Earnings call transcript: Ziff Davis misses Q1 2025 EPS forecasts, stock dips

Ziff Davis Inc. reported its first-quarter 2025 earnings with an adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.14, missing the forecast of $1.28. Revenue reached $328.6 million, slightly surpassing the expected $322.54 million. Despite the revenue beat, the company’s stock fell 0.26% in after-hours trading, closing at $32.38. According to InvestingPro analysis, the company maintains impressive gross profit margins of 85.76% and shows strong financial health with a GOOD overall rating.

Key Takeaways

• Ziff Davis reported Q1 2025 revenue growth of 4.5% year-over-year.
• The company’s adjusted EBITDA margin stood at 30.5%.
• The stock price decreased by 0.26% after the earnings announcement.
• The company reaffirmed its full-year guidance, expecting 5% revenue growth.

Company Performance

Ziff Davis showed resilience in Q1 2025, achieving a 4.5% increase in revenue compared to the same quarter last year. This growth was driven by strong performance in advertising and performance marketing, which grew by 12.3%. However, the decline in subscription and licensing revenues by 2% posed a challenge.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: $328.6 million, up 4.5% year-over-year.
• Adjusted EBITDA: $100.2 million, with a margin of 30.5%.
• Adjusted EPS: $1.14, missing the forecast of $1.28.

Earnings vs. Forecast

Ziff Davis’s Q1 2025 EPS of $1.14 fell short of the $1.28 forecast, a miss of approximately 10.9%. This marks a deviation from the company’s historical trend of meeting or exceeding EPS expectations, potentially influencing investor sentiment negatively.

Market Reaction

The stock price of Ziff Davis fell by 0.26% following the earnings release, closing at $32.38. This decline reflects investor disappointment with the EPS miss, despite revenue surpassing forecasts. InvestingPro analysis suggests the stock is significantly undervalued at current levels, with multiple ProTips pointing to strong fundamentals. The stock has fallen over 42% in the past six months, potentially presenting a value opportunity. Get access to 12 additional ProTips and comprehensive valuation analysis with InvestingPro.

Outlook & Guidance

Ziff Davis reaffirmed its full-year guidance, projecting a 5% revenue growth and a 6% increase in adjusted EBITDA. The company anticipates growth acceleration in Q2 and continues to focus on mergers and acquisitions and share repurchase strategies. InvestingPro data confirms management’s aggressive share buyback program, with net income expected to grow this year. Discover detailed growth projections and 1,400+ comprehensive Pro Research Reports by subscribing to InvestingPro.

Executive Commentary

CEO Vivek Shah expressed satisfaction with the company’s performance, stating, "We’re pleased with our first-quarter results with revenues and adjusted EBITDA both ahead of our internal estimates." Shah also highlighted the company’s active approach to share buybacks and mergers and acquisitions, emphasizing, "We continue to be an active buyer of our shares, and we’re settling into a nice M&A cadence."

Risks and Challenges

• Declining subscription and licensing revenues could affect long-term stability.
• Potential tariffs pose a minimal direct impact but remain a risk factor.
• Market saturation in certain segments may limit growth opportunities.
• The lawsuit against OpenAI could involve legal costs and resource allocation.
• The impact of AI on traffic, although minimal at 3%, requires monitoring.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the company’s M&A strategy and the impact of AI on traffic. Ziff Davis addressed concerns by confirming minimal traffic impact from AI and reiterated its commitment to exploring acquisition opportunities across various segments.

Full transcript - Ziff Davis Inc (ZD) Q1 2025:

Operator: Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Ziff Davis First Quarter twenty twenty five Earnings Conference Call. My name is Paul, and I will be the operator assisting you today. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. On this call will be Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff Davis and Brett Richter, Chief Financial Officer of Ziff Davis.

I will now turn the call over to Brett Richter, Chief Financial Officer of Ziff Davis. Thank you. You may begin.

Brett Richter, Chief Financial Officer, Ziff Davis: Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Ziff Davis Investor Conference Call for Q1 twenty twenty five. As the operator mentioned, I am Brett Richter, Chief Financial Officer of Ziff Davis, and I am joined by our Chief Executive Officer, Vivek Shah. A presentation is available for today’s call. A copy of this presentation is available on our website.

When you launch the webcast, there is a button on the viewer on the right hand side, which will allow you to expand the slides. If you have not received a copy of the press release, you may access it through our corporate website at www.zipdavis.com. In addition, you’ll be able to access the webcast from this site. After completing the formal presentation, we’ll be conducting a Q and A. The operator will instruct you at that time regarding the procedures for asking questions.

In addition, you can e mail questions to investorziffdavis dot com. Before we begin our prepared remarks, allow me to read the Safe Harbor language. As you know, this call and the webcast will include forward looking statements. Such statements may involve risks and uncertainties that would cause actual results to differ materially from the anticipated results. Some of those risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, the risk factors that we have disclosed in our SEC filings, including our 10 ks filings, recent 10 Q filings, various proxy statements and eight ks filings, as well as additional risk factors that we have included as part of the slideshow for the webcast.

We refer you to discussions in those documents regarding Safe Harbor language as well as forward looking statements. In addition, following our business outlook slides are our supplemental materials, including reconciliation statements for non GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP equivalent. Now let me turn the call over to Vivek for his remarks.

Vivek Shah, Chief Executive Officer, Ziff Davis: Thank you, Brett, and good morning, everyone. We’re pleased with our first quarter results with revenues and adjusted EBITDA both ahead of our internal estimates. We also believe that Q2 will show accelerating growth, and we are reaffirming our full year guidance, which as a reminder, reflects revenue growth of 5% and adjusted EBITDA growth of 6% at the midpoint. We continue to be an active buyer of our shares, and we’re settling into a nice M and A cadence with two acquisitions in Q1, ’1 in early Q2 and another signed last week. Four of our five reportable segments grew in revenues in Q1.

Taken together, these four segments, which historically were combined into the Digital Media segment, grew over 9%. The fifth segment, Cybersecurity and Martech, declined nearly 11%. However, much of that decline relates to certain timing benefits that occurred in the first quarter of twenty twenty four. I’d like to share some thoughts about each of our five segments. Starting with Tech and Shopping, revenues grew nearly 18% through the combination of organic growth and M and A, and adjusted EBITDA grew nearly 44%.

Our bottom line growth reflects the margin expansion we had planned for CNET as well as the shift in our strategy for B2B. We’ve simplified our B2B product offerings and reduced expenses in a shrink to grow approach that’s working. CES was a great success this past January, where we unveiled our new tech media portfolio branding, CNET Group, to clients and agencies at the event. We also partnered with the CTA, the organizers of CES, to launch the official Best of CES Awards, reinforcing our category leadership. Gaming and entertainment revenues grew by nearly 4% with 7% growth in ad revenue, while subscription revenues were slightly down.

Our humble platform had a weaker lineup of game offerings during the quarter. We’re focused on improving our merchandising assortment and securing better IP for future bundles. And we’re cautiously optimistic that the June launch of Nintendo Switch two will represent a nice tailwind for the video game ad market. Adjusted EBITDA for gaming and entertainment declined in the quarter based on revenue mix and expense timing, which we believe will reverse itself in Q2. Health and wellness grew revenues over 7% and adjusted EBITDA grew by over 12%.

Prior to last year, the Health and Wellness business was one of our most consistent growers. We view last year as an aberration and this quarter’s growth as well as a healthy pharma ad upfront as indications of a promising return to high single digit growth for the segment. It’s also worth noting that the subscription business is now 15% of the segment’s revenues, which has been a diversification priority for all of our digital media businesses. Connectivity’s revenues grew by 5% with the core part of the business, subscription and licensing, growing by 7%. In particular, we saw strong growth from both speed test and down detector.

