Ziff Davis Inc (ZD) 2024 Q4 法說會逐字稿

Good day ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Ziff Davis fourth-quarter and year-end 2024 earnings conference call.

My name is Paul, and I will be the operator assisting you today.

(Operator Instructions)

On this call will be Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff Davis; and Bret Richter, Chief Financial Officer of Ziff Davis.

I will now turn the call over to Brett Richter, Chief Financial Officer of Ziff Davis.

Thank you.

You may begin.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Ziff Davis investor conference call for Q4 and fiscal year 2024.

As the operator mentioned, I am Brett Richter, Chief Financial Officer of Ziff Davis, and I'm joined by our Chief Executive Officer Vivek Shah.

A presentation is available for today's call.

A copy of this presentation is available on our website.

When you launch the webcast, there is a button on the viewer on the right hand side which will allow you to expand the slides.

If you have not received a copy of the press release, you may access it through our corporate website at www.ziffdavis.com. In addition, you'll be able to access the webcast from this site.

After completing the formal presentation, we'll be conducting a Q&A.

The operator will instruct you at that time regarding the procedures for asking questions.

In addition, you can email questions to investor@ziffdavis.com. Before we begin our prepared remarks, allow me to read the safe harbor language.

As you know, this call and the webcast will include forward-looking statements.

Such statements may involve risks and uncertainties that would cause actual results to differ materially from the anticipated results.

Some of those risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to.

The risk factors that we have disclosed in our SEC filings, including our 10-K filings, recent 10-Q filings, various proxy statements and 8-K filings, as well as additional risk factors that we have included as part of the slideshow for the webcast.

We refer you to discussions in those documents regarding safe harbor language as well as forward-looking statements.

In addition, following our business outlook slides are our supplemental materials, including reconciliation statements for non-GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP equivalent.

Now let me turn the call over to Vivek for his remarks.

Thank you, Brett, and good morning, everyone.

While we came up a bit short in Q4 against our admittedly sanguine estimates, we nonetheless grew revenues by 5.9% and our adjusted diluted EPS by 10.7% in the quarter.

Against those measures, it was our best revenue growth quarter of the year and our highest level of free cash flow generation since the 2021 spinoff of consensus.

We just came up a touch short in a couple of parts of the business, adding up to roughly $10 million of revenues falling out of a quarter with nearly $413 million in total revenues.

It's very unusual for us to miss our own estimates, even slightly, and very much view it as an anomaly.

We were expecting some upside in our humble games portfolio, as well as some bookings in our connectivity business, which simply did not materialize in Q4.

But none of it diminishes our outlook for 2025.

We plan to build on our 2024 full year results, which included our highest revenues since 2021.

Importantly, 2024 represented a return to bottom line growth and outstanding free cash flow, which have long been the priorities of the company.

Our outlook for 2025 reflects an acceleration of our revenue growth from 2024's 2.8% to a midpoint for 2025 of 5%.

And adjusted EBITDA growth improvement from 2.3% to 6%.

We believe there is a meaningful disconnect between the current market value of the company and our strong underlying fundamentals.

We are committed to addressing this, and we are hopeful that the new segment reporting structure that we are implementing will aid investors in gaining a better understanding, and appreciation of the intrinsic value inherent in our business.

We are transitioning from two to five reportable segments, and we believe this reporting structure better aligns with our strategy, and will provide investors with greater transparency into the performance of our key businesses.

Specifically, we're disaggregating the digital media segment into four reportable segments.

Technology and Shopping, Gaming and entertainment Health and wellness and connectivity.

The cybersecurity and mark tech segment will remain the same.

The Tech and Shopping segment includes brands such as CNET, PCMag, Spiceworks, and Retail Me Now.

The gaming entertainment segment comprises IGN Entertainment and its subsidiary brands including IGN, Gamer Network, and Humble Bundle.

The Health and Wellness segment comprises the Everyday Health Group and its subsidiary brands including Everyday Health, Baby Center, Med Page, and Lose It.

The connectivity segment comprises (inaudible) and its subsidiary brands including Speedtest, Down detector, Root Metrics, and

(inaudible) .

We have provided five years of historical revenue by segment.

It's worthwhile spending some time to understand some of the trends and dynamics of each of these segments.

Starting with Tech and Shopping.

You can see a major spike in revenues in 2021 of 55%, which was a combination of M&A and a meaningful COVID bump.

This segment, far more than any other, benefited from people staying home and shopping online. 2022 and 2023 were very challenging with tough comparisons and a rapidly deteriorating B2B legion business.

Overall, the segment declined 25% over that two year period.

The segment returned to nearly 10% growth in 2024 with ad growth in the tech category and the addition of CNET offset by some continued shopping and B2B headwinds.

We believe this segment will be our strongest grower in 2025, especially on the bottom line with margin expansion in CNET, continued growth of our other consumer tech brands and the focus on profitability in B2B.

Gaming entertainment has been a mid single digit grower for a number of years.

While it's our smallest segment, it has one of the more balanced monetization models and has a great deal of potential to scale, particularly through acquisitions.

