BuzzFeed, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the BuzzFeed Inc. Third Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star 11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker. Amita Tumkoria, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to BuzzFeed Inc.' 's third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. I'm Amita Tumkoria, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations. Joining me 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, our Q1 and Q2 quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and in our Q3 quarterly report on Form 10-Q to be filed tomorrow. 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. We continue to operate in an unprecedented environment for digital media. Last quarter, I outlined some of the challenges facing digital media companies in the current platform ecosystem, namely that audience traffic referrals from the major platforms have diminished as they continue to prioritize their own vertical video formats amid intense competition for audience share. This has a direct impact on our ability to monetize content across our portfolio of brands. As you've seen by now, this has resulted in significant year-over-year revenue declines in Q3. However, Q3 also reflects the full benefit of the restructuring actions we announced earlier this year. As a result, we were able to deliver a profitable Q3 and improvement over Q2 and last year quarter despite lower revenues. We have already taken significant steps to combat the ongoing traffic and monetization challenges. Earlier this year, we made the decision to reprioritize editorial and creative resources across the business to focus on the platforms and formats with the highest potential for long-term monetization. We also made changes to our sales organization to align with a weaker demand environment, reducing organizational layers to drive efficiency and improve sales execution. With these changes in place, we continue to be laser-focused on driving traffic directly to our owned and operated websites and apps, in order to reduce our dependence on the major tech platforms for audience traffic, improve monetization, and pivot our business to adjust to the new realities of an altered digital media landscape. Specifically, we continue to introduce new AI-assisted content formats to increase engagement and offer innovative advertising opportunities for our clients, expand our creator network and creator-driven advertising opportunities to participate in the rise of vertical video, and prioritize destination news content to grow HuffPost's front page audience. We have strong and differentiated IP across BuzzFeed, Complex, Hot Ones, First PC, Tasty, and HuffPost, each with a trusted and established brand identity. For BuzzFeed, it is pop culture, entertainment, and curating the best of the internet, using AI to shift content delivery and distribution. For Complex, it's delivering premium original content that covers the latest trends in sneakers, music, and convergence culture. For First We Feast, it is expanding the Hot Ones universe and building more IP at the intersection of food and pop culture. For Tasty, it's attracting emerging food creators and leveraging the social platforms to build community around cooking. For HuffPost, it's breaking news coverage and audience-centric stories for a massive, direct front-page audience. Across this brand portfolio, we continue to lead the industry in terms of time spent. In Q3, US Gen Z and millennials once again spent vastly more time consuming our content than that of any other digital media company in our competitive set, according to Comscore. I will highlight a few of the specific areas where we're gaining traction with direct audiences and clients alike in the areas of AI, creators, and destination news content. Starting with BuzzFeed. BuzzFeed has always been a leader in data-driven storytelling, operating at the intersection of technology and media to curate the best of the internet for our audiences. Over the past several months, the BuzzFeed editorial team has launched multiple new AI-powered content formats, from interactive quizzes to chatbot games to AI-assisted content posts. In Q3, audience traffic to our original AI content was more than 60% higher relative to our non-AI content. And both page views and time spent with our AI content grew versus Q2. Our chatbot games like Under the Influencer, The Clout Queen, will determine whether you have what it takes to make it in the world of internet influencing. And Nepogachi, where players get their very own Nepo baby to raise and bond with, have driven particularly deep audience engagement with time spent per user growing by a double-digit percentage versus Q2. Building on the success of these games with our web and app-based audiences in particular, the BuzzFeed team is working to bring even more gaming content directly to the BuzzFeed mobile app. Complex 10 poll content continued to perform strongly in Q3, attracting premium brand sponsors. Across Complex's flagship YouTube series, Sneaker Shopping, Go Talk, 360 with Speedy, and more, Q3 viewership on the platform grew approximately 40% year over year, attracting a wide variety of sponsorships from brands such as Starz and Honda. And the Complex team is preparing to host its eighth iteration of ComplexCon later this month, featuring artistic director Cactus Plant Flea Market and a performance by Grammy Award-winning rapper and producer Kid Cudi. The event will welcome thousands of fans over two days in Long Beach, California, to experience some of the world's most influential artists and brands for an immersive, culture-defining weekend of style, sneakers, art, food, and music. First We Feast, our food and pop culture brand, kicked off its season 22 of Hot Ones with guests in sync. The episode immediately went viral with multiple major news outlets covering the interview. Throughout the quarter, the show continued to drive millions of weekly viewers and attract premium brand sponsors such as Core, State Farm, and Disney. Since 2015, Hot Ones has attracted the biggest celebrity guests, garnered more than 25 billion minutes watched, received multiple Emmy nominations, and broken new ground for YouTube-endemic talk shows. And fans can't get enough. In Q3, First We Feast launched the spin-off series, Heat Eaters, as well as its latest CPG offering, Hot Ones Hot Pockets. As the Hot Ones IP continues to find success with new IP extension opportunities, it has become the blueprint, not only for digital media, but also for any entertainment brands looking to break through the noise and create true impact with audiences and consumers. Turning to Tasty, in Q3, Tasty continued to introduce new collaborations between brands and its residents, Following the success of the Tasty TikTok series, Potatoes 100 Ways, filmed by one of Tasty's inaugural residents, Jerry Mobley, Tasty launched several new vertical video series featuring original content from Tasty residents and offering new partnership opportunities for clients. Tasty also made great strides introducing new content for its app-based audience that also appeals to clients. In Q3, Tasty teamed up with Bush Beans to launch a new meal planner to Tasty app users. The campaign included custom recipe content that reached the client's target audience and drove consideration for key Bush products. In Q3, HuffPost drove record audience traffic to its homepage and web app since joining BuzzFeed more than two years ago, demonstrating the brand's consistency in attracting loyal homepage and app audiences. Also in Q3, HuffPost and BuzzFeed Studios launched a new podcast in partnership with ACAST titled Am I Doing It Wrong, which landed in the top 1% of podcasts on its first day. HuffPost's shopping content also continues to gain momentum, driving robust double-digit growth in GMB year over year during both July and October Amazon Prime Days. Across our portfolio of premium brands and IP, we reach millions of young people every day who visit us directly to enjoy our content. And with the strategic and organizational changes we executed earlier this year, we are well positioned to drive a year-over-year improvement in adjusted EBITDA in Q4 and for the full year. And we are continuing to protect our liquidity position as we work towards building a sustainable long-term model for content creation. Before closing these remarks, I'd like to thank Felicia Della Fortuna for the years that she devoted to growing BuzzFeed. Felicia has been a key executive on my team, and we wish her all the best in her new endeavors. I am honored to work alongside our talented teams of creators, journalists, producers, and all our employees as we continue to lead the industry forward with an unwavering commitment to our mission to spread truth, joy, and creativity on the internet. I'll now hand the call off to Marcela to discuss our business performance and operational highlights. Marcela.