Nexstar Media executives outlined local advertising trends, The CW progress, streaming costs and spectrum options at Citi's 2026 Global TMT Conference on September 8, 2026. Chief Executive Perry Sook, described as the company's third-largest shareholder, and Chief Financial Officer Leigh Ann Gliha, who has been with the company for five years, also detailed the litigation timeline involving Tegna.
Nexstar shares were cited at $176.51, with the closing price around $176.83, after falling 27% over the past six months from a 52-week high of $254.30. The company's market capitalization was $5.45 billion. Revenue over the last twelve months through the second quarter of 2026 was $5.9 billion, and EBITDA was $1.7 billion. The dividend yield was 4.21%, and Nexstar has raised its dividend for 13 consecutive years.
On advertising, the executives said non-political advertising declined in the mid-single digits in the first quarter, while second-quarter guidance was similar, with the possibility of a slightly better result. Political advertising was running at record levels and began earlier than in traditional cycles, stretching from Labor Day through Election Day. Party-coordinated political advertising accounted for about 5% of total political revenue. Sook said Nexstar's role is to produce local content and help local businesses sell things, and that even if the entire industry were one company, it still would not be as large as the smallest big technology company it deals with. The discussion referenced other industry participants, including Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros. Discovery, Roku, DIRECTV, Comcast, Charter, Cox, YouTube TV, Starlink and Nielsen.
The CW's progress was a key part of the discussion. Nexstar acquired a 75% stake in the network in 2022. The executives said the network had previously lost hundreds of millions of dollars, including periods of losses around $250 million, and was on track to become profitable in 2024. The CW's Week Zero college football game between Florida State University and New Mexico State University drew 2 million viewers, the largest audience in CW sports history and one of the network's biggest in many years; 250,000 viewers watched via the ESPN app.
Streaming and spectrum were discussed as cost and capacity considerations. Building a proprietary streaming platform would cost about $1 billion, while buying an existing platform would cost several billion dollars. The EdgeBeam Wireless joint venture, comprising Nexstar, Scripps, Sinclair and Gray Television, controls about 7 billion megahertz-POPs of spectrum and covers more than 97% of the U.S. population. Under ATSC 1.0, each station uses 6 megahertz of capacity, while ATSC 3.0 could reduce that to about 2 megahertz, freeing roughly 4 megahertz. Sook said digital multicast and spectrum leasing revenue currently would not cover the cost of lunch at the convention.
The litigation update focused on Tegna. Oral arguments on the preliminary injunction are set for November 17 at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. A trial on the merits is scheduled for early July 2027 in federal court in Northern California, before the same judge who issued the preliminary injunction.
