Lionsgate Studios Corp.

Good day, and welcome to the Lionsgate third quarter 2025 earnings call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing the star key followed by zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star, then one on a touch-tone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star and then two. Please note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Neelay Shah, EVP of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for the Lionsgate Studios Corporation and Lionsgate Entertainment Corporation fiscal 2025 third quarter conference call. We'll begin with opening remarks from our CEO, John Feldheimer, followed by remarks from our CFO, Jimmy Barge. After their remarks, we'll open the call for questions. also joining us on the call today are vice chairman michael burns coo brian goldsmith chairman of the tv group kevin beggs chairman of the motion picture group adam fogelson and president of worldwide tv and digital distribution jim packer and from stars we have president and ceo jeffrey hirsch cfo scott mcdonald and president of domestic networks allison hoffman The matters discussed on the call also include forward looking statements, including those regarding the performance of future fiscal years. Such statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially and adversely from those described in the forward looking statements as a result of various factors. This includes the risk factors set forth in our public filings for Lionsgate Studios Corporation and Lionsgate Entertainment Corporation. The companies undertake no obligation to publicly release the result of any revisions to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect any future events or circumstances. I'll now turn the call over to John.

Thank you, Nealey, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. I'm pleased to report a solid quarter in which our businesses performed well in a challenging environment. Our motion picture business is back on track, converting our last three mid-budget films to significant profitability with solid box office performance, strong business models, and steady execution. Our television business continues to fight its way through the market correction, leaning into an extensive portfolio of content, shifting its business models, diversifying its buyer mix, and cutting costs. Together, they contributed to a very busy quarter with a total of 16 scripted television series, 36 unscripted series, and nine films in production. Star has returned to domestic OTT subscriber growth on a sequential basis and continued to expand its distribution footprint with key partner renewals and new bundling deals. And our library turned in another stellar performance with a record $954 million in trailing 12-month revenue as we continue to pivot to new buyers, utilize innovative windowing strategies, and incorporate advanced technologies. Now let me update you on each of our businesses. Within our Motion Picture Group, Best Christmas Pageant Ever, Den of Thieves 2 Pantera, and Flight Risk all demonstrated our strength in the mid-budget space. Last week, we announced plans to develop Den of Thieves 3. And we're already looking forward to our terrific Fiscal 26 slate. The response to our early materials on Ballerina, the first film spin-off of our John Wick franchise, indicates that it delivers the level of action and excitement John Wick fans have come to expect. Ballerina opens on June 6th. Ruben Fleischer just showed us an exciting new director's cut of the third installment of Now You See Me, extending a franchise whose first two films grossed nearly $700 million at the worldwide box office. and we're well on our way to completing production on our highly anticipated event movie, Michael. Rounding at a return to a strong, balanced, and diversified fiscal 26 slate, Frances Lawrence has completed The Long Walk, adapted from the classic Stephen King thriller, Aziz Ansari's rag-to-riches comedy, Good Fortune, starring Keanu Reeves, Seth Rogen, and Ansari, is set for an October 17th release. And Paul Feig is shooting the thriller, The Housemaid, adapted from the Runaway bestseller, and starring Sidney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried, for a Christmas Day release. In addition, we continue to welcome incredible new talent to the Lionsgate family, including Margot Robbie, whose Lucky Chap banner is developing Monopoly, acclaimed filmmaker Luca Guadagnino, directing the remake of American Psycho, and Grammy-winning recording superstar The Weeknd, whose trailer for Hurry Up Tomorrow opened to a huge response this week. And as the demand for movies increases, the post-theatrical window becomes more valuable and our slate is poised to benefit. Last week, we announced the extension through calendar year 2028 of our exclusive pay one deal with Starz and a new exclusive pay deal with Amazon Prime Video immediately following the Starz window. The new agreements are a win-win for everyone, with Starz getting our films closer to their initial theatrical release and Amazon Prime Video securing an early window for several films from our 2025 slate and the full lineup of our 2026 through 2028 slates. The combination of these two deals will significantly increase the contribution from our pay television window. we