Yahoo Finance

Peter Thompson

Thank you, Alfred. So consolidated net revenues were down 2.7% year-over-year for the three months ended December 31, '24, approximately $171 million. Net revenue for the Radio Broadcast segment was $47.7 million, an increase of 14.5% year-over-year. Excluding political, net revenue was down 5.1% year-over-year. According to Miller Kaplan, local ad sales were up 0.1% against our markets that were down 5.2%, and national ad sales were up 35.4% against the market that was up 28.4%.
Political advertising drove the growth in the national marketplace and for our stations and was our largest advertising category for the quarter. Second largest category for us was services, which was up 12%, driven predominantly by legal services, health care, retail, auto, financial, food and bev, all down year-over-year. Telecom, travel and transportation categories were up.
Net revenue for the Reach Media segment was $9.6 million for the fourth quarter, down 10.7% from prior year. Adjusted EBITDA was $2.9 million for the quarter, a decrease of 15.4%. While Reach benefited from $1 million in political advertising, client attrition and lower average unit rates offset those dollars.
Net revenues for the Digital segment were down 3.1% in Q4 at $20.5 million. Direct national sales were down, driven by decreased advertiser demand. Although political advertising is $2.4 million and both connected TV and podcast revenue were up from prior year. Adjusted EBITDA was $5.3 million, which was an increase of 50.7%.
We recognized approximately $39.8 million of revenue from our Cable Television segment during the quarter, which was a decrease of 15.9%. Cable TV advertising revenue was down 21.4%. Delivery declined 36% in total day persons 25-54. We had approximately 6% fewer units converted to ad inventory, about 4,000 more units allocated to ADU to help mitigate the delivery impact, and that was partially offset by favorable AVOD and FAST revenue of $1.3 million. Overall, that resulted in an ad revenue decline of $5.8 million.
Cable TV affiliate revenue was down by 9.9%, driven by the increased subscriber churn, which was a $3.3 million loss, partially offset by $1.3 million in subscriber rate increases and the launch of NOW TV. Full year subscriber churn was minus 9.5%. Cable subscribers for TV One, as measured by Nielsen, finished Q4 at 37.2 million compared to 39.1 million at the end of Q3. CLEO TV had 36.4 million Nielsen subs.
Operating expenses, excluding depreciation and amortization, stock-based compensation and impairments of goodwill, intangible assets and long-lived assets, decreased to approximately $91.1 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2024, which is a decrease of 13.8% from prior year.
The overall decrease in operating expenses was primarily due to lower corporate SG&A expenses, driven by a reduction in the CEO's TV One award and lower overall expenses in the digital segment due to lower sales and marketing-related costs. Radio operating expenses were down 5.4% or $1.9 million, driven by a favorable adjustment to the bad debt reserve. Reach operating expenses were down by 7.8%, driven by lower talent and staff incentive-based compensation.
Operating expenses in the Digital segment were down 16.1%, driven by lower sales and marketing costs and lower performance (inaudible) [station] Operating expenses in the Cable TV segment, up 4.1% year-over-year, driven by increased rating service costs and connected TV support costs. Operating expenses in the Corporate and Eliminations segment were down by approximately $10.2 million, primarily as a result of reduction to the CEO's TV One award.
Consolidated adjusted EBITDA was $26.9 million for the fourth quarter, down 0.9%. Consolidated broadcast digital operating income was approximately $38.6 million, an increase of 1.7%. Interest income was approximately $1.1 million in the fourth quarter compared to $2.5 million last year. Decrease was due to lower cash balances in interest-bearing investment accounts.
Interest expense decreased to approximately $11.5 million for the fourth quarter, down from $14.2 million last year due to the lower overall debt balances as a result of the company's debt reduction strategy. The company made cash interest payments approximately $347,000 in the quarter.
And during the quarter, the company repurchased $15.4 million of its 2028 notes at an average price of 69.8% at par, bringing the balance down to $584,575,000 at year-end. In January 2025, the company repurchased an additional $17 million in notes at a price of 62.5%, bringing the current balance on the debt to $567,575,000.
$24.2 million in noncash impairment charges were recorded in the fourth quarter. $4 million of that was associated with the TV One brand name and $20.2 million was for goodwill associated with the TV One reporting unit. The primary factors leading to the impairments for a decline in projected gross market revenue and operating profit margin for TV One. Provision for income taxes was approximately $27.6 million for the fourth quarter, and the company paid cash income taxes in the amount of $130,000. Capital expenditures for the quarter were approximately $1.3 million.
Net loss was approximately $35.7 million or $0.78 per share compared to a net loss of $11 million or $0.23 per share for the fourth quarter of 2023. During the three months ended December 31, 2024, the company repurchased 1,386,544 shares of Class A common stock in the amount of approximately $2.1 million at an average price of $1.50 per share, of which 908,894 shares of Class A stock were held in treasury stock as of December 31, 2024.
During the three months ended December 31, 2024, the company repurchased 703,292 shares of Class D common stock in the amount of approximately $700,000 at an average price of $1.02 per share. During the three months ended December 31, 2023, the company did not repurchase any shares of Class A or Class D common stock.
As of December 31, total gross debt was approximately $584.6 million, and ending unrestricted cash balance was $137.1 million, resulting in net debt of approximately $447.5 million compared to $103.5 million of LTM reported adjusted EBITDA for a total net leverage ratio of 4.33 times.
On March 16, 2025, the company began investigating an incident involving an unauthorized third-party who have gained access to and infiltrated certain information from our information technology systems. Upon discovery, we activated our incident response team, which is comprised of internal personnel and external cybersecurity experts. As of today, the incident has not impacted the company's operations or ability to conduct business in the ordinary course. This time, the incident has not had a material impact on the company's financial condition and the results of operations, although our investigation is ongoing.

Alfred Liggins

Thank you, Peter. Operator, could you ask the [audience] if any questions are coming forward.

Question and Answer Session

Operator

(Operator Instructions)
Aaron Watts, Deutsche Bank.

Aaron Watts

Hey, Alfred, Peter. Thanks for having me on. A few questions, if I may. I guess, first, just to clarify, your 1Q radio pacing down 13.6%, what was the equivalent performance that lines up with that for the fourth quarter? Was it the radio advertising down 8%? Is that the right way to think about it?

Peter Thompson

Yeah. So I gave core ex-political. And so you need to strip out the political from Q4, just looking back through my notes.

Aaron Watts

Sorry, I missed that. And then maybe while you're looking (multiple speakers)

Peter Thompson

So yeah, excluding political, net revenue was down 5.1%.

Aaron Watts

Okay. All right. And then could you give us a little more insight into what drove the weakness from that down 5% in 4Q into the first quarter? Was it broad softness, particular categories? And then a similar question on where you're seeing the improvement as you look ahead to 2Q and what's pushing that gain?

Alfred Liggins

Yeah. So look, it's absolutely broad softness. I've spent a significant amount of time with our national rep and our teams. And in Q1, you're basically seeing negative double-digit pacing across local, national and network radio. And now there was political in Q1, but not a ton of it. And so I think that you're absolutely seeing advertisers probably reacting to an uncertain economy.
I think I just read something from the CEO of Walmart talking about consumer behavior being choppy and skittish. The improvement for us is coming -- and when I say improvement, it's still negative, right? But it's negative 1.7. And we're seeing a bounce back and improvement in our Ohio markets, which are starting to lap a significant comps as it relates to -- excuse me, as related to sports betting revenue. And Peter, you were going to add the local.

Peter Thompson

Yeah. Locals bounced back more strongly in Q2, right? So national is a little better in Q2 than it was in Q2, but the local is strongly better than in Q2 than it was in Q1. So it's -- local at the moment is pacing up in Q2, whereas it was down 10%, call it, in Q1.

Alfred Liggins

And we're also -- and we're seeing improvements in national as well, albeit again still negative.

Aaron Watts

Okay. That's encouraging. And carrying that out a little further within your '25 guide, what are you assuming for the core radio broadcast segment from a top line perspective? Do you think it can trend back towards neutral, Alfred? Or you still assuming it's going to be down a little bit for the year?

Alfred Liggins

Yeah. I mean we're -- that guide is also right on top of our internal budget. And I think, Peter --

Peter Thompson

Yeah. I mean it's -- if you strip out the political hour and then we've assumed that the core grows a little bit in that number. So if you took out every dollar political and didn't replace it with something else, it would look worse than what we've thought. So we've assumed some growth in local and national ex-political and, obviously, digital.

