Good afternoon and welcome to Getty Images' Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2023 Earnings Conference Call. Today's call is being recorded. We have allocated one hour for prepared remarks and Q&A. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Steven Kanner Vice President of Investor Relations and Treasury at Getty Images. Thank you. You may begin.

Good afternoon and welcome to the Getty Images' fourth quarter and full year 2023 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 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 today's press release and in our filings with the SEC. Links to these filings in today'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. 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 with the SEC. After our prepared remarks, we'll open the call for your questions. With that I will hand the call over to our Chief Executive Officer, Craig Peters.

Thanks Steven and thanks to everyone for joining Getty Images' fourth quarter and full year 2023 earnings call. I'll start by addressing the full year business performance and progress before Jen takes you through the fourth quarter financial results and 2024 outlook. Throughout 2023, we experienced a series of challenges across our business landscape. In Europe across our agency customers and within certain technology sectors, we observe a cautious approach in customer spending given prevailing macroeconomic conditions. Additionally, starting in the second quarter, the writers and actors strike significantly impacted our media and entertainment segments. The strengthening of the U.S. dollar relative to foreign currencies also negatively impacted our EBITDA as we have a significant share of revenue outside the U.S. with a smaller cost base in these currencies. These challenges were not unique to us and despite their impacts, Getty Images remained relatively resilient as we adapted to mitigate the impact. For the full year 2023 revenue was $916.6 million, representing a year-on-year decrease of 1% reported and down 0.5% on a currency neutral basis. Consistent with our history and our culture, the company adopted prudent cost measures without sacrificing our investment in the long-term. As a result adjusted EBITDA came in at just over $301.4 million for the full year, down 1.2% reported and down 0.4% on a currency neutral basis, holding steady at 32.9% of revenue. Despite a tough climate and results below the expectations we had going into 2023, the Getty Images team continued to lay a strong foundation grounded in our core value propositions of helping our customers create at a higher level, saving our customers time and money and eliminating risk. That foundation starts with our exclusive content. It is one of the key differentiators for Getty Images. Content from over 80,000 creators and…

As Craig mentioned our performance in the fourth quarter and for the full year of 2023 reflected the impacts of the various challenges we face, but also the proactive actions taken by the company to protect its bottom line and position us for a return to top-line growth in 2024. I'll start by touching on some of our KPIs and I'll note that today's press release contains information on all seven of our KPIs which are reported on the trailing 12 month basis or LTM period ended December 31, 2023 with comparisons to the LTM period ended December 31, 2022. Total purchasing customers were 799,000 down from 835,000 in the comparable LTM period. This decrease is tied to both our continued shift into subscription products and the continued contraction in our agency business where customers consume nearly entirely on an a la carte or transactional basis. The continued shift into subscription, while driving the volume of purchasers down has more importantly driven an increase in annual revenue for purchasing customers up from 1109 to 1147 for the LTM period. Active annual subscribers grew 83% year-on-year to 236,000, up from 129,000 in 2022, driven primarily by growth of our subscription including our iStock Annual and Unsplash Plus subscription. This represents the 5th consecutive quarter with growth well in excess of 50%. While that growth rate is a strong metric on its own, the drivers of the growth largely new customers and customers in our growth markets as well as in our core markets is even more compelling for us. In fact, of the 236,000 annual subscribers in the LTM period, 62% were brand new customers to Getty Images and 38% were customers in our growth markets across LatAm, APAC and EMEA. We are expanding our reach. Our annual subscriber revenue retention…

Thank you. At this time, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from the line of Ron Josey with Citi. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, team, this is Jake on for Ron. Thanks for taking my questions. Craig, really great to hear about the Gen AI product rollouts on both Getty and iStock. I know last quarter, you shared that it had -- it would have -- or you expected to have limited impact?

Hello? Hello? Jennifer and Craig, are you online? Craig is on.

Yes, I'm here. I think we might have lost Jake.

Sorry. Can you hear me?

We can now. Head out pretty early into your questions if you don't mind just repeating them all again.

Sorry about that. Well, the first question was just on Gen AI. Last quarter, you shared that you'd expect financials, but now you've been live for a few months -- any more visibility you could share in terms of expectations, or contributions for this year? And then the second question was just on corporate. You noted some continued macro challenges. But we look at the resilience and the revenue per purchasing customer. And I'm curious if you could share more about what you're seeing from the corporates. Any specific verticals doing well or still showing signs of conservatism?

