iHeartMedia Q4 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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March 2, 2026

Key Takeaways

  • Positive Sentiment: Digital Audio Group momentum continued in Q4 with revenue of $387M (+14.1%) and podcast revenue of $174M (+24.5%), driving DAG adjusted EBITDA of $132M and full‑year margins of ~34.4% as management targets further margin upside.
  • Positive Sentiment: The Multiplatform Group faces Q4 EBITDA pressure (Q4 adjusted EBITDA $129M, down 14.2%) due to lapping prior political revenue, but management expects MPG to return to EBITDA growth in 2026 driven by programmatic rollout, integrated sales, audience scale and partnerships (Amazon DSP, Yahoo, Netflix, TikTok).
  • Positive Sentiment: iHeart reiterated financial targets for 2026, including roughly $800M of adjusted EBITDA and ~$200M of free cash flow, supported by $100M of in‑year cost reductions (on top of $150M saved in 2025) and continued investment in programmatic capabilities.
  • Positive Sentiment: Cash generation improved materially — Q4 free cash flow was $138M ($158M including certain real estate proceeds) with ~70% EBITDA-to-FCF conversion, and management expects working capital to be a source of cash in 2026 due to upfront political payments.
  • Negative Sentiment: The balance sheet remains leveraged with year‑end net debt of ~$4.5B, net debt/adjusted EBITDA of 6.6x, total liquidity of $640M and cash of $271M (including $50M drawn on the ABL), leaving leverage reduction a key execution risk despite guidance to reach mid‑fives by year‑end 2026.
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Earnings Conference Call
iHeartMedia Q4 2025
00:00 / 00:00

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Operator

Good afternoon, welcome to iHeartMedia's fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. All participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, we will have a question-and-answer session. To ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Andrey Hart, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.

Andrey Hart
Andrey Hart
Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at iHeartMedia

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for taking the time to join us for our fourth quarter 2025 earnings call. Joining me for today's discussion are Bob Pittman, our Chairman and CEO, Rich Bressler, our President and COO, and Mike McGinnis, our CFO. At the conclusion of our prepared remarks, management will take your questions. In addition to our press release, we have an earnings presentation available on our website that you can use to follow along with our remarks. Please note that this call may include forward-looking statements regarding our financial performance and operating results. These statements are based on management's current expectations, and actual results could differ from what is stated as a result of certain factors identified on today's call and in the company's SEC filings, including our recent 8-K filing. Additionally, during this call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures.

Andrey Hart
Andrey Hart
Senior Vice President of Investor Relations at iHeartMedia

Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures are included in our earnings release, earnings presentation, and our SEC filings, which are available in the Investor Relations section of our website. Now I'll turn the call over to Bob.

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

Thanks, Andrey. Good afternoon, everyone. We're pleased with our overall performance in 2025, especially given it was a non-political year. In the fourth quarter, we generated adjusted EBITDA of $220 million at the midpoint of our previously provided guidance range of $200 million-$240 million, compared to $246 million in the prior year, which, as a reminder, benefited from approximately $80 million of political revenue. Our consolidated revenue for the quarter was $1.1 billion, up 0.8% compared to the prior year quarter and above our guidance of down low single digits. Excluding the impact of political, our consolidated revenue was up 7.7%. Turning to our individual operating segments now.

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

The Digital Audio Group generated fourth quarter revenue of $387 million, up 14.1% versus prior year and above our previously provided guidance of up high single digits. The Digital Audio Group generated fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA of $132 million, up 10.7% versus prior year. The Digital Audio Group's adjusted EBITDA margins were 34.1%, and we finished the full year at 34.4%, up from 32.5% in the prior year, which is consistent with our stated goal of achieving full-year adjusted EBITDA margins in the mid-thirties, and we see further upside from here. Within the Digital Audio Group, our podcast revenue momentum continues and grew to $174 million, up 24.5% compared to prior year, which was above our guidance of up in the mid-teens.

