Unknown Analyst

Okay. We'll get started. Happy to have back at the conference from Sinclair, Chris Ripley, President and CEO. Chris, thanks for being here.

Unknown Analyst

So Chris, you've been leading Sinclair through a period of significant strategic change, including portfolio optimization, venture separation and progress and active pursuit of industry consolidation. Maybe can you set the stage for investors on where the company sits today and what you're most focused on as you look to the rest of 2026?

Christopher Ripley
President & CEO

Thanks, Dan. So look, I think the focus for us is around core execution. You saw that in our Q1 results where core advertising was up 4% year-over-year, retrans was up 2% and adjusted EBITDA was up 12% year-over-year. So we really do feel like we are executing exceptionally well on the core business, and we want to continue to do that. We, of course, also want to delever. You saw us do that in April, where we retired $165 million of term loans at a discount. And we want to transform the business through M&A and AI.

So M&A, I think we'll probably talk a little bit more about that later on, Dan. So I don't want to steal your thunder, but there are several opportunities that we see on the horizon that could yield significant synergies, and we're very focused on that. And we think that there's a lot that can be done with the business through AI. When you think about media businesses in general, but specifically broadcast, there's