Cineverse Corp.

Good day, everyone, and thank you for joining us, and welcome to the Cineverse Corp. First Quarter Fiscal Year 2026 Financial Results Conference Call. My name is Aiden, and I will be your operator today. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. If you have dialed into today's call, please press star 9 to raise your hand and star 6 to unmute. I would now like to turn the call over to Gary Lafredo, Chief Legal Officer, Secretary, and Senior Advisor for Cineverse. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the Cineverse Fiscal Year 2026 First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. The press release announcing Cineverse's results for the fiscal first quarter ended June 30th, 2025 is available at the Investors Section of the company's website at www.cineverse.com. A replay of this broadcast will also be made available at the Cineverse website after the conclusion of this call. Before we begin, I would like to point out that certain statements made on today's call contain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. The company's periodic reports that are filed with the SEC describe potential risks and uncertainties that could cause the company's business and financial results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements. All the information discussed on this call is as of today, August 14, 2025, and Cineverse does not assume any obligation to update any of these forward-looking statements except as required by law. In addition, certain financial information presented in this call represent non-GAAP financial measures, and we encourage you to read our disclosures and the reconciliation tables to applicable GAAP measures in our earnings release carefully as you consider these metrics. I am Gary Lofretto, Chief Legal Officer, Secretary and Senior Advisor at Cineverse. With me today are Chris McGurk, Chairman and CEO, Eric Opica, President and Chief Strategy Officer, Tony Widor, President of Technology and Chief Product Officer, Mark Lindsay, Chief Financial Officer, Yolanda Macias, Chief Motions Pictures Officer, and Mark Torres, Chief People Officer, all of whom will be available for questions following the prepared remarks. On today's call, Chris will briefly discuss our fiscal year 2026 first quarter financial highlights, the latest operational developments, outlook, and long-term growth strategy. Mark will follow with a review of our financial results. Eric will provide some details on our streaming business results and operating initiatives. And Yolanda will cover our upcoming theatrical slate before opening the floor for questions. I will now turn the call over to Chris McGurk to begin.

Thanks, Gary. And thanks everyone for joining us on the call today. On our last call, Tony Huidor reviewed our technology business in some depth. following our recent reorganization, where Tony became our president of technology and chief product officer to help turbocharge our tech business. On this call, Yolanda Macias, who recently became our chief motion pictures officer, will review our theatrical business in some detail as well, since we have so rapidly built it into a surging new product line for the company. However, before Yolanda goes through that theatrical business review, Mark will detail our financial performance, and then Eric will outline our operational progress and the new initiatives across our businesses. And I will start before them by briefly reviewing some points that I believe are very important for our shareholders. First, we had another strong quarter from a revenue standpoint, with significant growth across all our key lines of business. Operating margins also increased markedly from the first quarter of last year. Investments in SG&A and marketing to support our expanding theatrical releasing business and build out our technology product business development and sales team impacted our adjusted EBITDA and net income. However, we expect to begin to see some strong returns from these investments beginning in our fiscal second quarter that we are currently halfway through. Mark will get into more detail on all that in just a minute. Second, the toxic Avenger unrated hits theaters in two weeks on August 29th. We are pleased with the reaction to the film so far, particularly the response to the movie cast and director at Comic-Con, where we got major studio level panel placement in the main hall and lots of attention. Yolanda will get into more detail on the release and marketing strategy in a few minutes. But now I want to emphasize the economic comparison of this film to Terrifier 3 from a Centiverse standpoint. Like Terrifier 3, our all-in investment to acquire and release the Toxic Avenger is less than $5 million. That in and of itself generates a really favorable risk-reward profile for us, with an extremely low Ultimate Box Office breakeven of between $5 to $10 million and significant upside beyond that. However, The risk reward profile on Toxic Avenger gets even better than that, since we completely bought out the film from the producers for all North American rights in perpetuity. That means we completely own the entire stream of studio and producer revenues and profits that the Toxic Avenger will generate in all media domestically forever. And we don't have to share that with anyone. Obviously, that's an extremely advantageous position that I have never seen replicated for a major studio production such as this one. Third, we added a great high potential new film to our slate that we're very proud to have acquired, Air Bud Returns. We believe this amazing, beloved family film and TV franchise, formerly set up at the Walt Disney Company for over two decades under the creative guidance and ownership of producer Robert Vince, is a built-in audience that is all primed for a wide-release theatrical revival in late summer of 2026. Our recent announcement that Buddy the Golden Retriever is returning to the big screen has already garnered a huge positive reaction from fans and the media. both traditional and social. The announcement was featured on Good Morning America, the Today Show, and People Magazine, among many, many other outlets. Finally, just yesterday, we announced a 50-50 joint venture for MicroCo, a new studio and platform for MicroSeries, a market projected to reach $10 billion by 2027. Our partner for MicroCo is Lloyd Braun's Banyan Ventures, Lloyd is the former chairman of ABC Entertainment and the former chairman of WME. Joining this venture as CEO is Jana Winograde, the very talented former president of Showtime Networks, and also Susan Rovner as chief creative officer, the also very talented former chairman of NBC Universal Television and Streaming. The goal here is to be a first mover domestically in this rapidly growing new market by taking advantage the demonstrated capabilities of this elite leadership team, while fully leveraging Cineverse's unique set of streaming, content, technology, marketing, and AI assets to create no less than the Netflix of micro series in a low-cost, AI native, fan-forward environment. All the investments we have made over the years in technology, Mike Binford, AI content and streaming have given us a tremendous advantage in dramatically lowering entry costs to this business, as well as accelerating speed to market and scale Eric will explain all this in more detail in just a few minutes. In many ways, we are entering this micro series business for the exact same reason we entered the wide release film business, because we have assembled a unique set of next generation assets that create a compelling competitive advantage versus everyone else in the business. These assets enable us to break all the traditional rules and economic models that burden everyone else in the industry and should lead to significant value creation. And with that, I'll turn things over to Mark for a financial update. Mark.