Earnings Call Transcript - DLPN Q1 2025

Operator, Operator

Greetings, and welcome to the Dolphin Entertainment First Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. And a question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. Please note, this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Mr. James Carbonara of Hayden IR. Sir, you may begin.

James Carbonara, Investor Relations

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon. Before we begin, I’d like to remind everyone that during the course of this conference call, management may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on management’s current expectations and beliefs and involve risks and uncertainties that could differ materially from actual events. Please refer to the cautionary text forward-looking statements contained in the earnings release published earlier today as well as the most recent SEC filings and reports. During the call today, management will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted operating income or loss. The company believes that these will provide helpful information for investors. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures are provided in the earnings release. Now I would like to turn the call over to Bill O’Dowd, Chief Executive Officer of Dolphin. Bill, please go ahead.

Bill O’Dowd, CEO

Thanks, James, and welcome, everyone. As usual, I’ll start by reviewing some of the key financial and operating highlights from our first quarter. And then Mirta will provide a more detailed financial overview before we open it up for Q&A. So starting with the financials. While total revenue came in at $12.2 million for the quarter, compared to $15.2 million a year ago, it’s important to remember that last year’s Q1 included a significant contribution of $3.4 million from our Blue Angels documentary. If we set that aside, our core entertainment publicity and marketing revenue actually grew 2% year-over-year, which is a testament to the underlying strength of our platform, especially as we manage through the lingering impact of the LA wildfires and a correspondingly lighter award season. We believe that fires impacted our 42West and Special Projects subsidiaries most significantly. Fortunately, the impact of the fire was limited to Q1 for us. And on a personal note, we are very fortunate none of our team lost their homes to the fires as we continue to give our thoughts and prayers for many of our industry colleagues who were not so lucky. On the bottom line, our adjusted operating loss was approximately $600,000 and very comparable to last year if you backed out the movie as well. Obviously, any lost revenues from the impact of the fires flow through to our bottom line. And we believe this measured and contained result demonstrates that our cost discipline remains intact even as we make strategic investments for future growth. Speaking of investments, I want to highlight two areas where we’ve made strategic investments in Q1. First, we’re big believers in the future of women’s sports; our women’s sports management firm, Always Alpha, co-founded by the incredible Allyson Felix, has taken a leadership role in this multibillion-dollar and rapidly growing market. Our new partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment now positions us as the largest and most comprehensive management firm in the women’s sports space. We marked this milestone in style by ringing the NASDAQ closing bell on International Women’s Day alongside some of the most inspiring women in sports. That was an extremely fun moment for Dolphin and really brought the momentum we are feeling to life. We now represent more than a dozen female athletes and sportscasters, including several Olympians, in addition to Allyson herself, of course. We will continue to invest in this business throughout 2025. We want to expand into women’s soccer and basketball with dedicated management teams for each of these two most popular women’s sports in the United States. In doing so, we would expect that our active roster of represented athletes and sportscasters will double by the end of the year. Second, our digital department has officially launched a dedicated affiliate marketing division as the influencer economy continues to grow and evolve. Affiliate marketing is quickly becoming one of the most important revenue streams globally, now estimated at over $17 billion. By building out this vertical, we’re one of the rare agencies able to offer every major influencer marketing revenue stream under one roof, making us a true one-stop shop for creators and brands alike. And just like with Always Alpha, we will continue to invest in this area. We have two dozen influencers on our affiliate roster today, and we expect to more than triple that number by the end of the year. In order to achieve this growth, we will be hiring affiliate managers at a steady pace throughout the rest of the year. As you might expect, we believe that these investments in Always Alpha and the affiliate marketing division of the digital department will pay increasing dividends for us in 2026 and beyond, both in revenues and profits. Turning to the incredible work our agencies have delivered this quarter, 42West had a fantastic showing at Toy Fair, a champion declines both the Sundance Film Festival and the South by Southwest Festival as well as the Oscars, and drove major campaigns at the Super Bowl, including bringing Wayne Brady and producing the Wingin’ It campaign to life and increasing media buzz for the Puppy Bowl and DC Studios. Puppy Bowl being James Carbonara’s favorite aspect of Super Bowl Sunday. And he’s just a long-time supporter of the Puppy Bowl, we’re big supporters in general. Shore Fire Media saw its clients win big at the Grammys, celebrated longtime client Cyndi Lauper’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Go Cyndi and orchestrated memorable Super Bowl moments from Trombone Shorty and Lauren Daigle’s pregame performance, which was awesome, to Fred Minnick Live and campaigns for Dove, Uber Eats, and more. The Door continues to cement its authority in culinary lifestyle branding, unveiling a major new chef roster and running creative Super Bowl campaigns itself, like Not So Fast, Not So Furious with Vin Diesel and friends. Those friends include Michelle Rodriguez and Ludacris; it was a fantastic commercial plus the cross-country Häagen-Dazs Drive activation. The team at The Door just continues to crush it. There were a lot of, as you can see, Super Bowl activations for our PR firms. Speaking of our PR firms, Elle, our newest addition to the Dolphin family, serves over two dozen clients across both its lifestyle and impact divisions and it's just doing great work. The Digital Department set a new record with our highest-grossing BRANDEdit influencer experience in LA the past month and as mentioned earlier, kicked off the new affiliate marketing division, expanding our reach in the creator economy. And finally, Special Projects strategically brought together top celebrities and cultural influencers for Max, Warner Bros., and Louis Vuitton events among many others, I might add, enhancing brand impact and resonance. On the content side, the Blue Angels collected another industry award for sound editing and returned to IMAX theatres with a stunning new 3D version in January. Our Youngblood feature adaptation has now completed principal photography and is tracking toward a fall festival debut. We're excited for Youngblood very much. All of this activity has not gone unnoticed. We were honored to be named Agency of the Year by Observer's 2025 PR Power List, a major milestone that validates our strategy and the depth of talent across all our agencies. And on a personal note, I continue to put my money where my mouth is. I see tremendous upside in our shares, and I've started weekly purchases through a 10b5-1 plan, which began in the first week of April after we filed our 10-K. I believe our current valuation does not reflect the strength of our team, our brands, or our long-term growth prospects. Looking ahead, we are building on a powerful foundation with clear leadership in high-growth categories. We believe that our investments in women's sports and affiliate marketing are broadening our addressable market and will provide sustainable growth opportunities for us for years ahead. As we stay focused on execution and innovation, I'm confident that 2025 will be another year of progress for both our clients and our shareholders. With that, I'll hand it over to Mirta for a deeper dive into the financials. Then we'll open it up for your questions.

