Nexstar Media. With us this morning are Perry Sook, the Chairman and CEO, Lee Ann Gliha, the CFO, and Michael Biard, the COO. Thank you all for joining.
Thank you.
Happy to be here.
So we've got about 35 minutes for Q&A. I've got the iPad here. If anybody has any questions, just lob them in, and I'll try to weave them into the conversation. So, Nexstar is a unique and scaled business in the media sector. Perry, can you talk about how Nexstar fits into the broader media ecosystem?
Well, it's interesting because we think with the, the size and scale of the company, it doesn't really fit neatly into the peer group of pure-play broadcasters anymore. And I think, you know, the company that we are most comparable to, in my mind right now is, is Fox, right? Cable network, broadcast network, sports rights, entertainment programming, station portfolio. Where our network is not as large, nor has it been around as long, nor has our cable network. But our station portfolio is larger, so our ability to do local activation at scale, which is what these advertising agency and holding companies are very much interested in trying to make happen, is an area where I think we, we shine.
So we call ourselves kind of a unicorn 'cause we're a little big to be in this neighborhood and, you know, kind of just moving into this neighborhood over here. Hopefully that gives you some perspective on how we think about it.
That's great. As we sit here, sort of in late 2023, can you give us a sense for what the priorities for the company as we look out into 2024?
Well, it's a bit of an embarrassment of riches in terms of the amount of free cash flow that we generate, and so we talk about capital allocation, the three of us and Tom Carter, as long as he is, you know, still with us through the end of the year. We talk about capital allocation literally every other day, and so, you know, we have been buying back our stock rather aggressively. As you know, we've reduced our number of shares outstanding by 25% since 2019, which, you know, ought to be a headline, I would think, at some point, just when you look at the free cash flow available per share. And so we've been buying back stock. We increased our dividend 25%.
You know, this is the tenth year of our dividend, and it is increased to 25% or greater in each year. We're obviously on the look for acquisitions that would complement what we've built, which would be in the content space or content-adjacent to content. Haven't found anything at a price that is compelling, and obviously, you know, when the cost of capital is higher, necessarily the cost we would spend on an acquisition would be lower, right? So, we'll be in this kind of position, I think, probably as we move into the coming year. And obviously, our embarrassment of riches will be even greater with the political advertising that will wash over this industry and our company in 2024.
That makes sense. Mike, the health of the bundle is always a big question we get at the conference, and you know, we had Fox here earlier talking a little bit about it. And I think third quarter, we cracked, at least in our numbers, we cracked a sort of 8% decline mark, although there is some reason for optimism with, you know, I think around to a certain extent, the charter renewal with Disney. What are your thoughts on this deal, and then what do you think it means as we think about the evolution of the bundle going forward?
This deal meaning the Charter Disney deal?
Yeah.
Listen, we're optimistic about the future of the business, particularly after that deal. I think when you look at that conflict and what it was about and what it wasn't about, we feel pretty good about where we sit in that context, right? So the headline of that fight was not about price for premium programming. Right, what you did not hear Charter say in that fight was that, you know, ABC or ESPN content was not worth the price that they were seeking for that. There were two sort of avenues of conflict there. One was about the DTC and not only what Disney was doing in the DTC space, but more importantly, about what they have been announcing they intend to do with respect to ESPN flagship.
And I think if you're Charter and you're sitting there, looking at a proposition to buy an entire bundle of programming, largely on the back of ABC and ESPN, and Disney's telling the world they're gonna go out and sell ESPN in a way that's arguably better, maybe with better content, direct to consumer, that's a conflict that needs to get resolved at some point. And we've been saying for some time, both at Nexstar and in my previous job at Fox, that those conflicts needed to be reconciled at some point. So, the other conflict there, the other avenue of conflict, was sort of bundle of other content and programming that was stapled on to that lead programming, which really the derivative cable networks. Right? You had three versions of FX, you had three versions of Nat Geo, there was Freeform.
