On this page of StockholderLetter.com we present the latest annual shareholder letter from SAGA COMMUNICATIONS INC — ticker symbol SGA. Reading current and past SGA letters to shareholders can bring important insights into the investment thesis.

 •  4/9/2025 Letter Continued (Full PDF)
 •  4/7/2023 SGA Stockholder Letter
 •  4/11/2024 SGA Stockholder Letter
 •  More "Television & Radio" Category Stockholder Letters
 •  SGA Benford's Law Stock Score = 60

SGA Shareholder/Stockholder Letter Transcript:

2024 Annual Report


2024 Annual Letter
To our fellow shareholders:
As we close out another year we are looking forward to a new year. Not only because 2024 was difficult for
the economy and the sector, but because the strategic transformational journey Saga embarked upon the
better part of two years ago is beginning to show meaningful results.
First, I want to thank those who have been so instrumental in the transformational change Saga has been
going through over the past two years:
    Our Corporate Team
    Our Saga Board of Directors
    Our carefully chosen 3rd Party Partners
    Our Shareholders
    Our Leadership Teams in each of Saga   s 28 markets
    Our Saga Media Advisors
    Our nearly 800 Saga employees all over the country, who make this engine go.
    Our clients, those who trust us with their advertising dollars to bring about outcomes. After all, our
revenue comes from these clients.
Transformational change is NOT easy     it takes time, resources, people-training, commitment and a very
strong belief that what you are building will be successful. We chose this path of transformational change both
out of necessity and because we believe we have identified a local digital advertising market ripe for
disruption.
We determined 4 THINGS:
1.
There is a significant increase in digital advertising dollars.
Businesses are pouring more money into digital advertising every year, but the rapid growth of
digital budgets has outpaced the ability of advertisers to use them effectively.
2.
There are frustrated buyers with unmet needs.
Advertisers are fed up with ineffective evergreen    Set it and Forget it    campaigns and empty
promises. They don   t like what they are buying or who they are buying it from. These are the same
local advertisers who say they trust radio salespeople most for market knowledge and advice but
aren   t buying from us.
The RAB recently released a report that in 2024, radio surpassed the $2 billion dollar mark in
digital sales. That is a very pedestrian .067% of all digital dollars spent in 2024. Radio cannot win
celebrating less than 1% of the digital ad pie. We cannot simply compare it to where radio came
from; we need to lift our eyes and look at the macro digital marketplace for what   s available to us.
HERE   S WHY
    According to E-Marketer, in 2024, excluding political, there was approximately $421 billion
dollars spent on advertising in the U.S.
    73%, or $309 billion dollars, was spent in digital

    In 2025, estimated advertising expenditures in the U.S. will top $456 billion dollars, and 75%, or
$342 billion dollars, will go to digital advertising. That number is expected to climb to 83% by
2029. Radio   s approach to digital ad dollars is broken.
3.
There is a fragmented and confusing marketplace.
Too many providers and too many conflicting solutions. Businesses don   t know who to trust. In
this marketplace, simplicity and clarity win. Just ask the broadcasters I like and respect who have
gone through their own 4th, 5th, and 6th iterations of a digital strategy. It   s frustrating and costly.
4.
There is a shift in consumer behavior.
Advertising strategies haven   t caught up with the journey people take when they buy. There is a
gap where tech meets human behavior. Focusing the influence of ads on REAL consumer journeys
will allow everyone to win vs. the product-focused offerings that currently exist.
As a part of Saga   s Digital Strategy, which we call    Blended Advertising   , we have benefitted from talking
with and observing the 3rd party struggles of our brethren.
There   s an old saying that says    The 2nd mouse gets the cheese.   
   Blended Advertising    focuses on the consumer journey with three simple and effective products:
1. Radio     Leads to a search and gets the advertiser wanted.
2. Search     Gets the advertiser found.
3. Display     Gets the advertiser chosen.
We see it. We cannot unsee it. We believe it.
We have studied it and trained our media advisors with all this data in mind.
The question we had to ask ourselves was   
Do we build upon our already existing radio infrastructure or start anew?
We chose the former.
Infrastructure requires training. Training requires time and expense. This is why we forecasted a rise in
expenses over a year ago. And by investing in infrastructure vs. going brand new, the speed of growth
increases.
Unfortunately, the short term was impacted by the broadcast sector experiencing a significant downdraft.
So why should you continue to invest in Saga or perhaps become a new investor? Because we see a broken local
digital market ripe for disruption. And we are the right media company to take advantage of that
opportunity.
The customers we work with every day already like us and trust us and if we can impact just 5% of the
digital dollars available in our 28 Saga markets over the next 18-24 months, we could significantly increase
our total gross annual revenue (most of it digital), while also protecting, preserving, and growing radio.
For example, in our 28 Saga markets, there is approximately $2.9 billion dollars available in just search and
display. To disrupt 5% of the available dollars would result in more gross revenue than Saga generates in a
calendar year.
Before I share just some of the success blended advertising has helped us create, let me take you back to
earlier, regarding building on an existing infrastructure versus starting anew.
In previous President   s Letters, and on virtually every quarterly earnings call for the past 2 years, I have
asked the question,    Where would Saga be today if we had decided NOT to go down this path and had NOT
added the revenue verticals to our arsenal when we did to help launch Saga   s transformational change?

