Nexstar Broadcasting Group Revenue Down in Q4

Full-Year-2007 Revenue Up Slightly

By Michael Malone -- Broadcasting & Cable, 3/6/2008 12:09:00 PM

Nexstar Broadcasting Group’s net revenue for the fourth quarter of 2007 was $71.6 million, down from $77.2 million in the same quarter of 2006.

Income from operations was $12.7 million in the quarter, down from $18.9 million in 2006.

Nexstar reported a net loss per diluted share of $0.09 for the quarter compared with net income per diluted share of $0.16 in the fourth quarter of 2006.

Broadcast cash flow was $28.2 million in Q4 versus $33.8 million for the same period in 2006.

For full-year 2007, net revenue was up a tick -- Nexstar reported $266.8 million for the year, up from $265.2 million in 2006. Income from operations was $40.5 million for the year compared with $45.9 million in 2006.

Broadcast cash flow for the year was $98.5 million versus $103.1 million in 2006.

Chairman, president and CEO Perry Sook said the results exceeded Nexstar’s guidance despite a lack of political advertising propping up 2007’s performance.

“Nexstar is leveraging its core business into new sources of revenue growth and is successfully overcoming the ‘odd year/even year’ revenue disparity caused by political advertising,” he said.

“In 2007, Nexstar generated approximately $4.3 million of gross political revenue compared with $27 million in 2006,” Sook added. “Nevertheless, we finished 2007 with record annual net revenue of $266.8 million and free cash flow of $28 million. Retransmission-consent revenue grew more than 25% in 2007 to $17.2 million, and we generated more than $5.1 million in new-media revenue in 2007 in our first year of this initiative.”