Gray Media Inc (GTN) 2024 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen to the Gray Media Q3 2024 earnings call. I will now turn the program over to Chairman and CEO Mr Hilton Howell Junior.

女士們、先生們，歡迎參加葛瑞媒體 2024 年第三季財報電話會議。我現在將把該計劃移交給董事長兼首席執行官希爾頓·豪厄爾·朱尼先生 (Hilton Howell Junior)。

Thank you operator and good morning everyone and thank you all for being here as the operator mentioned, I'm Hilton Howell, the Chairman and CEO of Gray Television. And with me here in Atlanta are all of our executive officers, Pat Laplatney, our President and Co, CEO Sandy Brelan, our Chief Operating Officer, Kevin Latek, our chief legal and Development officer and Jeff Gignac, our Chief Financial Officer. As usual, we will begin with a disclaimer that Kevin will.

謝謝接線員，大家早安，感謝大家來到這裡，正如接線員提到的，我是希爾頓·豪厄爾，格雷電視台的董事長兼首席執行官。和我一起在亞特蘭大的還有我們所有的執行長：我們的總裁兼聯合創始人帕特·拉普拉特尼(Pat Laplatney)、我們的首席營運長桑迪·布雷蘭(Sandy Brelan)、我們的首席法律和開發官凱文·拉泰克(Kevin Latek) 以及我們的財務長傑夫·吉尼亞克(Jeff Gignac)。像往常一樣，我們將首先聲明凱文會的免責聲明。

Thank you Hilton. Good morning everyone. Great television inc, commonly known as gray media or gray uses its website as a key source of company information.

謝謝希爾頓。大家早安。Great Television Inc，通常稱為灰色媒體或灰色，使用其網站作為公司資訊的主要來源。

The website address is www.gray media.com.

網址是www.gray media.com。

We will file our quarterly report on form 10-Q with the SEC today included on the call may be a discussion nongaap financial measures and in particular, just at ebida leverage ratio, denominator and certain leverage ratios, these metrics are not meant to replace GAAP measurements but are provided as supplements to assist the public in its analysis and valuation of our company included in our earnings release, as well as on our website are reconciliations of these financial measures to the GAAP measures reported in our financial statements.

今天，我們將向 SEC 提交 10-Q 表格季度報告，電話會議中可能會討論非公認會計準則財務指標，特別是 EBDA 槓桿率、分母和某些槓桿率，這些指標並不意味著取代 GAAP我們的收益發布中包含這些財務指標，但作為補充提供，以幫助公眾對我們公司進行分析和估值，我們的網站上還列出了這些財務指標與我們財務報表中報告的公認會計原則指標的調節表。

Certain matters discussed on the call may include forward-looking statements regarding among other things, future operating results. Those statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results in the future could differ from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements as a result of various important factors that have been set forth in the company's most recent reports filed with the SEC including our most recent quarterly report on form 10-Q and our most recent earnings release, the company undertakes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements and now give a call to Hilton.

電話會議中討論的某些事項可能包括有關未來營運績效的前瞻性陳述。這些陳述存在許多風險和不確定性。由於公司向 SEC 提交的最新報告（包括我們最新的 10 表格季度報告）中列出的各種重要因素，未來的實際結果可能與任何前瞻性陳述中明示或暗示的結果有所不同。在最近發布的收益報告中，該公司沒有義務更新這些前瞻性陳述，現在請致電希爾頓。

Thank you, Kevin. Great Media is an exceptionally strong company that has continued to grow, invest and evolve to meet the challenges and opportunities in our ever changing industry. We take great pride in reporting to you every quarter, great success in serving our communities and continuing to deliver financial results for all of our stakeholders. As you all saw in this morning's earnings release gray had a strong third quarter with our revenues largely in line with our guidance, with the exception of slightly lower than expected political advertising revenues. In addition, you saw that our expenses were well below the low end of our guidance range as we continue to focus on ways to be more efficient. Specifically, the highlights for the quarter are as follows. Total revenue in the third quarter was $950 million. An increase of 18% from the third quarter of 2023 due to the increase in political advertising revenue net income attributable to common shareholders was 83 million in the third quarter compared to a net loss of $53 million in the third quarter of 2023 adjusted at the dollar was 338 million in the third quarter of 2024. An increase of 61% from the third quarter of 2023 core ad revenue in the third quarter of 2024 was 365 million.

謝謝你，凱文。Great Media 是一家異常強大的公司，不斷發展、投資和發展，以應對不斷變化的行業中的挑戰和機會。我們非常自豪每季向您報告在服務社區和繼續為所有利害關係人提供財務業績方面取得的巨大成功。正如大家在今天早上的財報中看到的那樣，葛瑞第三季度業績強勁，我們的收入基本上符合我們的指引，但政治廣告收入略低於預期。此外，您還看到，我們的費用遠低於指導範圍的下限，因為我們繼續專注於提高效率的方法。具體來說，本季的亮點如下。第三季總營收為9.5億美元。由於政治廣告收入增加，較 2023 年第三季成長 18% 第三季歸屬於普通股股東的淨利潤為 8,300 萬美元，而 2023 年第三季按美元調整後的淨虧損為 5,300 萬美元2024年第三季為3.38億。2024年第三季核心廣告營收較2023年第三季成長61%為3.65億。

An increase of 1% from the third quarter of 2023 political ad revenue in the third quarter alone was $173 million which was slightly below our guidance range but only $17 million below our political advertising advertising revenues in the record year of 2020. At the end of the third quarter, our leverage ratio is calculated in our senior credit agreement net of all cash was 5.67 to 1 as we repaid almost $250 million during the third quarter and are looking at a total repayment of half a billion dollars. By the end of the year, we are proud that we have managed to grow. Our core ad revenue in the third quarter. Despite some headwinds and political displacement, our exceptionally strong station sales teams continue to drive core ad revenue growth particularly within digital and new local direct sales channels by continuing to execute on the mission of delivering exceptional value and reach for our advertising clients.

光是第三季的政治廣告收入就比 2023 年第三季成長 1%，達到 1.73 億美元，略低於我們的指導範圍，但僅比 2020 年創紀錄的政治廣告收入低 1,700 萬美元。截至第三季末，我們的高級信貸協議扣除所有現金後的槓桿率為 5.67 比 1，因為我們在第三季償還了近 2.5 億美元，預計還款總額為 5.5 億美元。到今年年底，我們為自己的成長感到自豪。我們第三季的核心廣告收入。儘管存在一些阻力和政治位移，我們異常強大的電台銷售團隊繼續推動核心廣告收入成長，特別是在數位和新的本地直銷管道中，繼續執行為我們的廣告客戶提供卓越價值和影響力的使命。

Many of our southeastern markets suspended and were curtailed airing commercials in the last days of the third quarter as they ramped up coverage of the threat from hurricane Helene and the terrible damage that followed. We believe that our commitment to those communities made a significant difference before and after the storm and we believe perhaps saved a number of lives, particularly in the affected areas of Florida, Georgia and our North Carolina communities.

我們的許多東南部市場在第三季的最後幾天暫停並減少了商業廣告的播放，因為它們加大了對颶風海倫的威脅以及隨之而來的嚴重破壞的報道。我們相信，我們對這些社區的承諾在風暴前後產生了重大影響，我們相信也許挽救了許多人的生命，特別是在佛羅裡達州、喬治亞州和北卡羅來納州社區的受影響地區。

Our political ad revenue was very strong in the first half of the year relative to 2020. When you adjust for the absence of a competitive Presidential primary in either party, we began the third quarter with strength and optimism as we saw all the ingredients of a record political cycle.

與 2020 年相比，我們上半年的政治廣告收入非常強勁。當你根據兩黨都沒有競爭性的總統初選進行調整時，我們以力量和樂觀的態度開始了第三季度，因為我們看到了創紀錄的政治週期的所有要素。

As we saw two years ago, many of the expected competitive races and ballots were simply not that competitive all every day thereafter, tremendous amounts of political ad spending shifted to a fewer number of more competitive races that largely fell outside of our station footprint. Essentially Montana and Pennsylvania. In the end, our third quarter political ad revenue was quite strong yet finished below our record third quarter, political ad revenues in 2020 for the first for the full year. For 2024 we expect approximately half a billion dollars of political revenue, which as it appears to us makes us the largest recipient of political ad dollars in the television broadcasting business on both a gross and a per TV household basis.

正如我們兩年前所看到的那樣，許多預期的競爭性競選和選票根本就不那麼競爭了，此後每天都沒有那麼激烈，大量的政治廣告支出轉移到了少數更具競爭性的競選上，而這些競選基本上不在我們的電台足跡範圍內。主要是蒙大拿州和賓夕法尼亞州。最終，我們第三季的政治廣告收入相當強勁，但仍低於我們創紀錄的第三季政治廣告收入，這是 2020 年全年的首次。到 2024 年，我們預計政治收入約為 5 億美元，在我們看來，這使我們成為電視廣播業務中政治廣告收入的最大接受者，無論是按總金額還是按每個電視家庭計算。

That is something that we are exceptionally proud of because we reached 36 and some of our competitors double our reach. So we're happy to be at the top of that pile. Today's earnings release also highlighted that the company is not sitting still. We are continuing our keen focus on developing local direct and digital business across our station footprint. We are continuing to produce news and investigative pieces that local audiences want. In fact, we recently had five stations and our National Investigate Unit Investigating Unit Investigate TV, received eight National Edward Murrow Award for excellence in journalism.

這是我們感到非常自豪的事情，因為我們已經達到了 36 家，而且我們的一些競爭對手的規模甚至是我們的兩倍。所以我們很高興能成為其中的佼佼者。今天發布的財報也凸顯出該公司並沒有坐以待斃。我們將繼續專注於在我們的車站範圍內發展本地直接和數位業務。我們將繼續製作當地觀眾想要的新聞和調查作品。事實上，我們最近有五個電視台和我們的國家調查單位調查單位調查電視，因其在新聞方面的卓越表現而獲得了八項國家愛德華·默羅獎。

We also are continuing to expand our local sports broadcast on the expense side. We launched a significant cost containment exercise this past August that touches nearly all aspects of the company. As Pat will explain the leadership team here has worked hard to find more efficient ways to continuing delivering the highest level of service to our local communities and customers without impacting our values, our news coverage or our sincere commitment to our local communities, reducing debt and leverage remains our top capital allocation priority. We have taken concrete steps to act on this priority and we will continue to do so until we have achieved our goals in this area. Our earnings release details our most recent efforts which Jeff will address further later in the call. Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, we are taking actions necessary to be a stronger, more efficient and impactful company that is the best equipped to compete in the ever changing business environment. What you read in today's press release and we'll hear in today's call, we will reinforce our commitment to positioning the company for long term success. And now we'll ask Pat to provide more color on our operations.

