Good morning, and welcome to Beasley Broadcast Group's Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. 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 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 this morning's news announcement and on the company's website. I would also like to remind listeners that following its completion, a replay of today's call can be accessed for five days on the company's website at 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's CEO, Caroline Beasley. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Rob. Good morning, everyone and thank you for joining us to review our second quarter results. Marie Tedesco, our CFO is with me this morning. So consistent with the pacings we provided when we reported Q1 and reflecting continued softness across ad-reliant businesses. Our second quarter same-station revenue was down just 2%. Adjusting for the WJBR divestiture and the outlaw. And on an actual basis, total revenue was down 4.8%. Now reflecting our continued focus on leveraging and monetizing our local content and reach second quarter same-station digital revenue grew by an impressive 10.2%. Our revenue mix shift toward digital continues with it now accounting for 21.5% of second quarter total revenue, and that's up from 19.4% in second quarter '23 and up from 16.5% in second quarter '22. For the full year of 2024, we expect digital to account for between 20% and 25% of our total revenue, and this is driven by our content creation capability and continued success and growth of our digital service offerings. As such we intend to continue to expand our digital sales force to leverage our strong local brands, content and relationships by offering a broad range of advertising solutions to clients. Another bright spot for the quarter was political as during Q2, we generated $586,000 in net political revenue, and this includes both traditional and digital, exceeding our second quarter political revenue budget by 72%. This compares to $228,000 in political revenue in second quarter of 2020, so we’re off to a strong start with political, and we expect a robust second half of 2024 as several of our markets are well-positioned in swing states. Now national showed signs of stabilizing in Q2 with same-station national up 7.3% and up 3.5% ex-political. And on an actual basis, national increased 6.4%…

Thanks, Caroline and good morning everyone. As Caroline mentioned, second quarter total net revenue was $60.4 million, and six of our markets, including Augusta, Charlotte, Fayetteville, Fort Myers, New Jersey and Tampa exceeded prior year second quarter revenues, as did our in-house agency digital direct. The main drivers of the overall revenue decline was related to the divested Wilmington station, the elimination of the outlaws and the decline in local stock business, which was somewhat offset by continued growth in digital and political revenue. Looking closer at the quarter on a same-station basis, excluding the divested Wilmington station and esport, April was up 2.3%, May declined 5.2% and June dropped 2.7% year-over-year, resulting in a 2% same-station revenue decline for the quarter. Operating expenses for the quarter decreased 3.9% year-over-year or $2 million, and SOI declined $1 million year-over-year to $11.1 million. The expense decline was primarily due to the divestiture of our Wilmington station and the elimination of our esport team, along with the May 2024 headcount reduction somewhat offset by a $1.3 million non-recurring severance costs. Excluding the onetime severance costs, SOI increased 2% or $250,000 for the quarter. Same station expenses dropped by $28,000 driven by the headcount reduction, offset by increased third-party costs and severance expenses. Consequently, same-station SOI declined $1.2 million for the quarter to $11.3 million. And excluding the one-time severance costs, same-station SOI increased $60,000 for the quarter. Now looking at our revenue categories for the quarter. Consumer services remained our largest revenue category at 31.1% of total revenue with a decline of 1% year-over-year. Retail ended in second place, representing 16.2% in the quarter, falling 5.4% year-over-year, mostly from Detroit and New Jersey. Entertainment number three was up 4.5% in the quarter, accounting for [16.1%] (ph) of total revenue. The largest entertainment…

Thank you Marie. Digital revenue growth remains a strategic priority for us, and I'm happy to report that our digital segment reported SOI of $3.1 million and a margin of 24% for the quarter. As we evolve this business and look to drive efficiencies and reduce digital expenses, we decided to close our white label agency Guarantee Digital effective July 15. In doing so, we eliminated a large portion of their operating expenses, and I'm pleased to announce we successfully transferred 75% of the GD revenue to our in-house agency Digital Direct. This reorganization is expected to increase our bottom-line by about $1 million. Additionally, we decided to exit our esports content initiative, its monthly past profitability contradicts our hyper focus on reducing leverage. Our multi-platform content strategy is consistently delivering dominant market share results and strong digital impressions. On the digital side, our focus has been growing and monetizing our social media audiences and leading platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube, in addition, connecting our show pages to our social media management platform, maximize our revenue opportunities and increase our monetizable social media followers by nearly $1 million over the past six months. And while our strategy has predominantly revolved around station social accounts, we believe these partnerships will open more doors for engagement and reach of new audiences. We expect this growth to continue with revenue to follow. And finally, I'm really to announce that we hired a head of digital content marketing with extensive marketing expertise to help us, as we continue to build our new digital revenue streams on behalf of the company. And on the traditional side in Nielsen Audio PPM ratings, we remain the dominant player in most of our large markets. We currently have the top-rated station in Boston, Charlotte, Detroit, Las…

Yes. Thanks, Caroline. Well, most questions we received were addressed in our remarks, we do have a couple of them that we will address at this point. So the first one, our view in any discussions with creditors about the February 2026 bond maturity.

So what I can say about that is that we are laser-focused on addressing our first quarter of '26 maturity, and we will have more details that come on this near term.

Great. The next question we received is, are there more assets that could be sold?

We are open to selling assets at an attractive and deleveraging price.

Great. And the last question, I will take that. Do you realize -- you realized $2 million of cost improvements in the quarter, how far into the $10 million cost savings program are you? So as reviewed in our prepared remarks, the same-station expenses, excluding the divestiture of WJBR and Outlaws, we were flattish, adding back the onetime severance of $1.3 million and increased digital expenses from the increased digital revenue, our expenses would have dropped approximately $2.2 million. Now our second quarter expense reductions occurred in the month of May. So we did not see the full quarter benefit of the savings in the second quarter. And that concludes the additional question.

All right. Thank you all. We really appreciate you attending all and your interest in our company. All right. And should you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Marie or myself.

Thank you. This will conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. We thank you for your participation. Have a wonderful day.