And with the market adoption and deployment of Wi Fi seven in 2025, we believe we will experience increased demand for Ekahau. Connectivity has historically been our fastest growing segment and we’re pleased to see it poised for a reacceleration in growth in 2025. The margins of this business are industry leading and continued to impress at over 50%, and we believe this will once again be a rule of 60 plus data services and software business. Finally, as I mentioned, the one segment that did decline in the quarter was cybersecurity and MarTech, which fell nearly 11% in revenues partly due to the timing of certain revenues recognized in the prior year’s first quarter. Given some of the sequential revenue trends and a small acquisition in early Q2, we still expect to see this segment grow in the second half of the year.

We’re particularly encouraged by progress in our VPN business, where we believe we’ve stabilized our revenue and we’re now on a trajectory to grow organically. Our advertising markets, tech and shopping, health and wellness, gaming and entertainment, were strong in Q1 and hold promise for the year. Obviously, there’s a meaningful amount of uncertainty in the world right now, but we remain cautiously optimistic. Our subscription and licensing businesses are stable and growing nicely in some parts. As we always do, we’re tightly managing our operating costs and capital expenses.

Taken together, we feel confident in our ability to exceed our adjusted EBITDA growth rate year over year. On capital allocation, we continue to seek opportunities to further accelerate our EPS growth through share repurchases and acquisitions. On the former, we have bought 4,250,000.00 shares of our stock over the last four quarters, representing roughly 10% of our total shares outstanding. In 2021, the company generated $485,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA and the stock hit a high of almost $130 This year the midpoint of our guidance has us generating $523,000,000 of adjusted EBITDA and the stock is currently in the 30s with almost 12% fewer shares outstanding. While the market processes this, we will continue to lean into this dislocation.

At the same time, this environment is producing compelling acquisition opportunities for us, and we’re working to ensure that we are positioned to transact. Last year, we acquired four businesses, and so far this year, we’ve acquired three, have a contract signed on the fourth, and have an active pipeline of opportunities across all five of our segments. Looking ahead, our focus remains on identifying the most compelling assets within our verticals, situations in which we believe we can uniquely generate value, leveraging our platforms, technology teams and know how. We prize diversification, and you see that in our multiple revenue models of advertising, performance marketing, subscriptions and licensing, in our multiple end markets of consumers, small and medium businesses and enterprises, and of course, in our multiple digital categories. It’s why we seek to pursue businesses with powerful and established brands that have the proven capacity to adapt.

We believe we own the top tier brands in many of our categories, brands that have endured for decades. Moreover, we expect to see the compounding effects of serial acquisition and share buybacks restore value in the company and for our shareholders. Our decision to file a lawsuit against OpenAI stems from a fundamental conviction to protect the core principles underpinning quality journalism and the significant investments required to produce it. We are committed to advocating for the establishment of a more balanced and fair digital ecosystem, which includes supporting the responsible growth of AI technology. This ecosystem must ensure the long term sustainability of value for all stakeholders, including the consumers who rely on credible information, the publishers who invest in its creation, and the advertisers who support its dissemination.

This is a principled effort to defend the integrity and value of journalism and our copyrights. We are resourced and positioned to challenge the unauthorized use of our content by companies like OpenAI. We believe that this lawsuit is a crucial step towards fostering a digital environment where intellectual property rights are respected and the contributions of journalists and publishers are fairly recognized and compensated.

Brett Richter, Chief Financial Officer, Ziff Davis: We encourage everyone to read our complaint. It’s full of compelling and important insights. With that, I’ll hand the call back to Brett. Thank you, Vivek. Let’s discuss our financial results.

Our earnings release reflects both our GAAP and adjusted financial results for Q1 twenty twenty five. My commentary will primarily relate to our Q1 twenty twenty five adjusted financial results and their comparisons to the relevant prior period. Please see Slide four for the summary of our financial results. Q1 twenty twenty five revenues were $328,600,000 This reflects revenue growth of 4.5% as compared with revenues of $314,500,000 for Q1 twenty twenty four. Q1 ’20 ’20 ’5 adjusted EBITDA was $100,200,000 as compared with $100,800,000 for the prior year period.

