Getty Images Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

Quartr
Provided by Quartr
August 12, 2024

Key Takeaways

  • Getty Images returned to growth in Q2 with revenue of $229.1 M (+1.5% reported, +2.1% currency-neutral) and adjusted EBITDA of $68.8 M, maintaining a healthy 30% margin.
  • Subscription revenue now comprises 52.9% of total revenues, with annual subscribers reaching 282 000 (up 55% yoy), over 60% of whom are new customers, boosting ARPU and lifetime value.
  • Editorial revenue rebounded 4.1% yoy—the first growth since Hollywood strikes began—driven by sports, news and entertainment coverage (including the Paris Olympics and election cycles), while creative still dipped 2.4% but saw continued subscription growth.
  • Getty Images advanced its commercially safe generative AI offerings with an NVIDIA-powered model, tools for customers to fine-tune with proprietary content, and partnerships with Pixar and Canva to deliver high-quality, legally trained AI visuals.
  • Full-year guidance was reaffirmed at $924–943 M in revenue (+0.9% to +2.9% reported) and $290–294 M in adjusted EBITDA (down 3.8% to 2.5%), with EBITDA margins expected north of 31% and ongoing fiscal discipline to support debt reduction.
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Earnings Conference Call
Getty Images Q2 2024
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Operator

Good morning and welcome to Getty Images' second quarter 2024 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded. We have allocated one hour for prepared remarks and Q&A. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Steven Kanner, Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasury at Getty Images. Thank you. You may begin.

Steven Kanner
Steven Kanner
VP of Investor Relations and Treasury at Getty Images

Good afternoon and welcome to the Getty Images' second quarter 2024 earnings call. Joining me on today's call are Craig Peters, Chief Executive Officer, and Jen Leyden, Chief Financial Officer. Before we begin, we would like to remind you that this call will include forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are subject to various risks, uncertainties, and assumptions, which could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. These risks, uncertainties, and assumptions are highlighted in the forward-looking statements section of Friday's press release and in our filings with the SEC. Links to these filings and to Friday's press release can be found on our investor relations website at investors.gettyimages.com. During our call today, we will also reference certain Non-GAAP financial information, including Adjusted EBITDA, Adjusted EBITDA margin, Adjusted EBITDA less CapEx, and free cash flow.

Steven Kanner
Steven Kanner
VP of Investor Relations and Treasury at Getty Images

We use non-GAAP measures in some of our financial discussions as we believe they represent our operational performance and underlying results of our business. Reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP measures, as well as the description, limitations, and rationale for using each measure, can be found in our filings for the SEC. After our prepared remarks, we'll open the call to your questions. With that, I will hand the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Craig Peters.

Craig Peters
Craig Peters
CEO at Getty Images

Thanks, Steven, and thank you to everyone for joining Getty Images' second quarter earnings call. I will touch on our performance and progress at a high level before Jen takes you through the full second quarter financial results. I am pleased to report, as expected, we returned to growth in the second quarter with a revenue of $229.1 million, representing a year-on-year increase of 1.5% on a reported basis and 2.1% on a currency-neutral basis. Adjusted EBITDA came in at $68.8 million for the quarter, down 5.4% on a reported basis and 4.7% currency-neutral, but continuing to represent a healthy EBITDA margin of 30%. We continue to see some softness from our agency and production customers, impacting both creative and editorial, and most notably our video revenues.

Craig Peters
Craig Peters
CEO at Getty Images

However, we achieve growth across each of our Getty Images, iStock, and Unsplash brands, and we continue to see strong utilization of our offerings reflected by growth in paid downloads, with consumption centered on our exclusive creative and editorial content. It would not be an earnings call if the CEO did not speak to our embrace of AI, but I want to start by grounding us in what really sets Getty Images apart: our partnerships and unique access, our deep expertise embedded across our staff and exclusive contributors, our comprehensive coverage and archive, our best-in-class search, and our deep customer relationships. I was extremely fortunate to spend last week in Paris and observe how this uniqueness is demonstrated at an event like the Summer Olympics. We've been the official photographic agency of the International Olympic Committee for more than 25 years.

