The E.W. Scripps Company (SSP) Adam Symson, President & CEO - Gabelli 18th Annual Sports & Media ...

Thank you, Hannah. Thanks for having us.

Yeah, so we have been in and out of all sorts of media over our long history, obviously going all the way back to when we were one of the nation's largest newspaper publishers. We were a cable operator. We were also a cable programmer with launching HGTV and the Food Network, and we've been in and out of radio and podcasting. We no longer have any newspapers. Today we're mostly television and associated digital properties. When we think about this moment in time, our focus today is on yielding the benefits of our reach. And we are going through what we sort of characterize as a re-founding of the company. As a result of some structural factors with our industry, particularly local television, we've been in a mode of consolidation, and through that consolidation, we've been bolting on other TV stations. I would argue nobody in the industry has ever stepped back through the digital revolution and said, 'Are we actually producing a product that meets the customer and the consumer where they are?' And have we actually taken advantage of some of the technology available to us now to really upend the way we do things? At this moment when our industry is totally obsessed with financial engineering, which I am a big fan of and definitely want to take advantage of, I would also say we are focused on a transformation plan that will improve EBITDA by between 125 and 150 million dollars. That's about a 30% lift between now and 2028. We're exactly on track to execute against that, and I'm feeling very, very good about the results.

Yeah, so I would say we're looking at the use of technology, AI, and automation in both the front office and the back office. I'll sort of put the back office to the side because I think there's not very much different about our back office from any company's back office, and I'll tell you at the end of the day, the industry has been held back by its unwillingness to actually focus on the customer or the consumer. That means that we're still producing a newscast for 5:00 and 6:00 when the audience is no longer tuning in exclusively for news at 5:00 and 6:00. So, what we have done is we have engineered a way starting a couple of years ago to begin to eliminate the front office functions that are not apparent to the customer, to our audience, and really focus our resources on the folks that produce the journalism in the field, and the folks that actually do the selling of the advertising on Main Street. And everything else in between has really been up for grabs. That has opened up the opportunity for us to build out technology that changes the way we deliver the news. And therefore will generate a significant amount of the savings through the use of technology, while also, I would say, actually improving our focus on the customer.

Great guy.

So, I mean, by virtue of some of the things that he's already approved on waivers, I would say we have a really good sense as to where the rules are going to end up. I believe that ultimately the prohibition against owning two big fours in a market, as ruled by the 8th Circuit Court, I believe that will be codified into law and I think ultimately the chairman will see fit to significantly raise or eliminate the cap, based on ultimately even the FCC and the DOJ's approval of the Nexstar-Tegna deal. From our perspective, we've already been very focused on doing everything we can to ensure we get as deep as possible with big fours and independents in the markets where we operate. So, ideally I'd like to see us with two big fours in a market and potentially an independent where we'd be running sports. That's a little bit of a nuance or a difference from some of our peers because we have the Ion portfolio which gives us significant flexibility with how we use our broadcast licenses. And I believe the door is open for all that. So, we've closed on a couple of swap transactions. We recently announced the acquisition of a second station in Lexington from Morris Communications that we're already running essentially as one station group, and the industrial logic for us to have two big fours in a market and then layering on top of that the power of a sports franchise, I think creates the kind of durability that we're looking for from the regulatory environment.

I think there's significant opportunity on a couple of fronts. The first area is to continue with swaps that allow us to add in second stations or third stations in markets where we already operate. The economic logic there is really significant. The other opportunity that is unique to us is the opportunity that has to do with taking the Ion portfolio and always thinking about the use of spectrum at its best and highest use. So for example in Las Vegas we a couple of years ago we had an Ion station. So a lot of people don't realize Ion is not a cable network. It is actually the largest broadcast network in which we own all of the stations. We don't have affiliates. So the opportunity was for us to say are we better off using that Ion stick to run Ion or should we move Ion to the secondary channel, maintain its cable distribution and its reach, and take the first station and turn it into an independent station where we would then run the Vegas Golden Knights. And that's what we've done now several times over. Most recently we just announced a deal with the Nashville Predators that will be our fifth NHL hockey team. And you can see the power of the ability to expand our local footprint without actually deploying any additional capital. We don't actually have to buy new stations to pick up new network affiliates or new independents. And we've been doing that and that is what has been powering our core revenue growth. The core revenue growth that we saw in the first quarter was up 7%. That was industry leading because we're able to actually tap new markets by going to the sports marketplace and starting independent stations that our peers can't do because they're tied in only with big four affiliations.