Most of that did not come back on when they relaunched. So for us, when we looked at that conflict, both before the resolution and after the resolution, we said: This isn't about the space that we occupy, right? Premier programming got paid, and it got carried, and it got relaunched. And so that's the, that's the first headline we feel really good about the content that, that we offer and how it stacks up. Right, if you look at our portfolio of TV stations, particularly our Big Four affiliates, in general, each of the Big Four networks rates about four to one versus ESPN. Right, we're not getting four times the price of ESPN.
Yeah.
We wish we were. Certainly aspire to get there. We're not there yet. We're not close to there. So we think there's upside there, first of all. Secondly, you go back to that derivative set of cable networks, and as those got jettisoned, it frees up spend inside the bundle to be reallocated to folks like us that are underperforming as opposed to overperforming relative to the value that they're delivering.
So do you think over time, we could see that—I mean, obviously, this is crystal ball, but that 8% come down as maybe, you know, Charter does more and more of these deals, or maybe other distributors follow?
I think certainly it's got to level out, right? And you can see Charter certainly feels re-energized around the video business post that deal. See more advertising for Charter Video in the last few months than I've seen in the last few years, right? So both they and Disney in the release that they issued post-resolution of that agreement expressed confidence and sort of a renewed energy and optimism about the video business. And I think there's reason to believe that. I mean, from our vantage point, if you look at what's happened to the bundle, it's not that the content inside the bundle has suddenly become less attractive, right? There's a price-value equation there.
Prices continue to go up, in large part because we think there's a tax on the content that's really delivering most of the value there. That tax in the form of other cable networks that have been obsoleted by D2C, or they've been the content, you know, pillaged, or it's available in other products in a better way. There's a whole variety of reasons there. But the lead content has gotten less valuable. You can look. You know, it's not like the NFL is getting less viewership this year. College football is not getting less viewership. No one's talking about the NBA being less valuable when they come back to market. I mean, the lead dogs are still the lead dogs. So, that's the first thing.
The second thing is with the migration of content, either simultaneously into a D2C product on the outside, or worse, being, you know, migrated from to a D2C product exclusively, that's made the, you know, the bundle incrementally less attractive. Bringing those D2C products back inside the bundle eliminates that incentive for customers to leave, to get that exclusive content, or being forced to sort of make that Hobson's choice of: Do I have to buy the bundle and buy these D2Cs on the side, so I can get the two or three things that they've now taken out and made exclusive? So we think the resolution of that is a good thing for everybody involved in the system.
So over time, I mean, if you just think a few years out, should we expect the, the bundle to sort of get skinnier and skinnier as there's more and more of these, these type of renewals? And, and do you think other distributors will, will follow Charter's lead once... You know, Charter's got a couple more. I think they just did Fox. I think we think they've got Paramount coming up, and they're all going to go through the same thing. Do you think this is a thing that sort of snowballs in the industry?
To the extent they just did Fox, and you didn't see any headlines on that, so I think that reaffirms that our thesis-
Sure
... that it wasn't about getting paid for premium content. So I think to your question, does the bundle get skinnier? I think certainly versions of it will. I think there'll always be a home for people who want to buy everything, but certainly there has to be a distillation of the bundle, right? Down to the content that really is delivering value appropriate to its cost. And I think that's the reconciliation that we're seeing happen right now in the marketplace, right? When Charter drops everything and they get to a deal, and only part of it comes back on, that's a bit of a watershed moment. I don't think you've seen that ever happen with-
Right
... a major media company before.
So how should we think of rate increases going forward? You talked about not getting the sort of value that say ESPN despite the fact that you have a heavy load of sports content. I mean, so are the rate increases that you're getting you expect them to be sort of similar to what you've seen in the past? Because that's definitely not true with a lot of entertainment-focused networks.
No, nor should it be true for entertainment folks, right? Because the value that they're delivering isn't appropriate to the cost, right? I think I can say that without a lot of controversy. So, to answer your question, yes, we continue to believe that there's upside in our rates, as we drive closer to, you know, the viewership that we drive.