Aaron Watts

Right. Right. Okay. Let me squeeze one more in, and I appreciate the time. There's been a lot of talk around deregulation across the broadcasting space. I'm curious what opportunities you see that potentially opening up for you on the radio side, whether that's as a seller or a buyer? Do you think we could see some material consolidation in the space on the heels of kind of this new positioning from the FCC?

Alfred Liggins

Yeah. Look, I've been pretty vocal about I believe that you're going to see further consolidation in the radio sector. You need to see it. And we have over the years been both buyers and sellers. Recently, we've been more of a buyer consolidating in Indianapolis and Houston. But we have gotten -- we've trimmed our portfolio a number of times and gotten out of places that -- where we weren't successful, weren't working for us and put that capital to work and either debt reduction or more accretive acquisitions.
And so I think you'll see us continue with that. I think that we're probably in better shape, been a number of other folks in the sector in terms of our leverage profile, which I think gives us an advantage to be proactive in terms of opportunity. So -- but you still have to be careful, right? Even with consolidation, you're still dealing with a negative trend line on the top line revenue number.
So it's very tricky. And because of that factor, that even if you get dereg, having new capital come into the industry will probably be a challenge, right? And so I think that people would look to see if there are swap opportunities that can be executed in order to put people in better positions in various different markets.
I've always seen that as challenging for people to align on what's a good swap. You just don't see a lot of it. But the state of the industry might and dereg might make people more motivated to do that. So I would say that it is absolutely a net positive because in declining industries, you need to create economies of scale.
And so -- and I also think being bigger in these local markets, it makes you more of a digital force for local advertisers because you're covering off more formats, you've got more audiences that you're touching. And we're seeing significant amounts of digital revenue come in to the Miller Kaplan in the local markets. In fact, in about half of our markets, we're seeing more digital revenue than national spot revenue, which really came to light in our fourth quarter budget process for the first time.
So having more girth in the local market is going to allow us to compete better digitally, I believe, as well. So net positive is still challenged because you're not -- I don't think you're going to see a flood of capital coming to execute this consolidation. So people are going to have to figure out how to work it between themselves. But I also think that the current debt holders in the industry are eager for some sort of solution for folks' balance sheets. And we'll be constructive in trying to see consolidations happen. So it helps the industry and helps the players in it.

Aaron Watts

Very helpful perspective. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Ben Briggs, StoneX Financial, Inc.

Ben Briggs

Good morning, guys. Thank you for the time and thank you for taking the question. So I've got a couple here. Most of them most is around kind of what capital allocation plans are for fiscal '25. So thank you for the guidance. You've mentioned that cost reductions and debt buybacks are going to be a focus for 2025. And I think the market will definitely be glad to hear that. Curious if there's any plans for stock repurchases or is most of it going to be debt?

Alfred Liggins

We have been repurchasing stock. We've got a plan in place. It's a small plan that basically just buys kind of like the daily limits. I think we've probably repurchased in the last year $5 million, $6 million of stock in comparison to $150 million. What's our total debt repurchases?

Peter Thompson

We did $140 million last year and then another $17 million this year, right?

Alfred Liggins

Yeah. So yes, almost $160 million of debt repurchase. Yes, I think you'll continue to see that kind of outsized ratio of how we deploy that capital. So 95% of our money will go to continued debt reduction. And so that's -- I think we're also looking at M&A opportunities, as the previous person was questioning about dereg, and having cash available to us if we can find acquisitions that accomplish the same thing that are deleveraging, which is our goal. So we keep that in mind, but we're not going to just have it sitting around in hopes that an acquisition comes along.
With that said, we've always been mindful and thoughtful about how we repurchase debt, right? So we're looking -- we'll buy the $10 million or $15 million or $20 million chunks. We we're not a repurchaser at any cost either, right? Like we've definitely tried to be opportunistic on the pricing of it because that benefits the company long term. And so if we just go into the market and indiscriminately by depth, then it runs away from us. And so you never know exactly when we're going to be a buyer and when we're not going to be a buyer because we definitely set out for periods even when we had open windows because we didn't like the price.

Ben Briggs

Okay. Got it. That's very helpful. Have there been any -- I know you disclosed the buybacks through January. Has there been any debt buybacks since then? There were a few good-sized trades that (inaudible)

Alfred Liggins

That -- we intentionally set out while the window was closed. We didn't put a plan in place. And we were out of the market for the last -- we've been out of the market since that January repurchase.