Mirta Sanchez Negrini, CFO

Thank you, Bill, and good afternoon, everyone. Let me walk you through our financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2025. The total revenue for the quarter was $12.2 million compared to $15.2 million for the same period in 2024. As Bill noted, the year-over-year decrease is primarily attributable to last year's Blue Angels production revenue of $3.4 million. Importantly, if we exclude last year's one-time film production revenue, our core entertainment publicity and marketing segment revenue grew 2% year-over-year to $12.1 million demonstrating the underlying health and resilience of our agency businesses despite the impact of the Los Angeles fires and lighter award season wins. Operating expenses for the quarter were $13.9 million compared to $15.1 million in Q1 2024. This included depreciation and amortization of approximately $600,000 and non-recurring or non-cash expenses of $600,000. Our operating loss for Q1 2025 was $1.8 million compared to operating income of $200,000 in the prior year period. Adjusted operating loss was approximately $600,000 for the quarter as compared to adjusted operating income for the same period in the prior year of $1 million. If we reduce the revenue of $3.4 million and the amortization of capitalized production costs of $1.8 million of the Blue Angels for the first quarter of 2024, our operating loss would have been approximately $600,000 comparable to the first quarter of 2025. Net loss for Q1 2025 was $2.3 million, including $600,000 in depreciation and amortization and approximately $600,000 of non-cash or non-recurring expenses. This compares to a net loss of $300,000 for Q1 2024, including $600,000 of depreciation and amortization and $300,000 of non-cash or non-recurring expenses. Net loss per share was $0.21 per share based on 11,162,026 weighted average shares outstanding for the first quarter of 2025 compared to a net loss of $0.04 per share based on 9,238,913 weighted average shares outstanding for basic loss per share and 9,302,851 weighted average shares outstanding for fully diluted loss per share for the first quarter of 2024. With that, I'll now turn it back to the operator to open the floor for questions. Operator, would you please poll for questions?

