Q3 2021 Gannett Co Inc Earnings Call
Okay.
[music].
Greetings and welcome to Gannett's third quarter earnings call.
At this time all participants are in a listen only mode.
A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation.
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Please note this conference is being recorded.
At this time I'll turn the conference over to Tricia concert with Investor Relations Tricia you may now begin.
Thank you Rob good morning, everyone and thank you for joining our call today to discuss Gannett's third quarter, 2020 one result.
Presenting on today's call will be Mike Reed, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer, and Doug Hart Chief Financial Officer.
During this call we will discuss gannett's financial results for the quarter. If you navigate to begin that website you will find that we have posted an earnings supplement in addition to our earlier press release, we will be referencing it today on the call as it provides you with additional detail on this quarter's performance.
Before we begin please let me remind you that this call is being recorded in addition, certain statements made during this call are or may deemed or may be deemed to be forward looking statements, including those with respect to future results and events and are based upon current expectations. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause.
Actual results and events to differ materially from those discussed today, we encourage you to read the cautionary statement regarding forward looking statements in the earnings supplement as well as the risk factors described in Gannett's filings made with the SEC.
Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to publicly update or correct any of the forward looking statements made during this call.
In addition, we will be discussing some non-GAAP financial information during the call. Today, you can find reconciliations of our non-GAAP measures to the most comparable U S. GAAP measures in the earnings supplement.
Lastly, I would like to remind you that nothing on this call constitutes an offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to purchase any interest in getting that the webcast and audiocast are copyrighted material. It cannot it may not be duplicated reproduced or rebroadcast without our consent.
With that I would like to turn the call over to Mike Reed Gannett's, Chairman and CEO.
Thanks, Trisha good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us this morning on our third quarter earnings call.
We are pleased to report this morning that the third quarter was another strong quarter for the <unk>.
Specially in the areas of our business plan that are the most important for the evolution of our business and our long term growth.
Our results in the quarter evidenced continued strong growth in our digital only subscriber counts.
And in our digital marketing solution segment.
These represent stable and recurring revenue streams that are growing very rapidly with big addressable markets that we are penetrating.
The increases in these digital categories in Q3 led to year over year same store revenue growth.
And for the fourth consecutive quarter.
Year over year adjusted EBITDA growth.
Also importantly, our results are in line with previous guidance, we had given at the end of the second quarter and again when we did our most recent refinancing about a month ago.
Q3, adjusted EBITDA was $102 1 million.
With a margin of 12, 8% for the quarter and that brings our last 12 months adjusted EBITDA to $467 million up meaningfully from 2020.
We achieved positive net income in the quarter of $14 7 million and adjusted net income was a very strong $26 5 million in the quarter.
Further I'm excited to report that our last 12 months digital revenues have now exceeded $1 billion.
And our overall digital revenues are growing at 15% to 20%.
During the third quarter, we were able to meaningfully pay down principle on a five year term loan reducing debt by 91 million in the third quarter.
Our aggressive debt repayment. This year combined with strong financial performance has allowed us to opportunistically refinance our term loan b.
This refinancing was completed in October just last month.
In fact, this was our second refinancing in 2021.
We have been able to materially reduce the cost of our debt.
Our ongoing cash interest expense and we have continued to lower our leverage we continue to remain on our aggressive plan to delever our balance sheet.
We were able to post strong financial results this year, along with multiple refinancings. Despite the lingering impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
As well as the inflationary pressures that have risen here in the U S and impacted so many.
It's worth highlighting that we have repeatedly shown that even in a challenging environment.
Compounding growth in our digital revenue businesses.
And our ability to strategically modulate our cost structure continues to allow us to produce stable and growing adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow.
With regard to our strategy.
I met with our first strategic pillar accelerating digital subscription growth.
We have accumulated three best quarters ever of digital only subscriber growth here in 2021.
The third quarter being our biggest growth quarter ever.
Our subscription led strategy resulted in adding 164000 net new digital only subscribers in the third quarter outpacing our previous high set in the second quarter of 2021.
The accelerating growth is built on new product launches such as USA today sports plus a new premium personalized sports subscription product that went live in early September.
