Q2 2019 Earnings Call
Ladies and gentlemen, this is the operator today's conference.
Kelly.
Your conference operator today.
At this time.
I went to the group second quarter 2019 earnings Conference call.
All lines have monthly so mute to prevent any background noise.
After the prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session.
If youd like to ask a question during this time simply for stores and the number one on your telephone keypad.
He was like to withdraw your question. Please press the pound key.
I would now like to turn the call over to Hilton Howell.
Chairman and CEO . Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you Kelly I like all of you for joining US this morning for our second quarter 2019 earnings call.
I'm joined today by our President and co CEO , Pat look flattening, our chief legal and development officer, Kevin laid back and our Chief Financial Officer, Jim Ryan. We will begin this morning with our usual disclaimer that Kevin will provide thank you Hilton good morning, everyone.
Certain matters discussed on this call may include forward looking statements regarding among other things future operating results.
Those statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties.
Actual results in the future could differ from those described in the forward looking statements as a result of various important factors such factors have been set forth in the company's most recent reports filed with the FCC and included in todays earnings release.
The company undertakes no obligation to update these forward looking statements.
Great uses its website as a key source of company information website addresses www Gray dot TV.
We will post an updated investor deck to the website within the next few weeks.
Included on the call will be discussion of non-GAAP financial measures and in particular broadcast cash flow broadcast cash flow less corporate expenses.
Operating cash flow free cash flow adjusted EBITDA and certain leverage ratios. These metrics are not meant to replace GAAP measurements, but are provided as supplements to assist the public in their analysis and valuation of our company.
Included in our earnings release as well as on our website a reconciliation to the non-GAAP financial measures to the GAAP measures reported in our financial statements.
Now I will turn the call to Hilton.
Thank you Kevin we're extremely pleased to report our results for the second quarter of 2019 and for the much larger and much more diversified gray television.
Our total revenue for the second quarter was 508 million an increase of 103% from the second quarter of 2018, and obviously, an all time record for our company.
Our net income available to common stockholders for the second quarter was 31 million and our net income per diluted common share was 31 cents.
Excluding transaction related expenses and non cash stock compensation, our net income available to our common stockholders would have been 34 cents per diluted common share. This figure represents a strong increase over the first quarter of 2019.
Our broadcast cash flow was our best ever for the second quarter and $185 million, which was a 71% increase over the year ago quarter.
We ended the quarter with a total leverage ratio as defined by our senior credit facility at 4.71 times on a trailing eight quarter basis, netting our total cash balance of $251 million and excluding transaction related expenses.
We continue to see improvement in our local advertising business from the first quarter, which itself reflected improvement from prior quarters.
We began this year as I have said as a much larger and much stronger company with todays report. We are confident that you can clearly see while we had so long valued like Tom as the best single partner for Gray television.
We are happy with how the company has performed through the first half of the year and we're excited about the coming quarters in years ahead of us.
The vast majority of our consolidation and integration efforts merging our operations our management and most importantly, our corporate cultures has been very successfully carried out so far.
And of particular note as Jim will discuss in more detail. Later. This morning, we have raised our realized synergy number from the previously announced $80 million to $85 million and I personally believe will be more to come.
I will now ask past Pat to address a few operational milestones and further progress for our company.
Thanks, Phil.
Good morning, everyone. So that said, we continue to see improvement and general market conditions over the prior quarter building on a trend that began last summer.
While we remain disappointed with the weakness in national AD revenue and especially the auto sector. We've been pleasantly surprised by the strength in other categories, notably legal and financial as well as more and widespread demand for political advertising than we'd expected. During this off your the cycle.
Next month, we will launch our first weekend political show, which will be called full price full court press.
Great of ancestor.
This new weekend program will focus on how policy national events impact on local communities across the country.
We've already reached commitments to clear the show with nearly 70% of the country.
Meanwhile, we are equally excited about the progress made in recent weeks on the new Premier linear multicast an S. Vod service Navio with Opera Entertainment Group, which is a subsidiary of Ryman hospitality properties.
The new team in Nashville, as busy building out the programming branding and marketing plans for the channel, which will be dedicated to the country lifestyle. We're also having very positive discussions with numerous station groups and owners about clearing the new network on their multicast channels when it launches in early 2020.
Turning next to political we experienced stronger demand in the just completed quarter than we expected.
Political spending from Democratic primary contenders has certainly started in the states with early 2020 contests.