Craig Peters
Craig Peters
CEO at Getty Images

Our experienced team of more than 140 individuals captured every moment across more than 70 sports for both men's and women's competitions. We captured the grandeur of the host city and the celebrities and dignitaries performing and in attendance. We captured the action from every angle, including from the air and below the water. All told, we shot and edited more than 5 million images over the course of the games, and we delivered this content to our customers with unmatched speed. Our archive allowed customers to tell deeper stories about Paris and tie the Paris Games and its athletes to their rightful place in history. Our commercial team was also on the ground, delivering best-in-class service to the International Olympic Committee and its family of partners and sponsors, including NBCUniversal, Comcast, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Visa, Toyota, AB InBev, and Samsung Electronics, to name a few.

Craig Peters
Craig Peters
CEO at Getty Images

We did all of this while covering the world beyond Paris: global elections and conflicts, climate events, the latest concert performances and movie premieres, and major sporting events such as Formula One, where we're also their official photographic partner. If you remember, in April, we announced the acquisition of Motorsport Images to deepen our footprint within the sport. I'm pleased to report we added more than 300,000 images to our archive and worked closely to support new commercial partners such as McLaren Racing and Aston Martin. I am proud of the scale and scope of what our team accomplished. I am proud of the level of professionalism displayed. I'm reminded of what truly sets Getty Images apart and of the durable value we convey to our customers. On the technology front, we continue to innovate to bring true commercially safe, high-quality generative AI services to our customers.

Craig Peters
Craig Peters
CEO at Getty Images

We launched an updated model of our commercially safe generative AI services and tools in partnership with NVIDIA that brings lightning-fast speeds and higher quality visuals, including improved detail for high-resolution 4K outputs. We rolled out capabilities allowing customers to use AI across our pre-shot creative library, enabling customers to modify both generative AI images and existing pre-shot creative images. We announced the option for customers to fine-tune the commercially safe foundational model using their own proprietary content. We announced our partnership with Picsart to offer a custom commercially safe model to their millions of creators, marketers, and small business customers. We announced the renewal of our long-standing Canva relationship, providing Canva's customers with access to millions of Getty Images award-winning creative image and video assets and agreement to collaborate to develop responsibly trained, commercially safe generative AI for their platform.

Craig Peters
Craig Peters
CEO at Getty Images

I am proud of the progress we're making on this front. I am proud of the quality of our offerings and the legality and integrity of how they are trained. By the company we keep, I am reminded of the truly unique capabilities of Getty Images. I will end my remarks by saying that I'm excited to build on our momentum of the second half of 2024. I will now turn over to Jen to take you through the more detailed financials.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

As Craig mentioned, our business returned to top-line growth in Q2, with headwinds turning to tailwind. Our editorial business is back to the growth we have historically seen after four consecutive quarters of decline due to Hollywood strike impacts. Our subscription business continues to expand, now up to 52.9% of total revenue, and our key performance metrics continue to be healthy. Positive growth momentum across our business, in spite of a still challenged agency business and a slow ramp-up of post-Hollywood strike activity from our media and production customers, provides a solid foundation from which we continue to execute towards a strong second half of the year. Let's begin by highlighting some of our KPIs, which were reported on the trailing 12-month basis, or LTM period, ended June 30, 2024, with comparisons to the LTM period ended June 30, 2023.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

Total purchasing customers were 740,000, down from 830,000 in the comparable LTM period. The decrease is related to lower volumes of à la carte transactions, which reflects both our continued shift into committed annual subscriptions and a still pressured agency business, which consumes nearly entirely on an à la carte basis. Importantly, we continue to see the benefit of higher lifetime customer value as we shift into more committed solutions, with the total annual revenue per purchasing customer growing 10.7% to $1,232 from $1,113 in the comparable LTM period. We added 100,000 active annual subscribers to reach 282,000, representing growth of 55% over the corresponding 2023 LTM period. This metric has grown north of 50% in each of the last seven quarters.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

This growth was fueled by our e-commerce offerings, including our iStock annual and our Unsplash+ subscriptions, with the majority of this growth coming from customers brand new to Getty Images. Out of the 282,000 annual subscribers, over 60% were first-time purchasing customers. In addition, we continue to expand our geographic reach, with over 96,000 new subscribers from across our targeted growth markets in LATAM, APAC, and in EMEA. Our annual subscriber revenue retention rate was 89.4% compared to 98.5% in the comparable LTM period, but held relatively steady to 90% reported for the LTM Q1-2024 period. The year-on-year LTM decline was driven by the same factors that have impacted this metric over the past several quarters, including subscriber count growth and our lower retention, smaller e-commerce subscribers.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

A Hollywood strike impacted reduction in incremental à la carte subscriber revenue from some of our media, broadcast, and production customers, and a decline related to one-time project spend in the prior period from certain corporate customers. On a sequential basis, the impact from some of these items does appear to be stabilizing, and our subscription revenue renewal rates remain very healthy, averaging in the 90% range. Paid download volume was up 0.9% to 95 million, an ever-compelling data point demonstrating the continued demand for high-quality, differentiated, commercially safe content. Our video attachment rate rose to 15.6% from 13.5% in the LTM Q2-2023 period, another quarter of year-on-year growth. Turning to our financial performance, revenue was $229.1 million, an increase of 1.5% and 2.1% on a currency-neutral basis. Included in these results are certain impacts of the timing of revenue recognition, which reduced year-on-year growth by 100 basis points.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

Annual subscription revenue was 52.9% of total revenue, up from 51.1% in Q2-2023. This is our seventh consecutive quarter with subscription revenue comprising north of 50% of our total revenue. In total, subscription revenue increased 5.2% on a reported basis and 5.7% currency-neutral, driven primarily by growth across our e-commerce subscription offerings. Editorial revenue was $83.6 million, an increase of 4.1% year-on-year and 4.6% on a currency-neutral basis. We are seeing a strong rebound in editorial, with the business delivering its first quarter of growth since the Hollywood strike began impacting our financial performance in Q2 of 2023. We saw growth across sports, news, and entertainment, with the largest gain in sports, which was in double-digit year-on-year growth.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

We are seeing lift from our impressive coverage of major events such as the European soccer season and the lead-up to the UEFA Championship, as well as our coverage of the U.S. and U.K. election cycle. It is great to see our editorial business back in growth, and we are excited to continue this momentum into the second half of the year. Creative revenue was $137.9 million, down 2.4% year-on-year and 1.8% on a currency-neutral basis. Creative performance continues to reflect the pressures in the agency business, which was down double-digit due primarily to decline at the smaller independent agencies. As we mentioned earlier, we are seeing a lag in recovery on the production side of things, which is also impacting creative results. Creative annual subscription revenue continues to be in growth at 5.7% year-on-year and 6.2% on a currency-neutral basis.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

Our customer acquisition efforts continue to drive growth in our iStock annual subscription, which grew 19% on both a reported and a currency-neutral basis, marking the 12th consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. In addition, our Unsplash+ subscription, the first paid subscription for Unsplash, delivered another quarter with triple-digit growth. As Craig mentioned, iStock and Unsplash, largely e-commerce sites, continue to grow. These sites on a combined basis represent roughly 20% of our revenue, with over 50% sitting in annual subscription. Across our major geographies, on a currency-neutral basis, we saw year-on-year increases of 1.7% in the Americas, 2.4% in EMEA, and 3% in APAC. All of our major geographic regions were in growth. Fantastic to see. Revenue less our cost of revenue as a percentage of revenue remained consistently strong at 72.5% in Q2, up from 71.9% in Q2 of 2023.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

Total SG&A expense was $101.2 million, down from $101.5 million in the prior year. As a percentage of revenue, our expense rate was 44.2%, down from 45% last year. The lower expense rate was driven primarily by the increase in revenue and lower stock-based compensation in the quarter. Excluding stock-based compensation, SG&A rose to $97.2 million in the quarter, or 42.4% of revenue, up from $89.6 million or 39.7% of revenue in Q2-2023. The increase in spend reflects our planned reinvestment in the business, primarily across staffing and marketing, in addition to higher commissions tied to revenue delivery and the inclusion of Motorsport Images operating costs. This quarter also included some elevated severance costs as we continue to optimize our resource allocation. These costs should be offset by savings in the balance of the year and higher net annualized savings going forward.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

