Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us at the 26th Annual Needham Growth Conference. I'm Ryan Vaughan, and I'm delighted to be joined by the Gannett team, including Mike Reed, the CEO, and Doug Horne, the CFO. The plan for today is to go through some questions with the team, and should you have any questions, feel free to, you know, I think you put down here at the bottom, raise your hand or enter the question. The team is always great about answering questions, so just I'll keep an eye on that. But first things first, Mike and Doug, thank you for joining.
Yeah, thank you, Ryan. It's good to be back again this year.
Yes, thank you very much. We appreciate it.
Yep, and thank you. So first things first. I think we spoke about a year ago at this conference, and maybe what I'd like to do with some of the company, especially in the media world, maybe just take a step back to a bigger picture view, 30,000 ft view. Just why don't you give us an update on the industry, where you are today, and we'll start there.
Yeah, sure thing, Ryan. Thank you. Thanks again for having us. You know, if I go up to 30,000 ft and give a review of the industry, I think a couple of things are important, but they won't be surprises to anybody. You know, consumers continue to spend the majority of their time consuming content on digital platforms. And so there's been a migration, you know, away from legacy platforms, including printed newspapers, and that's been underway for quite some time. You know, we're, I think fortunately in the late innings of that migration in terms of our business being able to have the right platform and the right scale to thrive in that digital ecosystem.
The other, from an industry perspective, at 30,000 ft, the other thing that's happened over the last number of years is the migration from an advertising perspective to, away from what I would call more traditional advertising, brand type advertising, to direct response advertising. And I think we've been very responsive in addressing that as well with both our digital advertising business, which is driven by, you know, data and performance, as well as the Digital Marketing Solutions business we've built, LocaliQ, which really is a performance marketing-based business as well. So major shifts are consumers spend their time online and you have to have direct response advertising products. I think we've successfully navigated that. We have one of the largest media platforms in the country.
We reached, in the third quarter, 189 million uniques here in the U.S. and in the U.K., probably about 140 million-145 million uniques here in the U.S. And despite that being such a large audience, we grew at 7%, so we're having a lot of success. One thing that's become very clear to us in the migration to building our business in the digital ecosystem is you definitely need scale, which we have. If you don't have scale, it's gonna be very hard to compete over the long term and bring in enough revenue to be successful. You need scale, which we have. The other thing we've really honed in on is you need a diversified revenue stream.
You need to think about the platform, your entire audience, and how do you monetize that platform across various channels? Because your consumers that come to you are on a journey, and they're all coming to you for different reasons and through different channels. So we've developed a, what I would call a platform revenue monetization business, where we rely on digital subscription revenue. We rely on digital advertising revenue. That digital advertising revenue is sold by us as well as comes through programmatic, a digital video business that we're building. We have an affiliate revenue business that we've been building fast, which has been successful with a lot of the partnerships we've entered into the past year. Of course, there's a licensing business. There's the other end of producing great content and licensing that to other folks.
But having those a myriad of advertising channels, or I'm sorry, revenue channels on the platform, allows us to monetize a much broader set of the users that come to us, and therefore, it gives us a much bigger addressable market for revenues. And then, as I mentioned on the direct response side, we've been very successful in building a Digital Marketing Solutions business. That business is nearing now on $500 million of revenue. It does double-digit margins, and we've been, you know, successful in building our digital advertising business on data, and we've been growing that nicely in 2024. Overall, it was... I'm sorry, 2023. Overall, it's been great to see digital return to growth in 2023, and we've seen that growth accelerate each quarter.
That's, that's-
As I mentioned, it's been a transformation. Yeah, go ahead.
I was just gonna say, I'll dive into a couple of those categories, in particular, but, just for the audience, just a reminder for us, I mean, the way I think about Gannett is that you pretty much dominate in certain markets, especially, right? You are that voice, digital, print, and then I guess I would ask you, where else is that? Where are consumers getting that local information? And then, just remind us, what is that difference between local versus national for, for your business today? What's the right way to think about that?
... Yeah, majority of our business is still local. We do own the USA TODAY. I think, you know, all in the USA TODAY is probably roughly about 10% of our business, so we're primarily a local business.
