Townsquare Media is repurchasing and retiring 1.5 million shares held by MSG National Properties LLC at $9.76 per share for a total of $14.6 million
The purchase represents an 11% discount over the last closing share price and just under 10% of the company’s outstanding shares. Townsquare previously repurchased 1.5 million shares from MSG in June 2023 at $9.70 per share and 12.6 million shares and warrants in March 2021 from Oaktree Capital Management at $6.40 per share.
Townsquare states that the purchase was funded entirely from available cash on hand as the company’s cash flow increased in 2023 by 36% to $68 million. Following this purchase, Townsquare Media has 15.2 million outstanding shares.
Townsquare CEO Bill Wilson said, “We are very pleased to share that we have repurchased just under 10% of our total shares outstanding in an immediately accretive transaction for our shareholders. Since 2021, we have repurchased 16.2 million shares at an average price of $7.19, while simultaneously reducing leverage. The strong cash generation characteristics of our business model, which produced $68 million of cash flow from operations in 2023, has afforded us the opportunity to accretively repurchase equity and debt, while also investing internally in our digital growth engine. In addition, we introduced a high-yielding dividend in 2023, and recently increased it by 5%. Our dividend has a yield of 7% as of March 28, 2024. With a strong cash balance of $40 million following this transaction, we will retain financial flexibility moving forward and we are confident in our ability to build shareholder value for our investors through long-term net revenue, Adjusted EBITDA and cash flow growth, net leverage reduction, future dividend payments, and potential future share repurchases. We thank our Board of Directors for their vote of confidence in our medium and long-term business plan to grow revenue and profits, and MSG for their long-term support of our Company,”
The company says its Q1 and Full Year 2024 new revenue guidance is reaffirmed to be between $98.5 million and $100 million, and Adjusted EBITDA guidance is reaffirmed to be between $17.5 million and $18.5 million. For the full year 2024, net revenue guidance is reaffirmed to be between approximately $440 million and $460 million, and Adjusted EBITDA guidance is reaffirmed to be between $100 million and $110 million.
This story first appeared on radioinsight.com