Adjusted EBITDA was $68.8 million, down 5.4% year-over-year and 4.7% on a currency-neutral basis. Adjusted EBITDA margin was 30%, down from 32.2% in Q2 of 2023. CapEx was $15.4 million in Q2, up $1.5 million year-over-year. CapEx as a percentage of revenue was 6.7% compared to 6.2% in the prior year period and well within our expected range of 5%-7% of revenue. The year-on-year increase is largely tied to timing within the year. Free cash flow was $31.1 million, up from $27.9 million in Q2 of 2023. The increase in free cash flow reflects working capital changes related to the timing of receivables and payables. Free cash flow is stated net of cash interest expense of $26 million and cash taxes paid of $12.8 million in the second quarter.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

We finished the quarter with $121.7 million of balance sheet cash, down $12.5 million from Q1-2024 and up $0.4 million from Q2-2023. This includes $32.6 million in voluntary debt repayments in the second quarter of 2024. As of June 30, we had total debt outstanding of $1.35 billion, which includes $300 million of 9.75% Senior Notes, $601.8 million term loan with an applicable interest rate of 9.94%, EUR 448.5 million term loan converted using exchange rates as of June 30, 2024, with an applicable rate of 8.69%. We also have a $150 million revolver that remains undrawn. Our net leverage was 4.2 times at the end of Q2, unchanged from both Q1 and year-end 2023. We remain committed to utilizing our cash flow to further deleverage the balance sheet, and we will continue to proactively explore opportunities to refinance our debt.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

Based on the foreign exchange rates and applicable interest rates on our debt balance as of June 30, our 2024 cash interest expense is estimated to be $131 million. Of course, our actual annual interest expense remains subject to changes in the interest rate environment, which we outline in more detail within our SEC filing. In summary, it is good to see our business back in growth with healthy underlying key metrics. We remain fiscally disciplined. We continue to invest in this business, and we look forward to building on our Q2 momentum. Now turning to our outlook for the full year 2024. Taking into consideration the estimated impact of the stronger U.S. dollar and assuming current FX rates hold, we're updating our reported revenue guidance range to $924 million-$943 million, representing year-on-year growth of 0.9%-2.9%.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

On a currency-neutral basis, this represents growth of 1%-3%, which remains unchanged from our prior guidance. We now set Adjusted EBITDA of $290 million-$294 million, which translates to a year-on-year decrease of 3.8%-2.5% or 3.6%-2.3% currency-neutral. The update to our Adjusted EBITDA outlook reflects a $2 million impact from current foreign currency pressure, approximately $2 million of integration-related expenses that are more one-time in nature, and some higher-than-expected employee health insurance costs. Please note the estimated FX impacts include an assumption that FX rates remain consistent with those as of August 1, 2024, with the euro at 1.08 and the GBP at 1.29 for the remainder of the year. Despite these unplanned impacts, our operating efficiency remains strong, with Adjusted EBITDA margins expected to be north of 31%.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

With positive momentum building, we remain optimistic for our full-year return to growth while maintaining the fiscal discipline that has long been embedded in our business. With that, operator, please open the call for questions.

Operator

At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star and one on your telephone keypad. You may withdraw your question by pressing star two. Once again, to ask a question, please press the star and one on your telephone keypad. We'll take our first question from Cory Carpenter with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Cory Carpenter
Cory Carpenter
Analyst at J.P. Morgan

Good morning. Thanks for the questions. Craig, one for you and one for Jen. Maybe for you, Craig, just on generative AI, you rolled out a lot this quarter, made a lot of progress.

Cory Carpenter
Cory Carpenter
Analyst at J.P. Morgan

Hoping you could talk about the consumer engagement you're seeing and then also, I know it's still early, but your thoughtful latest thoughts on the potential monetization of that over time. And Jen, for you, just could you touch more on the drivers of the reacceleration in the second half of the year and the assumptions you're making, in particular around the agency channel? Thank you both.

Craig Peters
Craig Peters
CEO at Getty Images

Thanks for the question, Cory. On the Gen AI front, we continue to see really positive feedback from our customers across each and every segment of the business. And that's really due to the quality of the model and services that we're providing, but also the truly commercially safe nature of how these are built and what these can do. It's still early days in the adoption curve, though, within the commercial sector. And so it's not material to the business.

Craig Peters
Craig Peters
CEO at Getty Images

We expect over time it can be a meaningful contributor to the revenues of the business, but it's still early days and fairly limited contribution to the business at this point. But it is on a growth trajectory, and as that becomes more material, it'll be something we'll probably report back to. Jen?

