CuriosityStream Inc.

Good day, and thank you for staying by. Welcome to the CuriosityStream Q2 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'll need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Denise Garcia, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Maddie. Hello. Welcome to CuriosityStream's discussion of its second quarter 2021 financial results. Leading the discussion today are Clint Stinchcomb, 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 June 30th, 2021, when filed. In addition, reference will be made to non-GAAP financial measures. Now it's time to call over to Clint.

Thank you, Denise. I'd like to thank everyone for joining our second 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'll 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. Curiosity is the global factual entertainment brand for people who want to know more. We are deeply rooted in our passion for enchanting and informative storytelling and our strong direct subscription service with approximately 20 million paying subscribers across our platforms and distributors. We are committed to producing, acquiring, and distributing the best content across every genre of the factual category, and our original programming this year is resonating more than ever. Unlike many streaming services that rely on one line of revenue, we are delivering strong top line growth on a multifaceted revenue stack anchored by recurring subscription revenues and industry leading retention. Let me talk about the second quarter. I'm pleased to report another quarter of robust growth in our direct subscription business where we grew subscribers 56% year over year. New subscribers are joining our service at a rapid clip and the annual anniversaries for subscribers who signed up during the most significant periods of the COVID lockdown have passed. We have successfully navigated retaining those users better than anyone else in the industry. There were some concerns about an uptick in churn affecting our business when COVID lockdowns in the U.S. lifted, but in fact, we retained in Q2 2021 a higher percentage of users who signed up in Q2 2020 than any other streaming service, including Netflix. Our monthly churn remained in the low single digits during the quarter as we continued to lead the streaming industry in subscriber retention. We were also pleased to announce a partnership with Spiegel TV, the iconic media brand and leading producer and distributor of high-quality factual content for German-speaking audiences. This distribution partnership bolsters our global reach by adding millions of subscribers in Europe. It accelerates our growth through the addition of hundreds of hours of German-dubbed programming to our subscription video on-demand service and extends our brand through the introduction of the Curiosity Channel in German-speaking Europe. This deal demonstrates our commitment to prioritizing strong performing international markets and expanding globally through strategic distribution partnerships. It substantially increases our profile in Europe, which we believe sets the stage for accelerated subscriber growth in the region. Revenue in the second quarter grew 55%. compared to Q1 of 2021, to $15.3 million, 55%. Driven by continued strength in direct subscription revenue, content licensing also contributing to our success in the quarter. Paid subscribers increased 40% year-over-year to approximately $20 million, up from $16 million at the end of the first quarter, on strong double-digit growth across our streaming business. We continue to expect a robust second half of 2021 and are confirming our full year revenue guidance with $71 million for 2021. Fundamentals of our streaming businesses were exceptionally strong during the second quarter, led by low direct consumer subscriber churn, which was relatively flat on both the year over year and quarter over quarter basis. According to Antenna, a media analytics provider, CuriosityStream led the streaming industry in subscriber retention for the 13 months ended in May of this year. As of the end of May, we had retained 72% of subscribers who joined our service during the height of the pandemic in April 2020. We had Netflix at 71%, Disney at 55%, Hulu at 52%, HBO Max at 41%, and Apple TV Plus at 17%. We believe our industry-low churn demonstrates the high value of our service as well as the success of our annual subscription strategy. While our competitors typically have one month to prove the value of their service, we have an entire year to train our algorithms and to learn and to serve our subscribers the content that best suits their preferences. We believe our industry-leading subscriber retention was especially impressive in the context of the second quarter of 2021, as annual subscribers who took advantage of promotional pricing last year renewed their subscriptions at this year's higher RAC rates. Higher renewal pricing combined with a higher proportion of premium subscriptions as we enhanced the value of our premium tier offering drove a quarter-over-quarter increase in direct consumer average revenue per user, which we expect to continue. We are encouraged by these favorable trends and are as excited as ever about the long-term growth prospects of our subscription business. We believe the long-term growth prospects of our subscription business will be further enhanced by our recently announced partnership with Spiegel TV. International expansion has always been a key pillar of our growth strategy, with our success to date largely driven by distribution deals with pay TV operators worldwide. Our partnership with Spiegel TV extends well beyond a typical distribution deal, as it includes the introduction of a Curiosity-branded linear channel in Germany-speaking Europe, which will help raise our brand awareness to millions of people. in addition of hundreds of hours of German-dub programming to our subscription video-on-demand service. This channel will continue to be operated by the current management team, led by our good friend, business associate, and talented leader, Patrick Earle from Authentic, and Michael Klopp from Spiegel TV. Germany is currently one of CuriosityStream's top three non-English-speaking markets. We expect this partnership to accelerate our direct-to-consumer subscriber growth in German-speaking countries and beyond. A partnership with Spiegel TV more firmly establishes CuriosityStream in Europe. Over the longer term, as we expand our language customization, we believe Europe represents a vast direct-to-consumer opportunity with hundreds of millions of affluent broadband subscribers. Unlike many traditional media companies, our international expansion opportunity is less hampered by fractured rights issues and is greatly enhanced by how well our content travels. We continue to deliver unique, relevant, and insightful perspectives on our world through groundbreaking new content. During the quarter, we premiered the six-part docuseries, Doug to the Rescue, featuring aerial cinematographer and drone pilot Doug Thrawn. Now, this series gives viewers an inside look at what happens to animals, both wild and domestic, on the ground in the aftermath of a natural disaster. From hurricanes to wildfires, Doug travels to the hardest-hit areas using next-gen drone technology to find animals who are stranded or left behind, and it gets them back safely to their owners or to their natural habitat. Doug really tapped the cultural zeitgeist. She was profiled on Good Morning America, Access Hollywood, Rachel Ray, and in a beautiful layout in People Magazine last week. Throughout the quarter, we also premiered three new episodes of our landmark original series, Engineering the Future. which explores the spectacular next-generation eco-machines that could revolutionize life as we know it. Now, on the opposite end of the spectrum, five new episodes of our tentpole original, Ancient Engineering, which reveals how key technological innovations from our distant past continue to give rise to some of our greatest engineering achievements today. Both series delivered some of our strongest premieres to date and have already been greenlit for second seasons in 2022. as part of our strategy to better engage viewers with popular, brand-defining, returnable series. Another returnable series we premiered was the most recent season of Fourth and Forever, which profiles iconic high school football programs in the U.S., where football is merely the prism from which to tell the stories of the people in their community. This season, we embedded with Alcoa High in East Tennessee, an extraordinary school that did not just embrace diversity and integration, but became a much stronger community and a football powerhouse because of it. We also premiered the first four episodes of our landmark series, Faster, Humanity's Quest to Save Time, a quirky, smart, and engaging series I encourage you to watch, along with all of the other premieres I mentioned. We continue to invest in the distinct content that we believe defines us, nature, history, science, travel, and every category in the factual genre. We will offer more new originals this year than any time in our history. We are 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. I'm excited to announce that more recently we were nominated for an Emmy Award in the category of Outstanding Science and Technology Documentary for the Mars episode of our epic eight-part series, Secrets of the Solar Systems. It's an honor to be among the nominees and to be recognized for creating such high-quality science programs. With our strong balance sheet, robust subscriber momentum, a sturdy beachhead in German-speaking Europe, a strong team, and a leading factual content library and streaming, we are executing in a manner that makes us enthusiastic about the remainder of 2021 and beyond. I'd now like to turn the presentation over to our CFO, Jason Eustis, for some financial highlights.