Cumulus Reduces Debt By $200 Million
• Cumulus Media Inc. announced that it has made a voluntary prepayment of $115 million on its first lien senior secured term loan. In the year since emerging from bankruptcy, the Company has reduced its total outstanding debt by $200 million. Additionally, net leverage has declined from approximately 5.8x at emergence to approximately 4.8x with this payment.
The debt prepayment is being funded by the net proceeds of the previously announced sale of six radio stations — WPLJ/New York, WRQX/Washington, WYAY-FM/Atlanta, KFFG-FM/San Francisco, WZAT-FM/Savannah, GA and WXTL-FM/Syracuse, NY — to Educational Media Foundation, which closed on May 31, 2019, for $103.5 million in cash, as well as cash on hand generated from operations. Separately, the Company previously announced it had entered into an agreement to sell KLOS/Los Angeles to Meruelo Media for $43 million in cash. That transaction is still expected to close in the third quarter, and its net proceeds will also be used to pay down debt.
Mary G. Berner, President and Chief Executive Officer of Cumulus Media, said, “In our ongoing efforts to strengthen the business, Cumulus has been relentlessly focused on executing our key strategic priorities and meeting our financial objectives. The milestone we achieved today — $200 million of debt reduction in the first year since we emerged from Chapter 11 — resulted from those efforts and is another example of the progress we continue to make in implementing our business plan.”
Berner continued, “I would like to thank the entire Cumulus team for the hard work and dedication which have produced such a tremendous record of achievement over the past year, and I have every confidence that, together, we will be able to further improve our financial position and continue to deliver on the goals we have laid out for the business.”
