IDW Media Holdings Class B

Good evening and welcome to the IDW Media Holdings fourth quarter and full year 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 the star key, then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, Please press the star key, then 2. I will now turn the call over to Jen Belladeau of IMS Investor Relations.

Good evening. I'll take a brief moment to read the safe harbor. 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 file. 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. With that out of the way, I'll turn the conference over to Alan Grassman. Please go ahead, Alan.

Thank you, and thank you to everyone on the call for joining us. It's great to have you with us. My remarks today will provide an overview of our strategy and execution for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2022, which closed October 31st, 2022. Additionally, now with just about five months in the CEO seat, I'll provide some thoughts around our vision for IDW and our strategy moving forward. After my remarks, Brooke Feinstein, our CFO, will provide details around our financial results, and then we'll be happy to take your questions. So, onto our results. Brooke will provide a deeper dive, but at a high level, we finished 2022 with strong fourth quarter results, including consolidated revenue growth of 48%, enhanced operating results, and improved profitability. Our delivery of the third season of Lock and Key during the quarter was the primary driver of this revenue growth. For the full year fiscal 2022, we achieved consolidated revenue growth of 11%, which included delivery of seasons two and three of Lock and Key, as well as season one of Surfside Girls. We also made progress improving our full year operating results and profitability as compared to fiscal year 2021. Now let's look to the future and where we're going in the coming year. We have spoken about our heightened focus on leveraging what we believe is one of the most valuable intellectual property libraries in our industry. With hundreds of titles in our library today and hundreds of submissions coming in each year, our robust library is constantly growing. To frame how this creates tremendous opportunity for IDW, let me step back a bit to go through the basics of our strategy. IDW, along with its top shelf imprint, is a leading publisher of traditional comics as well as graphic novels, and we work with some of the best-known creators in the industry to publish original titles for all audiences, kids, tweens, teens, and adults. And some examples of titles you may recognize are March by the late Congressman John Lewis, They Called Us Enemy by George Takai, and Lock and Key by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez. These are well-known personalities and creators, and we're pleased to call them partners. Our publishing team also reviews hundreds of submissions every year from first-time or as yet undiscovered creators with the goal of identifying intriguing new stories and characters. With our solid content foundation and unique ability to find and publish new original and creative concepts, IDW is well positioned to release and capitalize on exciting new visions. We focus on attracting top talent and acquiring original content so that our team can identify which submissions have the best opportunity to move from creative idea published work to entertainment vehicle to financial success. And in today's environment of multiple media platforms, that entertainment vehicle can take many shapes. It could be a television show, a streaming series, a feature film, a podcast, or perhaps even a short form video. So at its core, our strategy is fairly simple. Continue to increase our industry recognition as the creative partner of choice so that we are presented with the best content from the most talented creators. That's our first goal. Our second is to publish comics and graphic novels that resonate with broad audiences and are successful. And our third goal is to develop those published content, graphic novels, and comics into entertainment vehicles like TV shows, feature films, podcasts, and other media platforms. To date, our success stories include Lock and Key, Surfside Girls, Winona Earp, V Wars, and October Faction. We are confident that there are more successes to come, and we currently have about 10 entertainment projects in place being developed. At this time last year, we had virtually no new development deals to speak of. Having said that, it takes time to develop a premier entertainment project from the idea to having an agreement to getting it into production, getting it delivered, and achieving success. Predicting that timing is difficult, and I, along with the entire executive team, know how frustrating that can be to shareholders. It is the nature of our business. We are focused on what we can control, growing IDW's reputation as the creative partner of choice. so that we continue to see submissions of excellent material from inventive creators to continue to expand our library, while also identifying creative material that we believe can go the distance on a variety of media platforms. From what I've seen and experienced during my first five months as CEO, I believe our company is in the early stages of realizing its enormous potential. Looking into 2023, We are focusing on various strategic initiatives on the publishing side to enhance our marketing and also to drive efficiency. We see tremendous opportunity for IDW publishing and IDW entertainment to continue to work together to optimize the financial returns of the intellectual properties which we control. And we will keep you apprised as we move through the year. Over the medium to long term, our company is very well positioned to scale revenue and drive more consistent and enhanced profitability. As we move through 2023, we have a lot of work ahead. Ultimately, we are well positioned to leverage the strength of our content library and to drive our project pipeline. IDW is a respected brand, and we, the entire management team, are energized to discover new ideas and creators as we continue to grow our position as a leading independent media entity and to drive accelerated growth across all our platforms. Long-term investors will be rewarded. Now, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Brooke Feinstein, to go over our financials for the fourth quarter of 2022. Thank you, Alan.