This should the growth in our recently launched paid crossword app as well as continued progress with our newly launched USA today premium content subscription strategy.
These new products combined with the continued strong growth in our local subscriber business has allowed us to begin to further accelerate our overall growth rates more on that in a minute.
USA today sports plus the immersive and interactive product give subscribers access to augmented reality experiences data visuals visualization that the USA today brand was built on.
Podcasts and access via live chats and text messages to the remarkable journalists across the USA today network.
<unk> Josefina Anderson, and NFL expert and a veteran with over 20 years of experience, who previously worked for E. S. P. N. There was named the network's first female national NFL insider in 2015, so happy to have her on board here at USA today.
USA today sports Pluses currently live in seven markets with more markets being added in the coming year.
As expanding and expanding product portfolio, which includes digital subscriptions and our over 200 local markets and at USA today, as well as ancillary products, such as our crossword App and sports plus up.
Now allow us to test the impact of bundling on both subscriber growth and retention.
Increased rigor on content and brand marketing and on data intelligence led by our chief marketing and strategy offer made at mere Gupta and our newly added Chief data Officer, Nate Raki, Wittes, who joined US in August have have also helped drive more new net subscribers in the.
The last two quarters than in all of 2020, we're really happy that a neat joined us as well.
While we are excited about the growth. This year. We firmly believe we are in the early stages with 179 million average monthly unique visitors and the sixth largest.
Reach among all domestic media peers, our digital only subscriber volume represents less than 1% of our audience reach so tremendous upside as penetration increases.
We expect to end 2021 with more than 1.65 million digital subscribers and that will represent growth of over 50% versus 2020.
With expectations of an expanding product portfolio and accelerated marketing flywheel and the application of rigorous data science. We are building plans to continue this accelerated growth rate going forward into 2022.
The success in our digital subscription efforts was complemented by success in our second strategic pillar accelerating the growth in our digital marketing solution segment.
The digital marketing solutions business, which operates a SaaS like model on our proprietary local IQ marketing services platform.
Which now generates approximately $440 million of revenue annually with growth rates that are expected to outpace the competitive market.
Our core platform revenue, which we view as customers using our proprietary digital marketing services platform.
That are sold by either our direct or local market teams.
<unk> grew 26% year over year to $113 million in the third quarter.
And importantly, the segment recorded record adjusted EBITDA margins again this quarter at 12.9%.
Sequentially client count demonstrated modest growth and ARPA grew 7%.
In the quarter, we also augmented our current local and direct sales channels by enabling a new freemium digital marketing solutions offering on our platform.
Which will serve as a low friction tool for acquiring registered users, while providing small businesses immediate marketing value and exposing them to the proprietary functionality of our broader local IQ platform.
The freemium offering will operate in close connection with our marketing efforts and inside sales capabilities to create an engaged segment of new customers, which may not have previously considered local Iq.
The first two phases were launched in Q3, which enable a registered user to receive a free assessment of their current marketing presence and to create a local like you account with access to the local like huge university and the ability to connect with a salesperson.
In Q4 and in 2022, we will enable additional features that drive platform engagement and the ability to purchase solutions within the freemium experience either directly or via one of our sales channels.
We look forward to updating you in the coming quarters on the metrics generated by the freemium channel and are excited by the potential to expand our Tam and reduce our customer acquisition cost through these efforts. This could represent our biggest growth category within the Dms segment over the next five years.
We continue to invest in our local IQ platform with our product team consistently rolling out product improvements to what we believe is already a best in class solution.
To help businesses build web presence drive leads and awareness and expertly manage leads and engage customers.
In the third quarter among other enhancements, we added a competitor keyword automation as soon as campaigns go live through our improved smart algorithm, which uses over $100 million national and local U S businesses to drive further optimization.
We also implemented the use of first party data.
As we strive to help businesses reduce their dependence on third party cookies.
We now allow businesses to leverage their own customer data to target lookalike audiences at both Google and Facebook.
We believe that ongoing investment in product and marketing.