Here is the answer to that question.
In 2024, we generated a nearly $7.6 million dollar increase in revenue since we began this transformation at
the end of 2022. They consisted of the following revenue verticals:
    Online local news sites
    E-Commerce
    Streaming
    Market-specific    Best of     programs
    Plus, a variety of digital products and services
These strategic additives have served us well in building the infrastructure of transformational change and
will continue to do so as we grow.
Again, at the same time, we forecasted a lift in expenses as we invested in our people, our products, and our
processes. These efforts are increasingly more important as the broadcast sector faces growing headwinds.
Allow me to share several data points from a 5-market snapshot inside Saga which illustrates how blended
advertising has already impacted Saga   s local, direct, and digital revenues    and how they show promise for
Saga, its shareholders, it   s customers, it   s employees, and financial strength in both the short and the
long-term:
Using a combination of Saga   s Marketron traffic system and Saga   s CRM called Rumple, we analyzed
local direct advertisers who purchased a blended product consisting of search, display, O.T.T. or social
media.
We compared January    23 through October    23 to January    24 through October    24.
Here is what we found:
    Local direct advertisers who bought a blended product INCREASED their radio spend 9%
YOY, while their overall Radio and Digital spend increased by 27% YOY.
    Conversely, over the same period, local direct advertisers who did NOT buy a blended product
reduced their radio spend by 13% YOY.
    Furthermore, accounts who were never presented blended advertising experienced a 50-55%
decrease in their radio spend. However, when blended advertising WAS pitched but the client
didn   t buy, their radio spend INCREASED by 1     2%.
    From November 7, 2024 through March 7, 2025, as a company, we secured $5.7 million dollars
in    Blended    orders with 203 customers. Of that, $2.9 million dollars were digital dollars, and
$2.8 million dollars were radio dollars.
During the same period, blended advertising orders yielded us 4.3 times more than non-blended orders, and
when examining the radio-only dollars and comparing blended and non-blended orders, we found that
those who bought blended spent 96% more on radio than those who did NOT buy blended. Building on
these results, during a 7-day period in early March 2025, in just 3 Saga markets, we generated another
$2 million in BRAND NEW BLENDED advertising dollars! And these wins do not even begin to drain our
pipeline!
It used to be said in our business,
   Control the Creative- Control the Campaign   .
Today it   s,
   Control the Strategy- Control the Campaign   .
With blended advertising, radio has the opportunity to include itself IN THE STRATEGY and we are just
getting started. Radio is the star of Saga   s digital strategy. Radio, with its high consumer trust leads to a
search. Data shows Radio is the very best, most pervasive, and most efficient top-of-the-funnel medium
available.



 4/9/2025 Letter Continued (Full PDF)