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

Yeah, and on guidance and just, as we noted, acceleration into the second half. So there's a few things there for top-line performance. One, as we mentioned, we're still seeing, certainly through the first half, Q2, some continued lag on that production side of things recovery. So a bit of continuing improvement there. We have seen those declines start to taper off, but largely still a slower recovery than we anticipated. So a bit of pickup there.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

Agency side of things, we're not necessarily expecting any material changes there, but again, slow gradual improvement to those double-digit declines that we're seeing. Other big piece of this, which we've spent some time talking about before, is the editorial side of our business. There's a few things woven in there. One, obviously, as we move into the second half of the year, we've got a really favorable year-on-year comp with those strike impacts starting to impact us largely in Q3 and the second half of last year. So we've got a built-in favorable comp there. And then our editorial event calendar largely stacked in the second half of the year. So that's big events like the Olympics and the U.S. political cycle, both of those shaping up to be pretty healthy-sized events for us. So those are the primary drivers of that top-line performance in the second half.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

Thank you.

Operator

Our next question comes from Ron Josey with Citi. Please go ahead.

Ronald Josey
Ronald Josey
Analyst at Citi

Great. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to double down a little bit more and understand on the subscription side, Craig and Jen, and specifically, clearly over 50% of revenue for the past 4 quarters. That's a good thing here. I want to understand about the drivers. So you mentioned iStock, Unsplash now, 20% of revenue, 50% of that from subscribers. Just tell us more about what you're doing to drive that subscription from iStock or call it subscription benefits from iStock and Unsplash, but then also the strength of iStock and Unsplash. And then back to the subscription side, growth did decel here in Q2 from an annual active subscriber perspective. Can you provide any insights on the decel and growth? And then from a retention rate, looks like retention rate's been relatively steady.

Ronald Josey
Ronald Josey
Analyst at Citi

Should we assume this is the right rate going forward here? Thanks for the questions.

Craig Peters
Craig Peters
CEO at Getty Images

Great. Thanks, Ron. And Jen, I'll take a stab at this upfront, and then Jen can fill in on anything that I might have missed. In terms of the kind of Unsplash and iStock side of things, we've been making a concerted effort over the last, really, two years to drive more annual subscriptions across those products. It results in higher RPU. It results in ultimately higher lifetime values. And we think we deliver more value to our customers through those offerings and become more embedded in their day-to-day use and workflows. So we think it's a good thing for the customer. We think it's a good thing for Getty Images overall. The way we've been doing that, obviously, on Unsplash, we introduced a paid subscription in Unsplash+ that had not sat there before.

Craig Peters
Craig Peters
CEO at Getty Images

And it brings new value to those customers. It brings indemnification. It brings higher-end content in there that is fully released content. So ultimately, it's providing additional value to the Unsplash universe. On iStock, we've introduced more SKUs within the paid or, sorry, within the subscription product side of things. And we've been increasing the use of free trials against that. I'd say it's been largely positive. There is a slightly lower retention coming out of the free trial, but it's been one that we're getting people to try the product that are largely new to the iStock platform, as Jen mentioned. And we think that's a good thing. And it's been largely net positive. We are obviously going through a test cycle to continue to optimize that by geo and traffic source.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

But that's been a driver behind that, in addition to offering lower-end annual subscriptions like 10 downloads per month. That has led to great growth across those two platforms in terms of their annual subscription revenues and ultimately as a percentage of the overall business. Those do, as mentioned on previous calls, those do with lower net retention. Obviously, we're dealing with small businesses and freelancers, and those have higher degrees of churn in and out of products. And so that's been impacting that retention rate that you referenced, which has kind of come down a bit. But again, I still think it's a net trade positive to the business. And so I think on a go-forward basis, yeah, you should expect to probably see revenue retention rates for subscribers to kind of maintain in that kind of 90% range. And we'll continue to test and learn and optimize.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

But again, I go back that we had growth across Getty Images, growth across iStock, and growth across Unsplash in the quarter. And I think the annual subscription component of that was a big driver to ultimately achieving growth across each of those brands. Jen, anything to add? Yeah, I think the only thing I'd add is, Ron, you asked specifically, I think if that 89%-90% retention rate is sort of the go-forward. I think probably if we cycle through this year, it'll hover somewhere around there and then start to ramp back up to low-mid-90s over time. And one of the things that we are seeing and we've touched on here, one of the other drivers of that retention rate is we're seeing a little bit of contraction in spend from these subscribers outside of their subscription. And that is very much a Hollywood strike impact.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