我們還在費用方面繼續擴大我們當地的體育轉播。今年八月，我們發起了一項重大成本控制活動，幾乎涉及公司的所有方面。正如帕特將解釋的那樣，這裡的領導團隊一直在努力尋找更有效的方法，繼續為當地社區和客戶提供最高水平的服務，而不影響我們的價值觀、我們的新聞報導或我們對當地社區的真誠承諾，減少債務和槓桿仍然是我們資本配置的首要任務。我們已採取具體步驟來落實這項優先事項，並將繼續這樣做，直到實現這一領域的目標。我們的收益發布詳細介紹了我們最近的努力，傑夫將在稍後的電話會議中進一步討論。展望 2025 年及以後，我們正在採取必要行動，成為一家更強大、更有效率、更有影響力的公司，在不斷變化的商業環境中具備最佳競爭力。您在今天的新聞稿中讀到的內容以及我們將在今天的電話會議中聽到的內容，我們將加強我們對公司定位以取得長期成功的承諾。現在我們將請帕特為我們的營運提供更多資訊。

Thank you, Hilton.

謝謝你，希爾頓。

Our core ad revenues. This quarter were 1% higher than the third quarter of 2023 which is also 1% ahead of the third quarter of 22. The consultant mentioned our core ad revenue strength occurred despite a number of headwinds particularly political displacement. This achievement is driven by our success in recruiting new local businesses to advertise on our stations and our digital platforms. Our new local direct business in Q3 2024 was up almost 14% over Q3 2023 in our local markets that are audited by a third party. The audits show that we increased our share of the total local TV ad markets to a new third quarter record. These results are very encouraging and gratifying, especially because many stations posting share growth in these audits did so as affiliates of CBS ABC and Fox competing against the record viewership of the Paris Olympics. This summer, our NBC stations performed well with the summer Olympics generating north of $20 million some of which was political advertising.

我們的核心廣告收入。本季比 2023 年第三季成長 1%，也比 22 年第三季成長 1%。該顧問提到，儘管存在許多阻力，特別是政治流離失所，但我們的核心廣告收入仍然強勁。這項成就得益於我們成功招募新的本地企業在我們的電台和數位平台上做廣告。在經過第三方審計的當地市場，我們 2024 年第三季的新本地直接業務比 2023 年第三季成長了近 14%。審計顯示，我們在本地電視廣告市場總量中的份額增加到了第三季的新紀錄。這些結果非常令人鼓舞和令人欣慰，特別是因為許多電視台在這些審計中公佈的份額增長是作為哥倫比亞廣播公司、美國廣播公司和福克斯的附屬機構與巴黎奧運會的收視率紀錄進行競爭的。今年夏天，我們的 NBC 電視台表現出色，夏季奧運會帶來了超過 2000 萬美元的收入，其中一些是政治廣告。

Digital ad sales continues to be a bright spot for us. We are seeing year over year, double digit growth rates and new records for digital ad revenue and new digital accounts nearly every month. In the third quarter, we had 22 markets that more than 1 million in digital ad sales, which is a new record for us.

數位廣告銷售仍然是我們的一個亮點。我們幾乎每個月都看到數位廣告收入和新數位帳戶的年成長率達到兩位數並創下新紀錄。第三季度，我們有22個市場的數位廣告銷售額超過100萬，這對我們來說是一個新紀錄。

In terms of political ad revenue. Hilton provided a good description of the political ad landscape for us. Our political ad revenues were from a historical basis quite strong going into the third quarter. As the third quarter progressed, it appears that the political parties felt there were fewer truly competitives, Senate and gubernatorial races in our footprint.

就政治廣告收入而言。希爾頓為我們很好地描述了政治廣告格局。進入第三季度，我們的政治廣告收入從歷史來看相當強勁。隨著第三季的進展，各政黨似乎認為我們的足跡中真正競爭的參議員和州長競選越來越少。

We expect that when the year ends, we will see our political ad revenue in 2024 meeting or exceeding 2020 2020 numbers at the President level, the house level state and local level as well as issue and ballot initiatives. The only category where we saw revenue decrease occurred in the Senate races which has long been our largest political ad category in 2020. Our current station portfolio had about 331 million of political revenue from senate races including the two Georgia runoffs versus 121 million of political ad revenue for Senate races. This year, the $200 million difference resulted from less spending in some competitive Senate races in our footprint this year compared to 2024. In the end, we brought in about half a billion dollars, which is a lot of money and in which we use to pay down debt in most quarters. Since the end of the pandemic gray has beaten the public peer group average year over year in core ad revenue performance. And it appears that we led the peer group average again in the third quarter. Despite this momentum, we anticipate the core ad revenues in the fourth quarter will be down compared to 23 for context in 2020 core ad revenue from our current station group declined 10% in the fourth quarter from the prior year due primarily to displacement and COVID pressures.

我們預計，到今年結束時，我們將看到 2024 年總統級別、眾議院級別、州和地方級別以及問題和投票倡議的政治廣告收入達到或超過 2020 年的數字。我們看到收入下降的唯一類別是參議院競選，這長期以來一直是我們 2020 年最大的政治廣告類別。我們目前的電台組合從參議院競選（包括喬治亞州的兩次決選）獲得了約 3.31 億美元的政治收入，而參議院競選的政治廣告收入為 1.21 億美元。今年，出現 2 億美元的差異是因為與 2024 年相比，我們今年在一些競爭激烈的參議院競選中的支出減少了。最終，我們賺到了大約 5 億美元，這是一筆很大的錢，我們用這些錢來償還大多數季度的債務。自疫情結束以來，灰色的核心廣告收入表現逐年超過了公共同行的平均水準。看來我們在第三季再次領先同業平均。儘管有這種勢頭，我們預計第四季的核心廣告收入將比2020 年的23% 有所下降，我們目前電台集團第四季的核心廣告收入將比上年同期下降10%，這主要是由於流離失所和新冠肺炎壓力。

In Q4,22 our core ad revenue declined 4% from Q4,21. We also attribute a significant piece of our core ad revenue slowdown to the move of Southeastern Conference football from CBS to ABC.

22 年第 4 季度，我們的核心廣告收入較 21 年第 4 季下降了 4%。我們也將核心廣告收入放緩的一個重要原因歸因於東南聯盟橄欖球從哥倫比亞廣播公司（CBS）轉移到美國廣播公司（ABC）。

We are the largest CBS affiliate owner and we have CBS as our affiliation in many Southeastern markets. Think Atlanta, Knoxville, Baton Rouge, Lexington Waco College Station, among others, the, the replacement of SEC with Big 10 will reduce core and political ad revenue in the fourth quarter. Overall for the full year 2024 we expect core ad revenue to be down slightly which is not unusual in the political year.

我們是最大的 CBS 附屬公司所有者，並且我們在許多東南市場都有 CBS 作為我們的附屬機構。想想亞特蘭大、諾克斯維爾、巴吞魯日、列剋星敦韋科學院站等，用 Big 10 取代 SEC 將減少第四季度的核心和政治廣告收入。總體而言，我們預計 2024 年全年核心廣告收入將略有下降，這在政治年度並不罕見。

On the expense side for the third quarter of 2024 our broadcast operating expenses and corporate operating expenses were 14 million and 3 million below the low end of the expense guide guidance ranges respectively.

在 2024 年第三季的費用方面，我們的廣播營運費用和企業營運費用分別比費用指南指引範圍的下限低 1,400 萬美元和 300 萬美元。

For full year 24 we currently expect broadcast and corporate OpEx to be significant below significantly below our initial full year guidance provided in February to prepare for 2025 we launched a major effort in August to reduce spending across the company and to find ways to streamline operations without cutting back on the mission to serve our communities.

對於24 全年，我們目前預計廣播和企業營運支出將大幅低於我們2 月份提供的最初全年指導，為2025 年做準備。 ，並尋找在不影響營運的情況下簡化營運的方法。

Since August, we've identified and begun implementing various initiatives that will allow us to reduce our operating expense run rate by approximately $60 million on an annualized basis. We're also closely evaluating, evaluating our capital expenditure needs for 2025.

自 8 月以來，我們已經確定並開始實施各種舉措，這些舉措將使我們的營運費用運行率每年減少約 6000 萬美元。我們也正在密切評估 2025 年的資本支出需求。

Most of our expense reductions involve nonpersonnel expense categories.

我們的大部分費用削減涉及非人事費用類別。

We've also taken steps to reduce our personnel expenses. Beginning in August, we eliminated positions by suspending recruiting and by not filling certain positions following attrition. In the ordinary course, we also made some targeted reductions in head count.

我們也採取措施減少人員開支。從八月開始，我們透過暫停招募以及在人員流失後不再填補某些職位來消除職位。當然，我們也進行了一些針對性的裁員。

Every individual who is directly affected has played an important role in the success of our company. These actions are per personally difficult for everyone to gray and particularly painful for those impacted by the job restructurings, they are however, for the company to operate more efficiently for the long term benefit of all other employees and the communities that depend on us.

每一個直接受到影響的個人都對我們公司的成功扮演了重要角色。這些行動對每個人來說都是困難的，對於那些受到工作重組影響的人來說尤其痛苦，然而，它們對於公司為了所有其他員工和依賴我們的社區的長期利益而更有效地運營來說是有利的。

Sandy will now address some important operational developments.

