Entravision Communication (EVC) Q4 2020 Earnings Call Transcript

Entravision Communication (EVC 6.57%)
Q4 2020 Earnings Call
Mar 11, 2021, 5:00 p.m. ET

Contents:

• Prepared Remarks
• Questions and Answers
• Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Greetings. And welcome to the Entravision Communications Corporation fourth-quarter and full-year 2020 earnings conference call. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Kimberly Esterkin of investor relations.

Thank you, you may begin.

Kimberly Esterkin -- Investor Relations

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone and welcome to Entravision's fourth-quarter and full-year 2020 earnings conference call. I hope everyone is staying healthy and safe. Joining me on the call today is Walter Ulloa, chairman and chief executive officer; and Chris Young, chief financial officer.

Before we begin, I must inform you that this conference call will contain forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ. Please refer to Entravision's SEC filings for a list of risks and uncertainties that could impact actual results. This call is the property of Entravision Communications Corporation. Any redistribution, retransmission or rebroadcast of this call in any form without the expressed written consent of Entravision Communications Corporation is strictly prohibited.

Also, this call will contain non-GAAP financial measures. The company has provided a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most comparable GAAP measures in today's press release. The press release is available on the company's website and was filed with the SEC on Form 8-K. I will now turn the call over to Walter Ulloa, Entravision's chief executive officer.

Walter Ulloa -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Kimberly and good afternoon, everyone. We appreciate you joining us today for Entravision's fourth-quarter and 2020 earnings call. Entravision had a very strong fourth quarter. As a result, we are well positioned for growth in the first quarter and full-year 2021.

Beginning with the top line, revenues for the quarter totaled $171.7 million, up 142% year over year and 173% sequentially. On a pro forma basis, including Cisneros Interactive, revenues improved 51% over the fourth quarter of 2019. Our digital segment performed well due in large part to our acquisition of Cisneros Interactive. While I will speak to the digital segment in further detail shortly, we are particularly pleased with our performance of Cisneros Interactive led by Victor Kong.

Cisneros Interactive continues to be additive to our cash flow and EBITDA, and we have the utmost confidence that they will successfully execute their business plan in 2021. As highlighted last quarter, political ad sales were all a strong driver of our fourth-quarter revenues. In total, political advertising revenue for the fourth quarter was $14.2 million, surpassing our prior record set in the fourth quarter of 2012. Excluding political ad sales, and including Cisneros Interactive on a pro forma basis, revenue increased by 39% in the quarter.

Adjusted EBITDA totaled $32.6 million for the fourth quarter of 2020, an increase of 195% compared to $11.1 million in the prior year period. On a pro forma basis, EBITDA increased 159% in 2020 versus 2019. Moving beyond the fourth quarter and turning to the full-year results. For 2020, revenues totaled $344 million, up 26% over 2019.

Adjusted EBITDA totaled $60.4 million for full-year 2020 as compared to $41.2 million in 2019 or a 47% EBITDA growth in 2020 versus 2019. 2020 was a very challenging year, but thanks to the strength of our business model, our proactive and conservative cost-cutting measures and the dedication of all our employees, our business continued to improve each quarter from the lows of the second quarter in 2020. We entered 2021 primed for growth. With the onset of COVID-19, we made a number of expense cuts in anticipation of a prolonged economic impact from the virus.

Fortunately, due in part to these proactive reductions in our SG&A, our business continued to grow quarter over quarter. As a result, we were able to reinstate certain expenses back in the business, namely employee salaries. I could not be prouder of the team we have assembled at Entravision. Their commitment to both our clients and our company this past year never wavered.

I was pleased to be able to reinstate our well-deserved employee salaries to the pre-COVID-19 levels. Even though salary expenses have been reinstated, the rest of our expense cuts remain in place, and we will continue to operate as a leaner, more efficient business, with strong free cash flow generation. As Chris Young, our CFO, will discuss shortly, in Q4, we more than doubled our prior record of free cash flow set in the second quarter of 2006. This strong cash flow generation should help offset some of the revenue loss from the lack of political ad sales in the first quarter of 2021.

