Kevin Latek: Our re-trans — our growth came in $1 million higher than our guide because the sales were not as — did not decline as much as we had modeled. We have been attempting to be particularly conservative in all of our guides over the last year, since the — we’re a little surprised on political last fall. So we are — again, we’re trying to model things on the conservation that we don’t have any negative surprises out there. So yes, we — our subs came in a bit better than expected.
Daniel Kurnos: Got it. All right. Cool. Thanks everybody. Appreciate it.
Kevin Latek: Thank you, Dan.
Operator: Our next question is going to come from John Dickson with Artemis Investment [ph]. Your line is open.
Unidentified Analyst: Good morning, Hilton and your team.
Hilton Howell: Good morning.
Unidentified Analyst: I just wanted to tell you as an investor in your company, I’m very impressed with your portfolio and the leadership of your team. One of my questions, one of my concerns from a long-term picture is your debt load. I just wanted to question you guys, can you give some more insight into what you’re going to pay that debt load down?
Hilton Howell: Well, let me begin, and then I’ll let Jim follow-up with all that. We have had a pretty direct communication with The Street and all of our investors about what our intentions were to do, and that was to grow the size of our portfolio. And we have allowed our debt ratio to grow into the five range. And then we have quickly paid it down. That happened after the acquisition of shores. It happened after the acquisition of Raycom. And we’re in the same situation now. Our percentage ratio in my judgment is really not totally accurately reflected, because we have such a high quality portfolio of television stations. During a political year, we have a very strong proven record of over delivering on political. So as you measure the ratio, the quarters that we have a lot of big political roles.
And so we have paid down about $600 million in absolute debt over the last several quarters. And that is our intention to do that going forward. So I think that you will see us continuing to reduce our ratios and our absolute debt as well.
Unidentified Analyst: Well, thank you, Hilton, and that’s really the only question I had. I’d just like to leave it as I really appreciate the leadership of your team. I think you’re doing well. And I’m very impressed with the quality of your portfolio. Thank you very much.
Hilton Howell: You’re awfully nice. I certainly appreciate it. Everybody does.
Operator: [Operator Instructions]. Our next question is going to come from Steven Cahall with Wells Fargo. Your line is open.
Steven Cahall: Yes. Maybe first, just to pick up on the last question. So it would be great, Jim, if maybe you could just walk through some of the puts and takes to get the free cash flow available for debt paydown this year. I know you talked to a free cash flow number, but between maybe some of the dividends and the CapEx. How much cash do you think you’ll be able to use for debt reduction this year? And then I assume that’s going to be a big number next year. So any kind of look on the amount of debt you might be able to bring down with the big political year coming next year?
James Ryan: Steven, I said our free cash as we define it, it would be in the $150 million range. As you know, we define free cash before our common dividend, which is currently running about $28 million a year. And it would also be before the expected net investment for a full-year ’23 in the assembly project. It’s roughly $55-ish million on a net basis on a full-year. So we will be paying down some debt late this year. You are absolutely right, and Hilton basic the same thing a couple of minutes ago that historically, as you know, in political years, we performed exceptionally well and have for longer than we can remember out indexed on a per capita basis political revenues from anybody in this peer space. We see no reason why ’24 won’t be similar.
We are certainly not going to put a full-year estimate on ’24 political, as you can imagine. Only to say it’s going to be a large number. Political comes cash in advance. So for all intents and purposes, goes directly cash flow. So we will be able to make a significant payment of debt, especially the latter part of next year. I’ll remind people that for every political season, except for ’22 and it changed slightly in ’22, but history has said that about half of our political and in ’22, it was slightly less than half of our political. But anyways, the vast majority of political shows up in the fourth quarter of the year, which in ’24 will allow us to make a significant debt paydown. You can look at our investor deck and see what we’ve done in prior political years to — I can’t guarantee the past is the future.