桑迪現在將討論一些重要的營運發展。

Once again in the third quarter and into the fourth quarter, our stations along the Gulf coast served as a critical lifeline of information for communities dealing with devastating storms. Our trusted news and weather teams provided around the clock coverage of hurricanes, Francine Helene and Milton, even while some of the homes of our own employees suffered damage from those storms. This is where local broadcasters best serve their community, but we didn't let the storm slow us down. In late September, we announced a significant mediawise deal with the New Orleans Pelicans. It brings every nonnational Pelicans NBA game to 4.1 million households through Gulf Coast Sports and Entertainment network. Our new multistate distribution venture that's anchored by our New Orleans television station continuing with this momentum, our stations will be broadcasting an ever increasing number of local and regional games from professional and college teams through this fall and next spring from the Chicago Bulls Blackhawks and White Sox games to the NBA Mavericks and the NHL crack in.

在第三季和第四季，我們墨西哥灣沿岸的監測站再次成為應對毀滅性風暴的社區的重要訊息生命線。我們值得信賴的新聞和氣象團隊全天候提供颶風弗朗辛·海倫和米爾頓的報道，即使我們自己員工的一些房屋因風暴而受損。這是當地廣播公司為社區提供最佳服務的地方，但我們並沒有讓風暴放慢腳步。九月下旬，我們宣布與紐奧良鵜鶘隊達成重大媒體交易。它透過墨西哥灣沿岸體育和娛樂網絡將每場非國家鵜鶘隊 NBA 比賽帶給 410 萬個家庭。我們新的多州發行企業以新奧爾良電視台為主導，繼續保持這一勢頭，我們的電視台將在今年秋天和明年春天轉播越來越多的職業和大學球隊的本地和地區比賽，包括芝加哥公牛隊黑鷹隊和白鷹隊紅襪隊對陣 NBA 小牛隊和 NHL 的比賽即將開始。

Finally, this brings me to a question we get asked sometimes by investors as to why businesses, political campaigns and local sports teams want to be on local television. We keep sharing our news ratings results including a deep dive in an October 2023 Investor Day. Still, I think it's worth answering this question with an interesting comparison between the top rated cable news show and our own local newscast.

最後，這讓我想到了投資者有時會問的問題：為什麼企業、政治競選活動和當地運動隊希望出現在當地電視上。我們不斷分享我們的新聞評級結果，包括 2023 年 10 月投資者日的深入探討。儘管如此，我認為透過對收視率最高的有線新聞節目和我們自己的當地新聞廣播進行有趣的比較來回答這個問題是值得的。

In the third quarter of 2024 the Fox News program five, which is available in 67 million homes pulls in more viewers than any program on cable with an average of 3.5 million viewers. That's impressive but not nearly as impressive as Gray's 5 p.m. newscast, which are available in 36% of us households collectively, our 5 p.m. newscast averaged 4.4 million viewers. That's 25% more viewers than the five despite reaching less than one half as many homes. Think about that. That is the power and reach of local broadcast television and that's the reach that local businesses, political campaigns and local sports teams need want and can get from gray media. We're obviously very proud of the great work of our news teams from coast to coast and these ratings show our loyal viewers appreciate and depend on their important work. I now turn the call over to Jeff.

2024 年第三季度，福斯新聞第五頻道的觀眾人數達到 6,700 萬戶，比任何有線電視節目都多，平均觀眾人數為 350 萬。這令人印象深刻，但不如格雷下午 5 點那麼令人印象深刻。新聞廣播，總共有 36% 的美國家庭可以收看，下午 5 點新聞廣播平均有 440 萬觀眾。儘管到達的家庭數量不到五家的一半，但收視人數卻比這五家多了 25%。想想看。這就是當地廣播電視的力量和影響力，也是當地企業、政治競選活動和當地運動隊伍需要並且可以從灰色媒體獲得的影響力。顯然，我們對全國各地新聞團隊的出色工作感到非常自豪，這些收視率表明我們忠實的觀眾欣賞並依賴他們的重要工作。我現在把電話轉給傑夫。

Thank you, Sandy. The team's already covered our Q3 and our outlook. So my comments will focus on our balance sheet as Hilton mentioned earlier, reducing debt and leverage remains our top capital allocation priority. We continue to improve. We continue to improve our balance sheet in Q3. During the quarter, we reduced our outstanding debt principal balance by $246 million returning our first lien in total leverage levels to 3.0 and 5.67 times respectively. This is in line with the levels following our early June refinancing in a sequential and a sequential improvement of approximately a quarter turn of leverage from June 30th 2024.

謝謝你，桑迪。團隊已經介紹了我們的第三季和我們的前景。因此，正如希爾頓之前提到的，我的評論將集中在我們的資產負債表上，減少債務和槓桿仍然是我們資本配置的首要任務。我們不斷改進。我們在第三季繼續改善資產負債表。本季度，我們將未償債務本金餘額減少了 2.46 億美元，將總槓桿水準的第一留置權分別恢復至 3.0 倍和 5.67 倍。這與我們 6 月初再融資後的水平一致，自 2024 年 6 月 30 日起，槓桿率連續改善約四分之一。

The debt reduction during third quarter was completed through a combination of open market repurchases under our previously announced board authorization and repayments at par. In addition to the previously announced $29 million repurchase of our 2027 notes at 92.1% a par. We repurchased approximately 16 million of our 2021 term loan D at an average price of just under 91% A par.

第三季的債務削減是透過我們先前宣布的董事會授權下的公開市場回購和以面額償還相結合完成的。除了先前宣布的 2,900 萬美元以面額 92.1% 回購 2027 年票據外。我們以略低於 A 面額 91% 的平均價格回購了約 1,600 萬美元的 2021 年定期貸款 D。

During Q3, we repaid the full 200 in that was drawn under our $680 million revolving credit facility at June 30.

在第三季度，我們償還了 6 月 30 日根據 6.8 億美元循環信貸額度提取的全部 200 筆貸款。

Also during Q3, we entered into agreements whereby we will retire an additional 39 million of our 2021 term loan at an average price of 92.6% a par which we expect to close in November of 2024.

同樣在第三季度，我們簽訂了協議，將按面值 92.6% 的平均價格額外償還 3,900 萬美元的 2021 年定期貸款，預計將於 2024 年 11 月完成。

Looking forward for full year 2024 we expect to reduce our total net debt outstanding by approximately $500 million. We announced this morning that our board has authorized a reset of our open market repurchase authorization to $250 million and we will continue to take a balanced approach and look to capitalize on opportunities to efficiently reduce our debt.

展望 2024 年全年，我們預計未償淨債務總額將減少約 5 億美元。今天早上我們宣布，董事會已授權將公開市場回購授權重置為 2.5 億美元，我們將繼續採取平衡的做法，並尋求利用機會有效減少債務。

One notable to our free cash flow outlook that I'd like to highlight is on the tax side, as you may have seen in our release. We determined during the course of filing our 2023 tax return that the portion of our interest expense attributable to real estate primarily due to assembly Atlanta coming online is fully deductible rather than limited under IRS rules. As a result, we expect to benefit from that deduction in our cash tax payments this year and on a go forward basis.

我想強調的自由現金流前景中值得注意的一個是稅收方面，正如您可能在我們的新聞稿中看到的那樣。我們在提交 2023 年報稅表的過程中確定，主要由於亞特蘭大組裝廠上線而導致的房地產利息支出部分可以完全扣除，而不是根據國稅局的規定進行限制。因此，我們預計今年和今後都將從現金稅的扣除中受益。

So to summarize, we're continuing to execute on the plan and pulling the levers that we have available to us to generate cash flow, the actions that we've taken on the expense side. A closer look at our capital needs and repaying our debt to reduce our interest burden, all enhance our cash flow profile going into 2025. This concludes my remarks and I will now turn the call back to Hilton for some closing.

總而言之，我們將繼續執行該計劃，並利用我們現有的槓桿來產生現金流，以及我們在費用方面採取的行動。仔細研究我們的資本需求並償還債務以減輕利息負擔，所有這些都將改善我們進入 2025 年的現金流狀況。我的發言到此結束，現在我將把電話轉回希爾頓進行結束。

Remarks Thank you, Jeff Operator. At this time, we ask you that you open up the line for any questions for any of our leadership team.

備註 謝謝您，Jeff Operator。此時，我們要求您開通熱線，向我們的任何領導團隊提出任何問題。

Absolutely. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, if you would like to join the question queue, you can press star one on your telephone keypad. Once again, that's star one on your telephone keypad to join the question queue and seeing several joining our, we'll take our first question from Aaron Watts of Deutsche Bank.

絕對地。女士們、先生們，此時，如果您想加入問題隊列，您可以按下電話鍵盤上的星號一。再次，按您電話鍵盤上的星號即可加入問題隊列，看到有幾個問題加入我們的行列，我們將接受德意志銀行的 Aaron Watts 提出的第一個問題。

Hi, everyone. Thanks for having me on. I have a couple questions. The first is a question around your core. A guidance. I'm hoping you can parse out your Q4 down 10.5% guide a bit more.

大家好。謝謝你邀請我參加。我有幾個問題。第一個是圍繞著你的核心的問題。一個指導。我希望您能進一步解析第四季度下降 10.5% 的指南。

Are you able to say how much of that was weather related? And it'd be really helpful to hear what you're seeing in the post election core ad environment generally, areas of strength, weakness, et cetera and how things feel turning the corner into 2025 I guess. Second, Jeff, I point your way with regards to the 60 million of run rate savings you announced. How should we think about the timing of that phasing in and hitting the P&L over the next several quarters? And are there any further cost actions you're you're exploring in any ways to kind of frame that incremental opportunity? And, and then finally, just regarding capital allocation, it sounds like the focus remains on debt reduction.

你能說出其中有多少是與天氣有關嗎？聽聽您在選舉後的核心廣告環境中所看到的整體情況、優勢領域、劣勢領域等，以及我想 2025 年拐點到來時的感受，這真的很有幫助。其次，傑夫，我為您指出了您宣布的 6000 萬運行率節省的情況。我們應該如何考慮在接下來的幾季中逐步實施並影響損益表的時機？您是否正在以任何方式探索任何進一步的成本行動來建立增量機會？最後，就資本配置而言，聽起來重點仍然是減少債務。

Do you envision continuing to be in the market repurchasing front end loans and bonds? How do you think about the timing of potentially accessing the capital markets to address your first maturities? And has there been any further consideration on reducing the dividend? Thank you.