With that as a background, let's turn to our three operating segments in further detail. Our television division generated revenues of $50.5 million for the quarter, up 37% compared to the prior year and up 34% sequentially. Breaking this down further, television advertising and multicast revenue was up 48% over the prior year fourth quarter, while retransmission consent revenues were up 1% year over year. Excluding political spend, our core television revenues increased by 10%, with television political revenues totaling $11.1 million in the quarter versus the nonmaterial amount of political revenue in the fourth quarter of 2019.

Excluding political revenue, national advertising revenues were up 20% driven mainly by Tier 2 automotive and healthcare, while local advertising revenues, excluding political, were up 2% driven by legal services and healthcare. On a full-year basis, television revenues totaled $154.5 million, up 3% year over year. Excluding political ad sales, core television revenues for 2020 were $131.9 million, a decrease of 12% over full-year 2019. Turning to our top 10 television ad categories.

Although several advertising categories did see year-over-year revenue declines, many experienced improvements sequentially, another indication that our business continues on an upward trend. Auto, our largest television ad category, increased 3% year over year, but improved 28% from Q3 2020. Services, our second largest advertising category, was up 17% compared to the prior year period. Health care, our third largest category, was up 26% over the prior year and also improved 102% sequentially.

Media was up 22% year over year and up 26% sequentially. Retail, while still down 21% year over year, posted a strong gain sequentially of 60%. Next, let's discuss our television ratings performance for the quarter. In all cases, I will be referring to the performance among Hispanic adults ages 18 to 49, unless otherwise noted.

Our Univision television affiliates built upon their market leadership in November 2020. For adults 18 to 49 in early local news, our Univision television stations finished ahead of or tied their Telemundo competitor in 11 of 17 markets where we have head-to-head competition. In late local news, we finished ahead of or tied Telemundo competitors in 10 markets among the 17 markets where we have head-to-head competition. Additionally, our early local news ranked No.

1 or 2 against English and Spanish language television competitors in nine markets, and we built up audience levels from the 15-minute lead-in in eight markets. Our late local newscasts ranked No. 1 or 2 against English and Spanish language television competitors in six markets. Our local news teams reported the latest on the COVID-19 pandemic and an unprecedented election year.

During the full week, our Univision and UniMás television stations combined have a cumulative audience of 3.8 million persons of two plus in our markets combined compared to Telemundo's 3.1 million persons two plus. We have 22% more viewers than Telemundo in our television footprint. During weekday primetime, when comparing to all stations in total, we had a higher ratings than at least one of the big four networks in nine markets among adults 18 to 49 and 10 markets among adults 18 to 34. Telecast for Univision's Latin GRAMMY Awards show on November 19 was among the top 10 broadcast television primetime programs for the night among adults 18 to 49 and adults 25 to 54 in 13 markets.

Among adults 18 to 34, the show ranked among the top 10 in 15 markets. Our sales teams did a remarkable job selling the Latin GRAMMYS, setting a revenue record for this signature TV special, with revenues up 25% over 2019. Now, let's turn to our audio operating segment. Audio revenues for the fourth quarter totaled $16.2 million, an increase of 17% over the prior year period and up 41% sequentially.

Local audio revenues decreased 3% over the prior year fourth quarter, while national revenues were up 51% over prior year, largely bolstered by political ad sales. Excluding political spend, core radio revenues declined 5% versus the prior year fourth quarter, with political revenues totaling $3 million in the quarter versus a nonmaterial amount of political revenue in the fourth quarter of 2019. Excluding political spend, national advertising revenues were up 8% driven by the service category, while local advertising revenues were down 11% in our audio unit as a result of the continued impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. On a full-year basis, audio revenues totaled $46.3 million, down 16% year over year.

Excluding political ad sales, core audio revenues for 2020 were down 26% over full-year 2019. The 12 markets where we subscribe to Miller Kaplan data, we outperformed the market by 34.6 points in total revenue combined. We outperformed the total market in 11 out of the 12 markets where we subscribe to Miller Kaplan. Turning to radio advertising categories.

