BZFD - NASDAQ

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to BuzzFeed, Inc. Fourth Quarter 2025 Earnings Conference Call. I'd now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Juliana Clifton, Vice President of Communications. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to BuzzFeed, Inc.'s Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2025 Earnings Conference Call. I'm Juliana Clifton, VP of Communications for BuzzFeed. Joining me today are CEO, Jonah Peretti; and our Chief Financial Officer, Matt Omer. Before we get started, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that our remarks today will include forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause these results to differ materially are set forth in today's press release, our 2025 annual report on Form 10-K to be filed with the SEC and our 2025 quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. Any forward-looking statements that we make on this call are based on assumptions as of today, and we undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. During this call, we present both GAAP and non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin. The use of non-GAAP financial measures allows us to measure the operational strength and performance of our business to establish budgets and to develop operational goals for managing our business. We believe adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin are relevant and useful information for investors because they allow investors to view performance in a manner similar to the method used by our management. A reconciliation of these GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release. Please refer to our Investor Relations website to find today's press release. Now I'll hand the call over to Jonah.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us. Before Matt walks through the numbers, I want to step back and talk about how we're thinking about the business and what we're trying to accomplish this year. At a high level, we believe BuzzFeed Inc. is undervalued. The current market value of the company does not reflect the strength of our individual brands, the quality of our assets or the innovative work we've been doing to create new products with big upside in the future. In other words, we believe the sum of the parts is worth more than the whole. . We generated close to $200 million in proceeds from selling Complex and First We Feast. But while owning these assets, our market cap was as low as $30 million with these assets representing a minority of our revenue. We believe this pattern continues today where the assets we own would be valued much higher individually than the market capitalization of BuzzFeed Inc., and this is only partly attributable to corporate debt. In fact, we believe that our current assets are worth a multiple of our market cap, especially when you consider the promise we see in unlaunched products and forthcoming features. This value isn't being recognized for a combination of reasons, including the pessimistic view of digital media in general, legacy centralized costs and downstream debt from our SPAC transaction, pre-COVID real estate commitment and the timing of cost reductions and new initiatives. We are in a much better position today on many of these issues, but we believe we can overcome these legacy costs and complications to help the market see the underlying value of the core assets and new products. When we look inside the company, we see several distinct sources of value. One, First, we have a powerful durable brands with loyal audiences, properties like HuffPost, Tasty, BuzzFeed and BuzzFeed Studios, each serve different communities have different monetization profiles and, in many cases, are attractive in their own rights of partners, advertisers and potential strategic counterparts. These are not generic media properties. They are category-defining brands with strong recognition and engagement. Secondly, we have assets and IP, particularly in bus seat studios that are scaling rapidly. Studio revenue nearly tripled this year as we delivered 3 feature films and entered the micro drama category. This IP can travel across formats and platforms, which gives us optionality around partnerships, licensing and other ways to monetize what we've created over many years. Thirdly, we have a growing body of innovative work that we'll launch this year as new products and enhanced features in our core businesses. Over the past year, we've been investing in new products and AI-driven experiences that deepen engagement, make our content more personalized and interactive and make our advertising and commerce offerings more effective. This year about surfacing that value and improving it, not just talking about it. On the innovation side, we're rolling out new apps and product experiences that integrate AI more directly into the core BuzzFeed experience. You'll see more of this throughout the year including at South by Southwest tomorrow, where we'll share details on the apps that we've built and where we're headed. Over the coming quarters, we plan to demonstrate the value of our assets in concrete ways. We are actively exploring a range of strategic options and we are focused on closing the gap between how the market values BuzzFeed Inc, today and what we believe our individual assets are worth. To summarize, our brands and assets are more valuable than our current market capitalization implies. Our innovative work, especially in AI and new product experiences represents meaningful upside that is not yet priced in. Our mandate this year is to prove the value of our parts, narrow the disconnect between intrinsic value and trading value and take the steps necessary to create value for our shareholders. With that, I'll hand it over to Matt to walk you through our financials.

