The story of Entercom basically is of one person – Joseph Field and the story of Entercom is one of acting cautiously.
Entercom is the only major radio owner that I’ve looked at so far that has a “Code of Ethics” posted on its web site. His company isn’t full of Harvard MBA and LBO experts trying to squeeze out every last dollar of borrowed money possible. He did not borrow money to acquire radio station until 1999, and then only did it reluctantly.
Like everyone else who owns radio stations, he has been crushed by the requirement to write down the value of the station licenses. However, the cash flow from operations is significantly more than the debt service and Entercom is aggressively paying down its long term debt and buying up its class A stock at panic seller prices. Unlike the other companies that are in trouble, Entercom is not firing its local programming staff and replacing them with syndicated programming. In fact, in New Orleans, WWL did the close to unprecedented action of dumping Rush Limbaugh citing that the costs to keep his program were too high.
Entercom has no hollywood producers running around, no Las Vegas lounge singers, no 1960s ex-DJs, no obsession over future discounted cash flows, no elaborate financial transactions structured to inflate earnings through accounting tricks, it doesn’t go around trying to “flip” station licenses for a quick profit, no secretive foreign ownership, and views debt as its enemy.
I like that. A lot. Boston Red Sox fans are a patient lot.
Their totally boring company profile is [here].