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

In Q4, approximately 47% of our podcasting revenue was generated by our local sales force, up from about 13% in Q4 of 2020, demonstrating the unique advantage of having what we believe is the largest local sales force in media, with a presence across 160 markets in addition to our strong national sales force. Not only do we have the number one audience in podcasting as measured by both Podtrac and Triton, the podcast industry's primary measurement services that measure actual downloads and users, we believe we also have the most profitable podcasting business in the United States. Our podcasting EBITDA margins remain accretive to our total company EBITDA margins, and we achieve this by continuing to apply rigorous financial discipline to building, partnering, and even renewing our podcast relationships.

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

One more thing to note, a key to our success in building our podcast business has been that podcasting is, in essence, radio on demand. For us, it's a truly adjacent and complementary business. We operate broadcast radio stations across the country 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with almost 90% of the U.S. population listening every month. We have the unique assets and expertise, including programming, production, and distribution at scale, which power our strong podcast momentum in an expanding podcast marketplace. In the fourth quarter, our non-podcast digital revenue grew 6.8% compared to prior year. Turning now to the Multiplatform Group, which includes our broadcast radio, networks, and events businesses.

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

Fourth quarter revenue was $665 million, down 2.8% versus prior year and in line with our previously provided guidance range of down low single digits. Excluding the impact of political advertising, Multiplatform Group revenue was up 2.3%. The Multiplatform Group's adjusted EBITDA was $129 million. As a reminder, the prior year benefited from approximately $40 million of political advertising revenue. We remain confident we can return the Multiplatform Group to EBITDA growth. To reach that goal, in addition to our continuing efforts on cost, we're focused on four major drivers. Number one, programmatic. We're the first radio company whose broadcast inventory is available through the existing programmatic buying platforms, enabling our broadcast radio inventory to participate in the growing programmatic TAM.

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

As a reminder of the progress we've already made in this effort, we have partnership agreements with Amazon DSP, Yahoo DSP, and others to include our broadcast radio inventory in their programmatic platforms. In the case of Amazon, we expect our broadcast radio inventory to be included in their programmatic platform in the second half of the year. Second, integrated sales. We serve as a true marketing partner for our broadcast radio clients and agencies. This marketing approach, which focuses on bringing all of our advertising assets to bear and not treating each campaign as a standalone transaction, increasingly allows us to develop complex media and marketing plans utilizing the unique power of radio to drive the results our partners are looking for, including enhancements of the non-broadcast components of their other media. Third, our broadcast outperformance.

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

In 2025, we outperformed the radio industry revenue performance by 500 basis points according to Miller Kaplan. Given the unique scale of our audience, our ad tech platforms, and the fact that we have the largest local sales force in audio, we expect to continue to increase our share of the radio TAM moving forward. Fourth, our resilient radio audience. There are more broadcast radio listeners today than there were 20 years ago, and one constant in advertising is that the revenue always follows consumer usage, even if it sometimes takes a while. As the percentage of broadcast radio usage among consumers is far greater than the share of the advertising revenue that broadcast radio enjoys, we remain encouraged about this upside potential.

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

We also see some important partnership announcements as validation of the power of broadcast radio, with important companies like Netflix and TikTok coming to partner with us and our broadcast radio assets. We're now premiering new music with TikTok and radio, including last week's preview of Bruno Mars' new album, which set a new bar for the largest album preview and demonstrates the unique power of iHeart and TikTok working together to help artists achieve their goals. It's also interesting to note that if you look at our video podcasts that are on Netflix today, some of the most popular ones are actually derived directly from our radio shows, including The Breakfast Club and Bobby Bones. More evidence of the unique power of our radio personalities and assets. Finally, before I turn it over to Rich, let me give you our view of the current advertising marketplace.

