Good afternoon and welcome to iHeartMedia's fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, we will have a question and answer session. To ask a question, please press star followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Andre Hart, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join us for our fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining me for today's discussion are Bob Pittman, our chairman and CEO, Rich Bressler, our president and COO, and Mike McGinnis, our CFO. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, management will take your questions. In addition to our press release, we have an earnings presentation available on our website that you can use to follow along with our remarks. Please note that this call may include forward-looking statements regarding our financial performance and operating results. These statements are based on management's current expectations and actual results could differ from what is stated as a result of certain factors identified on today's call and in the company's SEC filings, including our recent 8K filing. Additionally, during this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release, earnings presentation, and our SEC filings, which are available in the Investor Relations section of our website. And now, I'll turn the call over to Bob. Thanks, Andre. Good afternoon, everyone.

We're pleased with our overall performance in 2025, especially given it was a non-political year. In the fourth quarter, we generated adjusted EBITDA of 220 million at the midpoint of our previously provided guidance range of 200 to 240 million compared to 246 million in the prior year which is a reminder benefited from approximately 80 million of political revenue our consolidated revenue for the quarter was 1.1 billion dollars up 0.8 percent compared to the prior year quarter and above our guidance of down low single digits excluding the impact of political, our consolidated revenue was up 7.7%. Turning to our individual operating segments now, the Digital Audio Group generated fourth-quarter revenue of $387 million, up 14.1% versus prior year, and above our previously provided guidance of up high single digits. The Digital Audio Group generated fourth-quarter adjusted EBITDA of $132 million, up 10.7% versus prior year. The Digital Audio Group's adjusted EBITDA margins were 34.1%, and we finished the full year at 34.4%, up from 32.5% in the prior year, which is consistent with our stated goal of achieving full-year adjusted EBITDA margins in the mid-30s, and we see further upside from here. Within the digital audio group, our podcast revenue momentum continues and grew to $174 million, up 24.5% compared to prior year, which was above our guidance of up in the mid-teens. And in Q4, approximately 47% of our podcasting revenue was generated by our local sales force, up from about 13% in Q4 of 2020, demonstrating the unique advantage of having what we believe is the largest local sales force in media. with a presence across 160 markets in addition to our strong national sales force. And not only do we have the number one audience in podcasting as measured by both PodTrack and Triton, the podcast industry's primary measurement services that measure actual downloads and users, we believe we also have the most profitable podcasting business in the United States. Our podcasting EBITDA margins remain accretive to our total company EBITDA margins, And we achieve this by continuing to apply rigorous financial discipline to building, partnering, and even renewing our podcast relationships. And one more thing to note, a key to our success in building our podcast business has been that podcasting is, in essence, radio on demand. For us, it's a truly adjacent and complementary business. We operate broadcast radio stations across the country 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with almost 90% of the U.S. population listening every month. and we have the unique assets and expertise, including programming, production, and distribution at scale, which power our strong podcast momentum in an expanding podcast marketplace. In the fourth quarter, our non-podcast digital revenue grew 6.8% compared to prior year. Turning now to the multi-platform group, which includes our broadcast radio, networks, and events businesses. Fourth quarter revenue was $665 million, down 2.8% versus prior year, and in line with our previously provided guidance range of down low single digits. Excluding the impact of political advertising, multi-platform group revenue was up 2.3%. The multi-platform group's adjusted EBITDA was $129 million, and as a reminder, the prior year benefited from approximately $40 million of political advertising revenue. We remain confident we can return the multi-platform group to EBITDA growth, and to reach that goal, in addition to our continuing efforts on cost, we're focused on four major drivers. Number one, programmatic. We're the first radio company whose broadcast inventory is available through the existing programmatic buying platforms, enabling our broadcast radio inventory to participate in the growing programmatic TAM. And as a reminder of the progress we've already made in this effort, we have partnership agreements with Amazon DSP, Yahoo DSP, and others to include our broadcast radio inventory in their programmatic platforms. In the case of Amazon, we expect our broadcast radio inventory to be included in their programmatic platform in the second half of the year. Second, integrated sales. We serve as a true marketing partner for our broadcast radio clients and agencies. This marketing approach, which focuses on bringing all of our advertising assets to bear and not treating each campaign as a standalone transaction, increasingly allows us to develop complex media and marketing plans, utilizing the unique power of radio to drive the results our partners are looking for, including enhancements of the non-broadcast components of their other media. Third, our broadcast outperformance. In 2025, we outperformed the radio industry revenue performance by 500 basis points, according to Miller Kaplan. And given the unique scale of our audience, our ad tech platforms, and the fact that we have the largest local sales force in audio, we expect to continue to increase our share of the radio TAM moving forward. Fourth, our resilient radio audience. There are more broadcast radio listeners today than there were 20 years ago, and one constant in advertising is that the revenue always follows consumer usage, even if it sometimes takes a while. As the percentage of broadcast radio usage among consumers is far greater than the share of the advertising revenue that broadcast radio enjoys, we remain encouraged about this upside potential. We also see some important partnership announcements as validation of the power of broadcast radio, with important companies like Netflix and TikTok coming to partner with us and our broadcast radio assets. We're now premiering new music with TikTok and radio, including last week's preview of Bruno Mars' new album, which set a new bar for the largest album preview and demonstrates the unique power of iHeart and TikTok working together to help artists achieve their goals. And it's also interesting to note that if you look at our video podcasts that are on Netflix today, some of the most popular ones are actually derived directly from our radio shows, including The Breakfast Club and Bobby Bones, more evidence of the unique power of our radio personalities and assets. And finally, before I turn it over to Rich, let me give you our view of the current advertising marketplace. Last year, we successfully navigated an uncertain ad market, and although there was definitely some disruption to the advertising marketplace in this quarter due to major weather events, and there still remains some macro uncertainty as well, as clearly evidenced by the events in the Middle East over the weekend, we view the advertising marketplace as reasonably healthy. And we still expect a year of meaningful EBITDA and free cash flow growth for iHeart, and Rich will provide you with those details. And with that, I'll turn it over to Rich.