IGN Entertainment is a leading brand in a growing category.

The next two segments, Health and Wellness and Connectivity have long been our fastest growers.

And while each slowed to nominal growth in 2024, we have many reasons to believe they will return to their more robust growth rates.

Health and wellness has so many exciting elements, including its trusted care access portfolio, which is the leading hospital media network, its fast growing Lose it AI-driven weight loss and nutrition tracking app.

And a pharma ad business that just experienced a promising 2025 upfront buying season and that should benefit from a strong drug pipeline.

Connectivity is our most exciting business and has been fully retooled in 2024 with an ambition to be a larger scaled enterprise.

We undertook a major reorganization, which involved combining our UCLA and (inaudible) business units to set ourselves up for long-term growth.

We were willing to sacrifice near term growth for long term gains as we see this business as being the most valuable in our portfolio.

We're also deprioritizing the ad business within connectivity as well as some other non-core revenue streams to focus entirely on subscriptions and data.

While there's been no reporting changes to the cybersecurity and Mark Tech segment, it is worth pointing out that while revenues declined almost 3% in 2024, this was an improvement over the almost 7% decline in 2023, and we maintained the 35% EBITDA margin through disciplined expense management.

We believe this segment will return to growth in the second half of 2025.

It was the only segment with declining revenue in 2024, and if we achieve our expectations in 2025, then we will have all five of our segments growing for the first time in a few years.

Turning to our AI initiatives.

Some of our innovations are receiving market recognition.

Our AI powered features in Lose It, particularly the voice and photo logging capabilities were recently featured on CNET.

The article specifically highlighted how our AI technology is transforming nutrition tracking, making it as simple as taking a photo of your meal.

In addition, the AI job analyzer deployed by Health e-Careers was recently showcased as an AWS case study.

Healthy Careers has reported an 18% increase in engagement with their generative AI-powered job search functionality since Q3 2024, and they've seen a 30% uplift in job applications among users who engage with the AI tools.

While there's been industry discussion about AI's potential impact on search traffic, I want to emphasize a few key points.

First, our business model is diversified well beyond traditional traffic monetization, with traffic dependent ad revenues representing roughly 35% of our overall revenues.

Second, within our traffic, search represents roughly 40% of our visits.

Third, with respect to our search referrals, AI's presence remains limited.

AI overviews results are present in just 12% of our top queries.

Lastly, our analysis of year-over-year click through rates, specifically comparing queries with similar positions that now include AI overviews, shows no material aggregate impact on performance.

Given all of the attention and dialogue relating to DEI, I think it's important to reiterate that we view our programs and practices as being entirely value created.

But because so much of the dialogue seems to suggest that DEI practices are about exclusion and unfair preferences, it's important at this moment that we be very clear about what DEI means at Ziff Davis.

At our company, DEI has always been about fairness, equal opportunity, and belonging.

DEI is about finding the best talent regardless of background or circumstances and ensuring that all can thrive here.

Our work is knowledge work, and DEI is about building our intellectual capital.

We're also in the [audience] business and therefore it's imperative that we maximize our appeal and reach across a diverse landscape.

Simply put, DEI Ziff Davis helps us to drive the best possible business outcomes.

With that, let me hand the call back to Bret.

Thank you for that.

Let's discuss our financial results.

Our earnings release reflects both our GAAP and adjusted financial results for Q4 and fiscal year 2024.

We will focus our discussion today, and my commentary will primarily relate to our Q4 2024 adjusted financial results and their prior period comparisons.

Let's turn to slide 7 for the summary of our Q4 2024 financial results.

As Vivek addressed our new reporting structure and the content of slides 4, 5, and 6 in his remarks.

Fourth quarter of 2024 revenue was $412.8 million as compared with revenue of $389.9 million for the prior year period, reflecting growth of 5.9%.

Fourth quarter 2024 adjusted EBITDA was $171.8 million as compared with $167.6 million for the prior year period, reflecting 2.5% growth.

Our adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 41.6%.

We reported fourth quarter adjusted diluted EPS of $2.58. This figure reflects a 10.7% increase as compared with our Q4 2023 adjusted results.

Turning to slide 8, our fiscal year 2024 total revenue increased 2.8% to $1401.7 million as compared with fiscal year 2023.

Fiscal year 2024 adjusted EBITDA grew 2.3% to $493.5 million as compared with fiscal year 2023 adjusted EBITDA, primarily reflecting the growth in revenue.

Our adjusted EBITDA margin for fiscal year 2024 was 35.2% and relatively constant as compared with fiscal year 2023.

Adjusted diluted EPS grew 6.9% to $6.62 as compared with fiscal year 2023 adjusted diluted EPS.

Importantly, revenues adjusted EBITDA and adjusted diluted EPS all reflect year-over-year growth for both the fourth quarter and fiscal year 2024, each as compared with the prior year comparable periods.

However, Q4 2024 revenues fell short of our expectations, and the flow through of this shortfall negatively impacted fourth quarter adjusted EBITDA and adjusted diluted EPS.

