Greetings, and welcome to Gannett's Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn this conference over to your host, Ms. Trisha Gosser, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, ma'am. You may begin.

Thank you, Laura. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today to discuss Gannett's second quarter 2021 results. Presented on today's call will be Mike Reed, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; and Doug Horne, Chief Financial Officer. During this call, we will discuss Gannett's financial results for the quarter. If you navigate to the Gannett website, you will find that we have posted an earnings supplement in addition to our earlier press release. We will be referencing it today on the call as it provides you with additional detail on this quarter's performance. Before we begin, please let me remind you that this call is being recorded. In addition, statements made during this call with respect to future results and events are forward-looking statements that are based upon current expectations. Actual results and events could differ materially from those discussed today. We encourage you to read the forward-looking statements disclaimer in the presentation as well as the risk factors described in Gannett's filings made with the SEC. In addition, we will be discussing some non-GAAP financial information during the call today. You can find reconciliations of our non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP measures in the earnings supplement. Lastly, I would like to remind you that nothing on this call constitutes an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to purchase any interest in Gannett. The webcast and audiocast are copyrighted material of Gannett and may not be duplicated, reproduced or rebroadcasted without our consent. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Mike Reed, Gannett's Chairman and CEO.

Thanks, Trisha, and good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us this morning for Gannett's second quarter earnings call. We've had a very strong second quarter, and are excited to share with you many of the details. Our second quarter financial results outpaced expectations with revenue growing 6.8% year-over-year on a same-store basis, and adjusted EBITDA growing 48% as compared to the prior year second quarter. That marks our third consecutive quarter of adjusted EBITDA growth to the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA of $116 million in the second quarter brings our LTM adjusted EBITDA to $453 million. Within the quarter, the Company repaid approximately $46 million in debt under our 5-year Term Loan B. This was done with asset sales and with excess cash flow. This brings our total principal balance under our term Loan B below $1 billion. We also finished the quarter with $159 million of cash on hand. Equally as important, we continue to make tremendous progress on our long-term strategy and against our five strategic pillars. As a result, our digital revenue is now 32.2% or about 1/3 of total revenue. And importantly, the digital category is growing strongly, up 33% in Q2 over prior year. We had previously laid out a clear vision and strategy for the Company, and we've continued to make progress on that strategy. Accelerating digital subscription growth is our first pillar and remains our top priority. We ended the second quarter with approximately 1.4 million digital-only subscribers, adding 160,000 new net subscribers in the quarter. This subscriber growth for the Company outpaced our previous high, which we set during the first quarter of this year, with 120,000 net new adds. And our TAM for growth in the digital subscription category is quite large. With the 174 million unique visitors per month in…

Thank you, Mike, and good morning, everyone. For Q2, total operating revenues were $804.3 million, which was an increase of 4.9% as compared to the prior year quarter. On a same-store basis, operating revenues increased 6.8% as compared to the prior year quarter, which was the quarter most significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Adjusted EBITDA totaled $115.8 million in the quarter, which was up $37.8 million or 48.4% year-over-year. The adjusted EBITDA margin was 14.4%, up from 10.2% in the prior year quarter and 12.9% in Q1. This performance reflects the impact of year-over-year revenue growth while holding adjusted EBITDA expenses relatively flat. These are strong results, particularly considering that the prior year benefited from approximately $150 million of largely temporary cost reductions put in place in response to the pandemic. On the bottom line, we achieved $15.1 million of net income and $30.1 million of adjusted net income attributable to Gannett in the second quarter. Moving now to our segments. The Publishing segment revenue in the second quarter was $724.5 million, up 4.2% as compared to the prior year quarter and up 5.6% year-over-year on a same-store basis. Current advertising revenue increased 10.7% compared to the prior year on a same-store basis as a result of the pandemic's impact in the prior year. Digital advertising and marketing services revenues increased 35.9% on a same-store basis, reflecting strong operational execution from our national and local sales teams. Despite a slightly smaller audience base compared to last year's peak new cycle, which was driven by the pandemic and the political environment, digital media revenue increased 46.9% versus the prior year. National sales of digital advertising grew 77% as compared to the prior year and over 49% on a two-year basis. We saw strong national demand for both our owned and…

Thank you. I'd like to close our call this morning by just reiterating how pleased we are to have made the significant progress that we did in the second quarter against each of our five strategic pillars. We have tremendous momentum that we're carrying forward into the third quarter and the second half of the year. And just to recap, we achieved record growth in digital-only subscribers. We recorded strong growth in our Digital Marketing Solutions business with increasing EBITDA margins in that category. We drove improved results in our print business. We signed an important sports betting agreement in our growth businesses segment. We achieved continued growth in our events business despite the ongoing impact of the pandemic, and we remain ahead of schedule in reducing debt and leverage, generating strong cash flows. These results not only demonstrate the progress that we are making against each of our key initiatives, but they are also illustrative of the inflection we are seeing in our business towards growth here at Gannett. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the entire Gannett team for their passion, commitment and dedication to the execution of our strategy. And I'd also like to thank our investors for their continued support in our company. We look forward to reporting our continued progress again next quarter and to speaking with many of you over the coming months. Thank you.

Thank you for joining us today. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Enjoy the rest of your day.