Operator, Operator

Thank you. We have a question from Allen Klee with Maxim Group. Your line is live.

Allen Klee, Analyst

Yes. Hi. In Always Alpha, you talked about potentially doubling the roster by the end of the year and adding soccer and basketball. How a couple of things, like talk about how it works when you grow in terms of how to think about would you have to invest ahead of time versus the revenue potential? And then how to think about the opportunity in this segment? Thank you.

Bill O’Dowd, CEO

Sure. Yes. The similar businesses that we're expanding here with the affiliate marketing TDD, which I may be anticipating your next question, too, Allen, but on Always Alpha managers that will help you sign new talent or we've been signing at a very steady pace since we launched the company in October. Very proud of the roster that's been built by Cosette and Allyson primarily, Allyson Felix. And they've done a great job bringing in talent. So now to expand and keep going, you need more managers. And we're looking at managers that would be in those verticals of soccer and basketball because we've built a really nice practice of clients with the Olympics and sportscasters. And typically, when you bring in an experienced manager and then we can go recruit talent athletes in this case, you want to be managed by us and have us bring brand deals. There's a lag between you bringing in the manager, they'll sign talent, they'll start signing talent, hopefully, week one, right, month one, certainly. And we can help them recruit that talent, and then they'll start making brand deals and we'll bring brand deals to that talent. And then typically, in these types of endorsement deals, there's a little bit of a slower turn than in influencer marketing. So you could sign a brand deal to say, get athlete x going to the Winter Olympics to be sponsored by Delta Airlines, for example, and they'll run a campaign in Q4 of this year and Q1 of next year as an example. Well, so that's all well and good. And then of course, but of course you're recognizing that revenue and you're receiving it in Q4 and Q1 of next year. So there's usually on the athlete side, you could start seeing some revenue in the first three to six months after bringing in a manager, but it really hits a run rate or hitting revenue targets usually six to nine months after you make a hire, I would say. So as we talk about in 2025, then is we're hitting our benchmarks that we wanted both in terms of speed at which we're signing clients, which has gone very well. And then, of course, the deals that we have in the works or that we've closed. But if we've closed revenue through Q1 for Always Alpha, I think probably it's fair to say that 90% of that revenue will be sometime later in 2025, and that will be true in Q2, too. So and of course, eventually, you'll hit a stable revenue rate that should be quite profitable for you. In terms of the potential of this division, well, I mean sports could be easily as big as aspects of entertainment. How big is big? We'll see as we go over the next year or two, it will certainly be a profit center for us in the future. If we can take advantage, we believe, of our first-mover advantage and the great story, it's Always Alpha. I mean because that's a seasoned executive and Allyson Felix is a legend. So with the momentum that we can bring that business through their hard work on the brand deals they bring and then hopefully some synergies across all of our other companies that have many, many brand clients. And what is the, hopefully, five years from now the preeminent women's sports athlete management firm worth? We'll find out together, right? But I don't want to set a ceiling that may turn out to just be a floor for them. They have great potential. So that's what we're doing in 2025, and it will pay big dividends for us, we believe in 2026 and beyond.

Allen Klee, Analyst

Thank you. And so it's very clear and understandable what your strategy is and not that it's not understandable, but affiliate marketing, you said you could triple the influencers, but just to explain this a little more about where it's targeted in particular areas, or how are you just trying to find people who are very good at it? Or how does it work?