I'm in favor of consolidation. I'm in favor of smart consolidation. I think we are all sort of waiting to see what happens in the courts. And I don't have any special insight, right, more than anybody else. I would say, for us, especially if there was going to be a stock deal, and our shareholders were going to be invested in the success of the future enterprise, a lot of things have to be true. I mean, I think everybody in this room has lots of experience seeing transactions close and then the mergers fail dramatically as a result of different cultures, different governance structures. So, for us and for our shareholders, it not only has to be the right price, it has to be the right governance structure. I don't take much issue with any of the TV stations that Sinclair has or the hardworking people that actually work in those TV stations, but there is a dramatic difference between the ethos of our company and the ethos of Sinclair's leadership. And therefore, I think that was part of the issue relative to whether our investors or our shareholders were going to feel comfortable in a situation in which the value of their equity was potentially going to be tied up. It would be a very different case if there was a significant all-cash offer. At the same time, our board was very clear on what we were doing from a transformation perspective. We had not publicly announced our transformation, but increasing EBITDA by a third is going to have a dramatic impact on our share price. And while it's not necessarily appearing in the equity today, I would say if you do the math, you would then fairly clearly see that their offer of stock and cash was way too low. And so, from our perspective, our board was just simply looking out for the best interest of our shareholders. I do think scale's important. I think in-market depth is important, and we will continue to do what we need to do to put ourselves in the best position to participate in additional M&A that improves the operating performance of our business.

Yeah, sure. So, in our local segment, we do local advertising and national advertising. About 70% of our local advertising would be considered local local, like Main Street advertisers. And then 30% would be national advertisers that essentially buy locally. They're buying a selection of local markets. They may not be buying the entire country, so they're buying the top 25 markets, and they're coming to the owners of TV stations in those top 25 markets. For us, the dynamic is a little different than our peers because of sports. When we began to acquire sports rights and acquire them at very efficient rates, we recognized that this was going to open up new opportunity for us not only to take share, but also to bring in different kinds of advertisers that had not traditionally been spending on local television. And so we have been seeing pretty significant local advertising growth on the back of the continued growth in sports. We typically see that in first quarter and fourth quarter. Second quarter has a little bit of playoff action, but it's much lighter from a local sports perspective. After we announced first quarter results of up 7% in core, which was best in class, we also announced the acquisition of the Nashville Predators and of the Detroit Pistons. And so as you start to think about fourth quarter, you're going to start to see our company put up core revenue that will demonstrate incremental organic and inorganic core revenue growth on the back of local and sports in addition to what I expect to be a very, very good political year. And I think that's a big differentiator in our name.

Yeah, I mean political — I would say it's going to be a record setting year in political for the industry and for the amount of spend in general. Partisan politics and polarization makes for good political revenue sadly or gladly. But ultimately we're already beginning to see the strength in the political marketplace. I do expect to begin to see some more share going to connected TV. Here again, a little bit of a nuance or a difference between us and our peers, we are not only a political platform with respect to local advertising and broadcast, but we're also a political platform with respect to connected TV. Unlike our peers on the local side, we also have the Scripps networks and all of our networks are in the FAST marketplace. And in the FAST marketplace, free ad supported streaming television, we are already seeing significant interest in our inventory in local markets where we don't actually have local TV stations. So, I expect to continue to see CTV growth, and this year that will include a nice bump in political. Our local broadcast portfolio is terrific — good host of gubernatorial and senatorial races as well as house races, and then also down ballot exposure. I think we used to sort of look at down ballot exposure and wonder how important are house races, state house races and assembly races. The truth is they've become very important in this country because gerrymandering has really created a new power dynamic in local government. And so, you're seeing national and state parties spending significantly to try and influence what the make of a state house looks like. On the sports side of things, yeah, we recognized early both with Ion, our broadcast platform, as well as in local, that the destruction of the RSN marketplace was going to be an opportunity for us. Not to recreate RSNs, but to essentially go to like-minded owners and leagues and speak with them about the value of bringing their sports back to broadcast. Those of us that have been around for a while remember when baseball and basketball was only on broadcast, and then it went to cable, and as cable has continued to decline in its reach, these owners have recognized that they were better off when they had more reach. The future is not going to be about exclusivity. It's not going to be cable or broadcast or streaming. The future is going to be about a combination of, in my mind, broadcast and streaming. And so, we've heavily focused on acquiring rights, being a very disciplined acquirer of those rights. We actually haven't lost any deals. We have walked away from deals where the owners have had fantastical views of what their rights are worth. From our perspective, this has to create value. We want them to understand that they will make more money in merchandise, they will make more money in hospitality, and they will make more money in ticket sales when they take advantage of our reach. And so, we really expect them to look at this very different, and it's been working out really, really well for us.

You know, look, first and foremost, we believe things have to create value. And so, to me, we model every deal to be profitable and recognize that in some cases we may be willing to take a hit to margin in order to expand the whole number we take for revenue and EBITDA, but at the end of the day, it's not a passion play. For me, I like sports, but I'm not a sports fanatic. And so, for me, this is not about the love of the genre. For me, this is about recognizing that live sports is the most important genre as a programming vehicle for linear television. It's about recognizing, as we shifted our vision to recreate connection, live sports is the only thing in this country that brings people together. I mean, we are fractured along every line except if you walk around New York right now, everybody's rooting for the Knicks. So, look, I think ultimately, we're experiencing, we're seeing the power of live sports. When I was growing up, linear television, electronic journalism was the thing that created the water cooler moment. It was the thing that bound us together. We all would spend time together but separately in our own homes watching the same things, and then we would come to work the next day and talk about it. There was a shared experience. Today, that's not a factor anymore. Nobody comes to the office and says, 'Wow, did you stream the fourth episode of Bear from two seasons ago?' Like, that just doesn't work the same way. And so, sports is really it. And so, when we think about our vision to create connection, it's not creating connection between us and our consumer. It's about the role we can play to create connection for our consumers with each other, for our consumers with the brands that motivate them for their passions. And that, going all the way back to the history of this company, is what this company has always been about, recognizing that we had this incredible power through our platform in order to bring people together.

