Syniverse achieves 22% revenue growth in Q1, expects strong returns from strategic investments in theatrical releases and microseries initiatives.

OPERATOR - (00:00:00)

Press Star 9 to raise your hand and Star 6 to unmute. I would now like to turn the call over to Gary Lofredo, Chief Legal Officer, Secretary and Senior Advisor for Cineverse. Please go ahead.

Gary Loffredo - (00:00:14)

Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for joining us for the Syniverse Fiscal Year 2026 First Quarter Financial Results Conference Call. The press release announcing Syniverse's results for the fiscal first quarter, ended June 30, 2025, is available at the Investors section of the company's website@www.Cineverse.com. A replay of this broadcast will also be made available at the Cineverse website after the conclusion of this call. Before we begin, I would like to point out that certain statements made on today's call contain forward looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. The Company's periodic reports that are filed with the SEC describe potential risks and uncertainties that could cause the Company's business and financial results to differ materially from these forward looking statements. All the information discussed on this call is as of today, August 14, 2025 and Syniverse does not assume any obligation to update any of these forward looking statements except as required by law. In addition, certain financial information presented in this call represent non GAAP financial measures and we encourage you to read our disclosures and the reconciliation tables to applicable GAAP measures in our earnings release carefully as you consider these metrics. I am Gary Loffredo, Chief Legal Officer, Secretary and Senior Advisor at Syniverse. With me today are Chris McGurk, chairman and CEO, Eric Opoka, President and Chief Strategy Officer Tony Wheidor, President of Technology and Chief Product Officer Mark Linskey, Chief Financial Officer Yolanda Macias, Chief Motions Pictures Officer and Mark Torres, Chief People Officer, all of whom will be available for questions following the prepared remarks. On today's call, Chris will briefly discuss our fiscal year 2026 first quarter financial highlights, the latest operational developments, outlook and long term growth strategy. Mark will follow with a review of our financial results, Eric will provide some details on our streaming business results and operating initiatives and Yolanda will cover our upcoming theatrical slate before opening the floor for questions. I will now turn the call over to Chris McGurk to begin.

Chris McGurk - Chairman and CEO - (00:02:40)

Thanks Gary and thanks everyone for joining us on the Call today. On our last call, Tony Wheidor reviewed our technology business in some depth following our recent reorganization where Tony became our President of Technology and Chief Product Officer to help turbocharge our tech business. On this call, Yolanda Macias, who recently became our Chief Motion Pictures Officer will review our theatrical business in some detail as well since we have so rapidly built it into a surging new product line for the company. However, before Yolanda goes through that theatrical business review, Mark will detail our financial performance and then Eric will outline our operational progress and the new initiatives across our businesses. And I will start before them by briefly reviewing some points that I believe are very important for our shareholders. First, we had another strong quarter from a revenue standpoint with significant growth across all our key lines of business. Operating margins also increased markedly from the first quarter of last year. Investments in SGA and marketing to support our expanding theatrical releasing business and build out our technology, product, business development and sales team impacted our adjusted EBITDA and net income. However, we expect to begin to see some strong returns from these investments beginning in our fiscal second quarter that we are currently halfway through. Mark will get into more detail on all that in just a minute. Second, the Toxic Avenger, Unrated hits theaters in two weeks on August 29th. We are pleased with the reaction to the film so far,, particularly the response to the movie cast and director at Comic Con where we got major studio level panel placement in the main hall and lots of attention. Yolanda will get into more detail on the release and marketing strategy in a few minutes, but now I want to emphasize the economic comparison of this film to Terrifier 3 from a Cineverse standpoint. Like Terrifier 3, our all in investment to acquire and release the Toxic Avenger is less than $5 million. That, in and of itself, generates a really favorable risk reward profile for us with an extremely low ultimate box office break even of between 5 to 10 million dollars and significant upside beyond that. However, the risk reward profile on Toxic Avenger gets even better than that since we have completely bought out the film from the producers for all North American rights in perpetuity. That means we completely own the entire stream of studio and producer revenues and profits that the Toxic Avenger will generate in all media domestically forever. And we don't have to share that with anyone. Obviously that's an extremely advantageous position that I have never seen replicated for a major studio production such as this one. Third, we added a great high potential new film to our slate that we're very proud to have acquired. Earbud Returns we believe this amazing beloved family film and TV franchise, formerly set up at the Walt Disney Company for over two decades under the creative guidance and ownership of producer Robert Vince, has a built in audience that is all prime for a wide release theatrical revival in late summer of 2026. Our recent announcement that Buddy, the Golden Retriever, is returning to the big screen has already garnered a huge positive reaction from fans in the media, both traditional and social. The announcement was featured on Good Morning America, the Today show and People Magazine, among many, many other outlets. Finally, just yesterday, we announced a 50:50 joint venture for Microco, a new studio and platform for microseries, a market projected to reach $10 billion by by 2027. Our partner for Microco is Lloyd Bronze Banyan Ventures. Lloyd is the former Chairman of ABC Entertainment and the former Chairman of wme. Joining this venture as CEO is Jana Winograte, the very talented former President of Showtime Networks and also Susan Rovner as Chief Creative Officer, the also very talented former Chairman NBC Universal Television and Streaming the goal here is to be a first mover domestically in this rapidly growing new market by taking advantage of the demonstrated capabilities of this elite leadership team while fully leveraging Cineverse's unique set of streaming content, technology, marketing and AI assets to create no less than the Netflix of microseries, a lowcost AI native fan Forward Environment all the investments we have made over the years in technology, AI content and streaming have given us a tremendous advantage in dramatically lowering entry cost to this business as well as accelerating speed to market and scale. Eric will explain all this in more detail in just a few minutes. In many ways we are entering this micro series business for the exact same reason we entered the wide release film business because we have assembled a unique set of next generation assets that create a compelling competitive advantage versus everyone else in the business. These assets enable us to break all the traditional rules and economic models that burden everyone else in the industry and should lead to significant value creation. And with that I'll turn things over to Mark for a financial update.

