Getty Images Holdings, Inc.

Good afternoon and welcome to Getty Images' fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded. We have allocated one hour for prepared remarks and Q&A. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Stephen Kanner, Vice President of Regulations and Treasury at Getty Images. Thank you. You may begin.

Good afternoon and welcome to the Getty Images' fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings call. Joining me on today's call are Craig Peters, Chief Executive Officer, and Jen Layden, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that this call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to various risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. These risks, uncertainties, and assumptions are highlighted in the forward-looking statement section of today's press release and in our filings with the SEC. Links to these filings and today's press release can be found on our investor relations website at investors.gettyimages.com. During our call today, we will also reference certain non-GAAP financial information, including adjusted EBITDA adjusted EBITDA margin, adjusted EBITDA less capex, and free cash flow. We use non-GAAP measures in some of our financial discussions as we believe they represent our operational performance and underlying results of our business. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP measures as well as the description, limitations, and rationale for using each measure can be found in our filings from the SEC. After our prepared remarks, we'll open the call for your questions. With that, I will hand the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Craig Peters.

Thanks, Stephen, and thanks to everyone for joining Getty Images' fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings fall. I'll start by addressing the full year business performance and progress before Jen takes you through the fourth quarter financial results and 2024 outlook. Throughout 2023, we experienced a series of challenges across our business landscape. In Europe, across our agency customers, and within certain technology sectors, we observed a cautious approach in customer spending given prevailing macroeconomic conditions. Additionally, starting in the second quarter, the writers and actors strike significantly impacted our media and entertainment segments. The strengthening of the U.S. dollar relative to foreign currencies also negatively impacted our EBITDA as we have a significant share of revenue outside the U.S. with a smaller cost base in these currencies. These challenges were not unique to us, and despite their impacts, Getty Images remained relatively resilient as we adapted to mitigate the impacts. For the full year, 2023, revenue was $916.6 million. representing a year-on-year decrease of 1% reported and down 0.5% on a currency-neutral basis. Consistent with our history and our culture, the company adopted prudent cost measures without sacrificing our investment in the long term. As a result, adjusted EBITDA came in at just over $301.4 million for the full year, down 1.2% reported and down 0.4% on a currency-neutral basis. holding steady at 32.9% of revenue. Despite a tough climate and results below the expectations we had going into 2023, the Getty Images team continued to lay a strong foundation grounded in our core value propositions of helping our customers create at a higher level, saving our customers time and money, and eliminating risk. That foundation starts with our exclusive content. It is one of the key differentiators for Getty Images, content from over 80,000 creators and 300 partners represented exclusively by Getty Images. This translates to unique event access and rights. It translates to an unmatched archive and truly distinct quality. It translates to iStock being the only meaningful mid-tier provider to offer an exclusive, elevated quality level through its signature collection of more than 31 million assets. In a long-standing world of seemingly infinite supply of visual content, Getty Images has always stood apart on quality, and that is reflected by approximately two-thirds of our revenue being generated by content that customers can simply not get anywhere else, a statistic that has been durable over time. We successfully renewed each and every content partnership up for renewal within the year. This includes multi-year renewals with Paris Match, Anadolu, Sky News, Sony Pictures, and the DPA Picture Alliance. We also added new content rights through partnerships with the U.S. Soccer Federation and College Football Playoffs, to name just a couple. Through our staff, our partners, and our contributors, we produced award-winning, extensive editorial coverage across the globe, representing more than 160,000 events from over 170 countries. Events such as the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, plus Israel. Earthquakes, storms, the U.S.-Mexico border, All Things Taylor Swift, Beyonce's Renaissance World Tour, the Women's World Cup, the PGA Tour, Formula One, the Rugby World Cup, Sundance Film Festival, and the Met Gala. I could go on. We mined our archives in support of important stories, stories such as the coronation of King Charles III, the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, images celebrating the lives of Tina Turner, Matthew Perry, and Harry Belafonte. and the all-important buildup to the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. We conducted and conveyed deep research on societal and visual trends, enabling our customers to more effectively and deeply engage their targeted end audiences across the globe. Research around women in sport, sustainability, customer sentiment around AI, mental health, ageism, social media, and the global cost of living crisis. We introduced natural language search, on the Getty Images and iStock websites, enabling our customers to more deeply search our content and more efficiently find the content to meet their needs. We continue to invest in the growth of Unsplash Plus, our premium subscription offering on Unsplash, adding exclusive content, new languages, and new features. These efforts are why we maintained our paid downloads at 95 million, despite a challenging macro environment. They are why we were able to increase customer commitment in the face of a challenging environment, with total annual subscribers increasing to 236,000 up from 129,000 to start the year. And subscription is a percentage of total revenue reaching an all-time high of 53.2%. While still early days with respect to adoption and contribution to our business performance, I'd be remiss if I would not be an earnings call where I didn't mention AI. In partnership with NVIDIA, we announced and launched a truly unique generative image offering, an offering that is trained on licensed and released data and rewards content creators for the training, an offering that respects third-party intellectual property rights and is socially responsible in that it cannot produce deepfakes, an offering that is commercially safe and indemnified, an offering that produces high-quality outlets. We launched on Getty Images and via API in Q4 and on iStock in January this year. Of course, with all things AI, the pace of innovation is breakneck. In recent weeks, we have already introduced expanded controls and capabilities such as in-painting and out-painting. We'll be releasing a newly trained model soon, and we will also enable AI capabilities across our entire pre-shot creative library. We also have big plans for video in partnership with NVIDIA and Runway, which we expect to launch later this year, aligned to the commercial needs of our customers. While we continue to face macro challenges, as always, we remain focused on delivering real value to our customers and long-term returns to our shareholders. At the core of Getty Images is high-quality content and coverage that is derived from top-notch talent, exclusive access, extensive research, and rare expertise. We pair this with world-class customer service across committed and longstanding relationships and the delivery of technology that truly enhances the creativity, productivity, and efficiency of our customers without risk. With our solid foundation and clear vision and focus, we're excited to return to growth in 2024. Thank you. And now, turning the call over to Jen to take you through the more detailed financials.