TEGNA Third Quarter Revenue Jumps 34%

Strong Q3

TEGNA overall third quarter revenue jumped 34% year-over-year to $738 million in the third quarter, led by record political advertising revenue and strong subscription revenue plus better than expected ad sales despite the pandemic. Even without taking political advertising revenue ($116 million) into account, revenue rose 14%. Net income more than doubled to $132 million (60 cents/diluted share). Results for the company's only radio properties, Sports WBNS-F (97.1 THE FAN) and Sports WBNS-A (ESPN 1460)/COLUMBUS, OH, are not reported separately.

CEO DAVE LOUGEE said, “Our record single quarter revenue performance in the third quarter reflects the strength and durability of our business model and ongoing focus of our Board and management to deliver on our long-term strategy. Local news continues to be the preferred medium for viewers to receive important, timely information, which we have seen play out several times this year throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, racial injustice demonstrations, and the 2020 elections. The strategic positioning of our portfolio, including our recent acquisitions, has served us well and our stations, journalists and all our employees have demonstrated resilience throughout this challenging period.

“Third quarter political revenue is the highest we have ever seen at TEGNA, more than 200 percent above the last presidential election year, in part due to the recent strategic additions of stations in key political spending states, such as IOWA and PENNSYLVANIA. For the full year, we booked $395 million of political revenue through last TUESDAY’s ELECTION DAY, exceeding our prior guidance of $370 million and almost 70 percent above our prior full year record of $234 million in 2018.

“As we have highlighted before, our high-margin, stable political and subscription revenues will make up more than half of our 2019-2020 revenues, and we expect an increasing percentage thereafter. As a reminder, we now expect to see our full year subscription revenues increase by high-twenties percent year-over-year.

“Despite the significant impact of COVID-19, advertising and marketing services has benefited from our sustained efforts to diversify our platforms and an expansion of our number of new advertisers, which is reflected in an aggregate market share increase across our portfolio. Advertising and marketing services has continued to show sequential monthly improvement since April. This performance demonstrates the sales transformation improvements we have actively implemented over the past several years, including bringing national sales in-house and creating one, holistic sales organization, which we call ‘One Team TEGNA,’ to accelerate growth and better serve clients and agencies.

“In SEPTEMBER, we proactively completed our third refinancing in twelve months. This offering is another example of our continued focus on strengthening our balance sheet, as part of our broader commitment to thoughtful capital allocation. We will continue to evaluate the most appropriate use of capital given the current market environment, with a near-term focus on debt reduction.” 

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