Mark Linskey - (00:08:37)

Mark: Thank you, Chris. As Chris noted, we had a strong top line revenue and gross margin quarter with 11.1 million in revenue, a 2.1 million or 22% increase over the prior year quarter and a gross margin of 57% compared to 51% last year, materially above our guidance of 45 to 50%. For the quarter we reported a net loss of 3.5 million and adjusted EBITDA of negative 2.1 million compared to a net loss of 3.1 million and adjusted EBITDA of 1.4 million in the prior year quarter. The decline in both numbers is primarily the result of our SG&A expenses impacted by increased investments in sales, legal, marketing and technology to support our expanding theatrical and technology initiatives for the remainder of the fiscal year. We fully expect to see strong top and bottom line results in the remainder of our fiscal year. As a result of these upfront investments, we had 2 million in cash and cash equivalents on our balance sheet as of June 30, 2025 with 8.9 million available on our 12.5 million working capital facility. The decline in cash from year end is directly attributable to the acquisition of content and the payment of royalties during the quarter, the majority of which was related to Terrifier 3. Subsequent to year end, 1.9 million warrants to purchase shares of our common stock were redeemed for 5.9 million in proceeds or $3 per share, leaving approximately 700,000 warrants still outstanding. We would also like to highlight the positioning of our current balance sheet with no longer any long-term debt, no acquisition related liabilities outstanding. Outstanding warrants have been reduced to $700,0$12 million available on our capital facility as of today. Finally, coming off a fiscal year with record revenues and strong rev record revenues and strong revenue and gross margin growth this quarter, we believe the SG&A investments that we've made this quarter will lead to strong top and bottom line results for the remainder of the fiscal year. With that, I'll turn the floor over to Eric to discuss our operating and strategic growth initiatives.