您是否打算繼續在市場上回購前端貸款和債券？您如何看待可能進入資本市場以解決首次到期問題的時機？是否有進一步考慮減少股利？謝謝。

But thanks and hey, it's Pat the plat and you all start, 24, number of factors at play here. Right. So there's, there's political crowd out. We talked about sec, which is for us is material. And then, you know, we, we have some, I would say this, I'd say going forward, which I think was the thrust of your question. You know, we are cautiously optimistic about the remainder of the quarter. We have some green shoots, just in the last couple of days, which we think is a good sign and, and to be candid, not completely unexpected. So, you know, the better, the more improvement we see in Q4, the more optimistic we are about Q1,25 and the range of 25. So I think there's, I think there's some reason for optimism there, Jeff, I know you got a bunch of questions, Erin.

但謝謝，嘿，我是派特，你們都開始了，24，這裡起作用的因素很多。正確的。所以，存在政治排擠。我們談到了秒，這對我們來說很重要。然後，你知道，我們有一些，我會這樣說，我會說繼續前進，我認為這是你問題的主旨。您知道，我們對本季剩餘時間持謹慎樂觀態度。就在過去幾天，我們出現了一些萌芽，我們認為這是一個好兆頭，而且坦白說，這並不完全出乎意料。所以，你知道，我們在第四季看到的改善越好，我們對第一季、25 和 25 的範圍就越樂觀。所以我認為，我認為有一些樂觀的理由，傑夫，我知道你有很多問題，艾琳。

I jotted down a list so I'll try to pick through them in the order and if I miss anything, just weigh in. So first of all, on the 60 million of run rate savings and the timing of those. I guess the most of that, especially the personnel piece of that is already completed. So that's already, we're already, we've already achieved that. It's in the rearview mirror and that will start filtering through. I think you should think about that as much as anything as bending the curve. If you look over the last couple of years and in quarters, you've seen our run rate on expense growth come down. So you'll, you'll continue to see that come down as a result of these actions. There, there are a number of things that were renegotiation of contracts and workflow changes that we were able to make and those will take a little bit longer. But it'll be in starting beginning of the year in first quarter in terms of further cost actions. Look, we're continuously monitoring it, but there's nothing specific that's been identified as of right now. So we'll continue to look at things but nothing else planned at the moment.

我記下了一份清單，這樣我會嘗試按順序挑選它們，如果我錯過了什麼，請權衡一下。首先，關於 6000 萬運行率節省以及節省時間。我想其中大部分，尤其是人事部分已經完成。所以我們已經、我們已經實現了這一點。它在後視鏡中，並且將開始過濾。我認為你應該像考慮彎曲曲線一樣考慮這一點。如果您回顧過去幾年和幾個季度，您會發現我們的費用成長速度有所下降。因此，您將繼續看到這些行動導致這種情況下降。在那裡，我們能夠進行許多合約重新談判和工作流程更改，但這些事情將需要更長的時間。但就進一步的成本行動而言，將從今年年初的第一季開始。看，我們正在持續監控它，但目前還沒有發現任何具體情況。因此，我們將繼續關注此事，但目前沒有其他計劃。

Capital allocation. So the you can see that we reloaded the $250 million authorization from the board. So we're going to continue to be guided by where we can get good value. It, you know, we can go, it's not in any tranche of debt. And so we'll look at where things are trading. We will look if there's an opportunity to tap the capital markets to at, at a reasonable price that doesn't work against us too much in terms of cash flow and delivering, that's certainly of interest. And then on the dividend, Hilton can weigh in on this as well, but I would say that we look at it from quarter to quarter and you know, where we sit today, we're, we're comfortable paying it for this quarter. I don't know if you want to comment any further on that.

資本配置。所以你可以看到我們重新加載了董事會的 2.5 億美元授權。因此，我們將繼續以能夠獲得良好價值的方式為指導。你知道，我們可以走了，它不屬於任何債務。因此，我們將看看事情的交易情況。我們將看看是否有機會以合理的價格進入資本市場，而這在現金流和交付方面不會對我們造成太大不利，這當然很有趣。然後在股息方面，希爾頓也可以對此進行權衡，但我想說的是，我們逐季度進行研究，你知道，我們今天所處的位置，我們很樂意為本季度支付股息。我不知道你是否願意對此發表進一步評論。

No further comment right now.

目前沒有進一步評論。

All right, thanks guys. I appreciate the thoughts.

好的，謝謝大家。我很欣賞這些想法。

Thank you, Aaron.

謝謝你，亞倫。

All right. Next up, we have Marlane Piero.

好的。接下來是馬蘭·皮耶羅。

Thank you for taking my questions. You actually just addressed many of them. A quick one though, in terms of the political, is it possible to provide some, you know, number around potentially the impact from the hurricane specifically? Meaning you know what would have been without that hurricane impact? Thank you.

感謝您回答我的問題。您實際上剛剛解決了其中的許多問題。不過，就政治而言，是否有可能提供一些有關颶風潛在影響的具體數字？這意味著您知道如果沒有颶風影響會怎麼樣？謝謝。

A few million dollars.

幾百萬美元。

Okay, great. Thank.

好的，太好了。感謝。

You.

你。

All right. Next up, we have Patrick Scholl of Barrington Research.

好的。接下來請來巴靈頓研究中心的派崔克‧紹爾。

Thank you. I was wondering with the political if you're seeing any like difference between you know, maybe local affiliates and networks and just sort of your opportunities within selling on the station apps as and the port, the ability that you were able to capture some viewing share shift there.

謝謝。我想知道政治方面您是否看到任何類似的差異，您知道，也許是當地的附屬機構和網絡，以及您在電台應用程序和端口上銷售的機會，您能夠捕獲一些觀看的能力在那里分享轉移。

I Patrick, we didn't you kind of cut in and out there? Could you repeat that question? I'm sorry.

我派崔克，你沒有插話嗎？你能重複一下這個問題嗎？對不起。

Yeah, I, I guess what I was trying to ask was, you know, is there any sort of shift between political and buying local stations versus networks trying to reach, yeah, buying on the networks versus, and if your and your ability to sell political inventory on the station apps versus in the linear broadcast and being able to capture any of that share shift there.

是的，我，我想我想問的是，你知道，在政治和購買本地電台與試圖到達的網絡之間是否存在某種轉變，是的，在網絡上購買與，如果你和你的能力與線性廣播相比，在電台應用程式上出售政治庫存，並能夠捕捉其中的任何份額變化。

Yeah. So, so if you look through our political results, we, we talk about this a little bit. You know, all of our categories were up, you know, all the different categories of political spending were up with the exception of Senate, which historically has been far and away our largest. So we, you know, the money, the money was there in the market, it just got shifted out of our footprint essentially. And, and a lot of it he mentioned landed in Pennsylvania and Montana.

是的。所以，如果你看看我們的政治結果，我們會稍微討論一下這個問題。你知道，我們所有類別的政治支出都增加了，除了參議院之外，參議院在歷史上一直是我們最大的支出。所以我們，你知道，錢，錢就在市場上，它只是從我們的足跡轉移出來。而且，他提到的很多東西都降落在賓州和蒙大拿州。

Okay.

好的。

It is, and then just within the core ad verticals, are you seeing any sort of, like strength or weaknesses across different categories or industries?

是的，然後就在核心廣告垂直領域內，您是否看到了不同類別或行業的優勢或劣勢？

Yeah. So, so during, during third quarter, it was a mixed bag, you know, auto has been weak for us. It was, it was weak in third quarter, it's weak in fourth quarter. Communicated communications category has been somewhat weak. And then look, you know, given we talked a little bit about political crowd out, but there was also, you know, there was political hesitancy as well. People held on to their money either not to be on the air during the, you know, the onslaught of political ads or, you know, not really understanding what the economic outlook would be depending on which party prevailed, the elections, right? So that impacted a lot of different categories as we talked about before we're starting to see some green shoots coming out of the election. And so we're, you know, we're cautiously optimistic, but we would expect most of those categories to approve for the remainder fourth quarter that pick up next year.

是的。所以，在第三季度，情況好壞參半，你知道，汽車對我們來說一直疲軟。是的，第三季疲軟，第四季也疲軟。通訊通訊類一直有些薄弱。然後看，你知道，考慮到我們談論了一點政治排擠，但你知道，也存在政治猶豫。人們緊緊抓住自己的錢，要么是為了在政治廣告的猛攻期間不上電視，要么是不真正了解經濟前景將取決於哪個政黨獲勝，即選舉，對嗎？因此，正如我們在開始看到選舉出現一些新芽之前所討論的那樣，這影響了許多不同的類別。因此，我們持謹慎樂觀的態度，但我們預計大多數類別將在明年第四季剩餘時間內獲得批准。

And just one other interesting note on that, even with the strong political in October, our new local direct is up year over year fueled mainly by digital. And that's consistent with the laser focus we've had on growing new local direct.

還有一個有趣的事實是，即使 10 月政治局勢強勁，我們新的本地直銷業務仍逐年增長，這主要是由數位技術推動的。這與我們一直致力於發展新的本地直銷業務的重點是一致的。

Okay, thank you.

好的，謝謝。

All right. Next up, we have Doug pardon of Brigade Capital Management.

好的。接下來請來 Brigade Capital Management 的道格·赦免。

Hi, good morning guys. Just wanted to change directions a little bit lost in the noise of, you know, with some bad luck maybe with political and the hurricanes is, you know, retrans kind of beat our number on a, on a both a gross and a net basis. And it looks to me like retrans expense might be down on the year. Can you just talk a little bit about? That's something you guys talk a little, talk a little bit about that and your confidence as you look at retrans next year because I think that's been a, you know, probably one of the biggest concerns for investors and then I have a couple more after that.