Services, our largest category, representing 26% of our total audio revenue, improved 31% over the prior year fourth-quarter period. Legal services, including those related to immigration as well as government messaging regarding COVID-19 safety, continue to represent a large portion of the services add in this past quarter. Auto, our second largest advertising category, declined 28% for the fourth quarter as compared to the fourth quarter of '19, but was up 49% sequentially. Auto repair advertising was up a healthy 34% year over year as was grocery store advertising, which improved 3% over the prior year period.

We also saw increases in the product brand and paid programming categories. The remaining top 10 advertising categories were all down year over year in the fourth quarter, with the exception of political ads, where revenues totaled $3 million in the fourth quarter compared to an immaterial amount in the prior year period. Of particular note, during the quarter, we announced the launch of our new streaming destination, El Botón. Listeners can now stream their favorite Entravision radio shows and stations directly on their mobile phones or desktops.

We are positioning El Botón as a hub to direct our audiences across different genres, while also aggregating content to provide our listeners a seamless search and discovery experience. The addition of digitally streaming content to our radio offering fits with Entravision's overall positioning as an omnichannel audio solutions expert. The firm deployment of our podcast offering, mobile app presence and first-party data subscription services are also part of Entravision's vision. On this front, it is important to note that our recent investment in the digital space includes the acquisition of a controlling stake of Audio.Ad, the strongest audio network and digital audio publisher platform in Latin America.

This investment enhances our proprietary Audio.Ad network AudioEngage, currently serving the U.S. Latino market. In addition, with the Super Bowl just a month ago, Entravision has now completed its fifth season as the NFL's exclusive nationwide Spanish language radio broadcaster. The NFL has been an exceptional partner, and we look forward to continuing to share their programming with our radio listenership.

Looking at our audio division ratings performance for fall 2020, among the Spanish language radio stations, the Erazno y La Chokolata show is ranked No. 1 in nine out of 14 markets, including Los Angeles, released for fall among Hispanic adults 18 to 49, including ties; and No. 1 in 11 markets, including Los Angeles, among Hispanic adults 25 to 54. Across our 14 O&O radio stations, the Erazno y La Chokolata show reached more than 608,000 Hispanics 18 to 49 in the fall 2020 survey.

High-profile shows, El Genio Lucas and El Show de Piolin, anchor our morning drive and midday spots on the La Suavecita network and on Jose in Los Angeles and Riverside. For fall 2020, Piolin ranked as the No. 1 or 2 Spanish language midday show, including Los Angeles, in 10 out of our 13 markets released among Hispanic adults 18 to 49, including ties. El Show de El Genio Lucas was No.

1 or 2 among Spanish language radio stations in eight out of our 11 El Genio markets among Hispanic adults 18 to 49 and Hispanic adults 25 to 54. In Entravision's audio markets, the Hispanic list is recovering at a faster rate than the total market average. All 2020 Hispanic adults 18 to 49 weekly reach was at 95% of 2019 levels, while fall 2020 reach for total adults 18 to 49 was at 91% of 2019 levels. Now, moving on to digital.

Our third and final operating segment is digital. Digital revenues totaled $105 million for the fourth-quarter 2020, a substantial increase of 424% as compared to the prior year period. Sequentially, digital revenues improved 669%. On a pro forma basis for Cisneros Interactive, digital revenue increased 67% compared to the prior year period.

On a quarterly basis, digital revenues surpassed that of our television segment. On a full-year basis, digital revenues totaled $143.3 million, an increase of 108% compared to 2019. Throughout the past year, we made a number of strategic moves aimed at furthering Entravision's digital segment by building a portfolio of exceptional digital service offerings with creative and programmatic capabilities that meet our clients' needs around the globe. First, in May, we brought our digital capabilities together through the launch of Entravision Interactive, which provides advertisers and agencies a single source to engage consumers globally.

