Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Sinclair third quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode, and the floor will be open for questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Lucy Rutishauser, Executive Vice President and CFO. Ma'am, the floor is yours.
Thank you, operator. Participating on the call with me today are Chris Ripley, President and CEO, Rob Weisbord, President of Broadcast and Chief Operating Officer, and Steve Zenker, Vice President of Investor Relations. Before we begin, I wanna remind everyone that slides and supplemental information for today's earnings call are available on our website, sbgi.net, on the Information page and on the Earnings Webcast page. I also wanna remind you that today's call is a Sinclair-only call. A separate public call for Diamond Sports Group will be hosted in a couple of weeks. Now, Billie-Jo McIntire will make our forward-looking statement disclaimer.
Certain matters discussed on this call may include forward-looking statements regarding, among other things, future operating results. Such statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results in the future could differ from those described in the forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors. Such factors have been set forth in the company's most recent reports as filed with the SEC and included in our third quarter earnings release. The company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements. The company uses its website as a key source of company information, which can be accessed at www.sbgi.net. In accordance with Regulation FD, this call is being made available to the public. A webcast replay will be available on our website and will remain available until the next quarterly earnings release.
Included on the call will be a discussion of non-GAAP financial measures, specifically adjusted EBITDA, adjusted free cash flow, and leverage. The company considers adjusted EBITDA to be an indicator of the operating performance of its assets. The company also believes that adjusted EBITDA is frequently used by industry analysts, investors, and lenders as a measure of valuation. These measures are not formulated in accordance with GAAP and are not meant to replace GAAP measurements and may differ from other companies' uses or formulations. The company does not provide reconciliations on a forward-looking basis. Further discussions and reconciliations of the company's non-GAAP financial measures to comparable GAAP financial measures can be found on the company's website, www.sbgi.net.
In addition, given the deconsolidation of Diamond on March first of this year, and in order to have a meaningful discussion around comparative results and trends, all discussions of prior financial reporting periods during this call reflect Sinclair-only pro forma numbers and thus exclude Diamond and any intercompany transactions with them and exclude businesses sold in the prior 12 months. For actual results, including the periods that Diamond was consolidated, please refer to this morning's earnings release. Chris Ripley will now give you an update on the strategic direction of the company.
Good morning, everyone. I'm going to keep my comments relatively brief as we covered a lot of ground at our Investor Day just weeks ago on October third. Our results for the quarter were in line with our revised expectations provided during our recent Investor Day. Political revenues remain robust, and as mentioned on Investor Day, we're still expecting a record midterm political year. With a week remaining until election day, our full-year political estimate is $335 million-$340 million, which is in the $325 million-$350 million range we gave on our Investor Day. Rob will give you more color on the advertising environment in just a minute. Our total adjusted EBITDA of $198 million was within our guidance range, aided by lower than expected expenses.
During our Investor Day, we spent a fair amount of time on our growth initiatives. When you look at the future of Sinclair, it will be driven by our current television station assets as well as our growth initiatives. These initiatives fall into four categories: multi-platform content, marketing services, data distribution, and community interactivity. A key aspect of our growth strategies is creating additional revenue streams to both incrementally monetize our linear audience and our 80+ million unique digital viewers, as well as drive new uses for our broadcast spectrum. Today, Sinclair achieves the vast majority of its revenues from linear advertising sales and distribution. We believe these growth initiatives will unlock significant revenues rivaling today's two revenue sources. We also have our investment portfolio, which we currently estimate as worth approximately $1.2 billion or close to $17 per share.
It has generated an IRR of approximately 20% since 2014. I'd like to take the time to give you more insight into this portfolio. It currently consists of real estate, private equity, venture capital investments, and direct investments in companies. The real estate investments are in a number of different properties that are almost all income-producing , and Sinclair has a majority ownership in most of them. Many are apartment buildings with occupancies over 90%. The earliest real estate investments were entered into as far back as 2007. There are also commercial properties in which the company has an ownership interest.
