Scripps (SSP) Q1 2026 Earnings Transcript

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DATE

Friday, May 8, 2026 astatine 9:30 a.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Chief Executive Officer — Adam P. Symson

• Executive Vice President & Chief Financial Officer — Jason P. Combs

Full Conference Call Transcript

Jason P. Combs: Good morning, everyone, and convey you for joining us. We are coming into this morning's telephone with beardown momentum and bully quality astir our fiscal show and different activity. Here are a fewer of the highlights. We are progressing rapidly connected executing our broad translation strategy, which has helped thrust important betterment successful our archetypal 4th nett leverage to nether 4 times. Our Local Media part delivered a beardown show with industry-leading 7% halfway advertizing gross growth, driven by our unsocial unrecorded sports strategy. We launched the Scripps Sports Network, a premium escaped streaming channel. We are entering a midterm predetermination rhythm with strategical marketplace vulnerability successful cardinal battleground states.

And we proceed to optimize our portfolio done strategical plus transactions, generating $123 cardinal successful gross proceeds from caller income of 2 stations. We besides proceed to enactment towards the closing of our presumption swaps with Gray and prosecute further M&A enactment to enactment indebtedness simplification and heighten operating performance. In summation to those caller highlights, we are pleased to person conscionable successfully completed a caller affiliation statement with our largest web partner, ABC, covering 17 ABC affiliates. With that overview arsenic a backdrop, I would similar to reappraisal our archetypal 4th fiscal results, and past I volition sermon second-quarter guidance, followed by details connected our improving indebtedness position. I volition reason with a reappraisal of our EBITDA betterment plan.

I volition contiguous our archetypal 4th Local Media part results connected a same-station oregon adjusted combined basis, removing the Q1 2025 results of the 2 TV stations that we person present sold and reflecting our summation of the Lexington ABC affiliate. During the archetypal quarter, our Local Media part gross was $331 million, up 5.8% from archetypal 4th 2025. Core advertizing accrued 7%. Our services, automotive, and gambling categories each grew successful the quarter. Local halfway advertizing year-over-year maturation was mostly driven by advertizing income tied to our National Hockey League telecasts.

We saw a beardown publication from the summation of our newest rights statement with the Tampa Bay Lightning, and beyond this caller partnership, we besides saw beardown maturation successful our existing NHL deals with the Vegas Golden Knights, Utah Mammoth, and Florida Panthers. Our strategy is designed to thrust year-over-year maturation crossed some our existing deals and caller partnerships. And past month, we announced a 5th full-season NHL sports rights statement with the Nashville Predators to commencement this fall. The Winter Olympics and the Super Bowl besides contributed to our Q1 halfway advertizing growth. Political advertizing gross was astir $9 cardinal arsenic we statesman what is expected to beryllium a record-breaking spending rhythm for the midterm elections.