Bind with sales channel expansion are critical to sustaining the double digit growth in our core platform business and expanding our core client count from over 15000 today to a more meaningful percentage of the over 30 million small businesses here in the U S.
Our third strategic pillar is optimizing our traditional print business across circulation and advertising.
In the coming year, we will be creating a focused regional effort on enhancing the performance of our legacy legacy print offering across the country.
We continue to have many levers to pull around our print business that we believe can improve the business performance coming from this segment segment. Despite the secular headwinds we face.
Data governance, and intelligence impacts on customer acquisition and preferences to capitalizing on the standard systems and data analytics that have been put in place through the integration from our merger in 2019 to reinvigorating our single copy sales channel post pandemic.
Improved customer service and a focus on the right pricing all will lead to improvement in our legacy print business in 2022 and beyond.
Our fourth pillar is prioritizing investments in our growth businesses in the third quarter, we announced our five year agreement with typical USA. The U S. Based sports book of typical group limited the leading sports betting provider in Germany.
With this announcement typical became the exclusive sports betting and I gaming provider for Gannett in the U S.
The five year agreement includes 90 million in media spend by typical incremental incentives payable to give that for customer referrals upon reaching certain thresholds and the ability to acquire a minority equity stake in typical U S.
In September we officially launch content assets to support this exciting partnership and engage the avid sports betting fan.
The team launch sports book wire that F. T. W bet for the win a site dedicated to sports betting analysis.
We launched a video series onsite.
And that for the win one O one to help inform and educate betters.
Additionally, the video series Lorenzo's locks us back for another football season, and more video and podcasts will be launching over the next several months.
And just the first two weeks these assets drove nearly 15 million page views.
We will continue to bet big on sports with a sports audience here can that have over 53 million sports fans and and we have over 500 dedicated sports journalists.
To help expand our coverage of the growing sports betting market.
The events business remained under pressure in the third quarter with the resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic with the Delta variant, which directly indirectly impacted our ability to host live events well.
While we initially saw live events accelerated in the second quarter, we largely returned to virtual events in the third quarter and expect to remain substantially virtual in the fourth quarter of this year.
Despite these challenges events revenue still grew 33% year over year in the third quarter.
And our marquee events drove impressive engagement with just over 2 million virtual and live event attendees within the quarter.
Reg Brown the des Moines, Register's annual great bicycle ride across Iowa returned in July of 2021.
The first National High School Sports Award show was.
It was held this summer as well featured host Michael stray hand, and Rob Gronkowski and highlighted more than 1000 honorees from 50 states.
And earlier this week Weird the American Influencer awards hosted by Andy Cohen.
Our American Influencer awards honors influential and talented social media personalities and categories, including beauty fitness and lifestyle and it drives significant engagement with over 5.8 million votes cast this year through our website.
This diverse portfolio of events springs abroad engaged local to national audience into the ecosystem.
And we remain firm in our belief that events will be able to generate 40 plus percent year over year growth as we emerge from the pandemic.
Our fifth and final strategic pillar is building on an inclusive and diverse culture.
This commitment is the core pillar of our organization and influences all aspects of our operations from hiring on boarding and educating to aligning our culture around empowering our communities to thrive.
Last year, we published our inclusion goal for 2025.
And published our first company wide workforce diversity report earlier this year.
In addition, during the third quarter of 2020, our newsrooms published demographic metrics and pledge to build a workforce that mirrors the demographics of the nation and the communities we serve.
By the end of 2025 and to publicly report our staff demographics each year.
This September our news organization published results from the sheer survey.
This reflects our newsroom workforce as of July 13, 2021.
USA today increase the proportion of black and digital people of color journalists and also increased female representation year over year.
Similar gains were recorded in local newsrooms, including Detroit.
The Annapolis, Louisville, Nashville, Phoenix, and Rochester, New York.
To be sure. This work must continue in advance, but we remain committed to achieving our 2025 targets and to accurately reflect the interests issues and.
And lives lived experiences of the people we serve.
I would also like to highlight the fantastic work that foundation has done this year in October the foundation announced $5 4 million in grants through the companies a community thrives program.
In its fifth year, a community thrives awards grants to worthy causes and organizations across the United States.