Ben Briggs

Okay. Good to know. Thank you. And then second thing is kind of more operational with the business. And I know previous calls, you guys have discussed it. But can you give a little clarity or can you just kind of reexplain to me, I guess, what exactly, as far as the revenue is concerned, what goes into your digital segment?
I know there's kind of a little bit of a few different things that go in there. And I've gotten a couple of questions from investors this quarter on what exactly goes in there. So if you could just remind me, I'd appreciate it.

Peter Thompson

Yeah. And look, it's a timely question because one of the things that has been going in there is the Connected TV revenue. Yeah. And look, that's a growth area. And we decided going forward from January 1 that we're going to report that through the TV segment. So that would be a change.
And part of the thinking there is as linear TV is more challenged, see, to strip out that growth area and report it as digital is going to give a falsely negative position of the TV business. So we're going to kind of repatriate that revenue and those impressions back to TV One. And we think that's right because they really are attached to the TV business rather than digital content verticals.
So up until now, we report CTV through digital, and now we're going to report it through TV. And then all other digital impressions go through digital, so can be adverts on content verticals, can be pre-rolled, can be banner, podcast revenue, streaming is the other big one. And that's worth talking about. We had a really good deal through cats, and that got renegotiated down. So call it $7.5 million of revenue that we were going from cats on the podcasting side was reported as digital is going to be a significantly less -- significantly lower, probably $4 million lower --

Alfred Liggins

Podcasting and streaming.

Peter Thompson

Sorry, yeah, streaming and podcast. Sorry, and the main part of that is streaming. If I said podcasting, I'd flip them in my head. It's both to get upstream is the bigger part.

Alfred Liggins

So essentially, we had an output deal where they basically bought all of our available inventory that we had. And that got renegotiated. Everybody's got cost reductions. And so today, that affects us in a big way. So we're out now rebuilding our streaming partners.
So instead of just giving all of our impressions to one entity, we're actually plugging into multiple entities and it's going to take us a while to build that back up. But the net is we're going to see that revenue probably reduce by half of one of us. And that's going to affect the digital revenue number.

Peter Thompson

Yeah. And in our CTV plus that, so you're going to see our digital segment look weaker as a result of those two things.

Alfred Liggins

So in the most recent Miller Kaplan, we're getting annihilated in digital. And a big part of that is in our streaming number.

Ben Briggs

Okay. That's all very helpful. As you report going forward, since you're recategorizing some of that revenue, are you going to report -- are you going to adjust prior period numbers as you --

Peter Thompson

I don't think we're planning to adjust prior periods. But we -- I can give -- look, if it's materially different, I can probably give color on the earnings call, so people can understand the differences.

Ben Briggs

Okay. That is very helpful color. Thank you, guys and talk to you soon.

Operator

[Marlane Pereiro] Bank of America Securities.

Great. Thank you for taking my question. Based on your full year EBITDA guide of $75 million, how should we think about free cash flow for the year if you can provide any context on some of the puts and takes that would affect that, that would be great.

Peter Thompson

Yeah. So obviously, the good -- bad news is EBITDA has gone down, good news is we've got less debt, interest payments. So that's about $41 million. CapEx, we're penciling out at $10 million. There's a big project going on to consolidate the Indianapolis office post acquisition, that's kind of $5 million of the $10 million.
So that's a little higher, $10 million to is a little higher than we would normally do, but it's probably a solid number. TV One program and not a huge difference there. And so long story short, at the moment, we're looking at around $25 million of free cash flow generation off of the $75 million.

Great. And then coming back to the cost save containment, you mentioned about $5 million that you'd be saving from some staff reductions. So how should we think about cost savings for '25 that will hit the numbers as well as cost to achieve?

Alfred Liggins

Yeah. We are actually in the -- we wanted to get through getting our accounts filed year-end, et cetera, and we're back focused on what other cost save opportunities that we have. We don't have a number yet. We do feel like we have more opportunity to reduce costs. We did our first round in Q4, made it effective by the end of January, but we haven't gotten there yet. But you can expect more. I don't know how much more yet, but we're looking at every available opportunity.