Eric Opoka - (00:10:57)

Eric thanks Mark. So this was a quarter of acceleration across all our key business lines, streaming, advertising and platform services. Our strategy is working and we're starting to see results. Starting with streaming. We delivered 4 billion total minutes viewed up 38% year over year and 20% sequentially. Fast minutes streamed were 3.8 billion, a 39% increase over the prior year. Total streaming viewers climbed to 214 million, up 24%. Subscriber count grew to 1.4 million, an increase of 5% year over year and 1% over the prior quarter. Screambox is up 27% since the release of Terrifier 3 on the streaming service, and the Cineverse channel has grown more than 4,300% since January. Off a small base but clearly gaining traction. We saw a strong uptick in free trial starts in the quarter, many of which are now converting to paid in the current quarter and we're leaning into that momentum over the next two quarters. We expect to pursue aggressive growth through new partnerships, bundling strategies and marketing. Execution in the period on advertising performance was mixed, headwinds from open market, programmatic remainder that we are seeing signs of recovery as brands and agencies begin to restore spending heading into the back half of the year. The real strength came from our direct business, which grew 57% year over year. That growth was driven by both new and returning advertisers including Expedia, Mint Mobile, ZipRecruiter, Warner Brothers Pictures, Sony Pictures, Hulu, Neon, Audible and Universal Pictures, among others. Cineverse continues to be a must buy for entertainment marketers. Our advantage is scale, targeting and breadth of formats. We're not just offering CTV, we're delivering a full funnel reach across mobile, podcast, display and live events. Cineverse 360, our proprietary ad platform, is now a core part of that strategy. Subsequent to the quarter end in July, we just delivered our strongest month ever in terms of campaign volume and advertiser adoption. What makes Cineverse 360 powerful is that it gives us reach not only across our own owned properties, but across the open web. Advertisers can reach our fandom audiences across a stunning 98% of US ad supply. What does that mean? That means advertisers can target Cineverse audiences wherever they are on espn, Hulu, CTB platforms and more anywhere. That's what allows us to scale while still offering precision on licensing. We continue to land high value deals while preserving windows on our own platforms. That hybrid approach is delivering both revenue and strategic control. We've been capturing mid seven figure revenue across partners while driving growth on services like Screambox and Cineverse. We're monetizing through both first party and third party channels and that's a real advantage. Now let's talk about the microdrama announcement. With MicroCo, we're not entering the space to compete with other apps. We're building the platform that's going to define the category. There are dozens of apps operating independently, but none offer a complete experience for fans, creators and advertisers, which is pretty surprising giving the scope of this being a 10 billion dollar market. MicroCo is going to be that infrastructure layer. What makes MicroCode different is our strategy to match the cost effectiveness of the space. Short form mobile first with rapid production while raising the bar on quality. That's what's been missing. Content that feels built to last. So our leadership team and partners reflect that ambition. Janet Winograde, our CEO, was the former President of Entertainment at Showtime, where she greenlit and launched the network's most successful streaming series, including Yellow Jackets. She previously led business ops for ABC's network and studio, which gives her a rare hybrid view of created and operational leadership. And Susan Ravender, joining in October as Chief Content Officer, is one of the most accomplished network and studio executives in the business. She's overseen more than 18 series that reached the 100 episode mark, including Gossip Girl, Flash, Shameless and Supernatural among many more. And Lloyd Braun, Chair of the Board, is behind some of the most successful shows in modern television, including iconic and successful series like the Sopranos, Lost, Desperate Housewives, Grey's Anatomy, and Jimmy Kimmel Live. So this is not a team that's just chasing trends. We're going to be setting the standard for an emerging space and with our matchpoint technology, content library, fandom network and ad platform, and some amazing platform innovations forthcoming, we're going to be building the infrastructure, distribution and monetization that the space has been missing. So we believe MicroCo can fully unify this entire Microdrama ecosystem in the same way Amazon prime has unified it for long form content, aggregating great content, enabling creators and delivering discovery and monetization at scale. So while we're proud of what we've built so far leading up to this announcement, we know there's a lot more to do and the team across Syniverse continues to operate with urgency, focus and a commitment to execution. So now we're putting them to work during the next phase of growth. And with that, I'll turn it over to Yolanda to discuss our theatrical business.

Yolanda Macias - Chief Motion Pictures Officer - (00:16:36)

Thank you Eric. As part of the Next Generation Studio, the Motion Picture Group is building our strongest slate of wide releases in the company's history. This supports our strategy of IP with addressable and identifiable audiences who match Syniverse's internal media assets while offering the creative community an opportunity to reach their fans with a much better risk reward profile than anywhere else in town. The next release from our fan first slate is the Toxic Avenger Unrated, directed by Macon Blair, which is reimagination of Troma's 1984 cult classic and is coming to theaters over labor day weekend on August 29th. Also following our trend of wide unrated releases is Silent Night, Deadly Night, directed by Mike P. Nelson, and which will undoubtedly shock audiences in time for the holidays on December 12. On January 23, gamers and fans of creepy storytelling will experience the next installment of the iconic horror game franchise Return to Silent Hill, and It is the 20th anniversary of the original 2006 film. This joins our other previously announced wide release and the third installment of the franchise Wolf Legacy. Going beyond horror, we recently announced expanding our theatrical slate into the important and popular family category Air Bud Returns, the iconic franchise created by Robert Vince, who will continue to resonate and delight fans across generations. The marketing campaign launched first on the Today show last Friday where we announced that your Golden Retriever has an opportunity to be in the next Air Bud movie. The search is on and look for another exciting announcement very soon about a major film theatrical reissue that is coming to Cineverse,, and to fans in 2026. All wide releases leverage our unique theatrical strategy blueprint to release in an effective and efficient manner. As proven with Terrifier 2 and Terrifier 3, we target and reach major studio level awareness across all our internal media assets, efficient paid media spend and major brand partnerships. As Chris stated earlier, these projects have total investments in acquisitions, costs and P and A of less than $5 million and ultimate box office breakeven of less than 10 million. That's why they have such a favorable risk reward profile versus all our major and independent studio competitors. We will continue to prove that our independent and innovative approach will generate positive results for filmmakers in receiving participation overages earlier than the traditional studio paradigm. Comic Con was a huge marketing and press success for the Toxic Avenger in Silent Night, Deadly Night, Talent interviews, Hall H panel discussions and exclusive fan screenings were very well received and talent has been incredibly supportive with these efforts. Reactivating the iconic movie phone number for the first time in a decade. Syniverse partnered with Moviefone and launched a Fan Forward experience on August 1st with Peter Dinklage's voice as Toxi Reading Showtimes. The press pickup exceeded our expectations and Ad Age named it one of the most creative campaigns you need to know about. Toxi is the hero we need now and there is no better time for him come for him to come to the big screen than now as these releases show and the strategies to distribute and promote them to distribute and promote them Support we are champions not only for filmmakers but but also for our fans. We listen to them and deliver the films they want to see in the format they want to see them. We will continue to be bold and bring compelling pictures to theaters, including unrated pictures in which fans can see the filmmaker's vision in all its glory. In addition, we are disrupting Hollywood studio economics by delivering greater and faster backend to filmmakers. We will continue to identify and acquire proven IP from franchises, books or games or reissues of cinema masterpieces that beg to be offered as a unique experience to existing and new fans. The beauty of a known IP is the addressable and highly engaged audiences that you can match and align with our expansive network of channels, podcasts and editorial sites like Bloody Disgusting,. In addition, we are releasing award winning limited theatrical independent movies on less than 100 screens. These theatrical releases are prestige films acquired from festivals with a strong following and a Mark Cineverse,,'s support of indie filmmaking. For example, this November 14th we will release the Things yous Kill winner of Best Director at Sundance Film Festival 2025. A useful ghost, winner of Critics Week Grand Prize of Cannes Film Festival, will make its North American debut at the Toronto International Film Festival. Both critically acclaimed films may receive a Best International Feature Film nomination for their country of origin. And of course we will support the For Your Consideration (FYC) campaign. Finally, the Teddy Award winning animated comedy out of the Berlin Film Festival, Lesbian Space Princess will be theatrical release on October 31st. In summary, the Motion picture group is targeting highly engaged fandoms and creating event viewing and unique experiences across all windows of distribution. We are engaging legacy and new fans with our multi touch point campaigns supported by our technology and media assets at a fraction of studio cost. We expect to build wide and limited theatrical releases to roughly 14 pictures per year over the next several years. We will be announcing other exciting IP releases and reissues as early as next week and in the coming months. And with that operator, let's open it up for Q and A. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please raise your hand. Now we ask that you limit yourself to one question and one follow up. If you have dialed into today's call, please press Star9 to raise your hand and Star6 to unmute. Please stand by while we compile the Q and A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Dan Kernos with Benchmark. Please go ahead.

