Beasley Broadcast Group on Friday unveiled a plan to push back its debt maturities by two years. The move will not only give the company more time to repay lenders, but to capitalize on its burgeoning online business. With total debt of $285 million on the books, digital will continue to play a larger role in where company revenue originates.
Digital may be a growth driver, but Beasley has made several moves in recent months designed to improve its bottom line. The company closed its white-label digital agency business, Guarantee Digital, in July. The business, which offered a suite of services including social media content development, SEO, and website design, was acquired in a $2.2 million deal in 2022.
While Guarantee Digital is gone as a free-standing unit, CEO Caroline Beasley said three-quarters of its billings have been picked up by their in-house agency, Direct Digital. She told investors during the company’s quarterly earnings call last month that it increases their bottom line by about $1 million.
Digital accounted for 21.5% of Beasley’s second-quarter total revenue, which was up from 19.4% in Q2 2023, and up from 16.5% in Q2 of 2022. Management expects digital could make up as much as 20% to 25% of total revenue this year.
One area where it is expanding is into newsletters, with the recent hiring of David Snyder as Head of Digital Content Marketing. He expects every Beasley market to have at least one newsletter, predicting it could grow as big as other digital channels. But even as it has explored new areas of interest, Beasley has also been willing to scrap other plans.
E-sports was once a priority for the media group as a source of non-core business revenue, but Beasley no longer has any e-sports teams after the Overwatch League (OWL) went dark at the end of its 2023 season. Beasley had owned a majority stake in the Houston Outlaws OWL team.
Caroline Beasley said last month that the investment “contradicts” the company’s “hyper-focus on reducing leverage.” Instead, she said Beasley is more focused on growing and monetizing its social media audiences across Facebook, Instagram, X and YouTube. It is already showing promises as Beasley had nearly $1 million in social media-related revenue during the first half of 2024.
The restructuring of the digital operations will help Beasley with its ongoing effort to cut expenses. In May, it announced an initiative that will save the company about $10 million a year. It includes a headcount reduction effort that has resulted in the downsizing of 8.5% of full-time employees. The layoffs have been achieved through the combination of streamlining production and traffic services, and the consolidation of other operations. Beasley has also instituted a voluntary early retirement offer to staff.
“As employees accept this offer, we will not be backfilling most of these positions as part of our greater effort to streamline our processes,” Caroline Beasley told investors last month.
One place the company has not been reducing its headcount is in sales. Instead, Beasley said they’re adding technical sales specialists on both the traditional and digital side. The company has also introduced a new regional VP structure to its sales teams. “These managers already active in existing markets will now oversee multiple markets across the organization to realize operational efficiencies across regions, thus further streamlining our processes,” she said.
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