BuzzFeed, Inc.

Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to BuzzFeed, Inc.'s second quarter 2026 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 today, Juliana Clifton, VP of Communications. Please go ahead.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to BuzzFeed, Inc. I'm Juliana Clifton, VP of Communications for BuzzFeed. Joining me today are Chairman and CEO Byron Allen, Head of BuzzFeed AI 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, Form 10-Q to be 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 margins. 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 margins are relevant and useful information for investors because they allow investors to view performance in a manner similar to the methods used by our management. A reconciliation of these GAAP to non-GAAP measures is included in today's earnings press release. Please refer to our Investor Relations website to find today's press release. Now, I'll pass the call over to Byron Allen.

Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and thanks for joining us. BuzzFeed, Tasty, and HuffPost are strong, recognizable brands that have loyal users. I saw an opportunity and made a meaningful investment as I believe in these brands. With that said, we made it clear on our last earnings call that these businesses were carrying an unsustainable cost structure and a restructure was immediately needed. So last week we took steps to reduce headcount across the entire company by approximately 35% to better align our cost base with the underlying business. Thank you for watching. Now that my investment in Buzzfeed is officially complete, I want to share how energized I am by what we're building at Buzzfeed and the progress we're making to put our business on a path to profitability and sustainable growth. What has become clear to me is how strong of a brand we have in Buzzfeed. Buzzfeed shopping generates roughly a half a billion dollars a year in gross merchandise sales. and HuffPost has a very loyal and direct audience. BuzzFeed, HuffPost and Tasty have approximately 500 million social media followers. We also have nearly 75 million monthly active users. In terms of time spent, as reported by Comscore, we consistently bring in more than 60 million hours per quarter. generally outpacing the majority of our competitive set, which includes People, Inc., Condé Nast, Hearst, and Vox Media. Now that our brands and business lines are no longer burdened by excessive cost and debt, we have the opportunity to unlock tremendous value for shareholders and partners. That foundation is the perfect platform to launch and grow exciting new business lines and editorial extensions. We are moving quickly to build on top of it, pursuing distribution partnerships and transactions to get us there faster. Look for BuzzFeed to make transformative moves into comedy, weather, sports, music, podcasts, news, premium content and live events that will accelerate our growth. I am very excited to share that BuzzFeed has entered into a sales representation agreement with Allen Media Group, engaging AMG Sales Organization to expand monetization of BuzzFeed's advertising inventory and give brands and agencies another point of entry to build campaigns spanning premium television, streaming, local broadcast, and digital-first media. Under the agreement, AMG's sales organization serves as an extension of the BuzzFeed sales team, positioning BuzzFeed, HuffPost, and Tasty alongside AMG's broader portfolio, including national linear television, affiliate local broadcast stations, 24-hour cable networks, the Weather Channel, the Griot, CBS Late Night, and Local Now. Advertisers gain one coordinated sales relationship instead of two separate conversations, while Buzzfeed retains full authority over pricing, packaging, and inventory across every transaction. The agreement is designed to strengthen Buzzfeed's presence in the marketplace. Pairing AMG's long-standing advertiser and agency relationships with BuzzFeed's scale to deliver expanded cross-platform solutions for advertisers and making both companies much more competitive in this multi-platform environment. I have spent over 30 years building those kinds of relationships, and BuzzFeed now has access to all of them. The opportunity we have is enormous. as we pursue our number one goal, making BuzzFeed a best-in-class, free streaming service and a super app. And now, I'll hand it over to Jonah to walk us through our operational progress. Jonah?

Thank you, Byron. It has been an honor to partner with you on this next stage of BuzzFeed. I share the feelings of my colleagues at BuzzFeed when I say I'm very grateful for Ryland's investment in BuzzFeed. Byron has set us up for a new beginning and a bright future. Looking ahead, our focus is clear. We must get our core business back to profitability so we have a strong, sustainable foundation to build on. Last week, we took necessary steps to lower our costs, bringing our overall spending in line, and positioning us for greater growth. These changes were about setting the stage to execute on Byron's bold vision and dramatically improve how BuzzFeed operates. The value of our brands and the depth of our audience relationships remain our greatest strengths. but to capture the full opportunity ahead, our business model has to evolve. We are shifting from traditional publishing model to a true platform where our community creators and partners actively fuel our content ecosystem. To support this transformation, we are making fundamental shifts across our organization. We're developing new models for editorial and tech supported by AI that keeps human creativity at the core. In editorial, we are adopting a more flexible production model by pairing a smaller core team of talented writers with community creators, fellows, and freelancers. Our costs will naturally scale with traffic rather than staying high when audience trends shift. In tech, we have streamlined our teams and sharpened their focus directly on our highest revenue growth priorities. We have also continued to transform the way we work with widespread adoption of AI tools, allowing us to triple the amount of code we produce on a monthly basis. Thanks, Jonah.

As noted earlier, we made the difficult decision to eliminate positions across the entire company and execute an approximately 35% reduction in our workforce. This reduction in workforce is expected to yield approximately $30 million in annualized savings, at a cost of approximately $6.5 to $8.5 million, paid throughout the rest of the year. We're also realizing millions in additional cost savings in other ways. During the quarter, we terminated an office space in the UK, that commenced right before the pandemic. This is expected to save us approximately $5 million throughout 2029. We've also materially reduced our outsourced professional fees. We have strict limits on nonessential travel and entertainment. We've enacted hiring freezes and closed open rules. We've also paid down $20 million against our term loan, bringing down our principal balance to $25 million, which is a net debt balance of approximately $5 million as of June 30, 2026. This reduction in our term loan is expected to save more than $2 million in interest expense annually. Now that our operating expenses are stabilized, our focus is leveraging our strengths to grow the business. Given the transformation underway, we are focused on full-year operational targets rather than quarterly guidance. As the restructuring and platform transition progress, we expect to provide investors with a more complete financial outlook. What we can say definitively today is that the cost structure is coming down, the profitable parts of the business are being prioritized, and the platform we are building has a large and real addressable market. I will now walk through our second quarter 2026 financial results in detail. Total revenue for the three months ended June 30, 2026 was $36.3 million, compared to $46.4 million in Q2 2025, a decrease of 21.8% year over year. Advertising revenue decreased by $5.3 million for the three months ended June 30, 2026. Content revenue decreased by $700,000 for the three months ended June 30, 2026. And commerce and other revenue decreased by $4.1 million for the three months ended June 30, 2026. Net loss was $11.8 million for Q2 2026, compared to a net loss of $10.6 million in Q2 2025. The restructuring charges related to the cost reduction actions will appear in Q3. Adjusted EBITDA was negative $1.7 million for Q2 2026, compared to a positive $2 million in Q2 2025. On time spent, our primary audience engagement metric, Q2 2026 was 62.3 million hours compared to 69.9 million hours in Q2 2025, according to Comscore, a decrease of 11% year-over-year. Time spent increased by 1.7 million hours relative to Q1. That's all for now, and I'll hand the call back over to the operator. Thank you.

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program.