Right. And, you know, right now, I think, unless I've seen some... There's news I missed that TEGNA has a, has a dispute with, with DirecTV, a, a situation you guys know pretty well. I mean, does it seem... Like, is it getting more contentious to do these renewals? And is it just satellite or one particular satellite company, or is it getting the value... Are you getting more pushback on sort of getting the value for your viewership?
I'll start. It's not getting more contentious. I mean, I've been doing this since 2005, when we got our first dollars from, you know, MVPDs. It's just that, the two satellite companies, historically, have been responsible for approximately 85% of all blackouts that have happened-
Yeah
... in the industry. Any number of reasons, they don't have a broadband piece to subsidize. But I mean, they have been the ones most willing to take the chance of going, you know, going public and going into a blackout. You know, what we have found, our history with blackouts, is that advertisers may go away the longer the blackout happens, but when the blackout's over, the advertisers come back. Losing subscribers, it's very hard to get them back. So you're talking enterprise value versus cents on the dollar of operating expenses. So I don't think it's more contentious. It's probably more complicated than it was when we started, when it was just about money. Now, it's about a lot of things.
Nobody knows that better than Mike, so I'll let him, you know, finish the rest of the question, but it's not more contentious. There's still yelling and screaming. We just try not to let that get out into the streets.
...Certainly, it's been contentious for a long time. There are companies my children, to this day, despise because they caused me to miss a New Year's Day at home or some such thing after an all-nighter. So that-- those fights have been there. I think the focus of the dispute changing a little bit, as you can see in the Charter fight, right? I think, you know, x number of years ago, whether that was five, ten, whatever it was, there wasn't a realistic focus on we need to distill this thing down to the products that are delivering value. So I think that narrative will change, and you asked whether others are gonna follow in Charter's wake. The answer to that is unquestionably yes. Right, you mentioned DirecTV and Tegna.
You can see DirecTV's deck that they produced looks an awful lot like the one that Charter produced. So I think, you know, others are gonna take their cue. That's always been the nature of this business. It's a bit of a me-too copycat kind of exercise, right? You know, as I said, some of the resolution in that Charter-Disney dispute had never been seen before. So for sure, other distributors are gonna try and step up and, you know, achieve the same results.
As this happens, Mike, you know, coming from, from Fox in your space, I mean, do you think that over time, these networks just get dropped by all the distributors and just go away and companies consolidate? I think Iger, on his call last quarter, talked about, you know, finding new savings within his... and especially his entertainment-focused networks, and that's originally what I thought.
It has to happen with some products, right? If a consumer can get all of the FX-branded content on Hulu in a way... And by the way, other content that's not available to Charter under the FX-branded umbrella, and in a way that's more user-friendly, i.e., lower ad load, or if you want to pay a couple more bucks, no ad load. If that option is available, then the linear networks that used to house all of that content, the way they're available, the value they deliver has obviously changed. Their reach obviously needs to change over time. It's just inevitable.
Maybe pivoting over to the TV ad market. We started the conference with an ad panel that actually wasn't—I actually thought there'd be more, some more fireworks, but it sort of suggests a sort of healthy underlying fundamentals with the ad market. The linear TV certainly sort of continuing on sort of similar trends that we've seen. But maybe just to start the ball rolling, I mean, just, you know, any comments you can make on the sort of overall health of the TV ad market?
I, I'll take that one. You know, I think, you know, what we said was we've been seeing some improvement, you know, sequentially. Our third quarter core advertising, excluding the CW, declined at a rate that was less than the rate in the second quarter, and our pacing on the third quarter call for the fourth quarter was, again, a lower rate of decline. So we are starting to see some of that, you know, some of that level of improvement.
Which is affectionately known inside our company as we suck less, right? And I will tell you that, you know, I think, you know, we have to remember that advertising is and always has been a cyclical business, and is usually the first expense that gets cut on the way into a recession, the last one restored, so leading and lagging economic indicator. Not surprisingly, one of the categories that has been down the most on a percentage basis is other media. So if they're getting hit on the top line, they're probably taking their expenses out of spending advertising money with us. Auto has been encouraging. It's not enough to replace sports betting and outside media, and it's just a general... You know, this is not a category or anything secular.