Yep.
Yes, we're in a little north of 200 markets across the U.S. with the dominant local media business, and those range from very small markets to big markets, like in Detroit and places like that. But in those markets, we are predominantly the primary source for what I would say, comprehensive, broad-based local news information. You know, where do other folks get local news on a more precise and kind of singular basis? Of course, from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, places where there are certain things that people are able to see, sometimes just more randomly than searching for it. But when you think about a comprehensive overall local news and information report, we're still the main game in town for that.
I think, you know, our audience really speaks to that. I mean, it's easy for me to say we're the primary source for local news and information, but there are not other media platforms in the U.S., local media platforms, especially driving, you know, close to 140 million-150 million uniques a month to the platform. I think the content we produce is relevant, it is valuable, and that's supported by the fact that these folks are coming to our platform every single month.
Yep, makes sense. So, you gave us a lot there. Before I dive into more of a quantitative look, especially with the company does $2.5-$3 billion of revenue a year. If you were to say... Again, granted, we're in January 2024, your last reported for the 9/30 quarter, but what would you say either back in November or sitting here today, I'm sure they're probably comparable. What would you say the two or three kind of key focuses, key initiatives? Then I'll dive deeper into more of the specifics.
Yeah. So, I would say the biggest key focus area for us, Ryan, is monetization of this platform. We have scale, right? I'm just going to round to 189. So, we have 190 million uniques a month on the platform. The thing we're working, the most focused on right now is how do we build each of those various revenue opportunities out more than they are today? So again, digital subscription revenue, we still have tons of room to grow there. Digital advertising revenue and the migration into video with digital advertising, lots of upside for us there.
The affiliate revenue business we've kicked off in the past year, where we've signed partnerships and get paid based on the performance of the content on our business, that other—on our platform, that others produce, very high margin, fast-growing revenue for us. And then the opportunity to license our content, which we do today, and we see a lot more opportunities to grow that. So when you think about just rounding against, we have about $600 million of digital revenue on our platform today, with just under 200 million uniques, 190 million uniques. So we're doing about $3 ARPU per year per unique. And so the question, the real opportunity for us is to make $3-$6 and $6-$7, and $7-$9.
And that's the addressable market is there. Our penetration rates are still low, so the opportunity is big, and we're not dependent on any one single category to drive it. All the categories will be contributors to it, and we're not sure which one will be the biggest. They all have enormous opportunity, and so the thing we're really excited about and why it's our number one focus is taking this huge platform where we have scale and continuing to grow the monetization of it through all these various revenue channels. Now, other big focuses for us, two other ones I would cite. One is growing our Digital Marketing Solutions business, continuing to expand that, continuing to expand the product offerings and move try to continue to move more to a software-type business from an agency business.
That's a high focus to us. We have a great platform today with half a billion in revenue and double-digit margins and, you know, a solid customer base of 15,000. And then the third one I would cite that we started a year ago is we've really returned to local, and we got a little bit away from local in an effort to centralize things, and we've really gone back to investing in our local brands, adding sales reps in the markets, adding general managers into markets, adding more journalists in the markets, and we're seeing the fruits of the labor. As the year went on, the markets where we made investments, we continued to see increased performance. So we're doubling down, and we're going to continue to invest in local again in 2024.
So I think for us, it's monetization of the digital platform where we have scale. Of course, we're going to try to continue to grow the audience, but even if we don't, we have so much opportunity with the audience we have today. And then it's growing that Digital Marketing Solutions business, which is our B2B business, and then our focus on giving back to being local, getting back to our roots. Those are three big focus areas for us. Of course, we continue to work on cost. We don't talk a lot about that, but we're pretty good on the cost side, and that's really helped drive us the last few years with all the noise in the markets going back to the COVID days.
... Sure. That's helpful. So, look, Mike and Doug, so a lot of revenue here, $2.7 billion. I'm just rounding up, at least for what the guidance is for this year. Again, these are just previously given to us back in November. Just remind us, just especially for some of the audience base, big top line. Breaking down, I really wanna drill into the digital. I keep hearing you saying that it's a big number now, and it continues—as I heard you say earlier, it's starting to grow again. But just break down the rough numbers, rough, just how to think about the various buckets within that $2.7 billion. And then the next question is, I keep hearing you talk about digital.
