Nexstar Media Group, Inc. (NXST) Q3 2020 Earnings Call Transcript @themotleyfool #stocks $NXST
Perry A. Sook — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Well, I can tell you that, again, because it’s factual and timely. Tom and I talk about this literally every day. I mean there are some small accretive acquisitions in the digital space that we’re looking at. There are the occasional end-market television opportunities. I think we’re waiting for clarity on the Supreme Court activities, which probably will come in May or June of next year as to what that landscape looks like. And in the meantime, we have been very aggressive in reducing leverage and paying down absolute dollars of debt while spending a fair amount of money on buying back stock, and obviously, our dividend is constant and constantly increasing on an annual basis, something north of 20%. So we think maintaining that option value is right now the right thing to do, but we know what all the options are.
Tom Carter — Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer
But Dan, I’d also point out, we bought back almost 3% of our stock this quarter in the third quarter. So if you annualize that, that is a — it’s a substantial amount of the stock. And we see — at current levels, we see that as being opportunistic and a potential going forward as well. So I know a lot of people like to Kibbe when I say this, but we can walk and chew gum at the same time. I’ve been quoted on that several times. But I think this is going to be an example of that because again, the free cash flow in the fourth quarter because of the great work that we’ve done on political is going to be massive. And so we have some great optionality. And it’s interesting. And I guess I really never had a great appreciation for this. But the timing of the TV Food network distribution in Q1, Q1 is traditionally, in the broadcast business, your low point of a year from a seasonality perspective. Well, we don’t have that problem anymore because we get a massive infusion of cash from TV Food network in February of every year. So Q1 is going to be another good quarter from a free cash flow perspective. So as I’ve said before, I think we’ve got really good visibility, and it gives us some great options, and we’ll be able to I think, execute in a number of different aspects simultaneously.