Revenue for iHeartMedia in Q3 came in at $857 million, compared to $847 million in 2015. The slight increase was attributed to political revenue, growth in the network business, more revenue from syndication — specifically the news/talk format which benefits from a heated election — and iHeart’s traffic and weather divisions. More revenue is also coming in from events, including the iHeartRadio Music Festival which was held in September.
The increase in revenues was partially offset by lower local broadcast radio advertising revenues. CFO Richard Bressler said advertisers hit the pause button due to their anxiety over the election. Regarding political revenue, Bressler echoed most of what we heard from other radio CEOs, that political was not coming into radio like everyone had hoped. In fact Bressler said it was “substantially below 2012 spending.”
Top categories for iHeartMedia in the quarter were political, medical and health care, entertainment, food and beverage, and home improvement.
iHeartMedia revenue increased $10.2 million, or 1.2%. Excluding political revenue it was up $3.7 million, or 0.4%.
The company still has $20.5 billion in debt and continues to explore all options on how to deal with its balance sheet.
CEO Bob Pittman’s press release quote was: “We continue to grow our audiences across our broadcast radio, outdoor, digital, social, mobile, and events platforms, while advancing our transformation as a digital-facing, data-rich company built on the power of broadcast radio and out-of-home. This quarter, we were excited to announce the reimagining of live radio with our two new subscription services, iHeartRadio Plus and iHeartRadio All Access, set to debut in January 2017. In addition, at both iHeartMedia and outdoor, we continue to invest in programmatic buying platforms and research analytics tools to leverage our assets for the benefit of our marketing and advertising partners, and at America’s outdoor and international outdoor, we continue to realign our resources to expand our digital out-of-home networks.”
