USA Today reports Q1 EPS 12c, consensus (10c)

Reports Q1 revenue $548.5M, consensus $551.01M. “We are pleased to report strong and improving first quarter performance against important financial and metric measurements, building on a strong fourth quarter from last year. Same store revenue trends improved to a decline of 1.8%, a meaningful step up from the decline of 3.9% in the fourth quarter of last year. Importantly, this revenue trend improvement was driven by same store digital revenue growth in the quarter of 5.2%. Also, Total Digital revenues as a percentage of Total revenues climbed to 48%, nearing the critical 50% mark. In the first quarter, we delivered net income of $19.9 million, which was an increase of $27.2 million from the prior year period. Furthermore, first lien net leverage decreased to 2.3x at the end of the first quarter.”