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

Last year, we successfully navigated an uncertain ad market. Although there was definitely some disruption to the advertising marketplace in this quarter due to major weather events, and there still remains some macro uncertainty as well, as clearly evidenced by the events in the Middle East over the weekend, we view the advertising marketplace as reasonably healthy, and we still expect a year of meaningful EBITDA and free cash flow growth for iHeart, and Rich will provide you with those details. With that, I'll turn it over to Rich.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

Thank you, Bob, and good afternoon. Our Q4 2025 consolidated revenue was above our guidance of down low single digits and was up 0.8% compared to the prior year quarter. Excluding the impact of political, our consolidated revenue was up 7.7%. Let me provide you with some additional detail on our advertising revenue performance this quarter. As a reminder, one of our strengths is our diversified advertising revenues. There is no advertising category greater than about 5% of our total advertising revenue and no individual advertiser that is more than 2% of our total advertising revenue. In the fourth quarter, the largest category gainers in terms of absolute dollars were financial services, retail, entertainment, and beauty and fitness. The four categories that declined the most in terms of absolute dollars were political, government, restaurants, and food and beverage.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

In the fourth quarter, our five largest advertising categories in terms of absolute dollars were healthcare, home building and improvement, financial services, retail, and entertainment. Our consolidated direct operating expenses increased 2.4% for the quarter. This increase was primarily driven by higher variable content costs associated with the revenue growth of our digital businesses, partially offset by a decrease in costs incurred in connection with our cost savings initiatives, as well as decreased employee compensation costs. Our consolidated SG&A expenses increased 4.6% for the quarter. This increase was primarily driven by expenses related to our non-cash co-marketing partnerships, partially offset by a decrease in costs incurred in connection with our cost savings initiatives, as well as decreased employee compensation costs.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

We generated a fourth quarter GAAP operating income of $86 million compared to an operating income of $105 million in the prior year quarter. We generated adjusted EBITDA of $220 million at the midpoint of our previously provided guidance range of $200 million-$240 million and compared to $246 million in the prior year. As a reminder, Q4 of 2024 benefited from approximately $80 million of political advertising revenue. Before I turn to our segment performances, I want to give you an update on our cost savings initiatives. We are currently implementing $50 million of new in-year cost savings, which we'll start to benefit from beginning in Q2.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

This is in addition to the $50 million of cost reductions we announced on last quarter's call, which will bring our 2026 in-year cost savings to a total of $100 million. As a reminder, we achieved a previously announced $150 million of net cost savings in 2025, and we continue to work on the efficiency of our operating structure, including using technologies like AI-powered tools and services. Turning now to the performance of our operating segments. In the fourth quarter, the Digital Audio Group's revenue was $387 million, up 14.1% year-over-year and above our guidance of up high single digits.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

The Digital Audio Group's adjusted EBITDA was $132 million, up 10.7% year-over-year, and our Q4 adjusted EBITDA margins were 34.1% compared to 35.1% in the prior year. Within the Digital Audio Group, our podcasting revenue was $174 million, which grew 24.5% year-over-year and above the guidance we provided of up mid-teens. Our fourth quarter non-podcasting digital revenue grew 6.8% year-over-year to $213 million. Turning now to the Multiplatform Group, revenue was $665 million, down 2.8% compared to prior year, in line with our previously provided guidance range. Excluding the impact of political revenue, our Multiplatform Group revenue was up 2.3%.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

Adjusted EBITDA was $129 million, down 14.2% from $150 million in the prior year quarter. As a reminder, the Multiplatform Group's prior year Q4 adjusted EBITDA benefited from approximately $40 million of political advertising revenue. The Multiplatform Group's adjusted EBITDA margins were 19.4% compared to 21.9% in the prior year quarter, which as a reminder, was a political year quarter. As we have previously discussed, some of the investment in our proprietary audience database, which is the foundation of our broadcast programmatic offerings, take the form of co-marketing partnerships to drive engagement with the iHeartRadio digital services. In Q4, these relationships again drove an increase on non-cash partner marketing revenues and expenses.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

We will continue to experience some quarterly mismatching of these non-cash marketing campaigns in both directions in subsequent periods, and we believe that obtaining these critical marketing resources for our broadcast programmatic initiative on a non-cash basis is a prudent way to optimize capital and to achieve our goals. Turning to the Audio and Media Services Group, revenue was $79 million, down 19.3% year-over-year. Q4 of the prior year benefited from approximately $35 million of political advertising. Excluding the impact of political revenue, the Audio and Media Services Group revenue was up 21.8%. Adjusted EBITDA was $31 million, down 35.7% compared to the prior year, again, due almost entirely to the impact of political advertising in the prior year quarter.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