Our adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 30.5%. Note revenues adjusted EBITDA and adjusted EBITDA margin each exceeded our internal expectations for the first quarter and our Q1 twenty twenty five results reflect a strong start to the pursuit of our 2025 financial goals. We reported first quarter adjusted diluted EPS of $1.14 This figure was essentially in line with our expectations. Q1 twenty twenty five adjusted diluted EPS was negatively impacted as compared with the prior year period by higher net interest expense and higher depreciation and amortization, each primarily related to our 2024 capital allocation activities. Q1 twenty twenty five adjusted diluted EPS was also negatively impacted by changes in certain foreign exchange rates, which drove an increase in other loss net.

Slide five reflects performance summaries for our two primary sources of revenue, advertising and performance marketing and subscription and licensing. Q1 twenty twenty five advertising and performance marketing revenue grew 12.3 as compared with the prior period, while subscription and licensing revenues declined by 2%. Other revenues declined by approximately $2,000,000 in Q1 twenty twenty five as compared with the prior year period, primarily reflecting a decline in Humble Games publishing revenues. Slide six through 10 reflect the Q1 financial results of each of our reportable segments, which Vivek discussed in some detail already. Please refer to Slide 11 as we discuss our balance sheet.

As of the end of Q1 twenty twenty five, we had $431,000,000 of cash and cash equivalents and $167,000,000 of long term investments. We also have significant leverage capacity on both a gross and net leverage basis. As of the end of the first quarter, gross leverage was 1.8 times trailing twelve months adjusted EBITDA and our net leverage was 0.9 times and 0.6 times including the value of our financial investments. During the first quarter of twenty twenty five, we deployed more than $39,000,000 of cash for acquisitions and nearly $35,000,000 related to share repurchases, including the repurchase of 750,000 shares during Q1 twenty twenty five under a 10b5-one plan. As we had planned for, Q1 marked an active quarter for M and A activity.

We closed the acquisition of the SKIM and Max Roll in March and our activity has continued during the first half of the second quarter. We anticipate remaining active in M and A during the balance of 2025. We were also acutely aware of the reduction in our stock price and we continue to believe that our shares are undervalued in the market as compared with the intrinsic value of our underlying businesses. Ziff Davis has long exercised disciplined capital allocation to drive returns. This includes acting decisively in the M and A market and repurchasing our shares in the open market when buying opportunities arise.

To continue driving value for shareholders, we intend to use our existing share repurchase authorization to accelerate our share repurchase activity in the second quarter while maintaining our robust balance sheet. Turning to Slide 13, we are reaffirming the fiscal year twenty twenty five guidance range that we presented in February 2025. As I noted earlier, our consolidated Q1 results largely met or exceeded our expectations And to date, we have not experienced any notable negative impact of the expected volatility and instability of the macroeconomic environment. And while we, like most companies are exposed to recessionary risks and other macroeconomic disruptions, year to date we have not experienced any measurable negative impacts of the evolving tariff landscape. We started 2025 strong and while a strong start to a fiscal year is often an indication of the potential for strong performance for the balance of 2025, given the uncertainties of the macroeconomic environment, we have simply maintained our guidance.

We currently expect growth to improve in Q2 twenty twenty five as compared to Q1 twenty twenty five and Q2 adjusted EBITDA margins are expected to be similar to if not slightly below the prior year period, reflecting our plan to continue to invest in our businesses to support the balance of their 2025 goals as well as certain other factors including the acquisition of certain businesses which initially reflect dilutive margins prior to the completion of their integration plans. And as we have noted on prior calls, we plan to continue to focus on the creation of long term shareholder value and not run the business to achieve short term quarterly results. Following our business outlook slides including reconciliation statements for the various non GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP equivalents. Slide ’20 includes a reconciliation of free cash flow. Q1 twenty twenty five reflects a use of free cash flow of approximately $5,000,000 This result was largely anticipated and primarily reflects four factors.

