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, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for Illumin's fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call. 2025 was a year in which Illumin repositioned the business and our platform towards AI-assisted decision-making and not just campaign spending. This marks a significant shift from how Illumin has historically positioned itself and its brand. Historically, we've been known as a drag-and-drop DSP that helps marketers spend on campaigns. Through 2025, we invested beyond being just a DSP and emerged in 2026 as an AI-enabled platform centered on outcomes, helping marketers not just plan and spend, but now also on how to decide in real time where they want to allocate their budget and what their priorities are. Whereas much larger providers offer these insights in days or even weeks later, Illumine can now enable marketers to drive campaign and budget decisions in real time, setting us apart when it comes to campaign performance. Let me explain. We conducted customer interviews in late 2024, and we correctly perceived the market would shift away from pure play DSPs in 2025. We invested in our DSP and turned it into a platform centered on outcomes, repositioning our brand and our platform, not just as an executor of ad campaigns, but as a leading enabler of real-time decision-making when it comes to campaign options, spending, and budget reallocation, all intent on driving outcomes for marketers. To achieve this, we had to start by ensuring we have a robust exchange. A great outcomes platform needs great supply first and foremost, not just great demand experiences. So we leveraged what we already had and supported that product in its sales and abilities in 2025. We then spent $9 million to extend our DSP side of the platform towards outcomes and decision-making. In particular, real-time decision-making while campaigns were still in flight. We rolled out several features in 2025 and into 2026 to support this. Our intent positions us as a leader in enabling both better performance and smarter budget shifts for marketers, which is where future demand is and where fewer competitors can play. These investments show up in our 2025 results. Exchange sales showed strong growth throughout the year. Sales in our DSP started weaker than last year, but sequentially improved through the year as our platform was rolled out. Our gross margin was impacted by mixed shift in sales, which we believe will catch up going forward as the DSP and brand are repositioned in the market. The operational progress we made during the year, particularly the growth of exchange and the return to sequential growth in self-service, provides a stronger foundation as we enter 2026. Turning specifically to Q4, I'll begin by reviewing the operational highlights for the fourth quarter and full year, and then further discuss the evolution of the platform. After that, I'll turn the call over to Michael, our Interim Chief Financial Officer, who will review the financial results in greater detail. Revenue for the fourth quarter was $43.1 million compared to $49.9 million in the prior year period. Full year revenue reached $143.6 million. These year-over-year comparisons were affected by the roll-off of two large clients that concluded in late 2024. Those engagements represented approximately $23 million of revenue in the prior year across the managed service and self-service segments of our business. Despite that headwind, underlying revenue trends improved progressively through 2025, culminating in strong sequential growth in the fourth quarter. Looking more specifically at our business segments, exchange service continued to scale rapidly, growing 48% year-over-year to $19.7 million in the fourth quarter. Exchange now represents a meaningful and growing portion of our revenue mix and reflects strong execution by our commercial and technology teams. Self-service revenue was $10.2 million, representing 23% sequential growth, with 41 net new client additions during the quarter. The organizational and go-to-market adjustments we implemented in late 2025 contributed to that improved momentum we saw in the fourth quarter. Managed service revenue was $13.3 million. While the segment experienced some softness during the year due to broader advertising spending patterns, it remained a stable contributor to the business. As our revenue mix evolves, particularly with the growth of exchange, growth margins may have fluctuate in the near term. However, these segments provide greater scalability, and we believe they position the company for stronger operating leverage over time. When we entered 2025, we saw a shift in the market away from our historical position, a journey platform that helps marketers execute campaigns via drag and drop interfaces. We spent $9 million in 2025 extending the platform and repositioning our brand towards outcomes, repositioning us as a leading enabler of real-time decision-making for marketers and moving us beyond being just a DSP. We've historically been known as a platform that can combine media execution and measurement, but now we layer up real-time decision-making, and that extends us beyond the traditional territory of a DSP. What marketers increasingly need is the ability to understand campaign impact while campaigns are running and adjust spend and strategy in real time. Most providers who do this take days or weeks, but Illumen enables decision-making and budget shifts in real time while campaigns are still in flight. To complement this, our response in 2025 included ensuring that every component of the Illumen platform, from planning through execution and measurement, is designed around the outcomes our customers are trying to achieve. This was a departure from our past focus on just campaign planning and spend execution. During 2025, we made targeted investments across the platform to support that strategy. These investments included expanded support for connected TV, programmatic guarantee capabilities, and deeper integrations with major media ecosystems. We also introduced AI powered forecasting and campaign optimization tools, making capabilities that were historically only available to large advertisers accessible to a broader customer base. In addition, we began rolling out in-app real-time incrementality measurement, which enables marketers to better understand the real impact of their advertising spend. More recently, we've introduced live audiences, a key feature where marketers no longer need to wait for someone to visit their site. Illumine can now build audiences from traffic that was exposed to the marketer's ads. Taken together, these capabilities support our vision of transforming Illumine into a purpose-built, outcomes-based advertising decision-making platform, well beyond its historical remit as a mid-tier DSP. In terms of organizational efficiency, alongside these product improvements, we also completed a number of organizational initiatives designed to align our operating structure with the evolved business model. These actions include headcount restructuring measures and operating efficiency improvements that were largely completed by the end of 2025. As a result, operating expenses essentially remained flat year over year, and we expect to begin to realize those benefits of these actions as we move through 2026. Looking ahead, in summary, 2025 was a year of repositioning aluminum. While the roll off of two large client engagements affected our year over year comparisons, the trajectory of our business improved throughout the year, making the operational foundation of the company much stronger. As we move into 2026, our focus remains on four priorities. Scaling our high growth platform segments, particularly exchange and self-service. Dedicating a selling path and richer product support for managed services. continuing to innovate across our product roadmap with a move towards generative self-service, and lastly, cost control to ensure containment of expenses. As a result, Illumina enters 2026 with an expanded pipeline, and our focus is on executing that pipeline and turning it into sales growth. With that, I will now turn the call over to Michael to review the financial results in greater detail.

