Urban One Q1 2026 Earnings Call - Aggressive Debt Reduction Offsets Soft Ad Market

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Urban One 2026 first quarter earnings call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. We will begin this call with the following safe harbor statement. During this conference call, Urban One will be sharing with you certain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or its future performance. Urban One cautions you that certain factors, including risks and uncertainties referred to in the 10-Ks, 10-Qs, and other reports it periodically files with the Securities and Exchange Commission, could cause the company’s actual results to differ materially from those indicated by its projections or forward-looking statements. This call will present information as of May 14th, 2026. Please note that Urban One disclaims any duty to update any forward-looking statements made in the presentation.

In this call, Urban One may also discuss some non-GAAP financial measures in talking about its performance. These measures will be reconciled to GAAP either during the course of this call or in the company’s press release, which can be found on its website at www.urbanone.com. A replay of the conference call will be available from 2:00 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, May 14, 2026, until 11:59 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time, May 21, 2026. Callers may access the replay by calling 1-800-770-2030. International callers may dial direct 1-609-809-9909. The replay access code is 3438559. Access to live audio and the replay of the conference will also be available on Urban One’s corporate website at www.urbanone.com.

The replay will be made available on the website for 7 days after the call. No other recordings or copies of this call are authorized or may be relied upon. I will now turn the call over to Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer of Urban One, who is joined by Peter Thompson, Chief Financial Officer. Mr. Liggins, please go ahead.

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: Thank you very much, operator, welcome to our first quarter results conference call. Also joining Peter D. Thompson and I are Jody DiLauro, the Chief Financial Officer at TV One, and C. Kristopher Simpson, who is our General Counsel. Yeah, press release came out this morning. I think that, you know, we had, you know, warned, inferred, you know, other people have also, you know, reported already. You know, first quarter was a very tough quarter. We were budgeted to be down, but the marketplace was softer than anticipated due to continued declines in the traditional ad marketplace. Peter D. Thompson will give you more specifics and details on the numbers in a moment.

With the slow start to the year, we’ve been focused on balance sheet management and debt reduction and de-leveraging opportunities. Since the beginning of the year, we spent approximately $25 million to reduce our debt balance by another $60 million or so, approximately, just to over $300 million of gross debt. We’ve also announced some de-levering and accretive M&A with the acquisition of Service Broadcasting in Dallas, Texas, two radio stations there in the marketplace for an in-market consolidation opportunity for an announced purchase price of just about $22 million. Net of dispositions of one station in Dallas and two stations in Charlotte, we will spend approximately. By the way, those dispositions don’t contribute any cash flow currently.

We’ll invest approximately $11 million and pick up about $5 million in pro forma EBITDA. With that, you know, As I said in the last conference call, we’re gonna wait till after we got through first quarter to look at what, you know, we wanted to do about updating guidance for 2026. With that, we’re actually updating the 2026 guide to approximately $60 million of EBITDA, and we expect year-end leverage to be below 5 times by year-end with these acquisitions and dispositions. Another bright spot on this is with these numbers will generate about $40 million of free cash flow this year. Peter is gonna have more details on that in his comments.

I’m gonna let Peter, you know, go into the details, and then we can, you know, open it up for Q&A and answer any more detailed questions about the business.

Peter D. Thompson, Chief Financial Officer, Urban One: Thank you, Alfred. Consolidated net revenue for the quarter was approximately $77.7 million, down by 15.8% year-over-year. Net revenue for the radio broadcasting segment was $30.5 million, which was a decrease of 6.4% year-over-year. Excluding political revenue, the net revenue for radio was down 8.7% year-over-year. According to Miller Kaplan, our local ad sales were down 5.5% against a market that was down 7.1%. National ad sales were down 8.2% against a market that was down 6.7%. Our largest ad category was services, which was up 14.5%, primarily due to legal services.

The government and public category was up 23.6% due to political spending. All the other major categories were down. Net revenue for the Reach Media segment was $4.9 million, down 17% from the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of half a million for the quarter. This decrease was primarily driven by a decrease in the network marketplace revenue and key client attrition. Net revenues for the digital segment were down 33.5% in the first quarter at $6.8 million. The decrease was driven by the decrease in national direct revenue streams as a result of a reduction of DEI-focused spending, ad budgets being pushed to second quarter and second half, and a general pullback in advertiser spending due to macroeconomic concerns.

Local digital revenue was up 10.9% for the quarter as we continue to focus on expanding and improving our local digital sales. We recognized approximately $36 million of revenue from our cable television segment during the quarter, decrease of 18.5%. Cable television advertising revenue was down 24.9%. Prime delivery declined 24% year-over-year for persons 25-54. The integration of Nielsen dash data gave a boost to linear inventory, and this along with a weak scatter market led to more commercial units being allocated to direct response, which has a lower average unit rate. Cable television affiliate revenue was down by 9.8%, driven by a decrease in subscribers as linear cable continues to decline when that was partially offset by an increase in subscriber rates.

Cable subscribers for TV One, as measured by Nielsen, finished the first quarter at 29.1 million compared to 30.2 million at the end of Q4. The decline is a result of the combination of churn and a conversion of virtual MVPDs that has been sold as connected television and therefore pulled out of the Nielsen numbers. Cleo TV had 28.6 million Nielsen subscribers. Operating expenses excluding depreciation and amortization, stock-based compensation, and impairment of goodwill and intangible assets was approximately $73.5 million compared to approximately $80.7 million for the comparable period of 2025. Decrease was mainly driven by sales and marketing expense decreases in the operating segments.

Radio expenses were down 3.8% or $1.1 million, driven primarily by lower costs associated with revenue, lower facility and rental costs, lower national rep fees, and lower bank charges. Reach operating expenses were down by 16.2% or $1.1 million, primarily due to lower bad debt reserve, lower bank charges, and lower revenue related expenses. Operating expenses in the digital segment were down 19.7%, driven by a decrease in traffic acquisition costs, commissions, headcount related savings, and third-party ad serving costs. Operating expenses in cable television segment were down 9.8%, which was driven by lower marketing expense, lower programming content amortization, and research costs. Operating expenses at corporate were down approximately 6.1%, driven by lower professional service fees and payroll related costs.

Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $4.7 million for the first quarter, down 63.8%. Consolidated broadcast and digital operating income was approximately $14.9 million, a decrease of 35.4%. Interest expense was down to approximately $4.4 million, down from $10.9 million last year. Company made cash interest payments of approximately $700,000 in the quarter on the outstanding 2028 notes. Semiannual cash interest payments for the 2030 and 2031 notes were made on April 1 for 102 days of accrued interest from the transaction day of December 18, 2025, and the next payment on those notes is now due October 1 for the full 180 days of accrued interest.

During the first quarter, the company repurchased $4.3 million of its 2028 notes at an average price of 51% of par for a $2.1 million gain and approximately $32.4 million of its 2031 second lien notes at a weighted average price of approximately 40.7% of par. The discounted debt repurchases in the first quarter reduced the outstanding long-term debt balance to $326.7 million as of March 31, 2026. The company repurchased an additional twenty-three and a half million dollars of its 2031 notes in Q2 at 42% of par.

As Alfred said here today, it’s a total reduction in long-term debt of $60.2 million, which will give us an annual interest saving of $4.6 million. Under the troubled debt restructuring accounting, the long-term debt on the balance sheet includes a premium which amortizes over the remaining term. On the ABL, we drew $10 million in fourth quarter and repaid that in the first quarter. On March 31st, we drew another $10 million with a six-month maturity, which was outstanding as of March 31st, 2026. We drew a further $10 million in the second quarter of 2026 to help us do the long-term debt repurchase.

We have a current outstanding balance today of $20 million on the ABL, and we have incremental borrowing capacity of approximately $22 million today. No impairment losses were recognized for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026. We recorded amortization expense of approximately $6.2 million, including $5.6 million for the radio broadcast license and TV One trade name for the 3 months ended March 31, 2026. Benefit from income taxes was approximately $1.4 million for the first quarter. Company paid cash income taxes, net refunds in the amount of approximately $0.1 million. Capital expenditures were approximately $3.4 million in the quarter, which included the Indianapolis studio refurbishment, which is why that’s higher than you would normally expect to see.

That will normalize over time. Net loss was approximately $3.1 million or $0.69 a share, compared to a net loss of $11.7 million or $2.64 per share for the first quarter of 2025. During the three months, the company did not repurchase any shares of Class A common stock, and we executed stock vest tax repurchases of 2,187 shares Class D common stock at a price of $5.73 per share. As we previously announced, in March, company agreed to sell its WMXG and also WLNK radio broadcast licenses in Charlotte, North Carolina, to unrelated third parties for approximately $0.7 million and $4.2 million respectively. We anticipate to close on the sale by the end of Q2.