Got it. And so just to confirm for the $75 million of EBITDA for the year --

Alfred Liggins

It does not -- that number does not -- the $75 million does not include any new or projected cost saves that might come. Yeah, we made it simple this year that numbers are -- that's our actual budget where we think we're going to be at and it doesn't take into account any further cost reductions in it.
I mean I know that I think I had given a guide for 2025, which included their expected cost save. We've already taken out our cost save and we went through the budget process. And so anything new would actually help that number going forward.

Great. And then last one for me. Is there any -- are there any like assets or parts of the business that might be considered noncore and potentially could be a result like an asset sale?

Alfred Liggins

Yeah. I mean the answer is maybe we have some small things, I mean, but you need buyers, and those don't exist right now. And so in the media M&A landscape in both television cable networks, you haven't seen much activity. You've seen a number of failed processes on the cable television network front. And so again, we've always been economic animals, meaning that if somebody were to make us an offer on pieces of our business that would ultimately be accretive to us from a deleveraging standpoint, it would help us significantly move the needle, we would absolutely consider it.
And on the other side, on the acquisition side, we're not really considering anything that also doesn't delever us, right? Because we've got enough scale to be relevant now. Now it's really about getting the balance sheet to what I call a safe position. And I think that, that safe position has got to be leverage that's in the mid-3s, low 3s maybe even. But yes, you need buyers. Yes, so -- which is what I said earlier when we talked about dereg and new capital coming into the business.

Great. Thank you, Alfred. That's all I have.

Alfred Liggins

Yeah. Thank you.

Operator

Hal Steiner, BNP Paribas.

Hal Steiner

Hey, guys. Thank you for taking my question. A lot of my questions were already asked, but I just have a few quick things. I guess, do you want to hold at least like $100 million of cash? Or is there sort of like a minimum cash balance you want to kind of keep on the balance sheet? Or would you sort of be likely to drop below that as you kind of continue to focus on gross debt reduction?

Alfred Liggins

Yeah. No, we don't have a minimum amount of cash that we are targeting to keep on the balance sheet. We've got an undrawn $50 million revolver. So we could definitely see our cash balances be able to drop and still be fine from an operating standpoint. Again, our cash deployment has been opportunistic, right? Like meaning if we can buy our debt at an attractive price, then we'll do it. If the price is not attractive, then we sit out.
And so those -- that strategy has led us to have more cash on average than probably people might otherwise think that we should. But it's not because we're hoarding the cash, it's because we just don't want to go out and bid up things just because we've got cash, right?
Like -- and so -- because every time we have bought debt, it's -- when we're in the market, it goes up; when we're not in the market, it goes down. And again, the best thing for the company is to try to manage that in the most efficient way possible to continue to get the most deleveraging possible. It's not a cash ordering strategy.

Hal Steiner

Yeah. Understood. And then I know you've talked a lot about sort of the deregulation environment, but I guess one angle or something that I've been looking at, I'm curious your thoughts is I think like WPD and Comcast have both been kind of working on maybe cable network companies or cable network SpinCo sort of coming to market.
I guess I'm just curious how you think about that, those entities coming into market and maybe providing some valuation read-through? And I'm just curious how you think about like any combination or partnership angle there with your TV business.

Alfred Liggins

I mean everybody got all excited when Comcast announced they were doing SpinCo because they think that that's going to -- they're going to be the end buyer of all of the stranded cable assets. I don't know that to be true, right?
And I think the biggest problem that you're going to have with cable assets is if AMC is trading at -- last I looked, it was trading at 4.5 -- it was trading at like 5 times cash flow. Nobody wants to sell a cable cash flow at 5 times. They'd rather keep it, right? And nobody really wants to buy it at 7 or 8 times. So I don't necessarily believe that those entities are going to be the end buyers for people's assets. I do think, Jody, I mean, we've seen churn moderate, right?

Jody Drewer

Yeah.

Alfred Liggins

Now I think we're forecasting what mid-single-digit turns, down from like 11% last year. So I had a conversation in New York with a broadcaster at lunch with them.

