Greetings and welcome to IZEA Worldwide, Inc. Third Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A brief question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, Mr. Matt Gray, Assistant Vice President of Marketing. Thank you, Mr. Gray. You may begin.

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to IZEA's earnings call covering the third quarter of 2024. I'm Matt Gray, AVP of Marketing of IZEA. And joining me on the call are IZEA Chief Financial Officer, Peter Biere; and IZEA Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Venetucci. Thanks for being with us today. Earlier this afternoon, the company issued a press release detailing IZEA's performance during Q3 2024. If you'd like to review those details, all of 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 the 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. And with that, I would like to now introduce and turn the call over to IZEA's Chief Financial Officer, Peter Biere. Peter?

Thank you, Matt, and good afternoon, everyone. I'll review operating results for the quarter ended September 30, 2024, compared to the prior year's quarter and discuss selected balance sheet highlights. Total revenue for the third quarter of 2024 was approximately $8.8 million or 12% above the prior year quarter. Excluding revenue attributable to the large nonrecurring customer with whom we parted ways in 2023, revenues grew a healthy 27% from the prior year quarter. Demand for Managed Services grew 11% to $7.9 million in the third quarter of 2024 compared to $7.1 million in the prior year's third quarter. This quarter's demand was slightly lower than experienced in the first half of 2024. We believe this decline is due to timing and some reduction in marketing budgets, particularly in emerging markets. It's important to note that IZEA's contract bookings take an average of 7.5 months to complete the revenue cycle. Many contracts are faster and some are longer. Our Managed Services backlog, a total of unrecognized revenue for contracts that are underway and recent bookings that we haven't started to invoice, totaled $14.6 million on September 30th, 2024. This is a decrease of $1 million versus the second quarter of 2024 and an increase of $3.4 million year-to-date. We will recognize much of this revenue in the following two to three quarters. Our Managed Services revenue totaled $8.6 million during the third quarter of 2024, which was $0.8 million or 10% higher than the third quarter of 2023. Removing approximately $0.9 million of revenue from our nonrecurring customer in the prior year quarter, Managed Services revenue increased by $1.7 million or 25% from the same period in 2023, coming in part from Hoozu and by strong demand in the first half of 2024. SaaS Services revenue totaled $206,000 in the…

Thank you, Peter, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm Patrick Venetucci, the new CEO of IZEA. Thank you for your time and attention today. On September 6th, we made several important changes both to management and the Board. On the management side, Ted Murphy, Founder and CEO; and Ryan Schram, COO, departed the company. I stepped into the CEO role, leveraging my 30-plus years of industry experience and six years on IZEA's Board. On the Board side, we made changes to the size, composition and committee structure of the Board. We separated the Chairman and CEO roles, naming Lindsay Gardner as Chairman of the Board. We added two new Board members, Antonio Bonchristiano and Rodrigo Boscolo from GP Investments. We created a Strategy and Capital Allocation Committee chaired by John Caron. And importantly, we increased our share buyback commitment from $5 million to $10 million as a demonstration of the Board's belief that IZEA's shares are undervalued as well as confidence in the company's ability to create more value. During my first 60 days, I went on a listening tour, held strategic workshops and hired our first Chief Talent Officer. My listening tour encompassed meetings with employees, clients and shareholders. What I heard was newfound excitement and optimism about IZEA's future. Our talent base is smart, charismatic and engaged. We have an extensive client list that includes Fortune 500 brands for which we have opportunities to do more. We have a strong culture of care, creativity and innovation. Our tech product innovation pipeline is robust, including AI. I quickly organized several strategic workshops with our executive leadership team, which led to new ideas for growth and efficiencies. Lastly, I hired our first Chief Talent Officer, Kerry Griffin, who has over two decades of experience and is charged with professionalizing our talent…

Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] As there are no further questions, ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the end of question-and-answer session. I would now like to turn the floor over to Matt Gray for closing comments.

Thanks so much, Ranju, 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 izea.com/investors. Thanks again for joining us and have a nice evening.

Thank you. This concludes today's teleconference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation. End of Q&A: