Entravision Communications (EVC) Q1 2026 earnings call transcript

Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to Entravision's first quarter 2026 earnings call. I am Roy Nir, Vice President of Financial Reporting and Investor Relations. Joining me today to discuss our results are Michael Christenson, our Chief Executive Officer, and Mark Boelke, our Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Before we begin, I would like to inform you that this call will contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ. Please refer to Entravision’s SEC filings for a list of risks and uncertainties that could impact actual results. The press release is available on the Company's Investor Relations page and was filed with the SEC on Form 8-K. Additional information may also be found on our quarterly report on Form 10-Q, which was also filed today.

If you would like to ask a question, please use the Q&A function on your screen, indicate your name and company, and submit your question. We will try to answer any questions that relate to the topics contained in today’s call during the Q&A session. I will now turn the call over to Michael Christenson.

Thanks Roy, and thank you to those of you joining this call today. We appreciate your interest in Entravision and your support. As you saw in our press release on a consolidated basis Entravision revenue increased 114% to $197 million in 1Q26 compared to 1Q25. We had operating income of $21 million in 1Q26 compared to an operating loss in 1Q25. We report our results for two segments: Media and Advertising Technology and Services, what we call ATS. This is the first quarter of our third year with this segment reporting. As you may know, we started with our third quarter for 2024. Media Segment For our media segment, revenue increased 4% in 1Q26 compared to 1Q25. This increase was primarily due to higher digital advertising revenue and retransmission fees.

This was partially offset by lower broadcast advertising revenue and lower revenue from spectrum usage rights. Our 1Q26 results included a 6% increase in local advertising revenue, and an 18% decrease in national advertising revenue. These numbers exclude political revenue. Local advertising revenue is from our sellers working with local advertisers. They sell broadcast and digital marketing solutions. National advertising revenue is from our partners, primarily TelevisaUnivision, selling our broadcast to national advertisers and agencies. Our local advertising operations had 4% higher monthly active advertisers in 1Q26 compared to 1Q25 and a 2% increase in revenue per monthly active advertiser. Our operational priorities are to grow monthly active advertisers and revenue per monthly active advertiser. In terms of operating expenses and profitability as we have discussed in the past we have made a number of important investments in our media business in 2025 that we continued into 1Q26.

We added capacity to our local sales teams, more sellers, and we added digital sales specialists and digital sales operations capabilities, more digital. When we analyzed our local markets and our local advertiser base we saw an opportunity to increase revenue by adding sales capacity. All of our local advertising customers are advertising in digital channels: search, social, streaming video and streaming audio, and we believe we can serve their needs in those digital channels as well as our traditional broadcast video and audio channels. As we discussed on our fourth quarter report, we have two other important initiatives underway to generate incremental revenue: We are broadcasting a new network on our multi-cast capacity called Altavision across all of our markets.

We produce the local news for Altavision and we provide the sales and the broadcasting infrastructure. The balance of the programming is currently provided by Grupo Multimedios from Monterrey Mexico and we share the revenue. It is still early in the development of Altavision so we have operating expenses but no significant incremental revenue. In addition, at the beginning of this year we launched new programming on our full power Orlando television station WOTF-TV in a partnership with Hemisphere Media. Hemisphere owns WAPA-TV the number one television station in Puerto Rico. We launched WAPA Orlando Channel 26 to serve the large and growing Puerto Rican, Caribbean, Central and South American Spanish speaking communities in Central Florida. More than 500,000 Puerto Ricans live in the Orlando market.

We are very excited about this new revenue opportunity. Again, since it is early in the development of WAPA Orlando, we have operating expenses but no significant incremental revenue. Pulling this all together, in our media segment, operating expenses increased $2 million in 1Q26 compared to 1Q25 so we had an operating loss of $5 million in 1Q26 compared to an operating loss of $3 million in 1Q25. As we discussed on prior calls, we are committed to growing our business and earning a profit, so we acknowledge that we have more work to do to improve our operating performance and profitability in our media business. The new leadership team that we announced in March is evidence of this commitment: Maria Martinez-Guzman, President of Entravision Media, Eduardo Maytorena, President of Entravision Audio, and Winter Horton, our new Chief Revenue Officer.