Dan Kernos - Equity Analyst - (00:23:28)

Great. Hopefully you guys can hear me. Okay, so just I guess to first on the Microco announcement, I mean Chris, you know, and Eric, both you guys gave a lot of color. But why? Why you guys? Why? Why partner with you? It's obviously a huge market. We've got Netflix talking about it. YouTube's talking about it. We've got the Mountain on the DSP side getting in there. You know the, the long tail of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) is huge here. So A, why you guys? B, how much money do you put to work in the space if it's a 5050 joint venture? And C, how do you think about monetizing it? And then just on the expense side, if you guys could just give us some color on where you invested and how the leverage is going to occur in the coming quarters. Would appreciate it. Thank you.

Chris McGurk - Chairman and CEO - (00:24:16)

Well, Dan, this is Chris. You did a good job there of getting like 15 questions in with your One Question One follow up, but good on you.

Dan Kernos - Equity Analyst - (00:24:22)

Thank you.

Chris McGurk - Chairman and CEO - (00:24:25)

Just in terms of the micro drama microseries initiative, I think it emphasizes one compelling point. People are coming to us now, not just filmmakers, but other businesses and people in the industry who now understand that we built a collection of assets that nobody else has. And you know, again, whether it's launching a wide release movie business in a smarter way, we think than everybody else with virtually no risk, or a microseries business where we've already spent, you know, 10 years investing in kind of the infrastructure, the technology, the AI, the streaming, the podcast, our market, our marketing operation, Cineverse 360. So we've done most of the heavy lifting already to basically be the first domestic company to launch into the space, which as we said is going to be a $10 billion business a year and a half. So I think, I think Lloyd and company, who are all incredibly experienced and have been around the block, wanted to be involved in a game changing new business that had already done really well overseas. And I think they saw that we could really be sort of their secret weapon and helping them leverage all their creative talents and their relationships, but to do it in an incredibly smart, cost effective way and do it really quickly and really be the first mover in the space. So generally I think that that is why, you know, they, they came to us. I'll let Eric get into more detail on your 14 other questions.

Eric Opoka - (00:26:11)

Sure. Thanks, Chris. And you know, the other thing of ys, I think, you know, you look at the kind of business we've built already out of, out of the fandom business where effectively we've taken some very compelling assets individually, built them into a platform on the horror side with the Bloody Disgusting Screenbox ecosystem which is out now able to spawn and release wide theatrical movies where we built a very substantial ad business around it, we see the same dynamics in the microdrama space. So when know we're not just building, you know, another brand to compete with all of the other brands. We have a, we really have a plan to do what we did with Bloody Disgusting and that type of thing. Immense fandom, multi platform, lots of revenue, home of record for the information and data. And this model leverages all the things that we've been working on, including Cinecore, including Matchpoint, including Cineverse 360, you know, so we think we can build competing products not just to, you know, our game is not just, yeah, we're going to build our own original content on top of it, but the way in, the way that Amazon prime sells channels has an ad supported business, a marketing business has IMDb and other businesses. We're going to do the same thing for the microdrama sector so that these businesses are not only, not only are they providing a base of fandom but lots of monetize, monetization around them. So we're not just building once again yet another microdrama app, one of 40 or so out there in the market. We're building the home base for the microdrama industry and the fandom around it. In terms of the. Your question on investment, you know we have, there's a lot of options. You know, we have a very, very strong team and I, and you know, you can imagine we've had considerable interest from large, small, medium and large players that really like what we're assembling here. So you know, we'll have more details on that as the financing strategy culminates. Our goal now is to really is, is really to internally between our partners, bootstrap and fund this to launch and then evaluate the other investment opportunities. We, you know, we, I think this is the kind of business that can go very large and very big depending on how much capital we deploy. And if the capital needs we think are beyond what we're able to do, we're more than willing to bring on additional equity partners into the, into the endeavor. I hope that, that, that gives you a little bit of color without, you know, I can't get into the exact specifics just yet.

Dan Kernos - Equity Analyst - (00:29:17)

Yeah, super helpful,, I appreciate it.

