Fourth Quarter TV Station Deals Top $326M

Television station mergers and acquisitions (M&A) volume reached $326.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2015, according to numbers released today by SNL Kagan.

When adding in radio’s $160.4 million, the total broadcast M&A number is $486.8 million, which is down from the more than $3 billion registered in the previous quarter, but still more than the deal volume of the first half of the year.

TV Highlights from the SNL Kagan report:

• The TV market ended the year with an average 8.4x forward seller’s multiple (0.1 point higher than at the end of Q3).

• The top TV deal and the only $100 million deal of the quarter was Nexstar Broadcasting Group Inc.’s $130 million/8.4x c.f. acquisition of the CBS outlets in the West Virginia markets of Charleston-Huntington, Bluefield-Beckley-Oak Hill and Wheeling, as well as the NBC affiliate in Clarksburg, W.Va., from West Virginia Media Holdings.

In a twist to the usual spectrum aggregator model, LocusPoint Networks LLC  sold three of its stations — WMJF-CD in Baltimore, W33BY in Detroit and WBNF-CD in Buffalo, N.Y. — to HME Equity Fund II LLC for $23.75 million. LocusPoint and its backers Blackstone Group had acquired the stations in 2012-2014 for a total of $4.83 million and may have wanted to earn a return on some of the capital invested to date, and/or concentrate on a smaller number of high-demand markets.