You did say 500 million; it is growing again. Just what's in there? Can you just remind the audience, fill me in, what's the right way to think about digital? Because I'll then ask you about your digital subscriptions. We'll dive into that after.
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for the question. When you look at the kind of digital revenue, which Mike mentioned, you know, that's our key focus. We wanna grow our digital revenue. Right now, it's about 40% of our total revenue. As we approach the end of next year, we expect that to be closer to kind of 50/50. So you'll see that mix shift as we go forward. Ultimately, obviously, we want the vast majority of the revenue to be digital. And really, the growth in the digital is gonna come from a lot of the sources that Mike already mentioned. It's gonna come from the subscription components, it's gonna come from those affiliate deals, it's gonna come from the digital advertising and marketing solutions businesses.
Drilling in just one, you know, layer deeper, if you wanna think about some of the larger components in that 40% of total, we have a digital-only subscription business, which is about $160 million. It's growing, you know, 16% year-over-year. And as Mike mentioned, we're hitting record high ARPUs, which are up, you know, roughly the same amount as revenue, right around 14%. So really happy there, really focused in terms of our subscription, acquisition efforts. Also, the Digital Marketing Solutions, LocaliQ business, you know, it's approaching $500 million. It's very high ARPU on a monthly basis. We have very good client retention. You know, ARPU hovers around the $2,600 mark. Client retention in the mid- to high-90% range. Very excited about that business.
Also excited about what, you know, what our new leader, Chris Cho, is gonna bring to that from a product perspective. And then, you have digital advertising. You know, it's $280 million, excluding, you know, what is another big chunk of digital classified. But importantly, that digital advertising component returned to growth in Q3, and over the last year, plus really, we've been developing and further refining our first-party data capabilities, which we think will really kind of benefit us as we go forward and as the whole, you know, digital advertising ecosystem changes. So those are the, you know, biggest components, I would say.
And again, when you think about subscriptions, part of what's driving that growth, and part of the ARPU growth, is the fact that we are very focused on monetization and ensuring we're getting kind of the subscribers that will be with us the longest, have a higher lifetime value, which has allowed us to grow that ARPU this year.
Great. Let's stay right there on the digital subscription side. Continues to... I think it's hovering around 2 million± today. Mike, you've talked about this at different times. Just what that potential, medium, long-term possibility is. Obviously, you still have a bunch of print subs. I imagine some are migrating over to digital, but, you know, like, like you said, whether someone sees an article on Twitter or someplace else, they might click and subscribe to you as well. So that's a new sub, especially a younger demographic. But, just talk to us about that as far as what you think the potential could be or realistically, medium, longer term, if you're at 2 million today, you've grown that a lot over the last several years, certainly.
And then I think you answered it, but I'll just ask it one more time. Just on the ARPU, you are starting to disclose that. Forgive me if you disclosed it before, I don't remember. I now have a line item in my model for that. Maybe just touch on that. And then the last point, just that sub, how much is migrating versus and credit to the team, you've simplified the process a lot to add new subscribers, just a couple of double clicks, and I appreciate that. That was something I always asked you guys about, and credit to you for getting there. But just a few of those things, potential on subs being long term, ARPU, and then where the subs are coming from?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, obviously, you know, when we're talking about total monetization, a big component of that and one of our top focuses remains growing our digital-only subscriber base. You know, the vast majority of our subscriber base comes from the local markets, you know, 90%+. And when you look at penetration of those markets, we're in the very low single digits of penetration, and we feel like we have a real opportunity to kind of, you know, some multiple of that in terms of penetration. So we have a long way to go, in terms of acquisition and the potential in terms of the total subscriber base that we're targeting.
And again, we are, you know, being more, I would say, focused in terms of lifetime value versus solely a volume play, which is allowing us to kind of attract and, and retain subscribers, that are in fact paying us higher rates. And so we're seeing that ARPU increase. This year we're about, you know, roughly $7. We think over time, that ARPU really should be kind of 2x that at least, but, you know, like in the $15 range. And we believe that would put us still very competitive with other kind of sources of information, in those markets.
