Genius Sports Limited

Thank you for standing by. My name is Celine and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Genius Sports first quarter 2025 earnings result. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press Power 1 again. Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Genius Support. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning. Before we begin, we'd like to remind you that certain statements made during this call may constitute forward-looking statements that are subject to risks that could cause our actual results to differ materially from our historical results or from our forecast. We assume no responsibility for updating forward-looking statements. Any such statements should be considered in conjunction with cautionary statements in our earnings release and risk factor discussions in our filings with the SEC, including our annual report on Form 20F filed with the SEC on March 14, 2025. During the call, management will also discuss certain non-GAAP measures that we believe may be useful in evaluating Genius' operating performance. These measures should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for Genius' financial results prepared in accordance with U.S. GAAP. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most directly comparable U.S. GAAP measures is available in our earnings press release and earnings presentation, which can be found on our website at investors.geniusforce.com. With that, I'll now turn the call over to Mark Locke.

Good morning, and thank you for joining us today as we begin another year on a positive note. Throughout the first quarter, we are tracking exactly in line with the guidance that we set in March, highlighting the predictability of our business model. On today's call, I'll provide a quick summary of our results and cover four other key topics. First, I'm excited to share an update on our expanded NCAA partnership. Next, I'd like to highlight a few new products that we've launched since our last call. Then I'd like to share how these products launches are creating a powerful flywheel effect for the business. And I'd like to conclude by sharing my thoughts on the stability and the resiliency of our business model. First on the results, our first quarter group revenue increased by 20% year on year to $144 million. This group revenue growth contributed to our group adjusted EBITDA at a 53% incremental margin, once again demonstrating the operating leverage of our business model. This resulted in a group adjusted EBITDA of $20 million in the quarter, nearly tripling from the $7 million reported last year. This is also translated to 800 basis points of year on year margin expansion to 14%. Nick will cover the numbers in more detail shortly. In the meantime, I'll quickly touch on the other topics for today's call. First, the most exciting business update came after the quarter end as we expanded our NCAA partnership through 2032. This is a perfect example of why our tech relationships with leagues are so important. For context, our NCAA relationship began in 2018, purely as a technology agreement with no sports betting component or official data rights. After six years of building technology solutions, which is now relied upon for over 70,000 NCAA games per year across all major sports, we've now secured exclusive data rights for March Madness and all post-season tournaments at no out-of-pocket cost to Genius. This is the clearest demonstration of our strategic execution with leagues. We've leveraged our technology position to obtain exclusive data rights, again, at no out-of-pocket cost, making this a significant and notable deal for us. We are now positioned to provide exclusive NCAA data and marks and logos to licences sportsbooks and ultimately drive greater revenue without any rights fees. We're also expanding our technology solutions for NTAA with Genius IQ, our next generation AI platform, which will unlock future opportunities across broadcast, augmented advertising, coaching insights, and other immersive fan experiences, creating the powerful flywheel effect, which I'll come back to shortly. This generates new incremental revenue for Genius, creates more value across the entire NCAA ecosystem and helps solidify our long term position. You should keep this strategy in mind as I move to the next topic, which is our product development, beginning with SAOT. After several weeks of testing, we are proud to announce the English Premier League has officially gone live with our semi automated offside technology or SAOT for short. This is a milestone achievement for Genius Sports and offers a scalable solution for a universal challenge in global soccer. So why is it so important? First, this supported the growth of our sports tech revenue in the last two quarters. Second, it reinforces our stickiness with one of the most important sports organizations in the world. Third, it opens doors to other leagues and federations who also view this as an opportunity. And fourth, and most importantly, it allows us to install our genius IQ technology in hundreds of stadiums worldwide. The technology that enables SAOT is the same technology that drives other products like broadcast augmentations, bet vision, augmented advertising, player tracking, and so much more. Meaning technology distribution is key to our strategy. Again, The deal with UK football and the NCAA are clear examples of what is possible when leagues rely on our technology and as we execute on our strategy. As an example, one newly launched product is called Performance Studio, which is being utilized by individual teams in the Premier League. Performance Studio is a new tool that lets coaches or analysts review key moments of a match in a three dimensional format from different points of view. which you can see on slide eight. This