Gaia, Inc.

Good afternoon. Welcome to GAIA's first quarter 2025 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Joining us today from GAIA are Yurka Versavi, Executive Chairman, James Calhoun, CEO, and Ned Preston, CFO. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Before we begin, GAIA's management team would like to remind everyone that management's prepared remarks contain forward-looking statements, and management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions, including not limited to statements of expectations, future events, or future financial performance. These statements do not guarantee future performance, and therefore, undue reliance should not be placed upon them. Although we believe these expectations are reasonable, Gaia management undertakes no obligation to revise any statements to reflect changes that occur after this call. Actual events or results can differ materially. These statements are based on current expectations of the company's management and involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including those identified in the risk factors section of Gaia's latest annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC. All non-GAAP financial measures referenced in today's call are reconciled on the company's earnings press release to the most directly comparable GAAP measure. This call also contains time-sensitive information that is accurate only as of the time and date of this broadcast, May 12, 2025. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being A webcast and a recording will be made available for replay on GAIA's investor relations website at ir.gai.com. I will now turn the call over to GAIA's Executive Chairman, Jericho Wasabi. Thank you. Go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone. During the first quarter, we continued to deliver on positive free cash flow and double-digit growth. The revenue increased 12% and gross profit 15%. Gross margin improved to 87.8%, up from 85.4% in the year-ago quarter. For the remainder of the year, we expect the gross margin to be in a range of 86% to 87%. Earnings were in line with expectation. Our member growth, member count grew to 867,000, and we are now focusing on high lifetime value members. Our annualized gross profit per employee increased to over $800,000, up from $680,000 a year ago. And with that, I'll turn the call over to James.

Thank you, Juerka, and good afternoon, everyone. Q1 was a solid start to the year. We saw continued momentum from 2024 carry forward with double-digit revenue growth and significant margin expansion. We're also seeing very strong progress in the strategic pillars we outlined during our capital raise in February. Following the $8 million offering, we've accelerated development of our generative AI product and the Gaia community platform. On the AI side, we're on track to launch Gaia's Conscious AI Companion on or before our next scheduled price increase in early 2026. Early internal testing has been exceptional, and a recent research from Harvard shows that discovering one's purpose is now the third most common use case for generative AI, and it's exactly the niche that Gaia is built to serve, and we believe the product market fit here could be profound. As we look to the future, Gaia is fully embracing an AI-first strategy, joining a growing number of companies like Duolingo, Google Matter, and Canva that are re-architecting their businesses around generative AI. These companies are demonstrating how AI can streamline operations, reduce costs, and significantly boost productivity across functions. And for Gaia, this shift is not just about enhancing the user experience, that this remains a key priority. It's also about building a leaner, more agile organization that can scale intelligently. By integrating AI into our content management, localization, and member engagement workflows, we expect to increase speed to market, reduce manual overhead, and optimize how our teams operate. These efficiencies will allow us to reallocate resources to our areas of highest impact, such as community building, experiential offerings, and our conscious content development, whilst also delivering greater value to shareholders and members alike. In the coming quarters, you'll see us focus on optimizing marketing using AI, personalized content discovery with recommendations, and enhanced member support using intelligent systems. These investments are designed not only to support long-term ARPU growth, but also to expand gross profit per employee, making Gaia a more resilient, scalable business as we continue our mission to serve the global conscious community. On the community front, we've made meaningful progress in building our infrastructure and preparing for international meetups and chapter-based engagement. Community is the final differentiator for Gaia and will set us apart from every other streaming service in the market, and build the network effect around our content ecosystem. During Q1, Gaia Marketplace revenue was lower compared to our expectations, which led to us missing revenue by approximately 1%. However, this did not affect our earnings or free cash flow. This was primarily due to a US Level 3 travel advisory for Egypt issued in October 2024, And Intrepid Travel have reported a 30% decline in bookings. And tourist travel overall is hovering around just 45% of pre-conflict levels. Because we were heavily weighted on Egypt trips in the first half of the year, this impacted our performance in that business line. We've since pivoted. In Q2, we launched a Peru-based tour that has already sold out. We have additional inventory coming online later this year. And while Q2 may remain softer than we had originally anticipated, on the marketplace side, We expect to perform in line with expectation for marketplace revenue in the back half of the year. Despite this, the core business continues to grow meaningfully as we scale towards our next milestones. With strong member retention and expanding Gaia Plus base and continued top line growth, we are well positioned for the year ahead. During our recent board discussions, we explored a number of high impact growth accelerators across both Gaia and Igniton. These include deeper content and technology licensing opportunities and expanded strategic partnerships. After careful reflection, I've decided to take on this mandate full-time in the role of Chief Business Development Officer. In order to fully pursue these growth opportunities, I'll be transitioning the CEO role to our president, Kirsten Medvedich, effective at the end of Q2, and she will be on the next earnings call. Kirsten has been with Gaia for nine years, has an esteemed background in content with Sony Television, and has been instrumental in scaling operations and delivering consistent performance across the business. I have complete confidence in her ability to lead Gaia through its next phase. Additionally, given our audience is over 70% female, this leadership evolution is in alignment with our global growing community and mission. This change will allow me to dedicate my focus towards unlocking the next level of expansion across both businesses and add the most meaningful value to the mission and organization. I look forward to continuing to support the leadership team in my new capacity and to helping realize the full potential of Gaia and Ignaton. Now, I'll pass over to Ned for the financials.