Thank you, Simon. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our fourth quarter and full year 2025 earnings call, which we reported earlier today. Fourth quarter 2025 revenue was $43.1 million, representing 12.8% sequential growth from $38.2 million in Q3 2025 and was $49.9 million in Q4 of 2024. Exchange service continued to be a strong performer this quarter, while the strategic initiatives surrounding managed service started to take root. Self-service revenue performance reflected campaign timing dynamics and the completion of specific client programs. Gross profit or net revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $15.6 million, compared with $22.7 million in Q4 2024, reflecting a change in revenue mix, the absence of high-margin client activity in 2025, and broader product mix dynamics. Gross margin for the quarter was 36.3% compared to 45.4% in the prior period. This year-over-year change was driven by a higher proportion of revenue from service lines with lower margins, such as exchange service, as well as overall margin pressure across all service lines due to economic conditions. Exchange service revenue for the fourth quarter increased 48% year-over-year to $19.7 million, reflecting strong new customer acquisitions and augmented spend from existing clients. This performance underscores the impact of the strategic investments we made over the past year in core technology enhancements, strengthened external partnerships, and expanded customer capabilities. Turning to self-service, revenue was $10.2 million for the quarter, down $2.7 million year-over-year, and represented 24% of total revenue. During the quarter, we added 41 net new client additions. Year-over-year comparisons continue to reflect reduced spend from one large customer that underwent a business restructuring. Excluding that customer from both periods, self-service revenue increased 14% compared to the prior year. We remain focused on attracting high-spend customers and seeing continued progress in adoption, conversion, and overall spend performance within the segment. In managed service, revenue here was $13.3 million for the quarter, compared to $23.7 million in Q4 2024. Year-over-year comparisons were influenced by changes in customer marketing spend. To offset these shifts, we have been reallocating resources and implementing a series of initiatives aimed at driving stronger sales and improving performance in this service line. Total operating expenses for the fourth quarter of 2025 were $19.8 million compared to $21.8 million during the same prior year period. The year-over-year decrease reflected lower general administrative costs, lower sales and marketing expenses, lower technology expenses, and lower share-based compensation. This was partially offset by increased depreciation and amortization, which was attributable to an increase in and capitalized costs, largely due to IROP funding received in the prior year period, but not in the current year period. Q4 2025 operating expenses as a percentage of revenue was 45.9% compared to 43.7% in Q4 2024. It is up slightly as a result of a change in the product mix mentioned earlier and the lack of IRAP funding in the current year. Excluding IRAP, operating expenses as a percentage of revenue was 44.3% in the prior year. Fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $0.9 million compared with adjusted EBITDA income of $3.9 million in the prior year period, primarily due to lower revenue and gross margin, partly offset by lower operating expenses. Net loss for the fourth quarter of 2025 was $4.8 million, compared with net income of $4.1 million in Q4 2024. This year-over-year change reflects the factors mentioned, as well as a net foreign exchange loss of $1.1 million in 2025, compared with a gain of $3.6 million in the prior year period, largely due to the U.S. dollar weakening against the Canadian dollar during the period. Full year 2025 revenue was $143.6 million, up 2.3%, compared to $140.4 million in 2024. Year-over-year revenue growth continues to be driven by strong performance in our exchange service business, mostly offset by a decrease in managed service revenue. Our growth in exchange service was driven by the addition of new customers in this area, as well as an increased volume of spend from existing clients, largely due to our investments in key technology improvements, working with external partners to improve these capabilities, and added service improvements by our expanded customer support team. Turning to self-service, revenue was $36.1 million, a decrease of 6% from the prior year, and represented 25.2% of total revenue for the year. Year-over-year comparisons in self-service continue to be impacted by a large client that reduced spending this year due to their own specific circumstances, including undergoing a business restructuring. In managed service, revenue in 2025 was $42.3 million compared to $67.7 million in 2024. This year-over-year change was mainly due to the economic conditions and uncertainty I mentioned earlier, which has been influencing some customers' marketing spend. Gross profit or net revenue for 2025 was $57.5 million compared to $65.5 million in 2024, reflecting increased media-related costs due to higher sales year-over-year, as well as a shift in revenue towards lower-margin products. Gross margin for the year was 40.0% compared to 46.7% for 2024. This year-over-year change was due to a change in product mix, the higher portion of revenue coming from service lines with lower margins, such as exchange service. Total operating expenses for 2025 were $72.3 million compared to $70.5 million during 2024. The year-over-year increase was due to higher sales and marketing expenses, higher technology expenses, and higher depreciation and amortization, which was attributable to an increase in capitalized costs. This was partly offset by lower general and administrative costs and share-based compensation. 