IDW Media Holdings Class B

Good evening and welcome to the IDW Media Holdings second quarter fiscal 2022 earnings call. During management's prepared remarks, all participants will be in listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After the prepared remarks, you are invited to participate in the Q&A. To ask your question, you may press star, then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. I will now turn the call over to John Nesbitt of IMS Investor Relations.

Thank you, Operator. Good day and welcome to the IDW Media Holdings Investor Conference call for the second quarter and six months ended April 30, 2022. With me on the call are Ezra Rosensoft, Chief Executive Officer, and Brooke Feinstein, Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to begin the call by reading the Safe Harbor Statement. On this call, all statements that are not purely historical facts, including but not limited to those in which we use the words believe, anticipate, expect, plan, intend, estimate, target, and similar expressions are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. While these forward-looking statements represent our current judgment of what may happen in the future, actual results may differ materially from the results expressed or implied by these statements. due to numerous important factors, including, but not limited to, those described in our annual report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 30th, 2021, under the heading Risk Factors and Management's Discussion Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations, and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. We are under no obligation and expressly disclaim any obligation to update the forward-looking statements on this call whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Now I will turn the call over to Ezra Rosenstaff. Please go ahead, Ezra.

Thank you, John, and thank you to everyone on the call for joining us. My remarks today will review our strategy and execution during the second quarter of fiscal year 2022, which closed April 30th. At the conclusion of my remarks, Brooke Feinstein, our CFO, will provide details around our financial results And then we'll be happy to take your questions. This quarter came in where we expected. Strategically, we made tremendous progress as we continue to execute on IDW's new enhanced model of expanding our IP, intellectual property portfolio, and utilizing de-risked entertainment financing models and our asset life balance sheet to drive results. When you look at the quarter, the elephant in the room is no revenue on the entertainment side. Importantly, though, we did not expect any in the quarter. As we scale the new IDW model, revenue on the entertainment side of the business will continue to fluctuate. We have already seen this occur in the first six months of fiscal 22. Very strong revenue in Q1, then no meaningful revenue in Q2. In Q3 and Q4, we expect to see entertainment revenue from Surfside Girls and Lock and Key Season 3. So we don't currently evaluate the progress we are making on the entertainment side of our business on a quarter-to-quarter basis. Rather, we look at it on a trailing 12-month basis, particularly as the business scales. Taken from that perspective, our entertainment business is performing well and is a tremendous runway for potential growth as we continue to create more and more original content. To that end, we remain laser-focused on expanding our library of original content by attracting and partnering with talented and visionary creators. The authors and creators we work with are amongst the most talented and innovative in the industry. But don't just take my word for it. Recently, IDW Original Titles received 12 nominations from the Will Eisner Comic Industry Award, including Best Graphic Novel for Ballad for Sophie, Best Publication for Early Readers for Chibi Usagi, Attack of the Hebe Chibis, and best U.S. edition of international material for The Shadow of a Man, to name a few. We will continue to leverage our relationships with renowned authors and creators, as well as our own reputation as an innovative, independent publisher of comics and graphic novels to cultivate our pipeline, which we believe will transition very nicely across our platforms. Along those lines of leveraging our relationships, During the second quarter, we announced a strong slate of nine new graphic novels and comic books scheduled to be published in July 2022. Currently, we have over 100 original titles in our library with 40 new titles at various stages in development pipeline. And the goal is to add 40 quality original titles each year. I can't stress enough the importance of our original IP as a key economic driver of the business and also as a creative engine providing us access to new genres and the audiences they attract. Currently, as we build on our existing library of horror, sci-fi, and thriller titles, we are also targeting large audiences through genres that are new to us, including young adult, middle grade, tweens, drama, and comedy. As I already mentioned, after recording strong first quarter fiscal 22 revenues in the entertainment segment, related to our delivery of Lock and Key Season 2, during the second quarter, we recognized no measurable revenue from IDW Entertainment. As we further expand our roster of greenlit entertainment projects, we expect to deliver a more consistent revenue cadence from our entertainment segment. Looking ahead, during the second half of Fiscal 22, we expect to recognize revenue from the delivery of both Season 3 of Lock and Key and Season 1 of Surfside Girls. appearing on Netflix and Apple respectively. So a lot to look forward to as we move through the balance this fiscal year. We're energized by the progress we're making and the potential we see for the concurrent co-development of content for both publishing and entertainment. And we're exploring opportunities to work with international animation partners with the goal of converting kid focused IP into media properties. Likewise, We're exploring expansions of film and narrative podcast opportunities, which can be promising vehicles for our original content. We know from experience that when we can leverage our original titles on the entertainment side of our business, we'll benefit from increased visibility as this exposure has been proven to drive increased publishing sales, creating a virtuous cycle between our publishing and entertainment segments. This is an exciting and busy time for our company. As we move through the remainder of fiscal 22, we believe we are well positioned to capitalize on our refocus strategy, the strength of our content pipeline, and the flexibility of our balance sheet, which provide a solid foundation from which we can accelerate our growth. I will now turn the call over to our CFO, Brooke Feinstein, to go over our financials for the second quarter and first six months of 2022. Go ahead, Brooke.