Thank you, Bob, and good afternoon. Our Q4 2025 consolidated revenue was above our guidance of down low single digits and was up 0.8% compared to the prior year quarter. Excluding the impact of political, our consolidated revenue was up 7.7%. Let me provide you with some additional detail on our advertising revenue performance this quarter. As a reminder, one of our strengths is our diversified advertising revenues. There is no advertising category greater than about 5% of our total advertising revenue, and no individual advertiser that is more than 2% of our total advertising revenue. In the fourth quarter, the largest category gainers in terms of absolute dollars were financial services, retail, entertainment, and beauty and fitness. And the four categories that declined the most in terms of absolute dollars were political, government, restaurants, and food and beverage. And in the fourth quarter, our five largest advertising categories in terms of absolute dollars were healthcare, home building and improvement, financial services, retail, and entertainment. Our consolidated direct operating expenses increased 2.4% for the quarter. This increase was primarily driven by higher variable content costs associated with the revenue growth of our digital businesses, partially offset by a decrease in costs incurred in connection with our cost savings initiatives, as well as decreased employee compensation costs. Our consolidated SG&A expenses increased 4.6% for the quarter. This increase was primarily driven by expenses related to our non-cash co-marketing partnerships, partially offset by a decrease in costs incurred in connection with our cost savings initiatives, as well as decreased employee compensation costs. We generate a fourth quarter gap operating income of $86 million compared to an operating income of $105 million in the prior year quarter. We generated adjusted IBITDA of $220 million at the midpoint of our previously provided guidance range of $200 to $240 million and compared to $246 million in the prior year. As a reminder, Q4 of 2024 benefited from approximately $80 million of political advertising revenue. Before I turn to our segment performances, I want to give you an update on our core savings initiatives. We are currently implementing $50 million of new in-year cost savings, which will start to benefit from beginning in Q2. This is in addition to the $50 million of cost reductions we announced on last quarter's call, which will bring our 2026 in-year cost savings to a total of $100 million. And, as a reminder, we achieved a previously announced $150 million of net cost savings in 2025, and we continue to work on the efficiency of our operating structure, including using technologies like AI-powered tools and services. turning now to the performance of our operating segments in the fourth quarter the digital audio group's revenue was 387 million of 14.1 percent year-over-year and above our guidance of up high single digits the digital audio group's adjusted ibitda was 132 million dollars of 10.7 percent year-over-year, and our Q4 adjusted Ibitda margins were 34.1% compared to 35.1% in the prior year. Within the digital audio group, our podcasting revenue was $174 million, which grew 24.5% year-over-year and above the guidance we provided of up-mid teams. Our fourth quarter non-podcasting digital revenue grew 6.8% year-over-year to $213 million. Turning down to the multi-platform group, revenue was $665 million, down 2.8% compared to prior year, in line with our previously provided guidance range. Excluding the impact of political revenue, our multi-platform revenue was up 2.3%. Adjusted IBTDA was $129 million, down 14.2% from $150 million in the prior year quarter. As a reminder, the multi-platform group's prior year Q4 adjusted IBTDA benefited from approximately $40 million of political advertising revenue. The multi-platform group's adjusted IBTDA margins were 19.4 percent compared to 21.9 percent in the prior year quarter which as a reminder was a political year quarter as we have previously discussed some of the investment in our proprietary audience database which is the foundation of our broadcast programmatic offerings take the form of co-marketing partnerships to drive engagement with the iheart radio digital services in q4 these relationships again drove an increase on non-cash partner marketing revenues and expenses we will continue to experience some