A full quarter of our TDS business, which is a significant user of working capital in the first quarter and particularly January, a period that was not reflected in our Q1 twenty twenty four results. Overall Q1 twenty twenty five reflects an $84,000,000 cash outflow from operations from TDS for the quarter. Q1 twenty twenty five also reflects severance expenses related to a voluntary buyout program that we initiated in Q4 twenty twenty four as a way to facilitate some productive turnover. Certain M and A related expenses and interest payments related to our 35.8% convertible notes as Q1 twenty twenty four did not reflect any cash interest payments. In Q1 twenty twenty four, we significantly broadened our disclosure by reporting five segments.

As we said at the time, we believe this reporting structure will allow investors to gain deeper insight into each of our reportable segments and give our stakeholders a deeper appreciation of the diversity of our revenue composition, the scale of our businesses and the strength of their margins. Since this time, we have received requests for additional historical information relating to these segments and we plan to share certain reportable segment level quarterly financial information for the 2023 and 2024 periods in a Form eight ks. We trust that this additional disclosure will facilitate a greater appreciation of the intrinsic value of each of our reportable segments and the discount that our current stock trading level implies when compared with a sum of the parts analysis. In addition to supporting our businesses during the early part of 2025, we’ve been focused on capital allocation. Our M and A program has been active year to date and we plan to continue to take advantage of the opportunity to acquire stock at these levels.

Overall, we believe that Q1 twenty twenty five was a strong start to the year and while we continue to monitor risks associated with the macroeconomic environment, our second quarter is off to a solid start. We look forward to the balance of 2025. With that, I would now ask the operator to rejoin us to instruct you on how to queue for questions.

Operator: Thank you. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. In session. And the first question today is coming from Shyam Pato from Susquehanna. Shyam, your line is live.

Aaron Samuels, Analyst, Susquehanna: Hey, good morning. This is Aaron Samuels on for Shyam. Thank you so much for taking our question. Maybe first, I just wanted to ask for an update on the overall ad market. Sounds like things were good in one q and quarter to date trends have been good too.

But can you just go a little bit deeper in terms of what you’ve seen so far quarter to date? And then could you share some thoughts on how things could trend in the rest of the year?

Vivek Shah, Chief Executive Officer, Ziff Davis: Yeah. Good morning, Aaron. Thanks for the question. So as you point out, look, Q1 was very strong for the ad business, grew a little over 12%. CNET did contribute to that ad growth, but certainly our other consumer tech businesses performed very well.

IGN, Everyday Health, all contributed growth roughly, I think, 7% at Gaming and Entertainment and Health and Wellness. So across all of our key verticals, and I always encourage, those who study the company to understand the advertising business in the context of the verticals and categories in which we operate. So the three, tech and shopping, gaming and entertainment and health and wellness, look reasonably strong. We did have some offsets, but they were planned, and that’s largely in the B2B business, whereas I described in my prepared remarks, we’re focused on margin expansion. So we’re walking away from revenues, that were unprofitable.

And so we see profitability now in that business, and that was a really smart decision for us. We think that the trends, you know, for the rest of the year continue to be positive. I mentioned in the gaming side, potential tailwinds relating to Nintendo Switch two. With health and wellness, which is the vertical where we probably have the best visibility because there is an upfront that takes place with respect to pharmaceutical advertising. The upfronts have been good for us.

So, look, I think that, you know, sort of this the, you know, the the kind of ad growth that we are looking at, should sustain. Now look. At the end of the day, if if we enter into a recession, I think that would obviously change, not just our perspective, but I think everyone’s perspectives. But we don’t see any indications of that at this moment.

Aaron Samuels, Analyst, Susquehanna: Great. And if I could just ask a second question. Vivek, in the prepared remarks, you talked about, the opportunity for connectivity to reaccelerate. What would you say are the top one or two priorities that the team is working on to improve the growth rate there?

Vivek Shah, Chief Executive Officer, Ziff Davis: It’s entirely in the Wi Fi part of the business. So the Etihad part of the business really indexes to wireless access point sales. And so the WAP market last year was pretty bad. Now I think our view in 2025 with Wi Fi seven, but more broadly, the demand for better wireless networks across enterprises, manufacturing centers, hospitals, universities will continue to be long term very strong. So it’s been a near term issue around, look, if the hardware cycle isn’t where, we’d like it to be, Ekahau is a software solution that is attached to WAP sales, won’t do as well, but we view that more as just a a little bit of cyclicality in the market.

