James Goss: And maybe one last question. You were quite aggressive with the dividend increase, 10% plus yield being implied. Could you talk about the rationale the behind going that far?
Bill Wilson: The dividend clearly speaks to the fact that we have significant, significant strong cash flow and have had that year-in and year-out. And even during the challenging time of 2020, we had positive operating cash flow. So, yes, you are correct. At today’s stock price, it is a an aggressive yield, approximately 10%, if not slightly higher. As you know, Jim, a year ago, our stock was $13. 15 months ago, we were in the $14, We were about $15 at one point. So at a $15 stock price, that would be a 5% yield. Our expectation is that our stock price will get back to the level it was at just a year ago and it’ll grow from there. But that, obviously, is not the case today. So we’ve been focused up until this point, utilizing our free cash flow for our digital investment and we will continue to do that, but also de-levering.
We bought bonds in the open market. So we delevered to the lowest leverage point in the company’s history at 4.29 times, as you know, at the end of 2022. And yet, our stock price has not reflected delevering. It has not reflected the record setting revenue, record setting profits in 2021 and then again in 2022. So, our view is we want to highlight the strong cash flow characteristics. And that’s why we wanted to provide a reward to our shareholders. Because even with this performance, from a profit and revenue standpoint, given this performance of transforming a local radio company to a digital-first local media company, our shareholders have not been rewarded and seen the appropriate, we believe, stock valuation. So, that is why we went with the $0.75 a year.
My expectation is that, although it’s a 10% plus yield today, that will come down because we will continue to execute, we will continue to drive our digital growth and, over time, we will be appropriately rewarded from a stock price valuation. I would also point out that we bought back 12.6 million shares from Oak Tree two years ago today. It was March 9, 2021. And at that time, our stock price was roughly, I believe, and Claire can correct me, or Stu, I believe it was just under $8 €“ $7.90, I believe it was. And yet, after retiring 12.6 million shares, here we are below that point. So, we’ve obviously evaluated delevering, which we’ve done quite well. We’ve evaluated stock buybacks, which we have an authorization of a $50 million buyback that’s still active, yet neither one of those things have actually positively influenced our stock price.
So given our stock, our shareholders have not yet been rewarded, we felt the most appropriate thing to do right now was a dividend. We have strong cash flow. And it allows us €“ as Stu said, it’s only roughly about $13 million a year. And it allows us to continue to do everything we want to do from a digital investment standpoint. It allows us now to reward our current shareholders and, hopefully future shareholders when they evaluate what a strong cash flow, high yielding dividend, and digital company is doing. And it also allows us, as Stu said, to opportunistically continue to delever and buy bonds in the open market. So, we’re quite pleased the board approved this and we look forward to our current shareholders receiving this dividend on May 1.
And we look forward to hopefully other people who are not shareholders today, having them look at this yield as well as our strong cash flow generation and then factor that into a growing, robust digital company that’s highly differentiated in markets outside the top 50. So we’re quite excited about the dividend and pleased to share that with our shareholders.
Operator: We have reached the end of our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Bill for closing comments.
Bill Wilson: Thank you, operator. And thanks, everybody, for joining in today. We’re quite pleased and proud to share the results of 2022. We feel that we are in a tremendously strong position to weather the current macroeconomic environment. And I just want to say thank you to the Townsquare team. I feel like the commitment, passion for not only driving the company forward in this transformation to a digital first local media company, but their commitment to their communities and to our clients is second to none and we are very, very proud of that. So, hope everybody has a great day. Look forward to connecting with you, it should be, a couple of months from now to share our Q1 results and our Q2 pacings. Have a great day.
Operator: Thank you. This will conclude today’s conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time and thank you for your participation.
