Stagwell Inc.

Good morning and thank you for joining us for Stagwell's third quarter earnings webcast. I'm Ben Allanson and I lead the investor relations function here at Stagwell. With me are Mark Penn, Stagwell's chairman and chief executive officer, and Ryan Greene, Stagwell's chief financial officer. Mark will provide a business update before Ryan shares a financial review. After the prepared remarks, we will open the floor for Q&A. Please do submit questions through the chat function. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that the following remarks include forward-looking statements and non-GAAP financial data. Forward-looking statements about the company, including those related to earnings guidance, are subject to uncertainties and risk factors addressed in our earnings release, slide presentation, and the company's SEC filings. Please refer to our website stagwellglobal.com forward slash investors for an investor presentation and additional resources. This morning's press release and the slide deck provide definitions, explanations, and reconciliations of non-GAAP financial data. With that, I'll turn the call to Mark.

Thank you, Ben. Steadwell's third quarter demonstrates that we are successfully pivoting from a primarily marketing services company to a marketing transformation company selling AI-based transformation software and services. We aim to be nothing less than number one in AI marketing transformation, which virtually every company in the world now needs alongside its HR, IT, supply chain, and other systems and software. As I've said many times, we're a tech company's tech company, and tech giants like ServiceNow, Adobe, and Palantir are working with Stagwell as their co-innovation partners to build and co-market cutting edge agentic marketing solutions. We're bringing them to market and they are second to none. As a consequence of our shift towards software and digital transformation, our third quarter was the biggest on record on virtually every metric. Revenue, net revenue, and adjusted EBITDA were all at the highest levels in the company history. Last 12 months in that new business was yet another record. Enterprise tech bookings year to date stand at 59 million, more than double our initial goal and a healthy pipeline remaining through year end. Our overall organic growth now leads the marketing services industry. And when you look at the segments, the growth in tech capabilities of our business rival that of successful software and service companies. Let me walk you through the numbers. Stagwell delivered 11% organic growth in the quarter and more than 7% organic net revenue growth. Growth was led by the segments at the center of our shift. Digital transformation grew 23% organically, driving our two-year stack to 30%, our ninth consecutive quarter of two-year stack improvement. The marketing cloud grew 108% organically as software sales of our suite of new agentic AI products accelerated. Political is running slightly ahead of the 2024 presidential year, helping communications grow 20% organically, a meaningful sequential improvement. Geographically, the U.S., our biggest region, grew more than 11% organically, this more than offset weakness in the Mideast, where we saw a $9 million or 2% organic headwind due to the ongoing conflict in the region and pause at work. Our shift towards higher growth, higher margin software and digital transformation coupled with our commitment to cost controls means that adjusted EBITDA grew 25% year over year to 145 million. This is a 22% margin, 290 basis points higher than a year ago. Our adjusted EPS grew 42% to 34 cents. Meanwhile, year-to-date cash flow from operations has improved by $125 million, helping drive a same period $93 million free cash flow improvement. Third quarter net leverage was 2.7 times a 0.7 turn improvement year over year. Then there's net new business of $168 million, Skywell's best ever third quarter. Our last 12 month figure stands at 586 million, 24% higher than a year ago. What's driving our record new business streak? It's what I said at the beginning of my remarks. Stagwell is the partner of choice for companies looking to transform their marketing. We are breaking into new industries and getting invited into new rooms. I've said on these calls that we seek government as a real opportunity for Stagwell. Over the last two years, we've been building our team and gaining expertise. This work has paid off. In the third quarter, we won our first major federal assignment, which will really kick off the beginning of the year. Stagwell will serve as the prime subcontractor to Kaki for work with the U.S. Central Command. The total size of the win is $1.5 billion over five years. We conservatively expect to capture 10% of this total size in fees with potential for significantly more. Winning this first federal assignment is often the hard part. We're now established in the ecosystem and new opportunities are emerging. Just weeks ago, we won a second significant federal assignment. Government related work can become 10% or more of our business over time. The change obvious from our numbers is that our digital transformation services