Earlier this month, Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. reached its third retransmission agreement of the new year with Charter Communications. Sinclair had also reached agreements with Comcast and Med-iaCom.
For 2007, the Hunt Valley-based company estimated it would generate nearly $53 million in revenue from its retransmission agreement, a $5 million upswing from what it initially projected in 2006. Set to announce its first-quarter results Wednesday, the company reported $715 million in sales for fiscal 2006.
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The most recent retransmission deal Sinclair signed is a three-year agreement with Charter set to expire March 31, 2010. The terms of the deal include carriage of 28 stations in 19 different markets, reaching about 1.9 million subscribers. Across the country, Sinclair owns, operates, programs or provides service to 58 stations in 36 markets.
“Sinclair is pleased to have once again taken a leadership role in working with multichannel video distributors, such as Charter, to ensure cable subscribers in our markets continue to receive some of the most popular programs on television,” said David Smith, president and chief executive officer of Sinclair. “Our mutually acceptable economic agreement with Charter demonstrates the value of broadcast television on alternative delivery systems.”
Sinclair faced criticism before its 2007 agreements. In August 2006, Morningstar, a financial analysis Web site, dropped its coverage of Sinclair because Morningstar needed to allocate its resources elsewhere. Before that, analyst James M. Walden said in a report that the company had destroyed too much capital over the years to attract long-term investment dollars.
Since Sinclair?s stock opened at $10.50 on Jan. 3, shares have increased nearly 65 percent, closing at $16.62 on Friday.
The company?s board announced a dividend of 15 cents per share on two classes of common stock for March 15, paid out on April 13 to the holders of record at the close of business on March 30.
Sinclair, is part of The Examiner?s Top 10, a portfolio of 10 of the largest publicly traded companies in the Baltimore area.