Although the numbers are not yet significant we find it encouraging to see any spending as far out.
We saw meaningful spending in the governor's races in Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi as well as two statewide issue campaigns in the special election for the house seat in North Carolina District nine.
The Q2 political revenue in other words has been concentrated in markets other than the early presidential primary caucus states, which is another encouraging sign.
We expect we expect political revenue will continue to grow in each of the next two quarters as we approach election day 2018, and as we get closer to the start of the presidential permit primary contest to begin next February .
In recent weeks, we seems very bullish estimates coming from AD agencies in the press about potentially significant increases in political ad spending.
Coming into 2020, we're not prepared to make it yesterday is the amount of political AD revenue, we might see at our stations in 2020. Nevertheless, we believe that we have the right stations in the right markets to capitalize on the majority of the most competitive races that will take place next year.
Finally, we continue to negotiate with Fox on the terms of a new global affiliation agreement.
Covering all of our Fox stations, we've agreed on the reverse comp fees for 2019 and certain other issues. It's our hope that we will conclude the negotiations in the next few weeks I will now turn the call over to Kevin.
Great. Thank you Pat.
I wanted to take a few minutes to discuss retransmission.
As most of you know, we do not disclose the terms or tenure of our retransmission consent agreements with our roughly 500 separate MPPD.
That said I can confirm that we are not in negotiations many distributor at this time. The next round of agreement explorations occurs at year end in those negotiations will take place in the fourth quarter.
At this time, we anticipate that retransmission revenue will range between 804 and $807 million in calendar year 2019.
The revenue breaks down about $200 million per quarter.
The first quarter of this year was slightly ahead of that figure as a result of nonrecurring billing adjustments.
To provide Q2 and full year Retrans guidance, we underwent a complex month long process to combine legacy Gray and legacy Raycom Retrans billing systems and the model various scenarios of estimated subscriber accounts in rates across our 500 distributors.
Unfortunately, we have not fully integrated the necessary inputs and we provided a Q2 Retrans guide that was slightly higher than our actual results.
Taking these results into consideration when calculating our Q3 Retrans guide.
We do want to note, however that our total subscriber numbers across the full universe of traditional and non traditional distributors across our large and small markets were virtually unchanged from the start of the first quarter to the start of the second quarter, which exceeded our expectations.
In the end, we are still anticipating a 20% year over year increase in Retrans revenue.
This is the same magnitude of increase that we estimated in our 2018 year ends around year end earnings call in late February .
The Retrans revenue for this year, therefore is consistent with our initial expectations when the year began as well as consistent with our synergy expectations underlying the rate come merger.
We turn now to Retrans expense.
For the past several years the terms of our Retrans in network affiliation agreements have extended far enough into the future to allow us to estimate our retrans expense reverse comp compensation fees that we paid to the networks.
We've also explained that at various points. During 2019, we would re price the retrans comp rates for all of our NBC affiliations all of our Fox affiliations most of our CBS affiliations and many of our APC affiliations.
Up to now we have not been able to provide a full year guidance on retrans expense.
Due to the ongoing Fox renewal negotiations as Pat said, we have reached an agreement in principle with Fox on the reverse comp fees for calendar year calendar year 2019.
And we remain in negotiations with box and some other terms for the new affiliation agreements.
Yet with the Fox numbers now set we are able to estimate retransmission expense for calendar year 2019 will fall within a range.
422 million and 426 million.
Looking out beyond 2019, we still see a very significant gap between the extraordinary value delivered by our local broadcast stations and the compensation. We received for the right to Retransmit, our signals and use our brands and our programming to acquire and retain subscribers.
Consequently, we continue to expect continued growth in our retransmission revenue as well as the amount of retransmission revenue retain net of our retransmission expense.
Finally, we remind you that we have 78% of our MPPD subs renewing over the next 18 months.
Thank you for your time I will now turn the call over to Jim Ryan.
Thank you, Kevin and good morning, everyone.
Our earnings release, and the 10-Q that will be filed later today provide a great deal of information for the quarter.
As always we report results on a GAAP basis, which we call as reported basis. In addition, we present results and guidance in the earnings release on a combined historical basis, which gives effect to acquisitions and dispositions as if such transaction transactions occurred on January one 2017.
We have revised some of our reporting format. In particular, we have tried to make our transaction related expenses, especially in 2019, more transparent and easier to see what our results would like if you excluded the transaction related expenses.