In April, company entered into an agreement to acquire Service Broadcasting Group in Dallas, Texas, including radio stations KKDA and KRNB for $22 million. At the same time, we also entered into an agreement to sell radio station KZMJ to Fuzion Dallas for $6 million. Pending FCC approval, the Dallas transactions are expected to close in Q3. The net of all of that, radio M&A is roughly $11 million of outflow, and on a pro forma basis, we think the incremental cash flows from that will be around about $5 million.

As of March 31, 2026, the current contractually outstanding debt balance was approximately $336 million, and the ending unrestricted cash balance was $27.2 million, resulting in net debt of approximately $309.5 million compared to $48.5 million of LTM reported adjusted EBITDA for a total net leverage ratio of 6.39 times. Cash flow from operations is expected to be around $40 million for the year, and we do anticipate repaying the $20 million ABL balance in the second half of the year. Based on the guidance that we gave, we anticipate net leverage being below 5 times at year end. With that, I’ll hand it back to Josh.

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: Thanks, Peter. operator, could you please open up the lines for questions?

Operator: Our first question will come from the line of Ben Briggs with StoneX Financial. Please go ahead.

Ben Briggs, Analyst, StoneX Financial: Hey, good morning, guys, thank you for taking the call and taking the questions. I wanted to touch on one thing here. First of all, congratulations on the acquisitions that you made this quarter. I know, kinda moving some chips around the board is an important strategy for you guys. Can you give us some clarity on the thought process behind these? Is it more attractive formats, that you think are gonna make the difference, or is it better geographies or combination of both? Any clarity there would be great.

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: They aren’t different formats. They’re similar formats, you know, in the marketplace. You know, we’re really, you know, looking to expand our reach and our service of the African American community in Dallas, Texas. I think it’s gonna help us, you know, all the way around in terms of serving local advertisers. It’s, you know, the economics, you know, of putting those clusters together and also, you know, selling off our, you know, one station, you know, are gonna create a much larger cluster that has, you know, more revenue scale. With those economies of scale, you’re, you know, producing significantly more EBITDA. It makes a lot of sense.

It’s an acquisition that I’ve been trying to do for almost 30 years. You know, I think we, you know, Actually, we went public in May of 1999. That’s when we bought our first Dallas station, you know, been trying to make a deal with the owner operator, you know, there, Mr. Hymen Childs, who’s a wonderful broadcaster and has been, you know, in this business for, you know, a long time. You know, we were, you know, we always stayed in touch, you know, we finally were able to do something.

What really helps it is, again, the disposition of the 1 station that we have that You know, I think does maybe $2 million of revenue, you know, but really no cash flow contribution. You know, those 2 stations in Charlotte that we’re selling, you know, will probably do just about $1 million of revenue this year and also contribute no cash flow. The 2 stations in Charlotte became saleable because we moved our news talk format off of WBT AM, and we put it on WLNK-FM, which is a full market signal there. Because these spoken word formats have to move to the FM band, we finally, you know, did that.

You know, we moved the adult contemporary format to these stations, which, one’s a Class A in Charlotte, the other one is a C3 that’s just, you know, south of Charlotte. You know, we’re really positioning that Charlotte cluster for the future but there was no cash flow associated with it. It also actually frees up the land associated with the tower sites for WBT AM and also for our old WFMZ AM, which we also moved to the FM band. Something I didn’t talk about is that we’ve got significant value in those land assets in Charlotte, and there is a process going on as we speak to monetize those parcels.

All in the vein of how do we, you know, look for accretive and delevering M&A? Yeah. You gotta get it at the right price. It’s gotta be an operational fit such that 1 plus 1 equals 3 in terms of you know, in terms of profitability. You know, we think what we did in, you know, Dallas and what we’re doing in Charlotte is, you know, are significant, gonna be significant plays in our effort to continue to delever.

Ben Briggs, Analyst, StoneX Financial: Okay. That’s great color, and I appreciate the information about the land that some AM towers are on that frees up. Can you give any more clarity on the monetization process? Are you gonna lease? Are you gonna sell? Are you not sure yet?

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: We, yeah, we’re, you know, the land is listed with JLL right now, and there’s a process going on, you know, to bring in offers and to evaluate and to, you know, eventually just sell it. Yeah.

Ben Briggs, Analyst, StoneX Financial: Okay, great. That’s very helpful color. I appreciate it. Thank you, guys.

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: Thank you.

Operator: Again, for questions, press star one. Our next question will come from the line of Dennis Ponula with Lapan Partners. Please go ahead.

Dennis Ponula, Analyst, Lapan Partners: Hi. Good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions.

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: Hey, Dennis.

Dennis Ponula, Analyst, Lapan Partners: hey, I know the first quarter, you know, seasonality is the weakest quarter of the year, but man, to see TV down double digits. Did I hear Mr. Thompson right? Did you say digital, your digital broadcasting was up?

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: Q2.

Peter D. Thompson, Chief Financial Officer, Urban One: Q2. We’re, yeah.

Dennis Ponula, Analyst, Lapan Partners: Oh, Q2. I’m sorry.

Peter D. Thompson, Chief Financial Officer, Urban One: Yeah.

Dennis Ponula, Analyst, Lapan Partners: Gotcha.

Peter D. Thompson, Chief Financial Officer, Urban One: No. Look, so super soft Q1, but a bunch of campaigns got pushed into Q2 in the back half, so Q2 and digital is actually up.

Dennis Ponula, Analyst, Lapan Partners: Yeah, because digital-

Peter D. Thompson, Chief Financial Officer, Urban One: Yeah. Sorry. Of all of the divisions, I think the digital folks are optimistic and confident about, you know, making their numbers for the year, right? A weak Q2, but a weak Q1, but a stronger Q2.

Dennis Ponula, Analyst, Lapan Partners: Yeah, because a lot of your peers are transitioning to digital, and digital sales have been pretty strong. I’m sure that we’re probably trying to head in that same direction, I would imagine. Our margins are better, you know, sales numbers are better.

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: The, the mar-

Dennis Ponula, Analyst, Lapan Partners: Are we on the market for that division?

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: Yes. Well, the division, you know, has grown from I mean, we created iOne Digital, and for a long time it was a break-even division, you know. I think revenue went from, like, low 30s to, you know, let me tell, 75 after sort of the George Floyd DEI, and it was wildly profitable. When I say wildly, went up to, you know, call it $20 million. You know, now there’s pressure on digital publishers, of which they are, you know, you can see, you know, BuzzFeed had its challenge, et cetera. Even with all of that, advertisers are moving, you know, more towards digital. It will still be, you know, not a $20 million profitable division, but probably 6, you know, of course.

A misnomer that you just, you know, mentioned is that the margins aren’t better, you know, in, in, in digital. The margins are actually, you know, worse, particularly on local digital, because a lot of the campaigns that you sell, you know, require you to, A, do specialized individual custom content, and B, oftentimes you need impressions that are not owned and operated impressions to build scale, and those impressions are very expensive to buy. You have TAC, you know, which is traffic acquisition cost. You know, the radio business, local radio, you know, has been moving, you know, in that direction. You know, you know, it is a lower margin business.

Our local radio stations have been behind the curve in local digital, and we’re pushing and improving in that area because, you know, I tell my guys, you know, and ladies that low margin is better than no margin, right? You know.

Peter D. Thompson, Chief Financial Officer, Urban One: Yeah, Dennis, on the local to Alfred’s point, on local digital revenue, I mentioned in my sort of prepared remarks, we were up 10.9% for the quarter. The marketplace was up 20%, so local digital is where the growth is in radio. We’re sort of trailing that curve, but we’re working hard.

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: Yeah

Peter D. Thompson, Chief Financial Officer, Urban One: to catch up.

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: More scale in our markets will help us be a better local digital marketing partner for our advertisers. You know, we’re, you know, we’re focused on that.

Dennis Ponula, Analyst, Lapan Partners: Let me just take a quick second to thank you and management for working so hard. I mean, my God, that refinancing you guys did in December was awesome. You didn’t any of the company, there was no dilution to shareholders. Unfortunately, the market didn’t reward you in any way, shape, or form for that. Now with this additional debt repurchase and another $1.1 million in interest savings, plus the premium savings, it’s looking like if I’m not mistaken, your quarterly interest cost on your P&L is gonna be under $3 million. Does that sound about right, Mr. Thompson?

Peter D. Thompson, Chief Financial Officer, Urban One: Yeah, it’s Look, that’s the weirdness of having to amortize the premium, and it reduces the effective interest rate. I think the way to think about the interest burden going forward is the cash interest expense pro forma-

Dennis Ponula, Analyst, Lapan Partners: No, I know that.

