Newsmax Inc (NMAX) 2025 Q3 法說會逐字稿

Good day everyone and welcome to the Newsmax third quarter 2025 earnings conference call.

At this time, all participants are placed on a listen-only mode, and we will open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation.

It is now my pleasure to hand the floor over to your host Brett Mellott. Sir, the floor is yours.

Good afternoon and welcome to Newsmax's third quarter 2025 earnings conference call. I'm joined today by Christopher Ruddy, Chief Executive Officer, and Darryle Burnham, Chief Financial Officer.

On this call, Chris and Darryl will provide some prepared remarks on the most recent quarter. We will then take some questions from the investment community. A recording of this conference call will be available on our investor relations website shortly after the call has ended.

Please note that this call may include forward-looking statements regarding Newsmax's financial performance and operating results. The statements are based on management's current expectations. The actual results could differ from what is being stated due to certain factors identified on today's call and in the company's SEC filings.

Additionally, this call will include certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures are included in the earnings release and our SEC filings, which are available in the investor relations section of our website. I will now turn the call over to Chris Ruddy, Chief Executive Officer of Newsmax. Chris.

Thank you, Brett, and welcome everyone to our third quarter 2025 earnings call.

I am excited to be here with you today on our first call as a public company after completing our IPO earlier this year. I want to sincerely thank everyone who participated in both our private raise and IPO. Your support has led us to where we are today, and we are excited about the journey ahead.

Newsmax was founded as one of the first digital news publishers built on a mission to deliver independent values-driven journalism. When we launched our television network in 2014, we extended that vision to new audiences, and we've been growing ever since.

In a world where news consumption is increasingly fragmented and trust in media is declining, our founding principles remain as relevant as ever.

Today, Newsmax has grown into a comprehensive media platform with multiple distribution channels and a significant national and international audience reach.

Now present in over 100 countries, we operate the nation's 4th highest rated cable news network, reaching 60 million homes through our main channel, Newsmax, our free streaming channel, Newsmax to the Newsmax app, and its paid streaming service Newsmax Plus, our website, Newsmax.com, and our publications such as Newsmax magazine.

Newsmax generates diversified revenues from across affiliate fees paid by cable and satellite distributors, direct advertising sales across our linear and digital platforms, subscription fees from our Newsmax plus streaming service, and product sales revenue through our Humanic subsidiary, which publishes books and other content and products.

We are making strides across our revenue streams, demonstrated by our significant year over year growth results in the first, second, and now third quarters of 2025.

It is important to note that the year following a general election is typically a softer period for the broader news and broadcast industry, as audience engagement and advertising demand naturally moderate from election year highs.

Even with this backdrop, we are pleased to announce year over year growth this quarter, demonstrating the strength of our diversified revenue model and engaged audience base.

With that, I would like to share some key highlights from this quarter.

Financial performance. For the third quarter of 2025, we reported total revenues of $45.3 million representing a 4% increase year over year. Total broadcasting revenues grew 10.1% year over year to $36.6 million.

And affiliate revenues increased 22.3% year over year to $8.1 million. Our strong performance, especially considering this was a non-election year, was driven by affiliate fee revenue growth, higher pricing for broadcasting ad revenue, and an increase in Newsmax Plus subscribers.

Audience growth. Newsmax remains the fourth cable news network by delivering quality content across multiple platforms. This has been reflected in our strong ratings growth on our Newsmax channel year-to-date.

During each quarter this year, Newsmax has remained a TOP10 network in cable for a pivotal day part, like 9A to 8p and a TOP18 network in all of cable TV in total day.

That's out of 100 plus cable networks. Domestic distribution. This quarter, domestically, we saw a number of key distribution agreements, including with a leading provider of in-room entertainment within the hospitality hotel sector, making Newsmax accessible in more than 900 hotels, and over 300,000 hotel rooms in the United States.

We also partnered with Curb to bring Newsmax programming. To their taxi TV platform, reaching over 15,000 screens across 65 US markets, with 2.3 billion annual impressions.

International distribution expansion. We have seen continued success with our brand licensing partnerships with Newsmax Balkans and the launch of Newsmax en Espanol, the first and only AI live dub news channel.

This quarter also saw a significant expansion through our continued multi-year carriage partnership with Fubo, where we recently launched Newsmax and Espanol on Fubo's Latino plan and Latino Plus add-on package.

We also partnered with Trump Media and Technology Group to make Newsmax available at a global scale via the Truth Plus streaming platform.

Streaming success. Adding to our streaming success was Newsmax 2, our free streaming channel, airing across more than a dozen major OTT fast platforms, and over the air digital broadcast channels, as well as on the Newsmax app.

Newsmax too saw remarkable double-digit growth in viewership in the 3rd quarter versus the election year last year, with viewership up 33% in daytime. And always challenging day part in news. Our paid streaming service, Newsmax Plus, also saw strong growth, approximately 8% year over year versus Q3 2024.

Content investment this quarter, in addition to continuing to deliver best in class reporting and content domestically, we expanded our international news coverage with Carl Higbie broadcasting live from Israel for a week straight in August.

We provided comprehensive coverage of developments in the region, as well as exclusive interviews, including with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Newsmax is a high growth business, and we are focused on investing resources into the long-term execution of our business model and strategic growth initiatives. Looking ahead, we aim to continue executing on these opportunities, including affiliate fee advancement.

Favorable agreements with cable, satellite, and streaming distributors to secure a higher per subscriber fees and expanded channel placement, while pursuing new distribution partnerships that reflect our growing audience value and market position.

Programming expansion. New original programming and expanded news coverage capabilities through strategic investments in premium content, and additional correspondence in key markets.

We are also keenly focused on bringing exclusive programming that differentiates our brand while serving our audience's evolving information needs, such as our new World at War channel and our growing catalog of family-friendly content on the Newsmax Plus app.

Market expansion.

Opportunities in international markets and new distribution channels by evaluating strategic partnerships with global media distributors, developing localized content offerings, and expanded our digital presence to reach underserved audiences, both domestically and abroad.

Technology investment.

Enhancing our streaming platform capabilities and digital infrastructure to support our multi-platform distribution strategy.

Before I hand things off to Darl, I would like to reiterate that Newsmax is in a strong position and an exciting time in the news media industry.

The media landscape today continues to evolve with growing opportunities in streaming international markets, and multi-platform distribution, and we are uniquely positioned to benefit from these ongoing trends. Our cash position and strategic operating model provides us the flexibility to pursue growth opportunities as they arise.

Finally, I would like to thank our shareholders and partners for their support, and all of you for joining our call today.

With that, I will pass it on to our Chief Financial Officer, Darryl Burnham. Darryl?

Thank you, Chris, and thank you everyone for joining us today. As Chris mentioned, Newsmax is in a strong financial position, well capitalized with access to the public markets following our successful IPO earlier this year.

This milestone has provided us with significant capital and strategic flexibility as we continue to execute our growth initiatives.

It is important to note that while the ratings growth this year Chris mentioned is a positive indicator of our success, our financial performance is driven by multiple variables including Advertising rates and inventory availability, affiliate fee negotiations and rate increases, subscription revenue from our streaming services, timing of contract renewals, and intra and inter-year seasonal political patterns.

With that said, in the third quarter we delivered $45.3 million in total revenues, representing a 4% increase year over year. This strong performance demonstrates the continued momentum across our diversified business model.

Breaking this down by revenue stream, total broadcasting revenues grew 10.1% year over year to 36.6 million in the third quarter of 2025, which, as Chris mentioned, is even more impressive when considering this is a non-election year. Our growth in broadcasting was driven by affiliate fee revenues, higher broadcasting ad revenue, and an increase in Newsmax subscribers.

Affiliate fee revenues specifically increased 22.3% year over year to $8.1 million, driven by new contractual relationships as well as rate increases that went into effect earlier this year.

Advertising revenues decreased slightly to $27.6 million, a 1.6% year over year decline, mainly due to the non-election year comparison period versus 2024. Despite the tough comparison, we are encouraged by higher linear cable and satellite advertising rates and improved Nielsen ratings in 2025.

Which is translated into directly higher advertising rates and increased advertiser demand. Subscription revenues of $6.9 million were flat year over year, driven by continued growth in our Newsmax Plus subscriber base and offset by reductions in publication subscriptions due to the aforementioned election cycle comparison.

Product sales increased 1.8% year over year to $1.5 million. We reported a quarterly net loss of $4.1 million, a 58.1% improvement compared to a net loss of $9.8 million in the prior year quarter.

This improvement in net loss was primarily driven by a reduction in legal expenses relating to a previously disclosed and now resolved litigation matter.

Our quarterly adjusted EBITDA was $1.8 million compared to a positive adjusted EBITDA of $4.4 million in the same period of 2024, reflecting higher production and programming expenses and increased personnel and public company costs associated with the company's continued expansion.

We view these investments as essential to our long-term growth strategy and market position. We ended the quarter with $14.2 million in cash and cash equivalents and $116.2 million in short-term investments, bringing our total cash and investment position to approximately $130.4 million.

At the end of 2024, our total cash and investment position was $82.4 million. This represents a significant strengthening of our balance sheet following our successful IPO and pre-IPO funding rounds.

We are encouraged by the strong performance we are seeing early in the 4th quarter and remain confident in our previously disclosed full year revenue guidance of $180 million to $190 million.

In summary, we are demonstrating strong growth across key revenue metrics while making strategic investments for the future. Our diversified revenue model, strengthened balance sheet, and access to capital markets provides us with a solid foundation to continue executing our growth initiatives.

Thank you for your time today, and we look forward to updating you on our continued progress during next quarter's earnings call.

Now we would like to open the line for analyst questions operator.

(Operator Instructions)

Your first question is coming from Michael Kupinski from Noble Capital Markets. Your line is live.

Thank you. Good solid quarter. I just wanted to, a couple questions here. In the advertising, line, you really didn't have, political advertising in the earlier quarter.

The reason why you saw a little softness, related to political was just because, of, or related to the year earlier quarter was because of just the heightened level of, engagement, audience engagement from the year earlier, election cycle. Is that right? I just want to clarify that.

Well, Darryl, do you want to answer it or should I?

I can answer it. I mean, yeah, Michael, we didn't, thank you for your question. We didn't have a lot of political advertising in 2024, but we, we've continued to see, an interest in political advertising overall, both in 2024 and 2025.

I think that that is something that we're looking forward to as we continue to grow the business and the brand overall.

But, when you look at the quarter over quarter, we're really pleased with the fact that even though there's heightened engagement in Q3 of 2024 that we were still able to exceed last year's revenue with our Q3 2025 results.

I would just add that I would add that, 2024 was the Super Bowl of elections. That's how I describe every Presidential. There's usually very high engagement that drives advertising, and there's, even though we don't get a lot of direct, most advertising is spent in local market swing states, and we're a national advertising platform.

We still get a lot of ancillary companies that are selling financial newsletters, for instance, will oftentimes make their pitches and play into the election and other other types of advertisement, so it's usually for us the year after a Presidential is not as good as a Presidential. This year we'll we'll beat expectations.

Yeah.

And then in terms of your investments, can you provide a little color on the content investments that you're making? Are they showing signs of paying off, ratings or advertising support? Has there been a direct correlation to those investments or are you starting to see that already?

Well, I think in the history of Newsmax, we have found that there's never really a a linear 1 to 1 progression. When you make an investment, you see an immediate return. Some businesses you do seem like or act like that.

With Newsmax, it usually, takes a bit of a lag of effect before some of that has weight. For instance, this year we've been investing and increasing. The content on our app. We've purchased or licensed a lot of the documentaries, films, scripted programs from the 1960s and 1970s.

We've been, adding a bunch of new documentaries that we've, offered the money to or went into contract to have developed, and those, if you go onto the Newsmax Plus app, you'll find there's a lot more content.

We're laying the groundwork for a significant marketing effort in the coming months, for people to join the app for that content, so not all of that is immediately, increased, we're still looking for some very significant talent to join the company.

We're in discussions and looking for people that would add that would be an investment in content, but they would not be an immediate return. We believe just because we hired somebody that even if they're well known that that immediately generates revenues for the company.

And Michael, I might add to that just a little bit that, when we're investing in content, it really has multiple advantages because of the fact that investing in content, for example, on our Newsmax One channel is obviously something that we're looking to do to increase ratings which will lead to higher advertising.

But the investment in content on our Newsmax One channel also benefits our Newsmax Plus subscription because that is the same content that we're providing on the Newsmax Plus.

And it also benefits the potential for affiliate fees down the road because that investment will give us basically stronger content's going to put us in a much better position on renegotiating any of our affiliate fee renewals.

Oh, got you. And if I could just squeeze, just two quick ones in in regards to the current advertising environment, can you just discuss the tone of the current advertising environment and how have major events like the most recent government shutdown, for instance, how has that affected your business?

And then finally in terms of distribution deals, do you have any major distribution deals that are coming up for next year? And thank you for taking all the questions. I appreciate that.

Well, we haven't noticed anything that we think the government, shutdown has harmed our business, but I've noticed anything in the sales that we would report, so, we haven't seen that. And second, I think for next year in terms of distribution agreements, Darryll has a little more insight into that.

In terms of what's up for renewal.

Yeah, so right now, on the advertising market, Michael, I think when you look at that, the overall advertising market generally is up, right? It's really kind of a redistribution between what we would call linear cable and satellite, and then you're seeing a lot of growth in CCTV and OTT advertising as basically.

Advertisers are are looking to make sure that they're shifting their marketing over to areas that offer more precise targeting and measurable ROI. We've been investing in, continuing to increase our content on Newsmax too so that we can monetize that and take advantage of that growth.

But then just on our linear and cable advertising, we also think we're in a unique position because, while there is a decline in cord cutting that's been occurring, Newsmax has continued to see increases in advertising. So, even in a in a period when you're comparing a non-election year to an election year, so that is also something that we're.

Basically going to be focusing on because as I said earlier that's going to lead us towards, continuing to gain market share which as I said before will yield higher advertising rates and and revenue and it also puts us in a great position for the affiliate fee contract renewals in terms of major distribution deals that are coming up for renewal.

You know we do have a a a deal that we're working on right now that is going to be coming up for renewal within the next couple of months. I think that right now everything is positive on that. I don't think we're going to be going into the details of which MVPD that is, but generally speaking.

All of the negotiations that we've been entering into as the deals do come up for renewal have been very favorable, I think that's kind of highlighted by the fact that you've seen an increase in affiliate fee revenue of 22% quarter over quarter, and when you look at.

When you look at our scenario, even in a declining market, the distributors or MVPDs, they recognize the value of having a 24/7 trusted news brand on their platforms, and as we all know, news and sports are still continuing to attract both viewers and advertisers.

And Darryl, what percent of the total subscribers are this is this, one that you're working on? Or can you give us some color on that?

Is that something I'm, I mean we haven't released that information publicly at this point in time. I'm not sure that we want to do that on this call.

Okay, all right, thank you, thanks for taking all the questions.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Alicia Reese from Wedbush Securities. Your line is live.

Hi this is Kate on for Alicia.

I was wondering if you guys could speak a little bit more about your competitive advantages and how you plan to monetize your social engagement in the future.

Well, I think one of the main competitive advantages that Newsmax has is that we are, we are a company, a TV broadcaster, cable, and now streaming that came out of the digital world. Our core competency was digital, not TV originally, right?

We started in 1998 that we created a very powerful digital engine between websites, email lists, databases. And then social media that you mentioned, all of that took a lot of time, and the investors in Newsmax got the benefit of owning a company that had this big digital engine.

It's one of the reasons I believe Newsmax succeeded as a cable channel during a period there really have been relatively few entrants into the cable news market, and there have been a lot of failures, the few that did enter. We're, I think the big success story. In the past 10 years, and I think it's because we have a competitive advantage over companies.

News Nation, for instance, has had a very weak digital engine, backbone, one America, for instance. I think also, we don't have complete competitive advantage, but I think that we're in the marketplace that Fox News is, which is the center right pay TV market in America.

And there's really only Fox News as a player, so it's not blue ocean territory, but it's pretty close, and it allows us to maneuver a lot more and have less competition to deal with.

Fox is a very significant competitor, so I don't want to underplay it. But I do believe that a lot of Americans would like to have more choice in that area, and I think certainly we have proven and demonstrated that the marketplace is strong and robust and can have another major player in it.

Social media for us is not as easily monetizable as a direct. As they don't necessarily share fully all the revenues that you put on social media. We are seeing an uptick on that, but it's not to the degree that we would like to see.

I know Facebook, and some of the others are showing some increases this year across the board, but, we believe that social media is a very important component of our overall reach.

As a platform and when we sell to advertisers, they like to hear that we have over $22 million, I believe it is now, social media followers.

That's a really big number and and there are ways for them to benefit from that reach. There's each of the social media platforms have rules about how people can put advertisements into that, but it's a very strong overall selling point for the company.

And it and it and it really helps us not just in advertising, our cable distribution agreements. It's a powerful club to have when you go into a negotiation. You have $22 million followers that you can reach, so it gives you the ability to let them know, for instance, if a cable operator is not keeping you.

So there's other little other benefits we believe and we continue to invest in social media. We think it's a very critical important growth area for the company.

Got it, thank you.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Thomas Forte from Maxim Group. Your line is live.

Great, thanks Chris and Darryl, for taking my questions. I have one question and one follow-up. So, Chris, you had made some comments recently on the floor of the NYSE about Newsmax's growth on multiple fronts, including cable TV, digital, Newsmax Plus, print, streaming.

What are the various growth drivers and what gives you confidence that the growth is sustainable on so many fronts?

Well, I think they're sustainable because they're very much interrelated.

Our digital backbone, for instance, relates very much to the growth of our TV and vice versa. We've been, as our TV has grown, we've been able to push those viewers onto digital, take polls, read articles online, sign up for emails. We've been able to sell newsletters, books.

We're having a lot of, success this year with a book that Humanix has done called Pagan Threat, and that book is by Lucas Miles. It's now, number 4. It's been on the TOP10 New York Times bestseller list for 4 weeks in a row, and sales are really strong, and it has a foreword by Charlie Kirk.

And Charlie wrote the foreword for the book. He's a friend of the author, and that came out the week after he passed away. So for instance, that drives not only book sales, it's also driving subscriptions to our magazine. It's driving engagement on the website. It's something that we're able to promote on our TV channels.

When I was on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, I talked about three general areas, Tom, that were growing. One is the cable pay TV world. We believe we have significant growth still to come, even though that's a contracting ecosystem.

Number two is our streaming channel Newsmax 2. We are seeing very significant double-digit growth on streaming platforms. We believe that we have one of the strongest cable, streaming news channels because the big cable companies are not investing.

To the degree they should be on the streaming side, and there's a number of reasons for that. And number three, the Newsmax Plus service, as I mentioned earlier, we're investing a lot in the content. Newsmax 1, Newsmax 2 channels are available.

We have a new military history channel called World War. We believe that's an area of growth. All three of these areas will, as each of the channels grow, the Plus service will grow, and they will also, as people subscribe to the Plus service and have the app, they'll be able to watch all of these channels and engage in our content.

So we're very excited and we think that we've really laid the groundwork and we have a really robust infrastructure both digitally in our marketing department and through our various platforms to really sell the offerings of the company. And I think you're going to see very significant, continued growth next year.

Great thanks Chris. Then for my follow-up Darrell I know you talked about this before, but I wanted to ask it in case there's anything else you want to add how are affiliate fees trending as you negotiate carriage deals with cable and streaming distributors?

Well, as, as.

We said before, I think they're trending very favorably, right? You've already seen, as I referenced earlier, a 22% increase quarter over quarter, and I think one of the key components when you are looking at affiliate fees is the fact that we're basically, we're a new entrant into the market, right?

I mean, we didn't start collecting affiliate fees until late 2023. So in many cases we actually are on our first affiliate fee contract.

And we've been seeing positive results in the ones that have come up for renewal. We expect that to continue, and that's one of the reasons that we're going to continue to invest in the programming and the quality.

Content that we're putting out with Newsmax One because that's just going to put us in a much stronger position in those renegotiation contract renewals and then as we said as well, right, the MVPDs and advertisers, they're both looking for live news and sports, those are really kind of the key areas that they're focused on.

Having live news networks on an MVPD network is going to be key in terms of retaining their subscribers, and we don't have the same downward pressures that, some of our competitors do because of the fact that we're relatively new into the marketplace.

So I think overall, we've got a lot of upside in the affiliate fee growth area and we're looking forward to continued momentum in that in the years to come.

I added, yeah, I might add that, Newsmax, we're new to the market this year. We've been a new company, and, I think the market hasn't fully appreciated just how successful we've been in various things, with not a lot of capital. We haven't really spent a huge amount of capital.

We've already developed a tremendous foundation. The Reuters Institute last year said we were one of the TOP12 media properties in the whole United States, and I think as the market understands and The Economist had a similar ranking and so forth and is among the most trusted news agencies.

As the marketplace as we monetize that 50+ million people we regularly reach, the company is going to grow, we believe, significantly into profitability.

We've been facing the headwinds of what I would say is just, maybe we call it fake financial news, not fake news, but fake financial news, companies like Seeking Alpha, which just have no basis on fact, they have reported, I believe, more than once that I was selling shares in Newsmax.

Or that I had planned to sell shares. I have never sold a share of Newsmax. I have no plans to sell Newsmax. Frankly, I would like to own more shares of Newsmax. So, investors read this stuff online and unfortunately it's not a really accurate.

Understanding of both the management company, the desire of the management of the company and the ownership to continue to drive, and we're very much aligned, and I want to stay aligned with the success of the company with our shareholders, and we're going to be looking for very strong results next year.

Thank you, Chris.

Thank you. That concludes our Q&A session. I'll now hand the conference back to CEO Chris Ruddy for closing remarks. Please go ahead.

Well, I want to thank everyone.

This has been a tremendous year for us. We went public on the New York Stock Exchange. It was a historic Regulation A offering, the first time that a Regulation A plus offering has gone directly to the big board. I think investors, we have expanded our investment base tremendously.

I think we've already on a number of parts of the company that are key for the future have shown that we're going to continue having success this year and we expect to continue that in future years ahead. We very much appreciate all the investors for.

Standing with us, we like to say that they're joining our news revolution. We really do believe we have changed a lot of the concepts of how news is delivered in America and will continue to be delivered, and we're very excited about the future and appreciate your interest and support.

Thank you, everyone. This concludes today's event. You may disconnect at this time and have a wonderful day.

Thank you for your participation.