RUM Group Inc.

It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Shannon Devine, Investor Relations for Rumble. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. I'm here today with Chris Pawlowski, founder, chairman, and CEO of Rumble, Brandon Alexandrov, the CFO, and Tyler Hughes, the COO. A press release detailing our first quarter 2023 results was released today and available on the Investor Relations section of our company website. Before we begin the formal presentation, I would like to remind everyone that statements made on the call and webcast may include predictions, estimates, or other information that might be considered forward-looking. All forward-looking statements are made only as of the date of this webcast and should be considered in conjunction with the cautionary statements in our earnings release and the risk factors included in our filings with the SEC. Future company updates will be available via press releases and updates via the company's identified social media channels. I will now turn the call over to Rumble founder, chairman, and CEO, Chris Pavlovsky.

Thank you, Shannon. Hello, everyone. From our second acquisition to mega creator signings, you may have observed today's an incredibly eventful day at Rumble, which I'm excited to break down. I want to start off with what I think is one of the most historic moments in internet streaming history. What many would say was impossible to do six months ago is now a reality for Rumble. In the past few weeks, building off the top creators like DJ Akademiks and Gideon, Rumble pulled off the impossible. Rumble is not just a leader in political content, but will now also lead in culture. The number one YouTube gaming streamer in 2022, and the single largest U.S. gaming streamer, iShowSpeed, is now coming to Rumble. It doesn't stop there. We also announced the number one subscribed Twitch streamer in February, Kai Sinat, will also be coming to Rumble. I'm not speaking about creators who are ranked number two or three on the world's largest platforms. I will reiterate, both are number one on their respective platforms. No one is bigger at what they do, and now they are launching a show on Rumble. If you're not familiar with iShow Speed and Kai Sanat, don't worry. Your kids are, and so are advertisers. The gravity and implication of this event is more than meets eye. I've been personally in the trenches working to obtain new talent, and Rumble was not the only platform bidding on these creators. Our surgical moves in launching Rumble Sports, then UFC, and followed by DJ Academics and Gideon joining Rumble solidified our deal with Speed and Kai. We think they both see the writing on the wall and realize Rumble is the future for all verticals of content, politics, sports, and now with their help, Rumble will move to establish itself as a leader in culture. I've never been shy about our strategy. Rumble needs to have all verticals of content if we want to beat big tech. For the past few years, we've been heavily reliant on political content, which is dictated by news cycles and elections. In the past few months, our team has done what many doubted we could do, We have clearly grown far beyond the perception of only having political content. These moves will make us less dependent on political news cycles and elections, which can affect the stability of KPIs. With respect to Q1 KPIs, our monthly active users, or MAUs, which is derived using Google Analytics, for the quarter were 48 million, up 17% compared to 41 million in the first quarter of 2022. Historically, Rumble has seen dips in MAUs on a quarter-to-quarter basis, And in Q1, we saw a notable decline over Q4. This was primarily due to the incredible overperformance of Q4, particularly around the US midterm election cycle. For example, creators like Steven Crowder, who saw record traffic around election day, produced limited content in the first two months of 2023. Additionally, our fourth quarter traffic was driven by a large number of users who were new to Rumble, many of whom did not return to the platform in Q1. This was not unexpected. In our history, we have experienced other significant quarterly increases in users, which result in only partial retention of users going forward. As previously mentioned, we are diversifying our content library by seizing the opportunity to invest in new content categories like gaming, live sports, and culture. Content from top names in the streaming community like Kai Sinat, iShowSpeed, Academics, and Gideon will lead to more returning users who are loyal and less driven by single news events or election cycles. Average estimated minutes watched per month, which is based on bandwidth consumption and our best estimates of video resolution quality and encoding parameters were 10.8 billion for Q1. This represented a 3% increase when compared to 10.5 billion in the first quarter of 2022 and a small decline from the 11.1 billion minutes watched per month in the fourth quarter of 2022. We believe our consumption is driven by new product designs and features. We also saw connected TV applications grow as more users migrate to watch live streams and shows on big screens. These connected TV users consume enormous amounts of content. So far, we are seeing roughly 100 minutes of usage per connected TV user per day. Additionally, another major factor in driving consumption is that our average number of active live streams nearly doubled from Q4 to Q1. Streaming growth is something we are taking very seriously, and our latest signings are an example of that. I believe live sports, live streaming, and live podcasts via connected TV will slowly become more desirable than live cable television, especially with younger generations. This brings me to our second major acquisition. I'm very proud to announce that Rumble has acquired Cullens. In the beginning of this year, our team was presented with the unique opportunity to acquire Colin, a podcasting and live streaming platform with best-in-class product features. As we evaluated the Colin platform and exceptional engineering talent building the platform, it quickly became evident that acquiring Colin would put us in a position to greatly accelerate our product roadmap and enable us to build a world-class live streaming experience. For those of you who may be unfamiliar, Colin was founded by David Sachs one of the first employees at PayPal as their COO and former colleague of Peter Thiel, one of our first outside investors. David is an ardent supporter of Rumble's mission to protect the free and open Internet. In fact, David's venture capital firm, Kraft Ventures, became a shareholder of Rumble through Rumble's acquisition of Locals, in which Kraft Ventures was an early investor. The Call-In app focuses on providing outstanding live streaming and podcasting capabilities designed for creators to simplify production and editing as well as supporting live audience participation. Unique to Call-In is the concept of rooms, which allows for the instant launching of audio and video content with an attractive and easy-to-use interface for both creators and audiences. As I have continually emphasized, Estimated consumption is our most important KPI given that consumption reflects user engagement, which in turn drives monetization. Call-in brings features and functionality to Rumble, which will enhance user engagement and further empower our creators to generate more of their best content, thus driving monetization. While there is work ahead of us to integrate the call-in experience into Rumble, I can say confidently that we are now in a better position than ever to deliver on the vision to provide creators with a world-class experience. It is important to note that this acquisition is another manifestation of our mission and commitment to authenticity and to protect the free and open Internet. I am honored that as part of the acquisition, David Sachs, a devoted supporter of free speech and the creator economy, will be joining our board of directors later this year in the second half of June. To conclude, as evidenced by our first quarter and today's announcement, it's clear that we are becoming unstoppable as we continue executing against all components of our original growth strategy. After the acquisition of Colin and being able to attract the world's top streamers like Kai Sanat and iShowSpeed, there is no doubt in my mind that Rumble is executing on all fronts in ways unimaginable to many, and I remain confident that we will deliver on our plan. With that, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Brandon Alexandrov.