are just right for the agentic retooling companies need to do to stay competitive. And our products are just right for enabling large scale marketing transformation. The machines, as we call them, were crucial to our flagship win with ServiceNow, our largest ever multi-agency deal. The unified family of products agentically manages all phases of marketing campaigns from orchestration to insight, audience selection, content tracking, and media placement. They significantly reduce the cost of a large enterprise of managing their global marketing units and campaigns. Importantly, they integrate with a company's own data and tech stack and can be run by them, not us. Customers may purchase individual machines or products or engage us for a full marketing transformation project, which is typically a 20 to $40 million assignment with lasting long-term revenue. Based on my experience running Microsoft Marketing, we can help clients save about $100 million a year or more in their marketing expenses. Our proven AI applications are unlike any of the so-called solutions out there. Many of them are all bark and no bite, all hat and no cattle, all smoke and no fire. Well, you get the point. Just last week, we expanded our agreement with Palantir, strengthening the Stackable machines with Palantir's world-class data and engineering, working side by side with our team, headed by Chief AI Officer John Cahan, who headed data and analytics at both Microsoft and IBM. The agreement also named Stagwell as a Palantir Premier Marketing Transformation Partner and establishes joint go-to-market clients. Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, specifically cited our advanced work on deploying sovereign models as the key to creating new opportunities. Earlier this week, we presented the sovereign model work with a travel client on the main stage at Palantir's top customer event. To bring our technology together under one umbrella, last week we launched Stagwell AI. A single platform where you can find out about all our agentic products and services. Try this agentic website stagwell.ai for yourself or catch one of our ads on CNBC. We also launched Agwell Media earlier this month, bringing together assembly's performance, heritage, and ecosystem expertise with a new model powered by next-generation agentic technology. Hedwig noted this move, quote, fills a growing gap for clients, end quote, at a time when marketers are demanding greater agility, integration, and practical AI capabilities from their agency partners. And we could not agree more. We expect to increase market penetration in the coming year, and we're doubling next year's bookings goal. Turning to capital allocation during the first nine months, we focused on buybacks and deferred M&A. We have now resumed the mix of buybacks, M&A, and leverage reduction. Owned media is an M&A priority because we see synergistic high margin opportunities with our core businesses. We increased our investment in realtor politics and we acquired Freestar after close of the quarter, a tech driven ad operations platform serving over a thousand websites, including blue chip online publishers like Fortune and the Boston Globe. This gives us direct media pipeline for our clients that can be a win-win for them and us. Given our outsized growth in organic net revenue, adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS, we are increasing our full year outlook today. We still expect 8% to 12% total net revenue growth and free cash conversion of 50% to 60%, but we're raising our adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EPS guidance. We now expect adjusted EBITDA of $490 to $540 million and adjusted EPS of $1.7 to $1.21. Looking forward, 2027 is shaping up to be another strong year for Statoil. Demand for our enterprise tech solutions is accelerating. which we expect will drive growth in the marketing cloud. Today, I'm doubling our initial 2027 enterprise tech bookings goal to $150 million. Our pipeline and digital transformation is strong and we expect organic growth trends to continue. Our marketing services and media segments are poised to return to single digit growth with new wins coming online. The largest presidential cycle in history will kick off in earnest in the second half of 2027 with competitive political primaries expected on both sides of the aisle. And newly won government contracts and commercial assignments will kick in. In our view, Stagwell stock has strong upside potential, given strong year-to-date organic growth led by the successful pivot to AI marketing transformation. Do the math. Software and digital transformation revenue is worth two or three times that of marketing service revenue. With double-digit growth and digital transformation of 30% to 40% growth of software sales each year for the next two years, you can see a very different high-value company leveraging our thousands of relationships and deep enterprise in the marketing sector. We believe that could merit a stock price several times our existing value. But you be the judge. And with that, I would like to hand it over to Ryan, who will walk you through the third quarter financials in more detail.

