It was anticipated, but unconfirmed. Then, in the 2pm Eastern hour, Salem Media Group‘s third quarter 2024 earnings report arrived.
How did the company focused on Christian-themed and conservative secular spoken word programming perform in the three-month period ending September 30?
CEO Dave Santrella and EVP/CFO Evan Masyr signed off on a regulatory filing that offers the details regarding the company’s Q3 performance.
With no commentary from Salem, it reported a dip in net broadcast revenue to $46.05 million, from $48.97 million, as Salem’s net digital revenue climbed to $10.91 million, from $9.97 million.
At the same time, net publishing revenue declined from $4.57 million, to $1.75 million.
Add it up, and total net revenue came in at $58.72 million in Q3, dropping from $63.5 million.
At the same time, Salem greatly trimmed its expenses, reducing them to $63.06 million, from $99.79 million.
This helped Salem reduce its operating loss to $4.35 million (from $36.3 million), as the net loss shrank to $6.62 million (-$0.24 per diluted share) from $31.3 million (-$0.15).
Breaking down the Q3 report, Salem saw its Block Programming Revenue again serve as the biggest dollar generation arm, slipping to $56.53 million from $58.62 million. Local spot advertising was down to $25.18 million, from $29.23 million. National spot advertising was down slightly to $8.53 million, from $8.74 million.
Meanwhile, same-station Station Operating Income fell to $3.81 million, from $7.04 million. On that basis, expenses grew to $42.1 million from $40.51 million, while broadcast revenue dipped to $45.91 million from $47.55 million.
Digital advertising was up slightly to $34.68 million, from $34.11 million.
Salem presently trades on the Over-the-Counter market and its shares are presently trading between 25 cents and 26 cents.