As Vivek noted, the two most significant contributors to this shortfall were our Humble Games Publishing business and our Connectivity business.

Humble Games Publishing fell short of our Q4 expectations, driven by a combination of new releases moving into 2025, as well as underperformance of a couple of titles.

Humble Games Publishing generally delivers less predictable results than certain of our other businesses.

As noted on prior calls, we are focused on delivering our existing slate of games and development for release in 2025 and 2026.

Connectivity did not see the level of large (inaudible) deal activity that was expected in Q4, including the absence of certain historical data sales that would have resulted in Q4 revenue recognition.

However, we do not see either of these matters as impacting Connectivity's future prospects, and we look forward to a strong 2025.

Q4 2024 revenues also reflect certain indirect tax accruals which were netted against reported revenue.

These amounts included the results of an indirect tax audit, which resulted in an unexpected contra revenue item that also impacted adjusted EBITDA.

While none of these items were particularly large as compared to the overall scale of our activities, cumulatively they negatively impacted our Q4 revenue performance.

Overall, 2024 was an important year for the company as we returned to growth.

Fiscal year 2024 revenue and adjusted EBITDA both grew year-over-year, and we delivered high single digit growth and adjusted diluted EPS, which reflects not only our operating performance, but the impact of our balance sheet management and capital allocation decisions as well.

I will cover certain of those capital allocation decisions in more detail in a moment.

Slides 9 and 10 reflect performance summaries for our two primary sources of revenue, advertising and performance marketing and subscription and licensing.

Slide 9 reflects our Q4 and fiscal year 2024 advertising and performance marketing revenue.

Q4 2024 advertising and performance marketing revenue grew 10.6% as compared with the prior year period and fiscal year 2024 advertising and performance marketing revenue grew by 4.1% as compared with 2023.

Excluding our B2B Tech business, advertising of performance marketing revenues would have grown by 12% in Q4 and 5.6% for all of 2024.

The table at the bottom of slide 9 depicts certain key operating metrics for the fourth quarter.

Our net advertising revenue retention and annual 12 month measure was approximately 92% for Q4 2024, a significant improvement as compared with Q4 2023.

In the fourth quarters Ziff Davis had 1,899 advertisers with an average quarterly revenue per advertiser of more than $135,000, significantly higher than the comparable Q4 2023 metric.

Slide 10 depicts our subscription and licensing revenue performance.

Q4 2024 subscription and licensing revenue grew approximately 1% as compared with the prior year period, and these revenues grew nearly 2% during the last 12 months.

The table on the bottom of slide 10 includes subscription and licensing metrics for the fourth quarter.

Total subscription and licensing customers increased to 3.65 million customers, which includes growth at Humble Bundle and Lose It.

Our average quarterly revenue per customer was $40.44 and subscription and licensing churn was 2.83%.

With regard to the balance of our revenue, the company's Q4 2024 other revenues declined year-over-year to $7.5 million from $10.5 million in Q4 2023.

With regard to our balance sheet, please refer to slide 11.

As of the end of Q4 2024, we had $506 million of cash and cash equivalents and approximately $158 million of long-term investments.

We also continue to have significant leverage capacity both on a gross and net leverage basis.

As of the end of 2024, gross leverage was 1.8 times, trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA , and our net leverage was 0.7 times and only 0.4 times if you include the value of our long-term investments. 2024 was a very active year for our capital allocation activities.

First and foremost, 2024 reflected a significant increase in M&A activity as compared with 2022 and 2023.

During 2024, we deployed more than $225 million for current and prior year acquisitions.

Our cybersecurity and Martech business closed one small acquisition in the fourth quarter, marking its first transaction since 2021.

As a reminder, during Q3 2024, we also completed an exchange offer for $400.9 million of our 1.75% convertible notes to 2026.

As a result of this transaction, we've reduced the gross amount of our outstanding debt by $138 million extended the maturity of $263 million of our debt principal outstanding, and reduced the total number of shares underlying our outstanding convertible debt by more than 1.1 million shares.

During 2024, we also deployed more than $185 million in capital to repurchase our common shares.

Included in this amount is a repurchase of 3.5 million shares in the open market, or approximately 7.6% of our shares outstanding as of the beginning of 2024.

Although we did not repurchase any shares in the open market during the fourth quarter, there are more than 6.2 million remaining shares authorized under our stock repurchase program, and we will continue to be opportunistic with regard to future stock repurchases.

Our balance sheet is one of our most valuable assets, particularly in the context of our M&A strategy and our overall capital allocation strategy.

We continue to pursue transactions of various sizes across all of our businesses, and we look forward to a significant level of M&A activity in 2025 and beyond.

Turning to slides 13 and 14, which provides certain details relating to our 2025 guidance range.

Our guidance range reflects growth in revenue adjusted EBITDA, adjusted diluted EPS at both the high end and the low end of each metrics guidance range.

Our guidance reflects an improving outlook for our reportable segments.

