Nexstar Broadcasting Group's CEO Discusses Q1 2011 Results - Earnings Call Transcript

Digging a little deeper on our first quarter. Our gross local and national television ad revenue growth of 3.3% to $58.3 million is on top of the 17.6% growth recorded in last year's first quarter. First quarter 2011 local revenue rose by 3.7%, national revenue was up 2.1%. The strength in automotive advertising continued for us in Q1. Category revenue rising 10% year-over-year, marking the seventh consecutive quarter of double-digit revenue gains in automotive ad spend for Nexstar.

Nexstar's television ad revenue strength, combined with continued double-digit growth in retransmission fee, mobile, and e-MEDIA elements of our quadruple play of revenues and our quarterly management fee revenue collectively resulted in a 1.9% increase in total first quarter net revenues to $69.9 million. Additionally, we generated first quarter BCF of $24.8 million, adjusted EBITDA of $20 million, free cash flow of $3.6 million, all of which are record levels for an odd year first quarter.

Let me quickly review our quarterly and recent financial highlights, and then Tom will take you through additional detail. Our first quarter retransmission consent fee revenues were $8.5 million, representing a year-over-year increase of 15.6% and a quarterly sequential increase of 11.8%. We're starting to see the benefits of our newest contracts now rolling into the mix for 2011. Q1 e-MEDIA revenue came in at $3.7 million, and that surpassed last year's first quarter by 23.8%, marking the 18th consecutive quarter of growth for Nexstar's community web portal and mobile media strategies.

In the first quarter, we recorded $500,000 of management fee revenue from our services agreement to manage the Four Points Media Group. We're entitled to performance compensation, as we generate broadcast cash flow for the station group above the specified specials in our contracts, and we achieved solid upside on this front in the third and fourth quarters of 2010, and we expect that to be the case again later this year.

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