Nexstar Media Group, Inc. Common Stock Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference 2026

Great. Well, good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the Nexstar Fireside Chat at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology Conference. My name is Mike Ng, and I cover media cable telco here at the firm, and I have the privilege to introduce Nexstar Media Group's Founder, Chairman, and CEO, Perry Sook, and Nexstar's CFO, Leigh Ann Gilha. Thank you so much for being here today. It's an absolute privilege to have you on stage here with us.

Great. Thank you for having us.

To start off, Nexstar recently marked its 30th anniversary. Congratulations. Growing from a single station in Scranton into the nation's largest local broadcaster, operating or servicing 265 full-power stations across 132 markets. To start things off, how would you characterize the operational performance and the overall health of the business today across local affiliates, the national networks, and NewsNation, and The CW, as well as some of your emerging spectrum ventures?

Well, that's a lot. I'll see what I can do in the half hour that we have here. First of all, I think of our company as a local media company first and foremost, but with national scale and national scale aspirations in that what we do is the least sexy but most sticky and durable part of the media ecosystem, which is we provide a service, which is local content to local communities, and we help local businesses sell stuff. Everything else we do, we build on top of that. NewsNation was the outgrowth of the 5,500 journalists we have scattered around 44 states in the U.S. that provide content upstream to the news network.

Acquiring The CW was done to make it a better network for the owned and operated stations, of which today we own about 60% of the national distribution of The CW through our owned and operated stations. Everything we do is to the ends of what can benefit our go-to-market option for viewers and advertisers locally. That's different than a lot of other companies that focus from the top down and what's good for the network. It's what's good for the stations will inform what we do with the network. It's through a local lens, and we have a 2,500-person local sales and national sales organization that we have business relationships with approximately 47,000 SMBs across 44 states in the U.S. That is an extremely durable long tail relationship, we think.

Operationally, we're performing ahead of our plan, which is the plan we use to inform our EBITDA and free cash flow guidance to all of you. We feel good about that. Political is very stout right now, as you can imagine, post Labor Day, and has been all year, defying or at least overachieving our expectations, and we think that will continue. As you know, half of the money that's spent in all political advertising for the year will be spent between a week from Monday and Election Day, so that 7 weeks will determine the tale of the tape. But we feel very good about our ability to deliver political, not only on the Nexstar platform, but then what TEGNA is doing on their platform.

Obviously, we get the benefit of that revenue and free cash flow, and Leigh Ann Gliha's been using all of that to pay down debt. We feel very good about the company. We want to clear this jurisprudence underbrush eventually. But we have the benefit of owning and operating or at least overseeing the operations of the TEGNA assets through their financial performance, which is basically our only lens into the business. But as time goes on, our worst-case scenario is we continue to pay down debt. It's not like we have escalating fees or things get worse as time goes on.

From that perspective, we're in the best place possible given the cards we've been dealt, and we will do what we always do, which is keep our head down and do the work, and continue to find ways to make a more efficient operation, a more expansive operation, and continue to improve our balance sheet.

Great. I would love to dive into the Tegna integration and the hold separate order a little bit more. How is management running the business through this interim period while remaining compliant with the court order? What can you do from an integration readiness perspective so that you can hit the ground running once you get the clarity that you are able to do so? Obviously, a highly unusual situation, but would just love your thoughts on all that.

Yeah, I will take that. We obviously cannot run the business right now pursuant to the court order. There is a team that is in place. Pat Paolini, who joined Tegna as the CEO, who comes from Fox, is a phenomenal operator, is energizing that business and continuing to help that business generate the cash flows that it historically has. I think we feel very good about that. The business is also subject to limitations on what it can do with respect to the court order and with respect to the interim operating covenants that we had prior to the merger that are still in place. But I think everything is continuing to operate as we had seen and expected. I think from an integration perspective, there is also not a lot we can do there as a result of the court order currently.

But as you might imagine, and as I think we talked about leading up to this, we did an incredible amount of diligence, very detailed diligence, really looking at under every rock and figuring out exactly what our integration plans were going to be, really down to the line item detail. So we feel like the minute that we are able to dust off those plans and get back in business, we will be in good shape to push the button on that.

Nexstar is the largest local broadcaster, so you are in a unique and very well-positioned to talk about the FCC National Television Audience Reach Cap, which the FCC voted to repeal that 39% cap back in August. How does removing the cap change your longer-term M&A strategy? What is that regulatory modernization? I think everybody would agree that is a bit of an antiquated rule. What does it allow local broadcasters to do that they could not do before?

Well, let me say first that the removal of the national ownership cap restrictions against broadcasting, then dealing with the quadrennial review process, which is open proceeding in front of the FCC, which we think will lead to modernization of both the local ownership rules that govern in-market conduct of both radio and television. We think if Chairman Carr accomplishes that, which we think he will, likely by the end of the year, I think that we will look at Chairman Carr as the most consequential FCC chairman in modern times to actually do what he's been talking about doing since he was a commissioner under Ajit Pai and then under Jessica Rosenworcel, of eliminating these ridiculously outdated rules to allow the industry the ability to compete on a more level playing field, at least in the domestic U.S.

with big media and big tech, and just take the politics out of it. Those accomplishments would be seminal and really, I think, consequential. So what it does for us is if those impediments are taken away, then we can continue to grow our footprint, we can continue to grow and add in markets that would be of significant importance for distribution and advertising to The CW, to our owned and operated station portfolio that would benefit the network. And I think will allow for more rationalization and consolidation of the industry.