Saga Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ:SGA) Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call March 9, 2023 11:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Christopher Forgy - President & Chief Executive Officer

Samuel Bush - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Saga Communications Fourth Quarter and Year-End Earnings Release Conference Call. [Operator Instructions]

It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Chris Forgy, President and CEO at Saga Communications. Chris, the floor is yours.

Christopher Forgy

Thank you, Tom, and welcome to all of you and thank you to all of you who've taken the time and interest in learning more about Saga today and Saga tomorrow. In a moment I'm going to turn it over to Sam Bush. You'll notice that Sam will be unusually chatty this morning and for very good reason. So with that, Sam, I'd like to turn it over to you.

Samuel Bush

Thank you, Chris. This call will contain forward-looking statements, performance, and results of operations that involve risks and uncertainties that are described in the Risk Factors section of our most recent Form 10-K. This call will also contain a discussion of certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation for all the non-GAAP financial measures to the most directly-comparable GAAP measure are attached in the selected financial data tables. As all of you have heard and know from past calls, Ed never liked reporting adjusted numbers, actually none of us do. However, it is important that we do. So, again, for the year and due to Ed's passing last August, and the impact of his passing on our third quarter results. The purely reported year-end numbers do not reflect Saga's strong operational performance, as well as our extremely strong financial strength.

With that in mind, for the quarter ended December 31, 2022, net revenue increased 3.3% to $30.1 million compared to $29.2 million last year. Gross political revenue during the quarter was $1.9 million compared to $886,000 for the same period last year. Without political, gross revenue increased a little less than 1%. Station operating expense increased 5.9% to $22.9 million for the three-month period. Station operating income decreased 4% to $8.5 million. Operating income and free cash flow were approximately flat with the same period last year at $4.9 million and $3.8 million, respectively. Net income for the quarter was $4.3 million, which compares to $3.7 million for the fourth quarter last year.