And when you think about print versus, you know, print being a source of digital subscriptions, you know, obviously there is a component of that, but importantly, we're trying to meet our print subscribers where they're at and where they want to consume our content. So, you know, Kristin Roberts, our new Chief Content Officer, has done a great job in terms of revamping the entire content organization, the content generation, that has benefits in both print and digital. In addition to that, she is making investments in print to enhance kind of the experience of our readers, which we believe kind of benefits us long term. And, you know, as we look forward, it's important to have kind of the tie-ins with print and digital.
So we'll be looking to, you know, introduce QR codes, where people can move from the print to digital version if that suits them in terms of wanting to dig deeper. We'll also really be focused on the e-edition and having a much more robust e-edition, helping you know, people move along that print-to-digital continuum, but always trying to provide the product where, you know, where they want to consume it, but ultimately helping them approach the digital sort of version of that, where it makes sense.
Gotcha, that's helpful. Let's—I guess just one on the print side. Clearly, you know, you'd mentioned 60/40, roughly 50/50 this year, and we see where it's going. But at the same time, I'd be curious, are we always gonna have print? It seems like we will, but curious your thoughts there. And yeah, maybe just some update, just where you think. I think of it like a linear TV. We're always gonna have some form of linear TV. I'm just curious, where do you think on the print side as well, what's, you know, and whether it's a few years, whatever the timeframe might be, what's kind of, in your view, best guess normalization?
I mean, I definitely believe, you know, for the foreseeable future, you know, definitely short term, but likely mid to long term, there's always gonna be print. And in fact, we don't talk about it as much, but we spend a lot of time optimizing that print business and improving the customer service around our print business because it is very valuable to us. These customers are long-standing customers. They generate a lot of both top-line revenue, but also kind of net cash flow to us. So we've been focused on kind of solving some of the distribution challenges that we saw pop up during COVID. Our open routes have been, you know, down 20% year-over-year.
We're running some of the lowest complaint levels that we've seen over the last, you know, three, five years, you know, even below what I would say folks that have been in the industry long term would consider kind of standard complaint levels. So we feel good about that. We're also really actively looking to address alternate delivery mechanisms. So in areas where we can't attract the right delivery staff, or it just doesn't make sense because of geographic location relative to the operations, we're embracing mail delivery. And not only is that lower cost on an overall basis, but it actually results in a better kind of client service, customer service post-conversion. So people are actually, you know, more pleased, you know, have less complaints with the delivery.
And so it helps us extend that tail, which is very important 'cause it generates a lot of cash flow for us. So it's, although we're obviously, you know, on that digital transformation, we spend a lot of time focused on that print product and continuing to kind of manage that user base, customer base.
Okay, switch gears a little bit. Partnerships seems to be a new initiative. Can you talk about the purpose, the impact, just business, financials? What's the right way to think about some of these partnerships that we've been hearing more about?
Yeah, so as Mike mentioned, we've been successful over the last year or so, you know, entering into a number of partnerships with companies like Forbes and Red Ventures and Jackpocket and Home Solutions. And we believe these are kind of a win-win because we talked about the large audience we have, and what these partnerships allow us to do is bring engaging content to that large audience. We don't pay for that content, our partners provide it, and then we earn essentially a revenue share in terms of the monetization of that user base through the content. And so it's, you know, it allows our users to engage with high-value content, and we're able to monetize that, you know, existing user base in a way that is very, very... It's all really incremental margin to us.
And so, you know, I think offers both short-term as well as long-term, you know, and positive impact, because as we're able to grow these, you know, we believe these partnerships have the opportunity to turn into. We've seen other people turn these into, you know, tens of millions of dollars on a per-partnership basis. And so if you do a number of these, you really start getting some critical mass in terms of total revenue on the top line, as well as the fact that it has an outsized impact on the margin because you're not incurring any incremental cost as a result of these relationships.
