• by Ray Schultz , October 5, 2022

Gannett Co. Inc. has repurchased approximately $24.8 million of 6.00% first lien notes due November 1, 2026 for roughly a sub-par rate of $19.9 million.

In addition, the publisher has received a waiver from some lenders to apply up to $20 million of the net cash proceeds from real estate sales to the repurchase of the outstanding 2026 Senior Notes. 

After June 30, 2022, Gqnnett repaid $55.0 million of debt using the proceeds from real estate and other asset sales totaling $34.7 million, along with its scheduled quarterly amortization of $15.1 million. 

Of this total, $24.3 million was repaid in the third quarter of 2022. The company now expects its real estate and other asset sales for the full year of 2022 to be in the range of $65 million to $75 million, and currently has approximately $80 million of real estate assets in the sales pipeline.

"Since the acquisition of legacy Gannett in November 2019, we have repaid over $585 million of debt, with $130 million repaid year to date in 2022,” states Michael Reed, Gannett chairman and CEO.

Reed adds, “We expect to continue optimizing our real estate and asset portfolio as we continue to aggressively pay down debt.”

In Q2, total company revenues fell by 6.9% to $748.7 million YoY. The net loss attributable to Gannett totaled  $53.7 million, a 7.2% margin loss, adjusted to $26.9 million.   

Gannett laid off roughly 400 newsroom workers in the wake of those results. It has also been selling off media assets in several locations.