Eleven years ago, Sinclair Broadcast Group investors cheered as then President/CEO David Smith announced that the media company was reinstating its quarterly dividend after a two-year hiatus prompted by the economic downturn of the late 2000s.
Over the last six years, the dividend has increased, moving from $0.18 to $0.20 and to $0.25. That’s the quarterly dividend Sinclair is sticking with for its latest shareholder reward, as the television industry pacesetter on NEXTGEN TV released Q4 and full-year 2022 earnings that didn’t clearly beat analysts’ average estimates.
The five analysts polled by Yahoo! Finance were hardly in consensus as to where Sinclair would finish the year.
Meanwhile, the Sinclair leader of today told an analyst on today’s earnings call that the FCC should take action to phase out ATSC 1.0-powered television broadcasts by a firm date — a big declaration given the voluntary rollout of ATSC 3.0 and NEXTGEN TV presently underway in the U.S.