Bill O’Dowd, CEO

Sure. Sure. Yes. It’s a little bit more of a black box to some people than say, female soccer players, people understanding that right as we have soccer and basketball. By – we're trying to do it responsibly this summer, so when we get on Q2, by the way we'll see what updates we have in the sports field for everyone, right? Affiliate marketing, good news is that it's usually a quicker turn. You can have a team of affiliate managers, same thing, you bring in talent managers and you recruit a roster of affiliate influencers. The good news for us is we have a backlog of affiliate influencers that would like to work with us. And we're hiring and training affiliate managers in some cases. So we're trying to do it on a measured pace throughout the year, bringing in a new team of managers, let's say, every couple of months, every eight weeks or so, it takes a while to train, it takes a while to add the roster upload and et cetera. But they can have a quicker turn. A team could be cash positive within a shorter period of time, a couple of months after being fully ramped-up. And obviously, if our main roster of brand influencers, now we have over – I believe over 300 creators on roster. What's the growth potential of affiliate? Well, right now, we have a couple of dozen, which is a fantastic sign-up rate since we just started this in Q1. I'm indicating to us out there that if we have everyone on this call can do that math, right? So 2,000 become 6,000 by the end of the year or more. We're on a path in one year to having affiliate be 25% or even 33% size of our core business. That's tremendous growth in 12 months, right? And I don't know that we're going to stop there. So it will be a profit center for us by the end of the year, and we're in a position to have it be a solid profit center for us in Q4, which is already our best quarter for influencer marketing anyway. But affiliate marketing is also very appealing to us because it doesn't really have as much of a seasonality. So whatever we do in Q4, we can hope to somewhat repeat in Q1 of next year, and as it rolls through into 2026 and beyond. So, will affiliate be as big as our core creator representation business? Again, we need a crystal ball and let's see where we are in three to five years, but it could be a meaningful contributor to our bottom line at TDD, absolutely. And strategically, it allows us to offer both services to individual influencers. As I indicated on the 10-K earnings call, both of our companies before we merged on Be Social and Socialyte did not offer affiliate services, and neither do almost all of our competitors. So to have that in-house to go along with the brand campaigns gives us a market advantage as the market settles down into half a dozen firms or so that are positioned to be market leaders. We certainly are one of those. We think this gives us a major competitive edge to attract very good influencers who can make money both from brand campaigns we bring them, but also from affiliate links. So we're excited for and very appreciative of the hard work of the team that's building it out.

Allen Klee, Analyst

But just so I understand it a little better, an affiliate influencer, if they come with leads for businesses, or is that generated by kind of your managers or how does that work?

Bill O’Dowd, CEO

Sure. Yes, absolutely. So typically, what separates us, and I think a misperception in the market, I'll explain what it is and first to hopefully clarify what it is, right? I think even people that understand influencer marketing well often don't realize that when the digital department brings an influencer to do a campaign, and maybe that influencer is going to get paid, let's say, $100,000 to post products or talk about products or whatever the campaign would consist of, either on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube, for that money, we bring the deal together to the talent, and we get paid a commission on what the talent earns, typically 20%. So in that case, we get 20% of $100,000. If the influencer were to link for their followers to be able to purchase, typically, many brands will offer a commission to that influencer. That service of managing the links and knowing where to link either directly to the brand or most often through influencer sites like a ShopMy or LTK is back-end support coordination of where to link to because it's not brand-direct, then you want to link to the affiliate platform that pays the highest commission. One platform may be paying you 20% of the sale, and another may be paying you 10%. You want to link to the one that pays you more, right? That service is called affiliate marketing. And we, similar to the core service, take 20% of whatever the creator makes on those links. Of course, that's only if people buy the product through those links. So some influencers are very strong at both brand campaigns and in converting into affiliate sales, but the overwhelming majority of influencers do not do affiliate links. And some of our biggest influencers, our highest earners, don't do it. They will, and with us offering the service, they could turn out to be high earners. But it’s no joke for people that have followers that will buy what they’re posting. They can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a month. We have one on the roster currently that does just that. So it’s a business we can grow. So many people think that you just do both at the same time, but that’s just not true. The overwhelming majority of influencers don’t do affiliate.

Allen Klee, Analyst

Do they not do it because they don’t understand it? Or can you take your current roster of influencers and then just kind of upsell this to them instead of only bringing in because that sounds like a lower cost of having the – well, you tell me, yes.

