CuriosityStream Inc.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the CuriosityStream first quarter earnings 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 1 on your telephone keypad. Thank you. I'll now turn the conference over to Denise Garcia with Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Welcome to CuriosityStream's discussion of its first quarter 2021 financial results. Leading the discussion today are Clint Finchcombe, CuriosityStream's Chief Executive Officer, and Jason Eustis, CuriosityStream's Chief Financial Officer. Following management's prepared remarks, we will be happy to take your questions. But first, I'll review the Safe Harbor Statement. During this call, we may make statements related to our business that are forward-looking statements under the federal securities laws. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, but rather are subject to a variety of risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Our actual results could differ materially from expectations reflected in any forward-looking statements. Please be aware that any forward-looking statements reflect management's current views only, and the company undertakes no obligation to revise or update these statements, nor to make additional forward-looking statements in the future. For a discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to our SEC filings available on the SEC website and on our Investor Relations website, as well as the risks and other important factors discussed in today's press release. Additional information will also be set forth in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the three months ended March 31, 2021, when filed. In addition, reference will be made to non-GAAP financial measures. Now, I'll turn the call over to Clint.

Thank you, Denise. I would like to thank everyone for joining our first quarter 2021 earnings call. I'm delighted to have with us today our COO and General Counsel, Tia Cudahy, our CFO, Jason Eustace, and our Chief Product Officer and EVP of Content Strategy, Devin Emery. After my comments, I will turn the call over to our CFO, Jason Eustace, to review the financials. At the close of Jason's remarks, we will open up the call for questions. CuriosityStream's mission is to provide premium factual entertainment that informs, enchants, and inspires. As a pure play streaming service, we are capitalizing on current and emerging worldwide trends favoring on-demand content. Our sturdy and robust business model with multiple avenues of content monetization in our differentiated content offering provides us with several key competitive advantages. In our focus on factual content, which has longevity and engaging appeal across multiple demographics and geographies, is key to our success. Let me talk about the first quarter. I'm pleased to report robust growth in our direct subscription businesses, where we grew subscribers over 80% year over year during the quarter. These are our high-value subscribers, and we are adding them at a rapid clip. We will continue to delight our customers through high-quality content additions and product innovations, which you will see from us in the coming quarters. We're also pleased to announce that we have acquired One Day University, a founder-led company which shares our core value of providing inspiring, engaging, and informative content for people who want to know more. One Day University features over 500 unique talks and lectures from the best professors from over 150 colleges and universities in the United States. This is a milestone acquisition for our company that will fortify and enhance our long-term direct-to-consumer digital proposition to a broader factual audience, and also enable us to leverage the promotional power and reach of their enchanting live events as the world opens up. I'll provide more details later in the call. Revenue in the first quarter grew 33% year-over-year to $9.9 million, driven by continued strength in direct subscription revenue, with program sales and sponsorship also contributing to our success in the quarter. As we've noted on previous earnings calls, third-party revenue growth can be lumpy and difficult to forecast precisely due to deal timing. We continue to expect a robust second half and now have 90% of our full-year revenue goal of $71 million committed, up from 80% at the end of last year. With over $178 million of cash investments on our balance sheet at the end of the quarter, we are in an excellent position to invest in growth. We've always been opportunistic in our pursuit of profitable growth, and we see a great deal of opportunity in the current environment. We will take advantage of our low customer acquisition costs, continuing to invest in marketing, and according to our plan, we will continue to pursue strategic opportunities such as the one-day university acquisition we announced today. One-day use direct consumer services include live streams and Q&A events five days per week, premium multi-part courses, and access to a proprietary library of hundreds of entertaining and informative lectures on science, history, art, politics, and more. Think of One Day U as a master class for academia, which appeals to an interested and curious customer base. The digital education and edutainment industries are growing at an accelerated rate following the pandemic, which expanded market awareness and engagement. As an example, Coursera grew its registered learner base by 65% in 2020, up from 24% growth in 2019. One Day University was founded as a location-based entertainment company, which pre-COVID would hold 60 to 70 live events per year. One Day U pivoted to streaming following the COVID outbreak and launched its F-Spot service in April of last year. A year later, this service has experienced the same tailwinds from COVID that many have and is growing. One Day U's content is highly complementary to our existing library. And with our more advanced technology platform and marketing resources, we see a tremendous opportunity to accelerate subscriber growth. We're really excited to work with the company's brilliant, visionary founder, Stephen Schragus, after this acquisition to accelerate One Day U's growth and enhance the value proposition of our direct services. We're always looking for creative ways to grow our business and enhance our service offerings, so when we identify a strategic growth opportunity like One Day U, we will aggressively pursue it. We have other opportunities in our pipeline, which would improve our value proposition, expand our distribution, and accelerate subscriber growth, which we look forward to announcing in the coming months. Continue to optimize our business to our North Star metrics, revenue and paying subscribers. At the end of the first quarter, we increased total subscribers 28% compared to the first quarter of 2020 to approximately 16 million, with direct subscribers increasing 80%. We continue to deliver unique, relevant, insightful perspectives on our world through groundbreaking new content. During the quarter, we premiered the three-part original series, Ancient Yellowstone, which reveals the stunning array of past and present life that's been discovered beneath the hot springs and snow-capped mountains of Yellowstone National Park. The series was shot entirely during the pandemic, and the first episode had more viewers in its first week than any other program to date. In March, we premiered Nature Through Her Eyes, beautiful four-part series about some of the world's greatest female natural history photographers and cinematographers. It opened on International Women's Day during a special Jackson Wild Film Festival event that highlighted the enormous challenges that female filmmakers face and the unique perspective they bring to capturing the natural world. At the end of the quarter, we also premiered the first five episodes of our 10-part landmark original series, Ancient Engineering. which reveals how major advances in design gave rise to some of the greatest structures in history and how these century-old building techniques continue to shape our world to this day. Many more of the new landmark original series we recently announced are also rapidly nearing completion, including Rescue Chimpanzees of the Congo with Jane Goodall, The Royals in Color, Doug to the Rescue, and Faster, Humanity's Quest to Save Time. Production is also well underway on some of our most ambitious feature docs, including a biopic on groundbreaking Black American aviator Bessie Coleman and Haval, the gripping story of why Hollywood actor Michael Enright gave up everything to fight alongside Kurdish forces in Syria during their long and brutal war against ISIS. We continue to invest in the distinct content that defines us, nature, history, science, travel, in every category in the factual genre. We will offer more new originals this year than any time in our history. We're exploring all options to expand a library that is already unrivaled and goes deeper than anyone into the topics our viewers already care about or have yet to discover. We're extremely well capitalized at the end of the first quarter with over $178 million of cash and investments on our balance sheet. Cash flow during the quarter benefited from our follow-on offering, which raised approximately $94 million in proceeds. We also received $55 million during the quarter from warrant exercises. With our strong balance sheet, robust direct subscriber growth, and the leading factual content library and streaming, we are excited about our prospects for the remainder of the year and beyond. And as we have 90% of our year-end revenue target committed, we are on track to achieve our year-end revenue goal for 2021. I'd like now to turn the presentation over to our CFO, Jason Eustace.