Q1 2025 comScore Inc Earnings Call

Speaker Change: Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Comscore First Quarter 2025 Financial Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speakers presentation, there will be a question and answer session.

Speaker Change: To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 111 on your telephone, you will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised.

Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded.

Speaker Change: I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, John Tinker, head of investor relations. Please go ahead.

John Tinker: Thank you, operator. Before we begin our prepared remarks, I'd like to remind all of you that the following discussion contains forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include comments about our plans, expectations and prospects, and are based on our view as of today, May 6, 2025.

John Tinker: I actual results in future periods may differ materially from these currently expected because of a number of risks and uncertainties.

John Tinker: These risks and uncertainties include those outlined in up 10K, 10Q and other filings with the SEC, which you can find on our website or at www.scc.gov. We display many Julia obligation to update our four-looking data to reflect new information after today's call.

John Tinker: We'll be discussing non-GAAP measures during this call, to which we have provided reconciliations in today's press release on our website. Here you know that we will be referring to slide from this call, which are also available on our website www.comscore.com, under best relations events and presentations.

John Tinker: Now turn the call over to Comscore's Chief Executive Officer, John Carpenter. John .

All right, thanks everyone for joining us this evening.

We delivered another quarter of double digit growth in cross-platform.

John Tinker: Coupled with strong results in local, which came on the back of key renewals and new business wins fuelling double digit growth versus the same quarter a year ago

John Tinker: In addition, we earned another accreditation from the MRC, this time for our demos as part of our Comscore TV measurement offering.

John Tinker: For those keeping score, Comscore remains the only TV measurement solution in market that meets the MRC standards for both local and national TV measurement.

John Tinker: No other measurement player in the market can say that and I'm incredibly proud of the work our team is done to get us to this point.

John Tinker: We also launched our cross-platform content measurement solution in January , giving clients an omnichannel view of how audiences are engaging with content, regardless of where it's consumed.

John Tinker: across linear, streaming, social, or the open web, setting Comscore up as the one-stop shop for cross-platform audience insights and measurement.

John Tinker: Since launching in January , we are already seeing client adoption and are encouraged by the pipeline that is emerging as we progress through the year.

John Tinker: While I'm encouraged by the progress we are making, it's also clear we're operating in a macro environment that has become at best uncertain.

John Tinker: Now uncertainty has an impact broadly speaking on atspend and when the market is healthy digital atspend flourishes in part because it's easy to transact.

John Tinker: That ease of transaction also makes it an easy thing to pause as uncertainty grows and advertisers exercise more caution with their spending commitments.

John Tinker: As we progressed through the first quarter, we started to see signs of advertisers in certain categories taking a more cautious approach, which was a factor down the stretch in terms of our overall print in the quarter, specifically in our cross-platform solution group.

John Tinker: As Mary Morgan will highlight, we have factored this into our view of Q2 revenues, and while our cross-platform products are performing well, we remain guarded with our expectations, given the macro uncertainty that we're seeing.

Drone, Drone,

John Tinker: On the quarter, the revenue print was largely on track with the guidance we provided on our last call.

John Tinker: Revenue of just about $86 million with double-digit growth in both cross-platform and local

John Tinker: We continue to make progress with our agency clients and the overall goal of driving greater adoption of our offerings, particularly for use in TV currency transactions.

John Tinker: We expect that adoption to continue to ramp throughout the year.

John Tinker: on adjusted EBITDAI continued to be encouraged by the progress the team was making. For the quarter of the 7.4 million on adjusted EBITDAI came in where we expected it to, up year over year helping us get off to a solid start.

John Tinker: As we look at the full year, on our last call, we talked about two key drivers for us this year, cross-platform growth and building on our strength and TV currency.

John Tinker: We saw ample evidence in the first quarter of those things playing out.

John Tinker: Within our linear currency business we've seen continued engagement from agencies as they adopt Comscore as a currency for their campaigns.

John Tinker: across national and local TV, media buys, transacted on Comscore currency, help drive solid results, particularly in local, and our team is working hard to make sure that continues.

John Tinker: Within Cross Platform, there are two key items that I'd like to highlight.

John Tinker: As I mentioned earlier, the rollout of our cross-platform content measurement product has been encouraging, and it's clear that we're addressing an unmet need for our clients.

John Tinker: Another item I'm excited about is an announcement we made yesterday. Comscore certified DLIDs made available in our partnership with Magnite.