quarterly mismatching of these non-cash marketing campaigns in both directions in subsequent periods and we believe that obtaining these critical marketing resources for our broadcast programmatic initiative on a non-cash basis is a prudent way to optimize capital and to achieve our goals turning to the audio or media Services Group, revenue was $79 million, down 19.3% year-over-year. Q4 of the prior year benefited from approximately $35 million of political advertising. Excluding the impact of political revenue, the Audio and Media Services Group revenue was up 21.8%. Adjusted NVIDIA was $31 million, down 35.7% compared to the prior year. Again, due almost entirely to the impact of political advertising in the prior year quarter. In the fourth quarter, our free cash flow was $138 million or $158 million when including the proceeds from certain real estate asset sales compared to a negative $24 million in the prior year quarter. Our Q4 2025 EBITDA to free cash flow conversion was approximately 70% and demonstrates the company's high free cash flow conversion characteristics and gives us confidence in our ability to generate meaningful free cash flow in 2026 and thereafter at year-end our net debt was approximately 4.5 billion our total liquidity was 640 million and our cash balance was 271 million which includes 50 million dollars borrowed under the ABL facility. Our year-end net debt to adjusted IVITDA ratio was 6.6 times. Let me now turn to our guidance for the first quarter and the full year within the context that Bob discussed regarding the health of the current advertising marketplace. For the first quarter, we expect to generate adjusted IVITDA of approximately $100 million. We expect our consolidated revenue to be up high single digits compared to prior year. Our January revenue was up approximately 1% year-over-year, and as a reminder, January 2025 was a strong comp of 5.5%. Turning to the individual segments, we expect the digital audio group's revenue to be up mid-teens year-over-year, with podcast revenue expected to grow in the low 20s. We expect the multi-platform group's revenue to be up mid-single digits year-over-year. We expect the audio and media services group revenue to be up high single digits year-over-year. We are continuing to invest in our important broadcast programmatic efforts that Bob discussed, and our guidance includes the impact of those incremental expenses, and the good news is that the majority of this asset-building expense is non-cash. And for the full year, we expect adjusted IVITDA to be approximately $800 million and our free cash flow to be approximately $200 million. Embedded in our adjusted IVITDA guidance are the following. We expect the multi-platform group to get back to adjusted IVITDA growth during 2026. We expect to generate approximately $200 million of overall programmatic revenue in 2026, up approximately 50% from $135 million in 2025. And as a reminder, we expect our broadcast programmatic revenue trajectory to be similar to that of the growth we experienced in podcasting revenue. We expect podcasting revenue to continue with strong momentum. We expect this to be a robust midterm election year in terms of generating political revenue. And as mentioned before, 2026 will benefit from $100 million of in-year cost reductions, which will help to offset investments we're making to build out our future technological capabilities. Let me provide some additional inputs embedded in our free cash flow guidance. Interest expense will be approximately $440 million. Cash taxes will be approximately 5% of adjusted IVITDA. Capital expenditures are expected to be approximately $90 million. Cash restructuring expenses will be approximately $50 million. Working capital is expected to be a source of cash this year, driven by political revenue, which is paid up front. We expect our net leverage ratio at the end of 2026 to be in the mid-fives, which would be more than a full-term improvement year-over-year. We are looking forward to 2026 being a year of significant adjusted Ibitda and free cash flow generation for iHeart. Driven by the return of the multi-platform group to Ibitda growth, the continued strong momentum of our podcasting revenue and audience, our growing programmatic revenues, and our continued focus on efficiencies as evidenced by our cost savings initiatives. Now, we'll turn it over to the operator to take your questions. Thank you.