In particular, we expect improved performance from tech and shopping and health and wellness in part due to lapping certain specific 2024 performance challenges.

We expect continued growth from our gaming and entertainment business and a significant increase in connectivity growth.

Finally, we believe cybersecurity and Martech will continue to improve.

The high end of our guidance for 2025 revenue adjusted EBITDA, adjusted diluted EPS reflects growth rates of approximately 7.2%, 9.8%, and 10% as compared with the unaudited results we present today.

The low end reflects growth of approximately 2.9%, 2.3%, and 0.3% for revenue adjusted EBITDA and adjusted diluted EPS respectively.

Our EPS guidance reflects the adjusted EBITDA range, higher depreciation from our recent and planned capital investments, higher net interest expense, slightly higher taxes, and a lower average share count each as compared with 2024.

The midpoint of our guidance reflects mid single digit growth in advertising and performance marketing revenue, subscription and licensing revenue growth in the low to mid single digits, and low 10s on the revenue growth, each as compared with the prior year period.

The midpoint also reflects modest revenue growth in the first quarter and a higher rate of growth in the second half of the year as compared with the first half.

2025 expected revenue growth is a function of both organic growth and inorganic growth from recent acquisitions.

We expect our first quarter performance to be relatively muted as compared with our expectations for the balance of the year.

Our Q1 2024 results reflected a particularly strong quarter for Cybersecurity and Martech, and we expect Q1 2025 to more closely reflect the year-end 2024 run rate of the business.

We also have initiated and are expected to continue certain spending initiatives which are expected to suppress Q1 2025 margins as compared with Q1 2024.

However, we expect second quarter growth and margins to begin to improve as we continue to pursue our full year growth plan.

Given the seasonality of our advertising and performance marketing revenue, we anticipate that more than 20% of our revenues will be realized in the first quarter with approximately 30% expected in the fourth quarter.

At the midpoint of our range, the company expects to have an adjusted EBITDA margin of approximately 35.5% for the year, a slight improvement as compared with 2024.

We maintain the range of our projected tax rate at an annual rate of between 23.25% and 25.25%.

Note these rates are expected to fluctuate quarterly.

Our guidance does not reflect incremental M&A or additional share repurchases in 2025.

However, we plan to continue to maintain an active capital allocation program.

We believe this guidance reflects the proper balance of pursuing investments in our business to support growth opportunities in 2025 and beyond and our focus on delivering profitable growth, robust adjusted EBITDA margins, and free cash flow generation.

We plan to continue to rely on the free cash flow we generate to support our capital allocation strategy and as noted earlier, we believe we have substantial leverage capacity to support larger capital allocation initiatives if the right circumstances arise.

Following our business outlook slides are our supplemental materials including reconciliation statements for the various non-GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP equivalent.

Please see slide 26, which includes a reconciliation of free cash flow to net cash provided by operating activities.

Our 2024 free cash flow is more than $283 million, a significant increase as compared with 2023.

As shown on this slide, Q4 2024 free cash flow of $131 million nearly doubled as compared with Q4 2023.

Fiscal year 2024 free cash flow reflects 57.5% of our 2024 fiscal year adjusted EBITDA of $493.5 million.

These figures include a significant contribution from our TDS business, which has a seasonally high level of activity and free cash flow during the fourth quarter.

Consistent with 2024, TDS is expected to have significant working capital usage in the first quarter.

As Vivek noted, 2024 marked a return to growth for our company.

We look forward to continuing that growth in 2025.

This call also marks a new presentation of the financial results of our company.

We believe this reporting structure will ultimately allow investors to gain deeper insight into each of our reportable segments, and we trust that the information that we presented today will give our stakeholders a deeper appreciation of the diversity of our revenue composition, the scale of our businesses, and the strength of their margins.

With this information, we hope you will develop a clearer understanding of the intrinsic value of these businesses and why we are excited for the upcoming year and beyond.

With that, I would now ask the operator to re-join us and instruct you on how to queue for questions.

Thank you.

We will be conducting question and answer session.

(Operator Instructions)

Ross Sandler, Barclays.

Great.

Thanks, guys.

Vivek, maybe just to start, a question about like the macro environment as we look into '25, there's a view out there that like some of these AI tools from the Wall gardens like Performance Max and Advantage Plus might be kind of increasing the shift into Wall garden and away from open web digital advertising.

So it sounds like you guys, at least in Pharma are having a good upfront and that this shift that's being described here isn't having too much of an impact, but we just love to hear by category, how things are looking in '25 at the beginning of the year here and with that 4 to 5% growth rate for advertising, what underlying organic growth rate are we assuming in there?

Thank you very much.

Thanks for the question, Ross.

So, Let me zoom out just just a moment in terms of the ad business in 2024.

The Q4 was a strong quarter a little over 10% ad growth.

Obviously CNET helped with our ad growth in the quarter, but consumer tech was the rest of consumer tech was relatively strong and going into next year, just one thing I will point out is that within the tech ad number is our B2B business and as I've talked about in the past, we have a planned reduction in revenue in that business which will obviously detract from growth rate, but will improve profitability.