嗨，大家早安。只是想改變方向，有點迷失在噪音中，你知道，也許政治上運氣不好，颶風，你知道，重傳在總量和淨值上都擊敗了我們的數字。在我看來，今年的轉口費用可能會下降。能簡單談談嗎？這是你們談論的一點，談論一下你們明年考慮重新交易時的信心，因為我認為這可能是投資者最關心的問題之一，然後我還有更多那。

Hi, Doug, this is Kevin. Our core retrends has been in growth mode for a long time and we certainly saw this year. We went from being from growing a little bit growing a lot to growing a little bit. And this year, we went, we went backwards and we talked a lot on the prior calls we've been doing, we've been getting the rate increases we want, we've been really struggling with the sub erosion. Our sub numbers are, and you see this for all media companies that the subu situation has not been getting much better. There are some hopeful signs in the recent Comcast and Charter Sub reports that maybe their sub losses have stabilized. We were predicting that the sub declines would stabilize earlier this year. It seems that we now have folks kind of coalescing on the idea that it's probably later this year, maybe next year. We see the sub declines, the rate of growth slowing and our our math or I should say our gross revenue in this area is really a simple formula. It's, it's a rate times the number of subs for each, for each of the operators. So as the sub numbers, the declines mitigate our growth will improve. It's just it's beyond our control and it's kind of that simple. We've talked a lot about why we think we should be seeing that rate of growth slow. So we'll go into that again, but we are certainly optimistic. It's going to be that we have seen kind of the worst of it now and we're going to move forward with a world where the sub declines are, are muted and I think you've heard that from some of our peers and some third party folks as well. On the, on the network fees, we've said for a while that the network fees need to come down. They were priced in a different world under different factors. And there's been, we've had some success with our contracts to start bringing those fees down. We have more work to do. We have a lot of more work to do over the next, you know, roughly 14 months as we renegotiate with all four networks for the next round of contracts. And I can tell you that the focus on costs, which every quarter we've talked about bringing our costs below up, cutting our, our cost guide and the actions we disclosed on the earnings call today, make it pretty clear that we're really focused on bringing our costs down and that's not just operational cost. And that is going to include our network fees. So we're not giving any guidance obviously next year, but those are kind of the ingredients of things we're looking at.

嗨，道格，我是凱文。我們的核心趨勢長期以來一直處於成長模式，今年我們當然看到了這一點。我們從一點點成長到很多成長。今年，我們走了，我們倒退了，我們在之前的電話會議上談了很多，我們已經得到了我們想要的加息，我們一直在與子侵蝕作鬥爭。我們的 sub 數字是，你會看到所有媒體公司的 subu 情況都沒有好轉。最近康卡斯特和 Charter Sub 的報告中出現了一些充滿希望的跡象，表明它們的子虧損可能已經穩定下來。我們預計今年稍早次級跌幅將趨於穩定。看來我們現在人們一致認為這可能是在今年晚些時候，也許是明年。我們看到細分下降，成長率放緩，我們的數學，或者我應該說，我們在這一領域的總收入實際上是一個簡單的公式。它是每個運營商的費率乘以每個運營商的潛艇數量。因此，隨著子數字的下降，我們的成長將會改善。只是它超出了我們的控制範圍，而且就這麼簡單。我們已經討論了很多關於為什麼我們認為我們應該看到成長率放緩的問題。所以我們會再討論這個問題，但我們當然很樂觀。我們現在已經看到了最糟糕的情況，我們將繼續前進，進入一個次級下降的世界，我想你已經從我們的一些同行和一些第三方那裡聽到了這一點。關於網路費用，我們已經說過一段時間了，網路費用需要降低。它們在不同的因素下在不同的世界定價。我們在合約方面取得了一些成功，並開始降低這些費用。我們還有更多工作要做。在接下來的大約 14 個月內，我們還有很多工作要做，因為我們將與所有四個網路就下一輪合約進行重新談判。我可以告訴你，對成本的關注，每個季度我們都會討論如何降低成本、削減我們的成本指南以及我們在今天的財報電話會議上披露的行動，這些都清楚地表明我們正在我們真正專注於降低成本，而這不僅僅是營運成本。這將包括我們的網路費用。因此，我們顯然不會在明年提供任何指導，但這些是我們正在研究的內容的組成部分。

Yeah, let me just emphasize one point that let me just emphasize one point that Kevin made the 60 million does not include anything related to any network agreements.

是的，讓我強調一點，讓我強調一點，凱文賺的 6000 萬不包括任何與任何網路協議相關的內容。

Great. And then, and.

偉大的。然後，還有。

Then just change years on, on the political side. Is there anything structural about your footprint that causes you concern or is this just simply, you know, a case of bad luck.

然後幾年後，在政治方面發生變化。您的足跡是否有任何結構性因素引起您的擔憂，或者這只是您知道的運氣不好的情況。

Actually, we didn't have any bad luck. We had half a billion dollars, which is the largest gross number of political ads of any peer in the broadcast sector. And so the really only, but.

事實上，我們並沒有什麼運氣不好。我們擁有 5 億美元，這是廣播業中政治廣告總量最多的。所以真正的唯一，但是。

That said you guys did, you did kind of at least miss people's expectations and, and I think it's, and I think it's because of, you know, just where some of these races met. So I'm not trying to, you know, I'm just trying to, you know, understand that a little bit.

也就是說，你們確實至少沒有達到人們的期望，我認為這是因為，你知道，正是其中一些種族相遇的地方。所以我並不是想，你知道，我只是想，你知道，理解一點。

This is Kevin, I'd come back to, we made more money in Presidential than we did four years ago. We made more money in state and local races than we did. Four years ago. We made more money in house races than we did four years ago. We had more money on ballot initiatives than we did four years ago. All which was consistent with our expectations going into this year, our internal expectations and I think where everybody else got ahead of it was the Senate and we had, we look at the results today and we see really, really close results in places where Gray has a big footprint. Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan. And frankly, the spending was not spending by both sides did not match the way the polls worked out. And this happens from time to time. Sometimes there's a lot of money spent and a candidate is turns out to be well ahead of another candidate and yet a ton of money was wasted on that race. We, there's a couple of examples of that just this week and there are sometimes the flip side. There are races where not a lot of money was spent are nowhere near as much as people expected because the polls indicated the cir and it turns out that the competitor was a lot stronger. The race was a lot tighter than people expected. And unfortunately, again, for us, that was four Senate races, it happened to be states where Gray has stations in most, if not all the markets. So this is entirely a story about Senate races for Gray. It's not about money leaving our markets. We got the same political share of dollars that came in the market that we got four years ago. We excelled in every category, but there was a shortfall from what we would have expected in a handful of very expensive Senate races. That's the story. It's not about people had lots of expectations and we have internal expectations which we obviously never share because we believe it's really, really hard to predict these races with any kind of certainty. And we've said that in 2022 quite a bit and other folks have felt confident to give political guidance and that's their right and make political estimates on broadcasters. And that's people's right. But we've cautioned that it's really, really difficult and lots of people are going to exceed and some people are going to miss just based on factors completely beyond our control. And I think you've seen that not just with Gray and our Senate outcome, but I think you've seen that in the whole sector, some people really beat the street's expectations and some did not. And it's based on factors that none of us can control. So long as we're getting our market share, we're doing what we can, but we can't force a party to spend another $100 million in the state of Nevada, which may or may not have changed the outcome of the race there.

這是凱文，我回想起來，我們在總統職位上賺的錢比四年前還多。我們在州和地方比賽中賺的錢比我們賺的錢還多。四年前。我們在室內比賽賺的錢比四年前多了。與四年前相比，我們在投票倡議上投入了更多資金。所有這些都符合我們今年的預期，我們的內部預期，我認為其他人都領先於參議院，我們今天看到了結果，我們看到格雷的結果非常非常接近。亞利桑那州、內華達州、威斯康辛州、密西根州。坦白說，雙方的支出並不是與民調結果不符。這種情況時有發生。有時會花很多錢，而一位候選人卻遠遠領先另一位候選人，但在這場競選中卻浪費了大量資金。我們，本週就有幾個這樣的例子，有時也有相反的一面。有些比賽花費的錢不多，但遠沒有人們預期的那麼多，因為民調顯示，結果證明競爭對手要強大得多。比賽比人們預想的要激烈得多。不幸的是，對我們來說，這又是四場參議院競選，而格雷恰好在大多數市場（如果不是全部市場）都有駐地的州。所以這完全是一個關於格雷參議員競選的故事。這與資金離開我們的市場無關。我們在市場上獲得的美元政治份額與四年前相同。我們在各方面都表現出色，但在一些非常昂貴的參議院競選中，與我們的預期有差距。這就是故事。這並不是說人們有很多期望，而是我們有內部期望，但我們顯然從未分享過這些期望，因為我們相信要以任何確定性預測這些比賽真的非常非常困難。我們已經說過，在 2022 年，其他人有信心提供政治指導，這是他們的權利，並對廣播公司做出政治評估。這是人們的權利。但我們警告說，這真的非常困難，很多人會超越，有些人會因為完全超出我們控制的因素而錯過。我想你不僅在格雷和我們參議院的結果中看到了這一點，而且我認為你在整個領域也看到了這一點，有些人確實超出了華爾街的預期，而有些人卻沒有。它是基於我們任何人都無法控制的因素。只要我們能獲得市場份額，我們就會盡我們所能，但我們不能強迫一方在內華達州再花 1 億美元，這可能會也可能不會改變競選結果那裡。

That's no, that context is exactly what I was looking for. Super helpful so long and short of it, no structural issues with the footprint. My last it's just more common. I know people asked about the dividend, we are shareholders. So I would just point out that, you know, we think, you know, the ability to take some of that cash and buy back debt at significant discounts is really helpful for shareholders, reduces interest expense and you kind of combat compound that over time, it could really help with your deleveraging strategy. But thank you guys for the questions.

不，這個上下文正是我正在尋找的。超級有幫助，無論長短，足跡都沒有結構問題。我的最後一個比較常見。我知道人們問起股息，我們是股東。所以我只想指出，你知道，我們認為，你知道，拿走部分現金並以大幅折扣回購債務的能力對股東確實有幫助，減少了利息支出，隨著時間的推移，你會發現這種情況會變得更加複雜。但謝謝你們的提問。

Thanks, Doug, appreciate the comment.

謝謝，道格，謝謝您的評論。

All right. Next up, we have Craig Huber of Huber Research.

好的。接下來請來 Huber Research 的 Craig Huber。

Thank you. I'll try to make this easy for you. I'll go one question at a time. On the regulatory front with the new administration starting January 20th here. What is your expectation for any potential changes with the ownership cap regulatory environment here for M&A in the broad media space in general, when we start there, please.

