illumin Holdings Inc.

Good morning, everyone. Before we begin the official remarks, I will read the cautionary note regarding forward-looking information. Certain information to be discussed during this call contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable security laws, including, among others, statements concerning the company's objectives, the company's strategy to achieve those objectives, as well as statements with respect to management's beliefs, plans, estimates and intentions, and similar statements concerning anticipated future events, results, circumstances, performance or expectations that are not historical facts. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on information currently available to management and is subject to a number of significant risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated. please refer to the cautionary statement and the risk factors identified in our filings with CDAR for a more detailed explanation of the inherent risks and uncertainties that could affect such forward-looking statements. Following the presentation, we will conduct a Q&A session. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Simon Cairns, Chief Executive Officer.

Thank you, Steve. Welcome everyone and thank you for joining us for today's first quarter 2025 earnings call.

I'll begin by reviewing some of the highlights from our quarterly results where we posted 17% revenue growth supported by 148% revenue growth in our recently reinvigorated Exchange Services line. I'll also discuss our improving marketing and sales initiatives. As our quarter started slower than we targeted, we adjusted our marketing and selling tactics on a week-to-week basis, and by the time we exited the quarter, these initiatives had successfully contributed to our growth in Q1. Those adjustments primarily showed up in progress we made in self-service, such as onboarding new customers, as well as increased customer adoption and self-service spend performance. I will also highlight advancements we made in our platform, noting that we are on track to launch our AI forecasting tool in Q2. Then I'll turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Elliot Muchnick, who will review the highlights of our first quarter financial and operating results. After that, we'll be happy to take your questions. In the first quarter, we had strong year-over-year revenue growth of 17%. This improvement was driven primarily by exceptional growth in our exchange services segment, as well as increased customer adoption and spend performance in our self-service line. While we did experience some softness, especially in managed services, the strength of our exchange service and the better resilience of our self-service clearly highlights the success of our targeted investments in our platform. Managed service, by its very nature and spend profile, is more responsive to market conditions. We are encouraged to see that the increased momentum in managed service in the latter half of Q1 continue into Q2, reflecting continued demand and continued interest. At the core of our strategy is a commitment to supporting our customers in a flexible way as opposed to forcing them into one product or to commit to contracts with enterprise-level minimums. We've seen that our customers are responding very positively to that customer-centric approach. We're maintaining this customer-centric approach that we launched in the second half of 2024 across every touchpoint, ensuring we're delivering real value and meaningful outcomes for our clients. This approach was reflected in our ability to add new self-service clients during the quarter. In Q1, we onboarded 18 net new self-service clients, which is in line with our goal of adding new higher spend clients in this specific growth area. While self-service revenue showed modest growth year over year, this business also exhibited several solid underlying trends, such as increased customer adoption and conversion. This includes improved average revenue per customer, largely due to our customers finding more value in new features we launched in the latter part of last year, such as Programmatic Guarantee, or PG, and our consistently improving support for Connected TV, or CTV. This was also driven by enhancements we've made to the platform, including our integration with walled gardens like Meta, resulting in better customer stickiness. Our integration with Meta bolsters our ability to drive greater campaign performance across both open web, as well as through walled gardens, which in turn drives better overall conversion for that customer with much less effort in comparison to using multiple traditional single channel campaign planning tools. In addition to these platform enhancements, we are also extending our platform support to deal types such as programmatic guarantee or PG with CTV channels. We're also preparing to launch our new forecasting tool in Q2, which will add tremendous value to several channels, including CTV. And when coupled with more automated reporting and our PG support for CTV, collectively positions our self-service product as a very compelling offering to challenger brands and agencies alike. It is important to note that our AI-powered forecasting tool has typically been reserved for only large clients with significant budgets and only from premium vendors. Our launch of our forecasting tool democratizes this premium solution previously only accessible to marquee clients or those with large budgets. With Illumine's AI Forecaster, we are delivering equal or better forecasting insights and making that tooling available in a flexible way to any Illumine customer, all without forcing them to commit upfront to massive minimums. Based on initial feedback, we believe that our flexible approach to this premium feature may accelerate trends we are already seeing where more up-level premium brands are searching for flexibility in their DSP partners, and AI Forecaster makes Illumin a very viable option. We also continue to focus on driving adoption and scaling growth through targeted marketing and sales efforts. our efforts to market and sell more effectively and efficiently continue to yield initial positive results. First, it's helping us advance our Illumine self-service roadmap, as I noted earlier. What also helps us is our ability to offer our clients solutions ranging from self-service, managed campaigns, and exchange service, or a hybrid approach, if that is what is best for their needs. We continue to invest in our Lumen self-service platform and exchange service offering, but as a result, our adjusted EBITDA declined slightly during the quarter despite higher revenues reflecting these investments. While we continue to make these strategic investments in product stickiness, sales, and marketing to position us for long-term growth, we are also balancing this with a focus on maintaining liquidity and improving operational efficiencies throughout our business. This emphasis on operational discipline continues to be a priority as we look to grow our adjusted EBITDA while preserving our substantial net cash position, which was $54 million at the quarter end. To give a brief recap, Our strong growth in the first quarter was the culmination of actions we initiated in the latter part of last year to expand revenue, improve efficiencies throughout the company, and to build a strong infrastructure, processes, and tactics for sustainable long-term growth. Even in areas where we saw modest revenue growth, such as self-service, we are continuing to see patterns of customer adoption, stickiness, and spend performance that validates our focus on these initiatives. And while we don't necessarily like today's challenging market conditions, we are pleased with the fact that we now have a messaging, product, and selling flexibility to pivot and adjust in real time in this environment and still deliver on growth. Going forward, I believe there is still considerable room for us to improve our marketing, selling, and product strategies. Further investments, including and especially relaunching our brand, will be a priority for us during 2025. Another priority will be our team and how to utilize a more solution-centric approach versus a product approach when we sell to larger higher spend clients, turning us from vendors into key partners for them, as well as removing any friction that remains in how we execute on any and every sale. Complementing this, we will continue to balance these efforts with an eye on ensuring we have ample liquidity to support our continued growth, as well as to explore other opportunities to increase our growth trajectory. Lastly, I want to note that our team clearly recognizes the current economic uncertainty that we are all facing related to tariffs and inflation. While we can't control the economy, we can focus on what we can control. Our shifting to more upward brands with bigger spend habits has helped us in Q1, as these challenger brands have more durability when it comes to market fluctuations. With that in mind, we intend to continue leveraging our customer-centric approach, which to date has served us well. For us, this continues to be the best course. It's clearly working for us, and that's been demonstrated in our financial results the past few quarters. Taking that into account, we are really just getting warmed up, and we will keep updating you as to our continued progress. For now, I'll turn the call over to Elliot to give a detailed review of our financial results.