IZEA Worldwide Q1 2025 Earnings Call Transcript

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May 13, 2025

There are 5 speakers on the call.

Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the IZEA Worldwide First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce Matt Gray, Vice President of Marketing.

Operator

Please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to IZEA's earnings call covering the first quarter of twenty twenty five. I'm Matt Gray, VP marketing at IZEA. And joining me on the call are IZEA's chief financial officer, Peter Berry, and IZEA's chief executive officer, Patrick Benetucci. Thank you for being with us today. Earlier this afternoon, the company issued a press release detailing IZEA's performance during q one twenty twenty five.

Speaker 1

If you'd like to review those details, all our investor information can be found online on our Investor Relations website at izea.com/investors. Before we begin, please take note of the safe harbor paragraph included in today's press release covering IZEA's financial results and be advised that some of the statements that we make today regarding our business, operations and financial performance may be considered forward looking, and such statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. We encourage you to consider these disclosures contained in our SEC filings for a detailed discussion of these factors. Our commentary today will also include the non GAAP financial measure of adjusted EBITDA. Reconciliations between GAAP and non GAAP metrics for our reported results can also be found in our earnings release issued earlier today and in our publicly available filings.

Speaker 1

And with that, I would like to now introduce and turn the call over to IZEA's Chief Financial Officer, Peter Beery. Peter?

Speaker 2

Thank you, Matt, and good afternoon, everyone. Earlier this afternoon, we released our results for the first quarter and filed a quarterly report on Form 10 Q with the SEC. Additionally, we issued an informational press release announcing our intention to initiate a tender offer to repurchase the remaining 8,700,000 of our previously announced $10,000,000 stock buyback. Today, I'll review operating results for the quarter ended 03/31/2025, compared to the first quarter of twenty twenty four and discuss certain balance sheet highlights as well as our proposed tender offer. Total revenue for the first quarter of twenty twenty five was approximately $8,000,000 or 14.6% above the prior year quarter.

Speaker 2

Revenue from managed services totaled $7,900,000 in the current quarter, growing 18.1% over the prior year quarter. Managed services revenue from continuing operations, excluding $500,000 from HUSU in the prior year quarter, rose 27.6% in the first quarter over the prior year period. Managed services bookings, a non GAAP measure of demand for our services, declined to 7,500,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty five compared to $9,300,000 in the prior year's first quarter. '1 of our largest customers front loaded their 2024 contract commitments, which resulted in contract timing differences. As of 03/31/2025, our managed services backlog, representing unrecognized revenue from ongoing contracts and recent bookings not yet invoiced, totaled 14,900,000.0 It's important to note that IZEA's contract bookings typically require an average of six to seven point five months to complete the revenue cycle.

Speaker 2

SaaS revenue totaled $60,953 in the first quarter of twenty twenty five compared to $256,341 in the same quarter of the prior year. The year over year decline reflects our strategic decision to reduce marketing support for our SaaS offerings, while we evaluate the most effective capital allocation plan to drive long term profitability. Our total cost of revenue was $4,400,000 or 55.2% of revenue in the first quarter of twenty twenty five compared to $4,000,000 or 57.1% of revenue for the prior year quarter, reflecting lower margin Hoosier revenue in the prior year quarter. Expenses other than the cost of revenue totaled $4,200,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty five, a 40% decline from $7,000,000 in the prior year's quarter. Sales and marketing costs totaled $1,100,000 during the first quarter of twenty twenty five, representing a 63.3% decline compared to the prior year's $3,100,000 total.

Speaker 2

The decrease was largely due to reduced costs related to our targeted workforce reduction as well as a temporary pause in advertising spend and lower general contractor fees. General and administrative costs totaled $2,900,000 during the first quarter, a 22.3% decline over the prior year quarter, primarily due to lower employee related costs, reduced use of external contractors and lower spending on professional services and software license fees. Our net loss in the first quarter totaled $142,800 or negative 0 1 dollars per share on 16,900,000.0 shares compared to a net loss of $3,300,000 or negative 0 2 0 dollars per share on 16,300,000.0 shares for the first quarter of twenty twenty four. In the first quarter of twenty twenty five, adjusted EBITDA was negative $76,850 compared to negative $3,400,000 for the prior year quarter. As a reminder, we updated our non GAAP measure adjusted EBITDA in the fourth quarter of twenty twenty four to exclude nonoperating items, primarily interest income from our investment portfolio.

