For the full year, Cumulus Media’s same station net revenue was up 1.4 percent, to $1.1 billion, excluding the impact of political. Adjusted EBITDA, also excluding political, was $206.8 million, up 0.5 percent from 2018. For the fourth quarter, same station net revenue excluding political was $282.4 million, down 1.7 percent from the same period a year before, with same station adjusted EBITDA, excluding political, of $47.9 million, down 8 percent from Q4 2018.
Cumulus CEO Mary Berner said, “I am very proud of the company’s 2019 results. On a same station basis, our team has now delivered the second year in a row of revenue growth and, excluding the impact of political, the third year in a row of adjusted EBITDA growth. This performance was driven in large part by the industry-leading growth of our digital businesses and active cost management across our platforms. Additionally, we made strong progress against our financial goals during the year, paying down $220 million of debt with cash from operations and highly accretive divestitures, reducing net leverage to 4.7x. This year’s results reflect the success of our consistent focus on key strategies to create value for our investors.”
If they are doing 25 mil in podcast now but overall revenue is flat in a political year, that mean the core business is in total free fall? What happened to get rid of debt and the company can start to grow again? Old CMLS shares are worth a grand total of $0 because of that strategy. Now seems all for nothing and the cfo can’t get out of there fast enough. Ugggh!