As a reminder to ask a question, please press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw any questions, press star one again. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Aaron Watts from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, everyone. Thanks for having me on. I've got a couple questions, if I may. Encouraging to see the growth in core MPG revenues in 4Q and continued strength on the digital side. I thought it was interesting to see digital EBITDA larger than MPG in the quarter as well. But as I look ahead, I'd appreciate if you could help me understand why you're seeing high single-digit revenue growth in the first quarter, but a small decline in year-over-year EBITDA, despite all the costs you're taking out, and perhaps how to think about those same factors impacting first quarter as we think more about the full-year performance, too.

Sure. Let me start. First of all, you know, again, I don't think you see that same, you don't see that same dynamic as you go through the full year. I think, is if you look at overall guidance for the full year. The second thing is just as a reminder, our first quarter numbers are so small compared to the rest of the year. Again, if you look historically 2025, 2024, you look at 20 and 2026, what we got for Q1 and what we're guided for the for the full year. And also, because, again, with the land of small numbers coming out of the quarter of Q4, which is the land of much larger numbers, and continue to build up on our total critical programmatic offerings that we have, we continue to do co-partner and non-cash in Q4 as a way to support that and wrap up. And I think we started to talk about that in Q3, so it was kind of a natural build. And then some of that prepaid marking that's in Q4 and that built up throughout the year is getting deployed in Q1. So it comes back as expected. So it's just a lot of moving pieces, but it just gets really accentuated because of the land of small numbers in Q1. But as you go throughout the year, you will see that same kind of fact.

Okay, great. That's helpful. Thanks, rich uh and then thinking about your costs and i apologize if i missed this but how should we think about the cadence of the now 100 million of cost savings uh that you're targeting as we move through the year across like first quarter second quarter third quarter fourth quarter and then are there cash costs we should model in to achieve those that you could help us with yeah so on uh just on the course just doing the math if you take the program we already announced at Q4 for 2026, take to what we're announcing today, which starts to be implemented in Q2, but it's a full year, $100 million of course in 2026.

Think about it, just a math, 12 and a half, let's say for Q1 at about $28 million per quarter after that.

Okay, perfect, thank you. And then on a political side, We've heard robust expectations for political spend this year, and it sounds like a few races, including Texas, are off to a really fast start. As we look at your $800 million of EBITDA guidance for the full year, what political assumptions are you baking into that to help us get our mind around kind of what upside there could be from that number?

Yeah, I mean, we always said, and continue to say, that we expect 2026 to be a strong non-presidential cycle political year. So, and we're seeing, obviously, all the same signs.

Okay. All right. Great. And if I could ask one last question, and I appreciate the time. And from the outside, as we said, what benchmarks or milestones should we be looking for with regards to your programmatic efforts, as well as some of your recently announced partnerships, including Netflix? And are those partnerships adding to strength in your podcast forecast? Thanks.