I'll keep my comments on the results of operations for Q2, and our guidance for Q3 to a combined historical basis, which does include the two stations acquired from United Communications.
In the next few days, we will update our combined historical information by quarter from Q1 16 through Q4 18 to reflect the United acquisition.
We are generally pleased with the results overall results for the second quarter.
In general our second quarter revenue were towards the higher side of our guidance. Our local revenue showed some modest sequential improvement over the first quarter.
Our retrans revenue of $201 million was about $4 million to $5 million below our guidance due to some forecasting adjustments on our part and for which I apologize for.
As Kevin mentioned, our total count sub counts are stable.
Overall, our retransmission revenue increase quarter over quarter by a very healthy $37 million or about 23%.
As Kevin mentioned, we expect our Retrans revenue for the year to increased 20% over 2018.
Second quarter broadcast operating expenses were better than expected with overall quarter over quarter increase of 16 million, which included an increase in retransmission expense of 20 million consistent with our recent consistent with the increase in retransmission revenue that 20 million increase was partially offset by a decrease of about $5 million in overall compensation expenses.
Our production companies in corporate and corporate expenses were both within our expectations.
In the second quarter of 2019, we had a total of $2 million of transaction related expenses of which 1 million was recorded as a broadcast expense and the remaining million was recorded as a corporate expense.
As as a reminder, and as discussed in our Q1 call. In Q1, we had approximately $68 million of one time only costs of transaction related expenses of which 36 million was included in the broadcast expense line and $32 million in our corporate expense line.
To update you on our rate Com merger estimate estimated annual net retrans revenue improvements in various cost savings. We have now identified have allowed us to take the $80 million of initially predicted first year annualized synergies and raised an additional 5 million to 85 million.
Those synergies can be divided into two categories.
Payroll rate payroll synergies will reflect approximately $42 million contractual arrangements, which include our net retrans synergy and savings from contract revisions or contract terminations, such as our national Rep contract and the elimination of various other duplicative costs will will produce synergies of approximately $43 million.
On a realized synergy basis, we estimate that we actually realized about $16.4 million of synergies in the quarter and on a six month year to date basis, we have racking realized approximately 28 million.
Synergies.
Turning to the balance sheet, our leverage ratio net of all cash at June 30 was 4.71 times.
Our operating cash flow as defined in our senior credit facility was 788 million our outstanding debt was 3.963 billion and our cash on hand was $251 million.
Turning to our third quarter guidance, we currently anticipate that local broadcast revenue to be approximately even with 2018 results.
National broadcast.
Revenue, while still challenged especially with auto is expected to show modest improvement over the results for the first six months and our retransmission revenue is expected to grow in Q3 $30 million to $32 million over 2018.
While not in our Q3 political revenue guidance, we are cautiously optimistic that political advertising for 2020 elections will pick up as we move through the third quarter.
For broadcast expenses were anticipating an $18 million to $19 million increase and that is explained entirely by increases in reverse.
Retransmission expense.
Again, driven by the strong growth in our grocery transmission expense.
As we look for the full year. We currently anticipate the full year revenue will approximate $2.1 billion.
Our earnings release today includes a full year 2019 guide for for gross retransmission revenue of eight IL four to eight or $7 million.
Total operating expenses for the year before depreciation amortization and gain and loss on disposal of blood the assets.
Which would include approximately $80 million of transaction expenses.
Our estimated to approximate 1.5 billion.
Our full year non cash stock compensation is currently estimated to be approximately $13 million.
Our operating cash flow for 2019 will be nearly 700 million.
Our capex, excluding repack will approximate 80 million.
Cash taxes are currently expected to approximate 10 to 12 million.
As we benefit benefit from a larger than initially anticipated and while acquired from Raycom.
Finally, we anticipate that free cash flow for 2019, and a full year basis will comfortably exceed $300 million.
And I'll remind everyone that free cash flow.
Hi Inn.
2000 and.
Eight team was.
Approximately 522 million.
So on a two year blended average we are anticipating a blended average free cash flow per share an 18 19 basis.
Above $4.
At this I will turn the comments back to Hilton.
Thank you John and Kelly, if and so I would like to open up the call for any questions.
That there may being.
At this time.
Yes.
Aaron Watts with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead your line is open.
Yes.
Your next question comes the line of Marci Ryvicker from Royal Wolfe Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thanks, I had a couple questions just to confirm their retrans step down is not due to any hit from CBS thing off of Directv now is that correct.