Disoffering, Leverages, Comscores, Trusted Content Rankings

John Tinker: to deliver an automated curation solution that lets advertisers target independently vetted high-quality content and avoid wasted outspent.

John Tinker: While programmatic advertising has improved efficiency and targeting for advertisers, it has also created some challenges and frustrations for them.

John Tinker: One of those frustrations has been paying for ads to run alongside low quality or even made for advertising content, wasting ad dollars in the process.

John Tinker: Certified DLIDs alongside our AI-enabled predictive audience solution deployed inside Mag Knight helps advertisers run more effective campaigns and deliver a higher return on the Red Spent.

Speaker Change: We're incredibly excited about these developments, and with that, let me turn it over to Mary Margaret to delve into the details of the first quarter.

Mary Morgan.

Thank you, John .

Speaker Change: Total revenue for the first quarter was 85.7 million, down 1.3% for maybe 6.8 million, the same quarter a year ago.

Speaker Change: Content and ad measurement revenue of $73.2 million was slightly up from the prior year quarter, driven by growth in our cross-platform and local TV offering.

Speaker Change: Platform Revenue of $9.7 million was up 20.5% compared to the prior year driven by growth and proximate and Comscore campaign ratings along with the rollout of Comscore content measurement.

Speaker Change: syndicated audience revenue of $63.5 million was down 1.7% from the prior year quarter, primarily driven by the clients at our national TV and syndicated digital products from lower

Speaker Change: These declines were partially offset by double-digit growth in local TV due to higher renewals and new business in the quarter.

Speaker Change: Our movies business remain strong, generating 9.4 million of revenue in the first quarter, up 2.6% from the prior year.

Speaker Change: Research and Insight Solutions revenue of $12.5 million was down $11.5% from Q1 of 2024 in line with our expectations, primarily due to lower renewals and the timing of deliveries for certain custom digital products.

Speaker Change: Based on what we know today, we expect these revenue trims to continue in the second quarter and improve as we move into the back half of the year.

Thank you.

Speaker Change: On an SX neutral basis, adjust the EBITF for the first quarter with $7.4 million, up 2.8% from the prior year quarter, resulting in an adjusted EBITF margin of 8.6%.

Speaker Change: We remain disciplined in our spending and continue to take additional cost savings actions to operate more efficiently.

Speaker Change: This has allowed us to improve our adjusted EBITDA results for the quarter, even with lower revenue.

Speaker Change: Our core operating expenses in the first quarter were slightly down year-over-year, driven by the client and data cost related to the amendment we entered into a charter in December , and lower professional fees compared to the prior year.

Speaker Change: These declines were partially all set by higher royalties and reseller fees, primarily tied to revenue growth in proximate and our movies distance.

Speaker Change: We're continuing to transform how we operate and are investing in new products and capabilities, which include enhancements to existing products, upgrading our tech stack, providing faster data delivery, and increasing interoperability as we continue to roll out key integrations.

Speaker Change: As we noted on our year-end earnings call, there were a number of key areas we expected to draw growth in 2025, including the accelerated growth of our cross-platform products and the progress we're making with linear currency.

Speaker Change: While revenue from our cross-platform offerings showed solid growth in Q1, it did fall a bit short of our expectations due to add spin softness in a few key categories, which we believe were related to recent trade policy development.

Speaker Change: With the backdrop of macroeconomic uncertainty and the potential impact it might have on Aspen, we believe this guidance reflects the balance view of our growth opportunities against the potential effects we might see as we move through the year.

Speaker Change: We currently expect revenue on the second quarter of 2025 to be in line with the first quarter and roughly flat compared to the second quarter of 2024 with revenue increasing quarter in the back half of the year.

Speaker Change: We continue to monitor the state of things both within the industry and the broader economic environment and will align our expectations and strategy as needed.

Speaker Change: With that, I'll turn it back over to the operator to open it up for questions.

Speaker Change: Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question and answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you will need to press star 11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced.

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Speaker Change: Okay, showing no questions, I would now like to turn it back to John Carpenter CEO for closing remarks.

Speaker Change: All right, thank you. I'd like to recognize and thank our employees for their hard work to help Comscore deliver for our clients. Further, I'd like to thank our investors.

Speaker Change: and clients for their continued trust in partnerships. Thanks for joining us this evening and we'll be talking to you soon.

Speaker Change: Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.