Well, I think in terms of the programmatic, programmatic obviously benefits everything we have, podcast, digital streaming. and broadcast radio. Broadcast radio is obviously the harder one to get into programmatic because the programmatic systems have really been built for digital inventory. But as we announced, we are going into the Amazon DSP with broadcast, also the Yahoo DSP, both major DSPs, and continuing to add more to that. So that's encouraging on that front. I think in terms of how we think it all fits together and how it helps us, obviously there's a piece of the revenue pie out there that is programmatic. People want to buy programmatically, and if you can't offer programmatic, you're not going to get any of the money. So having that kind of capabilities for our podcast and broadcast radio in particular is very important to us and certainly is behind why we're investing what we have in it and why we're seeing the kind of growth we are. I think in terms of the video podcast, talking about Netflix and those opportunities, we've got this wonderful expansion of the marketplace from just audio to video podcast. Now, most people still want to listen to a podcast. The use case is generally in a place where you can't use your eyeballs. But there are people who do want to watch it and or will watch it occasionally. And we're seeing that market beginning to open up. And for us, that is sort of unforeseen revenue opportunities. And I think Netflix is, you know, I probably give credit. YouTube probably opened that up, people's eyes to that. And Netflix, I think, is taking it to a whole other level. and that we expect that to be a continued expanding market for us as well.

And by the way, just one last item to close. You know, as we said, you know, in terms of our guidance, that we expect total programmatic revenue to be possibly $200 million in 2026, up 50% from our total revenue in 2025. So I think that's a pretty good benchmark in terms of benchmarking our total programmatic product.

Great. Thanks, Rich. Thanks, Bob.

Our next question comes from Stephen Lasik from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Bob Rich, I was curious if you could talk a little bit more about the underlying drivers of growth and the podcasting business, continued strong performance, you know, to finish 2025. 25, just curious if you can unpack a bit more what you expect to see in 26, and then also too, if you look further out in 27 and beyond, just the drivers of adding new content, improving engagement, improving monetization, where you see the most opportunity for growth on And then I guess related to that, Bob, I think you might have mentioned origins in the mid-30s, continuing to have opportunity to move higher. Just curious what you see as the key drivers on that front as well.

Well, look, before Rich jumps in, I just want to say, I think on podcasting, what's great is you have so many vectors of growth. You not only have more people using podcasts, but you have them using more podcasts each year, and obviously we're seeing inventory opportunities continue to grow as well. And as we look at getting podcasts, from our standpoint, we have this incredible flywheel effect. Because we are the largest podcast publisher by pretty good margin, we tend to get first look at everything. So if we don't take it, it's because we couldn't figure out how the economics work. And we have pretty strong financial discipline in terms of making sure that we have podcasts that are legitimately good businesses for us. And we also have the ability, because we mentioned in the call, we have this incredible array of assets for our broadcast radio that we can apply to podcasting and allows us to build podcasts from sort of scratch. And if you look at the major podcast players, we're probably the only ones that have built podcasts as opposed to just buying podcast packages from others.

You know, and look, and the only thing I'd add on the margin front, and you've heard Bob, myself, and Mike, you know, talking about it, what our goal was on the annual podcasting margins, I'm sorry, to be clear, and with respect to DAG, I would just put the overall context and the overall umbrella, and you see if I believe continue to demonstrate, not just in words, is us striving just to become more efficient in every revenue stream, and in every support in our business. So when we talk to me, and I think you all agree, it's a natural outgrowth that, yes, we're at, you know, what we talked about getting to the mid-30s on IBDA margins for DAG, but, you know, we're never going to stop trying to improve those and take advantage of technology and continue to improve upon our risk in terms of capital allocation and bring more to the bottom line.

That's great. And then just a quick follow-up. Within that, I'm curious how big of an opportunity you think video podcasting is perhaps over the next 12 to 24 months. Is this something that can move the needle revenue-wise, or would we need to see maybe an expansion of the Netflix agreement to get it to the point where it starts moving the needle on growth and margins higher?