Perfect. Let me ask you about AI. Obviously, a hot topic in the investment community, and especially here at Needham. With being a tech conference, we hear about it all the time, but maybe just talk about what it has, any sort of impact, how you might be using it, or what kind of challenges it poses? Be curious to get your thoughts on AI.
Yeah, Ryan, as you might expect, as everybody on the call might expect, AI really is touching so many different facets of the business, right? Almost everything we do in some way, there's potential impact from AI. Most of it positive, I would say. And so it's hard to go, you know, you could go down a rabbit hole with all the different nitty-gritty things that AI touches, but, you know, at a high level, using artificial intelligence to be much better at acquiring leads for our B2B business, our Digital Marketing Solutions business, and our consumer acquisition businesses, is one great use of artificial intelligence. Being able to better serve our readers, you know, our consumers, the content they're most interested is another great benefit to us.
And we're really in, like every other company, in the very early stages of trying to understand all the different ways artificial intelligence can help us. At the same time, because of the business we're in, we are extremely cognizant of the fact that we're an original content creator, and trust is incredibly important to our brands, and so we are not using artificial intelligence to create content. You know, we're creating all of our original content. We are exploring ways where we can have artificial intelligence maybe help us craft our own content in a manner that might be better for a consumer, engage better with the consumer, but we're taking baby steps there to make sure we don't have any major missteps.
And then the other thing with regard to artificial intelligence is, you know, this is like search 20 years ago, but magnified 10x. And so we're highly focused on how we get paid for the theft of our content. I mean, our content, our original content is copyright protected and we believe stolen. And everybody's seen the New York Times lawsuit where against you know, OpenAI and Microsoft. We're fully supportive of that and believe that, you know, there's an opportunity for us to make sure that we're fairly compensated for the content that we produce that is helping feed the algorithms of other big AI companies.
So right now, AI is a massive field for us, and we're—there are ways where it is helping us get better today, and will continue to, but it's also, something we have to be careful of in terms of not damaging our reputation with, you know, artificial intelligence content out there that's fake. And then also, we need to make sure we're getting paid fairly for our content. And so there's, there's lots of things at play, and it seems every day that there's new developments, and so it's, it's exciting for us, but it's, it's early, early, early days.
Makes sense. Could I ask you next? You touched on the New York Times. Let me ask you about you recently filed a lawsuit against Google. Can you discuss the claims in that lawsuit? I imagine some of what you were just talking about, any potential remedies, and any sort of timeframe that investors should be thinking about here?
Yeah. So our—it's an antitrust lawsuit against, you know, Google's monopoly. Really, what we believe is a monopoly with the digital advertising ecosystem from start to finish, including pricing and the like. And so I think the thing I would want investors to understand is our case is extremely similar, if not, the same as the DOJ's case against Google, which was filed before ours. There's also a case out of the state of Texas that many states have joined, that's very similar to ours. And so we feel very strongly, very, very strongly that we have a great case here against Google, as the DOJ does and as 34 states do. From a timing perspective, the DOJ case is supposed to go to trial second quarter this year.
And so I think that's really the bellwether is the DOJ case. That's scheduled to go to court before ours, and so we're watching that one closely. Investors should watch that one closely. That will be a great indicator of our case. You know, as far as size, we've said before, we think it's a multi-billion-dollar claim. And the size is enormous.
Sorry, just had to write that multi-billion-dollar number down, again. Just make sure I heard you correctly. Okay, cool. So DOJ is number one. That'll be in, starting, it appears, 2Q. You'll follow that. We'll see what happens there. You believe the claim is $2 billion or multiple—Sorry, I'm sorry, multi-billion. So certainly my words, not yours. Nothing's modeled in here. Nothing's valued for any potential positive outcome. Where we sit today, I think that's fair to say, but, thank you for that. We'll be—we'll all be on the lookout for following the DOJ case. So, what do you think?
Ryan, just for context, it does sound like a big number, but just for context, in 2022, there was about $30 billion of digital advertising that came off publisher platforms. And the publishers got $6 billion, Google got the $24 billion. So there's a big mismatch there. It's on the back of the content publishers produce. It's on the back of the audience that is on publishers platforms, but we have no control over pricing and things of that nature, and so Google makes the money.
