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 on today's third quarter 2025 earnings call. I'll start by reviewing the operational highlights for the quarter, then discuss how our strategic pivot towards an integrated outcomes-based platform is meeting growing industry demand. After that, I'll turn the call over to our Chief Financial Officer, Elliot Munchnick, who will review the financial results in detail. Then we'll be happy to take your questions. Our third quarter results demonstrate that our strategic pivot towards an integrated outcomes-based platform in exchange and self-service supported by managed services is meeting growing industry demand. Revenue rose 5% year-over-year to $38.2 million, driven by exceptional 103% year-over-year growth in exchange service revenue. Exchange now represents 54% of our total sales at $20.5 million, more than doubling from the prior year period. This exceptional performance reflects strong execution by our commercial and technology teams in capturing publisher demand as they seek new value that traditional SSPs no longer provide. Self-service revenue was $8.3 million, representing 22% of total revenue. Now, the headline number appears flat compared to $8.4 million in the year-ago period, but that doesn't tell the full story. Our year-over-year comparison continues to be impacted by a single large client that paused spending in early 2025 due to their own restructuring. When you exclude the temporary impact, self-service sales were actually up 15% for the quarter and 34% year over year. That's the real trajectory of this line of business. Specifically, we onboarded 23 net new self-service clients during the quarter, reflecting our sales initiatives, targeting higher spend clients, and positioning us for long-term revenue growth. These aren't just any clients, they're the type of customers who align with where the market is heading and where our platform capabilities provide the most value. In uncertain markets like we've seen through 2025, Illumint is attracting new customers to its Exchange Service offering as publishers seek alternatives to older established SSPs. At the same time, more brands are shifting to self-service options with a goal of converting more of their ad spend to actual advertising rather than service fees. The market is clearly moving away from traditional DSPs and towards AI-powered, outcomes-based platforms with integrated retail media capabilities. This shift validates the strategic investments we've been making. To lead this transformation, we recently appointed Brian Garrigan as our Chief Revenue Officer. Brian brings proven ad tech leadership and a track record of driving scalable growth, most recently transforming Simplify into a category leader. We're excited to have Brian leading our global sales, account management, and client success efforts as we scale our platform. Our investments in leading in-app incrementality measurement are expected to be rolled out later this year and in the first half of 2026. Combined with our plan to transition self-service to a fully generative AI solution in 2026, these capabilities will enable us to add far more value to brands and marketers well beyond the historic customer profile and increase our growth trajectory. Now, managed service revenue was $9.4 million, down from the prior year. As per earlier this year, market conditions have impacted advertisers' willingness to market on a full-final basis, which has impacted our managed sales. As such, we can't sugarcoat this. Managed is a challenge. But platform data indicates we have a very sellable solution. Our platform data indicates that we're attracting larger, premium-focused agencies as opposed to our traditional mid-market agencies. These agencies are willing to pay a premium for performance, and our managed services performance and pricing are as good or better than any of the larger brands in our industry. As a result, we are now refocusing our sales pitch around a revitalized managed, matched with some additional services that reach beyond our traditional DSP capabilities. And as a result, in Q4, we are already seeing better performance in our managed pipeline. Furthermore, our Managed Services is now integrated with Exchange, so just like in Self, we can offer compelling pricing and supply chain optimization to our Managed Service and Self Service clients alike. This brings our Managed Services pitch in line with an outcomes-based approach to the platform that is proving itself out in both Exchange and Self Service already. For too long, the managed line has been sold as us assisting you in producing great campaigns. You'll see us reposition the entire sales pitch under our new CRO to focus on outcome-based approaches and how it can serve as an upsell to self-service solution. Regardless of our revitalized approach and managed, given the year-to-date challenges in like-for-like managed sales, we've taken decisive actions to streamline operations through cost containment and to accelerate our shift towards scalable technology-led revenue with a focus on improved cash flow generation and protecting our balance sheet. To be clear, we're not just cutting costs. We're fundamentally restructuring operations to drive profitability and realize platform leverage. Our generative self-service version not only removes friction in customer adoption and spending, but also creates new opportunities to realize that platform leverage. As we close 2025 and move into 2026, our priorities are crystal clear. First, continue scaling exchange and self-service through platform innovation and sales execution. The momentum is there. We need to capitalize on it. Secondly, continued investment in our product roadmap to differentiate ourselves and increasingly competitive market, particularly in incrementality measurement and AI-powered optimization. These aren't nice-to-haves. They are must-haves for sustainable competitive advantages. And third, complete our operational restructuring to drive profitability and platform leverage. The early benefits from restructuring and cost reduction initiatives we've been implementing this year are already visible, and these actions are helping us position the company for improved profitability as we move into 2026. We're confident this strategy will position Illumin for sustainable, profitable growth. Now I'll turn the call over to Elliot to provide detailed review of our third quarter financial results.