Craig?

Okay. Happy to take both of those. On the Gen AI front, I'd say that the expectations for contribution on a material basis are still going to still be much longer-term in terms of that growth. We've taken a point of view of, again, really building the products, getting them to market and doing that in a subscription model. So it's going to take time for that adoption to accrue to something that's meaningful to the business. But with that said, I'd say that we are definitely having a lot of conversations on the sales front. We're getting really good feedback on the use of the product and where we are seeing adoption of the product, it's positive and aligned to kind of our expectations. So -- but I wouldn't expect significant contributions into this year, that will have a meaningful material impact on our performance around the guidance stated. With respect to Corporate, we've -- it's been a growth segment for this business for a long time. And we saw that a little bit choppier in 2023, due to the macroeconomic items that we related. I think I specifically called out the Technology Segment -- Sub-Segment within that as kind of some of the areas that were a bit more, choppy than maybe what we had experienced in prior years. But we expect that segment to continue to grow for us in 2024. It still continues to be one where Internal Marketing groups are bringing their sales and marketing in-house in order to manage across their websites, their social media presence, their sales and marketing collateral and that continues to be the driver behind that. So, a little bit choppier in 2023. We will expect to see a little bit of choppiness in 2024. But again, the Corporate Segment should be wide growth.

Thanks so much.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Cory Carpenter with JPMorgan. Please proceed with your question.

Hey thanks. I just wanted to ask about the Agency business. As you mentioned, it improved a little down mid-single digits. Maybe if you could just talk about, your expectations for how that will trend in 2024? And then Jennifer, for you, just maybe within your 2024 revenue guide, anything are you willing to provide around Creative versus Editorial and what we should expect given the even year seasonality? Thank you.

Jen, why don't you take both of those?

Yeah. Happy to. So I'll start backwards on guidance. So as you know, we don't guide specifically to Editorial or Creative, but we are heading into an even year. Normally, that would come with an expectation of a level of growth. However, this year will look a little bit different and what we would normally expect to see in terms of that even impact will be a bit muted. And the reasons for that, obviously we're still seeing some lingering impacts from the strike. And certainly as we navigate through Q1, likely to see a bit of that as we navigate through Q2. So we're still dealing with a bit of impact from that. And then, the flip side of that is that we think about 2023, the first half of 2023 was actually in growth for Editorial. So we've got that in our comp that we're navigating through, growth versus still navigating through some of the strike impacts in each one. We definitely do expect to see you know some of that revenue. We've got Olympics. We've got a US Presidential Election. We've got euros. We did have a bit of revenue event revenue in 2023. So we expect to see that bump. But again, that strike impact will mute that a bit for us relative to what we'd normally expect to see. And obviously, when it comes to something with a US Presidential Election, it's hard for us to size that with precision, until we get a bit deeper into what all of it is going to look like. So in a little bit of color of how Editorial is playing into that top line and come back in a little bit of what that might mean for Creative. On the Agency side, so I don't think we're necessarily expecting a big reversal or Agency to shift into growth right away in 2024. What we commented on in the prepared remarks is that we saw a bit of an improvement. And I think specifically, I used the word slight, so that that's coming off of pretty steady double-digit declines on Agencies and are ending the year exiting the year in that in a mid single-digit decline. So I don't think we're expecting a massive turnaround that as we've spoken about earnings calls before, is largely a macro impact, right? So as customers are holding tight onto their Creative and marketing budget that flows through the agencies, that flows through to us. So we're cautious on that one. Again, we don't expect that to turnaround, but it is well under 20% of our total revenue at this point, as we exited 2023.

Great, thank you Jennifer.

You're welcome.

Thank you. Our next question comes from Mark Zgutowicz with The Benchmark Company. Please proceed with your question.

Thank you. Good evening, Craig and Jen. Jen, a couple of quick questions for you if I could. I was just hoping to get some visibility and creative revenue retention expectations this year ex agency. And I was also hoping you can maybe comment on churn ex agency. And then the second question is just around the EBITDA guidance. Just curious, what are the expense assumptions there just giving us roughly $20 million delta relative to your top line guidance? Any color there would be helpful. Thanks.

Mark, would you mind repeating the second question? I didn't quite hear that.

Sorry. Second question is, if you could just talk about the expense assumptions within your '24 adjusted EBITDA guidance just...

Yes, the agency I'd only mention, I heard that...