Well, look, I think you've got two major video players who really pretty much signaled that they want to play in video podcasting, YouTube and Netflix. I suspect we're seeing and, you know, you hear talk from others that they're also interested in it. So I think that's probably what's going to drive the expansion of it. But we certainly know that we can promote these podcasts in a way that other streaming shows are not promoted because we're able to utilize our broadcast radio, where you've got 90% of Americans listening every month to our broadcast radio. And if you listen to Charlemagne Tha God or Bobby Bones or some of the people that are on Netflix, you hear that they're, again, promoting their appearance there and their podcast there. So I think it gives them a pretty strong showing. Great. Thank you both.

Our next question comes from Sebastiano Petty from JP Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thank you for taking the question. I guess, Rich, first you wanted to follow up. You did call out the anticipated growth rate in programmatic for the year. I mean, can you just help us maybe give us what the 2024 programmatic revenue growth rate was just so we can kind of think about the glide path there? And then relatedly, you know, talking about the DAG margins, obviously still, you know, remain healthy. But I think the fourth quarter 2025 DAG margins were, I think, down year over year. And I think the lowest fourth quarter since fourth quarter of 2022. Anything driving that? You talked about some of the non-cash, you know, partnerships kind of going back and forth. I wasn't sure if there's anything maybe idio in the quarter. And then lastly, bringing broadcast back to EBITDA growth, or MPG, rather, back to EBITDA growth. Should we see a million of incremental savings coming through in 26th are kind of concentrated back towards MPG, and hence the flex you're going to see there?

Well, let me start. I'll take a couple, and then Bob and Mike chime in. And on DAG, as we've always said, there's so many moving pieces on a quarter to quarter basis and understand we report on a quarter basis in terms of the margins and understand the questions. But, you know, we are, that's why we have focused people for years and years in terms of, you know, really look at the annual margin base, because there's just so many moving pieces that can affect the individual quarters. And, you know, again, look at the rhythm of our business. Q1 is the smallest. Q2 and 3 as a general rule are, you know, relatively similar. And then Q4 is the biggest, which I don't think is anything different than any other ad-supported business out there. When it comes to MPG and getting back to EBITDA growth this year, you know, I think we did a pretty good job of outlining what the underlying factors were. You know, I don't have anything in addition to add to that that we outlined in the remarks, you know, all the different pieces there, ranging from whether it's continuing to take market share, as Bob talked about, and Bill Kaplan, and right down to just looking at our overall revenue growth, including our total programmatic revenue growth as you kind of go into this year out there. so not I don't have anything different to add to that and then in terms of 2024 uh 2025 you know I'm seeing Michael listen I don't have the 2024 number handy for total programmatic revenue growth

but I would uh I would uh I don't want to speculate but it will be substantially less than it was than it was in 2025 but we can circle back and get you that number yeah and if I could just add one thing on just to you know put a pin in what rich said i think on mpg there's really two vectors one is cost out you're absolutely correct it is uh the business that we've been able to apply technology to to get more and more efficient and i think make the product better and better and uh and the second is advertising programmatic when if you want to do an audio buy you can't get reach In video, you can get REACH. There's no longer the REACH. There's no way to make the plan without it. So we know it's going to find it.

It's an electric cycle, which we expect to greatly benefit from as a company.

Thank you.

Our last question comes from Patrick Scholl from Barrington Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Thanks for taking the question. I could ask another question on programmatic. you talked about the kind of mismatch of revenues and expenses as you kind of build up your capabilities there. I'm just wondering, like, how much of a drag you expect that to be on EBITDA for the full year?

I think it's built in the numbers. We're talking about everything you've got there.

So I think, you know, again, we've been pretty prudent in how we build programmatic, so it's not a big impact on earnings and we found a you know uh some some ways to build it out using primarily non-cash okay uh thank you thank you um if there are no other questions uh thank you all again for listening to the iheart story on behalf of uh all of us and uh we are available as always for uh follow-up questions bob myself and mike and the team thanks very much this concludes today's

conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.