OPERATOR - (00:29:22)

Your next question comes from the line of Kevin Pimento with Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead.

Kevin Pimento - (00:29:31)

Hi, thanks. This is Kevin for Brian Kinlinger. On the June earnings call you highlighted. That match point was closer to monetization. With the big studios evaluating the technology. Is there anything more you can share on the progress here and can you.

Chris McGurk - Chairman and CEO - (00:29:46)

Help manage expectations for sales cycle and feedback from studios? Yeah, thanks Kevin, this is Chris. I'm going to turn that over to Tony who's basically in the midst of filling up our tech pipeline right now and he can give you an update on where we stand and maybe a little bit better sense of sort of the timeline.

Tony Wheidor - (00:30:08)

Thanks, Chris. Kevin, thank you for the question. I think as we communicated at the last earnings call, we've made significant inroads in terms of bringing Matchpoint to market. One of the challenges that we had had previously was really getting Matchpoint in front of the decision makers, the champions at the studios. With the recent hiring and announcement of Michelle Edelman and the sales team that we've built around that, I'm confident that we now have the right sales team to really grow this business out rapidly. The traction and the robust response, positive response we've received from the studios has been tremendous. I would say that over the last quarter our pipeline has easily more than tripled in terms of potential deals. You know, some of these deals, obviously the largest studios are going to take a little longer to close the deal cycles are longer, but the revenue potential is, far exceeds the smaller deals that we currently announce. We will continue to do small deals because the deal cycles are smaller, but that's the meat and potatoes of the business. But our goal really is to continue to target larger big whales that we think will drive meaningful revenue to the business. We're pretty bullish. I would say that we're also making some traction with CineSearch. We were in a process of entering a pilot with the major TV oem, one of the top five global TV manufacturers. So once again, I think, as we've said before, Match Point is really the sphere that gets us in front of the big clients, Matchpoint Dispatch, and then from there we upsell the other services and products that we've developed. The product portfolio that we have is, bar none, far superior to anything any of our competitors are out there pitching. We're seeing movement in the industry in terms of competitors to matchpoint. We're seeing some other competitors fall out of the business, go under, be sold. So it really has opened up tremendous opportunity for us. So we feel very bullish in where we stand on the technology sales side.

Kevin Pimento - (00:32:16)

Great, thank you. And then could you go into a little bit more detail on the strategy. To drive strong revenue contribution contributions from podcasts?

Chris McGurk - Chairman and CEO - (00:32:26)

Eric, do you want to take that?

Eric Opoka - (00:32:28)

Sure. So, you know, I think the, the first phase of the podcast business was building up a scale audience which, you know, we've done just given the base of the podcast we have, I think the, the second phase of this was bringing in the sales capabilities to, to effectively shift from programmatic and third party sales deals which, you know, have, have a high hit to gross margin under those business models. So we've brought in, we've brought in a dedicated team of sellers. We're fully staffed up now and we've been, you know, these sellers have been, you know, the first part of, they've been around less than a quarter, so obviously getting them going around to their base of contacts. We, we brought in a team that's extremely experienced in podcast monetization, you know, coming from, you know, Sirius xm. And so they're making great progress. We've already, we've already seen significant, you know, low to mid six figure deals coming in under this team. So we think, you know, combining this with the, the bigger push we're making on C360, we think the combined mix of direct podcast sellers plus the rest of our team selling CTV podcast and other and other parts of the, of our ecosystem is a really, a good one two punch. And so that's really the game plan over the next few quarters. You know, takes a, you know, takes a new sales team about a quarter or two to really get up to their full potential. But we're already seeing, seeing them. So I have really strong belief that they're, they're going to be ready for the back half of the year, which is the prime selling period.

OPERATOR - (00:34:33)

There are no further questions remaining. So I'll pass the conference back over to the management team for closing remarks.

Chris McGurk - Chairman and CEO - (00:34:40)

Yeah, this is Chris. Thank you all again for joining us today and please feel free to reach out to Julie Milstead, with any additional questions you might have. We look forward to speaking with you all again on our next quarterly call. Thank you.

OPERATOR - (00:34:56)

That concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.