Aiming to improve their communities.
Supported by the <unk> Foundation, the program encourages nonprofits to promote their ideas and efforts on a national platform leveraging the USA today network, including USA today and over 200 local media brands to drive further awareness and support through donations.
It's driving mission is to empower our local communities and a community thrives as honored to support the sheaves recipients and their efforts to create change in their local communities.
Now turning our attention to the fourth quarter. We are estimating same store total revenues to decline in the low single digits. This decline reflects the impact of small market newspapers, we have sold or in rare cases closed during 2021.
Combined with the impact of the pandemic continues to have on the events business as.
As well as cycling against a strong fourth quarter last year, both in terms of revenue and adjusted EBITDA.
Despite small same store revenue declined as expected in Q4 for the reasons noted.
Our two year CAGR continues to improve and we expect that to approve improve again in Q4, we are very encouraged by this improving trend.
As we March toward sustainable revenue growth, our two year total revenue CAGR trend improved from down 12, 8% in Q1.
Two down 12% in Q2.
Two down 10, 1% in Q3, and we expect to be inside 10% in Q4.
With respect to adjusted EBITDA, we expect margins to be higher in the fourth quarter than the 12, 8%. We posted in Q3, we expect margin to be in the range of 14.5% to 16%.
As I mentioned before we have repeatedly demonstrated our ability to modulate our cost structure in response to macroeconomic conditions.
The upcoming fourth quarter and early 2022 will be no different.
We consistently review, our print portfolio and operations and optimize costs and strategies across the broad base of variable expenses that support our print operations with.
With growing and recurring digital revenue streams, and an improved capital structure with materially lower cost of debt. We are very confident in our ability to drive strong stable adjusted EBITDA and cash flow even during periods of economic disruptions.
I'd now like to turn the call over to Doug to discuss the details of our financial performance in the third quarter and the refinancing efforts, we just undertook in much more detail Doug.
Thank you, Mike and good morning, everyone.
For Q3 total operating revenues were $800.2 million, a decrease of one 8% as compared to the prior year quarter.
On a same store basis operating revenues increased 9% year over year.
Total digital revenues were $265 million, increasing 17, 8% on a same store basis year over year.
Adjusted EBITDA totaled $102.1 million in the quarter up $14.1 million or 16% year over year.
This strong performance was against the prior year adjusted EBIT number that included $4 $8 million of adjusted EBITDA associated with the print business that we disposed of in the fourth quarter of 2020.
The adjusted EBITDA margin was 12, 8% in line with our outlook and up 200 basis points from the 10, 8% recorded in the prior year quarter.
Adjusted EBITDA expenses of $713 $2 million declined one 8% year over year and benefited from $15 $1 million of PPP loan forgiveness in the quarter.
On the Bottomline, we achieved $14 $7 million of net income.
And $26 $5 million of adjusted net income attributable to getting that in the third quarter.
Our net income compares favorably to the prior year, where we incurred a loss of $31.3 million.
We are benefiting in part year over year as a result of 40% lower interest expense as compared with the prior year.
Moving now to our segments.
The publishing segment revenue in the second quarter with $715 $8 million down two 2% as compared to the prior year quarter and flat year over year on a same store basis.
Print advertising revenue decreased four 3% compared to the prior year on a same store basis as a result of the continued secular decline in the print advertising category.
Digital advertising and marketing services revenues increased 16, 1% on a same store basis, reflecting strong operational execution from our national and local sales teams.
Despite reduced pace your volumes as compared to last year's peak news cycle digital media revenue increased 10, 6% versus the prior year.
National sales of digital media grew 21% as compared to the prior year and 45, 5% on a two year basis, we saw strong national demand for both our owned and operated and our off platform properties, particularly surrounding our sports assets.
Digital classified revenues increased 12, 3% on a same store basis, and we now have fully cycled. The prior your exploration of the cars Dot com contract. Additionally, we saw strong performance in our employment obituaries and legal notice categories.
Digital marketing services revenues.
In the publishing segment continued its strong performance with 36% same store year over year growth.
