THE E.w. Scripps Company
SSPHIGH VELOCITYFILING INTENSITYTHE E.w. Scripps Company reads as High Velocity (composite 78/100); pressure / disclosure signals dominate the posture this cycle · primary market Media & Education, ranked #6 on disclosed spend.
Lens
Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)
$14M
vs $2.7B in 2020–2022
Disclosed transactions
N/A
1/3 active fiscal years in window
Buyer archetype
Consistent Strategic Buyer
Meaningful spend appears across repeat years.
Composite score
78
High Velocity dominates · Filing Intensity
Behavioral posture, nine reads.
Each index scores the issuer 0–100 against an EDGAR-anchored definition. Scores ≥ threshold elevate the issuer into the index's constituent set; the dominant index drives the masthead label.
Active Acquirer
Companies actively deploying disclosed capital into M&A
- $6.1B disclosed buyer spend
- Filed within 18d
Buyer Cadence
Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity
- Filed within 18d
- 308 8-Ks
Target Probability
Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings
- 43 activism filings
Spin/Carve
Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture
- 43 activism filings
Pressure Watch
Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure
- 43 activism filings
- Latest activism 1.7y ago
Distress Watch
Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns
- 43 activism filings
Restatement Risk
Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings
Capital Velocity
DominantIssuers with the highest filing-activity intensity
- 308 8-Ks
- Filed within 18d
- 5 form types
Quiet Power
Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence
- Enterprise value $533M
- 10-Q 18d ago
- 2 active signals
Capital cadence.
Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($MM); ticks show recorded transaction count. Disclosure tier annotated where v6 audited corpus carries an entry.
Disclosed spend $MM Disclosed transactions (right axis)Peak spend year: $2,678M · Peak count: 26
| FY | Disclosed buys | Disclosed spend | Avg ticket | Audited tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2024 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2023 | N/A | $14M | N/A | N/A |
| 2022 | 1 | $14M | $14M | N/A |
| 2021 | 2 | $2.7B | $1.3B | N/A |
| 2020 | 1 | $7M | $7M | N/A |
Strategy posture.
The buyer's playbook in terms of strategic archetype: what each disclosed move says about how they're deploying capital.
Archetype mix
- Geographic Expansion20%
- Bolt On20%
- Horizontal Consolidation20%
- Platform20%
- Technology Acquisition20%
Strategy keywords
Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.
- geographic_expansion
- bolt_on
- horizontal_consolidation
- platform
- technology_acquisition
Filing language.
Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.
“Acquisition and related integration costs of $18.7 million in 2020 reflect contract termination costs and professional service costs incurred to integrate the Cordillera and Nexstar-Tribune television stations, as well as costs incurred for the ION transaction, which closed in January 2021.”
“The goodwill of $456 million arising from the transaction consists largely of synergies and economies of scale and other benefits of a larger broadcast footprint”
“We continue to pursue a television station acquisition strategy that allows us to assemble the best-performing portfolio possible.”
“These acquisitions allow us to move into new markets that enhance our portfolio and will diversify our network affiliate mix.”
“We continued our expansion of our digital business with the July 22, 2015 acquisition of Midroll Media”
Market context.
Where this issuer sits inside its SE-Cluster rollup wedge, with disclosed-spend rank plus trading comparables against the public peer set.
Primary market
Media & Education
- Market spend (2023–2025)
- $31.8B
- Market spend (2020–2022)
- $74.8B
- Recent vs prior
- −57%
- Issuer rank in market
- #6 of 114
- Share of market capital
- 2.6%
Valuation positioning
SSP trades at a -16.2-turn discount to the Media & Education peer median of 19.2×.
- EV / Revenue
- 0.2×
- Net debt / EBITDA
- 14.1×
- Peer median EV / EBITDA
- 19.2×
Trading comparables
FMP market data · 2026-05-10
| Company | EV / EBITDA | EV / Rev | Net debt / EBITDA | Revenue | M&A 2023–2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21.6× | 2.0× | -0.2× | $8.8B | $55M | |
| 19.2× | 1.5× | -3.6× | $25.6B | $196M | |
| 4.9× | 1.8× | 2.2× | $37.2B | $100M | |
THE E.w. Scripps CompanySSP | 3.0× | 0.2× | 14.1× | $2.1B | $14M |
Trading multiples from FMP market data; disclosed M&A spend from the SE-Cluster EDGAR 10-K corpus. Peer set = top disclosed buyers in Media & Education. Bars scaled to the highest EV/EBITDA in the set.
Buyer landscape.
Public buyers whose stated archetypes, target categories, and recent cadence align with this issuer as a plausible acquisition target. Scores cross EDGAR signal and disclosure overlap.
Likely buyers
No public buyers surface as a strong target-side fit on current signal.
Likely sellers / divestiture partners
No reciprocal divestiture / strategic-alternatives matches identified.
Filing activity & signal stream.
Filing cadence and event-driven signals visible on EDGAR. The signal stream below is curated from restatement / spin-carve / activism categories, providing context for any near-term call.
Filing cadence
- 10-K (annual)382026-02-27
- 10-Q (quarterly)1002026-05-08
- 8-K (event)3082026-05-08
- Proxy / DEF 14A712026-03-20
- Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)432024-09-27
Signals on file
- elevated
Activism on file
2024-09-2743 activist filings on file (13D, DFAN14A, PREC14A series).
- info
Signal
Serial acquisition history
- info
Signal
10-K strategy themes
Audited corpus.
No audited record on file for this CIK in the current v6 corpus.
This issuer has not been extracted into the v6 audited acquirer corpus yet. The brief above pulls from ranking-level aggregates and issuer-index signal only.