Hi, Marci.
Hi step down from Q1 to Q2.
It had nothing to do with that the guide for Q2 to Q3 because that happened in Q3.
Yes. The Q3 guide is consistent with where we came out in Q2. So we.
We do not expect.
We do not expect a significant hit there.
Okay, and then for Fox, you're talking about 2019 in principle. So is this a one year deal.
No. We are negotiating a multiyear deal that we have agreed on some terms and not and we are negotiating other terms a term that has been resolved.
In principle is the fees for 2019 and that that's what allowed us to provide the Retrans got a reverse Retrans guide for this year. Okay. So based on the numbers you gave for Retrans and reverse it looks like your margins would fall out about 47% if I take the midpoint of both for 2019, but I assume that that's from a timing issue given that you had your all your reverse or must universe come up this year versus your retrans, So maybe margins would be higher.
Next year.
Well, we haven't looked at next year.
And again Fox, we've not discussed we don't have an agreement.
With all of our networks on fees for next year's Fox again, it's still outstanding.
You are right that the math for this year works out to about 47% and that we renewed.
Certainly the majority of our network affiliate deals or repurchase I enjoy them out of our network affiliate deals repriced in 2019 at different points.
Okay, and then just Jim going back to the 5 million of incremental synergies from MACOM. I know you broke out 42 million payroll and then 43 million from that Retrans and contract revisions or terminations, but for that 43 million. It's hard to believe that any of that's going to come from that Retrans. If you just read did.
All of the numbers, including re calm right to that for that extra 3 million would really come from terminations more than that retrans.
Not necessarily it's a mixture of all those things.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you Marcy.
Your next question comes from the line of Kyle Evans.
Please go ahead your line is open.
Hi, Thanks, I was hoping you guys could dive down into the trends that you're seeing your both your local and national core and then I've got some follow ups as well.
Yes.
For <unk> in generals Kyle I mean local is doing obviously better as we would have been as we anticipated as we always expect national is more impacted by.
Auto.
We have seen.
His other people have commented some of the services categories, and we probably break it out a little bit differently than others, but.
Financial in and some other legal has been doing relatively well in the first six months.
So we obviously were pleased with that.
As Ive commented I guess on a last two calls in general it looking at whether it's local or national and especially at auto, but you can look at it and other categories too.
Some of this can be attributed to a couple of main accounts, we've commented about Jeep Chrysler Dodge several times.
But also it still seems to be a case, where you up and down the line of our in total.
Advertising base.
Proportionally more people are taking a little bit more off the table then putting money on the table. There is always a mix of both.
But we're not seeing what I would describe as wholesale flight I mean, you get ins and outs, which are routine in any given quarter and you would expect it but it's not like everybody is moving.
Large amounts of money to the sidelines. It's just it feels like people are just putting some stuff in their pocket for.
Somewhere down the road.
It seems like auto has been shrinking for a while now.
We've had some other verticals showing some strength what is the overall contribution.
No no.
Given our very very strong news footprint.
In the strong overall strength of the stations Weve been number ones and number two is we still skew pretty high with auto it's still up.
Probably in Q2 is around 20, 420 324 ish percent.
On a year to date basis its probably.
Again 24 ish percent.
Okay.
And you've got some larger stations now with Ray crop with Ray Com added to your footprint.
Do you see any material difference.
And either retrans or core between those large and small markets. One of your peers has been pretty vocal about that.
Yes. So we know this is a flattening.
Our larger markets.
Just from a straight for poor performance perspective have.
Have grown in the last couple of years.
Well, it's really it's really yet.
A bit of a mixed bag in terms of you can't say smaller markets in general are underperforming larger markets. We just happen to have a fair number of.
Our.
The bigger properties in our portfolio performing well I think given that the current time and so so I don't really think you can you can make that.
Assumption.
Okay. Thank you.
Your next question comes the line of Dan.
Please go ahead your line is open.
Great. Thanks, just two quick housekeeping questions for Jim just if I, you know kind of back out the accounting adjustment or whatever it wasn't an retrans. This does that mean that the trend is basically just.
Stable throughout the year does that smooth everything out.
And the growth on the gross side yeah. The I think you can take the Q3 guide and expect that the Q4 number is in that same same range.
And then just on the outlook in the back half of the year, either Jim or Kevin I know you called stable sub said it was a bit of a surprise or outside of your expectation upside to expectations in the front half, but you're still calling for but effectively equates to.