is just another example of the type of product that is built on Genius IQ and empowers teams to improve the quality of sport. Sticking with soccer, we've also just announced the expansion of BetVision for soccer, representing another milestone achievement for Genius. BetVision has proven to be a highly engaging platform so that we are thrilled to launch this product for a high volume sport like soccer. This expansion marks a significant step forward as we aim to make this interface ubiquitous in sports betting. And lastly, as it relates to fan engagement, it's worth reminding you that we're not only creating new types of engaging experiences for fans, but also helping to integrate brands as part of these new experiences. This is exactly how we've gained momentum with our FanHub platform. After announcing the launch of FanHub late last year, We have already won many customers, including Deep Blue, an ad agency focused on women's sports, and Echo Point Media, a renewed partnership to promote ticket sales for the Indy 500 after we exceeded last year's targets. We have a robust and growing customer pipeline as these conversations continue to evolve, and we believe this is shaping up to be one of the most exciting opportunities for our business and for the entire sports advertising ecosystem. over the next several years. Each of these products I've described are interesting in isolation and are independently generating revenue today. However, what excites us most is how these are each linked to one another and can scale even faster when offered by one company on a single platform, creating a powerful flywheel for the business. Allow me to illustrate this using the products I've just described as examples of this flywheel. which you can follow on slide 10. Starting from the top, leads and teams depend on our technology for a wide range of opportunities. SAOT is a perfect example. This allows us to install our technology in venues and capture next generation data. This next generation data then powers new types of sports betting or viewing experiences such as BetVision or alternative broadcasts of live sports that you've heard us highlight in prior quarters. BetVision is powerful because it is now becoming the destination for millions of fans to fully immerse themselves in live sports content, creating a highly engaged audience. As a next step, FanHub then becomes the platform where brands can reach this captive sports audience. In this example, BetVision gives us a real time view of the audience and how they are engaging with live sport. In fact, BetVision itself can be a potential source of proprietary ad inventory, allowing brands to integrate directly into the video player and be part of the experience. Many of these brands are also official sponsors of the leagues and teams. So as we provide more optionality, brands get more value out of their official sponsorships, which flows back to the leagues and teams where the flywheel started. You can understand how we are creating value across the entire sports ecosystem. And as the world of sports, betting, media, broadcast, and advertising converge, our Genius IQ technology remains at the center of this flywheel. The reason I highlight this is because I wanted to share the strategic context for everything we do. As we continue to announce new products, technology agreements with leagues, alternative viewing experiences with broadcasters, expansion of BetVision or new fan hub partnerships, you should understand how they each fit together strategically. The strategy is working and it makes Genius an indispensable part of the sports ecosystem. As a final topic, I'd like to take a moment to reiterate our confidence in the business and our financial outlook. To be absolutely clear, we are largely unaffected by current macroeconomic conditions because of our unique and differentiated business model. And we have almost no exposure to these near term external risks, such as global trade, which has caused market volatility over the last several weeks. First, We believe online sports betting is currently one of the most resilient components within consumer spending, and we expect the industry should continue to grow in any economic environment. In fact, historical data provides this was true in markets like the UK and Europe throughout the 2008 global financial crisis. More importantly, most of our revenue and a large proportion of our costs are highly predictable, so our commercial model is structured to protect our downside and reduce any outside risk. This is why we remain confident in generating at least $620 million in group revenue and $125 million in group adjusted EBITDA this year, representing 21% revenue growth, over 300 basis points of margin expansion to 20%, increased cash flow compared to last year, and a meaningful step closer to our long-term target of at least 30% group adjusted EBITDA margin. As we continue to increase our cash flow in 2025 and beyond, we are sharpening our focus on capital allocation, which is why today we announced the authorisation of a share repurchase programme up to $100 million. To be very clear, our capital allocation strategy is primarily focused on tech investment and M&A, since we see several opportunities to drive growth and accelerate our long-term profitability targets. That said, we believe implementing a repurchase programme is just good housekeeping, and this provides us with the ability to be opportunistic, especially in a volatile market, as we have seen. This programme rounds out our capital allocation strategy and adds a complementary tool to deliver strong shareholder returns. Again, this programme is underpinned by a durable business model and predictable cash flow outlook. With this in mind, I will now turn the call to Nick to discuss financial results in more detail.