continue to capitalize on ancillary opportunities for our franchises with a number of exciting developments in the quarter. We're opening the John Wick Experience in Las Vegas later this month, which we expect to be very successful and serve as the model for similar John Wick Experience around the country. The Hunger Games stage play debuts in London this fall. Dirty Dancing and La La Land lead a lineup of stage plays targeted for Broadway beginning in 2026, and we're making great progress on the John Wick AAA video game. Together, I expect these ancillary opportunities to deliver significant incremental contribution to our business as they come online. Turning to television, our current series, Ghosts and the Rookie, continue to be network leaders in their fourth and seventh season on CBS and ABC, respectively, with a rookie spinoff in development at ABC from series creator Alexei Hawley. Hawley has another new series, The Envoy, in fast-track development at Hulu. We wrap production in the quarter on three highly anticipated series, Spartacus and the Hunting Wives for Stars, and Seth Rogen's comedy The Studio, debuting on Apple TV Plus on March 26th. Pivoting to fresh business models for new buyers, we're currently shooting The Rainmaker in partnership with Blumhouse for USA Network and preparing to start production on a new version of Robin Hood for MGM+. In our Lionsgate alternative, unscripted business, led by Craig Pellegian, we're coming off a very successful first season of Martin Scorsese's acclaimed docuseries, The Saints, for Fox Nation, and Scamanda, a four-part docuseries based on Lionsgate Sound's number one true crime podcast, recently launched on ABC and Hulu. And we've been refilling our TV pipeline with a strong development slate led by Stephanie Meyer's Twilight animated TV series, Midnight Sun for Netflix, the Power Universe prequel, Power Origins for Starz, Nurse Jackie at Amazon, the John Wick Under the High Table TV series, the TV remake of our hit draft day movie with LeBron James and Maverick Carter, Spring Hill, a TV series adaptation of Oldboy led by creator Park Chan-wook, and a limited series chronicling the Shohei Ohtani interpreter gambling story. Bolstering our television group performance, we expect a strong growth year in fiscal 26 from Three Arts, a leader in the talent management and production space. The hit television series Mythic Quest from our Three Arts Lionsgate Production Partnership is performing well in its fourth season on Apple TV+. The Hunting Wives is being prepared for its star's debut, and behind them we have a strong pipeline of scripted series development. We intend to diversify the business into new areas of representation through a combination of organic growth and M&A to further cement 3Art's leading position in one of the hottest sectors in the business. Turning to stars, a return to domestic OTT subscriber growth in the quarter was driven by the strong performances of the seventh season of Outlander, the drama series Three Women, based on the New York Times bestseller, and a strong slate of first-run movies from the Lionsgate theatrical output deal. On the distribution front, Starz has closed several new deals in the past few weeks, including two with Prime Video for Max and BET Plus bundles, with Vizio for an AMC Plus bundle, and with YouTube TV for a strategic offer timed to Super Bowl weekend. Starz also secured three key linear partner renewals in the quarter. As Starz prepares for the separation, it's instructive to recap how the platform has evolved over the past five years, successfully converting its revenue from 70% linear to 70% digital, more than doubling its domestic OTT subscriber base, achieving leadership in its two key demos with a strong core group of original hit series, ramping up a slate of world-class studio movies worldwide. and establishing itself as a bundling partner of choice, all while remaining consistently profitable. Now the industry has reached an inflection point, and the next phase of streaming plays to star its strengths. More bundles, the ability to provide digital services to linear platforms, and the opportunity to capitalize on a shifting and disruptive environment to scale its business. Turning to the separation, we're still in regulatory review of our joint proxy registration statement with the SEC. Given this timing, we will need to update the proxy with financials as of December 31st, 2024, which will take a few additional weeks. Pending further SEC review, we expect this would lead to a shareholder meeting in mid to late April with separation shortly thereafter. In closing, Our hearts go out to the thousands of people and businesses impacted by the recent LA wildfires. A number of our employees, talent, and business partners lost their homes, and many more were affected. but I'm very proud of how our employees came together in this time of crisis, not only to help their colleagues, but with an employee-driven grassroots initiative serving the community with clothes and other basic goods, benefiting more than 500 people impacted by the fires. It's this aspect of our culture, resilience, innovation, compassion and teamwork, that gives me confidence that we will continue to rise to the occasion and thrive in the year ahead. Now I'd like to turn things over to Jimmy.