謝謝。我會盡力讓這對你來說變得容易。我一次只回答一個問題。在監管方面，新政府將於 1 月 20 日上任。當我們開始時，您對廣泛媒體領域併購的所有權上限監管環境的任何潛在變化有何期望？

We would expect that the FCC will be deregulatory on ownership and much and just as importantly, if not more importantly for our future on ATSC 3.0. Next gen matters and a series of operational issues for broadcasters and other regulated entities in terms of specific policies that's going to depend on the outcome of some pending court cases. Further guidance from the Corps on the FCCS actual jurisdiction and absolutely who the commissioners are going to be. So, I would say broad strokes headlines, we see a deregulatory FCC coming but I don't think we're really in a position to be handicapping specific policy issues right now.

我們預計 FCC 將放鬆對所有權的管制，這對我們 ATSC 3.0 的未來同樣重要，甚至更重要。下一代問題以及廣播公司和其他受監管實體在具體政策方面的一系列營運問題將取決於一些未決法院案件的結果。軍團將就 FCCS 的實際管轄權以及委員的絕對身分提供進一步指導。因此，我想說的是，大頭條新聞是，我們看到聯邦通訊委員會即將放鬆監管，但我不認為我們現在真的能夠阻礙具體的政策問題。

And then longer term. What is your goal here for your net debt deta ratio on a two year basis?

然後是更長期的。您的兩年淨負債比率目標是多少？

Yeah, on a, on a two year basis. Craig look longer term. The company has been, has, has levered up to make acquisitions and then aggressively repaid debt. I think we're proving that we're getting back to the repaid debt piece of that by our actions so far and our expectations for the rest of the year.

是的，以兩年為基礎。克雷格著眼長遠。該公司一直在利用槓桿進行收購，然後積極償還債務。我認為，透過我們迄今為止的行動和對今年剩餘時間的期望，我們正在證明我們正在償還債務。

And so look longer term, it gets more comfortable when we're below four. But I realize that's a little ways away still. So we have the liquidity, we have the runway from a maturity profile point of view to get there, it's just going to take it, it's going to take, you know, beyond the 26 political cycle when we've got the next big influx cash to to get us back down into the, into the fours. And, you know, ideally right around that four times number longer term.

所以從長遠來看，當我們低於四時，它會變得更舒服。但我意識到這還有一段距離。因此，我們擁有流動性，從成熟度概況的角度來看，我們擁有到達那裡的跑道，這將需要它，你知道，當我們下一次大規模湧入時，它將需要，你知道的，超越26個政治週期現金讓我們重新站起來，四肢著地。而且，你知道，理想情況下，長期來看，大約是這個數字的四倍。

My next question guys on the cost cutting front, you talk about the 60 million. I appreciate that. Do you feel there's significantly more costs that you could take out in another round here to take out over the next 12 plus months without doing damage to the business? Of course.

我的下一個問題是關於成本削減方面的，你們談論的是 6000 萬。我很欣賞這一點。您是否認為在接下來的 12 個多月內，您可以在另一輪中消除更多的成本，而不會對業務造成損害？當然。

I would say, yeah, I don, I don't think that there's necessarily look, we did a pretty thorough review here and we're going to, we'll continue to watch things and as things come up, we'll, you know, be aggressive on renegotiating. I think the bigger cost savings side for us more impactful will be where we land on the affiliate renewals.

我想說，是的，我不認為，我們在這裡做了相當徹底的審查，我們將繼續觀察事情，當事情發生時，我們會，你知道，要積極地重新談判。我認為對我們來說，更大的成本節省和更有效的方面將是我們在會員續約方面的表現。

So the pinch point on that is 2025 and we renew all of them over the next 14 months. So that's the next, that's, you know, the next part of the discussion.

因此，關鍵點是 2025 年，我們將在接下來的 14 個月內更新所有這些。這就是下一個，你知道，討論的下一部分。

Okay. And now the last question on, on the core advertising outlook for the fourth quarter down 10% or so, if you would in your mind, I know this is hard to get to it. If you would adjust it for political crowding out the SEC. Football. You, you chatted about stuff. Where do you think that number would, would land at?

好的。現在最後一個問題是，第四季核心廣告前景下降 10% 左右，如果你願意的話，我知道這很難回答。如果你會根據政治排擠 SEC 的情況進行調整。足球。你，你聊了一些事。您認為這個數字會落在哪裡？

Is it close to flat or slightly down? What do you think.

是接近持平還是略微下降？你怎麼認為。

The se the crowd out from sec? The crowd.

秒裡人群出來了嗎？人群。

Out? Plus sec? Where, where do we have landed?

出去？加秒？哪裡，我們降落在哪裡？

I mean, look, we would have a lot more inventory to sell with, with, without, without the political crowd out and then the E the SEC moving to Big 10 on CBS, moving to Big 10 from SEC. It cost us a couple of it cost us a few points in terms of the change in the, in the overall revenue line out of.

我的意思是，看，我們將有更多的庫存可供出售，有、沒有、沒有政治排擠，然後 E、SEC 轉移到 CBS 的 Big 10，從 SEC 轉移到 Big 10。這讓我們損失了一些，就整體收入線的變化而言，我們損失了一些點。

But you take that and again, the political crowding out, you could remove those. You think you'd be much closer to flatter, I just want to get through. What do you think the underlying growth is right now in the marketplace for your TV? Advertising you just for those two items.

但你再一次接受這一點，政治排擠，你可以消除這些。你認為你會更接近奉承，我只是想通過。您認為您的電視市場目前的潛在成長是什麼？只為這兩種商品向您做廣告。

Look, there's a lot of noise in it right now. It's hard to quantify a specific number on that and we really haven't historically quantified. What exactly we think the crowd out number is, what we can tell you is what we see in the data as we sit here today. And as Pat described in our guide covers that and as Pat described it, there's, there's reasons for cautious optimism from here based on what we're seeing, but it's, it was there is hesitancy to commit for the near term. And so we're starting to see some of it, but it's too hard to, you can't give a specific number on any of this stuff right now.

你看，現在裡面有很多噪音。很難量化具體的數字，而且我們在歷史上也確實沒有量化過。我們認為擠出的數字到底是多少，我們可以告訴您的是我們今天坐在這裡的數據中看到的內容。正如帕特在我們的指南中所描述的那樣，正如帕特所描述的那樣，根據我們所看到的情況，有理由對此保持謹慎樂觀，但事實上，對於近期的承諾存在猶豫。所以我們開始看到其中的一些，但這太難了，你現在無法給出任何這些東西的具體數字。

Okay. Fair enough. Thank you guys.

好的。很公平。謝謝你們。

Thank you.

謝謝。

All right. Next up, we have Michael Kaine of Truest Securities.

好的。接下來請來 Truest Securities 的 Michael Kaine。

Hey, good morning. I'm thank you for all the color on political. I, I just want to follow up on the regulatory question if specifically about the the potential opportunity for you guys, if you're allowed to own more than one station in a market, is that something that would be a huge opportunity for your margins and operational cost if you were able to consolidate within a, within a single market.

嘿，早安。我感謝你們在政治上的所有色彩。我，我只是想跟進監管問題，特別是關於你們的潛在機會，如果你們被允許在市場上擁有多個電台，這對你們的利潤來說是一個巨大的機會嗎？能夠在單一市場內進行整合）。

This is Kevin. It depends on the station we acquire.

這是凱文.這取決於我們取得的電台。

If we have in our 113 markets, we have lots of markets with more than one station. If the second station we acquire is AC W or a my network or a telemundo, it's not particularly helpful if we require a big four affiliate that doesn't have any news and we put news on it. There's not, there's going to be certainly additional revenue but not a lot of cost to take out. If it's two stations that have pretty significant overlapping tasks and facilities, then there's more synergies. So, you know, we, the industry just went through 15 years of, of creating duopoly and I think there's a pretty good track record of companies identifying synergies when they're buying in market stations with local news where they already have a local news station. So the amount is going to completely depend on the market and the type of stations that we're putting together.

如果我們有 113 個市場，那麼我們有很多市場都有不只一個車站。如果我們獲得的第二個電台是 AC W 或我的網絡或 telemundo，那麼如果我們需要沒有任何新聞的四大附屬機構並且我們將新聞放在上面，那麼這並不是特別有幫助。不會的，肯定會有額外的收入，但不會有太多的成本。如果兩個站的任務和設施有相當大的重疊，那麼就會產生更多的綜效。所以，你知道，我們這個行業剛剛經歷了 15 年的雙寡頭壟斷，我認為，當公司在已經有本地新聞的市場電台購買本地新聞時，他們有很好的識別協同效應的記錄。因此，數量將完全取決於市場和我們要建立的電台類型。

So I know we're obviously we've been pretty active in that space and we would expect to continue to be active if opportunities present themselves and the balance sheet permits it.

所以我知道我們顯然在這個領域一直非常活躍，如果機會出現並且資產負債表允許的話，我們希望繼續活躍。

Great. That's all I have. Thanks.

偉大的。這就是我所擁有的一切。謝謝。

All right, next up, we have Bill Matthews of MUFG.

好的，下一位是三菱日聯金融集團的比爾馬修斯。

Hi, great. Thank you for taking the question. Many of my questions have been answered. When I kind of wanted to circle back on some of the comments that you've made in terms of the sub losses, a huge concern beyond your control, the political spending and predicting race is very difficult to predict and then the cost saves of 60 million.

嗨，太好了。感謝您提出問題。我的許多問題都得到了解答。當我有點想回顧一下您在子損失方面所做的一些評論時，這是一個超出您控制範圍的巨大問題，政治支出和預測種族非常難以預測，然後節省了 60 的成本百萬。

What's clearly in your control, common dividend and the dividend of the preferred.

您可以清楚地控制什麼，普通股息和優先股股息。

You've had a previous, person who, who is an equity holder voice that it would be helpful for the equity to reduce your debt.

之前有一位股權持有人表示，股權有助於減少您的債務。

So, is there a conversation in the boardroom? Is there a voice in the boardroom that is advocating to take that 80 million and even pause it for a year until you get your leverage down?

那麼，董事會裡有談話嗎？董事會中是否有人主張拿走這 8000 萬美元，甚至暫停一年，直到你降低槓桿率？

Yes. So it's Jeff. So look, we, like I said, we talk about this on a quarterly basis.