Sorry, sorry, sorry, I was looking at -- just looking for that to your comment on churn ex agency.

Right. Okay. And so I'll start with EBITDA. So yes, I think what you're seeing there in our EBITDA guidance, we've talked quite a bit about how we employ some proactive cost action pretty early on in 2023. So, as we enter into 2024, you're seeing a little bit of a reset on our cost base. We're certainly not pulling back on all of that cost management. There is certain element of the cost pullbacks that we made in 2023 that we've reset entering into 2024. And that's really just to set ourselves up to get back to top line growth. There are elements of employee incentive based compensation that as you can imagine are tied to the Company's financial performance. So as we reset into 2024 at the start of any year, we'd have within our cost base and expectation of that incentive based comp coming back because there's an expectation of the Company hitting its financial performance. So it's really just a bit of a reset. Again, not a full relieving of all of those cost actions, but we did go into 2024 pretty deliberately making sure we're investing in growth and setting ourselves up to get that growth. The question on revenue retention and churn, so we don't we don't really give a revenue retention figure or stat on creative versus editorial. I think the way that I would answer that question and I'm assuming you're talking a little bit more about the subscriber base, but we continue to see. When we think about our large enterprise customers, we continue to see those retention rates pretty much at 100%, right. To the enterprise side of things, we continue to see that figure being really strong as we start to grow that subscriber base. And we talked about a lot of that growth is coming from the smaller e-commerce and subscription side of things. Those obviously come at least at the start with a lighter revenue retention rate. So you'll see that pull down a bit and you know from something like 100% on the enterprise side of it and those smaller e-commerce subscriptions, those all do fit on the creative side of the business. So, not sure of that that answers those questions but we don't we don't really give a creator versus editorial retention or churn elements stage gate reviews.

Thank you.

Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Tim Nollen with Macquarie Asset Management. Please proceed with your question.

Hi Tim from Macquarie Research, not Asset Management, but I'm just curious Craig if you could give a bit more color on the potential revenue from AI. You said earlier that you expect it to be some kind of a longer term ramp in revenues, but would we see this in a line like paid download growth? I mean would there be a high demand for AI -- for images and for data behind that that people can used to generate their own images. And I didn't say that very well. I think you know to me would that come from the paid download side which has basically been flat quarter over quarter? Or would that come in somewhere else?

Yes. So, first let me just characterize how we are approaching AI. So we are licensing services to our end customers. Those services have been developed in partnership with companies like India [ph]. We have not pursued to any meaningful degree licensing of our data on a basis that that would generate revenue against that data side of things. So, what we believe long-term that AI is going to be a fundamental tool of creatives and we want to build the business around offering those services versus licensing our data out to third-parties to build services. We fundamentally believe our data will be critical in differentiating those services as we go to market. And so that's the trade that we are making. It’s a long-term trade that we believe is the right one for the business in terms of again owning these services and the end customer relationships in delivering those services to our customers. So, you will see -- over time you will see those results in our subscriber counts as customers subscribe into generative AI services on an annualized basis. You will see that show up into our paid downloads section as they generate imagery from those services and then download that imagery and use it within their marketing and sales and collateral and other parts of their marketing stack. So, yes, you will see those start to accrue through the metrics, but it will take some time for those to have a meaningful. This goes back to the comment, I think Jake -- or a question Jay asked. It's going to take a while for those to be meaningful relative to 95 million paid annual downloads.

Right. Okay. That makes sense. Thanks. I'll ask a separate question which is I'm looking your subscription as a percentage of revenue of 54% in the quarter, which was up quite a bit from a year ago, but it was down a little bit from Q3. And I wonder if that is just a normal Q4, kind of, a seasonal trend, it might be some more kind of seasonal related Q4 one-off types of sales that might have actually brought that number down sequentially?

Yes, we saw a little bit of -- in Q4, we saw a little bit stronger close to the year. A lot of that was through à la carte purchases in the business. Again Jen kind of mentioned the rebound in the agency in Q4, a slight rebound. They tend to buy on an à la carte basis. We also saw some of the strike impacts ameliorate on our business, most notably within our paid assignment business, which is not done within subscriptions. So, those are some of the things that Q4 relative to Q3 took that percentage down a bit? I would say all those were good things though.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you. And we have reached the end of the question-and-answer session and I'll now turn it -- this also concludes today's conference and you may disconnect your lines at this time.

Thank you.