Q2 was nothing to write home about, but net revenues for Cumulus Media were down less than 1% on a reported basis and slightly up excluding political. Right now, though, CEO Lew Dickey is looking forward to next month’s expected closing on Citadel Broadcasting for around $2.5 billion in cash and stock.
With the recent stock market turmoil driving the price of Cumulus Media’s stock well below three bucks, one analysts on Friday’s (8/12) quarterly wanted to know whether Crestview Partners and Macquarie Capital (we would also add UBS) have any wiggle room to adjust the financial terms of their $500 million equity investment tied to the Citadel closing. Those investments were pegged at the stock price of $4.34 when the deal was done. Dickey assured the analyst that the terms are “locked down.” That closing is expected to take place September 15th.
For Q2 Cumulus (not yet including recently acquired CMP) reported that net revenues were down 0.8% to $69.2 million. Dickey said that would have been a gain of 0.4% excluding political. Station operating income, however, was up 2.4% to $30 million.
For Cumulus Media Partners (CMP), which was rolled into Cumulus Media on August 1st (well into Q3), Dickey said Q2 revenues were down 4.5%. He blamed that on poor performance in the San Francisco and Cincinnati markets, where new managers have recently been put in place.
Dickey didn’t have a lot to say about the current quarter. “Looking ahead, Q3 is pacing slightly positive overall despite a challenging July. August and September are both pacing positive, despite the absence of significant political dollars that we saw – which was well over a million and a half dollars in the third quarter of 2010,” he told analysts and investors.
RBR-TVBR observation: Citadel’s Q2 numbers are due out Monday (8/15) and, if nothing else, it should be interesting to hear Farid Suleman say his goodbyes to Wall Street, at least for a while. You may recall that Citadel turned in a less than stellar Q1.