The private equity and venture capital investments are generally minority investments in funds that invest in many different areas, including middle-market companies in the U.S. and India, as well as specific industries, including technology, manufacturing, and environmentally focused services. Sinclair also has minority direct investments in 14 companies, including Valys and Playfly Holdings, which is a full-service sports marketing company operating at the intersection of sports, media, and technology. Other investments include companies in advertising security software, wireless communication, and semiconductors, and broadcast cloud production. The final piece of the investment portfolio is the Diamond accounts receivable facility loan, which advances funds to Diamond for a portion of its accounts receivable balance. The counterparty risk is with Diamond's customers, such as the big distributors, with which we have a relationship in our broadcast business. These are customers we know well, and with which we are comfortable.
The rate we have earned on this investment this quarter averaged 6%-8%. During the quarter, we made additional investments of $6 million in our portfolio and received distributions, including exit payments of $52 million. For the full year 2022, we projected investments of approximately $68 million, and distributions, including exit payments of $137 million. When you look at the adjusted free cash flow we generate, excluding Diamond's consolidated results for the first two months of the year, Sinclair currently trades at a free cash flow yield of approximately 50%, which is more than double the broadcast industry average and an even greater disparity to major market indices. Simply put, we believe we're grossly undervalued and have continued buying back our shares as one way to enhance returns.
Before I turn it over to Rob, I wanted to mention the series of automotive seminars that began last week, and which highlight the benefits of over-the-air data distribution for the auto industry. I think you'll find them very enlightening on the significant potential of ATSC 3.0 for data transmission, which offers wide coverage and high reliability at attractive costs. Now I'll turn it over to Rob, who will give you some greater color on the advertising market and our third quarter results. Rob?
Thanks, Chris. Total media revenue for the quarter increased 5% over last year. Political ad revenues were strong during the quarter, outpacing 2018 pro forma results by 28%. Year-to-date political ads revenues through the third quarter are up more than 50% over 2018 pro forma, and only down 2% over 2020 pro forma, which was a presidential election. October continues to see strong political spending, leading us to project the full year to range from $335 million-$340 million. As Chris mentioned, this would be a record midterm election year for us and would represent an over 30% increase above 2018.
The strength in political is the primary reason for core advertising declining versus a year ago, as well as the absence of Olympics and the weakness in insurance and sports betting category, which are really not macro, but industry, causes. We are keeping an eye on how the macroeconomy might affect us, and we will have a better grasp on demand once the elections are over. We have built into our Q4 guidance some impact from macro environment and the impact of higher interest rates on consumers. I do wanna point out, a couple of weeks ago, we announced a multi-platform creative partnership with Anthony Zuiker. Anthony is the creator of the CSI franchise, and he will help develop content for Sinclair in a number of different areas.
The partnership with Anthony underscores our commitment to creating original programming that can be not only utilized on Sinclair platforms, but sold to third parties as well. More importantly, Anthony intends to use our deep news content library to bring these stories to life. During the quarter, we launched an enhanced CRM and more in-depth artificial intelligence and machine learning pricing model to be utilized on a forward basis in 2023 and beyond. The revenue model utilizes algorithms similar to what is used for hotel and airline pricing, basing pricing on supply and demand dynamics. I'll now turn it over to Lucy to go more in-depth on the financials.
Thank you, Rob, and good morning, everyone, again. As I mentioned, you can follow along with our slide deck and our financial supplements on our website. Media revenues for the quarter were up 5% versus the same period a year ago, driven by higher political ad revenues and higher distribution revenues, offset in part by the lower management fee and lower core advertising due to political crowd-out and the other factors Rob discussed. The $836 million in media revenues, while below our guidance range, was primarily due to timing of political, which we expect to capture in Q4, softness in a couple of ad categories, and higher core advertising crowd-out in certain markets where political is running very strong. Themes all of which I mentioned at our Investor Day.
Distribution revenue increased 1% versus last year, but fell short of our guidance range due to higher than expected subscriber churn, which was still in the mid-single digits range versus last year. Looking at total advertising, it was very robust when including political revenues, increasing 15% over last year. Core advertising decreased high single digits in the third quarter compared to the same period a year ago as a result of the absence of Olympics and political crowd-out. The shortfall of the guidance was primarily the result of certain categories that came in lower than expected and increased crowd-out in markets with hotly contested races where political is running stronger than anticipated.