I like that. Got a few more questions for you here. Switching over to back to the financials. So the company is guiding this year, obviously, three quarters through, company's guiding to improve EBITDA year-over-year, despite a declining top line. Again, print's going down while digital is now recovering in positive territory, which is great. But the question is really more on the you know, what's driving the incremental EBITDA gain year-over-year? What's behind that? And maybe you were a little bit caught off guard last year. A lot of stuff was going on last year. But is it that shift that you've talked about, higher margin, potentially mix, as well as Mike, you know... You touched on it quickly, just on the cost side, where are we there?
Anything that you can help us along to think about going forward with where EBITDA is today?
Yeah, absolutely. You know, we were very pleased to grow EBITDA in Q2, as well as Q3. You know, Q2 was up 40%, Q3 came in up 15%, and importantly, we expect the end the year with EBITDA up over the prior year, so 2023 over 2022. And, you know, listen, we're seeing some improvement in top line revenue, and we're gonna expect that, do expect that to accelerate in terms of that level of improvement, 'cause that's gonna help do that, you know, mix shift from 40 to 40/60 to 50/50. But in addition to that, you know, we've done a lot in terms of strategic cost controls, operational transformation. We put a lot of cost saving measures in place at the very end of 2022, which has benefited us in 2023.
Also, you know, we saw a lot in terms of deflationary, you know, the relief from the inflationary pressures that we had seen in the prior year with regard to the raw materials, you know, newsprint, ink, drivers, fuel, all of that. You know, we've been happy to see costs come back more in line with historical standards, and that's helped us. But, you know, continuing to grow EBITDA is gonna continue to require us to be focused on cost management and continued transformation. You know, print, it's a high margin- it's a high margin business, but it does have a lot of fixed costs, and so as that, you know, does follow a secular decline, we're gonna continue optimizing that footprint, taking out those physical hard costs that are associated with print.
From a digital perspective, you know, when you look at digital, and specifically digital subscriptions on an incremental basis, those do have a high margin. And so growing those, continuing to grow that, will, you know, benefit the bottom line, the margin percentage, as well as some of the partnership agreements we talked about. The fact that that is essentially, you know, top line revenue with no associated costs will benefit the margin and the bottom line as well. All those, you know, give us confidence in terms of continuing to grow that EBITDA in the future.
That's great. Let's switch over to the balance sheet. I mean, Mike, obviously, and Doug, I've been following this for multiple years, especially when you announced that transaction initially in 2019 and got-- we all got blindsided by the pandemic. But the reason I say that to you is that the company's done an incredible job deleveraging the balance sheet. When the credit markets open, you're there. You've had a supportive holder base that even said: "Hey, you know what? We'll, we'll move into a convert, we'll exchange in equity. We believe in this." And real quick to you, because that initial piece was large, expensive, and the company has totally changed the game there, so, so credit to the team. Yeah, I guess just sitting here today, just with how much has come out, what's optimal? What's the goal?
I imagine it's a continued trajectory. You give us updates every, you know, either interquarter or every quarter, "Hey, we paid down this much. We're selling this real estate." And I guess I'll just tie it into this next question, just for cash flow, right? You take your EBITDA and you back out, you know, $40-something million of CapEx and $80 million-$85 million, which was, as I was just referencing, you know, 2x, arguably even more than that, just a few years ago. And then, yeah, you got a couple other things there.
But just talk to us on balance sheet, as you continue to delever, Doug, what your goals are, what's optimal, how much can you support, do you want to support, et cetera, and any other non-core items that might help, as we've seen so far, hundreds of billions of dollars of real estate, I assume you towards the tail end of that, in my words. But just anything on those, on the balance sheet side of things, please.
Yeah, absolutely. You know, as we've said in the past, and it remains consistent, debt repayment is, you know, our top priority. We want to bring down the absolute level of debt and the leverage that the company is carrying. In Q3, you know, we repaid $65 million, which is, you know, the highest quarterly pay down in a couple of years. You know, year to date, you know, we repaid $138 million of debt, which was in excess of kind of what we had guided towards at the beginning of the year. So really kind of overachieved there. Firstly, net leverage, which is really what we monitor, you know, from a health perspective, is right around kind of that two level.