Then in October, we announced our strategic majority investment in Cisneros Interactive. Through our majority investment in Cisneros Interactive, we represent the strongest global audience in ad tech platforms such as Facebook, Spotify and LinkedIn across Latin America. Last, but not least, in November, we announced the appointment of Juan Saldivar as our new chief digital strategy and accountability officer. Juan has over two decades of experience in media, marketing, technology, venture capital and e-commerce industries as a result of working for Bertelsmann in Germany, Spain and Mexico and as Executive Director of Televisa's digital interactive for 7 years.

Juan has been a member of our board since 2014, and he and his team were instrumental in the acquisition of Cisneros Interactive and its integration into Entravision. Prior to Juan's appointment, we did not have a single leader running all of our digital business units. With Juan, a fluent Spanish speaker at the helm of our U.S. and global digital businesses, we expect to be able to grow our solutions, technology and talent pool that serve today more than 4,000 clients in 21 countries.

Entravision believes it is critical to understand, participate and build technology to serve the programmatic advertising space. On this front, Smadex, our Barcelona-based machine learning DSP platform with proprietary technology has continued to grow and serve the most demanding clients in the gaming, mobile performance and app space by matching the strongest transparency, contextual demographic features and performance standards. Due to the impact of COVID-19, digital platform usage has increasingly increased all over the world and specifically in Latin America, where it has accelerated Internet adoption and penetration. Digital video is also a core pillar within our digital and interactive strategy.

Our video network continues to expand and close exclusive connections with Tier 1 publishers. In 2021, Entravision will continue exploring the most prominent growth markets around the globe as it deploys its digital services and considers strategic and complementary investments and acquisitions. Overall, while 2020 was a challenging year, our business reemerged, in the fourth quarter, exceeding our expectations and demonstrating the strength of Entravision's business model. One last thing I would like to comment on before handing it over to Chris is our political performance in 2020.

As we discussed earlier, 2020 was a record for Entravision in terms of political revenue. We generated over $28 million in political revenue in 2020, which is an incredible 65% increase over our prior year record of $17 million in 2012. According to a recently published UCLA Latino study of the 2020 presidential election turnout, approximately 16.6 million Latinos cast votes in the 2020 election. This represents a 31% increase and nearly double the nationwide growth of 16% in ballots cast between 2016 and 2020.

Latino voters supported Joe Biden by a margin across the country, consistent with margins that Obama won in both 2008 and 2012. That said, without the Latino vote, president Biden probably would not have been able to win Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico. We expected the outcome of the Latino vote in 2020 to be strong, but it went beyond our estimates. I believe that, going forward, the Latino voter is only going to become more important, and you're going to see much more investment in the Latino vote, particularly in the markets where we operate: California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas and certainly, Florida, Virginia and Massachusetts.

So I'm very bullish about the future and the continuing important role Latinos will play in U.S. politics. Now, before I speak to our areas of focus for the new calendar year, I will now turn the call over to Chris Young, our CFO, to speak further about our fourth-quarter 2020 performance and first-quarter '21 pacings. Chris?

Chris Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Walter and good afternoon, everyone. As Walter has discussed, revenue for the fourth-quarter 2020 totaled $171.7 million, an increase of 142% from the fourth quarter of 2019 and up 173% sequentially. When comparing on a pro forma basis and including Cisneros Interactive's revenue in our 2019 results, revenues increased 51% year over year. For our TV division, ad revenues totaled $41.8 million, up 48% year over year.

Retransmission revenue totaled $8.8 million and was up 1% year over year. For our audio division, revenues totaled $16.2 million, up 17% over the prior year period. Lastly, digital revenues totaled $105 million, up 424% year over year. When comparing on a pro forma basis and including Cisneros Interactive's revenue in our 2019 results, digital revenues increased 67% year over year.

As Walter spoke to earlier in today's call, over the past few quarters, we've taken strategic steps to limit our expenses due to market conditions. Throughout this process, it has become apparent to us that we maintain most of these cuts in 2021 while still running the business at an optimal level. SG&A expenses were $14 million for the quarter, a decrease of 1% compared to $14.1 million in the year ago period. Excluding the Cisneros acquisition, SG&A expenses were down 23%.