Speaker 2

The prior year comparison was restated for comparability. You can find a reconciliation of adjusted EBITDA to net income at the bottom of our earnings release. As of 03/31/2025, we had $52,200,000 in cash and investments, an increase of $1,100,000 from the beginning of the quarter. The higher cash balance reflects net reductions in working capital, primarily driven by collections of accounts receivable and positive cash flow from operations. We earned $05,000,000 in interest income on our investments during the recent quarter.

Speaker 2

Lastly, we do not have any debt on our balance sheet. We previously announced our commitment to repurchase up to $10,000,000 of our stock in the open market, which was subject to certain restrictions. Through 05/09/2025, we purchased 469,211 shares, investing about $1,200,000 from September 2024, Despite consistent daily buying since November of twenty twenty four, low trading volumes and purchase restrictions have limited our buyback. Late this afternoon, we announced our intention to conduct a modified Dutch auction tender offer for up to 8,700,000 of our shares, which if fully subscribed, will complete our current buyback program. The tender is planned to commence on Friday, 05/16/2025, and will be priced from a low of $2.3 and a high of $2.8 per share based on the percentage of our ninety day volume weighted average price.

Speaker 2

With cash on hand and liquidity from our investment portfolio as required, we are well positioned to execute organic business growth and capitalize on future acquisition opportunities. With that, I'll turn the call over to Patrick Panettiucci, our Chief Executive Officer.

Speaker 3

Thank you, Peter, and good afternoon, everyone. When I stepped into the CEO role in September 2024, the leadership team and I made a commitment to accelerate our path to profitability. We reset the strategic direction of the company and identified opportunities to fortify, simplify, and focus. In

Speaker 2

q four

Speaker 3

twenty twenty four, we activated the first phase of our plan and took several bold and decisive actions that made a positive impact in Q1 twenty twenty five. Geographically, we exited international markets in favor of fortifying in The U. S. By focusing on America First, we significantly reduced our international exposure and insulated our business from geopolitical risks, tariff risks, and currency risks. Organizationally, we designed a new and more efficient structure that aligned with our new strategy.

Speaker 3

This enabled us to simplify our organization and make targeted workforce reductions in December, which significantly improves our overall cost structure moving forward. We transformed our go to market model by focusing on high growth market segments and our extensive client list for which we have opportunities to do more. We are obsessed with serving our top clients even better. We've long had a strength in managed services and began embracing it more so than in the past. We're leaning into our ability to provide greater economy services with a better articulated service offering menu and a road map of areas where we intend to build capabilities both organically and via m and a.

Speaker 3

Technologically, we began simplifying our product offerings by focusing on fewer products, consolidating features, and delivering a more intuitive customer experience. There are a few other operational activities in q one worth highlighting. We won business from Nestle, Acer, Jeep, and more. Our sales pipeline is trending up with larger opportunities from higher quality clients. We produced exciting new work for Clorox, Carnation Breakfast Essentials, Matinee Kim, Academy Sports, and Coursera to name a few.

Speaker 3

We advanced our tech products by releasing enhancements that improve campaign management efficiency. Finally, we hired our first EVP of sales and marketing, Frank Pavalo, who breathes with not only influencer marketing specific experience, but experience in selling broader marketing services and enterprise account management. In summary, q one was an exceptional quarter and a giant step towards making good on our promise to accelerate our path to profitability. We grew revenue by double digits, nearly broke even, and generated cash all in one quarter. This is strong evidence that the transformational changes we made in q four twenty twenty four are working.

Speaker 3

Our new go to market model, cost structure, and technologies are aligning and beginning to bear fruit. We have confidence that there are even more value creation opportunities ahead of us. Because we continue to believe that IZEA shares are undervalued, we're continuing our $10,000,000 share repurchase program, and we plan to initiate a tender offer on Friday, 05/16/2025 to encourage completion of our repurchase goal. We are optimistic about the future of this company and our ability to deliver additional value to all of our stakeholders, shareholders, clients, and employees alike. Thank you for your time today.

Speaker 3

I will now open the call for Q and A from the analyst community.

