Townsquare Media has reported its first quarter fiscal results for 2020, with a 0.3 percent dip in net revenue. The company brought in $93.4 million in net revenue in Q1, down from $93.7 million a year ago.
Townsquare CEO Bill Wilson commented, “While our first quarter started strong with high single digit net revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth in January and February, beginning in March we experienced a significant negative business impact to our advertising and live events segments related to the COVID-19 pandemic, offsetting the momentum we established in 2019 and early 2020. First quarter net revenue increased 0.5% on a pro forma basis resulting in our ninth consecutive quarter of pro forma net revenue growth. In addition, Q1 2020 marked the first time our digital revenue exceeded 40% of our total net revenue, up from 35% in 2019, powered by Townsquare Interactive and Townsquare Ignite.”
He continued, “As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, we experienced a significant decline in our advertising revenue in March, but we were still able to generate positive first quarter year over year Advertising net revenue growth. Our advertising net revenue declined further in April, but has shown sequential improvement in both May and June to date. We also cancelled or postponed our live events scheduled in March, April, May and June, which negatively impacted our net revenue. Thankfully, our live events segment is a much smaller component of our company today after we had the foresight to sell our large, out of market live event assets, including North American Midway Entertainment and several multi-day music festivals over the past two years. We have taken a number of steps to reduce our cost base in an effort to help mitigate the decline in revenue caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In total, we have enacted approximately $1.7 million of monthly fixed cost savings, and anticipate the reduction of variable costs related to the decline in revenue. In addition, we have reduced our planned capital expenditures, and our board of directors has elected to cease paying our quarterly dividend moving forward. All of these actions have strongly bolstered our liquidity position.”
