IDW Media Holdings Class B

Good evening and welcome to the IDW Media Holdings Third 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 a question, you may press star, then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star, then two. I'll now turn the call over to John Nesbitt of IMS University Relations.

Good evening. I'll take a brief moment to read the Safe Harbor Statement. Any forward-looking statements made during this conference call, either in the prepared remarks or in the Q&A session, whether general or specific in nature, are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those which the company anticipates. These risks and uncertainties include but are not limited to, specific risks and uncertainties discussed in the company's SEC filings. IDW assumes no obligation either to update any forward-looking statements that they have made or may make, or to update the factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those that they forecast. Please note that the IDW earnings release is available on the Investor Relations page of the IDW Media Holdings Corporate website. I will now turn the conference call over to Alan Rothman. Please go ahead, Alan.

Thank you, John, and thank you to everyone on the call for joining us. While this is my first call as CEO of IDW, I joined the IDW board in 2019. I'm excited about this opportunity to build on the solid foundation the company has established. IDW is one of the premier independent comic and graphic novel media companies in the country. with outstanding resources in both our publishing and entertainment divisions. Over the past several weeks, I've been spending time with our talented employees. We've made solid progress to date with our strategy to strengthen our original content library, and we have tremendous potential to accelerate our growth. Our growth will come from leveraging our internal expertise and our strong relationships with creators to continue to develop unique characters and stories that appeal to a broad and growing audience. And we will be bringing new relationships to the company that will facilitate new opportunities for IDW. Just watch us. Over the coming weeks, I look forward to meeting many of you in person. Now, onward to the subject of today's call. My remarks today will provide an overview of our strategy and execution during the third quarter of fiscal year 2022, which closed July 31st. After my remarks, Brooke Feinstein, our CFO, will provide details around our financial results, and then we'll be happy to take your questions. Our third quarter demonstrated continued progress and revenue growth of 14%, primarily related to our delivery of the first season of Surfside Girls, which debuted on Apple TV in mid-August. As we move toward the close of our fiscal year at the end of October, We also expect to realize revenue and bottom line contributions from the fourth quarter delivery of season three of Lock and Key. With our heightened focus on original content, we're encouraged by the rate at which we're adding new entertainment projects to our roster. We are committed to sharpening our focus on acquiring and developing original IP content, and we are beginning to see solid traction from our efforts to expand our publishing library. To that end, In August, we announced five series development deals with a range of well-known studios, networks, and streaming services to develop television series based on our IDW publishing and top-shelf productions, graphic novels, and comics. Our originals represent some of the most creative characters and stories available, and we look forward to continuing to tap our robust library for adaptation into compelling stories, feature films, and podcasts. with the industry's leading authors and content creators. To recap, currently we have over 100 original titles in our library with 40 new titles at various stages in the development pipeline. Our goal is to add about 40 quality original titles each year. Our original IP is an economic driver of the business and also a creative engine providing IDW access to new genres and audiences. In a noteworthy accomplishment, we recently announced our first co-development deal with Matt Silverstein and David Jesser for the launch of a comic book and television series based on the comedy sci-fi project Family Time. We have been thoughtfully working to advance our co-development strategy for some time. Through creative partnerships between our entertainment and publishing divisions, we can open up new distribution avenues for our projects with the goal of bringing compelling new content, to audiences across multiple platforms. We are seeing positive response to our original titles and heightened industry recognition of our value as a collaborative and independent creative partner. We remain focused on driving strategic growth by partnering with creators to develop iconic characters and stories that will resonate across diverse media platforms. This is a really exciting time for IDW. and we are just beginning to realize the results of a lot of work by a lot of team members. As we move through the close of 2022, we are very well positioned to drive our refocus strategy by leveraging the strength of our content library and our pipeline of new projects to continue developing new creator relationships. Likewise, our strong balance sheet provides a solid foundation as we look to grow our position as a leading independent media entity. and drive accelerated growth across all platforms. So now I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Brooke Feinstein, to go over our financials for the third quarter of 2022.