Yeah, I mean again, those are two separate questions, so I'll answer them both. On the NFL, I don't think this is going to be broadcast or streaming. I definitely think you're going to continue to see games or small packages broken off and put on to streaming or incremental games sort of created as they've done with international games and put on to streaming. Major packages that go to streaming, you can see what's in the NFL's mind — the Amazon Thursday night game. Most people think, 'Well, it's gone to Thursday night.' But they don't realize that Amazon is required to resell the game to a local broadcaster in the two home markets because the NFL knows to black out those games permanently would not benefit the NFL. So they're very, very aware with their limited inventory that they have the power to sort of have their cake and eat it too. And I expect that we'll see things continue to cleave in that direction. It's no surprise that the NFL is going to try to maximize the value of their rights. I can tell you I expect programming fees to affiliates, or put differently, reverse retrans, to continue to go down. If you take a look at our results, you've already begun to see that. First with a flattening and then when you X out our incremental sports rights that we actually pay for, you are seeing programming fees going down and you are seeing net retrans margin expansion. And that's because we, the affiliates, have really drawn a pretty hard line with the networks for them to recognize that they actually need us and our distribution as much as we need them. And they have begun to build new businesses around us and I don't begrudge them that, but we're certainly not going to pay fees that once were reserved for exclusive products when those products are no longer exclusive. So, I would continue to expect, even if the NFL changes things, that we're going to continue to see programming fees go down for local affiliates.

Yeah, so, you know, the macro environment is very difficult in general. I think we are beginning to see, finally, the impact of the war in Iran in a way that we never actually saw with tariffs. I think with tariffs we saw companies deciding on an ad hoc basis whether they would eat the margin or they would pass it on. Well, with respect to gas prices, it's all being passed on to the consumer and that means the consumer has a lot less to spend outside of the supermarket and the pump. Advertising is impacted by that as well, especially on the national side and the DR side in particular. So, the DR, we described how DR was a little soft, and I would say the Nielsen methodology change doesn't necessarily help. I expect, if we can find some sort of resolution in the Middle East and for gas prices to at least stabilize, for us to drive some of the uncertainty out of the environment, things will stabilize and be a lot better. The difference for us is sports. And while I talked a lot about sports on the local side, we're also very focused on live sports on the network side. And if you take a look at our performance compared to our general entertainment peers, live sports, particularly women's sports, has been the key defining feature. We recognized early before Caitlin Clark that live sports, women's sports deserved a home on the national stage. And we began by dedicating a franchise night for the WNBA. And then we added the NWSL and more recently Major League Volleyball, PWSL, Athlos, which is a track league. And all of this live sports has been essentially a driver or a catalyst for overperformance relative to our peers. That doesn't mean it's easy. And I would say, it's a little early to provide upfront commentary, but it's a tougher time in the national marketplace. And that's why we're constantly looking at making sure that we're really using our broadcast spectrum for its best and highest use.

Yeah, I mean, I think the addressable market is huge and it's specifically helpful to Scripps because all of — we made a decision early on with all of our broadcast networks because we don't get paid by the cable operators that we can do whatever we want with them if we have the rights to the programming. And so we negotiated for the rights to the programming to put them into the CTV marketplace. And that built us a business from essentially nothing to about 125 million dollars in revenue. So I expect to continue to see growth there. I don't think it's going to grow at 40% forever. But it's been experiencing nice double-digit growth as I mentioned before. We'll see a little bit of contribution this year from political into our growth numbers with CTV. This is the direction the world is moving. And it helps that we are one of the very, very few programmers that have the rights to the kind of premium content in a network format that can negotiate for carriage with Samsung and with Roku and Pluto and get great positioning. I would say more recently we launched the Scripps Sports Network, which is an opportunity for us to drive premium sports into the FAST marketplace. There's very little live sports in FAST because most live sports is carried on platforms that are going to cable and that precludes them from being in FAST. And so we've been able to actually take our network, Scripps Sports, and take not only the rights that we already have with the WNBA and the NWSL and Major League Volleyball, but also acquire some other very efficiently acquired rights and bring them to FAST. And right out of the gate, I think it's doing very well from an advertiser perspective. I think advertisers recognize it's all about the live sports and the ability for us to have more than 1,000 hours of live sports a year on FAST has been a differentiator from an audience perspective as well as from an advertiser perspective.

Hannah, thank you for having us.