Podcasts were the clearest growth driver for iHeartMedia in its fourth quarter 2025 earnings report, rising 24.5% year over year, but the gains were not enough to prevent a quarterly net loss, even as the company cut its full-year loss by more than half.
America’s largest radio operator posted a Q4 net loss of $41.3 million, compared to net income of $31.9 million in the prior-year quarter. For the full year, the company reported a net loss of $471.9 million, a sizeable improvement from a $1.009 billion net loss in 2024.
Total Q4 revenue was $1.127 billion, up 0.8% year over year. For the full year, revenue reached $3.865 billion, up 0.3%.
Within the Digital Audio Group, revenue totaled $387 million, up 14.1% year over year. Podcast revenue reached $174 million in the quarter. iHeart Chairman and CEO Bob Pittman said, “A key to our success in building our podcast business has been that podcasting is, in essence, radio on demand. For us, it is a truly adjacent and complementary business.”
Pittman added, “It grew to $174 million, up 24.5% compared to prior year, which was above our guidance of up in the mid-teens. And in Q4, approximately 47% of our podcasting revenue was generated by our local sales force, up from about 13% in Q4 of 2020.”
For the full year, Digital Audio revenue rose 14.2% to $1.329 billion. Podcast revenue increased 25.6% to $563.7 million, while Digital revenue excluding Podcast grew 7.0% to $765.7 million.
The Multiplatform Group, which includes broadcast radio, networks, and events, reported fourth quarter revenue of $665 million, down 2.8% year over year. Excluding political advertising, revenue was up 2.3%. For the full year, Multiplatform revenue declined 4.2% to $2.274 billion.
Broadcast Radio revenue fell 4.8% in the fourth quarter and 5.4% for the year, while Networks increased 4.4% in Q4 and 0.6% for the year. Sponsorship and Events rose 1.9% in the quarter but declined 2.8% for the year.
Pittman, meanwhile, remains confident the company, “Can return the Multiplatform Group to EBITDA growth. And to reach that goal, in addition to our continuing efforts on cost, we are focused on four major drivers. Number one, programmatic. We are the first radio company whose broadcast inventory is available through the existing programmatic buying platforms, enabling our broadcast radio inventory to participate in the growing programmatic TAM.”
He added, “We have partnership agreements with Amazon DSP, Yahoo DSP, and others to include our broadcast radio inventory in their programmatic platforms. In the case of Amazon, we expect our broadcast radio inventory to be included in their programmatic platform in the second half of the year.”
Fourth quarter operating income was $85.7 million, compared to $104.5 million in Q4 2024.
After several quarters of layoffs and cost-cutting, President, COO, and CFO Rich Bressler commented, “We are currently implementing $50 million of new in-year cost savings, which we will start to benefit from beginning in Q2. This is in addition to the $50 million of cost reductions we announced on last quarter’s call, which will bring our 2026 in-year cost savings to a total of $100 million.”
The company said it expects total programmatic revenue to be approximately $200 million in 2026, up about 50% from $135 million in 2025, and projects its net leverage ratio to improve to the mid-5x range by year-end 2026.