Media expenses were 5% higher in this year's third quarter versus last year on higher network programming fees and higher sales and G&A expenses, but were favorable to guidance. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter grew 5% over the third quarter of last year, mainly on the strength in political revenues, partially offset by the Diamond management fee deferral and the higher expenses as discussed. As compared to guidance, our $198 million of adjusted EBITDA came in at the low end of our guidance range. Adjusted free cash flow of $170 million in the quarter also was within our guidance range, with adjusted free cash flow per share of $2.43 for the quarter and diluted earnings per share of $0.32.
We increased our cash balance by almost $200 million during the quarter for an ending balance of $607 million, and when combined with our undrawn revolver, put our liquidity at more than $1.2 billion at quarter end. Total debt at the end of the third quarter was $4.3 billion, and STG's first lien indebtedness ratio on a trailing eight quarters was 3.3 times, while total net leverage through the bonds was 4.1 times. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 500,000 common shares under a 10b5-1 stock buyback program and an additional 300,000 shares since September 30. That brings our year-to-date shares repurchase to approximately 7% of our total shares outstanding at the beginning of the year. Our total share count at the end of the quarter was 69.9 million.
Turning to our fourth quarter guidance, I wanna remind everyone that in the fourth quarter of last year, we experienced the cybersecurity incident that negatively impacted advertising revenues by approximately $63 million. As such, when comparing to 2021's revenues, I will speak to the adjusted pre-cyber revenues. To see the comparisons to last year's actuals, please refer to our earnings release from this morning. We expect a record amount of midterm political ad revenue for the fourth quarter of $174 million-$179 million. As already mentioned on this call, this would put our full-year political revenues at an expected $335 million-$340 million.
$335 million-$340 million, which would be over 30% more than what we booked in 2018, and only down less than 5% compared to the 2020 pre-Georgia runoff presidential election year. Political revenues are the main driver for media revenues, increasing approximately 10%-12% versus the cyber-adjusted fourth quarter last year of $862 million. Fourth quarter core advertising is expected to be down high single digit to low double-digit percent versus the cyber-adjusted fourth quarter last year, with the decline in core primarily driven by anticipated political crowd-out and mild macroeconomic weakness, as Rob discussed.
Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA is expected to be between $294 million and $313 million, compared to $202 million pro forma last year, which is not adjusted for the cyber incident. The increase is primarily the result of the lost revenues from the cyber incident last year and higher political revenues this year, partially offset by the lower management fee, higher network programming fees, higher technology costs, crowd-out of core advertising due to political and higher sales costs on the higher revenues. Adjusted free cash flow for the quarter is expected to be $385 million-$409 million, or $5.52-$5.86 per share. With that, I would like to open it up to questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, the floor is now open for questions. If you have any questions or comments, please press star one on your phone at this time. We ask that while posing your question, you please pick up your handset if listening on speakerphone to provide optimum sound quality. Please hold while we poll for questions. Thank you. Our first question is coming from Dan Kurnos with Benchmark Company. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks. Good morning. Maybe Rob, I guess just on the Q4 or Chris on the outlook of the macro impact, it's actually your guide's not different from what we had in our core assumptions. Maybe just tell us a little bit what you're seeing, whether it's category specific category weaknesses was put in the release or if there are any incremental cancellations, just you know, outside of sort of the unevenness we're hearing from across the industry, you know, sort of what is influencing your guide beyond the crowd out and knowing that we don't really have great visibility past the election would be a helpful start.
Yeah, Dan, I'll take it. It's Rob. As I indicated, from the sports betting, they've crossed the 50% mark in the country for legalization. Where we saw that short-term increase of spending in that category, they've now gone the network as well as all the sports networks such as Diamond. With insurance, because of the losses they took from weather as well as COVID-related illnesses, we've seen a pullback in that, and that's more of the industry segment than the macro. We'll get a better sense how the core is feeling about the macro come the end of political, because there are a lot of core advertisers sitting on the sidelines based on the heavy political spending and the pricing that's taking place.
