Versant Media Group, Inc.

Greetings. Welcome to Versant Media's full year 2025 Operating and Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. The question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero from your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. At this time, I'll turn the conference over to Wiley Collins, Executive Vice President, Investor Relations and Treasury. Thank you. You may now begin.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Versant Media's fourth quarter and full year 2025 Operating and Financial Results Conference Call. Joining us today are Mark Lazarus, Chief Executive Officer, and Anand Kinney, Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Also with us are Jordan Fassbender, General Counsel, and Natalie Candela, VP of Investor Relations. Before we begin, I'd like to remind you that certain statements made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements reflect management's current expectations and are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. For discussion of these risks and uncertainties, please refer to Versant Media's filings with the SEC in today's earnings release. All forward-looking statements are made as of today, March 3, 2026, and we undertake no obligation to update them. During today's call, we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in today's earnings release and in the materials posted in the Investor Relations section of our website. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mark.

Thank you, Wiley, and good morning. We are pleased to report Versus 2025 operating and financial results as an independent, well-positioned media and entertainment company. 2025 was a pivotal year for Versant. We completed our transition to a standalone public company while advancing our clear and deliberate strategy, continuing to win with premium content, extending the reach of our iconic brands, and accelerating the growth of our digital platforms. We operate in four large and growing markets. business news and personal finance, political news and opinion, golf and athletics participation, and sports and genre entertainment. In each, our brands hold leadership positions with clear opportunities to extend beyond pay TV. Burson enters this next phase with meaningful scale, reaching an average of approximately 100 million people every month. Our live news, live sports, and premium entertainment programming continue to attract large, engaged audiences and generate robust advertiser demand. Approximately 60% of our audience comes from news and sports, which is most valued by audiences and advertisers. In 2025, CNBC solidified its position as the number one global business media brand. delivering exclusive breaking news and more than 6,000 hours of live on-air coverage. That leadership was on full display in Davos last month, where viewership surged across all three days of coverage as CNBC was at the center of the world's most consequential business conversations. We built on that position of strength in 2025 with a multi-year partnership with CalSheet. integrating real-time prediction market data directly into CNBC's editorial coverage. This important commercial relationship introduces new revenue streams and connects us with a younger, highly engaged, and data-driven investor audience. We're extending that strategy even further. CNBC will launch a next-generation direct-to-consumer subscription service tailored to retail investors. a fully integrated platform combining CNBC editorial insights, investment recommendations, portfolio tracking, advanced charting, AI-powered analysis, and powerful decision-making tools, all built on a brand and talent that investors trust. We believe this service addresses a significant market need with a product only CNBC can deliver. On election night in 2025, MSNOW was the most watched network across all of cable, reinforcing the strength of the brand at the most consequential moments in politics. Since the rebrand to MSNOW in the fourth quarter, that momentum has not only held, it has accelerated with double digit growth in total viewers since November. That momentum extends well beyond traditional television as well. In 2025, MSNOW generated nearly 8 billion views across TikTok and YouTube, along with more than 140 million podcast downloads, demonstrating the depth and demand of a highly engaged audience. To build on that engagement, later this year, we will launch a new MSNOW direct-to-consumer platform centered on community engagement. access and exclusive content extending the breadth and depth of ms now's audience reach the golf channel is the number one golf media outlet and in 2025 we aired over 2 000 hours of live coverage across more than 200 events accounting for 35 percent of all hours watched for golf The inaugural Golf Channel Games aired in December, and we also extended our USGA partnership through 2032 and our PGA of America partnership, including the Ryder Cup, through 2033, securing long-term rights and reinforcing our leadership in golf for years to come. Beyond pay TV, our tee time platform, Golf Now, delivered a record year with 40 million tee times booked over 9,000 courses globally. demonstrating Versant's scale in the broader golf ecosystem. Across our broader sports portfolio, USA Sports added Pac-12 football and basketball and expanded our leadership in women's sports through long-term agreements with the WNBA and League One volleyball. Last month, we also brought the Olympic Winter Games from Milan Cortina to audiences nationwide on USA Network and CNBC. and we'll provide more on that during our first quarter call. In entertainment, USA delivered the number one scripted cable original premiere of 2025 with The Rainmaker, and it has already been renewed for a second season, reinforcing our ability to launch and develop premium franchises. We also broadcast the Critics' Choice Awards, which delivered their strongest ratings since 2022, a reminder of the enduring appeal of live, unscripted entertainment. At Fandango, we will launch new ad-supported streaming service later this year, enabling audiences to watch films and television series for free, leveraging Fandango's broad distribution footprint, scaled customer base, and versant strong library of content. This is a natural extension for the Fandango platform, growing audience and deepening engagement while driving incremental monetization. In addition, we completed the acquisition of Indie Cinema Group, expanding our offering for cinema operators with a cloud-based operating system now deployed across theaters worldwide. We also added free TV networks to our portfolio, with national over-the-air distribution expanding our presence in the fast-growing free and supported market, and extending our footprint beyond traditional pay television. These acquisitions reinforce our strategy of building on our leadership in our core markets by expanding distribution, deepening engagement, and developing new audience touchpoints through both existing and new platforms. We view revenue mix as a critical indicator of our strategic transformation. In 2024, 17% of our revenue came from non-pay TV platforms. In 2025, that increased to 19%. And that was achieved without the benefit of the new initiatives launching this year. Our target is 33% over the next three to five years, and over time to get closer to 50%. Positioning Versant to a platform for growth over time. We are committed to continue investing in the business and returning capital to shareholders. Our board has declared the company's first dividend and has also approved a $1 billion share repurchase authorization. This program reflects our confidence in the business and our strong balance sheet, which provides us the flexibility to invest in growth while also delivering meaningful shareholder returns. As we move forward, we have a clear strategy and the infrastructure, operating discipline, and leadership required to win. We enter this next chapter from a position of strength, profitable, scaled, and disciplined. None of this would be possible without our team. Across every part of our company, our people executed a complex separation while continuing to deliver for audiences, partners, and shareholders. I am incredibly proud of what we have built and even more confident in what we will accomplish next. With that, let me turn it over to Ahmed.