Company Overview
Nexstar Media Group, Inc. operates as a diversified media entity that produces and distributes local and national news, sports, and entertainment content across television and digital platforms within the United States. The company functions within the Communication Services sector and the Broadcasting industry, positioning it as a key provider of mass media consumption and advertising solutions. Its financial scale is defined by a market capitalization of $6.46B and annual revenue of $4.95B, while the specific employee count is not disclosed in the available data. These valuation and revenue figures indicate that Nexstar maintains a substantial presence in the broadcasting landscape, commanding a market value that reflects its consolidated ownership and operational reach despite the absence of public employee metrics. The disparity between its significant market cap and the lack of disclosed headcount suggests a capital-intensive operational model where asset ownership and content distribution infrastructure drive value rather than purely labor-dependent scaling.
Financial Health
The company reported a Total Revenue of $4.95B over the trailing twelve months, generating a Net Income of $92.00M and an EBITDA of $1.36B during the same period. The substantial gap between the $4.95B revenue and the $92.00M net income reveals a cost structure where operating expenses, including content acquisition, transmission costs, and administrative overhead, consume approximately 97.8% of top-line revenue before reaching the bottom line. Free Cash Flow stands at $941.88M, which signifies strong operational cash generation capabilities that provide the company with significant financial flexibility for capital expenditures, debt servicing, or potential strategic investments. While Gross Margin is recorded at 55.4%, indicating healthy pricing power or cost efficiencies in direct production, the Operating Margin of 20.5% and the thin Profit Margin of 2.2% highlight the aggressive expense environment typical of the media industry. On the liquidity side, the company holds $280.00M in cash against a total debt load of $6.62B, resulting in a Debt to Equity ratio of 320.85% that characterizes a highly leveraged balance sheet rather than a conservative one. This leverage is further contextualized by a Current Ratio of 2.07, which indicates that current assets are more than double current liabilities, suggesting adequate short-term liquidity to meet obligations despite the high debt burden. Return on Equity is 3.8% and Return on Assets is 5.0%, metrics that suggest management effectiveness in generating returns is constrained by the capital structure and the specific return expectations inherent in a capital-intensive, high-debt media holding model.
Valuation Assessment
The trailing twelve-month P/E ratio is 70.81, while the forward P/E is significantly lower at 11.89, implying that the market expects earnings to grow substantially in the future to justify the current high valuation multiple. The Price to Book ratio of 3.13 indicates that the market is pricing the stock at a significant premium over its net asset value, reflecting intangible assets like media rights and brand value that are not captured on the balance sheet. Alternative valuation metrics such as the Price to Sales ratio of 1.31 and an EV/EBITDA of 9.38 provide additional context, suggesting that on a revenue basis the company is valued moderately, but the enterprise value multiple reflects the high cash flows relative to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization. The stock has traded within a 52-week range defined by a high of $254.30 and a low of $141.66, and without a specific current price, the range establishes the volatility boundaries within which the asset has moved over the past year. The Beta value of 0.79 indicates that the stock's price volatility is lower than the broader market, suggesting that Nexstar tends to move less dramatically than the S&P 500 in response to general market fluctuations.
Growth & Income
Revenue growth year-over-year stands at -13.3%, while earnings growth is listed as N/A in the available data, preventing a direct calculation of whether earnings are growing faster or slower than revenue at this specific moment. However, the negative revenue growth combined with a thin profit margin of 2.2% implies that the company is currently facing headwinds that affect its top line before it can impact the bottom line. As a dividend payer, the company offers a Dividend Yield of 3.5% with a Payout Ratio of 248.0%, which indicates that the dividend is being funded by sources other than current earnings, such as cash reserves or debt proceeds, as the payout ratio exceeds 100%. This high payout ratio relative to earnings suggests that the sustainability of the dividend is dependent on the company's ability to maintain cash flows and manage its heavy debt load of $6.62B rather than organic earnings retention. The overall growth and income profile presents a trade-off where significant current income is available to shareholders, but the growth trajectory is currently negative, requiring careful monitoring of revenue recovery to ensure long-term dividend support.