These new leaders are aligned on our core objectives, serve our audience as a trusted source of news, information and entertainment, and serve our advertisers by connecting them with our audience. This team is committed to growing revenue and earning a profit. ATS Now for our Advertising and Technology Services segment. ATS revenue was $155 million in 1Q26, compared to $51 million in 1Q25. We had more monthly active customers and more revenue per monthly active customer. We continued to invest in our ATS segment in 1Q26 to grow revenue and operating profits. We invested in our engineering team to continue to improve our technology and build more powerful AI capabilities into our platform, and we invested to increase the capacity of our sales and customer service organizations.

In addition, our infrastructure costs continue to grow as our revenue grows, but we are beginning to see operating leverage with infrastructure costs growing at a slower pace than revenue. The combination of these investments in ATS, increased operating expenses by $10 million in 1Q26 compared to 1Q25, or $40 million on an annualized basis. Operating profit for ATS was $34 million in 1Q26 compared to $7 million in 1Q25. So to summarize, in media, we are investing to increase our local sales capacity and to expand our digital sales and digital sales operations capabilities, More sellers and More digital. In ATS, we are investing to add more engineers to advance our technology and to increase our sales and customer service capacity.

More technology, Better technology, More selling. We believe these investments will help us build a stronger company. So now I will ask Mark to share with you more details of our financial results for 1Q26. Mark?

Thank you, Mike. I’ll start by reviewing the performance of each of our two reporting segments – again Media and Advertising Technology & Services. Media In our Media segment, first quarter revenue was $42.4 million dollars, which was up 4% compared to first quarter 2025. This increase was primarily due to increases in digital advertising revenue and retransmission consent revenue, partially offset by decreases in broadcast advertising revenue and spectrum usage rights revenue. We have undertaken initiatives focused on increasing our Media advertising revenue, and we are seeing momentum and progress in the execution of these initiatives, particularly in local ad sales and digital ad sales. Let’s look at total operating expense for the Media business - that is the sum of direct operating expenses, plus selling, general and administrative expenses, as those two line items are reported in our Segment Results.

Media segment total operating expense in the 1st quarter, increased $2.1 million dollars compared to 1st quarter 25, an increase of 6%. One of our goals in the Media segment is to optimize our organizational structure and expenses, to be aligned with revenue and to generate profit, as Mike noted. We continue to work on achieving this goal, and we’ve taken steps under an ongoing organizational design plan begun in Q3 2025 intended to support revenue growth and reduce expenses in our Media segment. Key components of this plan have included a reduction in our Media business workforce, reduction in professional expenses and the abandonment of several leased facilities. We recorded a charge during 1st quarter totaling $1 million for the expenses associated with moves under this plan, and these charges were reported as Restructuring costs on our income statement.

The Media segment had an operating loss of $5.2 million dollars in Q1 26, compared to an operating loss of $2.6 million in Q1 2025. The decrease was mainly due to higher cost of revenue associated with the increase in digital advertising revenue in our Media segment. We remain focused on providing compelling content, growing revenue, streamlining our organization and reducing operating expenses during 2026 and beyond. ATS At this time I’ll turn to our Ad Tech & Services segment, or ATS. First quarter revenue for the ATS business was $154.6 million dollars. This was an increase of 204% compared to first quarter 25, and a sequential increase of 74% from 4th quarter 25. We had a higher number of monthly active accounts and higher revenue per monthly active account.

As discussed on previous calls, and as Mike noted earlier, we have had success executing our strategies in the ATS business, including strengthening the AI capabilities that are a core part of our technology platform, and expanding the ATS sales team and geographic sales coverage. ATS total operating expenses increased 72% in the first quarter 26 compared to first quarter 25, an increase of $9.8 million dollars. The ATS expense increase was primarily related to the increase in revenue. For example, the expense of cloud computing services has increased, as a result of processing more transactions and using stronger AI capabilities in the ad tech platform. There was an increase in sales commissions and performance compensation, as a result of the revenue increase and achievement of other performance metrics.