In the fourth quarter, our free cash flow was $138 million or $158 million when including the proceeds from certain real estate asset sales compared to -$24 million in the prior year quarter. Our Q4 2025 EBITDA to free cash flow conversion was approximately 70% and demonstrates the company's high free cash flow conversion characteristics and gives us confidence in our ability to generate meaningful free cash flow in 2026 and thereafter. At year-end, our net debt was approximately $4.5 billion. Our total liquidity was $640 million, and our cash balance was $271 million, which includes $50 million borrowed under the ABL facility. Our year-end net debt to adjusted EBITDA ratio was 6.6x.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

Let me now turn to our guidance for the first quarter and the full year within the context that Bob discussed regarding the health of the current advertising marketplace. For the first quarter, we expect to generate adjusted EBITDA of approximately $100 million. We expect our consolidated revenue to be up high single digits compared to prior year. Our January revenue was up approximately 1% year-over-year, as a reminder, January two thousand and twenty-five was a strong comp of 5.5%. Turning to the individual segments, we expect the Digital Audio Group's revenue to be up mid-teens year-over-year, with podcast revenue expected to grow in the low twenties. We expect the Multiplatform Group's revenue to be up mid-single digits year-over-year. We expect the Audio and Media Services group revenue to be up high single digits year-over-year.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

We are continuing to invest in our important broadcast programmatic efforts that Bob discussed. Our guidance includes the impact of those incremental expenses. The good news is that the majority of this asset building expense is non-cash. For the full year, we expect adjusted EBITDA to be approximately $800 million and our free cash flow to be approximately $200 million. Embedded in our adjusted EBITDA guidance are the following. We expect the Multiplatform Group to get back to adjusted EBITDA growth during 2026. We expect to generate approximately $200 million of overall programmatic revenue in 2026, up approximately 50% from $135 million in 2025. As a reminder, we expect our broadcast programmatic revenue trajectory to be similar to that of the growth we experienced in podcasting revenue.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

We expect podcasting revenue to continue its strong momentum. We expect this to be a robust midterm election year in terms of generating political revenue. As mentioned before, 2026 will benefit from $100 million of in-year cost reductions, which will help to offset investments we're making to build out our future technological capabilities. Let me provide some additional inputs embedded in our free cash flow guidance. Interest expense will be approximately $440 million. Cash taxes will be approximately 5% of adjusted EBITDA. Capital expenditures are expected to be approximately $90 million.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

Cash restructuring expenses will be approximately $50 million. Working capital is expected to be a source of cash this year, driven by political revenue, which is paid upfront. We expect our net leverage ratio at the end of 2026 to be in the mid-fives, which would be more than a full-term improvement year-over-year. We're looking forward to 2026 being a year of significant adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow generation for iHeart, driven by the return of the Multiplatform Group to EBITDA growth, the continued strong momentum of our podcasting revenue and audience, our growing programmatic revenues, and our continued focus on efficiencies as evidenced by our cost savings initiatives. We'll turn over to the operator to take your questions. Thank you.

Operator

As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star followed by the one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw any questions, press star one again. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Aaron Watts from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Aaron Watts
Aaron Watts
Managing Director at Deutsche Bank

Hey, everyone. Thanks for having me on. I've got a couple questions, if I may. Encouraging to see the growth in core MPG revenues in 4Q and continued strength on the digital side. I thought it was interesting to see digital EBITDA larger than MPG in the quarter as well. As I look ahead, I'd appreciate if you could help me understand why you're seeing high single-digit revenue growth in the first quarter, but a small decline in year-over-year EBITDA despite all the costs you're taking out, and perhaps how to think about those same factors impacting first quarter as we think more about the full year performance too.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

Sure. It's Rich. Let me start. First of all, you know, again, I don't think you see that same dynamic as you go through the full year, I think, as you can look at our overall guidance for the full year. The second thing is just as a reminder, our first quarter numbers are so small compared to the rest of the year. Again, if you look historically, 2025, 2024, you look at 2026, what we got for Q1 and what we're guiding for the full year.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

Because again, with the land of small numbers coming out of the quarter of Q4, which is a land of much larger numbers and our continue to build up on our total critical programmatic offerings that we have, you know, we continued to do co-partner and non-cash in Q4 as a way to support that and ramp up. I think we started to talk about that in Q3, so it was kind of a natural build. Some of that of that prepaid marketing that's in Q4 and that built up throughout the year is getting deployed in Q1, so it comes back as expect. It's just a lot of moving pieces, but it just gets really accentuated because of the land of small numbers in Q1.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

As you go throughout the year, you won't see that same kind of effect.

