SSP

Scripps screens optically cheap at 0.1x sales, but that multiple is a mirage created by the capital structure: the $275M equity sits atop $2.59B of long-term debt (plus $8.85M current) against just $27.9M of cash. Netting operating income of $184M with $151M of D&A gives ~$335M of EBITDA, so net leverage is roughly 7.5–8x — and it is rising, not falling. FY2025 operating cash flow collapsed 85.5% to $53.1M, barely enough to service that debt after $46.6M of capex, which is the real reason the equity trades near $3 and the market assigns it almost no value. This is a distressed, thinly-covered balance sheet, not a bargain.

The business underneath is in secular decline dressed up by cyclicality. Revenue fell 14.3% to $2.15B in FY2025 and the company swung to a $101M net loss (diluted EPS -$1.87) with a -8.1% ROE and $577M accumulated deficit. Part of the drop is the odd-year political-advertising trough — 2024's $2.51B benefited from election spend — but the Risk Factors are blunt about the structural problem: 'Linear TV viewing levels have declined in recent years due to cord-cutting and a migration of viewing to streaming,' ad-supported SVOD 'could take advertising dollars from linear TV,' and audience fragmentation threatens both ad rates and the retransmission-consent revenue that props up broadcast economics. A levered, ex-growth advertising business facing commoditized programmatic pricing is precisely the profile that cannot afford 8x leverage.