We have not seen any key categories come in with any types of cancellations to date.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Barton Crockett with Rosenblatt Securities. Please go ahead.
Hi. I guess a couple of questions. One is, following up on the ad categories. I'm just curious about auto, what you're seeing there, if we're starting to comp some of the headwinds. I'm wondering if you know, what the trend is there, if there's also incremental kind of macro worries. So a little bit of color there would be helpful. Second question is, you know, we're getting back to your comment about the 50% free cash flow yield, which is incredible. And the question is this, like, you know, companies that are, you know, have that kind of situation, you wonder why would you know, do a sea change in the level of share repurchase.
I mean, you've reduced share count 7%, but it's hard to see how you can come up with a better investment than a 50% kind of free cash flow return. I think the result of that is maybe, you know, a little bit of distrust of the 50% figure because, you know, where you're putting your capital. I'm just wondering, you know, what would it take, or why wouldn't you do, like, a big tender or C change in terms of share repurchase?
All right, Rob, I'll take the auto first. From the auto position, we now comped against the chip shortage, COVID, and we did actually see year-over-year increase in auto spending. With that said, a couple things that keep me awake at night and keep us looking at that sector is on top of the chip shortage, which I think they're starting to solve, they now have a sheet metal shortage. Toyota announced that minivans won't go into production for at least 18 months, and obviously interest rates on car loans have increased. That could be good or bad. We believe inventories will start to stockpile based on the interest rates going up, and the tier three dealerships will need to start to advertise to move those vehicles versus the shortage that they've had on their lots.
Yeah. In terms of your second question, you know, we are, I think, approaching about 40% reduction in our shares outstanding, from share repurchases, over the last 3 years. This year we're approaching 7% reduction. The activity's been quite significant. You know, we put our money where our mouth is in terms of, you know, being grossly undervalued. I'd expect us to continue to be aggressive there. Also we're looking at ways in which we can, you know, we talk about our investment portfolio so much because, when you think about that in terms of the sum of the parts, it just makes our valuation really look wacky.
You know, we're thinking about ways that we can highlight that value and recognize that value even more.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Aaron Watts with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me on. I've got two questions, I guess. First, Lucy, can you remind me how much of your debt stack is floating rate? Can you also remind us if you have any of that floating rate exposure hedged and how rising rates combined with the macro headwinds you cited may or may not impact how much liquidity you keep on hand and capital allocation near term?
Sure. We have about 60%, which is floating. You know, every 100 basis points in rates is, you know, gonna translate to about $27 million of higher interest. I know the Fed is meeting today and, you know, we're expecting an increase in rates. You know, we've built that into our forward guidance. That's on the interest rate side. We have looked at hedges in the past, but again, you know, we found them to be expensive to lock in for several years as you would have to with a hedge. And then, you know, really just as far as preparing for any downturn and so we've gone through this, you know, multiple times, you know.
Whether it was, you know, for many of us who were here during the Great Recession, during COVID in 2020. We pretty much have a playbook of what we can do. We started, as I mentioned, I think last quarter on the call, you know, we've already notified throughout our management teams, to curb expenses. We started that several months ago, for this year. You've seen that in the results of our expenses, which have been favorable, you know, to our guidance levels. Then, you know, we also refinanced all of our current debt maturity. We don't have any refinancing risk, for the next four years. We've done that.
You know, look, there are other things that we could pull if need be, you know, if we get to that point. You know, the important thing here is that we, you know, be smart about what we're spending the money on. Whether it's, you know, deep discounts in our securities, and as you know, we've bought stock back this year, we've bought debt back at deep discounts. We've continued to make investments in the things that are growing for the company, whether it's our outside investments, whether it's our four pillars of long-term growth. We, you know, just have to be smart about it.
The last thing I would say, Aaron, is, you know, if there is a recession, you know, we would go into that period with substantial liquidity currently at, you know, over $1.2 billion today.
Okay. Very good. That's helpful. One other question I had for you is just following the recent Disney ABC renewal, any changes to your net retransmission fee outlook for the next three years? I believe you were speaking to a low to mid-single digit growth rate. Maybe any general learnings or takeaways you can share from that recent ABC renewal with Disney, anything around rate increases or commitments to keep content on broadcast versus streaming platforms, et cetera.