Aaron Watts
Aaron Watts
Managing Director at Deutsche Bank

Okay, great. That's helpful. Thanks, Rich. Thinking about your costs, and I apologize if I missed this, but how should we think about the cadence of the now $100 million of cost savings that you're targeting as we move through the year across, like, first quarter, second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter? Are there cash costs we should model in to achieve those that you could help us with?

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

Yeah. On just on the cost, just doing the math, if you take the program we already announced at Q4 for 2026, take what we're announcing today, which starts to be implemented in Q2, but it's a full year, $100 million of cost in 2026. Think about it, just the math, $12.5 million, let's say, for Q1 and about $28 million of the quarter after that.

Aaron Watts
Aaron Watts
Managing Director at Deutsche Bank

Okay, perfect. Thank you. On the political side, we've heard robust expectations for political spend this year, and it sounds like a few races, including Texas, are off to a really fast start. As we look at your $800 million of EBITDA guidance for the full year, what political assumptions are you baking into that to help us get our mind around kind of what upside there could be from that number?

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

Yeah, I mean, we always said, I continue to say, is that we expect 2026 to be a strong non-presidential cycle, political year. We're seeing obviously all the same signs.

Aaron Watts
Aaron Watts
Managing Director at Deutsche Bank

Okay. All right, great. If I could ask one last question, I appreciate the time. From the outside, as we sit, what benchmarks or milestones should we be looking for with regards to your programmatic efforts as well as some of your recently announced partnerships, including Netflix? Are those partnerships adding to strength in your podcast forecast? Thanks.

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

Well, I think in terms of the programmatic obviously benefits everything we have, podcast, digital streaming, and broadcast radio. Broadcast radio is obviously the harder one to get into programmatic because the programmatic systems have really been built for digital inventory. As we announced, we are going into the Amazon DSP with broadcast, also the Yahoo DSP, both major DSPs, and continuing to add more to that. That's encouraging on that front. I think in terms of how we think it all fits together and how it helps us, obviously, there's a piece of the revenue pie out there that is programmatic. People wanna buy programmatically, and if you can't offer programmatic, you're not gonna get any of the money.

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

Having that kind of capabilities for our podcast and broadcast radio in particular is very important to us and certainly is behind why we're investing what we have in it and why we're seeing the kind of growth we are. I think in terms of the video podcast, talking about Netflix and those opportunities, we've got this, you know, wonderful expansion of the marketplace from just audio to video podcast. Now, most people still wanna listen to a podcast. The use case is generally in a place where you can't use your eyeballs, but there are people who do wanna watch it and or will watch it occasionally, and we're seeing that market begin to open up. For us, that is sort of unforeseen revenue opportunities. I think, Netflix is, you know, I probably give credit.

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

YouTube probably opened that up, people's eyes to that, and Netflix, I think, has taken it to a whole other level. We expect that to be a continued expanding market for us as well.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

By the way, just one last item close. You know, as we said, you know, in terms of our guidance, that we expect total programmatic revenue to be approximately $200 million in 2026, up 50% from our total revenue in 2025. I think that's a pretty good benchmark in terms of benchmarking our total programmatic progress.

Aaron Watts
Aaron Watts
Managing Director at Deutsche Bank

Great. Thanks, Rich. Thanks, Bob.