Thank you, Simon. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our third quarter 2025 earnings call. Today, we reported our third quarter 2025 results that included sustained revenue growth driven by another quarter of exceptional performance in exchange service, which rose, as Simon mentioned, 103% year over year as our initiatives to drive adoption and expand demand continue to pay off. I will now provide additional details on our third quarter results. The third quarter revenue was $38.2 million, up 15.4% compared to the $33.1 million in the previous quarter, and 5.2% compared to the $36.3 million from Q3 of the prior year. Our year-over-year revenue growth continues to be driven mainly by strong performance in our exchange service business and stable revenue in our self-service, partially offset by a decrease in managed service revenue. Our growth and exchange service was driven by adding new customers in this area, as well as an increased volume of spend by our clients. We are now seeing the benefits from our efforts over the past year to invest in key technology improvements, working with external partners to improve these capabilities, and by providing better service due to our expanded customer support team. Turning to self-service, revenue was $8.3 million, relatively stable with last year's third quarter and representing 22% of total revenue for the quarter. Year-over-year comparison and self-service continue to be impacted, as mentioned earlier, by a large client that reduced spending this year due to their own specific circumstances, including undergoing a business restructuring. Excluding the spend of that client from both comparative periods, self-service revenue grew by 15% over the same period in last year and 34% over the nine months comparative. We onboarded 23 new self-service clients during the quarter, reflecting sales initiatives targeting higher-spend clients. Our focus remains on targeting higher-spend clients as we see further progress in raising customer adoption, conversion, and spend performance in this segment. In managed service, revenue here was $9.4 million for the third quarter compared to $17.8 million in Q3 2024. This year-over-year change was mainly due to larger economic uncertainty, which has been influencing some customer marketing spend, and we anticipate to continue this in the near term. To mitigate the effects, we're already taking measures to reallocate resources in order to drive improved sales in this service line as part of a larger series of initiatives. Gross profit or net revenue for the third quarter of 2025 was $14.4 million, compared to $17.2 million in Q3 2024, reflecting increased media-related costs, which showed in the gross margin for the quarter as it was 38% compared to 47% for the same period in 2024. This year-over-year variance reflects a shift in our product mix, with a higher portion of revenue coming from service lines with lower margins, such as exchange service. We expect gross margin to return to a level more consistent with prior quarters in Q4 based on our current pipeline. Total operating expenses for the third quarter of 2025 were $17.5 million, compared to $18 million during the same period in 2024. The year-over-year decrease reflected lower technology expenses, general and administrative costs, and share-based compensation. This was partially offset by increased depreciation and amortization, attributable to an increase in capitalized costs, higher funding received in the prior year period, and higher sales and marketing expenses, which were primarily related to the increased salaries and benefits, as well as commission and bonus costs associated with higher revenues for the quarter. Q3 2025 operating expenses as a percentage of revenue were 45.8% compared to 49.9% in Q3 2024. Third quarter adjusted EBITDA was 0.2 million compared to adjusted EBITDA of 1.9 million in the prior year period. Despite the higher revenues, the year-over-year decline was primarily attributed to lower gross margin as a result of product mix and higher sales and marketing expenses partially offset by lower general and administrative expenses. Net loss for the third quarter of 2025 was 2.1 million, compared to a net loss of 1.1 million in Q3 2024. The year-over-year change reflects the lower adjusted EBITDA, as mentioned above, higher depreciation and amortization expense, and higher severance expenses as part of our cost containment initiatives, partly offset by net foreign exchange gain versus a loss in the prior period. On December 23rd of 2024, the company commenced a normal course issuer bid, or NCIB, to purchase for cancellation up to $3.9 million of its outstanding common shares. As of September 30th, a total of 744,108 shares had been repurchased under this facility at an average price of $1.65 per share for a total cost of $1.228 million. This includes 432,490 common shares during the third quarter of 2025 at an average price of $1.57 per share for a total cost of $680,123. The normal course issuer bid remains open and can continue until December 22, 2025 or until we reach our targeted repurchase limit. Turning to some corporate information, on our balance sheet, we exited the quarter with $43.2 million in cash versus $48.3 as of the end of the prior quarter. The quarter-over-quarter decrease was primarily attributable to investments in our platform, payments on leases, the repurchase of common shares, and negative cash flow from operations. The negative cash flow from operations is consistent with the seasonality of our business and industry and typically reverses in the fourth quarter. We continue to maintain a strong balance sheet in order to support our growth and to support our flexibility to develop our strategy despite ongoing difficult market conditions. As of September 30, 2025, the total number of outstanding common shares stood at 51,821,042 compared to 51,612,725 as of June 30, 2025. The figure reflects the impact of shares issued through the exercise of vested equity instruments offset by our share repurchases during the quarter. On a fully diluted basis, our shares outstanding are approximately $55.9 million and our insider share ownership is at 25%. In conclusion, our third quarter results were fueled by strong performance in our exchange service business as a result of our targeted investments in this segment and stable performance in self-service revenue. As anticipated, operating expenses have started to decline as the majority of our growth investment designed to enhance our product platform, strengthen brand identity, increase client satisfaction, improve efficiencies and drive sales are now behind us. In addition, we continue to implement various cost reduction and restructuring initiatives in order to better align ourselves with the current economic environment. These actions are designed to drive sales growth, enhance our competitive position, and to improve efficiencies throughout the organization. We remain confident in our long-term growth prospects as we continue to balance cost management with investments and key growth initiatives to drive revenue and improve profitability. And with that, I'll now turn the call back over to Simon for his closing remarks.