comScore, Inc. (SCOR) Q4 2025 Earnings Report, Transcript and Summary

Good day, everyone, and welcome to comScore Fourth Quarter 2025 Financial Results. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this conference is being recorded. Now I would like to turn the call over to Mr. Kevin Burns, EVP of Business Operations. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Before we begin our prepared remarks, I'd like to remind all of you the following discussion contains forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include comments about our plans, expectations and prospects and are based on our view as of today, March 17, 2026. Our actual results in future periods may differ materially from those currently expected because of a number of risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include those outlined in our 10-K, 10-Q and other filings with the SEC, which you can find on our website or at www.sec.gov. We disclaim any duty or obligation to update our forward-looking statements to reflect new information after today's call. We will be discussing non-GAAP measures during this call, for which we've provided reconciliations in today's press release and on our website. Please note that we will be referring to slides on this call, which are also available on our website, www.comscore.com, under Investor Relations, Events and Presentations. I'll now turn the call over to comScore's Chief Executive Officer, Jon Carpenter. Jon?

Good evening, and thank you for joining us. 2025 was a solid year with meaningful progress as we further developed our leading cross-platform capabilities, all to achieve our objective of becoming the industry standard for modern measurement. Revenue for the full year was just over $357 million and adjusted EBITDA came in at $42 million, both ahead of 2024 performance. This was driven by 24% growth in our cross-platform solutions, along with double-digit growth in our local TV offering. Throughout the year, we had a number of important wins. One that I want to highlight is the launch of CCM, our cross-platform content measurement capability. CCM gives clients a more complete picture of the audience for any piece of content, whether it was viewed on linear TV, CTV or mobile device, all at the title level. Some of the largest broadcasters and technology companies in the world have already signed on, and we believe we're just scratching the surface. We've also deepened our relationships with the largest media companies, those that command the vast majority of ad dollars. Our cross-platform measurement solutions helped drive nearly 25% year-over-year growth across key technology clients. Additionally, our local business continued to execute at a high level, anchoring our cross-platform capability while delivering significant value to our broadcast network and agency partners, contributing to double-digit year-over-year growth. Beyond our commercial execution, we made meaningful progress simplifying our capital structure. At year-end, we closed a pivotal recapitalization with our preferred shareholders. The transaction eliminated $18 million in annual dividends, a $47 million special dividend obligation and our preferred holders also converted roughly $80 million in preferred shares into common shares at an attractive premium. And we were able to reduce the size of our Board, streamlining both costs and governance. This was an important first step, and we remain focused on continuing to simplify our business and strengthen our balance sheet as we move through 2026. I am proud of how our teams executed in 2025, and I'm excited about building on that momentum. But before I talk about where we're going, it's worth grounding everyone on where we've been. comScore has always led with innovation. We were the first company to make digital audiences measurable at scale. While others are only now figuring out how to combine big data and panels, comScore pioneered that work more than a decade ago. We also led the industry shift to big data TV audience measurement, giving us over 10 years of experience delivering stable measurement that reflects how people actually watch television. That history matters because it speaks to what comScore does when the industry is at an inflection point, and we're at one right now. The media landscape has fundamentally changed. Attention is fragmenting across AI-driven environments, platforms continue to wall off their data and creators across social platforms now command audience share that rivals traditional media. These shifts create a real challenge for advertisers, and they expose the limits of legacy measurement approaches. Our response is clear, become the defining standard for modern measurement. That means building a fully integrated flywheel connecting our offerings across planning, activation, buying and measurement with common metrics across the board. When our products work together, our clients can navigate this complexity with confidence rather than confusion. CCM is a clear example of this action. It allows advertisers to evaluate audiences for social creators alongside ad-supported connected television and linear TV and to plan true cross-platform campaigns from a single unified view. This is the flywheel capability that we're building. I look forward to sharing more -- looking ahead, we're also bringing forward innovation in AI measurement, an area that is only going to grow in importance for our clients. The early work here includes measuring which sources, LLMs and AI search tools are citing, how these tools are changing the way consumers discover brands and products and perhaps most importantly, how they're changing the way consumers make purchase decisions. What differentiates comScore is how we get this data. Our unique digital panel assets allow us to directly observe millions of AI search and AI chatbot interactions every single month. When we provide clients with single insights into how these tools are reshaping their businesses, it's based on real observed behavior, not just assumptions. CCM, AI measurement, a connected product flywheel. Our work in these areas is evidence that we're delivering all in service of one goal, establishing comScore as the standard for modern measurement. We look forward to sharing more about our progress and strategy with you throughout 2026. Now I'll turn it over to Mary Margaret to take you through our 2025 results.

