culture that lives in our workplace. The key to Saga's success from a culture perspective is -- perspective, excuse me, is summed up by saying -- a saying from the third century confucian philosopher, Xun Kuang. He said, and we use this a lot in our company, tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand. The understanding that Saga employees possess enables them to carry out their functions with passion, commitment, purpose, love and, say it again, understanding. You see, we hire talent first, provide them with an environment that is conducive to success, and more times than not, the outcome is a positive one. You can look at it this way, talent times environment equals outcome. Along those lines, I wanted to share one quote with you before I turn it back to Sam for any questions we may have, and to address those. This came to me from our -- one of our leaders in Des Moines, Iowa. And one of their employees, their -- one of the program directors was at an event and he returned from the event and sent this email to Stephanie Heide, our General Manager in Des Moines, Iowa. And he said, I recently took a few days, and for the first time, attended the rock radio convention known as [indiscernible] in Las Vegas. The experience was great for a variety of reasons, but perhaps the biggest, a common thread throughout the large gathering of radio and record professionals was what I call a professional jealousy, quote-unquote. From those who work with other companies, the vast majority of those with whom I spoke, Saga is the cat's meow. Since it was my first time experiencing all that the convention had to offer, there were a lot of introductions to peers from cities, big and small, and anyone who knew me by name and a reputation. The first thing out of their mouth was to ask me, how incredible is it to work for a company like Saga. Needless to say, it was impressive to receive that amount of positive feedback from people who operate outside of our universe, most of who have no actual experience from which to draw those conclusions. This was a result of the solid foundation this company was built on, without question. We should be proud. I wanted to share this with you. Hope you have a wonderful week. Andy Hall. So with that, enough said, I'm going to turn that back over to Mr. Chatty Sam Bush.

Thank you, Chris. We did have a few questions come in this morning. And so I'm going to go through those now. And between Chris and I -- we will try to answer them as best we can. First, Chris, so the question was, how are digital revenues in Q -- or how were digital revenues in Q4 and I would expand that to say, how are digital revenues in Q4 and how were they for the year, more importantly?

I would say, Sam, we're running very quickly to get up to speed and grow. We've grown, as you will see in a moment, substantially over the last several years and are continuing to grow. In 2022, our total interactive revenue was $7.9 million, round numbers. That represents a 25% lift overnight of -- over 2021 and a 209% on over 200% lift over 2019. And make it a little helpful -- more helpful to break out some of these categories of digital revenue, our streaming revenue was at a little over $3 million for the period, up 56% over 2021 and up 700% over 2019. Content sponsor was basically flat over 2021. It was at $2.69 million, up 41% over 2019. And targeted display represented $1.9 plus million. It was up 27% over 2021 and again, 70% over 2019. So that gives you a sense, Sam, and whoever asked the question, of the health and growth of the digital space from a year-over-year standpoint and a quarter-over quarter standpoint.

Very good. Thank you, Chris. Another question that I'll let you answer. Have there been further solicitation of interest in the business after the $33 buyout offer that we previously responded to?

The very simple and direct answer to that question is no.

I'll leave it at that. Are you seeing other acquisition opportunities at multiples below where your stock currently trades? Without talking about the multiples at this point, I would say, right now, the acquisition market is really quiet due to the current economic and industry environment and we're just not seeing a lot going on there right now.

Sam, I would add that, when those times become available to us, we will certainly be a strategic buyer and be strategically active when those acquisition opportunities occur, we will be buyers.

Absolutely, for the right strategic acquisition as Saga has always done. The last question we got is, can a stock repurchase plan we put in place for opportunistic future purchases? And I'll answer that. We do have a plan in place. We have had for quite a while. It's just not active at present. Our Board has engaged in many conversations over the past year, as we considered our capital structure, which led to the recent $2 per share special dividends. But I would also tell you that stock buybacks will certainly be a consideration along with the special dividends, variable dividends, quarterly dividends, as we continue to look at our capital structure and adapt it to the future of Saga. And with that, I think we'll turn it back over to Tom and let you wrap it up, Tom. But thank you all for joining 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.

Thanks, Tom.

Thank you, Tom.