2025 operating expenses as a percentage of revenue was 50.3% compared to 50.2% in 2024. Excluding IRAP funding received in 2024, operating expenses as a percentage of revenue was 51.4% in the prior year. Adjusted EBITDA for 2025 was a loss of $2.2 million compared with income of $6.3 million in 2024. Despite higher revenues, year-over-year decline reflects lower gross profit as a result of lower gross margins, increased sales and marketing expenses, higher technology costs, partly offset by lower general and administrative costs. Net loss for 2025 is $14.7 million compared to net income of $0.9 million in 2024. Year-over-year change reflects the lower adjusted EBIT I mentioned earlier. Net foreign exchange loss of $1.4 million versus a gain of $5.1 million in the prior year period, higher depreciation and amortization expense, and higher severance expense as part of the company's cost containment initiatives. We exited the year with $43.8 million in cash versus $43.2 million as of September 30, 2025, reflecting disciplined capital allocation and improved management of the receivable and payable cycles. Cash was $56.0 million at the end of 2024 and was down year over year, primarily related to investments to enhance our product platform, strengthen brand positioning, improve client experience, drive operating efficiencies, and support sales initiatives, as well as lease payments, the repurchase of the company's common shares, and a foreign exchange loss on our cash. These uses of cash were partly offset by strong working capital management. Effective December 31, 2025, the company commenced a normal course issuer bid, or NCIB, to purchase for cancellation up to $3.8 million of its outstanding common shares. As of December 31, 2025, no shares had been purchased under this program. The 2025 NCIB remains open and can continue until December 30, 2026, or until we reach our targeted repurchase limit. Under the company's previous 2024 NCIB, which expired on December 22, 2025, the company had repurchased and canceled 1,025,552 shares on the open market at an average purchase price of $1.53 per share. Turning now to our balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $43.8 million in cash, up slightly from $43.2 million as of September 30, 2025, driven by disciplined capital deployment and stronger working capital management. Maintaining a strong balance sheet to support a long-term strategy remains a priority. Our liquidity provides financial flexibility to pursue selective, strategically aligned and accretive acquisition opportunities that expand our capabilities and shareholder value. We are seeing an increasing number of attractive opportunities and more rational valuations. We'll continue to evaluate them with a disciplined approach as we move through 2026. As of December 31st, 2025, the total number of our outstanding common shares stood at 51,602,090 shares, compared to 51,821,042 shares as of September 30th, 2025. This reflects our share repurchases during the quarter, partly offset by the impact of shares issued through the exercise of vested equity instruments. On a fully diluted basis, our shares outstanding are $55.8 million, and our insider share ownership is at 25.1%. In conclusion, our fourth quarter and full year 2025 results were driven by a strong performance in our exchange service line as our revenue mix shifted meaningfully towards this business. Managed service showed strong sequential improvement in the fourth quarter, increasing 41.7% from Q3, reflecting the strategic initiatives implemented toward the latter part of the year, although four-year results were lower compared to 2024. Self-service returned to sequential growth in the fourth quarter following the organizational and go-to-market adjustments implemented earlier in the year. Operating expenses remained relatively stable year-over-year as we implemented restructuring initiatives that reduced our North American workforce and resized operating expenses to align with revenue levels. These actions were largely completed as we entered 2026. We ended the year with $43.8 million in cash, no debt, and positive cash from operations. Investments made in product development and platform upgrades during 2025 position us to support revenue growth efficiently as scalable segments expand. As we continue to improve operational efficiency, our capital allocation remains disciplined. With that, I'll now turn the call back over to Simon for closing remarks.