Operator

Our next question comes from Stephen Laszczyk from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Stephen Laszczyk
Stephen Laszczyk
VP at Goldman Sachs

Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. Bob, Rich, I was curious if you could talk a little bit more about the underlying drivers of growth in the podcasting business, continued strong performance. You know, to finish 2025, just curious if you could unpack, you know, a bit more what you expect to see in 2026. Also too, if you look further out in 2027 and beyond, just the drivers of adding new content, improving engagement, improving monetization, where you see the most opportunity for growth on that front. I guess related to that, Bob, I think you might have mentioned margins in the mid-30s continuing to have opportunity to move higher. Just curious what you see as the key drivers on that front as well.

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

Well, look, before Rich jumps in, I just wanna say, I think on podcasting, what's great is you have so many vectors of growth. You not only have more people using podcasts, but you have them using more podcasts each year. Obviously we're seeing inventory opportunities continue to grow as well. As we look at getting podcasts from our standpoint, we have this incredible flywheel effect. Because we are the largest podcast publisher by pretty good margin, we tend to get first look at everything. If we don't take it's because we couldn't figure out how the economics work, and we have pretty strong financial discipline in terms of making sure that we have podcasts that are legitimately good businesses for us.

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

We also have the ability, because we mentioned in the call, we have this incredible array of assets from our broadcast radio that we can apply to podcasting and allows us to build podcasts from sort of scratch. If you look at the major podcast players, we're probably the only ones that have built podcasts, as opposed to just buying podcast packages from others.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

Yeah. Look, the only thing I'd add on the margin front, you've heard Bob, myself, and Mike, you know, talk about it, what our goal was, on the annual podcasting margins, EBIT margins, I'm sorry, to be clear. With respect to DAG, I would just put it the overall context and the overall umbrella, you see us, I believe, continue to demonstrate, not just in words, is us striving just to become more efficient, in every revenue stream and in every support, in our business.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

When we talk, to me, and I think you'd all agree, it's a natural outgrowth that, yes, we're at, you know, what we had talked about getting to the mid-thirties on EBITDA margins for DAG, but, you know, we're never gonna stop trying to improve those and take advantage of technology and continue to improve upon our risk of in terms of capital allocation and bring more to the bottom line.

Stephen Laszczyk
Stephen Laszczyk
VP at Goldman Sachs

That's great. Just a quick follow-up. Within that, I'm curious how big of an opportunity you think video podcasting is perhaps over the next 12-24 months. Is this something that can move the needle revenue-wise? Or, you know, would we need to see maybe an expansion of the Netflix agreement to get it to the point where it starts moving the needle on growth and margins higher?

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

Well, look, I think you've got two major video players who really pretty much signal that they wanna play in video podcasting, YouTube and Netflix. I suspect we're seeing, and, you know, you hear talk from others that they're also interested in it. I think that's probably what's gonna drive the expansion of it. We certainly know that we can promote these podcasts in a way that not, that other streaming shows are not promoted because we're able to utilize our broadcast radio, where you've got 90% of Americans listening every month to our broadcast radio. If you listen to Charlamagne tha God or Bobby Bones or some of the people that are on Netflix, you hear that they're again promoting their appearance there and their podcast there. I think it gives them a pretty strong showing.

Stephen Laszczyk
Stephen Laszczyk
VP at Goldman Sachs

Great. Thank you both.

Operator

Our next question comes from Sebastiano Petti from JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Sebastiano Petti
Sebastiano Petti
Executive Director at JPMorgan

Hi. Thank you for taking the question. I guess, Rich, first, just wanted to follow up. You did call out, you know, the anticipated growth rate in programmatic for the year. I mean, could you just help us maybe give us what the 2024 programmatic revenue growth rate was, just so we can kinda think about the glide path there. Relatedly, you know, talking about the DAG margins, obviously still, you know, remain healthy, but I think the fourth quarter 2025 DAG margins were, I think, down year-over-year and I think the lowest fourth quarter since fourth quarter of 2022. Anything driving that? You talked about some of the non-cash, you know, partnerships kinda going back and forth. I wasn't sure if there's anything maybe IDO in the quarter.