Thank you, Jonah. I want to start by providing some context on the full year before getting into Q specifics. Total revenue for the full year 2025 was $185.3 million, down 2% year-over-year from $189.9 million in 2024. Breaking down our full year numbers. Advertising revenue declined 3% to $91.7 million. Programmatic advertising grew 7% to $69.6 million. This is our seventh consecutive quarter of programmatic growth and it now represents 76% of total advertising revenue. Direct sold advertising declined 25% to $22.1 million. Content revenue increased 9% to $37 million. Studio revenue nearly tripled to $16.1 million as we delivered 3 feature films during the year, coupled with positive contributions from our micro-drama vertical. Direct sold content declined 26% to $21 million. Commerce and other revenue declined 8% to $56.5 million. Affiliate commerce declined 7% to $55.5 million primarily reflecting changes in supplemental bonus structures from our partners. The underlying business remains strong, and we have not seen a decline in our conversion rates, click-through rates and total GMV driven for partners. The decline was primarily driven by a reduction in supplemental incentives from the prior year. Net loss from continuing operations was $57.3 million compared to $34 million in 2024, reflecting a noncash goodwill impairment charge of $30.2 million, driven by a sustained decline in our share price. For the full year, adjusted EBITDA improved 61% and to $8.8 million compared to $5.5 million in 2024. Time spent totaled 276.5 million hours down 7% year-over-year and expected given that 2024 includes elevated engagement during the presidential election cycle. We ended the year with cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash of approximately $27.7 million, a decrease of $10.9 million compared to 2024. But as a reminder, in 2025 equated approximately $9 million in expenses related to refinancing our former convertible notes, severance and purchasing shares back from a prior investor. Before I get into Q4 epics, I want to provide some context on our balance sheet position. As of December 31, 2025, we had total debt of $60.2 million. That's broken up with $45 million in our term loan and $15.2 million in film financing arrangements. Our term loan is secured by our existing accounts receivable and our film financing indebtedness is generally repaid directly with production tax credits proceeds or minimum guarantee payments for feature films. The cash and cash equivalents and restricted cash on the balance sheet is $27.7 million, which includes approximately $19.3 million pledged as collateral for our letters of credit on our office leases. We expect that approximately $15 million of those levers of credit will be released by our landlord after our sublease concludes in May of 2026, and we expect to use those funds to pay down debt. Now let's turn to Q4 2025 specifically. Q4 revenue was $56.5 million, up 1% year-over-year. Advertising revenue increased slightly to $25.6 million. Programmatic advertising grew 2% to $18.4 million and direct sold advertising declined 3% to $7.2 million, reflecting continued market softness. Content revenue increased 56% to $14.7 million, driven by Studio. studio revenue grew $7.3 million as we recognized 2 feature films in Q4 plus contributions from micro-dramas. Direct sold content declined 5% to $7.4 million. Commerce and other revenue declined 24% to $16.3 million, and affiliate commerce declined 23% to $16.1 million, primarily driven by the continued decline in supplemental bonuses from affiliate partners as they refine their commission structures. Net loss from continuing operations was $26.8 million compared to a net loss of continuing operations of $4.1 million in Q4 2024, again, reflecting a $30.2 million noncash goodwill and impairment charge. Adjusted EBITDA for Q4 2025 was $12 million compared to $10.9 million in Q4 2024. And time spent was 17.3 million hours, down 11% year-over-year, again, reflecting the comparison to an elevated engagement of the presidential election cycle in Q4 2024. As Jonah mentioned, we are evaluating strategic opportunities to unlock value and remedy the liquidity challenges that we are going to be facing. Some of those options could have a material impact on the shape of the company and our business in 2026. Given this, we are withholding the 2026 guidance at this time, we expect to provide an update on both our strategic direction and financial outlook in the coming quarters. Thank you for joining us today. I'll hand the call back to our host.