Direct operating expenses totaled $31.9 million for Q4 of 2020, an increase of 6% compared to Q4 of 2019. Excluding the Cisneros acquisition, direct operating expenses were down 2%. Finally, corporate expenses for the fourth quarter increased 18%, totaling $9.3 million compared to $7.9 million in the same quarter of last year. The primary driver of corporate expense was salary expense as we retroactively restored salary cuts executed earlier in the year, along with bonus expense.

During the fourth quarter, our share buyback program remained on hold. We also maintained a dividend of $0.025 per share and continued to eliminate expenses at the operating and corporate levels deemed secondary to serving our core media business. We will continue to evaluate our buyback and dividend each quarter, which will be at the discretion of our board of directors. Expense-wise, we expect that our operating expenses, excluding digital cost of goods sold and corporate, will be roughly flat in the first quarter as compared to the prior year period.

Excluding expenses related to Cisneros, operating expenses are expected to be down approximately 13%. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA totaled $32.6 million for the fourth quarter, up 195% compared to the fourth quarter of last year. On a pro forma basis, accounting for the Cisneros Interactive acquisition, adjusted EBITDA was up 159% year over year. This was a record quarter for EBITDA generation due in part to the 2020 presidential election cycle and the contribution of Cisneros Interactive.

Entravision's 51% portion of Cisneros Interactive adjusted EBITDA was $3.6 million for the fourth quarter. Free cash flow, as defined in our earnings release, was approximately $28.6 million in the quarter, up 495% compared to the fourth quarter of last year. Similar to adjusted EBITDA, the fourth quarter of 2020 also represented a record quarter for Entravision's free cash flow generation. Strong free cash flow has been the cornerstone of Entravision's business and supported our ability to grow both organically and through acquisitions without the need to take on significant leverage.

We expect this high free cash flow conversion rate to continue for the foreseeable future. Earnings per share for the fourth-quarter 2020 were $0.24 compared to $0.09 per share in the same quarter of last year. Net cash interest expense was $1.3 million for the fourth quarter compared to $2.2 million in the same quarter of last year. Cash capital expenditures for fourth quarter totaled $1.3 million compared to $4.1 million in the prior year.

This brought us to $9.1 million in cash capital expenditures for the full year of 2020. Turning to our balance sheet, which remains very strong. Cash and marketable securities as of December 31, 2020 totaled $147.2 million. Total debt was $215 million.

Net of $75 million of cash and marketable securities on the books, our total leverage, as defined in our credit agreement, was 2.3 times as of the end of the fourth quarter. Net of total accessible cash and marketable securities, our total net leverage was 1.3 times. Turning now to our pacings for the first quarter of 2021. As of today, our TV advertising business is presently pacing a minus 14%, with core TV, excluding political, pacing at a minus 4%.

Our audio business is pacing a minus 8%, with core audio, excluding political again, pacing at a minus 6%. And our digital business, including revenue from Cisneros Interactive, is pacing plus 500%. Factoring in Cisneros revenue generated in Q1 of last year of approximately $42.2 million, our digital business on a pro forma basis is currently pacing at a plus 65%. Now, before I turn the call back to Walter, there's one other item I would like to review.

As part of our expanding business operations and geographic footprint, Entravision acquired a majority interest in Cisneros Interactive during the fourth quarter of 2020. As a result, we've experienced a longer audit process, and our auditors have informed us that they have not yet completed their audit procedures as of the time of this call. As a result, we anticipate that we won't be in the position to file our 10-K by the standard SEC filing deadline of next Tuesday, March 16. If that's the case, we will file a notice with the SEC to extend our 10-K filing deadline for an additional 15 days.