The publishing segment delivered its second consecutive quarterly record for digital marketing services revenue at $34 $1 million as a result of robust operational productivity.
Our solutions continue to resonate with our small business customers and our local sales force continues to improve its dms productivity, resulting in client count growth of 4% over the previous quarter.
Moving now to circulation, where revenues decreased eight 2% compared to the prior year on a same store basis, which compares favorably with the Q1 and Q2 same store trend of down 12, 9% and down nine 2% respectively.
Within circulation home delivery trends also improved as we cycled some of the seasonal impacts we saw in the prior year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Single copy remains negatively impacted by the ongoing pressure of the pandemic as a result of lower business travel.
The resurgence in the COVID-19 pandemic early in the quarter contributed to single copy being down five 6% on a same store basis in the third quarter versus being down five 1% in the second quarter.
Digital only subscriber growth yielded a 27% growth in digital only revenue.
Digital only subscribers grew 46% year over year to approximately.
1.543 million subscriptions.
Digital only ARP, who declined slightly year over year as we continue to focus on growing the overall volume of our subscriber base.
We expect the ARP, who will stabilize and begin to increase again in 2022 as a higher volume of digital only subscribers will begin to roll off their introductory pricing plans.
Adjusted EBITDA for the publishing segment totaled $101 million, representing a margin of 14, 1% in the third quarter versus the 14, 8% we generated in the prior year.
The publishing segment's Q3 margin was negatively impacted by the resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact that it had on both single copy distribution as well as our live events business.
Also we are experiencing increased delivery costs related to postage and contract labor as well as higher newsprint costs versus the prior year.
For the digital marketing solutions segment total revenue in the third quarter was $116.8 million, an increase of 16, 5% year over year on a same store basis.
As compared to Q2 of 2021 revenue grew $8 million or seven 7%, primarily due to increases in our Peru.
Core clients those that utilize our proprietary digital marketing services platform increased modestly from 15300 clients in Q2 to 15400 clients in Q3.
The increase in ARPA was largely attributable to a few seasonally large national customers and we expect <unk> to return to previous levels in the fourth quarter.
Comparing to the prior year quarter, the core business, which accounts for over 95% of the revenue and the digital marketing solutions segment increased 25, 8% year over year.
Average client count held relatively flat year over year at 15400, Despite the fact that the prior year included approximately 2000 low dollar accounts that were subsequently transitioned off the platform as a result of a strategic change in our product set.
ARPA growth of 26, 4% over the prior year reflects not only the impact of large national clients, but a focused product portfolio, which drives more effective results for clients and higher ARPA and margins within the segment.
Adjusted EBIT for the digital marketing solutions segment totaled $15 million, representing a strong margin of 12, 9% in the third quarter, our second consecutive quarter of record adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin.
Our Q3 net income attributable to <unk> was $14 $7 million and includes $48 $1 million of depreciation and amortization.
Company's effective tax rate for the quarter was impacted by the forgiveness of the P. P. P loans and the creation of valuation allowances on nondeductible interest expense carry forwards.
Net income in the quarter benefited positively positively from our improved capital structure.
In Q3, our interest expense was approximately $35 million, which is down 40% from the prior year.
Let's now turn to the balance sheet.
Our cash balance was $141 $3 million at the end of Q3, resulting in net debt of approximately $1.26 billion.
Capital expenditures totaled approximately $11 $4 million during Q3, reflecting investments related to digital product development technology and operating infrastructure.
Free cash flow in the third quarter was $29 $3 million, which reflects interest payments of approximately $34 million.
We ended the quarter with approximately $1 $4 billion of total debt comprised primarily of $899.4 million of the five year term loan and $497.1 billion of 2027 convertible notes.
During the quarter, we repaid $91.1 million of debt funded through $39 million of real estate and other asset sales as well as excess cash.
We expect to generate $40 million of incremental asset sales in the fourth quarter, which would bring our total asset sales for the year to approximately $100 million.
And as Mike mentioned earlier during October the company secured a new $516 million five year senior secured term loan the.
The proceeds from the new senior secured term loan together with the net proceeds from a private offering of 400 million dollar first lien notes due in 2026 allowed us to fully repay the previous five year term loan.