This is all categories with the exception of auto that's coming off of a low base and, you know, a year or two of negative comps. But we're seeing just generally spending pull back, which is characteristic of, you know, being in a recession. You know, we're leading into one. We think we're in the worst of it, and we actually think things will get better as we move into 2024, certainly by the back half of the year. And I think MAGNA revised their forecast and said a lot of the same things over the weekend.
Right. I mean, are there other sort of factors at play, like is the writers' strike, you think, having an impact? I mean, in terms of less content on the, on the networks and, and as a result, lower ratings or, or less likely to, you know, for ad buyers to, to sort of spend in the upfronts not knowing what they're paying for?
You know, I can't speak for other networks than the CW is selling kind of a growth story and, you know, and same with NewsNation that added, you know, 25 new advertisers that had never done business with them before. So I think we're a bit of a contra indicator. You know, a lot of our programming, in terms of originals, was sourced from Canada or overseas and was already produced as reality programming. Most everything we had, with the exception of one show, which was All American, you know, was already produced, so we may have benefited on the margin. What happened, you know, at other networks, I really can't speak to, so.
And then, you guys are a big beneficiary of political advertising, and we obviously have the upcoming elections. I mean, any way at this point to sort of, sort of size what, what the potential upside could be there, and are you starting to see any spend at this point?
We are starting to see spend at this point, even in, you know, third quarter. We saw our earliest spend for the 2024 presidential from candidates that accelerated their first telecast date from what Hillary Clinton did when she ran. So that's a positive economic indicator. It's an anecdote. Our debate coverage on NewsNation is sold out at record rates, and so, those are all anecdotes. The one thing I would caution everybody, you know, is if we get out of the gate with a big first quarter... don't extrapolate that necessarily, because as I tell people, first quarter political is interesting, but it's only the fourth quarter political that is meaningful, because that's where half the money will be spent-
Right
in eight weeks, and that's where the game is played.
The political debate is interesting. I mean, so that's I think that's later this week, correct?
It's Wednesday.
Wednesday, okay. That'll be on NewsNation. I mean, just how did that come about? Is that something—I mean, I frankly don't know sort of how that works, but how did NewsNation end up with that, with that?
We've been working on the RNC and the DNC for the better part of a year, and it's pretty remarkable that NewsNation is now three years old and actually has a presidential debate. Fox News was on the air for eight years before they landed their first political debate. And so we you know we think it's a validation of what we're doing, and Elizabeth Vargas was a big part of that presentation to the RNC, and so we'll have an interesting panel with Elizabeth and Megyn Kelly. And so it's, there'll be three women that will be the moderators, and I think it will be well-received. And it's also gonna be airing on The CW.
We offered it to the CW affiliates, and they snapped it up, you know, unanimously in less than 48 hours. I think just realizing this was a chance to access programming in an audience that they've never been able to reach with the CW before, and so, we're very pleased. We didn't force it on anybody, but it will be a... It's a proud moment for the company and for NewsNation to be able to be in the same room from a stature perspective, be able to land a political debate.
Our job is to make sure that it's interesting and not yelling at one another, and so that's always the challenge, but I, I'm very, very pleased of the fact that, you know, a year's work paid off, and here we are in the discussion.
Right. Makes sense. Maybe, Perry, talk about news in general. Why is this an attractive area, where obviously you're making some investment in this space? And then maybe talk a little bit about the landscape and where NewsNation sort of fits.
Sure. Well, I mean, just general, you know, the company was built on news, local news, local content. We produce over 300,000 hours. We have over 5,500 journalists in the United States, which is more than any other journalistic organization in the world. And so we said why can't we use that to extend our brand and our platform to build what was a rerun general entertainment cable network? And if you've been following their fates and fortunes, just generally, it's not a pretty picture. So we were fairly prescient with our pivot to news. You know, we're currently 24/5. We'll be 24/7 by September 1 of 2024, in terms of our coverage.