Thank you, Michael. To summarize, 2025 was a year in which we repositioned Illumin towards scalable, platform-driven revenue. Exchange service scaled significantly. Self-service returned to sequential growth in the fourth quarter. And managed service remained a stable contributor. 2025 had one consistent story. Underlying revenue trends improved progressively throughout the year. As we enter 2026, we are encouraged by the momentum we are seeing across the business and remain focused on discipline execution and delivering long-term value for customers and shareholders. Thank you for joining us today. We will now turn the call over to questions.

Good morning, gentlemen, and thank you to everyone for attending this morning's presentation of Illumine Holdings' fourth quarter and full year financial and operating results. I would like to begin by reminding our analysts that in order to present your question, you must first select the raise your hand icon on your screen. Gentlemen, your first call this morning, your first question rather this morning comes from Daniel Rosenberg of Paradigm. Daniel, please proceed with your question when you're ready. Daniel, are you there? Daniel, can you hear me? Okay, I think we now have Daniel, my apologies for the interruption. Daniel, please proceed with your question. Daniel, are you there?

Trying to speak. Can you hear me?

We can hear you. Sorry for the interruption.

Okay, thanks. Apologies for that. Let's start with the exchange business. I was curious about the improvements that you guys outlined in your commentary. Just wondering if you could detail a little bit about what you're investing in exactly, and do you plan to continue investment in this business line? Just some details around where the ROI is there.