Our auditors have informed us that they anticipate completing their audit procedures by the end of March, and we expect to file the 10-K as soon as practical. As a result of all of this, please note that the financial results reported in our press release and this call are subject to completion of our audit and we refer you to our Form 10-K for audited financial results. All this said, we believe Cisneros Interactive has been an excellent addition to our digital business. We're excited about the future of Cisneros Interactive and how this business has enhanced our product portfolio and service offerings and aligns with our mission and sales operations.

With that, I'll turn the call back to you, Walter. Walter?

Walter Ulloa -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Chris. As is evident from our fourth-quarter performance, Entravision enters 2021 at a very strong revenue run rate. Even without political revenues this year, with a leaner cost structure, we expect higher profitability from each of our operating segments. As Chris noted, our free cash flow generation remains high and our balance sheet is strong.

As a result, our leverage is very low, which leaves us with a lot of dry powder to continue to make acquisitions while still investing in our organic growth. In addition to growing our digital business organically, we also look to grow our digital efforts through acquisitions, including acquiring complementary businesses in similar geographic regions as Cisneros Interactive. We plan to target companies with similar multiples to that of Cisneros Interactive and that are accretive to earnings. It is clear there is a solid runway ahead for Entravision.

And while this past year was challenging, we learned to operate our business units more efficiently and have positioned our company for continued success. I would like to thank all of our employees for their hard work in 2020 as well as express my strong gratitude to our incredible on-air talent who kept our radio and television audiences well informed during the most newsworthy and volatile year. Thank you again for your time today and your continued support of Entravision. Chris and I will now open up the call for questions.

Operator?

Questions & Answers:

Operator

[Operator instructions] And our first question is from Michael Kupinski with NOBLE Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Michael Kupinski -- NOBLE Capital Markets -- Analyst

Thanks for taking the questions and congratulations on your quarter. First of all, you took a lot of cost out of the business obviously last year. And you retroactively increased the salaries, I guess, and the bonuses, and that was all in the fourth quarter, so that was like a true-up? Or I'm just trying to get a sense of how much of the reinstatement of the salaries, what would that mean for the full-year cost increases this year? And if you can just tell us when you will lap the significant part of the cost cuts this year.

Chris Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Hey, Michael. Yes, that was a true-up payment. So what we did was everyone who took a pay cut back on April 15, we went back in December and did the math on how much they had given up and we turned around and cut them a check for the difference in December. That was a total onetime payment of approximately $2 million.

And then what you -- what you're trying to do is just restore a run rate expense bank for your model. And what you basically need to do is take -- I would take our third-quarter expense, that's the last then kind of clean look without the moving parts there on the salary front, and then you would add around $250,000 a quarter for TV and corporates each and then another call it $200,000 for radio expense. That will take you as to where you should be.

Michael Kupinski -- NOBLE Capital Markets -- Analyst

OK. Gotcha. And then can you just kind of give me a sense of what did Cisneros do in revenues year over year and the quarter on a stand-alone basis? So what was the rate of growth that they experienced? And then embedded in your Q1 pacings, could you just kind of give us a sense of how much Cisneros is growing? And then, I guess, finally, on that front, what are the prospects that Cisneros grows beyond the Facebook, Spotify and LinkedIn? Are there -- is there another platform, Twitter or anything else, that you could see in terms of the prospect of growth there? Or can you just kind of give us a sense of where you're seeing the growth?

Chris Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Sure. Well, I'll cover the numbers and maybe Walter will chime in on the other platforms. So this -- at fourth quarter of 2019, Cisneros did about $42.8 million of revenue. And in 2020, just remember, we acquired them on October 13.

So you've got a stub period of 12 days that's not on our books. But just a portion that was on our books, that was $89.2 million. So you've got a growth there of call it 110%.

Michael Kupinski -- NOBLE Capital Markets -- Analyst

Right. And then in terms of what would you -- you gave us pacing data for Q1. What would Cisneros be growing at in Q1?

Chris Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Oh, if you factor in that same logic there for first quarter, it's probably another 100%. Same growth trajectory consistent with what we did in the fourth quarter.

Michael Kupinski -- NOBLE Capital Markets -- Analyst

Can you give us a sense of where you're seeing the growth? Or what -- is it growing platform, just growing volume? What -- how should we look at the growth there?

