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Report: Radio Deals Total $149 Million in Q1 2018
RADIO ONLINE | Tuesday, April 3, 2018 |
U.S. broadcast station mergers and acquisitions volume reached $311.9 million in the first quarter of 2018, as tracked by Kagan, a media research group within S & P Global Market Intelligence. This is the lowest quarterly deal volume since Q4 2016 and one of the four lowest in the past four years. The quarter's top radio deal took place in two separate transactions in which Emmis exited the St. Louis market, selling two FM stations to Hubbard Broadcasting and two more FMs to Entercom. Emmis figures to receive $45 million (7.2x cash flow) from Hubbard and $15 million (6.1x cash flow) from Entercom.
Following the cancellation of the top deal of the fourth quarter of 2017, the intended sale of Merlin Media LLC's last two stations to Cumulus Media, Merlin has found a new buyer for Chicago's WLUP-FM. Educational Media Foundation has agreed to pay $21.5 million for the station, representing the quarter's second-largest radio deal.
In the quarter's third-largest radio deal, Connoisseur Media sold a three-station cluster in and around the Trenton, NJ, market to Townsquare Media Inc. for $17.3 million. Connoisseur also sold a four-station cluster (plus one translator) in the Hartford-New Britain-Middletown, Conn. market to Red Wolf Broadcasting Corp. for $8 million.
In the first quarter of 2018 Kagan registered 12 radio deals and 16 TV deals above the million-dollar mark, matching last year's per-quarter average of 28 deals between $1.0 million and $100.0 million. The just-ended first quarter's total of 107 broadcast deals, compared to 70 in the fourth quarter of 2017, speaks to a diverse deal market with increased activity.
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