The main investments – good morning, Daniel, first and foremost. The main investments we made over 2025 center actually on the demand side and positioning the DSP to have an additional layer around what the industry would call outcomes. So DSPs historically would be used, for example, to do campaign setup, campaign management and deployment, and then reporting on how those advertising campaigns work. And so if you worked in an ad agency and you were using a Lumen, that is essentially what you would use a Lumen self-service for. We've built on an extra layer that does transform the demand side of that business, which really is moving from, you know, not just reporting, at which then the brands and the agencies work together to determine their next step, but instead being able to optimize campaigns or make campaign decisions effectively. In real time, well, campaigns are still like in flight. And there's a series of modules that we deployed Q4 and into Q1 of this year. Attribution and incrementality would be the industry names that enable all of a sudden marketers to have the ability to sort of really optimize their campaigns and make smart decisions while they're still deployed, not a week or two later. after deployment is done and analysis is complete. So our AI and our platform can analyze trends and risks and opportunities in real time and enable those marketers to make those decisions in real time. Part of this is complemented by Exchange and the fact that Exchange provides an excellent source of supply And, you know, the exchange has grown very nicely over the last year plus now. It has a great team behind it. And so we're also sort of, you know, in a position where, you know, for customers who want sort of both sides of that equation, we have that ability. But exchange is feeding a really great supply path into that attribution incrementality and that demand side of that platform.

All right. So, Marge.

Thanks for that. I guess I'm trying to understand, you know, the incremental margin that is expected to come from these investments in exchange. And then kind of a follow on to that is obviously the revenue mix has changed significantly over the past year. I was wondering, you know, what does, you know, what is the right mix for the company? Obviously, the market is changing quickly and it's competitive, but

how do you think about it when you think you know one two three years forward for illumine we saw a change in our gross margin mix this year largely due to the change in the sales mix that's 90 plus percent of the reason why we saw a change on a 12-month basis where we saw challenges in around managed services that then moved to more stabilized revenue and then we saw uh sequentially as we went through the year a return to growth on the self-service side with exchange growing. So the exchange growing consistently and the other sort of building over time impacted our gross margin on a 12-month basis in 2025. We expect to be able to restore more gross margin dollars in the business through 2026. We believe that the gross margin of the business will be north of 40%. Yes.

And maybe lastly for me, just on capital allocations, you mentioned a number of investments into the platform over the past year. And obviously, you know, technology requires continuous investment. So just try to understand the incremental investment versus maintenance investment that you see in maintaining your improvements and innovation onto the platform.

Sure, Daniel. Thank you for your question, Michael. Yeah, I mean, last year we spent a lot of money investing in our platform. The incrementality that Simon had mentioned, moving towards agentic AI, that was essentially a lot of the investment in tech. If you had anything else to add, Simon?

Daniel, from our point of view, is we did invest heavily last year to make the transition on the tech side, and so we're very conscious of the spend levels we're currently at, and so we're kind of looking at making sure that where we can improve on operating spends in tech or even outside of tech is a big area of focus for us for 2026. A lot of the investment that we have made is now deployed. We still have some incremental pieces that we are definitively rolling out right now.

Okay, thank you for taking my questions. I'll pass the line. Thanks, Daniel.

Thank you for that, Daniel. Gentlemen, your next question comes from Aravinda Galapataji from Canaccord Genuity. Aravinda, please proceed with your question when you are ready.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a quick clarification to start with. I think, Mike, you mentioned... that excluding the impact of the two large customers that rolled off in late 24, that self-service was up, was it 13% year-over-year? Did I hear you correctly? In Q4?

It was about 14%. In Q4.

14%. Yes. Oh, sequentially. It's not year-over-year. Correct. Are you able to say what it was year over year?

I can get the figure over and talk here in a minute. Just give me half a second. But if you want to ask me this question, go for it.

Okay. And then on the sort of given sort of your comments about the exchange services business, are you able to give us a sense of what the gross margins there could kind of move towards as we kind of look to sort of Think about the construct of the overall consolidated margin.

The gross margin in the exchange side is consistent. You know, I'm looking at it from a consolidated basis. We believe that the consolidated gross margin can go north of 40% from where we went through in 2025. Fair comment, Michael?

