Another big bonus payout is coming to those who hold shares of Nexstar Media Group stock, as the company’s Board of Directors has declared a quarterly cash dividend that repeats its first quarter investor reward.
The board also said yes to a share buyback initiative.
The company that owns more broadcast television stations than any other in the U.S., has a controlling interest in The CW Network, and also has cable news network NewsNation and Chicago’s WGN Radio in its stable, will pay a dividend of $1.69 per share on Friday, August 23.
This will go to shareholders of record on Friday, August 9.
News of the dividend sent NXST, which trades on the Nasdaq GlobalSelect market, up to $185 in pre-market trading on Monday.
That pushes Nexstar stock up to a new year-to-date high, and brings shareholders a 17% gain since January 1; over the last five years “NXST” has grown by nearly 78% in value.
With the growth in value comes a decision by Nexstar’s board to give its OK to a new share repurchase program.
This authorizes the company led by CEO and founder Perry Sook and CFO Lee Ann Gliha (pictured, top left) to repurchase up to $1.5 billion of its common stock. The new share repurchase authorization is in addition to Nexstar’s existing share repurchase program announced in July 2022, of which $496 million remained as of May 8, 2024.
While Nexstar says it intends to pay regular quarterly cash dividends for the foreseeable future, all subsequent dividends will be reviewed quarterly and declared by the Board of Directors at its discretion.
The share repurchase authorization will be executed at the board’s discretion and any share repurchases are subject to regulatory limitations.
Nexstar will release its Q2 2024 results on August 8, and eight analysts weighed in to Yahoo! Finance with their estimates. This put the consensus earnings per share at $4.31, with the low estimate at $2.58 and the high estimate at $5.59.
The Q2 2024 EPS was $2.64. As such, there is a lack of consensus among analysts chiming in for the consensus estimate.
Nine analysts offered their thoughts on Q2 2024 revenue, and the low estimate is $1.28 billion, while the high estimate is $1.39 billion, Yahoo! Finance reports.