是的。所以是傑夫。所以，就像我說的，我們每季都會討論這個問題。

The the 80 million that you referenced includes the preferred dividend. So from a rating agency standpoint, they count that as debt, they count that up. They count that as an uptick in debt. So really the savings from a and from an equity point of view, it's in front of, it's in front of the equity holders. So we think about it as the 30 million whatever discount you could capture with the full 30 or 80. If you went down that route, that route, we talk about it each quarter and you know, we'll continue to evaluate where things are in the business with the leverage profile, et cetera as we, as we move into 25.

你說的8000萬是包含優先股股息的。因此，從評級機構的角度來看，他們將其視為債務，並將其計算在內。他們將此視為債務增加。所以，從股權的角度來看，真正的節省是在股東面前。因此，我們將其視為 3000 萬美元，無論您滿 30 或 80 美元可以獲得什麼折扣。如果你走那條路，那條路，我們每個季度都會談論它，你知道，當我們進入 25 年後，我們將繼續透過槓桿狀況等來評估業務的狀況。

I mean, I would just follow up that there's 440 million of interest expense on the debt. The series a preferred is a pickable instrument at the board's discretion. And if you look at the equity reaction today to the results, I think there's a lot you're managing and managing well with what you have, but you're compounding the difficulty with the leverage. And so if you can eliminate that leverage, that value will accrue to the equity.

我的意思是，我只想跟進一下，債務有 4.4 億的利息支出。首選系列是由董事會酌情選擇的工具。如果你看看今天的股票對結果的反應，我認為你在管理很多東西，並且用你擁有的東西管理得很好，但你用槓桿加劇了困難。因此，如果你能夠消除這種槓桿作用，那麼價值將會計入股權。

Yeah, I, I understand. I'm just, I guess the point that I was making is that if we pick the preferred, it works against what you're, it works against that calculation. It's 50 million that works the opposite direction by picking but point taken, I understand your point.

是的，我，我明白。我只是，我想我想說的是，如果我們選擇首選，它會與你的情況相悖，它會與計算相悖。這是 5000 萬，透過挑選但採取相反的方向，我理解你的觀點。

Okay. Thank you.

好的。謝謝。

All right. Next up, we have Alan Gold of Loop capital.

好的。接下來是 Loop Capital 的艾倫·戈爾德 (Alan Gold)。

Thanks for taking the question. I've got a broader question on political, I mean, it seems like political fundraising was higher than ever. And if I look across the spectrum, it's more of an industry question. It looks like almost every player with the potential exception of Fox is going to have disappointing relative expectations on political advertising. So, are we seeing a reallocation of political dollars? Yeah, out of broadcast into C TV. People spending more time on podcasts to reach the audience. Is there a structural change occurring? And also related to this? If you look typically for Q political used to be, yes, 75% to 100% greater than Q3. We're not seeing that this year. Was there some pull back? Any reason why four Q is so much weaker relative to its normal results versus Q3? Thank.

感謝您提出問題。我有一個關於政治的更廣泛的問題，我的意思是，政治籌款似乎比以往任何時候都多。如果我放眼整個領域，這更多的是一個產業問題。看起來，除了福克斯之外，幾乎所有參與者對政治廣告的相對期望都會令人失望。那麼，我們是否會看到政治資金的重新分配？是的，C TV 不再播出了。人們花更多的時間在播客上來接觸觀眾。是否正在發生結構性變化？還有跟這個有關的嗎？如果你通常觀察 Q 政治，是的，比 Q3 高 75% 到 100%。今年我們不會看到這種情況。有沒有一些回調？為什麼 4 Q 相對於 Q3 的正常結果要弱得多，有什麼原因嗎？感謝。

You.

你。

You want to start with the Q4 cover? Let.

你想從第四季的封面開始嗎？讓。

Me pull the number up. But are you? Yeah. Okay.

我把號碼拉上來。但你是嗎？是的。好的。

Sure. Yeah, look so, so we believe some money is going towards C TV. But I don't, we don't believe there's any kind of sea change there, there is more money going in there and in other media than there used to be. I think that, you know, I think that's pretty basic but it's not something that's foundational or structural or, or, or you know, any of those grand words at the end of the day, there's a, there's a change, but for us, the impact in our political was simply a function of money moving from state to state.

當然。是的，看起來是這樣，所以我們相信一些錢會流向 C TV。但我不這麼認為，我們不相信那裡有任何巨變，那裡和其他媒體的資金比以前更多了。我認為，你知道，我認為這是非常基本的，但它不是基礎性或結構性的東西，或者，或者，或者你知道，任何那些宏偉的詞在一天結束時，有一個，有一個變化，但對我們來說，對我們政治的影響只是金錢從一個州轉移到另一個州的函數。

In terms of your question around the fourth Querter, I think Kevin and Kevin and Jeff.

就你關於第四季度的問題而言，我認為是凱文、凱文和傑夫。

If I go back to 2018 on our combined historical 2018, 2020. So I'm talking about the, our current footprint, our fourth quarter was 55% of the total, 55% of the total, 50% of the total, 51% of the total. So I don't see a sea change here in the third quarter. We, our, our political revenue is 30% 32% 28% 35%. So the, the allocation of the dollars is frankly pretty stable across the four. The, the one thing that we have seen slightly change our primaries, we have a Presidential primary that pulls some more money into the first quarter, state and gubernatorial election. Those primaries tend to be a Q2 event. So sometimes we see a bit more and certainly in 18 and 22 which is very heavy on gubernatorial races. We see a sort of a bigger Q2, but we've never talked about Q4 as a factor of Q3. We instead look at how the dollars have been allocated by quarter over the last now four cycles with our current footprint. We're seeing the fourth quarter was consistent with the others. It was a bit more than half of the total in the fourth quarter in the third quarter was about, you know, right around 30% to 35% every year. So I'm not really seeing the numbers reflect any particular concern here for at, at gray.

如果我回到 2018 年，我們將 2018 年和 2020 年合併起來。所以我說的是，我們目前的足跡，我們第四季佔總量的55%、總量的55%、總量的50%、總量的51%。因此，我認為第三季不會發生巨大變化。我們我們我們的政治收入是30%32%28%35%。因此，坦白說，美元在這四個國家的分配相當穩定。我們看到初選略有改變的一件事是，我們舉行了總統初選，為第一季、州和州長選舉帶來了更多資金。這些初選往往是第二季的活動。所以有時我們會看到更多，當然在 18 和 22 月份，這對州長競選來說非常重要。我們看到第二季更大，但我們從未將第四季視為第三季的因素。相反，我們會根據我們目前的足跡來研究過去四個週期中資金如何按季度分配。我們看到第四季與其他季度一致。這是第四季總數的一半多一點，第三季大約是每年 30% 到 35% 左右。所以我並沒有真正看到這些數字反映出對灰色的任何特別關注。

Okay. Thanks Pat, thanks Kevin.

好的。謝謝帕特，謝謝凱文。

Sure thing.

當然可以。

All right. Next up, we have Daniel Kurnos of the Benchmark company.

好的。接下來請來的是 Benchmark 公司的 Daniel Kurnos。

Yeah, thanks. Good morning. I'll take it a little one step further. Hilton on regulatory, if the FCC, not the FCC, if Congress were to eliminate the ownership cap, what's your openness to some kind of transaction, buyer, seller, merger in order to unlock incremental value for stock?

是的，謝謝。早安.我會更進一步。希爾頓談監管，如果是聯邦通訊委員會，而不是聯邦通訊委員會，如果國會取消所有權上限，您對某種交易、買方、賣方、合併以釋放股票增量價值的開放態度如何？

I think the answer that I'd be very open to consider anything.

我認為答案是我會非常開放地考慮任何事情。

That's helpful. Pat Nitpicky, but the shift from sec on the local, the network change there, is there any cash flow ramification or is that all just a revenue impact it's revenue?

這很有幫助。Pat Nitpicky，但從當地安全的轉變，那裡的網路變化，是否有任何現金流影響，或者這只是收入影響它的收入？

Okay. And then Jeff just appreciate, you know, the deep dive on the expenses just trying to get a sense. And obviously you mentioned, you know, the big delta could be on the affiliate side, but like how do we think of 24 going into 25? You know, your need to reinvest something in growth or head count. Like how, what are the offsets to what you've just taken out or can we just kind of look at where we think the year ends up and then, you know, we've got our kind of our run rate Here.

好的。然後傑夫只是欣賞，你知道，深入了解費用只是為了了解情況。顯然你提到，你知道，大三角洲可能在聯盟行銷方面，但我們如何看待 24 變成 25？您知道，您需要對成長或員工數量進行再投資。例如，你剛剛取出的內容有哪些抵消，或者我們可以看看我們認為今年結束的地方，然後，你知道，我們在這裡得到了我們的運行率。

Yeah. So at a macro level, I would say this is against the current run rate. You know, there will be, there will still be some typical adjustments that you might see for, employee raises and things like that going into, going into 25 sort of the natural stuff in the business. So, you know, I think what we've talked about here is to bend the curve and flatten this out and ideally, you know, try to bring it down where we can. But on our last call, we talked about taking a very thoughtful approach. And so the things that we, the things that we did are really more managing the business in a smart way and thinking about how can we do things in a better way but still serve the community, still make sure we have local news in all of our markets, all of the things that are hallmarks of the success of this company.

是的。因此，從宏觀層面來看，我想說這與目前的運行速度相反。你知道，仍然會有一些典型的調整，你可能會看到員工加薪之類的事情，涉及到業務中 25 種自然的事情。所以，你知道，我認為我們在這裡討論的是彎曲曲線並使之變平，理想情況下，你知道，盡力將其降低。但在上次通話中，我們談到了採取非常深思熟慮的方法。因此，我們所做的事情實際上更多的是以明智的方式管理業務，並思考如何以更好的方式做事，同時仍然為社區服務，仍然確保我們在所有地方都有當地新聞我們的市場，所有這些都是這家公司成功的標誌。

Got you. I'll, I'll sneak one last one and I guess maybe for Kevin just on political, looking at 26 obviously, there's going to be some, you know, angst, I think to try to combat the what just happened. So, and then in 28 we have two open primaries theoretically. So I don't know if that gives you any more confidence. I know, obviously, you guys have spent the entire call today telling everybody that you did a good job in political. But, if it just, you know, kind of helps frame how we should be thinking about the competitive nature of the races in the next two cycles relative to your footprint might be helpful.