Yeah, I would just add that the exchange business has historically been in the sort of low to mid-30 range. But I agree.

Low to mid-30s.

Okay. And it's been fairly consistent.

Okay, okay. And when you think about sort of the new layer that you talked about, Simon, that's offered now to clients, how does the pricing work? I mean, how do you sort of get additional yield on that investment? Maybe just a sense of sort of the business model there.

I'm sorry. Could you repeat the question, Aravinda? I apologize.

So you talked about the new layer that you offer now in your platform in terms of the ability to shift, make changes in the decisions in the middle of the campaign. How are you pricing that and how does that affect your pricing model? I want to understand how that affects the business model.

Scene is very valuable by the customers, and it's what's driving the current demand in the DSP or the demand side platform space of our market. And so we price it in as we sort of have historically where we can acquire and mark up media and offer really effective results, which drives better stickiness over time. This is an essential piece to continuing that business model. We don't offer it. Today, for anything extra or premium, we're trying to democratize access to the DSP. And this is an essential piece in building momentum in the DSP from both a marketing and then also from a sales pipeline perspective. It's where the customers are buying, said differently.

Okay, I understand. And then maybe lastly on your comments about OpEx. Are you sort of able to – do you have a target in mind in terms of how much you want to sort of, you know, reduce OPEX in 2026? Michael, do you want to?

I'm not sure that we can – I mean, we're definitely going to reduce OPEX, I think, in 2026. But in terms of the total amounts – I'm not sure that I can share that just yet.

Okay. Thank you. I'll pass the mic. Thanks a lot.

Thank you for that, Aravinda. Gentlemen, your next question comes from Rob Goff of Ventum Financial. Rob, please proceed with your question.

Good morning, Rob. Can you hear us okay? Okay.

Rob, you there?

Can you hear me now?

Yeah, there you go. Thank you.

Okay, very good. Thank you. Two questions, if I might. First, could you talk to the 41 net new self-serve customers? What sort of profile? What sort of average spend? And then in terms of the exchange, can you talk to what you're What are the secrets behind your success? What is your market differentiation on this service?