The refinancing reduced our cost of debt by nearly 200 basis points lowering our blended rate of debt outstanding to approximately five 8%.
The new senior secured term loan contains usual and customary covenants for our credit facilities of this type and it's substantially similar to the previous five year term loan with one notable update.
We are pleased that the new term loan will permit the repurchase of outstanding junior debt or equity, including the existing convertible notes up to $25 million per fiscal quarter provided that the first lien net leverage ratio for that quarter is less than two times.
Firstly net leverage as of September 30th 2021 was one six times.
We estimate that we will recognize a loss on the early extinguishment of the five year term loan and the other refinancing fees of approximately $31 million during the fourth quarter of 2021.
As a result of these expenses as well as our forecast the tax erosion. We are currently forecasting an overall net loss for the fourth quarter.
I will now hand, it back to the operator, so we can give everyone an opportunity for questions.
Thank you at this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session.
If you'd like to ask a question. Please press star one on your telephone keypad and a confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue.
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One of them please pull for questions and Thats Star one to ask a question. Thank you.
Our first question is coming from the line of Doug Arthur with Huber Research. Please proceed with your questions.
Yeah good morning.
Yeah.
Just a question on <unk> and digital I mean, obviously, you're growing your subs nicely. The revenue numbers is still you know to be harvested I would say you talked to that stable ARP, who are in 2022 I mean, so I guess the question is at what kind of leg.
All of.
Subs would you start to.
Press, the price level lever a little more aggressively.
Thank you for the question.
As a dog in that certainly Mike can jump in if he has some additional things to add.
I think what we're what we're talking about in terms of ARPA for 'twenty 'twenty. Two is kind of a natural progression of the subscriber base. So I think we're going to remain really focused on on maximizing the volume of our digital subscribers, but naturally as those subscribers age we're gonna be able to increase or they will naturally increase off their introductory pricing plans.
Tim more of the full priced a monthly rate so.
As we get more and more of the subscribers in the ecosystem I think we will naturally see ARPA stabilize and then begin to increase.
So we're not we're not looking at next year is necessarily attacking a price level, but really more of the you know the math.
Duration of the base itself.
Do you have such a long ways to go with Doug with such a long ways to go with penetration you know with 179 million monthly uniques.
The the volume growth that we see over the next five years far outpaces needing to do price increases or any kind of work like that so, but but you'll see that as our core customers come on.
Increasing our pool, increasing revenue growth rates that start to mirror the growth rates of our actual subscriber counts as the as this.
Business segment for us matures a little bit.
Is it do you have enough data on churn at this point or is it just too early in the process to really draw any major conclusions.
Well it is early but with activity et cetera et cetera.
Yeah, well, we are using the data to drive all of that work and we do have good data. So far I mean, I would say, it's still early but but you know our data right now suggests that we're keeping 70% to 75% of our consumers that come on.
So that so the data is good it's strong.
And we're moving folks after the introductory offer up to more normalized pricing in.
Churn or retention is good once a customer stays with us for more than a year that retention on an ongoing basis improves to above 80%. So it is still early but the data so far suggests strong retention.
Okay, great two other questions.
There's a lot going on with your U S H E a franchise.
Sports betting this debenture thing it is like is there a way to sort of frame.
Frame the overall revenue size of the USA.
Platform and I know single copy sales is obviously a source of weakness you mentioned business travel but.
Or is it just sort of ubiquitous through the system because you you're.
Inserting a lot of sections in the local paper, so it's really hard to box.
Well you know to that question does the USA today.
The news business itself.
Representing a little bit less than 15% of gannett's total revenue.
However, the sports gaming partnership we've undertaken we've undertaken as part of that and our USA today network. So all of our local properties as well as you'll see today are part of the gaming partnership so the standalone.
News business for for USA today, which has both digital print circulation in digital and print advertising is a little bit less than 15% of the overall going at the.
The growth that we see in the future coming from these new product launches like sports plus App crosswords the gaming partnership.
Really distributed across the entire network not tied specifically to the USA today news product.
That's really helpful and then finally any any.
Color on new trends that news quest.
