ACCESS Newswire Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Access Newswire's fourth quarter and year ended 2024 earnings conference call. My name is Michael Kret and I am not only excited to be your host for today's call, but I'm also proud to be going on my ninth year here at Access Newswire as a senior news desk editor. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that statements made during today's conference call may be deemed forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 as amended and are subject to the safe harbor created thereby. Actual results may differ materially due to a variety of risks, uncertainties, and other factors. For a detailed discussion of some of the ongoing risks and uncertainties in the company's business, I refer you to the press release issued this afternoon and filed with the SEC on Form 8K, as well as the company's reports filed periodically with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 10K for the year ended December 31, 2024. The company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, unless otherwise required by law. We will also be discussing the recent sale of our compliance business and urge you to read the Form 8-K filed with the SEC on March 6, 2025, regarding the transaction and to review the pro forma financial statements contained therein. Finally, during the course of today's call, we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Management believes The presentation of non-GAAP information provides useful supplementary data concerning our ongoing operations and is provided for informational purposes only. Reconciliation of the non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures and certain additional information are also included in today's press release. With that said, it is my pleasure to introduce the company's founder and chief executive officer, Brian Balverni, and our chief financial officer, Steve Nur. Brian?

Thanks, Michael. A pleasure to have you do this for us today. I also wanted to thank you for representing our brand, taking care of our customers the way you do. Your editorial prowess embodies everything we stand for. It's that perfection that keeps our customer coming back. Keep up the good work. And I don't care what the team says. Your golf game's amazing. All joking aside, good morning, everyone. This is a treat. For the first time in 12 years, we're doing our earnings conference called pre-market on a Tuesday, something we plan to continue to do going forward. And thank you for joining us today to discuss our fourth quarter 2024 and year-end results. Our press release, which is accessible in our newsroom, was released pre-market this morning and provides key takeaways on our performance for the quarter and 12-month period ended December 31st. By the way, the new newsroom product that we released is also a recent upgrade to our subscription to And on your reference for today's call, it is on your screen. You can visit newsroom.accessnewswire.com for reference during today's call. Despite the 1% increase in revenues for the quarter, we've continued to make substantial progress in our transition we have spoken about for the last few months. This reoccurring revenue model of communications-focused subscriptions are growing and becoming sticky in our install base. For the three months into 1231, new subscriptions sold averaged $12,000 in Q4. while on our way to get to the $14,000 guided by the end of the year. Additionally, our subscription business now accounts for approximately 50% of our overall revenues for the quarter, compared to just 30% in the prior year. Let's not get ahead of ourselves today on the call. I'm excited, as you can tell, so there's a lot to talk about, so we're going to get to Steve in just a second. As a reminder, though, today's prepared remarks, earnings, and annual report reflect the discontinued operations of our compliance business that we sold on February 28th. Gap accounting requires us to classify the assets as held for sale, and as such, all reported financials are in a go-forward business of our communications product lines. We have spent a good bit of time discussing the possibilities of this in prior calls, and we're pleased to have closed the transaction with Cirrus and Equinity on February 28, 2025. The proceeds of the sale were applied to the debt on our balance sheet, thus reducing the debt by 78% or $12 million to just $3.3 million. A balance we are confident we can manage and pay down at a sensible pace along with investing in our business and top-line growth, resulting in a debt-free, growing, profitable enterprise. Later in the call, we will discuss the additional KPIs we are tracking for this business in the quarter going forward. As we round out our go-to-market offerings for 2025, we are going to continue to focus on retaining as well as selling our subscription platforms to our current install base and new prospects globally. Our rebrand access newswire has afforded us the ability to have a cleaner go-to-market strategy and a set of value-based subscriptions for both public relations and investor relations professionals under one single platform. There's a lot to talk about today, so I'll turn the call over to Steve to cover the quarter and year-end results. Steve.

Thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. As Brian mentioned, 2025 has been a very busy and productive year for us so far. I can say that I am very excited for this next chapter of the company. more so than I have been in my 11 and a half years here. There's plenty to talk about for 2025, but first we have to recap the finish of 2024 for what is now Access Newswire. As Brian noted, and as you will see in our 10-K once it is filed later today, our compliance business is reported as discontinued operations. We actively began the process of marketing the sale of our compliance business prior to year end. Thus, according to GAAP, we are required to classify those assets as held for sale. which also requires them to be reported as discontinued operations on the balance sheet and statements of operations and cash flows. As a result, we will focus the conversation today and in our 10K on the continuing operations of the communications business that Brian described earlier. Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $5.8 million, $64,000 for 1% increase over Q4 of 2023. For the full year of 2024, Total revenue is $23.1 million, 6% decrease from the full year of 2023. The decrease in revenue is primarily related to a decrease in revenue from our formerly branded Newswire business due to lower volume. Revenue from our investor relations webcasting and websites was also down slightly for the full year. Gross margin percentage for Q4 2024 was 75%, which is consistent with Q4 2023. For the full year ended December 31st, 2024, Gross margin percentage was 76% compared to 77% for 2023. The reason for the decrease in gross margin percentage was due to the decline in revenue as cost of revenues for both periods were consistent. Operating expenses for Q4 2024 increased $13.3 million compared to Q4 2023 and increased $12.1 million compared to the full year of 2023. However, these increases were primarily due to an impairment loss of $14.15 million associated with the Newswire trade name. As a result of our rebrand to Access Newswire, management determined the remaining life of the trade name was only five years compared to the original useful life of 15 years. Absent the impairment, operating expenses decreased $900,000 and $2 million for those same periods respectively. The decrease is due to lower corporate and sales and marketing department headcount, stock compensation, advertising expense, and one-time non-recurring expenses, including acquisition and integration expenses. As we move forward with only our communications business, we will be aggressively reviewing costs to ensure we are operating in the most cost-efficient manner. One thing that is important to keep in mind as you review the historical results of the continuing operations is that they include all corporate overheads, sales and marketing, and shared costs between the compliance and communications businesses. As for GAAP, any allocated expenses are to remain in continuing operations. This continued operations only includes those costs that are directly related to the compliance business, which is mostly in cost of revenue. As part of the sale of the compliance business, we entered into a TSA with the buyer to continue performing certain services to support the operations of the purchased assets. Thus, there are some shared costs that will continue for a short period of time until all of the services are transitioned to the buyer. These include certain accounting, IT, operating, and facility expenses. Moving back to the income statement, on a GAAP basis, we reported a net loss from continuing operations of $10.9 million, or $2.85 per diluted share, during Q4 of 2024, compared to a net loss from continuing operations of $1.5 million, or $0.40 per diluted share, during Q4 of 2023. For the full year of 2024, net loss from continuing operations was $13.3 million for $3.47 per diluted share compared to a net loss from continuing operations of $3.4 million for $0.90 per diluted share for the full year of 2023. The increase in the loss from continuing operations for both periods is primarily due to the impairment loss I noted earlier. Looking to some non-GAAP metrics, non-GAAP net income from continuing operations with $819,000 for $0.21 per diluted share and $791,000, also $0.21 per diluted share, for Q4 and the full year of 2024, respectively. Compared to a non-GAAP loss from continuing operations of $275,000, or $0.07 per diluted share during Q4 2023, the non-GAAP income from continuing operations of $538,000, or 14 cents per diluted share for the full year of 2023. We generated EBITDA of $770,000, or 13% of revenue, and $840,000, or 4% of revenue, for Q4 and the full year of 2024 respectively, compared to EBITDA of negative $834,000, or negative 14% of revenue, and negative $342,000 or negative 1% of revenue during the same periods of 2023. Adjusted EBITDA was $871,000 or 15% of revenue and $1.9 million or 8% of revenue for Q4 and the full year of 2024 compared to adjusted EBITDA of negative $27,000 or just under 1% of revenue and $2 million or 8% of revenue for the same periods of 2023. Switching over to the balance sheet and cash flow statement, Our deferred revenue balance, which is revenue we expect to recognize primarily over the next 12 months, remained relatively consistent as of December 31, 2024, as it was at December 31, 2023. With the transition to our new monthly subscriptions, we will expect this number to decrease going forward. We ended the quarter with $4.1 million of cash on hand, compared to $5.7 million at the end of 2023. A significant portion of this cash was used for debt repayment. cash provided by continuing operations was $353,000 and $400,000 for Q4 and the full year of 2024, compared to net cash used by continuing operations of $236,000 and $741,000 for the same periods of the prior year. The increase is due to lower expenses and increased operational efficiencies. With that, I will now turn it back over to Brian, who will talk a little more about our GoPort operations, subscriptions, new offerings, and other exciting things to come. Brian?