Thank you. So in terms of the self-service customers or the self-service logos, what we've seen is, so first and foremost, I can answer from a few different ways. They do represent a variety of industries and focus. There's no one particular vertical. That being said, we do rather well in travel tourism, for example, hospitality, consumer products, business services. But no one vertical is over or underrepresented in terms of the trend. What we are focused on mostly, though, is what we see as both the most interested and the most idealized ICP or ideal customer profile. We have identified that our brand, our positioning, the values that we bring in terms of results, the most interested customer segment, and for that matter, the most successful customer segment, on the aluminum DSP has shifted over the last year. And that are spenders that do spend, say, north of $750,000 and less than $5 million. It's quite a broad range, but it's a notable shift because historically over the last five or six years, The ICP in and around the self-service DSP in particular has been significantly less than that. That has sort of been who has been using the self-service product. A couple exceptions, don't get me wrong. There are definitely – our most successful customers have been larger players. We saw that in the roll-off. of $23 million year on year, which did impact our 2025 comparables. But, you know, if I look at all the customers deployed over the last several years, the spend there has historically been lower than what we're seeing as most interest in us. So what we've done is we've matched the roadmap in our investments, the $9 million investments we made in 2025, towards that bigger spender. They're more durable. They have a more established market for their products or more established differentiation would be another way to say it against their competitors. And these are the ones that are really interested in those outcomes, that ability to not only have attribution and incrementality, which basically is understanding what value or what business return I got for my advertising dollar, but they're very interested in trying to find ways to optimize in real time as opposed to going through sort of the industry standard right now, which is get results, analyze them, discuss, then take action. That can take days. That can take weeks, right? depending on how your organization is set up. So this is what I call the challenger brands. They're not yet a tier one brand, but they have a good space in the marketplace. They're being successful with their customers. They want to break through and they see the ability to decide in real time as a lever they can pull to break through. So we match the roadmap to that. And we're landing more and more logos in that space. So what I'm looking for as we go through 2026 is, Does our churn or our retention improve amongst those customers? What is the spend performance like on a month-to-month basis in terms of – and what is the value they are getting? Are there strategic opportunities where they may also need – depending on who they are, if they're a brand, for example, do they also need to take advantage of our exchange, for example? That's what I'll be watching for as we start to land. We sort of started to see this late in the second half of last year. We talked about sort of shifting to a slightly more durable customer segment, and this customer segment did help drive the sequential growth in self-service in Q4. This is what we'll be looking very closely for in 2026 is do we make consistent progress around that higher spend level customer. And again, what they are really focused on are the products that we built in Q3, Q4 and into Q1 of this year. In terms of exchange, exchange is very difficult to differentiate. It's a very, very difficult market to be different. The team has succeeded in carving out a few angles. First and foremost, the performance is very good. So performance does stand. Again, similar story in the DSP in the sense that when we were at that higher customer spend level, They're very satisfied with the performance. I was on a call just yesterday with an agency, and they noted specifically that they've always had a preference towards Lumen, but it works best for them and customers spending $750,000 million, et cetera, as opposed to $50,000. And, you know, in exchange, they, again, have sort of been able to deliver on very good results. It's a great team. And that is winning them good accolades with customers using the exchange. At the same time, there is also that they are very flexible in their approach. The much larger providers in the space are more rigid in what their contract terms are or what the minimum sort of velocity that they sort of need to see to be supported. As a smaller emerging challenger brand, we're much more flexible. That is winning, again, business and demand, again, by being just smart and flexible and very customer-centric in the approach. And then lastly, there is a bit of a demand shift towards direct-to-supply, and so I'm very happy that we have an answer there in the direct-to-supply space where either agencies or brands are looking for cleaner or different, more precise, more optimized supply paths And it's great that we have an exchange and a presence in that space that's now at a level that it can sort of genuinely be offered in the sense of this is a very viable place to come and bring your business. And we seem to be delivering very good results to the team. So very proud of that team.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for that. Your next question, gentlemen, comes from Drew McReynolds of RBC Securities. Drew, please proceed with your question when you're ready.

Yeah, thanks very much. Can you hear me okay? Loud and clear. Good morning, Drew. Okay, perfect. Yeah, good morning, Simon. Good morning, Michael. Maybe three for me. First on, I guess, for you, Simon, just the insights, immediate insights and kind of this upgrade of the broader platform, real-time decisions. Can you just characterize your competitive position with this capability? in terms of how you do it relative to who you would bump up against in terms of competing for business. The second question may be related. As we go through 2026, what kind of additional enhancements are in the pipeline in terms of product and further improvement in the platform? And then just lastly, just for modeling purposes, can you give us a sense of Q1, how it's performing year over year, to the extent you can? Thank you.

Sure, Zig. So the first question, again, was really getting an understanding of the differentiation, for example, against other DSPs, correct?

