Earnings Transcript for BZFD - Q3 Fiscal Year 2024

Operator: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the BuzzFeed Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker for today, Amita Tomkoria, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Amita, please go ahead.

Amita Tomkoria: Thank you. Hi, everyone. Welcome to BuzzFeed, Inc.'s third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. I'm Amita Tomkoria, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. And joining me today are CEO, Jonah Peretti; and CFO, 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 2023 annual report on Form 10-K and our Q3 2024 quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC. 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 along with our investor letter. And now I'll pass the call over to Jonah.

Jonah Peretti: Thank you, Amita. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you all for joining us today. Today's call will be focused entirely on our Q3 results. In the coming weeks, we look forward to sharing an update on our debt, balance sheet, Q4 financial outlook and the results of the strategic review process we initiated last year with our financial advisors. Turning to our Q3 results. We had a great third quarter. To put our results into context, I want to reiterate that our primary focus this year has been on stabilizing our business. We have not wavered. In Q1, we announced the sale of Complex, through which we raised significant cash in order to pay down debt, execute restructuring plans and improve our working capital. In doing so, we were able to reorganize the business around two of our largest high-margin and most scalable business lines in Programmatic Advertising and Affiliate Commerce. In Q2, these changes started to bear fruit in the form of improving trends across time spent, revenue and profitability. In this quarter, I'm pleased to share that we delivered significant improvements in each of our key operating and financial measures

Matt Omer: Thank you, Jonah. As you just heard, we achieved a number of milestones in the third quarter, returning the business to overall growth in both time spent and revenues, driving exponential year-on-year growth in adjusted EBITDA profitability and improving our cash balance versus Q2. Before I discuss our Q3 financial performance in more detail, I'll recap some highlights across the business. Audience time spent grew 2% year-over-year and 13% quarter-over-quarter to 80 million hours, according to Comscore, the first quarter of year-over-year growth in time spent since Q1 2023. Overall, Q3 revenues grew 7%, exceeding our August outlook, led by strong year-over-year growth in both Programmatic Advertising and Affiliate Commerce, including our biggest Prime Day ever in July. We delivered Q3 adjusted EBITDA near the high end of our guidance range, generating approximately $11 million as compared to roughly flat adjusted EBITDA in the year ago quarter, a $10 million improvement year-over-year. And we ended the quarter with $54 million in cash, an $8 million improvement versus Q2. As Jonah articulated, our primary focus in 2024 has been on stabilizing the business and driving profitability. These results underscore the significant progress we have made and position us well to focus on driving consistent top line growth and expanded profitability in 2025 and beyond. Turning to our third quarter financial performance. As a reminder, all financials and comparables presented here are on a continuing operations basis, which excludes Complex. Overall revenues for Q3 2024 grew 7% year-over-year to $64.3 million, exceeding our August outlook. Performance by revenue line was as follows

Operator: This does conclude today's conference call. You may now disconnect.

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