Thank you, Jon. Total revenue for the year was $357.5 million, up 0.4% from $356 million in 2024 and in line with the guidance we gave on last quarter's earnings call. Content & Ad Measurement revenue of $304.3 million was up 1% from 2024, driven by growth in our cross-platform and local TV offerings. Cross-platform revenue of $50.3 million was up 24.4% compared to the prior year, driven by higher usage of our Proximic and CCR products, along with the successful rollout of CCM. Syndicated audience revenue of $253.9 million was down 2.6% from 2024, driven by declines in our national TV and syndicated digital offerings partially offset by growth from our other syndicated offerings, including double-digit growth in local TV from higher renewals and new business. Our movies business also posted solid growth, generating $38.4 million of revenue in 2025, up 3.4% from the prior year. Research & Insights Solutions revenue of $53.2 million was down 3.1% from 2024, primarily due to lower deliveries of certain custom digital products, partially offset by new business from our consumer brand health products. Adjusted EBITDA for the year was $42 million, up 2.6% from 2024, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 11.8%. These results are largely driven by our intentional decision-making around spend, which we calibrated throughout the year to align with our revenue expectations. Our core operating expenses for 2025 were up 1% year-over-year, primarily driven by an increase in employee incentive compensation, higher revenue share costs and higher panel costs, partially offset by lower data costs, most notably from the amendment we signed at the end of 2024 related to our data license agreement with Charter. We also made targeted investments in 2025, which contributed to the increase in operating expenses. As we've discussed on prior calls, we're focused on investing in areas that have the greatest potential to either accelerate top line growth or streamline our operations. In 2025, we invested in enhancing our cross-platform product suite and related sales teams, improving our panel footprint and integrating AI across the company, among other things. We believe these investments will continue to provide benefits to our business going forward. Our fourth quarter results tell a similar story with a couple of distinctions that I'll call out. Total revenue for the fourth quarter was $93.5 million, down 1.5% from $94.9 million the same quarter a year ago. Content & Ad Measurement revenue of $78.8 million was down 2.7% from 2024, primarily driven by lower revenue from our national TV and syndicated digital products, partially offset by growth from our cross-platform offerings. As Jon mentioned on our last earnings call, we expected cross-platform growth in the fourth quarter to be impacted by a strategy shift of one of our large retail media clients. This turned out to be the case, resulting in cross-platform revenue growth of just under 10% in Q4, lower than the growth we saw in previous quarters. We expect this to pick back up in 2026 with double-digit growth in cross-platform projected for the year. Our movies business generated revenue of $9.9 million in the quarter, resulting in 5.5% growth over Q4 of 2024. Research & Insights Solutions revenue of $14.6 million increased 5.3% from the prior year quarter, primarily due to new business from our consumer brand health products. Adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $14.7 million, up 3.3% from the prior year quarter, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 15.7%. Our core operating expenses were down 4.4% compared to the fourth quarter of 2024, primarily due to lower employee compensation and data costs, partially offset by higher rev share costs. Looking ahead to 2026, we believe our revenue and adjusted EBITDA performance will continue to follow the trends we saw in 2025. We expect our cross-platform offerings, along with continued local TV adoption to play a significant role in shaping our business for 2026. As I mentioned earlier, we expect to see continued double-digit growth from our cross-platform offerings in 2026, which should offset the declines that we anticipate from our national TV and syndicated digital products. As such, we expect revenue in the first quarter of 2026 to be roughly flat compared to the first quarter of 2025. We also plan to continue making investments in key areas of the business with the goal of driving top line growth and streamlining our operations while remaining disciplined with overall spend as we work to improve our cash flow. We believe the recapitalization transaction was the first step in our strategy to transform comScore, putting us in a better position to evaluate additional strategic actions that have the potential to further streamline our capital structure, enhance our financial profile, unlock growth and simplify our business, all of which can contribute to generating cash flow and driving shareholder value. We plan to provide an update on our progress, along with our financial outlook for the rest of the year on our next earnings call. With that, I'll turn it back over to the operator for questions.

