BuzzFeed, Inc.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the BuzzFeed Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker for today, Amita Tomkoria, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations. Amita, please go ahead.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Welcome to BuzzFeed Inc.' 's third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. I'm Amita Tamkoria, Senior Vice President of Investor Relations, and joining me today are CEO Jonah Peretti and CFO Matt Omer. 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 2023 annual report on Form 10-K, and our Q3 2024 quarterly report on Form 10-Q filed with the SEC. 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 all for joining us today. Today's call will be focused entirely on our Q3 results. In the coming weeks, we look forward to sharing an update on our debt balance sheet Q4 financial outlook and the results of the strategic review process we initiated last year with our financial advisors. Turning to our Q3 results. We had a great... Our third quarter. To put our results into context, I want to reiterate that our primary focus this year has been on stabilizing our business. We have not wavered. In Q1, we announced the sale of Complex, through which we raised significant cash in order to pay down debt, execute restructuring plans, and improve our working capital. In doing so, we were able to reorganize the business around two of our largest high-margin and most scalable business lines in programmatic advertising and affiliate commerce. In Q2, these changes started to bear fruit in the form of improving trends across time spent, revenue, and profitability. In this quarter, I'm pleased to share that we delivered significant improvements in each of our key operating and financial measures, time spent, overall revenue growth, and adjusted EBITDA profits. on a year-over-year basis as well as versus Q2. In Q3, audience time spent grew 13% versus Q2 and 2% year-over-year to 80 million hours, outpacing our peers according to Comscore. And our flagship BuzzFeed brand continued to lead the way among its competitive set, garnering vastly more time spent overall and among its core demographic of millennial and Gen Z. We grew Q3 revenues by 7% year-over-year to $64 million, led by strong performance in both programmatic advertising and affiliate commerce. Our commerce business had a particularly impressive quarter, growing affiliate commerce revenues by 53%, including our biggest Prime Day ever in July, which outpaced even Amazon's overall Prime Day growth. Programmatic advertising revenues grew 9% year-over-year, accelerating from their Q2 pace of 3% year-over-year. We delivered adjusted EBITDA of approximately $11 million in the quarter, a nearly four-fold increase versus Q2, and a $10 million improvement versus last year when we were roughly break-even. We also grew our cash balance by $8 million versus Q2 to $54 million. These results are a testament to the hard work and resilience of our teams in executing our plans to stabilize our business in a tough environment. While we still have some hard work ahead of us, I'm confident in our ability to establish a solid foundation for the business to evolve and thrive in the next era of digital media. And I'm grateful for the support of our shareholders as we look to build on this strong performance in the year ahead. We will update you further on our go-forward plans very soon. I'll now hand the call off to Matt to share more details on our Q3 financial performance.