Versant Media Group, Inc.

Greetings. Welcome to Versant Media's first quarter 2026 earnings 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 that this conference is being recorded. At this time, I'll now turn the conference over to Wiley Collins, Executive Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasury. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Versant Media's first quarter 2026 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, Vice President 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 recent media's filings with the SEC and today's earnings release. All forward-looking statements are made as of today, May 14, 2026, and we undertake no obligation to update them. In addition, 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. During today's call, all comparisons to the prior year are against standalone adjusted figures, which represent our estimated 2025 results as if Fersen were already a separate independent company. With that, I'll turn the call over to Mark.

Thank you, Wiley, and good morning, everyone. We're off to a strong start to the year with continued progress and growth across key areas of the business driven by disciplined execution and the strength of our portfolio. As we report our first quarter as an independent company, I want to recognize the truly unique culture and organization that we are building. I am incredibly proud of how our teams are executing with focus, rigor, and a shared commitment to performance. The teamwork is evident in the results and in the momentum we're building across the business. This momentum reflects our strategy at work, operating scale, market-leading brands anchored in live sports and news, winning with premium content, expanding audience reach, and accelerating the growth of our digital platforms. We hold a leadership position in each of our four large and growing markets, business news and personal finance, political news and opinion, golf, and sports and genre entertainment. Across each, we continue to make meaningful progress against our objectives, deepening engagement and driving new monetization opportunities. Let's talk about the results. At CNBC, we saw exceptional engagement during a period of heightened market volatility. The network delivered its highest-rated quarter in four years, with double-digit year-over-year growth reinforcing CNBC's role as the destination for business news when it matters most. That strength was on full display in Davos at the World Economic Forum, where CNBC was on the ground having and covering the most consequential conversations shaping today's global economic agenda with CEOs, policymakers, and business leaders. Viewership among key demographics increased more than 50% during the week, resulting in our largest Davos audience in five years. We also continue to expand and build on the strength of our programming with the launch of Morning Call, a new early morning program that begins our business day lineup by delivering pre-market analysis, insights, and global financial developments to set the agenda for the trading day. At MSNOW, The network achieved its most watched quarter since 2024 with double digit growth in both total day and prime time viewership among key demographics. MS now reached an average of over 30 million viewers weekly and our viewers watched an average of nine hours weekly. The second highest engagement across all cable networks regardless of genre and nearly double the next closest competitor. That scale extends to digital where the MSNOW website and app delivered the strongest first quarter on record. MSNOW generated more views on YouTube than the three broadcast networks combined from their news divisions. And we had over 1.6 billion views across YouTube and TikTok combined year to date. Growth also continued in digital publishing and podcasts, with original podcast downloads up more than 60% year over year. MSNOW is the network audiences turn to during the most important moments in politics. With the 2026 midterm elections approaching, MSNOW will continue to deliver premium programming with differentiated analysis. In golf, Golf Channel continued to build on its leadership position as the number one golf media outlet, driven by strong early season engagement. The PGA Tour is off to an exceptional start, with the Golf Channel drawing its largest audience for the Players' Championship in two decades. And that momentum continued more recently at the Masters, where Golf Channel reached 13.5 million unique viewers during the week, reinforcing its role as the primary destination not only for live golf, but for news, interviews, and post-round analysis as well. We are extending that leadership beyond pay TV through our platforms business. Golf now delivered broad growth across tea time bookings and payments. Golf Pass, boosted by our partnership with Rory McIlroy, in the first quarter reached the highest number of subscribers ever. In just a moment, I'll talk about the platforms business, but as it relates to golf, this is a clear example of how we are integrating content, commerce, and consumer engagement within a single ecosystem. Turning to sports and genre entertainment. In the first quarter, we delivered the largest Olympic audience in USA Network history with the Milan Cortina Olympics, which aired across USA Network and CNBC, reaching approximately three quarters of US pay TV households and securing the number one rank among sports and entertainment cable networks. In addition, we are building on our momentum in women's sports. Our first season of League One Volleyball on USA Network was a breakout success, highlighted by the most watched match in league history. We are also proud to have just kicked off our inaugural WNBA season this past Sunday with our opening game and a doubleheader just last night. Beyond live sports, we are driving value from our deep content library. The licensing of Keeping Up with the Kardashians and other iconic entertainment titles to third-party platforms underscores the enduring demand for our own content and our ability to monetize it across the evolving distribution landscape. In addition, our entertainment brands continue to perform throughout the quarter. E! Live from the Red Carpet drove strong audience engagement around major events, including the Oscars, the Grammys, and the Critics' Choice Awards. The Critics' Choice Awards aired as a simulcast on E! and USA Network, doubling viewership compared to the prior year. And finally, in platforms, we delivered high single-digit growth in the quarter, continuing to build a scalable revenue stream beyond pay TV while expanding the reach and distribution of our iconic brands. Our performance reflects disciplined execution and progress in scaling these businesses, which remains a foremost strategic priority. Platform's growth in the quarter was driven by Golf Now and Fandango, with Fandango One, formerly Indie Cinema, expanding Fandango's value proposition for cinema operators. An important component of our platform strategy is to build on CNBC's position as the leading source for business news and expand our audience relationships through deeper and broader coverage. As part of this strategy, we acquired StockStory, an AI-driven platform platform that enhances our ability to deliver real-time, actionable investment intelligence and supports the next phase of CNBC's direct-to-consumer product development. We're building on this momentum with other new platform initiatives as well, including the previously announced MSNow direct-to-consumer offering and Fandango AVOD service, both on track to launch later this year. These initiatives and strategies underscore that we are actively managing through Pay TV's secular changes. we are focused not only on continuing to improve the content and reach of our leading brands, but also aggressively expanding beyond TV through direct-to-consumer initiatives. Our strong balance sheet enables us to both return capital to shareholders and invest in these growth opportunities. That includes acquisitions such as Indie Cinema for Fandango, Stock Story for CNBC, and free TV networks, which expand our platform capabilities and accelerate our evolution. As I just mentioned, we remain committed to returning capital to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases, including this morning's announcements of an accelerated share repurchase transaction as we enter the second quarter. With that, I'll turn it over to Anand, and we'll walk through the financials.