Vivek Shah
Analyst · JPMorgan
Thank you, Bret, and good morning, everyone. Before I discuss our first quarter results, I want to share some high-level thoughts about the company and our vision. Ziff Davis' edge has always consisted of identifying, acquiring and improving businesses. From our first acquisition of PCMag in 2010, for a little more than $20 million, we have been a patient and disciplined buyer of digital media and Internet companies. We've always been focused on business transformation, free cash flow generation and cash-on-cash returns. That model compounded value for a decade, and our shareholders were nicely rewarded. But in recent years, we believe the public market has increasingly denied Ziff Davis reasonable credit for the intrinsic value of the businesses that it owns. Our response, however, is not to abandon the acquisition program that has defined Ziff Davis, but to expand our capital allocation to embrace significant repurchases of our stock while also pursuing monetization opportunities for our businesses where we see an opportunity to unlock value through a transaction. In simple terms, we see this as a pivot from our buy-and-hold past to a future in which active monetization represents a key tool in our pursuit of shareholder value creation. We're pleased with the market response to the announced sale of the Connectivity business, which we expect to close in the coming months. However, we believe that the current trading value of our stock implies that the market continues to assign a very low multiple to the adjusted EBITDA of the rest of our portfolio of businesses. In other words, despite the market's positive reaction to the announcement of the sale of the Connectivity business, our current stock price implies that we're only getting credit to the expected cash proceeds of the connectivity sale while little additional value is being ascribed to the rest of our assets. As a result, we will continue to engage in the pursuit of transactions that offer the opportunity to highlight the value of the businesses in our portfolio. We recognize that we own some businesses facing headwinds and that require turnarounds. However, we believe that we also have businesses worth well in excess of what our current stock price implies. The market appears to be penalizing the better-performing businesses in our portfolio for sharing an ownership structure with those that are under pressure. We believe we can unlock value through active monetization while working to turn around those businesses facing headwinds. At the same time, we can use our balance sheet to continue to return meaningful capital to shareholders while investing in acquisitions that offer the opportunity for attractive future returns for the company. Just last week, we bought a few excellent brands, including Popular Science, Dwell, Domino and the Business of Home for an adjusted EBITDA multiple that is accretive to our own. I'll quote Ben Graham. The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists. Now let me shift to our first quarter results. Please note that the Connectivity segment is not included in the continuing operations results, which Bret and I are discussing today. Our revenue for the first quarter fell almost 2% versus last year with a decline of approximately 13% in Tech & Shopping, offset by nearly 3% growth in the rest of the company. I'll share some observations about each of our 4 continuing reportable segments. Starting with Tech & Shopping, lower revenue came as a result of continued and expected traffic pressures across the segment, impacting affiliate commerce and programmatic display advertising. These declines were partially offset by growth in off-platform monetization, licensing and sponsored content. Building upon off-platform success within the tech portfolio, our shopping group has driven its off-platform growth with social video views growing more than 75% year-over-year across Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. We're encouraged that the sequential decline in revenues for the Tech & Shopping segment improved, and we expect each successive quarter in 2026 to be better on a year-over-year basis as compared with the prior quarter. Gaming & Entertainment had a strong quarter, with revenues up over 7%, driven by a record quarter at Humble Bundle and significant growth in both subscription and performance marketing revenues. Map Genie, IGN's map tools destination for gamers increased views by 24% in Q1. While AI search summaries can impact traditional web article performance, Map Genie's interactive approach offers a unique on-site experience that draws repeat visits. IGN has kicked off a year-long program to mark its 30th anniversary. As part of that, we released the key Audience Insights report, Generations in Play, offering a detailed picture of the evolving consumption habits of today's gaming and entertainment audience. The findings are already at work inside IMAGINE, our proprietary audience intelligence platform, where they inform how we identify, model and activate audiences at scale for our advertising partners. While Health & Wellness revenues were up only slightly year-over-year in Q1, it's worth unpacking. We had strong consumer pharma ad revenues in Q1 driven by higher GLP-1 ads and continued positive market reception to our AI-powered data activation tool, HALO. Its audience insights are used to inform campaign design, target audiences and improve performance. We are also seeing momentum in our hospital media network, where we serve as the exclusive digital advertising partner for highly trusted medical institutions. We just secured a long-term extension of our relationship with the Cleveland Clinic, which now has the highest traffic of any digital consumer health brand. Our AI-powered weight and nutrition management app, Lose It! continued to thrive, posting record Q1 revenues. Our PRIME continuing medical education business also had record Q1 revenues as it expanded into a broader set of therapeutic areas. HCP advertising on MedPage Today, however, fell in Q1 due to bookings delays across certain key pharma clients. MedPage Today bookings for the balance of the year are improving. Pregnancy and parenting revenue also fell due to year-over-year declines in traffic-related programmatic and affiliate commerce revenues. Cybersecurity & Martech revenues grew nearly 4% year-over-year in Q1, driven by strong performance in the cybersecurity business. In Q1, we significantly enhanced the digital security of IPVanish with the release of Threat Protection Pro, which was designed to provide always on malware protection, whether or not a user has the VPN connected. With this milestone, IPVanish now delivers a full range of privacy, data protection and malware detection to consumers. VIPRE Security launched a native product integration with Docebo, a leading enterprise learning management system. PhishProof by VIPRE and Docebo delivers targeted security training when employees fail a simulated phishing attack, enabling organizations to implement real-time behavior-based risk reduction. I want to touch briefly on how we're using AI to transform the way we build products. The traditional software development life cycle was designed around long running, human-driven processes with significant time spent on planning, coordination and process overhead rather than the work itself. The first wave of AI tools largely got bolted on to that same process as assistants. Advances in the technology now put AI at the center of the development process, drafting requirements, proposing architecture and generating code and tests. As AI handles the routine work, our teams come together in collaborative spaces for real-time problem solving, creative thinking and rapid decision-making. This shift from isolated work to high-energy teamwork accelerates both innovation and delivery with cycles that took weeks now compressed into days. We're deploying this approach across key product and engineering teams. Over time, we expect this to become a meaningful structural source of operating leverage, providing faster time to market, lower cost per feature delivered and the ability to support a broader product road map without proportionately scaling engineering headcount. Looking ahead, Ziff Davis is in a strong financial position with a robust portfolio of durable, trusted brands across multiple high-value market segments with significant revenue, adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow, a strong balance sheet and significant investable cash resources, both current and the portion that is pending the sale of the Connectivity business. With that, let me hand the call back to Bret.