So if you go back to last year, pre-Hollywood strike, this number was in those low- to mid-90s. So we're starting to see that consumption level, that a la carte spend outside of subscription start to tick back up. Again, we're far from full recovery on that, but that's one of the drivers of this. But I think slowly over time, we'll start to see that come back a bit. Super helpful on both. And one quick follow-up, just talking to the writer's strike and the recovery. We still have, I think we're still recovering. Would you say we're beyond the heavy lifting, so to speak, and now it's a matter of time? Or would you have expected the recovery to be faster, slower? Any thoughts there would be helpful. Thank you very much. Yeah, Ron.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

I think we're beyond the heavy lifting, but we're just in a gradual re-ramp over time. And so we're hopeful that we'll continue to see that over the second half and into 2025. It's one where that will impact kind of all of our product lines. So it's not just an editorial item. It's an editorial plus creative. In fact, a lot of the content that is consumed in the productions is creative. So yeah, we expect that we'll see that. Clearly, following the media sector, it's one where that's been a bit more gradual by all reports. But all expectations are that by 2025, we should probably be back to where we were. But yeah, we're kind of past the heavy lifting side of things and should be in a situation where it's just a gradual return over time.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

And again, we've got deep embedded relationships within that community and those customer space and are in tight conversations with them. So I think that expectation is one that's grounded in good, solid customer communication and feedback. Thank you, Craig. Thank you, Jen. I'd just add there, just to give some numbers, if we look at specifically kind of that production side of things, when we were in the heart of strike impact last year, we saw that industry down double digits as we move into this first half of the year, still in decline, but now sort of in that lower single-digit range. So if you look at those numbers, we've gone from double-digit declines down to single-digit declines. So seeing some improvement, but as Craig noted, we expect that recovery to continue on a bit longer.

Operator

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Zgutowicz with Benchmark.Please go ahead.

Mark Zgutowicz
Mark Zgutowicz
Analyst at Benchmark

Thank you. Good morning, Craig and Jen. A couple for me on, well, one Premium Access. Just curious how that performed in the quarter and your expectations for the e-com product. Basically, I think it's roughly a 20% base today, so just growth in the second half. And then also curious, I might have missed it, but I was curious what drove the big quarter-over-quarter growth within the other segment. Thanks. Thanks, Mark. On PA, Premium Access is our largest subscription offering. It's our primary subscription offering. It includes a lot of our really premium content across editorial and creative and video and stills, can bring our archive into play. We continue to see really strong performance in that product, not just in take-up of new customers, but more importantly, on the retention side of things and the utilization side of things.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

So it's a really strong product, and we haven't really seen any moderation in its performance at any point in the last couple of years. It's really about building the strength of that deep customer-embedded workflows and utilization. And that's kind of what we're bringing to the e-commerce side of things through those subscriptions on iStock and Unsplash. With respect to the performance going forward on iStock and Unsplash, we continue to expect them to be in growth. These are platforms that are, again, really offering a differentiated content offering relative to competition. And it's one that we believe fundamentally resonates with our customers. We see them consuming that content relative to non-exclusive or other sources at a much higher level. And it's one that we think that's a durable point of differentiation.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

We believe, based off of paid download metrics, revenue metrics, customer metrics, that we're taking share within those spaces through those platforms, given their unique positioning and fundamentally the content that underpins that. We expect that to continue. With respect to other, that includes our Media Manager offering and music offering, but also some data licensing. We did some small data licensing deals that are consistent with our view about really how we bring our content into the data licensing market, or if we bring our content into the data licensing market, which is really staying away from one-time kind of perpetual licenses and trying to do it more in a partnership model. So there was some slight data licensing that's consistent with that framework in Q2 off of a very small base historically. So that's what drives that in the quarter. Jen, anything to add there?