Jody Drewer

(inaudible) growth in the virtual are helping (inaudible)

Alfred Liggins

I had a conversation with the broadcast and he said that, hey, I've been talking to people and our people think that sort of churn or cable penetration is going to net out, bottom out at like 40%. I guess that would be like 40 million households. That was his view. And I guess the point I'm trying to make is churn has started to ease up. There are some people who believe that it is going to bottom out at some point in time.
And if that happens, that will -- that, I think, will create more opportunity for people wanting to acquire these assets because you know what -- you know the knife is falling, right? Like you know what you're going to own and can try to -- and can better project what the earnings from that are going to be.
But I don't think just because you got the SpinCos out here that all of a sudden, you're going to see a bunch of consolidation. I could be wrong. I haven't talked to anybody at Comcast about it. I haven't asked them. I just don't think people can make that assumption.

Hal Steiner

Got it. Makes sense. Thank you, guys for taking my question.

Operator

Matt Swope, Baird.

Matthew Swope

Thanks. Good morning, Alfred and Peter. Peter, could you give us an update on where your cash balance stands at this point?

Peter Thompson

Yeah. As of this morning, it was $117 million.

Matthew Swope

So Alfred, just sort of listening to you talk about possible capital allocation and things, I guess, to be a little bit blunt, I mean, your bonds are all the way down to 50 now, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, honestly. Why not -- I guess, one, could you find any M&A that gave you a better return than buying your bonds back here?
And two, why not do something bigger? You guys have run with a very, very low cash balance in the past. Why not take almost all of that cash, maybe do a broad tender or something and buy back as many bonds as you possibly could, maybe to slight premium to where the market has been today?

Alfred Liggins

Versus taking that cash and buying it at where the market is at, like over time? Like -- I mean I think the problem with that is you go out and you offer a tender, it's rarely a slight premium, right? Just in negotiate -- just doing the bond buybacks, our experience is, there's a significant bid ask when we're an active buyer between where people want to sell and between where the market is marking it, right?
And so we've done better when we've selectively bought, right, as opposed to just going out, taking all our cash and paying some big premium for the bonds. We've considered the tender. We're also going to run out of buyers -- excuse me, sellers at some point because our bonds are very concentrated into two big hands that probably own over 50% of the issue. So there's going to be a point where you're not going to see sellers at these levels.

Matthew Swope

Given that dynamic, is there any thought to doing some kind of liability management exercise or working with your big holders to capture some of this discount, maybe do some equitization? You talk about wanting leverage to be down in the low 3s. You've given an EBITDA guide that's down over 25% year-over-year. So obviously, that pushes your leverage a lot higher.
Is there any way to do some kind of broader I'll use the word restructuring, which I know is a dirty word, but to maybe provide some equity to some of those holders just to reduce that debt balance a little bit proactively?

Alfred Liggins

Yeah. We have no liability management exercise in process. We haven't engaged anybody. People have pitched us on it. We think it's early for us, our maturity isn't until February '28. So we think it's early to begin discussions on some sort of rollover extend like iHeart's done, like Beesley's done, et cetera.
But the answer to the question is, as we get closer to that maturity maybe in another year, having those discussions with our holders are absolutely prudent. And we would consider all options to accomplish a better leverage profile. But as I said before, there's two players that you got a -- we don't have two people that we need to talk to and figure out what's the best route for the company because they have over 50% of the issue.

Matthew Swope

Got it. I appreciate that commentary.

Alfred Liggins

And we have consistent dialogue with those players. We're not operating in sort of a vacuum of information flow between us and our debt holders.

Matthew Swope

Got it. Thank you. And on the $75 million EBITDA guide, Peter, that's a little bit lower than I was modeling. Would you call that a more conservative estimate? Or how would you characterize that?

Peter Thompson

Yeah. Look, one thing you got to think about is the valuation on TV One went down significantly year-over-year. And as a result of that, the liability on the CEO's award went down by $10.5 million. And that's in -- we got a pickup in the adjusted EBITDA as a result of the valuation of TV One going down. So on a cash basis, you would adjust the [$103.5 million] you'd take that [$10.5 million] of. So really a baseline is kind of [$93 million] not [$103.5 million] because of that noncash pickup that's not expected to recur this year.

Matthew Swope

I see. Can you mention that -- yeah, that does make sense. Can you just walk us through how that CEO award works?

Peter Thompson

Yeah, it's -- I mean, I'll oversimplify it, but it's roughly 4% of any cash proceeds, dividends, sale proceeds from the value of TV One. And I think the valuation of TV One at the moment is $285 million. And then there's some balance sheet adjustments. But the liability currently stands around $10 million on the balance sheet. And it has been as high as $25 million in the past. So that's just a reflection on the reduction in the carrying -- in the fair value and the carrying value of the TV One asset as the projections have decreased.

