Saga Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:SGA) Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript May 11, 2024

Saga Communications, Inc. isn’t one of the 30 most popular stocks among hedge funds at the end of the third quarter (see the details here).

Operator: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Saga Communications First Quarter 2024 Earnings Release and Conference Call. At this time all participants have been placed on a listen-only mode. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Chris Forgy. Sir, the floor is yours.

Chris Forgy: Thank you, Matt. And as I said last time, we’re going to find a place for you and our company with that docile tones that you have. So we’ll work on that. But again, thank you, Matt, and thanks to everyone who is taking the time to join us on the Saga’s Q1 earnings call. We appreciate your continued interest, support participation in Saga Communications, a company that we believe is the best broadcast company on the planet. Lately, I’ve been hearing from other broadcasters, more and more things like man bad debt expense are increasing and 90-day old plus receivables are on the rise. Clients are booking later and paying even later. Saga is a buyer, not a seller. So talk to us about buying our company. Well, we too have experienced some of the – some of the aforementioned and it makes you kind of wonder, is there a wows me [ph] a bit of a cast over the sector.

Perhaps there is. But look, the industry is not broken, it’s just slowing down, just a bit. And we could choose to sit still and do nothing and stay in the status quo and let gravity take its course or we can behave differently, and we’ve chosen the latter. Remember the story math problems we used to have in school, here’s one for you. At best radio gets 7% of the media spend pie. So for example, if you’re in a market in the radio group does a 35% share of revenue in that market, that station group is really only getting just shy of 3% of the total ad spend in that market. Forget the 7%, yet customers we deal with every single day, the ones that have "great relationships" with us. Spend over 60% of their money or they’re ad budget with digital products and providers.

And I’m not talking about web development, but digital advertising, and they use on an average three to four different digital vendors to do so. So for the most part, we as an industry have not yet earned their trust enough to have the 60% discussion with them yet. The majority of our advertisers trust us with just 7% of that discussion. The fact is, this is a bit shocking, but the fact is, in my opinion, all of our 7% is at risk. I stated many times before Saga’s objective is not to become a digital company. But to save and protect the 7% we have to provide the skills to our sellers necessary to qualify us to have a 60% discussion with our customers, plus the 7% and do it all the time. And that is the primary and final part of the transformational change Saga has been going through for the past 16 months.