The $12.5 million gain from Beasley Media Group’s sale of its Fort Myers stations carried the day in Q1, as the company swung to net income of $3.2 million against a $2.7 million loss a year earlier, buying time in its race against the clock for a sustainable fix for ad weakness.
Total net revenue fell 13% to $42.6 million, and Chief Business Officer Kevin LeGrett did not soften the characterization. “The quarter was challenging, but it was also clarifying. We now have a very clear understanding of where the business is performing, where it is underperforming, and what needs to change…This is a portfolio in transition with identifiable, fixable problems, not a structural failure of the business.”
National revenue totaled $5.1 million, down from $6.6 million in the prior year period. Entertainment declined approximately $2 million year-over-year; gaming fell roughly $1.4 million; automotive dropped approximately $1 million. Against that, consumer services grew approximately $1.7 million, or 13.8%, and home improvement and construction-related categories combined for nearly $2 million in gains.
Digital, however, is moving in the intended direction, though the composition mattered as much as the total.
Digital revenue held at $10.7 million, flat year-over-year on a reported basis but up 18% same-station. More significantly, owned-and-operated digital products grew approximately 26% year-over-year while lower-margin third-party programmatic revenue declined. O&O now represents roughly 65% of total digital revenue, up from 49% in the prior year period. “Digital is no longer just a growth driver,” Director of Finance & Strategy Ilana Goldstein said. “It is the foundation for stabilizing and rebuilding the earnings profile of the business.”
LeGrett outlined a 35% digital revenue threshold as the operating benchmark at the market level, noting the company is not there yet but expressed confidence in the trajectory. He described a deliberate shift away from inventory-based selling toward outcome-based, integrated bundled campaigns, with full CRM adoption, weekly revenue committee reviews, and standardized pipeline visibility now in place across the organization.
The balance sheet actions taken since quarter-end represent the most consequential near-term development.
On May 1, Beasley completed a second lien restructuring, exchanging approximately $184 million of existing notes into approximately $98 million of new PIK notes, repurchasing approximately $16 million of first lien notes, and establishing a new $35 million asset-based lending facility. CEO Caroline Beasley framed the moves as, “The beginning of a broader deleveraging strategy, not the end.”
The company also executed an early retirement offering in early May, expected to generate nearly $2 million in annualized savings, alongside approximately $5 million in additional annualized cost reductions, which would explain the sudden exits from WXTU’s Mark “Razz” Radziewicz and Hot 96.9’s Susan “Pebbles” Semedo.
Even with cost-cutting, the forward picture carries tension.
April entered the month down 10% on a same-station basis before closing down approximately 2%, a recovery the company attributed to end-of-month advertiser activity. May and June are currently pacing consistent with how the company entered April. Second quarter same-station revenue is expected to decline in the mid-to-high single digits. “The operational changes we’ve implemented will take time to fully translate into revenue and SOI,” Caroline Beasley said. “We view this as a timing dynamic, not a change in trajectory.”