Bill O’Dowd, CEO

Yes, it is, and it’s low-hanging fruit, too. And why it often isn’t done is because you could have influencers that would only make $30, $40, $50, $100, or $200 a month. If their follower accounts don’t typically think of them as somebody to click on and go through to the link. However, the other thing about building that type of practice or that type of content, I should say, is there’s some back-end work to it. And bringing in Kate Steele and that team and watching people that do this every day, all day. It can meaningfully change even influencers that do affiliate work. You could go from making $15,000 a month to making $30,000 a month. We’ve got case studies on just that ratio within 30 days, why? Because the influencer often doesn’t have the time to shop across different platforms, know how to link, get certified to link into all these different platforms, and know when the ratio changes. You sit there and say, "Oh, okay, Amazon pays 20% for this pair of shoes today." That’s better than LTK’s 10% hypothetically, but then LTK runs a special this weekend and they’re offering – to clear out inventory, they’re offering influencers 30% on the same pair of shoes. Do you switch the link? Are you savvy to know that? Or Amazon is going to do the Black Friday specials? Not only do they lower the price to the consumer, they pay influencers a higher percentage of the sale. Those are dream situations if you’re an affiliate influencer, right? So doing that, knowing how to handle that, working the links on the back end, there’s a lot of science to go with this art. And if you can do it at scale, and that’s where having a leading influencer marketing agency, one with 300 creators on the roster. Now you can build out this type of practice and offer it to influencers, even if their core work, their brand work, is not done with us. So it’s a major competitive edge. And it can be a selling point to our brands division or work with brands that have or want to have affiliate links, especially depending on the type of consumer product they sell. So you can see a flywheel there, right? Having an influencer marketing agency like the digital department that has all four ways to make money traditionally in the influencer economy between core creator representation, affiliate marketing, brand representation, which we’re very proud of, and influencer events. That’s Belinda Strom. That’s the BRANDEdit. That’s the one that I mentioned in our prepared remarks, just had their highest-grossing brand out of showroom date in LA in April. Let’s see if Nashville in June breaks that record. TDD, the digital department is definitely a growth company for us and I’m very proud of the leadership of Ali Grant, Kirsten Weinberg, and Sarah Boyd for that company. So that was a long answer to a short question, Allen, but hopefully, that answers why affiliate is different from the core brand representation and how we can monetize it.

Allen Klee, Analyst

Got it. Thank you. And then for the movie Youngblood, you said you’d like to get it at a fall festival. Remind us what that means in terms of your target for getting it in theaters?

Bill O’Dowd, CEO

Yes. We’re hoping for a February release of next year as it’s a streaming platform premier. We’ll see when we get to the market and the reason for that is it will be timed to the Winter Olympics. Hockey’s one of the most popular sports at the Winter Olympics. It’s in the middle of the NHL season. The playoffs right now are very exciting for the NHL, that’s a popular sport that’s growing. It’s also the 40th anniversary of the original. So it’s kind of a marketer’s dream when you have a confluence of events like that. So we would like that in that time next year, and the film is shaping up to be prepared for that because we’re – as I mentioned, we’re editing it now. And we will – in a perfect world, just would we have the film screening in Toronto where we shot the movie? Sure, Toronto Film Festival. That’s one of the big fall film festivals. Whether it’s in competition or not is not as important to us as much as just a special screening there. And that’s also traditionally the time that these fall festivals, whether it’s Toronto or others, signal the start of Oscar season. I am not positioning Youngblood for the Oscar, but what I am saying is buyers, whether they be studios or streaming platforms, often buy movies out of one of those three festivals that they will launch even before the year ends and make them Oscar eligible. So buying something at Toronto, which always starts, of course, right after Labor Day every year and having it ready for release in February is not considered rushed in any way. They do things faster in the normal course. So we feel good about that. And hopefully, that’s the timing that the market will allow us to exercise.

Allen Klee, Analyst

Thank you. You have a lot of things on your plate. What would you say your top priorities are for 2025?

