Urban One, Inc. (NASDAQ:UONE) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Alfred C. Liggins: No, I mean, we paid we paid $27.5 million. I think I just said that we think with add backs and things of that nature that we’ll have that we $5 million of EBITDA.

Peter D. Thompson: Sorry — I don’t know if you caught up with the NAV spins.

Alfred C. Liggins: Yeah. So let’s say their EBITDA was less than $5 million, we think with add backs, we’ll have at least $5 million. And when I say add backs, duplicate expense stuff that we can take out day one. And there’s not a lot of it, right. We’re not changing formats. But what was the surprise for us to be honest with you, because we modeled something else, was we were able to get out of the two radio stations for an acceptable price, right? And we didn’t know what the marketplace was going to be like. Yeah. And we are able to find two buyers and got what we thought were not amazing prices, probably low watermarks for stations in Houston, but given the M&A activity in radio period is pretty tepid, we felt — feel pretty good about the sales there. And so we’re going to be in to Houston for about $17 million.

Aaron Watts: Okay. Thank you for that. And one last question. You mentioned your liquidity a couple of times and it is a nice a cushion to have given the uncertain economic backdrop. As you move forward here, you fought back bonds, but you also have this potential casino projects. How should we think about the uses of those of that cash, whether it’s debt paydown going towards a casino initiative or potentially more M&A activity, whether that’s on the radio side or otherwise?

Alfred C. Liggins: Look, if — when we win this casino referendum, we’re going to have to write a — it’s not certain exactly what the equity check will be. It’s fifty-fifty right now. But let’s assume that it’s $80 million for each, us and Churchill and that’s assuming you put some debt on it, we may not go that route depending on how expensive project financing is. So we may need to write a slightly bigger check. But assume that that’s going to something that we will spend cash on starting in Q4, beginning with closing on the land acquisition. And then I think we sit back and just look at stuff opportunistic. I mean the good thing is that our bonds trading at a discount, call it $90 million and some change or whatever, yield 10.5% right?

So that’s always — that’s a good use of capital at that point in time. And if we can make some radio acquisitions that are better return than that, then we should look hard at that. But paying down debt, I mean, we’re also starting to get into a strike zone of leverage into 3s, you get leverage 3.5 times, low 3s, you’re starting to get in the strike zone of what other kind of capital — returns of capital do you look at. But we’ve got some significant projects on that — on the plate right now that we need to see how they’re going to turn out.

Aaron Watts: Okay. All right, great. I appreciate the time as always.

Operator: We’ll next go to the line of Ben Briggs with StoneX Financial Incorporated. Go ahead.

Ben Briggs: Good morning, guys. Thank you for holding the call and taking the questions. So a lot of mine got answered but I still have a couple of more here. So using your guidance and again thank you for providing guidance, you said that you expect to come in above where you were in fiscal year ’19 while adjusting out the roughly $8 million MGM dividend that you received. So that gets me to roughly, let’s call it like, just north of $130 million of EBITDA? I just want to kind of sanity check that and make sure I’m doing my math right there.

Peter D. Thompson: No, I have $133.5 million with MGM in, and MGM I think was 6.6%. So I think it’s like high $120 million, $126 million, $127 million.