Good morning and welcome to the Beasley Broadcast Group's Fourth Quarter 2021 Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. Before proceeding, I would like to emphasize that today's conference call and webcast will contain forward-looking statements about our future performance and results of operations that involve risks and uncertainties described in the Risk Factors section of our most recent annual report on Form 10-K, as is supplemented by our quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Today's webcast will also contain a discussion of certain non-GAAP financial measures within the meaning of Item 10 of Regulation S-K. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures with their most directly comparable financial measures calculated and presented in accordance with GAAP can be found in the morning's news announcement and on the company's Web site. I would also remind listeners, that following its completion, a replay of today's call can be accessed for five days on the company's Web site, www.bbgi.com. You can also find a copy of today's press release on the Investors or Press Room sections of the site. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to your host, Beasley Broadcast Group CEO, Caroline Beasley. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Anna, and good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to review our 2021 fourth quarter and full-year operating results. Marie Tedesco, our CFO, is with me this morning. So, Q4 proved to be another strong quarter with total revenue growth of 3.3%, nicely outpacing the 2% revenue guidance we provided on our last earnings call, as we successfully offset the 4Q 2020 political revenue contribution. Our active new business initiatives, sports betting revenue, and a $3.4 million increase in digital revenue were the primary drivers to the strong quarter. As a reminder, we recorded approximately $10.2 million of political revenue in the fourth quarter of 2020, and $15.1 million net political for the full-year. As such, our ex political, our 2021 fourth quarter revenues exceeded Q4 '20 levels by $12.1 million or about 21%, with local spot increasing 14.1%, and national increasing 9.2%. Now, including political, so these are actual numbers for the same period, over-the-air spot revenue increased 10.9%, while national declined 38%. And this represents a large portion of this decline coming from political, for 2020. Of special note here is that we were able to offset over-the-air spot declines from political with increases from digital to generate overall revenue growth for the quarter, of 3.3%. And as with recent quarters, our gains were broad-based, with seven of 13 markets delivering year-over-year revenue increases, including double-digit growth in Boston, Fort Myers, Las Vegas, and Philadelphia. Now, looking at the quarter, October was down 10.4% as the political comp had the biggest impact, while November was up 16.8%, and December was up 8% year-over-year. Comparing our revenue performance to 4Q, 2019, and this is a target comparison in our pandemic recovery, our revenues for the quarter was down less than 2% or $1.4 million. And…

Thanks, Caroline, and good morning, everyone. I will start with overview of the fourth quarter and full-year results, followed by overview of our balance sheet. Fourth quarter net revenue increased 3.3% or $2.3 million to $70.7 million, which includes $585,000 from our esport teams, the Outlaws, and Rocket League, our new organically created esport team. We generated approximately $400,000 in net political revenue, compared to $10.2 million in the prior year. Excluding 2020 political, our revenue would have increased 20.7%. Besides the prior year political, we grew revenue year-over-year at our Boca Raton, Boston, Fort Myers, Las Vegas, New Jersey, Philadelphia, and Wilmington clusters. Furthermore, when comparing fourth quarter '21 to fourth quarter 2019, net revenue was down just 1.9% or just under $1.4 million. Full-year revenues increased 17.1% or $35.3 million, to $241 million, compared to $206 million in 2020, which included approximately $15 million of political ad revenue. Boston and Philadelphia had year-over-year revenue increases of more than $10 million, and generated double-digit revenue growth, along with Detroit, Fort Myers, Las Vegas, New Jersey, and Wilmington on a year-over-year basis. Digital revenue for the quarter and year grew to 47.3% and 51.6%, respectively, to $10.7 million and $32.7 million, respectively, and we are pleased with the returns we are getting on our investment in growing this revenue stream and diversifying our revenue sources. Station operating expenses for the quarter increased $8.5 million or 17.6% to $56.8 million resulting in fourth quarter ‘21 SOI of $13.9 million. Our quarterly expense increased includes $2.5 million directly related to the buildup of our digital agencies. The other drivers of the expense increase were $3.1 million of increased wages primarily from the reinstatement of 2020 wage reduction to pre-pandemic level including the return of furloughed employees. A $2.8 million cost of sales…

Thank you, Marie. As the data confirms, our radio stations continue to gain share an audience, driven by the highest quality multi-platform local content in the industry. In the following Nelson audio rating period, our overall share increased by 1% quarter-to-quarter with the top advertising demographic of adults 2,554, looking only at our largest PPM market, we saw a 4.5% share increase quarter-to-quarter and an 8% year-over-year increase with adults 2554. This is the largest quarterly share we have ever had in our PPM markets. We currently have the highest average cluster share when compared to the largest radio broadcasters in PPM and our digital content strategy continues to show great success. And in Q4 impressions grew by over 39% year-over-year and by 20% on a quarterly sequential basis. This was once again the biggest quarter ever for digital impressions at Beasley. In addition to ratings and audience performance, Beasley puts a higher priority on serving the communities in which we operate, and almost every station here at held charity events during the holiday season. For example, WMMR's President Steve's morning show hosted their annual camp out for hunger food drive or 2.3 million pounds of food and over $1 million in cash was collected for the hungry in Philadelphia. While the Morning Show, Orlando in the freak show held their annual toys drive, where they collected almost 700 bicycles $80,000 and gift cards and four positive toys for the children of Tampa. It was an amazing quarter of audience growth and good causes for the content department here at Beasley. Now moving on to esports, which continues to be a growing and popular facet of our company. During 2021, we continue to focus on expanding our viewership, fan based and revenue stream. We have a new player roster and…

Thanks, Caroline. Yes, we do.

The first question is there is lots of talk about the great resignation and companies having a harder time recruiting new employees. Is Beasley seeing any impact?

Yes, we are seeing some impact from the -- and we're seeing this primarily from the digital side of the company. And I will say that we are adjusting accordingly. And we're looking at different options to address this great resignation. We believe that we're going to be able to turn these challenges into opportunities, helping us to -- allowing us -- in making sure that we focus on new areas of recruitment. And as another point on that is that we're not seeing as many resignations on the radio side. And I really attribute this to the culture of our radio stations and the dynamic brands that we have in the market where the radio stations are located.

Thank you. And the second, and the last question we got, is that can you give us the political expectations for 2022?

Sure. So, let's just go back and review where we were in 2018. We ended the year at about $5 million in political, so that's a non-presidential year. 2020, we ended the year with $15 million in political. So, for 2022, we are looking at political revenue to come in slightly north of 2018.

Perfect, thank you.

So, with that, those were all the questions that we had. I thank you for your time. And should you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Marie or myself. Thank you.

And once again, that does conclude today's conference. We thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect.