Nexstar Media Group, Inc. (NXST) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

With us this morning are Perry Sook, the Chairman and CEO; Lee Ann Gliha, the CFO; and Mike Biard, the COO. Thank you all for joining.

Thank you. Happy to be here.

So we've got about 35 minutes for Q&A. I've got the iPad here. If anybody has any questions, just log them in and I'll try to weave them into the conversation. So Nexstar is a unique and scaled business in the media sector. Perry, can you talk about how Nexstar fits into the broader media ecosystem?

Well, it's interesting because we think with the size and scale of the company, it doesn't really fit neatly into the peer group of pure-play broadcasters anymore. And I think the company that we are most comparable to in my mind right now is Fox, right? It's cable network, broadcast network, sports rights, entertainment programming, station portfolio, where our network is not as large nor has it been around as long nor has our cable network. But our station portfolio is larger. So our ability to do local activation at scale, which is what these advertising agency and holding companies are very much interested in trying to make happen, it is an area where I think we shine. So we call ourselves kind of a unicorn because we're a little big to be in this neighborhood and kind of just moving into this neighborhood over here. So hopefully, that gives you some perspective of how we think about it.

That's great. And as we sit here, sort of in late 2023, can you give us a sense for what the priorities for the company as we look out into '24?

Well, it's a bit of an embarrassment of riches in terms of the amount of free cash flow that we generate. And so we talk about capital allocation, the 3 of us and Tom Carter, as long as he is still with us through the end of the year. We talk about capital allocation literally every other day. And so we have been buying back our stock rather aggressively. As you know, we've reduced our number of shares outstanding by 25% since 2019, which ought to be a headline, I would think at some point, just when you look at the free cash flow available per share. And so we've been buying back stock. We increased our dividend, 25%. This is the tenth year of our dividend, and it has increased to 25% or greater in each year. We're obviously on the look for acquisitions that would complement what we've built, which would be in the content space or adjacent to content. Haven't found anything at a price that is compelling. And obviously, when the cost of capital is higher than the -- necessarily the cost, we would spend on an acquisition would be lower, right? So we'll be in this kind of position, I think probably as we move into the coming year. And obviously, our embarrassment of riches will be even greater with the political advertising that will wash over this industry and our company in 2024.

That makes sense. Mike, the health of the bundle is always a big question we get at the conference, and we had Fox here earlier talking a little bit about it. And I think third quarter, we cracked -- at least in our numbers, we cracked the sort of 8% decline mark, although there is some reason for optimism with, I think, around to a certain set the Charter renewal with Disney. What are your thoughts on this deal? And then what do you think it means as we think about the evolution of the bundle going forward?

This deal, meaning, the Charter-Disney deal?

Yes.

Yes. Listen, we're optimistic about the future of the business, particularly after that deal. I think when you look at that conflict, and what it was about and what it wasn't about, we feel pretty good about where we sit in that context, right? So the headline of that fight was not about price for premium programming, right? What you did not hear Charter say in that fight was that ABC or ESPN content was not worth the price that they were seeking for that. There were 2 sort of avenues of conflict there. One was about the D2C and not only what Disney was doing in the D2C space, but more importantly about what they have been announcing they intend to do, with respect to ESPN flagship. And I think if you're Charter, and you're sitting there looking at a proposition to buy an entire bundle of programming, largely on the back of ABC and ESPN, and Disney is telling the world, they're going to go out and sell ESPN in a way that's arguably better, maybe with better content, direct-to-consumer, that's a conflict that needs to get resolved at some point. And we've been saying for some time, both at Nexstar and in my previous job at Fox, those conflicts needed to be reconciled at some point. So the other conflict there -- the other avenue of conflict was sort of bundle of other content and programming that was stapled onto that lead programming, which is really the derivative cable networks, right? You had 3 versions of FX. You had 3 versions of Nat Geo. There's Freeform. Most of that did not come back on when they relaunched. So for us, when we looked at that conflict, both before the resolution and after the resolution, we said, this isn't about the space that we occupy, right? Premier programming got paid and it got carried and it got relaunched. And so that's the first headline. We feel really good about the content that we offer and how it stacks up, right? If you look at our portfolio of TV stations, particularly our big 4 affiliates, in general, each of the big 4 networks rates about 4:1 versus ESPN, right? We're not getting 4x the price of ESPN. I wish we were, certainly aspire to get there. We're not there yet. We're not close to there. So we think there's upside there, first of all. Secondly, you go back to that derivative set of cable networks. And as those got jettisoned, it frees up spend inside the bundle to be reallocated to folks like us that are underperforming as opposed to overperforming relative to the value that they're delivering.

So you think over time, we could see that -- I mean, obviously, this is a crystal ball, but that 8% come down as maybe Charter does more and more of these deals or maybe other distributors follow?

I think certainly, it's got to level out, right? And you can see Charter certainly feels reenergized around the video business post that deal, see more advertising for Charter video in the last few months than I've seen in the last few years, right? So both they and Disney, in the release that they issued post resolution of that agreement, expressed confidence in sort of a renewed energy and optimism about the video business. And I think there's a reason to believe that. I mean if you -- from our vantage point, if you look at what's happened to the bundle, it's not that the content inside the bundle has suddenly become less attractive, right? There's a price value equation there. Prices continue to go up in large part because we think there's a tax on the content that's really delivering most of the value there, that tax in the form of other cable networks that have been obsoleted by D2C or they've been content pillaged or it's available and other products in a better way. There's a whole variety of reasons there. But the lead content have gotten less valuable. You can look -- it's not like the NFL is getting less viewership this year. College football is not getting less viewership. No one talking about the NBA being less valuable when they come back to the market. I mean the lead dogs are still the lead dogs. So that's the first thing. The second thing is with the migration of content, either simultaneously into a D2C product on the outside, or worse, being migrated from -- to a D2C product exclusively, that's made that the bundle incrementally less attractive. Bringing those D2C products back inside the bundle eliminates that incentive for customers to leave to get that exclusive content or being forced to sort of make that Hobson's choice of, do I have to buy the bundle and buy these D2Cs on the side, so I can get the 2 or 3 things that they've now taken out and made exclusive? So we think the resolution of that is a good thing for everybody involved in the system.

So over time, I mean, if you just think a few years out, should we expect the bundle to sort of get skinnier and skinnier as there's more and more of these type of renewals? And do you think other distributors will follow Charter's lead once -- Charter has got a couple of more. I think they just did Fox. I think -- we think they've got Paramount coming up, and we're all going to go through the same thing. Do you think it is the thing that sort of snow wells in the industry?

To the extent they just did Fox, you didn't see any headlines on that. So I think that reaffirms our thesis that it wasn't about getting paid for premium content. So I think to your question, does the bundle get skinnier? I think certainly, versions of it will. I think there'll be a home -- there'll always be a home for people who want to buy everything. But certainly, there has to be a distillation of the bundle, right, down to the content that really is delivering value appropriate to its cost. And I think that's the reconciliation that we're seeing happen right now in the marketplace, right? When Charter drops everything and they get to a deal and only part of it comes back on, that's a bit of a watershed moment. I don't think you've seen that ever happen with a major media company before.

So how should we think of rate increases going forward? You talked about not getting the sort of value that, say, ESPN does despite the fact that you have a heavy load of sports content. I mean, so -- are the rate increases that you're getting? Or do you expect them to be sort of similar to what you've seen in the past? Because it's definitely not true with a lot of entertainment-focused networks.

No, it shouldn't be true for entertainment folks, right? Because the value that they're delivering isn't appropriate to the cost, right? I think I can say that without a lot of controversy. So to answer your question, yes, we continue to believe that there's upside in our rates as we drive closer to the viewership that we drive.

Right, and right now, I think I've seen -- there's news I missed that, TEGNA has a dispute with DirecTV, a situation you guys know pretty well. I mean does it seem -- like is it getting more contentious to do these renewals? And is it just like one particular satellite company or is getting the value -- are you getting more pushback on sort of getting the value for your viewership?

I'll start. It's not getting more contentious. I mean I've been doing this since 2005 when we got our first dollars from MVPDs. It's just that the 2 satellite companies, historically, have been responsible for approximately 85% of all blackouts that have happened in the industry. Any number of reasons. They don't have a broadband piece to subsidize. But I mean, they have been the ones most willing to take the chance of going public and going into a blackout. What we have found, our history with blackouts, is that advertisers may go away the longer the blackout happens. But when the blackouts over, the advertisers come back, losing subscribers, it's very hard to get them back. So you're talking enterprise value versus cents on the dollar of operating expenses. So I don't think it's more contentious. It's probably more complicated than it was when we started when it was just about money. Now it's about a lot of things. Nobody knows that better the Mike, so I'll let him finish the rest of the question, but it's not more contentious. There's still yelling and screaming. We just try not to let that get out into the streets.

Certainly, it's been contentious for a long time. There are companies my children to this day despise because they caused me to miss a New Year's Day at home or some such thing after an all-nighter. So those fights have been there. I think the focus of the dispute changing a little bit is you can see in the Charter fight, right? I think x number of years ago, whether that was 5, 10, whatever it was, there wasn't a realistic focus on we need to distill this thing down to the products that are delivering value. So I think that narrative will change. And you asked whether others are going to follow in Charter's wake. The answer to that is unquestionably yes, right? You mentioned DirecTV and TEGNA, you can see DirecTV's deck that they produce looks an awful lot like the one that Charter produced. So I think others are going to take their cue. It's always been the nature of this business. It's a bit of a me-too copycat kind of exercise, right? And as I said, some of the resolution in that Charter-Disney dispute, has never been seen before. So for sure, other distributors are going to try and step up and achieve the same results.

And as it happens, Mike, coming from Fox in your space, I mean, do you think that over time, these networks just get dropped by other distributors and just go away and companies consolidate? I think [indiscernible] on his call last quarter talked about finding new savings within this -- and especially as entertainment-focused networks, and that was originally what I thought.

It has to happen with some products, right? If a consumer can get all of the FX branded content on Hulu, in a way -- and by the way, other content that's not available to Charter under the FX branded umbrella. And in a way that's more user-friendly, i.e., lower ad load, or if you want to pay a couple more bucks, no ad load. If that option is available, than the linear networks that used to house all of that content, the way they're available, the value they deliver has obviously changed. Their reach obviously needs to change over time. It's just inevitable.

Maybe pivoting over to the [ TVI ] market. We started the conference with an ad panel. That actually wasn't -- I actually thought there'd be some more fireworks, but it sort of suggests a sort of healthy underlying fundamentals with the ad market. Linear TV certainly sort of continuing on sort of similar trends that we've seen. But maybe just to start the ball rolling. I mean, just any comments you can make on the sort of the overall health of the TVI market?

I'll take that one. I think what we said was we've been seeing some improvement sequentially. Our third quarter core advertising, excluding the CW, declined at a rate that was less than the rate in the second quarter. And our pacing on the third quarter call for the fourth quarter, was, again, a lower rate of decline. So we are starting to see some of that level of improvement.

Which is affectionately known inside our company as we are -- we suck less. And I will tell you that I think -- we have to remember that advertising is and always has been a cyclical business. And it's usually the first expense that gets cut on the way into a recession, the last one restored, so leading and lagging economic indicator. Not surprisingly, one of the categories that has been down the most on a percentage basis is other media. So if they're getting hit on the top line, they're probably taking their expenses out of spending advertising money with us. Auto has been encouraging. It's not enough to replace sports betting and outside medium. It's just a general -- this is not a category or anything secular. This is all categories with the exception of auto that's coming off of a low base and a year or 2 of negative comps. But we're seeing just generally spending pullback, which is characteristic of being in a recession. We're leading into one. We think we're in the worst of it, and we actually think things will get better as we move into 2024, certainly by the back half of the year. And I think Magna revised their forecast and said a lot of the same things over the weekend.

Right. I mean, are there other sort of factors at play? Like is the writers strike, you think, having an impact? I mean, in terms of less content on the networks and, as a result, lower ratings or less likely to -- for ad buyers to sort of spend in the upfront, not knowing what they're paying for?

I can't speak for other networks than the CW is selling kind of a growth story and same with NewsNation that added 25 new advertisers that have never done business with them before. So I think we're a bit of a contra indicator. A lot of our programming in terms of originals was sourced from Canada or overseas and was already produced as reality programming. Most everything we had, with the exception of one show which was all American, was already produced. So we may have benefited on the margin. What happened at other networks, I really can't speak to.

And then you guys are a big beneficiary of political advertising, and we obviously have the upcoming elections. I mean, anyway at this point, there's sort of size -- what the potential upside could be there? And are you starting to see any spend at this point?

We are starting to see spend at this point even in third quarter. We saw our earliest spend for the '24 presidential from candidates that accelerated their first telecast date from what Hillary Clinton did when she ran. So that's a positive economic indicator. It's an anecdote. Our debate coverage on NewsNation is sold out at record rates. And so -- those are all anecdotes. And I -- the one thing I would caution everybody is if we get out of the gate with a big first quarter, don't extrapolate that necessarily. Because as I tell people, first quarter political is interesting, but it's only the fourth quarter political that is meaningful because that's where half the money will be spent in 8 weeks, and that's where the game is played.

So the political debate is interesting. I mean, so that's -- I think that's later this week, correct?

Yes. Wednesday.

Wednesday. Okay. That will be on NewsNation. I mean, just how does that come about? Is that something -- I mean, frankly, I don't know sort of how that works, but how did NewsNation end up with that?

We've been working on the RNC and the [ D&C ] for the better part of the year. And it's pretty remarkable that NewsNation is now 3 years old and actually has a presidential debate. If Fox was on the air -- Fox News was on the air for 8 years before they landed their first political debate. And so we were -- we think it's a validation of what we're doing. And Elizabeth Vargas was a big part of that presentation to the RNC and then so we'll have an interesting panel with Elizabeth and Megyn Kelly. And so it's -- and there'll be 3 women that will be the moderators and I think it will be well received. And it's also going to be airing on the CW. We offered it to the CW affiliates, and they snapped it up unanimously in less than 48 hours, I think, just realizing this is a chance to access programming in an audience that they've never been able to reach with the CW before. And so we're very pleased we didn't force it on anybody. But it will be a -- it's a proud moment for the company and for NewsNation to be able to be in the same room from a stature perspective to be able to land a political debate. Our job is to make sure that it's interesting and not yelling at one another. And so that's always the challenge, but I'm very pleased of the fact that a year's work paid off and here we are in the discussion.

Great. Makes sense. Maybe Perry talk about news in general. Why is this an attractive area? Obviously, you're making some investment in this space. And then maybe talk a little bit about the landscape and where NewsNation sort of fits.

Sure. Well, I mean, just in general, the company was built on news, local news, local content. We produce over 300,000 hours. We have over 5,500 journalists in the United States, which is more than any other journalistic organization in the world. And so we said why can't we use that to extend our brand and our platform to build what was a rerun general entertainment cable network? And if you've been following their fate and fortunes just generally, it's not a pretty picture. So we were fairly prescient with our pivot to news. We're currently 24/5. We will be 24/7 by September 1 of '24 in terms of our coverage. But in terms of news and going back to distribution, if you look at our local content, our non-network content, on our television stations, that makes up roughly half the viewing. And the network content is the other half of viewing. So it's very important to the customer, the distributor and their customers that we program local news. And if you think of the diminution of local newspaper and local news on radio, we're kind of the last bastion for professionally produced original relevant local content, something we take pride in. And so NewsNation was just built on the foundation of those 5,500 journalists that are in local communities. And it's really, as I said, local content is what the company is all about. So even if you look at our acquisitions, acquisition of The Hill was to build out a political vertical, which ties into our content strategy. And now obviously, more content that's distributed nationally between the cable and the broadcast network. But again, the broadcast network benefits our local stations that our CW affiliates reach 35% of the country. So it's pick in New York, KTLA, some big stations. And so this was also to guarantee kind of a source of programming that can generate ratings and revenues for our stations.

Speaking of acquisitions, can you give us an update on the company's 75% acquisition of the CW? And I know it's early, but is there sort of any early learnings from that deal?

Well just that the CW was losing in excess of $300 million when we took it over. And if you look at our first year of ownership and operation, which is now and what we have budgeted and planned for next year, we're taking in excess of $100 million of costs out of the network every year, which is kind of how we get to a kind of a 3-year path to profitability. Now the curveballs that we've been thrown in that since making that statement are kind of an ad recession that is around, but also the writer strike that caused us to have to push some shows and the costs associated with those further into our operating calculus. So -- but we still think that we will be at breakeven -- I don't want to say by '25, but we say in 2025, probably toward the end of 2025. Obviously, the one thing we didn't anticipate or calculate to the extent that it has happened for us is our ability to generate rights agreements to put, what I think is quality broadcast -- quality sports on broadcast television that heretofore haven't been, right? The ACC that came to us because the RSN group rejected the contract in bankruptcy. So they either did a discount deal with us or there was no ACC second package. We worked on NASCAR. Lee Ann and I worked on NASCAR for the better part of the year, and we're able to become the exclusive destination for the Xfinity series. Well, that's 33 weeks of programming. That's a big slug. And then the WWE with the next program that will layer on Tuesday night, that's going to program literally one night of the network for a year. And we know that people watch that programming, just the track record of all of those franchises. And the linchpin of that was LIV Golf, which was not a political state. And this was an opportunity. They wanted exposure. We had a broadcast network. They saw the value in broadcast. The deal we did with them, it's no secret, was a revenue share. So we were taking virtually no risk. And it just said to agents to the sports community, hey, we're open for business for sports on the weekend, which historically, the network was not. So we're very pleased with the investments that we've made in sports rights. It's amazing how quickly they came and how quickly we had to react. And we're able to react because of the structure of our company. They're all entrepreneurial deals that we budget -- will make money over the life of those rights agreements if you look at the distribution revenue increases and the ad sales that will come from it. But they may not make money in the very first year. But the rights holders have worked with us to -- and Lee Ann has structured the payments. So we're paying more in the last year than we are in the first year, so we can grow into this together.

I mean, stepping back, how would you describe the -- maybe this is for Mike, just the overall strategy for programming for the CW? I mean obviously, a lot of sports, but maybe the mix of sports and entertainment. And then are there other sports deals out there that could be attractive as ever?

Yes, there's always the potential for more, right? I think we'll be very disciplined as those opportunities come along. But I think that -- to sort of zoom out and answer your question about the programming strategy, listen, we want to program the thing as a proper broadcast network with tent-pole big-ticket programming that is attractive to both viewers, our affiliated stations and our distributors, right? That's kind of the 3 constituencies that we think about. We do our job, then it becomes more attractive to investors as well, right? And so you look at what the CW was, and it was a network that was programmed for the benefit of its co-owners, which were TV studios, right, Warner's and things like Paramount, and primarily for the output of the content that they produced to a streaming world. And so the broadcast or runs of those shows were really just kind of a waylay on the way to the ultimate destination. It didn't make any sense. It didn't perform well in broadcast. So we look at it as an opportunity to reprogram the network inside of the tent poles, which we now have acquired and have yet to really see. I mean we've talked a little bit about NASCAR, and we talked about WWE. WWE, the NXT series, won't come on for a year and NASCAR won't come on until March of '25. So we're still very much in the building phase of this, not the actual execution yet. So in terms of the rest of the programming, we have the opportunity to reprogram it not only for the right audience, but also in a way that takes a lot of cost out of how we do that. So at the end of the day, our cost per hour across all of the programming, including sports, will be significantly lower than what it was when we acquired it. And in so doing, we'll make it a little bit more broadly appealing. So it will look a lot like what you see elsewhere, scripted entertainment, unscripted in a way that makes sense. And we have an opportunity now before WWE and NASCAR arrive to experiment with some things. Hopefully find a couple of winters in there that we can put our bets behind going forward.

Is there an opportunity with local sports, right, that your local stations on a market-by-market basis in the collapse of the RSN business model?

There certainly is an opportunity. I think what that looks like is still very much TBD. The key there is market-by-market. And then inside each market, it's going to be team-by-team. And so you're -- I don't think you're going to see uniformity across markets. You're not going to see uniformity across leagues. I think the NBA, given the fact that they have a significant national rights deal coming that each of the teams will benefit from, puts them in a slightly different position to sort of offset the demise of the RSNs than maybe MLB is. And MLB is going to vary depending on the size of the market, the rights deal that the team has gotten accustomed to with an RSN. You've already seen in places like San Diego and Phoenix, Diamond sports has already rejected those deals. So those teams are talking right now, obviously. So yes, we'll be opportunistic and continue -- we're in dozens of conversations right now, some of which are real because the teams know kind of what their fate is, others are very much sort of speculative because they don't know whether they're going to emerge from bankruptcy inside of Diamond or what it will look like. So those conversations are all over the place. I think it's fair to say we'll be opportunistic but disciplined in how we approach all that.

Makes sense. Maybe for Perry, just -- can you talk a little bit about your strategy as it relates to your spectrum and ATSC 3.0?

Sure. We, I think, will announce that we're going to light up the Empire State Building tower with the 3.0 lighthouse signal in conjunction with ABC and Univision, which will then give 3.0 signal on both broadcast facilities in New York. Chicago is next. We will, as a company, be close to 50% of the country receiving an ATSC 3.0 signal from a Nexstar-owned or operated station. And in conjunction with other parties, we've made no secret of the fact that we have a consortia with -- or a partnership, I should say, with Scripps. And if you look at Scripps and Nexstar, we have an unduplicated reach of spectrum of 92% of the country. We have another partnership with Sinclair called BitPath, and we have tried to design this. So they're each going after different parts of the market. But I think Sinclair and Nexstar have an unduplicated reach of approximately 75%, maybe closer to 80% of the U.S. So when you get to that level, it's not unheard of to think that with one more partnership agreement, you might be able to reach 100% of the U.S. And again, the use cases are meant to be different and what we're attempting to do now, particularly with -- and we're probably further along with Scripps then with Sinclair in this regard is to actually announce a commercial use and a client test case, the actual money will change hands to test out our thesis on location-based technology. And so I think when we can do that -- I told our gang, I don't want to put any more press releases about partnership agreements that don't have a customer. And we have a customer, I think people in this room would be much more interested in.

Is that the '24 event?

Our hope is in '24 that we will have a commercial arrangement with a customer to basically help develop proof of concept.

Yes. Great. Maybe for Lee Ann, the balance sheet. I think the numbers sort of suggests you guys are going to be below 3x levered for the -- off of '24. I mean is that the appropriate sort of leverage ratio for you guys?

Yes. We think about our leverage sort of in a 2-year cycle, right? So in an odd year, our leverage is a little bit higher and then an even year, our leverage is a little bit lower. I think we feel fairly comfortable with our quantum of debt. We have some mandatory amortization payments that we make to -- that reduce our balance over the course of the year. But we've been -- I think we're pretty comfortable with where we are from a leverage perspective. At the moment, we're not too levered or not too unlevered. And we look to then deploy the remaining amount of our free cash flow. And the ways that we think are going to be most beneficial to our shareholders generate the most return. And historically, that's been M&A. It's been more difficult to find good M&A targets that have been accretive. And given our scale, those targets have to be fairly large. So what we've been doing is redeploying that capital in the form of both dividends and share repurchases. And the -- on the share repurchase side, I would just say, we started this whole conversation, we've reduced our shares outstanding by 25% since 2019, and it's been at about a clip of about 10% a year. I don't know with other companies. If you sort of look at our LTM period, we generated about $1 billion of attributable free cash flow. And we returned 95% of that to shareholders. So talk about an actual 20% cash return, we think that's pretty impressive. And something to take note of because I think we largely trade on an EBITDA multiple basis rather than a free cash flow basis, but we're actually putting our money where our mouth is.

And should we expect -- I mean, those kind of returns to continue? And I guess I want to bring M&A into -- you mentioned potential M&A. I mean, that's sort of growing theme in the media space, just really in the last few weeks. I mean -- and the -- and we talked about earlier, there were some fleeting talk of you guys potentially buying some other broadcast assets. I mean, how do you -- what do you think of the sort of the M&A environment? You said it would have to be big. I mean, are there anything -- is there anything out there that sort of makes sense? Or anything -- what do you guys think about?

I mean, look, we look at our business as like a portfolio of assets and all of them work together, right? The CW, we bought it's beneficial in a number of different ways, not the least of which is it helps our station group that we have that were CW affiliate. So we like to look at M&A as what can we do to kind of grow this overall portfolio. There's another business that can be synergistic and help us grow. I think it's been a tough M&A environment, as we all know, when there's -- when the stock market or the [indiscernible] cost of capital is high, people don't actually go and try to sell a lot of assets at that point in time. So it's been a little bit lack of assets, but there's lots of things that are going on in the media sector, as you mentioned, and there may be things that -- pieces that can fly off of things that we can look at. But we'll look at any M&A in connection with how we historically do. Is it going to be accretive? Is it going to generate free cash flow? Is it going to be better than buying back our own stock? Is it going to create long-term value? Those are the types of things we like to look at.

Great. And just one last one. I think a [ tough ] one last question really for Mike. Relatively new to the company, but a long tenure here in the media industry, just any early learnings from your short time here at Nexstar?

That's a good question. We talked a lot about sports. So I guess I'll use a sports reference. They are who I thought they were. Look at Dennis Green. Yes. So no, no surprises. I mean the company is exactly what you've heard here today. It's well managed, very disciplined in how they approach both cost, but also investment. And as I've come into it, I guess, I've just been impressed by the overall story that you've just heard, and particularly Perry likes to call the fortress of our balance sheet, the cash flow generation, it's a favorable environment for investors. Water is warm, come on in, right? So I guess I've just -- to the extent there's been any surprise, it's been the fact that, that doesn't get talked enough publicly, right? Talked about enough publicly. And I think to sort of finish where Perry started, we do feel like we're a unicorn, right? Our reach at the local level is really unparalleled. And when you staple that with our really nascent and growing portfolio at the national level, it puts us in a position that we think is really unique in the industry.

That's perfect. Thank you all for joining us today.

Thanks for having us.

Appreciate it.