Operator

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. First question comes from John Hickman with Ladenburg Thalmann. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Peter, could you give us a little bit of or elaborate on a little bit what you think gross margins might be for kind of the remaining of the year or remainder of the year?

Speaker 2

Well, as you know, we're not giving guidance. But with that said, I think our margins are fairly steady. They go up and down a little bit within a band depending on how things mix. You saw margins in the fourth quarter drop a bit. We're back up.

Speaker 2

And, of course, we've we've cleared out some of the really low margin stuff. So I would imagine that you could say margins will be stable through the rest of the year. And

Speaker 4

your cost cutting measures, are they essentially over like, is this a good level for going forward?

Speaker 2

Well so first of all, some of the costs are structural, and they'll be that way going forward. You know, we trend quite a bit of headcount, and that's the biggest, obviously, the biggest expense item on our statement. That doesn't mean we're not gonna hire more people. What it means is we brought our costs down to a level that our business could afford. Our goal is to make money, so we still have to get more top line synergy and grow costs slower.

Speaker 2

And we're in a good position to manage ourselves that way. But, you know, I would say for this year, the cost structure you're looking at is probably pretty good. We'll we'll probably add people, going into the summer and early fall, but you all you should also see the business rise a bit to pay for that. So we're we're trying to be really tight and make our objectives.

Speaker 4

Okay. And then any comments on, you know, the economy has been kind of or at least, I don't know, maybe it's more Wall Street than anything. But with with fears of, like, a slowdown, your pipeline, are you seeing any evidence that people are pulling back on their advertising dollars?

Speaker 3

I'll I'll jump in here, Peter. Hey, John. It's Patrick.

Speaker 1

Yeah.

Speaker 3

We're you know, I I think just as with everyone else, there is a lot of uncertainty in the world. But with that said, our pipeline is actually growing. And more importantly, the quality of the the clients that we're speaking with are increasing. We're reaching higher end organizations. We're having more substantial conversations with our enterprise customers.

Speaker 3

The deal sizes we're talking about are are bigger. So, you know, I think it's more a question of short term versus long term. There's there's a lot of good signs on the long term. And while some clients are are pausing, on the other hand, some of the clients are looking at this category as a better place to place their advertising and media investments because it doesn't require the upfront commitments that some of the competing marketing choices do. This is more controllable.

Speaker 3

It's it's marketing spend that you can turn on and off more readily. It's something you can shift around on a tactical basis more in a more agile way. So I think, you know, we're we're like everyone else, we don't have a crystal ball, but we're seeing a lot of good signs and sometimes that may even offset the risks that are out there.

Speaker 4

Okay. And then do you can you elaborate more on your, like, m and a opportunities? Like, is it target rich and large environment, evaluations? Are they in your comfort zone? That kind of thing.

Speaker 3

Yeah. So we have not aggressively pursued it yet because we wanted to get the organization to a point of of readiness. You know, we wanna make sure we're organizationally ready so that we can integrate with the right the right partner. With that said, we have been looking at some opportunities opportunistically as we have had a number of unsolicited inbounds. We are ramping up our relationships with investment bankers and and more aggressively looking ahead now that we've gotten through some of these structural changes.

Speaker 3

And, you know, as you can you can see, we've gotta get cost structure to build off of. And in terms of of valuations right now, it really depends which areas we go into. You know, there are some areas where I think it's it's reasonable. There are other areas that are a little hot right now. The creator economy is hot, and quite frankly, we I mean, it's part of the reason we're doing the share buyback.

Speaker 3

We think we're we're very much, you know, undervalued right now. But all in all, I would say, you know, what whatever we do moving forward, we're be reasonable about it, and we're not gonna, you know, overpay in the market.

Speaker 4

Okay. Thank you. That's it for me. Appreciate it.

Speaker 1

Thanks, John.

Operator

Thank thank you. I would like to turn the floor over to Matt Gray for closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Thanks so much, Stacy, and thank you everyone for joining us this afternoon. As a reminder, you can find all of IZEA's Investor Relations information on our Investor Relations website at izea.com/investors. Thanks for joining us, and have a nice evening.

Operator

This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and thank you for your participation.

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Earnings Conference Call
IZEA Worldwide Q1 2025
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