But in terms of news, and you know, going back to distribution, you know, if you look at our local content, our non-network content on our television stations, that makes up roughly half the viewing, and the network content is the other half the viewing. So it's very important to the customer, the distributor, and their customers that, you know, we program local news. And if you think of the diminution of local newspaper and local news on radio, we're kind of the last bastion for professionally produced, original, relevant, local content, something we take pride in. And so NewsNation was just built on the foundation of those 5,500 journalists that are in local communities. And it's really... As I said, local content is what the company is all about.
So even if you look at our acquisitions, acquisition of The Hill was to build out a political vertical, which ties into our content strategy. And now, obviously, more content that's distributed nationally between the cable and the broadcast network. But again, the broadcast network benefits our local stations that, you know, our CW affiliates reach 35% of the country. So it's WPIX in New York, KTLA, Los Angeles, some big stations, and so this was also to guarantee kind of a source of programming, you know, that can generate ratings and revenues for our stations.
Speaking of acquisitions, can you give us an update on the company's 75% acquisition of The CW? I know it's early, but is there sort of any early learnings from that deal?
Well, just that, you know, The CW was losing in excess of $300 million when we took it over. And if you look at our first year of ownership and operation, which is now, and what we have budgeted and planned for next year, we're taking in excess of $100 million of costs out of the network every year, which is kind of how we get to a kind of a three-year path to profitability. Now, the curve balls that we've been thrown in that since making that statement are kind of an ad recession that, you know, is around, but also the writers' strike that caused us to have to push some shows and the costs associated with those, you know, further into our operating calculus.
But we still think that, you know, we will be at the break-even, I don't wanna say by 2025, but we, we say in 2025, probably toward the end of 2025. Obviously, the one thing we didn't anticipate or calculate to the extent that it has happened for us is our ability to generate, you know, rights agreements to, to put, you know, what I think is quality broadcast quality sports on broadcast television that heretofore haven't been, right? The ACC that came to us because the RSN group rejected the contract in bankruptcy, so they either did a discount deal with us or there was no ACC second package. We worked on NASCAR.
Ann and I worked on NASCAR for, you know, the better part of a year, and were able to become the exclusive destination for the Xfinity Series. Well, that's 33 weeks of programming. That's a big, a big slug. And then, you know, the WWE with the program that will air on Tuesday night. That's going to program literally one night of the network for a year, and we know that people watch that programming, just, you know, the track record of all of those franchises. And, you know, the linchpin to that was LIV Golf, which was not a political state. This was an opportunity. They wanted exposure. We had a broadcast network. They saw the value in broadcast.
The deal we did with them, it's no secret, was a revenue share, so we were taking virtually no risk. It just said to agents, to the sports community: Hey, we're open for business for sports on the weekend, which historically the network was not. We're very pleased with the investments that we've made in sports rights. It's amazing how quickly they came and how quickly we had to react, and we're able to react because of the structure of our company. They're all entrepreneurial deals that we budget. We'll make money over the life of those rights agreements, if you look at the distribution revenue increases and the ad sales that will come from it.
But they may not make money, you know, in the very first year, but the rights holders have worked with us to, and Lee Ann has structured the payments, so we're paying more in the last year than we were in the first year, so we can grow into this together.
So, I mean, stepping back, how would you describe the... maybe this is for Mike, just the overall strategy for programming for The CW? Obviously, a lot of sports, but maybe the mix of sports and entertainment. And then, you know, are there other sports deals out there that you know, that could be attractive?
Yes. Yeah, there's always the potential for more, right? I think we'll be very disciplined as those opportunities come along. But I think that to sort of zoom out and answer your question about the programming strategy: Listen, we wanna program the thing as a proper broadcast network with, you know, tent-pole, big-ticket programming that is attractive to both viewers, our affiliated stations, and our distributors. Right? That's kind of the three constituencies that we think about. If we do our job, then that becomes more attractive to investors as well, right? And so, you look at what The CW was, and it was, you know, it was a network that was programmed for the benefit of its co-owners, which were, you know, TV studios, right? Warners and Inside Paramount.