Well, Aaron, I'd say, you know, we had, when we gave our last guidance, that three-year CAGR of low to mid-single digits, that we by and large already knew what the economic outcome was going to be for ABC. That was baked in there. What we've learned from, you know, that interaction and, you know, the ones leading up to it, is that there has been a shift in terms of negotiating position vis-à-vis the networks as they have focused elsewhere on streaming, and they have, you know, moved some of their content around and changed the exclusivity provisions. Also just given the magnitude of dollars that we already pay in terms of reverse retrans.
We saw a significant reduction in the growth rates for reverse retrans to be more reflective of the value we bring, the value they bring, and you know, what the current subscriber environment is. We were very pleased with the outcome at ABC. We actually think their commitment to the network has actually been growing recently. You know, they've put more NFL product on ABC after the last NFL deal. They've secured, you know, their other major sports properties. As far as we know, there are no plans to reduce, you know, any sort of prime time programming that's been rumored on other networks. We think they're great partners for us.
They were, you know, we thought the negotiation, you know, reflected the synergistic relationship we have with them, but also reflected, you know, the market dynamics and the gives and takes between the two parties.
Okay. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Lucy.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Edward Reilly with EF Hutton. Please go ahead.
Hey, guys. Thanks for taking my question. Just to echo Barton's comment. On the investment portfolio, I'm wondering if there are any scheduled monetization events for the next year that you know you might be able to recycle back into share repurchases.
There isn't necessarily scheduled monetization events. There is several investments that yield income on a regular basis. You know, that's not huge dollars. We're talking sort of $10s of millions in terms of that flow. As I mentioned in my remarks, you know, this year we had $137 million coming in in 2022 in terms of distributions, exit payments, versus investments of $68 million. You could see that there was sort of a net positive, you know, to the tune of about $60-$70 million this year. I'd expect next year, you know, there'll be some further distribution and exit opportunities. That tends to happen in this portfolio.
You know, if economic situations are not as robust, then, you know, I'd expect that to be maybe a little bit slower than historically has happened. Beyond that, you know, it's not something beyond saying that these things generally happen, and they do every year, you know, we don't have great visibility to tell you what will happen next year.
Yeah. If I can just add to that. While you know, Chris mentioned that we don't have the exit schedule, there is one that's included in the free cash flow guidance, just over $20 million of exit distributions. We do have that one of them in the guidance for Q4.
Okay. Great. Thanks. I was wondering if you could maybe provide some color on just growth in digital. I might have missed that if you guys spoke to that earlier.
Yeah, we continue to see growth in digital. We saw mid-single digits growth. Some of the growth was curtailed by the auto category, but we're seeing continued growth into fourth quarter as well. Our assets that we've built not only from our O&O, but our marketing services continue to be strong in the marketplace.
Yeah. What's interesting, we tried to highlight this at our Investor Day, is that when you take a look at our overall ad business, you've got the twin pillars of growth are political and digital. They've compounded over the years to become quite significant in terms of size, and are fueling overall growth in our entire. You know, in our ad business overall. As they've gotten bigger, they've sort of overwhelmed some of the other, you know, weaknesses in the core ad business. You know, we've been very pleased with that tailwind that we've had overall.
Yeah, just one last comment. Our national team, as well as our local sellers, go through continuous education and training by the senior digital leadership. We're prepared to capture the digital dollars in the local marketplace, as well as those that are flowing through programmatic.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Steven Cahall with Wells Fargo. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and apologies as I joined a little late, so hopefully what I'm gonna ask hasn't already been covered. Just the first kind of big one on gross and net retrans. When we look at it on, like, a four- or five-year stack, it looks like that net retrans is below where it was in 2018, and gross retrans has definitely been slower than the peer group. I'm just wondering how you all think about that, if you've done any of that comparative analysis. Have you been less aggressive on retrans rates because you've expected higher cord cutting? Does any of it have to do with RSN carriage? We'd just love to get your perspective on why maybe the retrans growth levels have been a little bit below the peer group. I have a quick follow-up for Lucy.
