Highlights as reported from Gray Television’s Q4 Earnings Release and Conference Call
Gray Television announced financial results for the fourth quarter ended December 31, 2022, reflecting revenue above guidance and expenses near the low end of guidance for the quarter.
Highlights: Overall, the fourth quarter of 2022 produced record results, including $1.1 billion in total revenue, due to the combination of recent acquisitions, added scale, increasingly efficient integrated operations, and the “on-year” of the two-year political advertising cycle. Moreover, compared to the fourth quarter of 2018, the last mid-term election year, our political advertising revenue of $255 million in the fourth quarter of 2022 grew by 207%.
For the full year 2022, our political advertising revenue was $515 million, which exceeded 2018’s political advertising revenue by 232% on an As-Reported Basis and by 38% on a Combined Historical Basis. Our strong cash flow in the fourth quarter of 2022 enabled us to return a total of $174 million of capital to our shareholders during the fourth quarter.
Despite concerns about a possible macroeconomic recession discussed publicly in the general media and by certain sectors of the economy, we believe that our businesses performed well throughout last year and have started 2023 in a strong position.
We attribute these solid results to real-world confidence among advertisers and businesses in local markets, which we believe has been and remains more positive than the advertising sentiment currently held by many national advertisers.
Regarding Atlanta Assembly
Meanwhile, we believe our investments in Atlanta Assembly will provide some diversification from our broadcasting segment with new exposure to the growing film and television production industry in Georgia. We currently anticipate that construction on the Assembly Studios portion of the development and much of the infrastructure for the entire project will be completed in the summer of 2023.
At that time, we expect that the new facilities will begin generating revenue from both long-term and short-term leases of soundstages and related facilities to various content producers.
Also at that time, Gray intends to pause its funding of construction projects at Atlanta Assembly to evaluate carefully certain opportunities to maximize the long-term value of this unique real estate investment.
In the conference call, executives including Chairman and CEO Hilton Howell talked about the immediate revenue expectation from the agreement with NBC Universal beginning the first of June. This combined with the allocated stages that Gray will lease show great revenue opportunity for the company. Mr. Howell also praised Georgia’s film tax credit and educational initiatives like the Georgia Film Academy for building the foundation of success the state is seeing today.