Primarily for the output of the content that they produced to a streaming world. So the broadcast presence, or runs of those shows were really just kind of a, you know, a way station on the way to the ultimate destination. It didn't make any sense. It didn't perform well in broadcast. So, you know, we look at it as an opportunity to reprogram the network inside of the tent poles, which we now have acquired and have yet to really see. I mean, we've talked a little bit about NASCAR, and we've talked about WWE. WWE, the NXT series won't come on for a year, and NASCAR won't come on until March of 2025. So we're still very much in the building phase of this, not the actual execution yet.
So, in terms of the rest of the programming, we have the opportunity to reprogram it not only for the right audience, but also in a way that takes a lot of cost out of how we do that. So, at the end of the day, our cost per hour across all the programming, including sports, will be significantly lower than what it was when we acquired it. And in so doing, we'll make it a little bit more broadly appealing. So, you know, it'll look a lot like what you see elsewhere, scripted entertainment, unscripted, in a way that makes sense.
We have an opportunity now before WWE and NASCAR arrive to experiment with some things, you know, hopefully find a couple of winners in there that we can put our bets behind going forward.
Makes sense. Is there an opportunity with local sports, right, that your local stations on a market-by-market basis in the collapse of the RSN business model?
There certainly is an opportunity. I think, what that looks like is still very much TBD. You know, the key there is market by market. And then inside each market, it's gonna be team by team. And so you're- I don't think you're gonna see uniformity across markets. You're not gonna see uniformity across leagues. I think the NBA, given the fact that they have a significant national rights deal coming, that each of the teams will benefit from, puts them in a slightly different position, to you know, sort of offset the demise of the RSNs, than maybe MLB is. And MLB is gonna vary depending on, you know, the size of the market, you know, the rights deal that the team has gotten accustomed to with an RSN.
You've already seen in, you know, places like San Diego and Phoenix, you know, Diamond Sports has already rejected those deals, so those, you know, those teams are talking right now, obviously. So yeah, we'll be opportunistic and continue. You know, we're in dozens of conversations right now, some of which are real because the teams know kind of what their fate is. Others are very much, you know, sort of speculative because they don't know whether, you know, they're gonna emerge from bankruptcy inside of Diamond or, you know, what it'll look like. So those conversations are all over the place. I think it's fair to say we'll be opportunistic but disciplined in how we approach all that.
Makes sense. Maybe for Perry, just can you talk a bit about your strategy as it relates to your spectrum and ATSC 3?
Sure. We, I think, will announce that we're gonna light up the Empire State Building tower with a 3.0 lighthouse signal in conjunction with ABC and Univision, which will then give 3.0 signal on both broadcast facilities in New York. Chicago's next. We will, as a company, be close to 50% of the country receiving an ATSC 3.0 signal from a Nexstar owned or operated station. And in conjunction with other parties, we've made no secret of the fact that, you know, we have a consortia with or a partnership, I should say, with Scripps. And if you look at Scripps and Nexstar, we have an unduplicated reach of spectrum of 92% of the country. We have another partnership with Sinclair called BitPath.
And we have tried to design this, so they're each going after different parts of the market. But I think Sinclair and Nexstar have an unduplicated reach of approximately 75%, maybe, maybe closer to 80% of the U.S. So, you know, when you get to that level, you know, it's not unheard of to think that, you know, with one more partnership agreement, you might be able to reach 100% of the U.S. And again, you know, the use cases are meant to be different. And what we're attempting to do now, particularly with...
And we're probably further along with Scripps than with Sinclair in this regard, is to actually announce a commercial use and a client test case, you know, that actual money will change hands, you know, to test out our thesis on location-based technology. And so I think when we can do that, and I've told our gang that I don't wanna put out any more press releases about partnership agreements, you know, that don't have a customer until... With a customer, I think people in this room would be much more interested.
Is that the 2024 event?
Our hope is in 2024, that we will have a commercial commercial arrangement with a customer to basically help develop, prove the concept.
Yeah, great. Maybe for Lee Ann, the balance sheet. I think the numbers sort of suggest you guys are gonna be below 3x levered for the off of 2024. I mean, is that the appropriate sort of leverage ratio for you guys?