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

No, I think you touched on it. There's some other smaller individually immaterial contributors there, our prints business, our music business, both of those also in growth. But again, these are fairly small numbers, as is that other grouping overall.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

That's helpful. And just on the data licensing side, how would you characterize that growth as more one-time in nature versus carry forward over the next 12 months? Just maybe if you could frame that, Craig. And one last one for me, just in terms of political and the Olympics, if you could maybe quantify that, your expected contribution relative to the last cycle, that'd be helpful. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks, Mark. It should be there's a bit of accounting with 606 and revenue recognition that makes that a little bit of a pull forward on some of the data licensing.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

But these are kind of within the model that we've always stressed, which is kind of more recurring in nature, kind of more partnership in nature. So I would see some level of lumpiness just due to the different recognition aspects relative to kind of linear time-based recognition. But for the most part, we're trying to build recurring, durable revenue streams over time. That is our focus as a leadership team and as a business and how we're entering this. So probably a little bit of lumpiness, but ultimately, you can think about it as something that we're building relationships and revenue that we believe will be recurring over time, but how they're recognized might vary a little bit.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

As for the editorial calendar in terms of the elections and the Olympics and Euros, we expected that to be slightly lower than the historic contribution on a four-year cycle, presidential, so 2020 versus 2024. We're probably closer to $10 million-$12 million in the previous cycle, largely driven by the political side of things. And we expected this year to be around $8 million-$10 million, and again, largely driven by a differential on the political side of things. We'll see how that plays out. We believe that that might be a conservative point of view given how the election is now shaping up in the U.S. And I can tell you, having come out of Paris and sat with a lot of our commercial partners in Paris, there's a lot of activity that is flowing out of that.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

So hopeful that there might be some upside relative to what we set in our initial guidance within. But I think you can think about it in that $8 million-$10 million range. Excellent. We're certainly seeing consumption of that content out of that Premium Access subscription offering. And it just speaks to, again, the quality of the content coverage that that team, our team, the Getty Images team, pulled together in Paris, the speed, the quality, the depth, the breadth, the innovation around how we're covering games. I think some of the new content and new content types we are producing were just fantastic, and customers really reacted to them well, so. One thing I'd add there, specifically on the political side, that incremental revenue for us, that'll be a lift to both creative and editorial.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

So historically, when we look back at political spend, it's roughly 50/50 in terms of how it hits creative editorial. Sometimes it skews even higher on the creative side of things. So that political impact, while we talk about it in the editorial side of the business, that impacts our creative revenue as well.

Mark Zgutowicz
Mark Zgutowicz
Analyst at Benchmark

Good point. That's helpful. Thanks, Jen.

Mark Zgutowicz
Mark Zgutowicz
Analyst at Benchmark

Yep. Thanks, Mark.

Operator

Our next question comes from Tim Nollen with Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Tim Nollen
Tim Nollen
Analyst at Macquarie

Hi. I'd like to come back to the agencies topic, please. The agencies themselves have had kind of mixed-ish results. Just wondering what gives you the optimism going into the second half of the year. I mean, I think they've been stable overall. But I'm talking to larger agencies. We cover on the public side, maybe you're focused more on the smaller agencies. So just wondering where the optimism comes from there.

Tim Nollen
Tim Nollen
Analyst at Macquarie

And then secondly, and relatedly, I think last time we were talking a bit about agencies adopting more of the Generative AI tools. And I'm wondering if there's any indication yet that they are shifting away from an à la carte to more of a subscription payment model as they adopt these tools. Thanks.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

Thanks, Tim. On the agency front, I would say that what we're really seeing is a stabilization within that portion of the business. This was, again, a segment where we were seeing double-digit declines. And we're seeing that start to moderate as we see some of the economic certainty start to improve, as we see some of the sectors of the economy, like the tech sector, kind of bring back some spend and investment that flows through the agencies.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

So it's not anything that we're expecting in terms of a heroic change, as Jen referenced in her remarks, but it is one that we are seeing the trends of normalization that's kind of led out through the large network agencies. And we're seeing early signs of that in the indie agencies. So we don't see a major shift to AI or subscription within those agencies. And that's largely, again, because of how they work with their clients and what that means in terms of how they need to build back to their clients. They still need to build back on a per-project basis. So we're not seeing a shift into subscription. We're not really seeing any major shift into AI there in terms of end project needs. But we are seeing experimentation. And that is certainly something that we see in there.

Jennifer Leyden
Jennifer Leyden
CFO at Getty Images

In many cases, that's in partnership with Getty Images, so. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. This will conclude our Q&A session as well as our conference call. Thank you all for your participation, and you may disconnect at any time. Thank you.

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