Flat retrans in the back half of the year sequentially without any material renewals. So is that sort of a similar outlook embedded in there.
When factoring in our escalators.
Our escalators.
In.
I'm Air subs are sub counts have been.
Or virtually unchanged.
And our escalators kick in on January one so we're we're seeing a pretty steady state run into the year with the exception of the billing adjustments we saw in Q1.
Great and then just one kind of high level question are you already getting upside to synergies. We've now got a net retrans number that's probably better than what.
People were expecting just.
How do we think about you know when you first bought rate com sort of factoring this all in a relative to sort of the free cash flow or O. C. F. That you you talked about like how do we think about the magnitude of Delta now you know in guide going forward. It seems like you guys have some pretty meaningful upside and I'm going to assume Jim that your your free cash flow statements were I I don't know if those are as reported but I think CHP would be higher than they were they were now those those were CH bees and.
I mean, we always knew that the radcom transaction would be extremely highly free cash flow accretive to us.
It has proven to be exactly that.
Ah, that's probably slightly better than what we would have said a year ago or even six months ago, given slightly you know a little bit better improved synergy there may be a little upside in the synergy number by the time, we get to December as you know, we always work hard to try to be as efficient as possible.
And as I mentioned, our especially this year in free cash flow given our annual well is.
That's starting up a little bit bigger than we had anticipated it's allowed us to bring our cash tax number down to the $10 million to $12 million three out for the full year. So.
Overall, we are extremely pleased with with the transaction and how it's been playing out over the first six months and our expectations on how it's going to play out over the remaining six months.
Got it thank you very much.
Thank you Dan.
I got it feels like to ask a question. Please press.
The number one.
Your next question comes from.
Jim Goss of Barrington Research. Please go ahead your line is open.
All right first Kevin last quarter, you were arguing persuasively that.
[noise] like a retrans Ah has continued upside from the standpoint of the the.
Broadcast stations.
But the with the development of some.
Examples of impasse since that time I'm, just wondering if that's suggesting more pushback from distributors and if.
You know if if if a the notion is a is a full professors seem to be implying at that time.
Hi, Jim.
Our our.
All broadcasters combined.
Or taking Uh huh.
Somewhere between 17 18, 19% of the total programming pie.
Our our ratings are significantly higher than that as a group the intensity of our viewership is significantly stronger than a non broadcast channels. So yeah. I think there is still a huge way for us to go there are.
Generally.
Drops occurring with one big.
M.B.P.D. Who's gone a lot bigger in the last a year or two.
While we're seeing and hearing that other people are getting deals done with other distributors. So you know we've always had.
We've always had in passes and the programming space. They don't just include broadcasters.
Oh, the press likes to talk about.
The broadcast.
Impasses, but there are plenty of in passes that do not involve broadcasters that do affect all 210 markets in the country. It's you know this is it's these are tough negotiations or they're not getting any easier but the deals are still getting done you know again, we we did 500 deals in the last three years without a single drop and our peers are doing.
An equal number of negotiations or without drops and maybe there's one or two in passes here or there. The overall percentage of deals that broadcasters get done versus those that result in an impasse.
Is extremely high so I don't see although there's some noise right now this summer.
I don't think there's anything dramatically different.
And our expectations for grocery trends over the.
Over the future.
Okay I figure, it's always good to revisit those things.
And on the flip side the.
Retrans expense seems to be edging to 52.5% to 53% do you feel that capture as much of the existing pressure or do you think are you expecting the network clawback a share to continue to edge higher.
Well I mean, I would say the same thing I've said for years we.
We have 100% of $20 million in 2008 Retrans revenue.
The margins will continue to come down and we are managing the company for the money they need a pause in the bank not the margins. So we are unconcerned.
They're not running the company to hit a particular margin we are concerned about.
The dollars that we bring in and our net Retrans is has been growing.
For all the last several years and we see a growing going forward to us that's the important matters the networks need to spend more money to secure programming in a more competitive programming environment, we get that at the same time, we all need to get compensated better for the programming and the value that we're delivering and at the end of the day the network the network.
Broadcast affiliate margins aren't going to change it because they have changed every single year since 2008.
So again.
We're.
This there's nothing new here and it's really nothing that is unexpected I think across our entire peer group. We've all been saying the same thing margins are going down enough, but that's going to continue to grow.
Okay.
And now with a full court press a you said I think you indicated there was this 7%.