Thanks, Mark. Good morning and thank you for joining us. The third quarter was our strongest quarter in the history of the company. Revenue, net revenue, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, and adjusted EPS all set record highs. Revenue grew 10% to $816 million and net revenue grew 8% to $664 million. Organically, third quarter revenue grew 11% and net revenue grew more than 7%, representing our strongest growth in the last seven quarters. We expect the organic contribution to drive the majority of fourth quarter growth. Digital transformation, the marketing cloud, and communications-led growth. Digital transformation net revenue increased 23% organically year over year to $119 million, driven by demand for technology implementation, integration, and workflow optimization, including capabilities associated with the machine OS. We expect continued momentum in the fourth quarter. The marketing cloud increased organic net revenue 108% to $56 million, driven primarily by the growth in software sales associated with the machines, and increased demand for research products. Communication delivered 20% organic net revenue growth to $124 million, driven by corporate communications, public affairs work and activities associated with the US midterm election cycle. Our political business is on track for low single digit growth versus 2024, ahead of our prior expectations for a flat performance. Media and commerce declined 2% organically to $159 million. Growth in owned media in our CRM practice was offset by reduced spending in the Middle East related to the ongoing conflict. We expect the segment to return to growth early next year. Marketing services generated $218 million in net revenue down 9% year over year, including a 7.5% reduction organically. This was largely attributable to the challenging prior year comps and timing related to new business wins. Several significant engagements were awarded in the second and third quarters, and we expect these wins to drive a return to growth in 2027. Geographically, organic net revenue was led by the US, up $53 million, or 11%. Latin America grew 54% from a smaller base. This was partially offset by a $9 million or 35% organic decline in the Middle East. As the top line accelerated, adjusted EBITDA increased $28.8 million or 25% year-over-year to a record $144.8 million. Adjusted EBITDA margin expanded approximately 290 basis points to a record 21.8% of net revenue. The margin improvement reflect a mix of organic growth, including higher margin software, digital transformation, and advocacy work, together with active management of labor. Digital transformation adjusted EBITDA margin was 32.1% in the third quarter. The segment benefits from higher value work, flow transformation engagements, while hiring and other staff cost growth trailed revenue growth in AI-enabled development and coding workflows, improving productivity. The marketing cloud generated a 44.3% adjusted EBITDA margin in the quarter, reflecting the increased contribution from software sales associated with the machine OS. Communications margin benefited from higher value political services and disciplined staff costs. As a result, adjusted EPS increased 42% to a record $0.34, driven primarily by higher adjusted net income. We continue to make progress on previously announced cost savings targets. $78 million of the savings have been actioned, keeping us on track to deliver the $80 to $100 million year-end goal. We are taking steps to drive efficiency using technology and will soon start implementing ServiceNow's control tower across business functions, including finance and HR. Staff costs as a percentage of net revenue decline approximately 400 basis points year over year to 57.6%, the second lowest level since our merger and only 10 basis points above the 57.5% low in the fourth quarter of 2024. Across the cost base, productivity gains and active management of labor are allowing us to expand margins while continuing to invest selectively in growth initiatives. Year-to-day operating cash flow increased approximately $125 million or more than 400% to $155 million, driven by stronger working capital management, improvement in earnings, and a one-time $3 million adjustment. Year-to-date free cash flow increased by approximately $93 million year-over-year to $52 million. We expect further improvement in the fourth quarter, driven by normal seasonality and the culmination of the midterm election cycle. We remain confident in achieving our free cash flow conversion target of 50% to 60% of adjusted EBITDA. At quarter end, deferred acquisition consideration was approximately $64 million, $13 million lower than a year ago. Our revolver balance is approximately $324 million, with approximately $410 million of remaining availability under the credit agreement. Net leverage was 2.73 times at quarter end, an improvement of 0.7 turns from 3.42 in the third quarter last year and 0.9 turns below the post-merger peak of 3.62% in the third quarter of 2023. This was the second lowest quarterly net leverage ratio and our lowest third quarter ratio. We remain on track to exit 2026 with a net leverage ratio in the mid twos. During the quarter, we purchased approximately 260,000 shares, bringing our year to date repurchase of approximately 12.1 million shares at an average share price of $6.23 per share. We ended the quarter with approximately 244.6 million shares outstanding and approximately 326 million remaining under our authorization. Year-to-date capital expenditures and capitalized software investments are in line with our expectations and we expect full-year capital expenditures and capitalized software investment to be in line with last year. As Mark mentioned, we are updating our full-year guidance today. raising adjusted EBITDA to $490 million to $540 million, raising adjusted EPS to $1.07 to $1.21 and reiterating 8% to 12% total net revenue growth and free cash flow conversion of 50% to 60%. This reflects our expectations for continued acceleration of organic growth in the fourth quarter, combined with margin expansion and contribution from M&A that Mark discussed. Now, I will hand it back over to Ben for questions.