Tegna 2Q Media Segment Rev Climbs 10%

Tegna this morning released second quarter results that included Media Segment revenues that were up 10% in the quarter to $459 million, driven by double-digit increases in retransmission revenues and online revenues and bolstered by $10.2 million of political advertising.

Media Segment 2Q revenue broken down by category:

• Core (local and national) was down 0.6% to $267 million.
• Political grew 273.1% to $10.2 million.
• Retrans increased 33.2% to $146 million.
• Online rose 11.9% to $32 million.

Media Segment operating expenses were $279.4 million compared to $239 million in the second quarter of 2015. The increase was due primarily to higher programming fees, continued investment in growth initiatives and a $6.9 million charge related to an early retirement program.

Digital Segment 2Q revenue was up 3.9% to $352.8 million, driven by continued revenue growth at Cars.com of $8.4 million and a return to revenue growth at CareerBuilder with an increase of $4.7 million partially offset by the impact of the sale of Tegna’s PointRoll business in late 2015.

Gracia Martore, president-CEO, said: “We are pleased to have achieved strong performances across all of our businesses in the second quarter, which resulted in revenue growth of 7% and a substantial year-over-year increase in earnings per share. Continued growth in retransmission, political and digital revenues in the Media Segment drove segment growth of 10%.

“In our Digital Segment, Cars.com benefited from increased dealer market penetration, new products and growth in display advertising sales to auto manufacturers, while CareerBuilder’s transition to human capital software solutions — boosted by its acquisition of Aurico last quarter — resulted in positive revenue growth in the quarter.”

Martore continued: “Looking ahead to the second half of the year, we continue to be very well positioned in both our Media and Digital Segments to maximize on market demand for our services. We expect political revenue to ramp up steadily in the third and fourth quarters as a longerthan-usual primary process led to delayed ad buys from front running candidates. We also are seeing robust advertising from the Olympics this summer driven by our strong NBC footprint.”

The company as a whole reported revenue of $811.8 million, up from $756.7 million in the year-ago quarter.

Read the company’s report here.