William O'Dowd
Analyst · Maxim Group
Thanks, James. And hi, everyone, and good afternoon. And thank you for joining us today. As always, we'll start with a review of some financial and operating highlights, followed by a full financial review and then open it up for Q&A. So from a financial highlights perspective, revenue for Q3 was $10.2 million or an increase of 3% year-over-year. I'm very proud of the team at Dolphin, which achieved this increase in revenue despite enduring two prolonged industry-wide strikes and the distraction of an internal merger for essentially the entire quarter. On the bottom line, our Q3 operating loss of $2.1 million includes approximately $1.2 million in noncash charges. Thus, the cash operating loss was approximately $900,000. We believe if it were not for the impact of the two strikes and the onetime costs associated with the internal merger of our influencer marketing subsidiaries, be social and social it to create the digital department, we would have achieved a cash operating profit in Q3. And that would have been without the benefit of special projects, which we acquired at the start of Q4. Thus, going forward, once the industry resumes normal operations post strikes and with the addition of the revenues and profits of special projects, we expect to have consistent cash operating profits. The effects of the strikes will be felt into Q1 as many movies and TV series have already been pushed out of 2023 and into the spring and summer of next year. But make no mistake, the industry is excited to get back to work and Dolphin has not been sitting idle. Quite contrary, as we have achieved the following highlights all since our last earnings call in the middle of August. First, as I just mentioned, we created a market-leading influencer marketing agency, the digital department by merging Social and social life. Second, we hosted the grand opening of Midnight Theater, now open seven days a week and signed our multiyear partnership with Blue Chip marketer, Mastercard. And third, we completed our 7-year journey to build an entertainment marketing earned media Super Group with the acquisition of the best-in-class talent booking and celebrity live event firm special projects. We believe each of these is a catalyst for our company in its own right, and I'll spend a few words on each. And as an aside, on a personal note, I can unequivocally say that this run post Labor Day has been the busiest period of my entire career, just one big ticket item after another. Okay. So first, the merger be social and social life to create the digital department. I'll be brief on this topic since we alluded to it coming in September at length during our Q2 earnings call. The short-term pain of management distractions in both cash and intangible costs are all behind us now, and we've assembled a beautiful company that is a platform for us in the fastest-growing area of marketing that we know. The launch events we hosted for our talent and brand partners in New York and Los Angeles were nothing short of electric. The New York event was at Midnight Theater, I might add. The incoming calls to work with the digital department are exactly what we hoped for, and the excitement about its expansion prospects is comparable. There's just tremendous momentum, both internally and externally around building what we think will be the flagship influencer marketing agency in the country out of the entertainment space. Simply put, the digital department will be a strong growth catalyst amongst our core businesses as we add new verticals of expertise. Right now, we are market leaders in female-focused fashion, beauty, wellness and lifestyle products with Instagram as our major platform of choice. We have several well-known reality television personalities on a roster of more than 200 exclusive talent. From this base, we plan to expand to include several new verticals such as sports, culinary, teens and young adults, reaching broader audiences on both TikTok and YouTube to complement Instagram. Just the sports vertical alone could in success, we believe, grow to be as big as our entire business today. Much more to come on this in the quarters ahead. Next, I'll turn to the midnight theater. As a reminder, Dolphin manages all aspects of publicity and marketing for Midnight Theatre and its restaurant hidden leaf while also facilitating talent and commercial relationships within the entertainment and culinary industries. Dolphin also holds a meaningful ownership stake in Venture. The headline here is our new multiyear partnership with Mastercard. Obviously, this is the bluest of blue-chip partners for any performance venue. Guests will have the opportunity of taking new immersive experiences, exclusive events, special discounts, all tailored exclusively for Mastercard cardholders. Moreover, the venue will now be known as Mastercard Midnight Theatre with the financial industry powerhouse's name prominently featured. We are confident that this long-term support from such a prominent player in the financial industry substantially elevates the intrinsic value of this cutting-edge destination. For anyone new to Dolphin, Midnight Theatre is located in Manhattan West in New York, between ninth and 10th Avenues. The same streets between 31st and 33rd like Penn Station or Madison Square Garden, just one avenue over and it's inside Brookfield's $4.5 billion complex, the largest in Brookfield's history. We are the only entertainment venue there. We have a theater and a restaurant on the same floor, all under one roof, if you will. We went to seven days a week, four days after we merged the influencer agencies, and 11 days before we acquired special projects with a full programming schedule and events throughout the fall. And we've already started booking 2024, which includes internationally renowned Magician, Joshua Jay, who is bringing, Look closer, a new Magic show to Midnight Theatre in February. He'll be performing 16 