On Thursday, Urban One (NASDAQ:UONEK) discussed first-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below.
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Summary
Urban One reported a tough first quarter with consolidated net revenue of $77.7 million, down 15.8% year-over-year, and a consolidated adjusted EBITDA of $4.7 million, down 63.8%.
The company focused on balance sheet management, reducing long-term debt by $60.2 million and aiming for year-end leverage below five times.
Strategic initiatives included the acquisition of Service Broadcasting in Dallas for $22 million and selling stations in Dallas and Charlotte to optimize market presence and improve EBITDA.
Management updated 2026 guidance, projecting approximately $60 million in EBITDA and $40 million in free cash flow for the year.
Despite challenges, the company made significant strides in digital revenue, which is expected to improve in Q2, and continued efforts to manage costs and reduce operating expenses across segments.
Full Transcript
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 10Ks, 10Qs 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 14, 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 first also discuss some non Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) financial measures in talking about its performance. These measures will be reconciled to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) either during the course of this call or in the Company’s press release which can be found on its website as at www.urbanone.com.. a replay of the conference call will be available from 2:00pm EDT May 14, 2026 until 11:59 PM EDT May 21, 2026. Callers may access the replay by calling 1-800-770-2030. International callers may dial direct 1609. The Replay access code is 343-8559. Access to live audio and a 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 seven 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)
Thank you very much operator and welcome to our first quarter results conference call. Also joining Peter and I are Joe Detour, the Chief Financial Officer at TV One and Chris Simpson who is our General Counsel. Press release came out this morning. I think that we had warned or inferred other people have also reported already but first quarter was very tough quarter. We were budgeted to be down but things the marketplace was softer than anticipated due to continued declines in the traditional ad marketplace. Peter, I’ll give you more specifics and details on the numbers in a moment, but with the slow start to the year we’ve been focused on balance sheet management and debt reduction and deleveraging 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 deleveraging and accretive M&A with the acquisition of Service Broadcasting in Dallas, 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 but 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. And with that we are also giving out a new As I said in the last conference call, we’re going to wait until after we got through first quarter to look at what that we wanted to do about updating guidance for 2026. So with that we’re actually updating the 2026 guide to approximately $60 million of EBITDA and we expect year end leverage to be below five times by year end with these acquisitions and DISH positions. Another bright spot on this is with these numbers we’ll generate about $40 million of free cash flow this year. Peter is going to have more details on that in his comments. So I’m going to let Peter go into the details and then we can open it up for Q&A and answer any more detailed questions about the business.
Peter Thompson (Chief Financial Officer)
Thank you Alfred. So 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. Then net revenue for radio was down 8.7% year over year and according to Miller Kaplan, our local ad sales were down 5.5% against the 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 and the government and public category was up 23.6% due to political spending, but all of 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 first quarter at $6.8 million. 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 the day. Q4 decline is a result of the combination of CHURN and a conversion of virtual Multichannel Video Programming Distributors (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 approximately $73.5 million compared to approximately $80.7 million for the comparable period in 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 …
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