Media, broadcasting, and digital services company E.W. Scripps (NASDAQ: SSP) reported Q4 CY2025 results exceeding the market’s revenue expectations, but sales fell by 23.1% year on year to $560.3 million. Its GAAP loss of $0.51 per share was significantly below analysts’ consensus estimates.

Is now the time to buy E.W. Scripps? Find out by accessing our full research report, it’s free.

Company Overview

Founded as a chain of daily newspapers, E.W. Scripps (NASDAQ: SSP) is a diversified media enterprise operating a range of local television stations, national networks, and digital media platforms.

Revenue Growth

Reviewing a company’s long-term sales performance reveals insights into its quality. Any business can experience short-term success, but top-performing ones enjoy sustained growth for years. Unfortunately, E.W. Scripps’s 3% annualized revenue growth over the last five years was weak. This fell short of our benchmarks and is a tough starting point for our analysis.

We at StockStory place the most emphasis on long-term growth, but within consumer discretionary, a stretched historical view may miss a company riding a successful new product or trend. E.W. Scripps’s performance shows it grew in the past but relinquished its gains over the last two years, as its revenue fell by 3.2% annually.

This quarter, E.W. Scripps’s revenue fell by 23.1% year on year to $560.3 million but beat Wall Street’s estimates by 1.4%.

Looking ahead, sell-side analysts expect revenue to grow 8.4% over the next 12 months. Although this projection implies its newer products and services will spur better top-line performance, it is still below average for the sector.

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Operating Margin

Operating margin is an important measure of profitability as it shows the portion of revenue left after accounting for all core expenses – everything from the cost of goods sold to advertising and wages. It’s also useful for comparing profitability across companies with different levels of debt and tax rates because it excludes interest and taxes.

E.W. Scripps’s operating margin has been trending down over the last 12 months and averaged 12.8% over the last two years. The company’s profitability was mediocre for a consumer discretionary business and shows it couldn’t pass its higher operating expenses onto its customers.

This quarter, E.W. Scripps generated an operating margin profit margin of 7.5%, down 18.8 percentage points year on year. This contraction shows it was less efficient because its expenses increased relative to its revenue.

Earnings Per Share

We track the long-term change in earnings per share (EPS) for the same reason as long-term revenue growth. Compared to revenue, however, EPS highlights whether a company’s growth is profitable.

Sadly for E.W. Scripps, its EPS declined by 20.8% annually over the last five years while its revenue grew by 3%. This tells us the company became less profitable on a per-share basis as it expanded.

In Q4, E.W. Scripps reported EPS of negative $0.51, down from $0.93 in the same quarter last year. This print missed analysts’ estimates. Over the next 12 months, Wall Street expects E.W. Scripps to improve its earnings losses. Analysts forecast its full-year EPS of negative $1.87 will advance to negative $0.10.

Key Takeaways from E.W. Scripps’s Q4 Results

It was encouraging to see E.W. Scripps beat analysts’ EBITDA expectations this quarter. We were also happy its revenue narrowly outperformed Wall Street’s estimates. Overall, this was a solid quarter. The stock remained flat at $3.63 immediately following the results.

Big picture, is E.W. Scripps a buy here and now? What happened in the latest quarter matters, but not as much as longer-term business quality and valuation, when deciding whether to invest in this stock. We cover that in our actionable full research report which you can read here (it’s free).