Sebastiano Petti
Sebastiano Petti
Executive Director at JPMorgan

Lastly, bringing broadcast to back to EBITDA growth, or MPG rather back to EBITDA growth. $2 million of incremental savings coming through in 2026 are kinda concentrated back towards MPG and hence the flex you're gonna see there? Thank you.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

Well let me start. I'll take a couple and then Bob and Mike can chime in. On DAG, as we've always said, there's so many moving pieces on a quarter-to-quarter basis. Understand we report on a quarter basis in terms of the margins and understand the questions. You know, That's why we have focused people for years and years in terms of, you know, really look at the annual margin base because there's just so many moving pieces that could affect the individual quarters. You know, again, look at the rhythm of our business. Q1 is the smallest. Q2 and Q3 as a general or, you know, relatively similar.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

Q4 is the biggest, which I don't think is anything different than any other ad-supported business out there. When it comes to MPG and getting back to EBITDA growth this year, you know, I think we did a pretty good job of outlining what the underlying factors were. You know, I don't have anything addition to add to that we outlined in the remarks. You know, all the different pieces there, ranging from whether it's continuing to take market share, as Bob talked about in Miller Kaplan, and right down to just looking at our overall revenue growth, including our total programmatic revenue growth as you kinda go into this year out there.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

I don't have anything different to add to that. In terms of 2024 to 2025, you know, I'm seeing Mike and listen, I don't have the 2024 number handy.

Mike McGuinness
Mike McGuinness
CFO at iHeartMedia

We know the growth.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

for total programmatic revenue growth. I would I don't want to speculate, but it will be substantially less than it was in 2025. We can circle back and get you that number.

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

Yeah. If I could just add one thing on just to, you know, put a pin in what Rich said. I think on MPG, there's really two vectors. One is cost out. You're absolutely correct. It is the business that we've been able to apply technology to get more and more efficient, and I think make the product better and better. The second is advertising. Is, and there are multiple reasons why we think and why we see the advertising opportunity from, you know, programmatic when if you wanna do an audio buy, you can't get reach without broadcast radio. In video, you can get reach without broadcast television. They're no longer the reach medium. We're the reach medium in audio.

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

As people get more and more into audio and really, they have to get the results, you know, there's no way to make the plan without it. We know it's gonna find its way there, and it's just a question of how and when. Finally is, you know, pushing the client direct marketing capabilities we have is pretty powerful. When you consider these on-air personalities we have on radio, there's nothing like it. They're probably the most powerful influencers today. When they talk about something, people notice.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

By the way, and one last point is just as a reminder, which we talked about in previous question, 2026 is a non-presidential election cycle, which we expect to great benefit, greatly benefit from as a company.

Sebastiano Petti
Sebastiano Petti
Executive Director at JPMorgan

Thank you.

Operator

Our last question comes from Patrick Sholl from Barrington Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Patrick Sholl
Patrick Sholl
Managing Director at Barrington Research

Hi. Thanks for taking the question. If I could ask another question on programmatic. You talked about the kind of mismatch of revenues and expenses, as you kind of build up, your capabilities there. I'm just wondering, like how much of a drag you expect that to be on EBITDA for the full year?

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

I think it's built in the numbers we're talking about.

Patrick Sholl
Patrick Sholl
Managing Director at Barrington Research

Yeah.

Bob Pittman
Bob Pittman
Chairman and CEO at iHeartMedia

Everything you've got there. I think, you know, again, we've been pretty prudent in how we've built programmatic, so it's not a big impact on earnings. We found some ways to build it out using primarily non-cash marketing expense as well, which we think has a tremendous benefit to us.

Patrick Sholl
Patrick Sholl
Managing Director at Barrington Research

Okay. Thank you.

Rich Bressler
Rich Bressler
President and COO at iHeartMedia

Thank you. If there are no other questions, thank you all again for listening to the iHeart story on behalf of all of us. We are available as always for follow-up questions, Bob, myself and Mike, and the team. Thanks very much.

Operator

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.

Executives
    • Andrey Hart
      Andrey Hart
      Senior Vice President of Investor Relations
    • Bob Pittman
      Bob Pittman
      Chairman and CEO
    • Mike McGuinness
      Mike McGuinness
      CFO
    • Rich Bressler
      Rich Bressler
      President and COO
Analysts
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