Look, I think certainly some of our deals were done in a different era of cutting expectations. One of the deals that we had highlighted previously was our ABC affiliation deal that we just actually renewed. That was that sort of hampered us through a couple of years in terms of how that performed. We're much happier with the new deal we just renewed. Then, you know, going forward, that's one of the big reasons why we put out the three-year CAGR expectation at Investor Day. Because we do have, you know, we're not. You know, net retrans will not grow in 2023, but we have between the end of...
At the end of 2023 and the beginning of 2024, there's 70% of our subscribers up on the distributor side. We see that as a huge opportunity to reset the table. We think we'll do very well there through that period, which will power the three-year CAGR.
Great. That's really helpful. Then, Lucy, just on cash interest, you know, we've done some modeling and looks like cash interest could be up a lot next year based on the debt. You know, could be up even close to $100 million. Just wondering if you could comment on, based on where rates are today, how to think about cash interest in 2023. Just as it relates to cash, I know that what happens to Diamond is a bit of a what if, but investors certainly care about what happens to the NOLs. You know, the bond market is kind of implying that a Diamond filing isn't such a low probability what if anymore. Can you give us a sense of what happens to your NOLs if things do change for Diamond? Thank you.
Steven Zenker, we can certainly go offline with you and give you the component pieces of our debt. You know, 60% of that is floating. If you look at where the forward curve is, and I don't have that here, but you can run it and apply it to the variable rate debt. But you know, for every 100 basis points, the interest expense would go up by about $27 million annual. The $100 million, you know, you would have to have like a really steep increase in the curve, which.
Gotcha
which we're not seeing. Okay? Again, we can go offline, and we can give you the component pieces because remember, we have all the nodes that are fixed rate.
On your question around NOLs, the impact of those Diamond NOLs is not as big as you may think because there is a significant amount of disallowed interest at Diamond under the current tax rules, and that continues to increase year-over-year. I mean, it is true that if we no longer owned 80% or more of the equity, that we would no longer get the benefits of those NOLs, but they're naturally decreasing anyway because of the disallowed interest.
Great. That's super helpful.
Steven
I appreciate that color.
Hey, Steven, if I could go back to one other piece too, don't forget that, you know, right now we're sitting with, you know, $600 million of cash balance, and that cash is also earning interest. As the curve increases
You know, depending what your model is showing for your cash balance will also generate more interest income. Make sure you're also looking at it on a net basis.
Gotcha. Great. Thank you for that.
Okay.
Thank you. Our next question is coming from Daniel Kurnos with The Benchmark Company. Please go ahead.
Yeah, thanks. I see you got dropped earlier on the follow-up. Just, Chris, I maybe wanted to actually ask this back to the analyst day. Can you just talk about the profitability of tennis right now and subsequently, you know, given all of the puts and takes, and Lucy commented on this a little bit. As we go into next year, knowing that there's macro uncertainty, just how are you thinking about sort of the levers around investment, you know, next year around these growth initiatives and obviously pushing towards DTC, for example. In tennis, how much of that's already been, you know, encapsulated versus, you know, considering, you know, pulling back just as, you know, to optimize cash flows, things get messy in the short term?
Yeah, look, it's a fair comment. You know, we do, you know, we probably have at least $50 million or more of losses in the portfolio that, you know, are quote-unquote investments that we made in tennis alone. You know, that probably amounts to around $10 million a year. Certainly if in a downturn, we would modulate some of that spending.
at the same time, you know, something like Tennis that has such robust growth opportunities in international and FAST channels like T2 and direct-to-consumer, which should come in 2024, we know we wouldn't want to hold back on that, on that too much because, we think Tennis has such a bright future in front of it in terms of being the global brand for Tennis and that sort of central point. Certainly there'd be a prioritization within our investment spending, if the downturn hits in 2023.
Got it. That's really helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. As there are no more questions in the queue, I will hand it back to Chris Ripley, President and Chief Executive Officer, for any closing comments.
Thank you all for joining us today. If you should need more information or have additional questions, please don't hesitate to give us a call.