You know, we do believe that kind of continuing to reduce that first lien net leverage will reduce kind of an overhang on the stock. It'll be accretive to, you know, shareholders. And so we believe kind of our appropriate target long-term, and we've been consistent on this over time, is to have that first lien net leverage at one or, you know, below one times as a long-term target, which, you know, we're progressing against that target. When you think about free cash flow, you know, I think we are benefiting from the fact that we have lower interest payments. We are in a good position with our pension.
You know, our pension, our main pension plan is, you know, 107%-108% overfunded, which is gonna hopefully in a, you know, some period in the future, put us in a position of taking out that entire kind of liability. So that's something we continue to work. From a tax perspective, you know, we still have a sizable NOL, and so we're, you know, have to pay some small taxes from a state tax perspective, but, you know, all in all, there's not a big drag on the capital there.
The one thing I would say as we look at 2024, you know, 2024, we're, we're continuing, and I think we're, we're definitely to the tail end of it, to reduce some of the technology, debt, you know, to complete a lot of the integration of systems and to kind of put us on a solid foundation moving forward. And so I think there is probably gonna be a little bit more CapEx, in 2024 versus what we've seen over the last couple of years. But all that being said, you know, I think we will be in a position in 2024 to significantly grow free cash flow over, 2023 levels. And obviously, we'll be providing more specific details on that as we get to kind of Q4 earnings, but definitely expect significant increase next year from a free cash flow perspective.
Excellent. That's helpful. Sorry, can you clarify where we are on the real estate monetizing a ton of the real estate? I'm just curious.
Yeah.
I mean, is there anything left there to be thinking about? And credit to the team, really, for how much you have extracted, far more than, I certainly expected going into this.
I appreciate that. The team that works on this internally has done a great job, and it's been a constant focus. I would say, you know, we've sold the vast majority of the larger properties. As we optimize that print infrastructure, there'll be some opportunities to take some of the print facilities that we own and monetize those as we go. But, you know, outside of those, I would say we're down to the smaller properties, and so, you know, I think your assessment of being towards the tail end of that's probably correct.
I think we still have an opportunity, though, to monetize, you know, a significant chunk, call it $40 million-$45 million of aggregate asset sales, because we are still very focused, not just on real estate, but on non-core assets and assets that, you know, we believe don't necessarily fit with our long-term strategic vision. And we believe the combination of selling those, as well as real estate, still put us in a position of, you know, generating a significant amount of cash flow that'll go to debt repayment next year.
Well, real quick, real quick. I always like to give the team just one, you know, 30 seconds. But I see someone saying we got one minute, maybe a little bit less now. Just any final thoughts, the company, $1 billion?
Yeah.
Yeah. Billion more valuation.
Yeah.
What it might be.
Yeah, what I would say is the 30-second, you know, pitch I would make to shareholders is that we're at a very unique time now where things are very near. You know, we're getting closest to the 50/50 revenue digital/print split. As revenue returns to growth overall for the company, and as EBITDA and cash flow is growing, that's gonna change the multiple that we trade at significantly, and that's gonna create a ton of value for our shareholders. The other thing is we continue to have a high priority on debt repayment. As we pay down debt, there's a enterprise value shifts from debt to equity, creating value for shareholders.
As we get to that 1x leverage that Doug noted, 1 or below, we're still gonna throw off even more free cash flow than we do today, and that puts us in a position to say, "How do we allocate that capital the right way?" Both investing in the business and, and figuring out the right return for shareholders, whether it's buybacks or dividends, etc. So I think we're at that place now where the next two or three years is gonna be very exciting for Gannett shareholders. So it's a, it's an opportune time to be taking a look at the company, and hopefully we have some folks here that are new, that are taking a look today.
Absolutely. Well, this was great. Mike, Doug, appreciate your time. As always, great to speak to you and credit to the team, what we've seen here and excited for 2024. Thank you.
Thank you. Good to see you. Thank you.
Thank you very much. Appreciate it.