明白你了。我會，我會偷偷地講最後一篇，我想也許凱文只是在政治上，看看26顯然，會有一些，你知道，焦慮，我想嘗試對抗剛剛發生的事情。所以，理論上我們在 28 年會有兩次公開初選。所以我不知道這是否能讓你更有信心。我知道，顯然你們今天整個電話會議都在告訴大家你們在政治方面做得很好。但是，如果它只是，你知道，有助於框架我們應該如何思考接下來兩個週期中相對於你的足跡的比賽的競爭性質，可能會有所幫助。

You're absolutely right. At 26 we should have not one but two Presidential primaries. We've not had that for quite some time now.

你是絕對正確的。26 歲時，我們不應該舉行總統初選，而應該舉行兩次。我們已經有一段時間沒有這樣了。

I'm sorry, 28 in 26.

對不起，26 中的 28。

Remember the Senate being up every six years, we get sort of a random selection of competitive versus uncompetitive races. The off year is always very, very big with gubernatorial races and state races.

請記住，參議院每六年選舉一次，我們會隨機選擇競爭性與非競爭性的競選。明年總是非常非常重要的州長競選和州競選。

I do not anticipate that this election is going to unify America and we're going to suddenly have a quiet, non terribly competitive round of elections in two years. I suspect we'll continue to see high political engagement and high stakes for both parties. So I just, I just don't see things becoming returning to any kind of more calm political situation in the next two or four years that people will continue to be engaged with ever more complicated issues.

我預計這次選舉不會讓美國團結起來，而且我們將在兩年內突然舉行一輪安靜的、競爭性不那麼激烈的選舉。我懷疑我們將繼續看到雙方的高度政治參與和高風險。所以我只是認為，在未來兩四年內，事情不會恢復到任何更平靜的政治局勢，人們將繼續處理更複雜的問題。

Okay. Thanks for.

好的。謝謝。

Bearing with me. I appreciate.

與我同在。我很欣賞。

It.

它。

A gym.

健身房。

All right. Next up, we have Steven Cahall of Wells Fargo.

好的。接下來是富國銀行的史蒂文·卡霍爾。

Thanks for squeezing me in. Maybe first with a more favorable FCC deregulatory backdrop. Can you just expand on maybe in market duopoly opportunities I know this question came up before but I'm just wondering if you think, you know, the FCC might allow just threes and fours. Could it, could it even allow some twos in there? And if there's any way to size or dimensionalize what a significant opportunity that could be for the industry, love to hear more on that. And then, you know, cabinet, I think you both talked about the reverse compensation expenses, you know, a big, a big focus for next year. Just wondering how early you start to have those conversations with your major counterparty. They're going through a lot of management changes. I don't know if that makes things easier or, or harder and if you've learned anything from some of the recent Peer renewals but would just love to get some more color there as well. Thanks folks.

謝謝你把我擠進去。也許首先有更有利的 FCC 放鬆管制背景。您能否擴大市場雙寡占的機會？可以嗎，甚至可以允許兩個人進去嗎？如果有任何方法可以衡量或維度化該行業可能帶來的重大機遇，我們很樂意聽到更多相關資訊。然後，你知道，內閣，我想你們都談到了反向補償費用，你知道，這是明年的一個很大的焦點。只是想知道您多久開始與主要交易對手進行這些對話。他們正在經歷很多管理層變動。我不知道這是否會讓事情變得更容易，或者更困難，以及您是否從最近的一些同行更新中學到了任何東西，但也希望在那裡獲得更多的色彩。謝謝各位。

On, on the FCC. Look, we don't know exactly who the five commissioners are going to be. There are a number of pending court cases involving FCC decisions in broadcast area and non broadcast areas that will inform their authority. So I don't know quite how we could start opining on whether the what a new FCC rule may look like that would be proposed, you know, at what point next year by what FCC? Given, what new guard rails may be imposed as a result of the pending court cases. And remember there's also court cases not involving the FCC, that address administrative law that can also impact what the FCC C can do.

就在聯邦通訊委員會上。聽著，我們並不確切知道五位委員將是誰。有許多未決的法院案件涉及 FCC 在廣播領域和非廣播領域的決定，這些決定將告知其當局。所以我不太清楚我們如何開始就新的 FCC 規則是否會提出意見，你知道，明年什麼時候由哪個 FCC 提出？鑑於未決的法庭案件可能會實施哪些新的防護措施。請記住，還有一些不涉及 FCC 的法庭案件，涉及行政法，而行政法也可能影響 FCC C 的職能。

So I just, I don't know how to, again go say anything more than we expect the FCC will be deregulatory and we think that they will address ownership and 3.0.

所以我只是，我不知道如何，再次去說一些超出我們預期的事情，FCC 將放鬆管制，我們認為他們將解決所有權和 3.0 問題。

But I don't know who has that crystal ball. And if so, I wish they would have told us, you know, the results of the election a couple of days ago.

但我不知道誰擁有那個水晶球。如果是這樣，我希望他們幾天前就告訴我們選舉結果。

But I just think that's impossible on network. Our network conversations tend to happen fairly close to the expiration date. We start talking months earlier, but they tend to like retran tend to get serious towards the very end as you know, ABC is up end of this year, CBS Fox next summer, NBC, end of the year. So again, I think those conversations will get serious a month or two beforehand. And I don't, you know, last question here, I haven't learned anything from my peers with recent renewals because we have no, absolutely no clue what the terms are in any other network affiliation agreement other than our own. I literally have not, no one talks about it. All we can see is the aggregated number reported by public companies across all their, all their network contracts. So we literally have no, we have no intel on what our peers are paying the networks or what their structures are absent, what they would say in a public earnings call. That that's all the insight we get. So I don't know how to, how to answer that more sort of clearly, except we've been very clear about our own situation and the strength of our stations and what we deliver to these networks in terms of reach and eyeballs that they monetize for advertising and that they use to promote their programs that they then monetize in the aftermarket. So we know our situation, they know our, our we're delivering and that's what we're going to talk about. I hope, I hope that helps.

但我認為這在網路上是不可能的。我們的網路對話往往發生在接近到期日的時候。我們提前幾個月開始討論，但他們傾向於喜歡重播，往往會在最後變得嚴肅起來，如你所知，ABC 將於今年年底播出，CBS Fox 明年夏天播出，NBC 將於年底播出。再說一次，我認為這些對話會提前一兩個月變得嚴肅起來。我不知道，你知道，最後一個問題，我沒有從最近續約的同行那裡學到任何東西，因為我們完全不知道除了我們自己的網絡附屬協議之外的任何其他網絡附屬協議中的條款是什麼。我確實沒有，沒有人談論它。我們所能看到的只是上市公司報告的所有網路合約的總結數據。因此，我們確實不知道，我們不知道我們的同行向網路支付了什麼費用，或者他們缺乏什麼結構，也不知道他們在公開財報電話會議上會說些什麼。這就是我們得到的全部見解。所以我不知道如何、如何更清楚地回答這個問題，除非我們非常清楚我們自己的情況和我們電台的實力，以及我們在覆蓋範圍和眼球方面向這些網絡提供的內容他們通過廣告獲利，並用它來推廣他們的程序，然後在售後市場中獲利。所以我們知道我們的情況，他們知道我們的，我們正在交付的，這就是我們要談論的內容。我希望，我希望這有幫助。

Thank you.

謝謝。

All right. Next up, we have David Hamburger of Morgan Stanley.

好的。接下來請來摩根士丹利的大衛漢伯格。

Thank you very much for taking the question. Jeff last quarter, you had mentioned that you expected leverage to end the year in the low to mid fives. Can you update us on where you think leverage will now shake out for the year end? And how should we think about 2025? I know you spoke about kind of longer term, but could we expect to see some debt reduction next year and how you know, how will you execute on that?

非常感謝您提出問題。傑夫上個季度，您曾提到您預計今年年底的槓桿率將在五成左右。您能否向我們介紹您認為年底槓桿率將出現怎樣的最新情況？我們該如何看待2025年？我知道您談到了某種長期目標，但我們是否可以期望明年看到一些債務削減，您如何知道，您將如何執行？

Yeah, let me, let me take the second part first in 25. Some of the actions that we took are designed to make sure that we have the ability to continue to pay down our debt going into 25. So that's that, that's part of the overall plan with respect to where we finish 24 depending on, you know, open market activities and things like that. We should be flat to maybe slightly down from where we are today for the third quarter by the end of the year.

是的，讓我，讓我先講25的第二部分。我們採取的一些行動旨在確保我們有能力在 25 年後繼續償還債務。這就是我們完成 24 小時總體計劃的一部分，具體取決於公開市場活動等。到今年年底，第三季的業績應該會與今天持平，甚至可能略有下降。

So we, we're, we're running late into the first after earnings call that we, we need to get to. So at this point, we're going to need to wrap up the, and the, and the public calls and I apologize. We see there's a couple of other folks still in the queue. I think we have calls scheduled with all of you individually. So we do need to end this to stay on schedule for the rest of the day. So.

所以我們，我們，我們需要參加的第一次財報電話會議之後，我們已經遲到了。因此，在這一點上，我們需要結束公眾呼籲，我深表歉意。我們看到還有其他幾個人仍在排隊。我想我們已經安排了與你們所有人單獨通話的時間。因此，我們確實需要結束這一切，以便在當天剩餘的時間裡按計劃進行。所以。

All right. Well, thanks everyone for being here. We're actually quite proud of our quarter and most particularly, we're happy we stack up against our peers in terms of our, both our core and our political advertising. And we're particularly proud that by the end of the year, we will have paid off half a billion dollars in debt, which I'm actually pretty impressed with and pretty proud of thank you all for spending time and we look forward to talking to you next quarter.

好的。嗯，謝謝大家來到這裡。事實上，我們對我們的季度感到非常自豪，最特別的是，我們很高興我們在核心廣告和政治廣告方面與同行競爭。我們特別自豪的是，到今年年底，我們將還清 5 億美元的債務，這讓我印象深刻，也非常自豪，感謝大家花時間，我們期待著與您交談下個季度給你。

All right, ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your call. You may now disconnect your lines and thank you again for joining us today.

好的，女士們先生們，你們的通話到此結束。現在您可以斷開線路，再次感謝您今天加入我們。