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. So when I look at the marketplace, there's sort of four generations of competitors. There are those that are focused entirely on sort of as a margin driver is like media markup, right? Acquiring media at one level and deploying it at another. And they have invested a lot less, they have technology, but they've invested a lot less in technology and they're starting to fade in terms of customer adoption. Where the market is sort of heading is into this sort of outcome space. In other words, the value has shifted over the last five years from help me deploy my advertising budget across all these different channels towards a new sort of focus, which is for every dollar that I spend, what am I actually getting back in business returns? And that this is shifting from where we think our customers are and reaching different audiences towards What are all the options I have to maximize my row as? The smartest agencies and the smartest brands have made this shift in the last year, year and a half, and we have a solid answer. So first and foremost, the first generation of DSPs, they can't play in this space. They are missing a couple layers of tech, let alone that attribution and incrementality layer. Secondarily to that, we actually – we happen to have the right ingredients, a drag-and-drop canvas. We happen to have the ability to have AI at every level in the stack, which we've actually had for some time. And we invested a lot in 2024 around reporting and whatnot. That gave us the base layer to implement attribution and incrementality. So the third answer to your question is, where are we positioned or differentiated? If you said there's 25 or 30 or 40 DSPs out there, there's only a handful that can really focus on outcomes. It's a small number. Some of them are really big brands that you know, but some of them are, like Viant is a good example, for example. They're heavily focused on outcomes. Their product and their business plan is the one that is closest to us. From my point of view, where I see us as differentiated right now is small and flexible, but also the only provider doing a lot of this in real time where you can make decisions in real time. And this is... sort of a very key touch point or an ignition point with marketers. They're like, hang on a sec. So I don't, I don't, I can't, not only do I understand like where my dollars went and what I'm getting for it, but you're telling me that I can then go right back into my campaigns and optimize things and come out the other side and maybe get an incremental level of performance. The answer is yes. So that's how we've differentiated ourself in this segment of what DSPs are offering is being small, flexible, but also the real-time provider of attribution, incrementality, various levels of insights. We, in Q1 and Q2 of this year, we layer up that. There's different subsegments or different types of of attribution incrementality, multi-touch models, for example. There's different components to it, so we add on some additional use cases, some additional features and functions to really make that complete. And then my focus is to start to really shift. Once we have that, that's the predicate. I want to shift to what I call the next generation of DSPs, which is really going into a a generative DSP with human in the loop, so to speak. So it's not necessarily without any human involvement. It's really sort of really accelerating campaign setup by having the machine do it, accelerating issue resolution by, again, having the machine constantly running its own internal insights, having reporting entirely in a format and a way and under parameters that the user wants to operate as opposed to anything that we produce in terms of a workflow. And then, again, being able to take advantage of that not only attribution and immortality, but that real-timeness to, again, leveraging the machine, be able to make even further changes or take advantages of buy opportunities in real time, just sort of on this pursuit for continuous growth. ROAS optimization. And so where I see us as differentiated in this space is, first and foremost, we're one of only a handful of providers that can do this. A lot start to fade away. And secondary to that, we are differentiated within that small group by being able to do things in real time, and we will continue to layer that up towards generative self-service later this year. Then I think your last question, I'm sorry, again, if you could repeat it.

Yeah, and thanks for that, Simon. That's really, really good context, very helpful. Just thoughts on Q1 and trajectory of the business.

Yeah, what I see right now is I see a stronger pipeline than I have seen in my time here. What I see is a pipeline moving towards levels that I would really like to see where we get to a – a um a lot less volatility for example in the the dsp performance in particular i'm talking specifically about the dsp the exchange side doesn't have a pipeline based on the nature of its business so talking specifically about the dsp managed herself i see the best pipeline i have seen in my my time here right now uh it is in both managed and self we're seeing opportunities of both bringing in a new CRO late last year has been helpful in sort of getting that going because, again, we move towards that. Better ICP that I mentioned under Aravinda's question. And then Brian coming in as our CRO, he's been able to sort of layer up and really segment the sales pitch because managed buyers and self-service buyers don't always need the same thing. And, you know, we've moved away from really selling what historically Illumine has sold, which is, you know, we're a journey platform. We help you spend across all these channels. into a much more precise level of selling that we started very late last year into this year, which is around, you know, land and expand. These are specific problems that we can help drive real-time decision-making on in these specific channels. And if you like what you see, then let's do more channels. So we sort of land and expand as opposed to pitch the spend side. We pitch the result side. And that's feeding – the ICP and that different approach to sales is feeding the best pipeline I've seen in my time here. So when I'm looking at it, our number one job this year has two components. It is dedicate a team, which we have done, towards really focusing on better retention, best retention of the customers we have landed in the last few months because these are at that higher level ICP. helping them perform, getting their questions answered, giving them support, layering up new features with them. And then secondary to that, converting that pipeline towards sales. That's the two proof points that I am definitively looking for in 2026.

Okay, that's great. Thanks very much.

Thanks very much for that, Drew. As there are no further questions, this will conclude our time this morning. My thanks to Simon.