Sell through so far and I'm wondering and that's nationally I'm wondering if you're getting takers and the bigger markets as part of that.
Yes, it's Pat will play out and you get yes, we are getting takers in the bigger markets and it's yeah, it's roughly cleared up.
Past tight times this time or.
Well, if you're mostly a little bit in the first mostly in the late third quarter and early fourth quarter.
Or any other variance you're expecting.
I mean in general and I'm very broad sense, yes historically.
And I've said this for many many years it seems like it seems like half of the total political revenue usually falls in the fourth quarter half or more.
That being said given we've got more exposure in 2022, the early primary states than we've ever had before we might see we're all cautiously optimistic that we will see more activity in first quarter than we have seen historically.
But again, given we believe 2020 will be a very significant political spend for the TV industry.
The broadcast industry and a very strong year for us and we're not going to put a number out but it's all signed say it will be a good year.
We would expect as you said the spending will be heavier September through election day.
Okay.
Thanks very much.
Thank you.
Your next question comes from Michael Kupinski from Noble.
Please go ahead your line is open.
Thank you. Thank you for taking the questions.
One other broadcaster indicated that they're already seeing.
Very small amount, but already seeing presidential.
Money being booked.
And your political is trending better than what I would've expected an off election year.
Are you seeing any of that at this point.
Yes, we've seen some I would characterize it as relatively small dollars, but we actually mentioned this on our Q1 call.
That we had already seen some small relatively small orders in Iowa is early as if I recall that came in in February may It was March but it was it was extraordinarily early.
And so that we take that as a very good sign for as we move through the latter part of this year as well as into the Earth as well as although all through 2020.
And as Pat commented earlier Weve also seen very good spend in the non presidential races already this year in several.
Gubernatorial races, as well as a special election in North Carolina. The so we're pleased with the early trends.
Yeah. It seems like the political dollars being raised or are significantly more than the last cycle certainly on the presidential side.
Also you Gray has very deep and long relationships in the broadcast industry with potential sellers can you talk a little bit about.
The M&A environment currently.
Are you seeing.
The sellers potentially coming to the market at this point, obviously, you still have a nice large cash position and able to execute on M&A, if you need to.
Just kind of give us the thoughts on what what you're seeing out there.
Hi.
Michael It's Kevin.
Honestly, it's pretty quiet on the M&A.
Front bidders.
Theres, a little activity theres, not a lot going on.
Gotcha, that's all I have thank you.
Sure. Thank you. Thank you Michael.
Hi, Kevin Good question. Please.
And then on your telephone keypad.
Our next question comes from the line of Devin.
Lebowitz from active partners. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you.
You said the genon that the full year will comfortably exceed 300 million this year in free cash flow and it was fun 22 at 18 so.
On a blended basis, there's like $4.10 a share.
From everything Youve said with political and acceleration in.
Retrans contracts and synergies above guidance I would assume that 2020 will be higher than 18. So.
Is I mean is there anything wrong with that analysis, which would indicate that the free cash flow for sure it would be well over $4.
We have consistently said for a while that we our expectation is that 2020 will look better than what 2018 looked like on a combined historical basis and free cash and our 18 17 numbers are published on page five of our current investor presentations on the website. So we've obviously put out some some general numbers now for 19, and we've been saying for.
I feels to me like about a year now that we do and we do expect 20 to be better than 18, yes.
If I could just follow up I mean, given what your stock price is done today I know that you're focused on free cash flow and debt repayments given the leverage but the free cash flow yield down close to 30% is there any point at which you would take advantage of that in terms of share repurchase.
Hi.
I don't think we want a comment explicitly on on whether we would be opportunistic or not.
There is.
Just shy of $50 million available on our on our repurchase authorization and that authorization is good until the end of this year.
And you know I.
A.
Understand what free cash flow yield on any given day may or may not be.
And we certainly.
We certainly think it's an extraordinary yield period.
But you are right. We have just done a lot of M&A, we have we have.
You know, we do want to bring leverage down so we'll have to be very thoughtful on our allocations over the near term.
Thanks.
There are no further questions at this time I will now turn the call back to Hilton Howard for closing remarks.
Well. Thank you very much for all of you joining us this morning.
We're very excited about the balance of the year and particularly looking forward to.
Political in 2020 as you know Gray television has one of the best footprints.
And the presidential swing states of any company in the broadcast business and so we look forward to the future with a great deal of optimism. Thank you for joining us today, and we'll talk to you next quarter.
Okay.