good afternoon thank you for attending today's informa tech target reports first quarter 2025 conference call and webcast my name is victoria and i'll be your moderator today all lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end if you would like to ask a question please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad i would now pass the conference over to charles renick journal Council. Thank you. You may proceed, Charles.

Thank you, Victoria, and good afternoon, everyone. The speakers joining us here today are Gary Nugent, our Chief Executive Officer, and Dan Norrick, our Chief Financial Officer. Before turning the call over to Gary, we would like to remind everyone on the call of our earnings release process. As previously announced, in order to provide you with an update on our business in advance of the call, we posted a press release to the Investor Relations section of our website and furnished it on an 8K. You can also find these materials at the SEC free of charge at the SEC's website, www.sec.gov. A corresponding webcast as well as a replay of this conference call will be made available on the investor relations section of our website. Following Gary's remarks, the management team will be available to answer questions. Any statements made today by Informatec targets that are not factual, including during the Q&A, may be considered forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements, which are subject to risks and uncertainties, are based on assumptions and are not guarantees of our future performance actual results may differ materially from our forecast and from these forward looking statements forward looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties including those discussed in the risk factor risk factor section of our most recent periodic report these statements speak only under the date of this call an informatic target undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward looking statements that may arise after finally we may also refer to certain financial measures not prepared in accordance with GAAP. A reconciliation is certain of these non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP measures, to the extent available without unreasonable effort, accompanies our press release. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Gary.

Thank you very much, Charles. And of course, welcome and thank you. If I may, a few words of context. The first headline really is that the Q1 revenues were in line with the question and answer

session if you would like to ask a question please press star followed by one on your telephone key pack if for any reason you need to remove your question please press star followed by two again as a reminder it is star one to ask a question as a reminder please pick up your speaker phone if you're using one today our first question comes from a line of joshua reilly with needham and company your line is now open oh yeah thanks for taking my questions um maybe just starting off

here what gives you confidence uh in the guidance being unchanged from the prior call that you can improve revenue sequentially in the second half of the year to hit the full year implied revenue guidance of roughly unchanged revenue and how much of an improvement in the overall market demand has to occur to hit these numbers versus any operational factors that we should be aware of thank you josh thank you for your question good to leave your voice um i will certainly i would I would say, first and foremost, within our assumptions and our guidance, we're not expecting any material change to the market outlook, that is not included.

Most of what gives us the confidence is the operational improvements in our conversations that we're having with our customers in terms of their demands and their intentions, as we highlighted, I think, in January and maybe early bedded in that.

Got it, that's helpful. And then as you look at the informant tech assets, maybe you just hit on Netline here for a second, but maybe dive into that a bit more. What, if any, changes are you making to either the go-to-market product or business structures that we should be aware of now that you kind of have the combined company operating as one?

Well, I think if we talk a little bit about on the product, let me talk a bit on the product front. And I mentioned earlier on that we'd be moving at pace in terms of the product strategy, the product roadmap, and part of that effort was a rationalization of the code. We started early with end on the market. If I may finish on the product phase, there's one other point.

Of course, the other thing that would be helpful, and maybe just one last question for me. You highlighted cybersecurity as a key market for you guys that you're doubling down on. What does that mean exactly, and how do you actually increase your market share in that end market?

Yes, absolutely. I mean, obviously, the cybersecurity market, in other words, you know, at the government level on the buy side.

Thanks, guys.

Thank you for your question. Next question comes from the line of Martunazi with Lake Street. Your line is now open.

Curious to know if you've seen a response from your shift in focus in the go-to-market strategy towards the large customer accounts. In other words, since the start of the year, since you've been focusing in a more concentrated manner on large customer accounts, has there been an incremental lift in the pipeline from those accounts?

Hi, Eric. Thank you. I think the short answer to that question is yes, I'm very encouraged with the response we've had to that, both in terms of results year-to-date, but we see within…I've talked about addressing the needs of our customers across their product lifecycle and across their organization and actually within these large accounts there are many profit tools and budget for us to address with most of these companies the beginning of their product lifecycle is within their business unit and product management and product marketing and the way in which they are looking for us to help them shape their informants shape their their product strategies, their product roadmaps, their market strategies, and, you know, there are budgets associated with that activity. We then invariably get to this product lifecycle. There are different budgets.

In your prepared remarks, you talked about artificial intelligence engine optimization versus search engine optimization. TechTarget has always had a terrific footprint relationship with the Google.com search results. How are you, generative AI, the chat GPTs and the perplexities, the Gemini, how are you getting the AI engine optimization to work to tech targets' favor?

The first thing is that, I mean, the rules of the game are being written as we, so we are.

The color that you've given, if I take the, let's call it $85 million on the adjusted EBITDA and roughly $490 million of revenue, that speaks to about a 17% adjusted EBITDA margin for the year. Certainly Q1, I would expect that's going to be the trough here with the 3% adjusted EBITDA margin. But how should we think about the adjusted EBITDA margin progression through the remaining three quarters of the year? because on average, we've got to come up with about 21% for those three quarters to achieve the full year.

Hi, Eric. This is Dan. How are you doing? For your question.

Our next question comes from the line of Jason Cryer with Craig Hallam. Your line is now open.

Wonderful. Thank you.

So, Gary, wondering if you could provide any green shoots just in regard to the early stages of the combination, like any product categories or any business segments that you're seeing improved demand or higher interest from customers and in those products or cross-sell opportunities um hi jason and yes i mean look i think on an individual product level the first thing i would talk about of course is the example of the repositioning of netline to the cost conscious volume end of the market which is really a market that we didn't particularly um and as i see that repositioning in the early adoption by customer the early acceptance that's a sort of a slightly individual i think um maybe more collectively um what we've really seen is um and this was this was reinforced with the conversations with our customers that was at the roi summit the brand requirement and the demand capabilities

of our customers okay appreciate that i wanted to maybe hop on or piggyback off the last question i mean you gave some good indications of the revenue trends through the first five months of the year curious if you can give any color on on how how profitability is tracking through the

first five months yeah so jason we haven't given any specific guidance but if you think about how the business has sort of trended historically with revenue growth and incremental margins i think we would see that okay thank you dan um one last one for me just just on ai curious how how the ai opportunity manifests today and then how that changes over the course of the next year?

Forecasting the next year with AI is an interesting thing. Certainly how it manifests itself today is first and foremost as a market in and of itself and are addressing it as a market. It's now becoming a really live market. I've been watching the AI market for four or five years now and certainly I would have said that up until now there's a lot of heat and light in it, but not a lot of enterprises or governments deploying serious capital. And then I think, as I said, the second thing I mentioned was the whole notion of efficiency. How do we deploy AI within our editorial, our go-to-market, many use cases actually within the business where that is now in.

Thank you, guys.

Thank you for your questions. That'll conclude today's call. Thank you for your participation and enjoy the rest of your day.

Thank you, Victoria. Thank you all.