So that's just something just to keep in mind.

That's probably 150 basis points are there of headwind against growth rate.

So tech we feel reasonably good about as a category picking up on the momentum from 2024 gaming and entertainment again, you can now see this in our new segment disclosures, but really good growth in that segment, particularly on the ad side, we think that's going to continue into next yea., So we like that from from a category point of view.

Health and wellness was a relatively flat business for us in 2024.

It's been, as you'll see, historically a very strong grower.

I've talked about.

Some challenges we had with a very large form advertiser.

We think those challenges are working their way out, as I noted in my prepared remarks.

The (inaudible) funds have been pretty strong and so we feel really good about that.

So look, I mean, it is a category and category, you've got to look at this categorically, but overall I would just say that a mid single digit ad growth outlook at our midpoint is prudent, given kind of the experience we've had the last couple of years.

I know you didn't ask about the Subscription business, but in overall outlook, I do think it's just also worth pointing out.

And we're going to accelerate our growth from about 2% in 2024 to about 4% at the midpoint, and key to that is improved growth at connectivity, continued growth at Health and Wellness and Gaming, and then just some improving second half trends we're seeing in cyber and Martech.

So look, there's a lot here.

I think we're we're being, I think we're appropriately cautious as we think about 2025, just given some of the experiences we've had over the last couple of years.

Last thing I'm just going to say because you did ask about open web versus sort of the walled gardens.

What I will say against that is that I do think in each of our large, in each of our main act categories, right, so tech, a shopping, gaming, and health, we're in a leadership position in each of those, and what I will tell you is that marketers want to balance what they're doing within social networks, what they're doing with search against what they're doing in endemics, and so we view ourselves as being leaders in these endemic categories which happen to be pretty robust that categories.

So I think we're in a different position than the rest of maybe the open web, where I think it's more of a programmatic driven proposition and as programmatic is a small piece of our overall equation.

Well, the only thing I might add, and use the word macro, is if you just go beyond advertising and just broaden the lens on economic macro, 2022 and into 2023, the global economy, the domestic economy were headwinds.

I would say in 2024 it was relatively benign.

And at the very moment it's essentially the same, but there's a tremendous amount of dialogue, if not activity, in elements of the global macro, whether it be views of the change in the inflationary curve, whether it be tariffs, whether it be the continuation, if not the feared escalation of international activity.

We've essentially assumed constant for our plan if there are massive shifts, we obviously have to adjustment.

Thank you.

Ygal Arounian, Citi

Hey, good morning guys.

I'll start with capital allocation.

I guess broadly but focus on M&A.

And your leverage and your views as we go through 2025, why not press a little bit more here?

I know you've been cautious and patient around the M&A environment, we talk about it picking up and, I think you didn't buy back any stock and forth.

Does that have anything to do with the building up for M&A?

What are your thoughts around that and does, how much does Gen AI play into your views or targets for M&A this year as well?

Yeah, listen, great question.

So I'd say, look, remember 2024 was healthy from an M&A point of view.

We deployed about $225 million and that's after almost no deal activity in 2023.

So I do think it's worth noting that things are happening.

The pipeline right now is very active.

And so our hope is that 2025 will be at least consistent in terms of capital deployment for M&A versus 2024.

And then we're going to start seeing the compounding effects of serial acquisition, which have been a hallmark of this company for a long time, but have been absent for the last several years.

The other thing I'm going to say is all five of our divisions, which are our five reportable segments are actively pursuing deals.

That wasn't necessarily the case over the last few years.

All five are very focused with respective pipelines that are pretty robust.

Cybersecurity and Martech did its first deal in Q4 since 2021, so they were kind of on the sidelines and they are firmly back on the field.

We have the capacity from an operating point of view and obviously from a balance sheet point of view to add a new vertical if that's something that we see as being an attractive opportunity for us and then you sort of speak to it, I think with your Gen AI question valuations in digital media are pretty attractive right now, right?

Obviously we see it reflected in some of the fears that must be attached to our own stock, but we're inclined to lean into those fears.

We think that our own experience here is that listen, great brands attract audiences from which we can extract multiple (inaudible), and that is what we do.

And so from our point of view, if we have, if we see great brands that may have some struggle from a financial point of view, that's where you're going to see us strike.

So look, we have the cash, as we pointed out, we have the borrowing capacity and look, I think it's a balance between, we have been patient, but we're also impatient in some ways to really get some of these things across the finish line, and I'm optimistic about it, but Brett,(inaudible).

The only thing I'd add on M&A is that the one element we always have to be patient on is price.

There's no success factor in M&A that's more important than what you're paying initially, and sometimes that's where deals get done or don't get done, But we're very active in the pipeline and exploring a lot of opportunities and, hopefully some of those come to fruition.

On capital allocation, it's not a problematic approach.

I don't think we've ever been a company that buys a certain amount of stock every quarter.

But if you, in the three years since the span, which is the three years I've been here, 2024 is far and away.

