Audacy Sells Two Stations for $15.5M

Audacy has sold two radio stations to Educational Media Foundation (EMF) for $15.5 million as the Philadelphia-based audio content provider looks to pare down assets amid financial struggles.

The Philly Business Journal reports the stations being sold are adult contemporary formatted Star 102.5 WTSS-FM in Buffalo, New York, and country formatted 94.1 The Wolf WLFP-FM in Memphis, Tennessee. Both stations had recently been moved to Audacy Atlas, a holding company established for assets earmarked for divestiture.

Audacy still has six radio stations in Buffalo and five in Memphis, according to its website. EMF, a Nashville-based nonprofit, plans to convert the two stations to noncommercial status.

Audacy Atlas has so far sold off six radio towers in the fourth quarter for $17 million. During the company’s fourth quarter earnings call last month, Audacy CEO David Field said it had added meaningful liquidity via sales of $73 million worth of non-strategic assets since last summer. The company said it had roughly $25 million more in the works in 2023. Once the sale to EMF closes, that would leave another $10 million of divestitures for this year.

As it faces significant debt and a cratering stock price that puts it in jeopardy of being delisted by the New York Stock Exchange, Audacy is trying to pare down its assets. The company has about 220 radio stations across the country.  The nation’s second largest radio station owner has more than $2 billion in debt on its books.

The New York Stock Exchange informed the company last August that it was not in compliance with listing standards, which require a minimum average closing price of $1 per share over 30 consecutive trading days. Audacy has been facing the prospect of delisting ever since.

Audacy’s stock price last exceeded $1 on July 5. When the NYSE sent its notice on Aug. 1, Audacy's stock closed at 59 cents. Shares of the company closed Friday at 11 cents — a sharp decline from the nearly $11 its stock was trading at when Audacy acquired CBS Radio in November 2017.

In a late January Securities and Exchange Commission filing, Audacy said one remedy it has planned is a reverse stock split, where shares of the company’s stock are effectively merged to form a smaller number of proportionally more valuable shares. If it reduced the number of its shares tenfold at the current price, the per-share value would exceed the required $1. The NYSE requires shareholder approval to conduct a reverse stock split, something sources said the company plans to do at its annual shareholder meeting on May 24. That is also the deadline Audacy has been given to sort out the issue.

During the fourth quarter earnings call, Audacy executives attributed the financial woes to decreased advertising demand and macroeconomic issues created by inflation and Russia’s ongoing conflict with Ukraine.

Analyst Craig Huber of Huber Research Partners, though, told the Business Journal last month that in order to weather storm he believes the company needs to take more aggressive actions than the ones planned. Audacy CFO Richard Schmaeling addressed bankruptcy speculation with analysts after the third quarter by saying the company was seeking refinancings to extend its debt maturities.