Chris Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Well, it's the three -- there are three primary platforms, are really the drivers of that business. And really if you had to kind of cycle through the 3, it's really Facebook. The Facebook business in the emerging markets where Cisneros operates is just performing really, really well and that's really the primary driver.

Michael Kupinski -- NOBLE Capital Markets -- Analyst

And then what's -- in terms of -- I haven't done the math here, Chris. But if you factored out Cisneros in the first quarter, what would be -- what would your digital revenues be then in terms of pacing?

Chris Young -- Chief Financial Officer

In terms of pacing?

Michael Kupinski -- NOBLE Capital Markets -- Analyst

Yeah.

Chris Young -- Chief Financial Officer

I don't have that broken out. You know what, I'll -- let me come up with that number and get back to you on that.

Michael Kupinski -- NOBLE Capital Markets -- Analyst

OK. And then maybe if you could just talk a little bit about the M&A environment right now. I know that it sounds like you would love to be able to make more digital acquisitions. Walter, in the past, you've made some comments about what you would like to see in terms of the contributions from digital in terms of the total company.

Maybe -- I wanted to see if you wanted to update that -- those -- that expectation or maybe give us some guidance on what your thought with how this company might look in the next three to five years.

Walter Ulloa -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well, I'll just make a couple of comments, Michael. And thank you for your questions. Our total digital revenue was about 60% of total revenue in Q4, and we expect that trend to continue in 2021. We also are looking to grow our digital portfolio and then identify, I'll call it, accretive, complementary assets to our digital businesses.

And so that is something that we are actively involved in. We're looking at opportunities all the time and then -- and doing whatever analysis we need to do and trying to find the right fit just like we did with Cisneros Interactive.

Michael Kupinski -- NOBLE Capital Markets -- Analyst

And Walter, do you have any thoughts in terms of what you would like to see your digital contributions be in terms of total company revenues in the next couple of years?

Walter Ulloa -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

I won't make a comment on that more than what I've said already. I mean it's already 60% of total revenue. We expect that to continue this year in 2021. As we add more digital businesses to the portfolio, it will increase.

But to what level, I don't know. But we're certainly -- one of the great, I'll call it, benefits of building our digital portfolio is the talent that comes with it. We've got some great talent around the world working in our digital businesses. And it just makes everything better and not only our global digital business, but also our U.S.

digital business. And we're -- we continue to integrate digital assets and talent into our U.S. digital business and expand our offering to -- particularly expand our offering to advertisers that want to reach the Hispanic market and using digital solutions to do that. So we complement our broadcast business with our digital, our U.S.

local digital business.

Michael Kupinski -- NOBLE Capital Markets -- Analyst

Well, congratulations. It was a great quarter, and it seems like Cisneros is off to a strong start. Congratulations on that as well.

Walter Ulloa -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Michael. Yeah we're very proud of the fourth quarter and certainly in terms of what we've been able to achieve over the last year despite a very difficult environment.

Chris Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Mike.

Operator

[Operator instructions] Our next question is from Lisa Springer with Singular Research. Please proceed with your question.

Lisa Springer -- Singular Research -- Analyst

Thank you and congratulations on a strong quarter.

Walter Ulloa -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thanks, Lisa.

Chris Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Lisa.

Lisa Springer -- Singular Research -- Analyst

Regarding M&A coming up in 2021, are we likely to -- how -- is it more likely to see small acquisitions, a number of small acquisitions, or do you think you might be making another large one? What's the environment out there? What kind of assets are available?

Walter Ulloa -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Well Lisa, we continue to look for like I said assets that are complementary and assets that are accretive, so -- to the business. We're just constantly looking for opportunities that might be -- might help the business grow. Certainly, growth has been one of our No. 1 goals, to not only to achieve the growth we have today, but to continue to grow going forward.

So I can't really give you an answer on the size of the business. I mean it just depends on what we run across and how it pencils out in terms of is it a business that's strategic to our growth, does it fit our current portfolio, is the culture of the business that we're buying, the talent that we're buying, do they fit the needs of our businesses, and then finally, what's -- is it accretive to our stock.

