Gannett Co., Inc.

please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Matt Esposito, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today to discuss Gannett's first quarter 2025 financial results. Joining us on today's call will be Mike Reed, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Tricia Gosser, Chief Financial Officer, and Kristen Roberts. Chief Content Officer. If you navigate to the Gannett website, you will find that we have posted an earning supplement in addition to our earlier press release. We will be referencing it today on the call as it provides you with additional detail on this course performance and our full year 2025 business outlook. Before we begin, please let me remind you that this call is being recorded. In addition, certain statements made through this call are or may be deemed to be forward-looking statements as defined under the U.S. federal security laws including those with respect to future results and events and are based upon current expectations. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results and events to differ materially from those discussed today. We encourage you to read the cautionary statement regarding forward-looking statements in the earnings supplement, as well as the risk factors described in Gannett's file made in the Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to publicly update or correct any of the forward-looking statements made during this call. Please keep in mind all comparisons are on a year-over-year basis unless otherwise noted. In addition, we'll be discussing non-GAAP financial information during the call, including same-store revenues, free cash flow, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA margin, and adjusted net income attributable to Gannett. You can find reconciliations of our non-GAAP measures to the most comparable U.S. GAAP measures in the earnings supplement. Lastly, I would like to remind you that nothing on this call constitutes an offer to sell or solicitation of offer to purchase any Gannett securities. The webcast and audio cast are copyrighted material of Gannett and may not be duplicated, reproduced, or rebroadcasted without a prior written consent. With that, I would like to turn the call over to Mike Reed, Gannett's Chairman and CEO.

Thank you, Matt. Good morning and thanks for joining our first quarter earnings call. In February, we outlined our full year outlook with the expectation that 2025 would unfold as a year of two halves. As you'll recall, we anticipated a progressive build in our performance. The first quarter results we are presenting today reflect our ability to deliver improvements in earnings and free cash flow while navigating both the highly dynamic environment and the outsized impact of several items unique to the first quarter. With these items now behind us, we expect to drive a marked improvement in our top line trends for the balance of the year led by a re-acceleration in our digital businesses. Additionally, we believe this perspective is supported by the fact that March marked our best performing month of the quarter for digital revenue, and we are seeing improving revenue trends continue into Q2. We believe our financial objectives remain within reach, and as such, we are reaffirming our full year 2025 business outlook. The path to growth is rarely linear, and while digital revenue in the first quarter was more challenged, we continue to have the largest digital media audience among content creators, and I am confident we have the right strategy with the right leaders driving our business forward. Despite an uncertain economic backdrop, our Q1 performance delivered clear proof points that validate our strategy and its potential to drive meaningful growth. This includes significant bottom line improvement, despite certain one time items solid free cash flow generation and aggressive debt reduction of approximately 75 million which lowered our leverage and further strengthen our capital structure. The opportunities ahead are substantial and we are taking swift targeted action to accelerate the execution of the opportunities that will drive long term value creation. To that end, we recently announced a key leadership transition with the appointment of Tricia Gosser as our Chief Financial Officer. Tricia has more than 20 years of financial experience, including more than 15 years in the media industry. We are fortunate to have a leader with her deep institutional knowledge and operational experience to enable the organization to deliver excellence and value to our stakeholders. We also want to acknowledge the departure of Chris Cho from the Digital Marketing Solutions Division. We remain more committed than ever to our strategy and our leadership changes better position us to strengthen our financial and operational performance. Before we dive into first quarter results, I want to share three important takeaways that reinforce our optimism for 2025 and beyond. First, We believe we have a substantial opportunity for long-term growth. Our industry-leading scale at a national and local level, diverse digital businesses, and our vast collection of content that audiences seek serve as powerful engines for the growth we expect to capture over time. We are also continuously unlocking new monetization opportunities, which combined with ongoing investments in our digital initiatives, are expected to accelerate the speed of our transformation. Second, we are reaffirming our full year 2025 business outlook. The fundamentals reflected in our Q1 results give us confidence in our ability to deliver on our 2025 outlook. We believe we are well positioned to improve revenue trends, achieve a third consecutive year of adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow growth, and drive improvement to net income compared to the prior year. Last but certainly not least, we believe we are entering a moment of real structural change in the digital advertising ecosystem, one that directly benefits Gannett and publishers like us. The federal court's recent ruling that Google illegally monopolized key segments of the digital advertising marketplace validates what we and others have argued for years. Google built a closed system that suppress competition channel demand towards its own exchange and diverted revenue away from content creators this wasn't just a regulatory concern it systematically eroded publisher revenue for years. Now that the liability phase of the trial has concluded and the proceedings are moving to the damages phase, which may include potential divestiture of google's ad exchange and add server. We can now enter a more open, transparent, and competitive marketplace. This shift is expected to unlock higher CPMs, stronger fill rates, and more equitable and profitable participation in the ad value chain. With the largest digital audience among content creators and over 300 million in annual digital advertising revenue, Gannett is well positioned to capture that upside. As broader structural improvements unfold, we are accelerating our efforts to expand first-party data, deepen direct advertising relationships, and develop the technology infrastructure needed to control how we manage and monetize our inventory. Furthermore, we view the recent DOJ ruling as a positive signal for the strength of our own case against Google as we continue to move forward. Now with that, I would like to discuss the key operational highlights from the first quarter. Our commitment to a diversified digital strategy is expected to provide a foundation for sustainable growth. We see our highly engaged digital audience as a powerful leading indicator of the revenue opportunities we are well positioned to unlock. In Q1, We continue to attract a significant digital audience with 195 million average monthly unique visitors coming to our platform, growing over 4% compared to the prior year period. With our audience at scale, the next phase of our transformation prioritizes deeper engagement. There is significant potential to expand total digital revenues by delivering more personalized experiences across the consumer journey and increasing monetization of the audiences already engaging with our platform. Diversifying our monetization opportunities also remains a top priority, and the collaboration between our content, consumer, and product teams has already played a key role in advancing our progress. With that, I'll now turn it over to Kristen to cover the monetization efforts around our growing audience. Kristen?