[Operator Instructions] It comes from the line of Jason Kreyer with Craig-Hallum.

Just wanted to see if you can talk a little bit about the financial flexibility. With the structural changes that have been put in place in the business over the last few months, how does that open up kind of strategic flexibility or changes to how you want to run the business going forward?

Jason, thanks. Yes, as we move forward, I mean, I think one of the key elements here overall is just freeing up, again, $18 million in dividends that the preferred holders were entitled to, not having that obligation on a go-forward basis, better positions the company moving forward. I think some of the actions that the preferred holders took to reduce the size of the Board as part of that transaction that we announced helps us take down costs associated with running the Board. So I think both those things bode well in terms of freeing up the balance sheet to continue investing in the products that are going to drive the most meaningful growth going forward, namely our cross-platform execution.

Good to hear. Maybe staying on the cross-platform topic. Curious if you kind of can talk about the last several months, your ability to increase utilization of existing partners with your cross-platform solutions and then maybe a little bit of context on your ability to add new partners to cross-platform.

Yes. I think it's been a nice combination of both increased usage of our cross-platform audience product, Proximic across the client set. We are continuing to expand partnerships. We did so in the fourth quarter. We'll continue to do so and hope to be able to announce those in short order as we go through the early part of 2026 in terms of how the partnerships on the audience, the cross-platform audience capabilities is expanding. And then I'd just say on the cross-platform measurement products, CCM, really encouraged by the early adoption across the client set of that product really from launch through the end of the year, and we continue to see usage headed in the right direction on that front. And we still have a number of product features and enhancements that we're going to continue to roll out over the course of 2026.

All right. Good to hear more to come there. One last one for me. Just on the local side of the business, it seems that market is evolving, maybe creating more of a role for comScore. Just wondering what your thoughts are on the local market as we go forward.

Yes. I think certainly, in the traditional sense, the currency conversations continue to go very well for us in terms of those clients that are looking to transact more holistically against the comScore offering. We had some really good success on that over 2025 and the early readout in 2026 on -- as the renewals have come through, we fully anticipate that continuing. And then I just think as the world evolves to more audience-based buying across the ecosystem, we remain really the only place you can go to buy local audiences, local advanced audiences or specific local advanced targeting at the local market level at any meaningful scale. And as that side of the business continues to accelerate, that plays right into our wheelhouse. And of course, as you know, that product anchors our cross-platform capability, which really helps drive the overall robustness of what we're able to do in terms of attaching audiences, whether it be traditional linear to digital at a hyperlocal level, incredibly impactful. Steve, do you have anything else to add on local at all?

No, I think that's totally in alignment.

As I see no other questions in the queue, I will conclude this session and pass it back to Mr. Jon Carpenter for final remarks.

Great. Thank you. I'd like to just take a minute to thank our employees for their continued work to help us deliver for our clients. And further, I'd just like to thank our investors and clients for their continued trust and partnerships. Thanks, everyone, for joining us this evening, and I'm sure we'll be talking soon. Have a good night.

Thank you. And this concludes our conference. Thank you for participating, and you may now disconnect.