And the ATS business has also hired additional sales, engineering and ad operations staff in recent quarters, in order to drive ATS growth and expand into new geographic territories. One of our goals for the ATS business is to continue to grow revenue and generate positive operating leverage, and the ATS revenue increase exceeded the expense increase in terms of percentage and absolute dollars. Operating profit for the ATS segment was $34.3 million dollars in Q1 26. This was an increase of 427% vs. Q1 25, and a sequential increase of 178% from the prior quarter, Q4 25. Consolidated Results Combining our two operating segments, on a consolidated basis, revenue for first quarter 2026 was $197.0 million dollars, up 114% compared to first quarter 2025.

The two segments together generated a consolidated segment operating profit of $29.1 million dollars in Q1 26, compared to $3.9 million dollars in Q1 25. The increase was a result of operating profit in the ATS segment, partially offset by a decreased operating profit in the Media segment. We had a consolidated operating income of $20.7 million dollars in Q1 26, compared to an operating loss of $52.8 million dollars in Q1 25. Corporate Expenses Corporate expenses in 1st quarter 26 were $7.2 million, an 8% decrease compared to 1st quarter 25, or about $0.6 million dollars. The decrease was primarily due to expense reductions in professional services and rent. We have taken significant steps to reduce corporate expenses over the past few years and for additional context, looking back one additional year to 2024, corporate expense in the 1st quarter of 2026 was 41% lower than corporate expense in the 1st quarter of 2024.

Balance Sheet & Capital Allocation Entravision’s balance sheet remains strong, with over $71 million dollars in cash and marketable securities at the end of first quarter 2026. We’re proud of our strong balance sheet, which we believe sets us apart from others in the industry. Our strategy regarding allocation of cash is: first, reduce debt and maintain low leverage, and, second, return capital to our shareholders, primarily through dividends. In 1st quarter 26 we made a debt payment of $5 million, reducing our credit facility indebtedness to about $163 million dollars at the end of first quarter 2026. We remain committed to reducing our debt and maintaining a strong balance sheet. In addition, we paid $4.6 million in dividends to stockholders in the first quarter, or 5 cents per share.

For the second quarter of 2026, our Board of Directors has approved a 5 cent dividend per share, payable on June 30th, 2026 to stockholders of record as of June 16th, for a total payment of approximately $4.6 million. Closing Remarks We’d like to thank you all for joining our call today, and at this time, Mike and I would like to open the call for questions from the investment community. Roy, I’ll turn it back over to you.

Thank you, Mark. We will now begin the questions and answers session. As a reminder, if you have a question, please use the Q&A function on the Zoom screen, indicate your name and company, and submit your question. Please hold as we review questions. Mike, the first question is regarding the outlook for political revenue in 2026? Any updates since the last call that you can provide?

Yes, thanks, Roy. I guess next quarter we will put political comments in the prepared remarks. So, we are 182 days away from Election Day 2026. As everyone knows Primaries are underway across the country and we are positioning ourselves for a strong political spending environment in 2026. For Entravision, we have big races in our markets, Governor races in California, Nevada and Texas; Those are the three biggest Governor races for us but we have some others. Then we have the Texas US Senate race, and we have at least seven critical contested House races. So it will be busy this year focusing on political revenue. As everyone knows, this will be one of the most consequential congressional elections in our lifetime.

And we believe that the Latino vote will be critical to the outcome of all these elections. We have shared with our clients that studies have shown that Latinos are the most persuadable segment of the electorate. And we have a powerful channel for reaching that audience. So, political will be an increasing focus for us as we go through the rest of the year.

Thank you, Mike. And the next question we received was related to the status of the negotiations with TU and the Affiliation Agreement. Can you provide any update on that?

No new news on the affiliation agreement for this call. This affiliation agreement runs through December 31, 2026, so we have time. We have been partners for three decades, and our plan is to renew this agreement. But there is no news on that at this time.

Thank you, Mike. Again Please hold as we review any potential questions. At this time we don’t have any additional questions. We’d like to thank you for joining our call today. We welcome our investors to connect with us through the Investor Relations page on our corporate website, entravision.com, where you will have access to a transcript of this call, the press release containing our 1st quarter financial results and a copy of our quarterly report filed with the SEC on Form 10-Q. We look forward to speaking with you again when we report our second quarter results. Thank you very much. You may now disconnect.