Matthew Swope

I see. And has cash been paid out on that at all? Or that's just the liability that moves up and down?

Peter Thompson

Yeah. It has on an annual basis, TV One declares dividends and the CEO gets his 4% share of those dividends. And that's range. I think it's around $2.5 million-ish a year at the moment. It's been as high as just north of $4 million. But as the cash flow from that business is reduced, so is the cash payout on the annual dividends flowing from TV One.

Matthew Swope

I see. Thank you. And maybe just one last one for me, probably for Alfred. Alfred, is it safe to say that the casino process is off the table for now?

Alfred Liggins

In Richmond, yeah, that's -- it's safe to say given that they've actually broken ground on the casino on Petersburg. So yeah, that --

Matthew Swope

I guess I'm asking even -- at 1 point, you maybe mentioned thinking about it in Maryland as well. Is it -- but just given the state of the balance sheet and things, is it over?

Alfred Liggins

Yeah. No -- well, we like that business. We are looking for opportunities to invest in it again. Our Maryland effort was not around a bricks-and-mortar casino, it was around their iGaming legislation. For the last two sessions, they've been contemplating trying to introduce iGaming.
And we'd like to position ourselves to be in that business and get a license. And so we've been lobbying to be part of a legislation. It died again this year. But iGaming is a great business as well, and it's only in 6 states versus 37 or 38 states they actually have a bricks-and-mortar casinos operating. So that's been our most recent gaming effort. We are currently not participating in any sort of RFPs for any land-based casino developments at all.

Matthew Swope

Got it. Well, I'll just -- I'll reiterate my unsolicited advice that I just -- I can't imagine you can get a better return on anything than buying your bonds back in the open market right now. But thank you, guys very much.

Alfred Liggins

Yeah. I mean we've been taking that advice. I mean we spent $150 million in the last year. And I appreciate that advice. But again, I guess that we want to make sure that we're prudent about how we buy it. And that's the reason we do it selectively.

Matthew Swope

Thanks, guys.

Operator

Ann Silver, Stifel.

Hi. It's [Ken Silver] from Stifel. Anyway, nice to talk to you again. Most of my questions were answered. I guess, let me just ask you, you gave the EBITDA guide, which was definitely helpful. Would you be -- can you give us a revenue guide for the year also? You sort of did sort of talking about radio and TV a little bit, but --

Peter Thompson

We haven't talked about giving that, Ken. I need to -- Alfred and I have discussed it. I mean, obviously, I can see what we think it's going to be. I don't think --

That's fine. So let me just ask you on how should we think about Reach Media for the year? I mean it was down, I think, like high single digits in 2024. Is that sort of a trend that's going to continue? Or might it stabilize more?

Peter Thompson

Yeah. We have it stabilized and actually growing a little bit on the bottom line. So top line, down a bit; bottom line, up a little bit. So we don't see that as being the problem child this year.

Okay. And then now it (inaudible)

Peter Thompson

Stable to down a bit, but up on the bottom line.

Okay. And then on digital, you called out the sort of the headwind with cats. Are there any other -- obviously, you're going to move some revenues to the TV segment. But besides those two things, is anything else significantly up or down in digital?

Peter Thompson

Yeah. I think there's a couple of other macro things. Our traffic is down significantly over historic levels, and that's a function of partly AI, partly the new landscape out there. So we're not getting traffic driven to us in the same way as we have before from Google and Facebook. So you've got some headwinds in traffic, which in turn means we have to go out and buy traffic, which reduces the margins, right? We've got high attack.
And then demand in general, we've ridden the DEI wave, and that's receded. So I think there's a softening in demand there in the digital business as well. So digital has got some headwinds for us.

Okay, great. Thanks so much. I appreciate it.

Alfred Liggins

Operator, it's 10:58, we got time for one more question.

Operator

We have no further questions at this time.

Alfred Liggins

Okay. Great. Thank you, everybody. As usual, we are available off-line if anybody forgets anything or would like to have a deeper conversation about the business. Thank you very much, and we'll see you next quarter.

Operator

This will conclude today's meeting. Thank you all for joining. You may now disconnect.