The news Quest business has actually performed very well since the pandemic hit.
It's been it's actually been one of our best.
Asset performing assets during the.
Don't really 2020 in 'twenty one so.
Can't say enough about the great job the team has done over there and their ability to maintain.
Revenue and profitability during the pandemic, so there's not anything more strategic going on and that we're just very pleased with the performance in there a nice contributor to to our overall business you know I will say there they represent less than 10% of overall.
Revenue and profitability, but it's still a nice contributor.
And as their digital strategy I mean, I know they've been they were sort of early movers I believe if I can remember correctly as their digital strategy you know been a success in your view.
I think their their digital strategy. The strategy is actually more early stage than here in the U S.
Right now you know in the U S about 20% to 21% of consumers are willing to pay for digital news online and in the UK, it's a little bit less than 10%. So I think that the upside for the U K on the digital side, both the digital marketing solutions segment as well as digital subscriber growth there.
Theres more upside there, they're not as far along as well.
We see here in the U S interesting, okay, alright, great. Thank you very much.
Yep.
Thank you.
Linda and start wanted to ask a question at this time.
Our next question is from the line of Florence filler with polar asset management. Please proceed with your question.
Good morning, Thanks for taking my questions and congratulations on a great quarter.
I had two questions for you first question is regarding the poison pill. That's outstanding are there any.
Plans discussions on lifting the cap of 5% for institutional shareholders.
Not that in the near term Laurence and thank you for the.
For the question and the comments here.
We have a three year window for for tax purposes to protect that NOL post the merger we did with Gannett.
So about a year from now that three year window expires and certainly our intention as a company will be to move that that threshold up from the current 4.9%, but right now it's early in the best interest of all shareholders that we protect that NOL.
Okay understood and then one more I wanted to ask you about the local journalism sustainability Act, which is.
In the latest version of the budget that came out this week.
We actually have a budget that passes.
If it does pass and you all quantified impact that'll have on your business in 2022.
Yeah.
On a gross basis, we think if if it passes as it stands today it could be.
30 to 35 million of employment tax credits for Gannett.
Okay, and then with respect I guess that's it.
With respect to the credits for I would say good digital subscribers prints.
Print subscribers as well as the.
The credits for a small.
The small business ad spending.
I guess, it's something more difficult to quantify if he can't ignore it.
Well launch the most recent version of the Bill. This week, obviously, it's been you know moving by the hour it seems like.
Recent version that does.
It did not it only included the impairment tests credit for employing journalists.
Okay, that's what I thought I didn't administer read the entire 2200 pages. So yeah, yeah. Thanks for that.
Okay, well I appreciate it thanks very much.
Great. Thank you.
Q.
Thank you.
There are no additional questions at this time I would like to turn the floor back to Mike for additional comments.
Okay, great. Thank you everybody I just wanted to mention something Doug mentioned at the end of his comments commentary about the enhanced restricted payment.
Baskets and an opportunity we have as a company with our latest credit facility, it's really important because it really opens up all levers for us now to create value for shareholders and as we think about capital allocation. We now have additional levers right. We can continue to invest in the business, which we'll do we're going to continue to delever and pay down debt.
We also have the app more optionality now to repurchase common shares of stock in the market as well as repurchase of convertible notes. So so even more levers available available to us to allocate capital and create value for shareholders.
You know in summary, very solid execution by our business and we're squarely on track to deliver an outstanding 2021, we continue to execute against the strategic priorities, we laid out for everybody at the beginning of the year and we continue to discuss on all of our quarterly updates the top priority for our company continue.
To be driving recurring digital revenue growth through our digital only subscription business and the increased penetration of our digital marketing solutions business.
And debt repayment remains a very high priority in terms of how we think about capital allocation delevering that balance sheet is still a high priority.
Our results year to date demonstrate our focused execution on the five pillars of our growth strategy is working well and we're excited about the significant opportunities, which lie ahead and look forward to keeping you apprised of our progress as we drive momentum in 2022, and as we continue to create value for our shareholders. Thanks for joining us today.
Sure at the time and the support thank you.
This concludes today's conference you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.