Lisa Springer -- Singular Research -- Analyst

OK, thank you. And my next question concerns the dividend. What factors would have to fall into place for a restoration of the dividend to the former level?

Chris Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Well, it's tough to define the factors per se. It's an issue that's going to be looked at by the board accordingly for the balance of the year. And all I can say to that is stay tuned.

Lisa Springer -- Singular Research -- Analyst

OK, great. All right. Thank you.

Chris Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Lisa.

Operator

And our next question is from Michael Kupinski with NOBLE Capital Markets. Please proceed with your question.

Michael Kupinski -- NOBLE Capital Markets -- Analyst

Thank you. Just a couple of quick follow-ups. On the TV side of the business, a 1% retransmission revenue growth is kind of anemic, it seems, relative to the industry. I was wondering if you could give some thoughts about what we're likely to see in 2021.

And then in terms of your core pacing down -- being down 4%, it seems a little lighter than the rest of the industry. The rest of the industry is indicating that Q1 core is up which is a little surprising I guess. And I was wondering what factors might be going into your core pacing data, if you can just kind of give us some color there.

Chris Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Sure, Michael. On the retrans front, our deal with Univision is basically locked in at high single-digit rate increases year over year. I think we're at $0.27 for 2021. $0.26? $0.26, I just got corrected.

But the problem therein is that the subscriber counts keep offsetting those rate increases. So we saw subs decline by around a little more than 2% in the last quarter. And it's just where the industry is headed right now. So you take one step forward with the rate increase, but then another step backwards with the sub count.

So until those sub counts start to normalize, so that's the pattern that we're going to be up against. I would say retrans for the Spanish language side of the business is going to be maybe flat to maybe up 1% or 2% for the balance of the year. And then the retrans, however, on the English language side should be growing in the. If not, 10% to 15% range for the balance of the year as well.

So that's a separate -- that's a completely separate retransmission process. That's a negotiation that takes place with us directly with the cable companies as opposed to Univision representing us on the Spanish language side.

Michael Kupinski -- NOBLE Capital Markets -- Analyst

And Chris, just to remind me, do you not get the benefit of the OTT platforms or how do you...

Walter Ulloa -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

We do not. For Univision, no, there's no OTT arrangement between Univision and ourselves. It's been talked about from time to time, but we've never really hunkered down and gotten a deal done. So we do have an OTT arrangement with NBC, our Palm Springs affiliate, but that's the only one at this time.

And Fox -- sorry, Fox as well. And then the core business being down 4%, what we're seeing is that's actually been improving pretty significantly over the past several weeks. So that would have been a very different answer maybe four or five weeks ago. So vis-à-vis the industry, auto as a category for TV is still kind of pacing in the minus 7%, minus 8% range and that's our No.

two category. What's been offsetting that is the legal services category, which has really been growing nicely, close to double digits. Restaurants or -- for the first time, restaurant advertising spend with us is flat. We haven't seen that since pre-COVID.

So that's a sign of better things to come as well as the vaccine takes hold. But the minus 4%, we're not so concerned about. It's the trends that we're focused on, and the trends tell us that we may end up a little better than minus four and a quarter once the quarter is all done.

Michael Kupinski -- NOBLE Capital Markets -- Analyst

Great. OK, thank you. That's all I have.

Walter Ulloa -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Mike.

Operator

And we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session. I'll now turn the call over to Walter Ulloa for closing remarks.

Walter Ulloa -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Shumali. And thank you again everyone for joining us today and for your support. We are optimistic about the future of Entravision. And we look forward to sharing our progress with you on our first-quarter earnings call in May.

Duration: 42 minutes

Call participants:

Kimberly Esterkin -- Investor Relations

Walter Ulloa -- Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Chris Young -- Chief Financial Officer

Michael Kupinski -- NOBLE Capital Markets -- Analyst

Lisa Springer -- Singular Research -- Analyst

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