Yeah, we think about our leverage sort of in a two-year cycle, right? So in an odd year, our leverage is a little bit higher, and then in an even year, our leverage is a little bit lower. You know, I think we feel fairly comfortable with our quantum of debt. We have some mandatory amortization payments that we make to that reduce our balance over the course of the year. But I think we're pretty comfortable with where we are from a leverage perspective. At the moment, we're not too levered, we're not too unlevered. And, you know, we look to then deploy the remaining amount of our free cash flow in the ways that we think are gonna be most beneficial to our shareholders, generate the most return.
You know, historically, that's been M&A. It's been more difficult to find good M&A targets that have been accretive. You know, given our scale, those targets have to be fairly large. So what we've been doing is redeploying that capital in the form of both dividends and share repurchases. And the, you know, on the share purchase side, you know, I would just say, you know, we at the very start of this whole conversation, you know, we've reduced our shares outstanding by 25% since 2019, and it's been at about a clip of about 10% a year. I don't know what other company, if you sort of look at our LTM period, we generated, you know, about $1 billion of attributable free cash flow, and we returned 95% of that to shareholders.
So talk about an actual 20% cash return. You know, we think that's pretty, pretty impressive and something to take note of, because I think we largely trade on an EBITDA multiple basis rather than a free cash flow basis, but we're actually putting our money where our mouth is.
Should we expect, I mean, that those kind of returns to continue? I guess I wanna bring M&A into... You mentioned potential M&A. I mean, that's sort of a growing theme in the media space, just really in the last few weeks. I mean, and then we talked about earlier, there was some fleeting talk of you guys potentially buying some other broadcast assets. I mean, how do you... What do you think of how the sort of the M&A environment? You said it would have to be big. I mean, is there anything out there that sort of makes sense or anything, ways you guys think about?
I mean, look, we look at, you know, we look at our business as like a portfolio of assets and all of them work together, right? The CW we bought, it's beneficial in a number of different ways, not the least of which is it helps our station group that we have that we're CW affiliates. So we like to look at M&A as what can we do to kind of grow this overall portfolio? There's another business that can be synergistic and help us grow. I think it's been a tough M&A environment, as we all know, when there's, you know, when the stock market or the debt, cost of capital is high, people don't actually go and try to sell a lot of assets at that point in time.
It's been a little bit, you know, lack of, lack of assets, but there's, you know, lots of things that are going on in the media sector, as you mentioned, and there may be things that can fly, pieces that can fly off of things that we can look at. But we'll look at any M&A in connection with how we historically do. Is it gonna be accretive? Is it gonna generate, you know, free cash flow? Is it gonna be better than buying back our own stock? Is it gonna create long-term value? Those are the types of things we like to look at.
Great. And just one last one. I think we have time for one last question from, for really for Mike. Relatively new to the company, but a long, long tenure here in the media industry. Just any early learnings from your short time here at Nexstar?
That's a good question. We talked a lot about sports, so I guess I'll use a sports reference. They are who I thought they were. Right, look it up. Dennis Green.
Right.
Yeah. So no, no, no surprises. I mean, the company is exactly what you've heard here today. It's, you know, well-managed, very, you know, disciplined in how they approach both, you know, cost, but also investment. And, you know, as I've come into it, I guess I've just been impressed by the overall story that you've just heard, and particularly, you know, what Perry likes to call the fortress of our balance sheet, you know, the cash flow generation, you know, that it's a favorable environment for investors. You know, water's warm. Come on in, right? And, so I guess I've just... To the extent there's been any surprise, it's been the fact that that doesn't get talked enough publicly, right? Talked about enough publicly.
And I think as you know to sort of finish where Perry started, we do feel like we're a unicorn, right? Our reach at the local level is really unparalleled. And when you staple that with you know our really nascent and growing portfolio at the national level, it puts us in a position that we think is really unique in the industry.
That's perfect. Thank you all for joining us today.
Thank you.
Thanks for having us. Appreciate it.