Bill O’Dowd, CEO

Growing Always Alpha. I’m trying to make a theme of it on a Q1 earnings call because we just spoke to the market six weeks ago. So trying to reiterate where we are. Grow Always Alpha because we have such an opportunity there. Grow the affiliate division of TDD because we see such a big opportunity there. And then after that, as you said, both films – have Youngblood ready, get the next one in the queue behind that, increase the frequency of our productions because they're – if they all worked out like Blue Angels, they’ll be geniuses, but Blue Angels was very lucrative for us. We hope the same for Youngblood, obviously, and then having them behind it and then also our ventures expanding and increasing the number of ventures because now that the super group has been built now, as I mentioned, we see ourselves at the starting line, right, not the finish line. And we’re starting to do what? We’re starting to expand, grow our services, and grow our ventures. And that’s what we’re going to measure whether we had a good year or a bad year in addition to increased revenue, increased profit, of course. Are we setting ourselves up for some major successes in 2026 and 2027? And that’s how we’re going to measure ourselves this year.

Allen Klee, Analyst

Okay. My other – sorry, I think, I mean, those are my main questions. Yes, I mean, is there anything about the financial outlook? I know you just qualitatively – I know you’re not providing specific guidance, but anything qualitatively you might want to comment on?

Bill O’Dowd, CEO

I think I probably alluded to it in the prepared remarks too. We’re past it and sometimes you forget sometimes things that occur four months earlier. I’m a kid from Miami. I remember hurricanes, right? They stick with you. The people that live through those fires. It’s terrific. And my hearts and our prayers go out to those affected. Business-wise, we’ve had to return to normal and continue to work very hard, but it did have an impact on us in Q1. It’s not true if I said anything different, but it was no pun intended, contained within Q1 and really by early March. So we’re excited to kind of return to normal in Q2 here and going forward. We expect to still have as strong a year as we thought we were going to have at the start. Our businesses are growing and there’s no loss of confidence for this full year for us. So, yes, we feel great, honestly. And it really is a testament. Sorry, I jumped on my own conclusion there. To go up 2% in revenue with that impact in our entertainment marketing segment, that’s really a testament to so the team is working very hard and recovering. So, and our growth in general. So very, very proud of both the business development activities of our companies, especially those that were more affected and the cross-selling that we just continue to get stronger and stronger at each successive year. And so yes, I feel very good about the rest of this year.

Allen Klee, Analyst

Well, thank you. I mean your revenue – I mean we were – our estimate was for $10 million in the quarter. So you came in much stronger than that. So with all the headwinds that you did have, kudos to you. Okay. Thank you.

Bill O’Dowd, CEO

Thank you, Allen. Appreciate the kind words at the end.

Operator, Operator

As we have no further questions in the queue at this time, I would like to hand it back to Mr. O’Dowd for any closing comments.

Bill O’Dowd, CEO

Sure. Well, thank you and long-time listeners. No, the Q1 call is usually the shortest because we just had our big 10-K call six weeks ago, but I always like to try and look ahead a little bit. Q2 in August, we expect to be able to provide updates on the progress we’re making with Always Alpha, soccer, and basketball. I will provide an update on the progress we’re making with the affiliate marketing. We just brought team number two to start yesterday. So we’ll see where we are even on team number three by the time we get to our Q2 earnings call. We’ll have an update on Youngblood, although I don’t expect. Well, we would know where we would be taking it out in the fall film festivals when we do Q2. So that’s exciting, and we will provide an update for sure on our ventures work. And as I say, we’re growing organically on the base businesses, and we’ll continue to report that. But we’ll judge years going forward now, not just on that growth, but also on the optionality or the lottery tickets or whatever you want to call things like films or ventures because that will certainly factor in, in future years to the valuation of Dolphin as a whole as we build those opportunities for ourselves. So thank you, everyone, for listening, and I appreciate your time, and look forward to picking it back up in the middle of August in Miami. It’s a ball me time to come down here. Okay. I’ll talk to everybody soon.

Operator, Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today’s call. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and we thank you for your participation.