Moderna, Inc.

Good morning. My name is Julianne and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to Spotify's second quarter 2022 earnings call and webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. If you require operator assistance at any time, please press star followed by zero. I would now like to turn the call over to Ryan Goldberg, head of investor relations. Mr. Goldberg, you may begin.

Thanks, Operator, and welcome to Spotify's second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. Joining us today will be Daniel Ek, our CEO, and Paul Vogel, our CFO. We'll start with opening comments from Daniel and Paul, and afterwards, we'll be happy to answer your questions. Questions can be submitted by going to slido.com, slido.com, and using the code hashtag SpotifyEarningsQ222. Analysts can ask questions directly into Slido, and all participants can then vote on the questions they find the most relevant. We ask that you try to limit yourself to one to two questions and to the extent you've got follow ups, we'll be happy to address them, time permitting. If for some reason you don't have access to Slido, you can email investorrelations at ir at spotify.com and we'll add in your question. Before we begin, let me quickly cover the safe harbor. During this call, we'll be making certain forward looking statements including projections or estimates about the future performance of the company. These statements are based on current expectations and assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could materially differ because of factors discussed on today's call in our shareholder deck and in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. During this call, we'll also refer to certain non-IFRS financial measures. Reconciliations between our IFRS and non-IFRS financial measures can be found in our shareholder deck, in the financial section of our investor relations website, and also furnished today on Form 6K. And with that, I'll turn it over to Daniel.

all right hey everyone and thank you for joining us i hope you had a chance to take a look at our new approach to sharing our earnings results we would love any feedback you have because as i mentioned on our investor day we want to improve how we communicate with you and i see this revised format as an important first step and paul will speak to this further in a few minutes And with that, let's jump into the quarter. We had another very strong quarter in Q2, building on the momentum and success we've now seen for four consecutive quarters. The acceleration in our user growth continued, and we had a very strong beat on MEU growth, coming in about 5 million users ahead of forecast. As a reminder, this was one of the weak spots for us in Q2 of 2021, so I'm really glad to see the hard work from our teams has paid off. In addition, our global subscriber growth exceeded expectations by a million while revenue was in line. Going forward, while the macro environment continues to present uncertainty, we're currently not seeing any material impact on our expectations for users or subs growth from the economic downturn. In fact, we're seeing several markets trending ahead of our forecasts. That said, in anticipation of a potential slowdown, we already shared that we proactively reduced our hiring by 25% and instituted a double-down weekly revenue monitoring. I've said this before. I do believe only the paranoid survive, and we're preparing as if things could get worse. But it's hard to be anything but optimistic given what I'm currently seeing. Looking further ahead, recession or not, my confidence in our business and the unique Spotify machine that we're building is really unwavering. Audio is growing and Spotify with it. Hopefully, after last month's investor day, this is a term you're all familiar with. And for those needing a refresher, we believe the Spotify machine is what differentiates us from other tech platforms. It leverages one consumer experience powered by three revenue-generating business models, subscriptions, ads, and marketplace. And as I detailed last month, we're confident in our ambitions to get to 1 billion users by 2030, while at the same time, we are also focused on improving our gross margins and continuing to generate positive free cash flow. And this rinse and repeat approach and the machine behind it that bundles multiple business models with multiple verticals into one user experience is what we will continue to invest in. Not only will this investment benefit Spotify and its shareholders, but it also creates tremendous upside for listeners, artists, songwriters, creators, and advertisers. And for those who want to learn more, I'd really encourage you to go to our investor site to catch a replay of our recent event. We highlight the big bets we're making, the incredible opportunity on the horizon, and detail how we're measuring success. And with that, I'll hand it over to Paul to go deeper into the numbers, and then Brian will open it up to the Q&A.