Our most active capital allocation period that mentioned the $225 million of M&A.

We bought back over $180 million worth of stock retiring.

Over 7.5% of the shares that we started the year with.

We paid down some debt in the convertible exchange that we did and deployed another $135 million of capital.

Yes, we do want to maintain our capacity for M&A, but we will deploy it in the stock buyback.

I just wouldn't expect it every quarter on a programmatic basis.

I think it's important that in addition to the 3.5 million shares that we bought back in 2024, our Board increased our authorization in the summer.

So we have over 6 million shares currently authorized to execute upon, and we'll balance that against all other capital allocation opportunities.

Okay, thanks.

And if I could as a follow up on updated thoughts around, licensing with the LLMs and, pursuing legal action or what the strategy is we saw a kind of a tech media company yesterday, file action and call out Google in particular for, taking traffic away and you're talk, that have up until today kind of repeatedly talked about how you're not seeing that.

It just what are your updated thoughts around partnerships and your approach here.

Thanks.

Listen, I think that so I did see today's news.

I think the more notable news was a week or two ago, a court decision relating to copyright and fair use that I think was very favorable to copyright owners.

And look, I think that's fundamentally we are open and having discussions around licensing agreements, but they need to be fair value, they need to be long term, and I think they need to recognize that it is in fact a license to copyright versus an agreement that is more focused on having people not come after them for copyright violation.

So we're going to play, I think we're going to be patient here.

I don't think the numbers in any of the numbers you've seen a publicly reported on that material anywhere for us to feel like we need to move quickly and cut a deal that might be short term beneficial, but not long term appropriate for the company.

So look, I think we are very focused on making sure that if you're training on our content, if you are retrieving against our content, we need to get fair compensation for that.

On your other question which I separate, right, which is what's happening in search.

I said a fair amount within the prepared remarks, but I might reiterate one or two statements that come up with respect to at least our own experience, which is the rate at which AI overviews appear against the queries that matter most to us is still relatively small at 12%.

So that's that's the first thing.

But the second thing that I point out is that in our analysis of queries, where AI overviews are present and then are present today, but were not present in the past and our search rate remained unchanged.

The overall click through rate is also relatively unchanged.

So there are those who argue that the presence of AI overviews actually enhanced click through rates.

There are those who argue that the presence of AI overview of certain queries detracts from click through rates.

I think it probably depends categorically.

I think there are many things that evolve on the search engine result page ad placements other types of of changes.

Google is experimenting constantly.

So again, I don't see a quibble there for us.

I more see a quibble around large language models using our stuff without offering us cash or traffic as as compensation.

Meaningful cash or meaningful traffic, I should say is competition.

Thanks a lot,

(inaudible)

Rishi Jaluri, RBC Capital Markets.

Wonderful, thanks so much for taking my question.

Really appreciate all the new disclosures.

Maybe I want to go back to the Health and Wellness business.

Obviously it's been generally a strong strong performer in the past as we think looking forward, just given a lot of the concerns around the biopharma environment, advertising, obviously the new administration and RFK in that position.

Just how should we be thinking about the puts and takes of all the kind of macro factors around that and maybe alongside that, if we think about your health and wellness portfolio, do you see maybe any holes in that portfolio where there are opportunities to make even smaller tuck in M&A and just broaden or expand the scope of what you're able to do within that sub-vertical.

Thanks

Rishi, thanks for the question.

So you're right, obviously, there's been a lot of noise coming from the (inaudible) and from the administration around direct to consumer advertising.

Now this isn't new.

DTC comes up, almost predictably every handful of years.

I think there are real legal challenges to banning it.

I think there are frankly pretty vested lobby interests that have been successful in making, really none of that really materialized.

So we're not not really concerned about it.

And again, a lot of the focus is frankly on television ads, which is not where we play.

So look, it's something we're going to watch.

It's like a lot of things that I think are happening in the world.

There's just a lot of noise and we'll see if it in any way materializes, but we don't see that, and that's certainly not built into our outlook and as I think I, as I mentioned, the upfronts which are on the DTC side are strong.

The other thing I'll also point out is that we do have a fairly diversified ad business between DTC and direct provider, where the marketing is against those who write prescriptions, which are physicians (inaudible) assistants, and registered nurses.

And so that that certainly hasn't been an area where that the discussion around potential changes to what is permitted from an advertising point of view, that hasn't come up.

I think that with respect to your question around acquisitions at everyday health.

I, 100% agree that moving beyond pharma is an opportunity for the company.

And a great example of that, frankly, is to Lose It acquisition.

This business, which is calorie tracking, macro tracking has been a wildly successful business for us and and a great example of how we've been able to accelerate its scriber growth, it's ad growth, and its product capabilities through its integration within everyday health.

We'd love to do more of those.

So I think things that are app-based that appeal to consumers, I think would be interesting.

I think given to the female heavy audience that we enjoy with everyday health, I think there are lots of other extensions around beauty and fitness and lifestyle that I think we can absolutely get into food that I think connect to everyday health.

And then yes, I think we're going to continue to lean into things that support the pharma marketing ecosystem because that is one of the primary monetization elements within within the category.

So we're very excited for the space as you'll see in the disclosures.

This has been a very good category for us.

It was a flat business in 2024, but we believe it will return to a historic growth rates in 2025.

So we're excited for it.

Look, on the new segments, I know a number of people on this call and certainly shareholders have been looking for this, and we're excited for the new segment reporting.

I do think it's a real opportunity for us to showcase more parts of the business, allow you all and investors to better appreciate all the parts of the company.

There's a real richness in these disclosures.

So I encourage everyone to spend some time, historic five segments, three revenue types, EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA buy segment.

I mean, there's a lot here to look at.

And then ultimately, I think you'll start to see that there are some real market comps for each one of our segments and that as you look at a potential value of each segment and you would assume those values, I think we'd find that it would be well in excess of the current market value of the company.

Very helpful.

Thank you.

Robert Coolbrith, Evercore ISI.

Great, thank you.

I have a couple

(inaudible).

Just can we get an update on the consumer versus provider side of the business.

I think you had noted some divergence and trends there last quarter.

On the upfront buying season strength that you're seeing, I think, you'd referenced, I think in the commentary or in response to one of the questions, maybe some re-engagement with one of the large brands.

I think we've also seen some generally some CMO turnover, maybe if you just talk generally about the engagement with the brands as part of the upfront buying season.

And last one, the GLP1 compounders, can you remind us on the exposure there?

I think you've said in the past it's pretty low, but just give us a quick update there.

And then just I'll have one quick follow up

(inaudible).

Thank you.

Yeah, no, it's all great questions on Health and Wellness.

So on the my commentary around the upfronts of the DTC comment, direct to consumer, and I will say that in 2024, as a result the direct to consumer business fared better than direct provider business.

We had headwinds and director to provider business owing to a large marketer there that was more that was the DTP side of the equation.

We believe that reverses itself.

This is a part of the business that frankly, we see as a growth part of the business.

We're not as large in this business as others, so when one of our largest is not largest, advertiser pulls back because of changes in the marketing strategy.

It affects our business maybe more than others.

But ultimately, I think we're, we feel like we're in a good place in 2025 both DTC and DTP.

The underlying products and our ability to reach are all there.

It's just about, we got to win the orders, right?

We have to win the instruction orders to run the campaign.

So it really is about winning those contracts.

On the GLP1 side, it is not a material source of revenue, but we think it can be.

It actually has strategic connection to Lose It.

So what you're seeing is with lots of payers and even with pharma, this need and hope to attach a GLP1 prescription to a lifestyle calorie tracking management app, right?

So it's this idea of true long term sustainable benefit from GLP1 around weight loss that you really need to not just take The drug, you need to be tracking your calories and you need to be tracking consumption, activity, calorie burn, etc. And so we're seeing some interesting bundling of the two, and I think that's part of what's driving the Lose It business.

But we also think there's going to be a fair amount of GLP1 advertising available to us in 2025 and beyond.

Got it.

And then just quickly going back to the comments that you made about the some historical data sales not coming through again, could you just unpack that a little bit and maybe give us a sense of how connectivity would have performed some of those maybe one time things that didn't come through in the quarter.

Thank you.

Yeah, no, and before I even get to that, the other thing that I probably should have mentioned is, and you can see this in the new disclosures, three revenue lines, (inaudible) subs, other.

A fair amount of headwind and ads and other we're prioritizing the ad business as I pointed out, it's small.

It continues to get smaller.

It is not strategic, kind of distract we think detracts a little bit from the experience.

So that is kind of being managed in a certain way.

So we are just parsing that out and and it would change the view of what the core business has done.

But even within the core business there are, there's some lumpy parts of this business, and this will happen from time to time where dollars kind of shift out of one quarter into another.

I will also say that the re-organization was pretty significant.

When I say significant, about 70% of the senior leadership has changed in about 20% of the organization.

So when [Stephen Bay], who oversees that business, who is a really seasoned high quality executive out of the telecom industry came in.

He had a real vision for how to re-organize and set this business up to become a really big business and so we supported that.

We knew there would be some disruptions for the year.

Yes, Q4 had some issues, but the full year, I mean this was a flattish year when you look at it.

That is certainly not the growth rate of this business.

This is going to be an engine for us going forward.

The only thing I'd add to that, and I think we've made it maybe the commentary a little subtly, maybe I'll just be a little bit more specific is you might have noticed several quarters ago we sort of re-described our subscription revenue business to subscription and licensing to highlight the fact that within that revenue there is some one-time upfront recognition of various products that impact several of our businesses, and while those numbers aren't necessarily enormous, we measure sometimes success on a quarterly basis and a handful of millions of dollars.

I mean, that mentioned roughly 10% relative to our expectations for this quarter

And you can see some of that lumpiness from quarter to quarter.

One of the things I highlighted in my remarks was that our Cyber Martech business had a strong Q1 in 2024, and we expect more of a run rate in 2025.

