TEGNA Inc. (NYSE:TGNA) Q3 2024 Earnings Call November 7, 2024 9:00 AM ET

Company Participants

Kirk von Seelen - Investor Relations
Mike Steib - Chief Executive Officer
Julie Heskett - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Steven Cahall - Wells Fargo
Dan Kurnos - The Benchmark Company
Craig Huber - Huber Research
Patrick Sholl - Barrington Research
David Karnovsky - JPMorgan

Operator

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the TEGNA Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to your speaker for today, Kirk von Seelen. Please go ahead.

Kirk von Seelen

Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to our third quarter 2024 conference call and webcast. My name is Kirk von Seelen, and I am TEGNA’s Treasurer. Today, our CEO, Mike Steib; and our CFO, Julie Heskett, will review TEGNA’s third quarter performance and results and provide TEGNA’s full year and fourth quarter outlook. After that, we’ll open the call for questions. Hopefully, you’ve had the opportunity to review this morning’s press release. If you have not yet seen a copy of the release, it’s available at tegna.com.

Before we get started, I’d like to remind you that this conference call and webcast includes forward-looking statements, and our actual results may differ. Factors that may cause them to differ are outlined in our SEC filings. This presentation also includes certain non-GAAP financial measures. We have provided reconciliations of those measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures in the press release.

With that, let me turn the call over to Mike.

Mike Steib

Thanks, Kirk, and good morning, everybody. I’m excited to be here working hard for our shareholders and the communities we serve. On the heels of this week’s election, I want to commend our team for helping to keep our communities informed and engaged in our democracy, local journalism has never been more important in America. And as the folks on this call know, it’s also never been more challenged as the world has undergone a digital transformation, viewers and advertisers have shifted online. Since 2021, pay TV homes have been declining 5% to 7% per year with traditional cable and satellite homes declining in the teens, while TV advertising has declined 3% to 5% per year.

Traditional media and broadcast in particular, has fallen behind, missing opportunities to evolve the business and take advantage of the digital moment. But history is not destiny here. Local communities continue to strongly value local news, 85% telling people that local news is important and the vast majority reporting that their local media team is doing a good job. TEGNA’s brands, in particular, have strong leadership positions in attractive markets across the U.S. In this hypercompetitive environment, where it is extremely difficult to establish an audience and build trusted brands, TEGNA has both. We reach approximately 100 million people every month across the web, mobile apps, streaming and linear television. Our brands and our products continue to mean a lot to the people in our local communities.