BuzzFeed, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to the BuzzFeed Incorporated first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. 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 today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, Please press star, then two. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Amita Tomkoria, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to BuzzFeed, Inc.' 's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. I'm Amita Tomkoria, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Joining us today are founder and CEO Jonah Peretti, President Marcella Martin, and CFO Felicia De La Fortuna. 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 2022 annual report on Form 10-K, and in our Q1 quarterly report on Form 10-Q. 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 gap to non-gap 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.

Thank you, Amita. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. Last quarter, I shared my vision for the future of digital media, namely that content creation would be transformed by creators and AI. With a massive direct audience across our premium brands and IP portfolio, we are poised to benefit from these trends. We have built trusted brands with awareness that it's the level of 100-year-old companies. U.S. Gen Z and millennials spend vastly more time consuming our content than that of any other digital media company in our competitive set, according to Comscore. These competitive advantages have helped us carve out a strategic position in the ecosystem of audiences, advertisers, platforms, and creators. The biggest beneficiaries of the shift to the creator economy and generative AI will be incumbents with recognizable brands and scale distribution. In Q1, Our content teams made great progress in launching new content formats to align with these trends. On creators, the next few years will be defined by creators partnering with the best media brands for credibility and community. For us, Tasty is leading this transformation in how media is made and distributed through the creation of programs to give creators the tools and skills to drive large audiences. Creator-led content has generated two times the views per video, and more than 1 billion views on Instagram alone. This gives us the conviction to extend this model to more brands. The results are amazing for everyone when creators and media companies work together, develop IP together, collaborate on new formats and frames, and jointly brainstorm with analytics from the larger BuzzFeed Inc. media network. To build on the success, we are rapidly expanding our creator program to increase both revenue and content output. Casey recently welcomed a new class of creator residents. And earlier this year, Complex launched its inaugural creator class. Turning to our progress on artificial intelligence. Broadly speaking, I believe that generative AI will begin to replace the majority of static content. Audiences will begin to expect all content to be personalized, interactive, dynamic with embedded intelligence. Formats that were developed before the AI revolution and many other formats and conventions of the media industry will need to be updated and adapted or begin to feel stale and outdated. This is why BuzzFeed has been investing in AI-powered content and launching new formats like Infinity Quizzes and chatbot games. In the past two months, we've seen time spent increase by more than 40% when a quiz is AI-powered compared to legacy quizzes. And our first chatbot game under the influencer had an average time spent four times higher than time spent on static quizzes. Looking ahead, We are rapidly prototyping new generative AI formats, including quizzes and chatbots, that will scale in the coming months. We have also made significant strategic and organizational changes to position the business for long-term growth. Last month, we completed a strategic reprioritization across the company in order to accelerate our progress in the areas of creators and AI. and translate this exciting work into new revenue opportunities that will help us re-accelerate growth. Specifically, we have significantly reduced our fixed cost structure and aligned resources with the formats and platforms we believe will propel our future growth, refocused our flagship BuzzFeed brand on entertainment, and announced the closure of our platform-dependent news brand, BuzzFeed News, to focus on growing the significant direct audience at HuffPost, and anchored our go-forward strategy in the areas that we believe represent our biggest opportunities to drive long-term growth and monetization. These changes, in addition to the momentum we have built in growing audience reach and engagement around new platforms and formats, position us to close the gap in monetization and accelerate our revenue growth. We are committed to building a business that delivers significant margin expansion and generates strong cash flows over time. I am grateful for the support of our shareholders as we continue to transform our business in this new era of digital media. And I'm honored to work alongside our talented teams of creators, journalists, producers, and all our employees as we continue to lead the industry forward in an unwavering commitment to our mission to spread truth, joy, and creativity on the Internet. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing you at our upcoming Virtual Investor Day this Thursday. I'll now hand the call off to Marcella to discuss our business performance and operational highlights.