So we saw a little bit of that in connectivity in the fourth quarter.

We see it in other businesses from time to time.

Sometimes it's a benefit, sometimes it's a headwind.

But at the end of the day, the quality of the revenues that underlies subscription licensing broadly at over 40% of our overall revenues is one of the most attractive elements of our diversity revenue streams.

Got it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Chris Kuntarich, UBS.

Great, thanks for taking the question.

I just have two modeling questions here.

Can you just sort of unpack the drivers of your expectation that Cyber and Martech will return to growth starting in the second half of the year?

And then just one on EBITDA would be, drivers for EBITDA growth this year and just how we should be thinking about the seasonal weighting of this?

Is this more seasonally weighted towards 4Q than what you're describing revenue.

Thanks.

Yeah.

I think first and foremost we're guiding to the overall company performance.

And we did give some texture to certain elements of different businesses and I'll give a little bit of texture here, but we're, looking at 2025 as a goal in its entirety of a mix of expectations amongst our businesses, and we'll inevitably get performance.

Variations amongst those businesses not only over the full year, but over any given quarters.

With regards to Cyber Martech business, generally been a multi-year improvement story.

If you look at some of the rates of decline going back on the last couple of years and you look at 2024, it's gotten better.

Some of the businesses within Cyber Martech we've called out by email have been performing well.

Others have been performing better, particularly in our Cybersecurity businesses.

We have had a little bit more headwinds in some of our Martech businesses.

There are, there is some (inaudible) in this business.

There's some licensing in this business.

There's some large customers in this business.

But we do expect the beginning of '24, '25 to sort of map the end of '24 and like a lot of our businesses, we're expecting sort of general improvements over the course of the year.

Seasonality is really driven by the advertising and performance marketing businesses, heavy in the fourth quarter.

I think we see that consistently and EBITDA margins reflect that because those revenues have high marginal incremental flow through to the bottom line.

I mentioned in my remarks Q1, it's sort of a muted expectation both on top line and bottom line.

Bottom line is for these various reasons and also because we have some spending initiatives to fuel growth in the back of the year and some dollars you need to spend in other parts of the business that are expected to be spent in the first quarter.

And we'll see what the exact timing of that is.

I think the commentary I make about margins is they're strong across the five reportable segments.

They vary between a couple of points.

Within the businesses, we've had different pockets of challenges, but that called out B2B.

We have a strategy this year of taking revenue down, to get margin back up.

We do that in various areas of the business.

So again, well, happy to provide a little bit more texture and a little bit more commentary.

I think we need to go back, widen the lens, and take a holistic view about what we think the entire enterprise can do over the next 12 months.

Got it.

Thanks.

Shyam Patil, SEG.

Good morning.

This is Aaron Samuels on for Shyam.

Thank you for taking our question.

I just wanted to ask about CNET now that it's been a few months since that deal closed.

How has the integration there been relative to your expectations?

And if you can just double click on how that has impacted your ad sales motion across the technology brands that you have, that would be really helpful.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you for asking the question.

We're really pleased with our progress and we're certainly on or ahead of plan.

We're going to market as the CNET Group, the most trusted brands in tech CNET, ZDNET, PCMag, Nashville, Lifehacker, and Spiceworks, and it's a pretty compelling line up and roster of brands.

We've combined the sales and marketing teams for both efficiency and go to market effectiveness.

So we go to market as CNET Group that allows us to leverage our scale and our position within the category.

We do maintain distinct editorial teams for each brand.

We think it's important that they each have their own independent editorial voices, but we have found some opportunities for shared services across the editorial teams and more importantly, real areas of cooperation.

I'll give you an example at CES this year.

Every year, the Consumer Technology Association, which puts on CES, looks to work with a single publication around what they call best of CES, right?

the best products that are on display.

This year Best of CES was done across the CNET group where each of our editorial brands made selections in various categories.

A great example of editorial collaboration across our brands and something that makes a real impact within the marketplace, and I can tell you that marketers were excited to see this, right, to see this in a way that supports the industry from a cost point of view.

We have already realized the synergies and savings we had planned, so that's very good.

We've got a terrific leader in [Kate Gutman] overseeing the CNET Group.

She's got a great and talented team.

So overall, I'd say that we're ahead of schedule in delivering kind of this effective 5 to 6 times purchase price EBITDA as which is our target to try to achieve within 12 to 24 months post acquisition, I think we're going to be there pretty quickly.

And so we feel very good about the acquisition and it really does strengthen, it does put us in a very strong position in one of our important verticals.

That's great.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And there are no other questions in queue at this time.

I would now like to hand the call back to Brett Richter for any closing remarks.

Thank you, Paul, and importantly, thank you all for joining the call and your continued interest in the company.

We hope that you appreciate our new disclosures, reportable segments, the incremental information and commentary we were able to provide on today's call.

As usual, we'll be participating in various conferences and events in the coming months.

Hope to see some of you there, and we look forward to speaking with you in the future.

Thank you.

This does conclude today's conference.

You may disconnect your lines at this time.