Peter D. Thompson, Chief Financial Officer, Urban One: Yeah. $24.8 is the pro forma cash interest expense moving forward, which is obviously way down on where we’ve been historically, and to your point, helps us generate more free cash flow, right?

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: Yeah, look, it’s, you know, we’re in tougher businesses, right? You know, it really, it’s going to be, you know, a threading of the needle of how do you manage the balance sheet, get your interest burden down, get your debt down, find the places where you can create more cash flow. Look, you gotta deal with the reality is that, you know, at least the assumptions that we make, like when we did this Dallas acquisition, our model has the Dallas market going down in spot revenue and digital going up with, you know, with lower margins, but net, the market coming down, right?

I don’t have a crystal ball as to what happens, you know, to the media ecosystem in terms of technology and who’s competing and what it means, you know, and I don’t think anybody does. You know, you know, you just gotta manage that debt down and stay ahead of it. That’s, you know, that’s what we’ve been doing. That’s what we planned. I mean, it’s actually, in fact that in February of 2021, we had $825 million of debt. Five years later, we’ve got $303 million of debt. You know, we have less cash flow too, but, you know, that’s.

Dennis Ponula, Analyst, Lapan Partners: Even looking at January of 2024, you had $725 million. In just a few years, you guys took off what? Over $400 million in debt.

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: Yeah.

Dennis Ponula, Analyst, Lapan Partners: Without diluting shareholders a single share since.

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: I mean, look, you know, you know, that’s, that’s all fine and good, but I appreciate that. The stock trades at an as, you know, basically as an option level because, you know, what’s the value, right? Like, if you value stuff at, you know, we’re like, "Hey, we’re gonna be below 5 times." Somebody could argue that, you know, your assets, cable and radio are worth 5 times, so there’s no equity value, right? Like, you know, it could certainly benchmarks, whether it’s AMC Networks or whether it’s Versant or like, you know, have seen multiples, you know, below 5 times, right? You know, so, but we soldier on. That’s the reason you gotta get your debt down to 3 times, right?

You know, and that’s, you know, like, you know, what we’re, you know, what we’re focusing on.

Dennis Ponula, Analyst, Lapan Partners: Well, even your free cash flow that you just mentioned, you’re gonna do $40 million. Your current market cap is $26 million this morning. I mean, how many companies are trading under 1 times free cash flow? I don’t know of any.

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: Yeah.

Dennis Ponula, Analyst, Lapan Partners: I mean, I don’t know what your peers typically trade at, but when I took a look, they typically trade at five to eight times free cash flow. You guys are less than one.

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: Well, look, I think the market’s gotta get comfortable that, you know, our company, these companies are gonna make it through the curve, right? You know, ’cause a number of folks have not made it, you know. Cumulus is in, you know, BK again. Spanish Broadcasting just went to BK, you know. You know, they gotta believe that you’re gonna make it, and then they’ll buy your argument.

Dennis Ponula, Analyst, Lapan Partners: You don’t have any liquidity issues either, any of the term debt issues. You just pushed them out to 2030 and 2031. You’re eradicating and you’re eliminating that debt at a rapid pace. I mean, how do you not get rerated and, you know, have your stock trading at literally bankruptcy prices?

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: Yeah.

Peter D. Thompson, Chief Financial Officer, Urban One: S&P are on the call.

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: Exactly, right?

Peter D. Thompson, Chief Financial Officer, Urban One: S&P, I hope you’re making notes.

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: All right. Thank you.

Dennis Ponula, Analyst, Lapan Partners: Guys, thank you for taking my questions. I appreciate your time and your hard work. I hope you guys get rewarded share price-wise very soon.

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: Do we.

Peter D. Thompson, Chief Financial Officer, Urban One: Yeah. Thank you, Dennis.

Operator: Once again, for questions, please press star one on your telephone keypad. This concludes our question and answer session. I’ll hand the call back to Alfred for any closing comments.

Alfred C. Liggins, Chief Executive Officer, Urban One: Operator, thank you very much. Also, thank you everybody for your support. Again, I always say this, it sounds like a broken record, but Peter and I, you know, pride ourselves on being accessible. If there are any follow-up questions, please feel free to reach out to us. Thank you very much.

Operator: This concludes our call. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.