shows, including two shows on Valentine's Day. I'm going to highlight this particular show because of the quality of the performer who is looking to call Midnight Theatre home. So Josh Jay return to New York City 4 years after its critically acclaimed show 6 impossible things, sold out its entire 18-month off Broadway run. As a magician, Joshua Jay has performed its original work on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, the Late Late Show with James Corden, and even successfully fooled Penn & Teller on Fool Us. I can hear James Carbonara multitasking and pulling up midnightheater.com to buy Valentine's Day tickets right now. Let's just say I'm happy for Mirta, his lovely wife, who doesn't have to plan it this year. Okay. So now we're up to the acquisition of Special Projects. This company is very special to all of us at Dolphin since it represents the culmination of that 7-year journey to build our entertainment marketing Super Group. We'll begin with the speech at LD Micro in December of 2016 and was followed by the acquisition of 42 West on March 30, 2017, and the uplisting to NASDAQ in December of 2017, 1 year after the speech at LD Micro has now finished after buying one company a year since, with two in 2018, I should add. And it would be hard-pressed to think of any company more strategic for our group than Special Projects. So first, some particulars. Special Projects was founded by Nicole Vecchiarelli and Andrea Oliveri, two former magazine editors, who met working at Condonast. They have built the entertainment industry's go-to talent booking and celebrity curated live of that company, period. They have offices in both New York and Los Angeles and simply handle a wide variety of signature events, from the Wall Street Journal's Innovator Awards held with the Met every year, with this year's honorees two weeks ago, including Martin Scorsese and Kylie Jenner among others, to the Motion Picture Academy Museum Gala in Los Angeles coming up in a few weeks and said to honor Merrill Street, Oprah Winfrey, Sophia Copa, Michael B. Jordan along with a few surprises. Too bad they couldn't get any big names, right? Their client list is A++ from retainer clients like Apple and Chanel, the project-based clients like A24, Amazon, the Apollo Theater, Bumble, GQ, Louis Vuitton, Max Mara, Meta, Netflix, Stella McCartney, Versace, ES. Laurence and YouTube. Anyone who has heard our story before today knows that ideating and executing world-class events is a big part of Dolphin's future. First, let's just take a look at our core business. Just with the business that our PR firms are already doing, we have so many opportunities for cross-selling. Every movie or streaming series that brought to us is promoting is a potential candidate for a premier event handled by Special Projects. Every hotel or restaurant opening the door is promoting, is a potential candidate for a launch event handled by Special Projects. Every single or album drop that shore Fire is promoting is an opportunity to create a release party handled by Special Projects. Any consumer product being handled by any one of our PR firms is a potential beneficiary or sponsor of an event handled by Special Projects. So by the way, this is an immediately accretive acquisition for us. Special Projects is a very well-run profitable business with a great margin, and we think we can grow them very well in the next 12, 24 months with all the synergies I just mentioned. And when we look at Dolphin Ventures, we talk about receiving ownership stakes in exchange for our services and promoting three categories of assets; content, consumer products, and live events. Thus, ideating and executing world-class events is a big part of Dolphin's future and adding special projects immediately catapults us into the industry-leading position. And needless to say, after hearing that client roster, the reputations and relationships of Andrea and Nicole in our industry are simply unmatched. So, Andrea, Nicole, and Special Projects have finished our super group. I've talked about how to some. This may seem like it's a finish line. For us at Dolphin, we see it as the starting line. We now have our full team assembled. And by the way, eight acquisitions from only eight offers. What's that tell you? We got our first choice of companies in every vertical of entertainment marketing we want to be in. We've assembled our dream team. Now we're excited to show what we can do together. With these accomplishments, we believe Dolphin is in its strongest position in company history with highly diversified revenue sources across seven operating subsidiaries and expectations of cash operating profits in 2024. As we look ahead to next year, a landscape of promising opportunities within Dolphin Entertainment and Dolphin Ventures awaits, beginning with the release of and the revenues from the Blue Angels, the first project in our multiyear agreement with IMAX. Also, we believe the aforementioned multiyear partnership with Mastercard and Midnight Theatre validates our investment by indicating the value placed on our venue by the market. Both our IMAX partnership and our Midnight Theatre venue are just getting started. And each of them are ahead of other Dolphin ventures that we are equally excited about and are working hard to realize in 2024. In short, we believe we've weathered the unique storm of this past summer and early fall. Looking ahead, after successfully navigating these temporary headwinds, and after our successful at-the-market raise, no discount, no warrants of two weeks ago, we find ourselves on stable footing and with the full amount of our targeted cash reserves. We are very confident in our sustainable path forward. We believe that this sends a strong message to our current microcap market, which we expect will reward positive free cash flow, underlining our strategy for creating significant near-term shareholder value. With that said, I'll turn it over to Mirta.