And so the core sort of speed test and down detector businesses continue to do extremely well. And so we’re, you know, we’re posting, as we said, 7% in our subscription and licensing business in q one without any contribution from the Ekahau business contributing to organic growth. So we expect that’s just gonna be a further accelerant. So look, I think this has been and if you look, you know, obviously, the historical segment information is now available, this has been a fantastic business for us. Last year, you know, wasn’t what we had hoped it was gonna be.

There was some of this WiFi issue, some major reorganizational and retooling in the business, but we’re very excited for it.

Aaron Samuels, Analyst, Susquehanna: Great. Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you. The next question is coming from Rishi Jaluria from RBC Capital Markets. Rishi, your line is live.

Rishi Jaluria, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Wonderful. Thanks so much for taking my questions. Nice to see the disclosures. That’s really helpful helpful for us in just getting more visibility into the business. Vivek, I wanted to and maybe for Brett as well, I wanted to dive a little bit deeper into kind of assessing some of the potential macro impacts.

I think about some of your advertisers and the products they’re offering. And so while you may not directly be impacted in the case that tariffs come through and things kind of go back the reciprocal tariffs once the ninety days are up. I want

Vivek Shah, Chief Executive Officer, Ziff Davis: to better understand, how are we

Rishi Jaluria, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: thinking about the impact of that on your customer base? What does that do in terms of advertising demand, in terms of pipeline, even in terms of traffic, right, for some of your properties. Maybe some of us understand the puts and takes. And I understand that this will take a while to play out. It’s very uncertain.

But just any color you could provide

Vivek Shah, Chief Executive Officer, Ziff Davis: us there would be helpful. Yes. No, it’s a great question, Rishi. And we obviously spend a lot of time trying to assess, what this could mean. And then obviously, dynamics change, fairly frequently in this area.

So just with respect to direct impact of tariffs is very low. Right? So it doesn’t impact our cost. It doesn’t impact our business in any meaningful direct way. But I think your question is, well, what is the indirect exposure?

Right? So the degree to which, you know, our revenues or someone else’s expenses and what is happening to their expense base and what does that mean. So, again, I think it’s instructive probably to go by vertical. And I will say that in health and wellness, we feel optimistic. The tariff discussion is is really on generics.

Generics aren’t, part of our advertising base. So, again, anything can happen, but in terms of the current, the current dialogue, we we feel fairly well insulated. I think on gaming and entertainment, similarly, yes, there’s been there’s some talk about, you know, production expenses, etcetera. But the gaming and entertainment space isn’t one of the the you know, it’s not physical goods. It’s not physical in nature.

And so I think, you know, digital product, I think generally is is reasonably well insulated. And so then it really comes down to tech and shopping. And, again, I think some of the the there have been exemptions on certain consumer electronics products. So if that were to continue, I think that would be beneficial. But, certainly, I think if you start to see significant pressure on the large tech marketers, yes, they’re always gonna look for ways to to, you know, manage their p and l’s.

But, again, we don’t see any indication of that. We see a lot of great momentum within the verticals. And then the final thing I’ll say is with shopping, is the degree because you asked the consumer element of this, and I was trying to think through what that impact may be. One potential benefit actually is the degree to which consumer products go up in price, the tendency for consumers to seek discounts, cash back, deals, and coupons goes up. And that obviously benefits us with respect to RetailMeNot.

So look, it’s early. You know, it’s certainly something that we watch. It’s something that we try to, you know, to tabletop a little bit. But right now, I think we feel reasonably good.

Rishi Jaluria, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Alright. Very helpful. Thank you.

Vivek Shah, Chief Executive Officer, Ziff Davis: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. The next question will be from Ross Sandler from Barclays. Ross, your line is live.

Ross Sandler, Analyst, Barclays: Vivek, you mentioned the upfront for Pharma being pretty strong. Could you just talk broadly about how the pipeline looks for for the rest of the year and then how the other categories went, during the upfront? And then the lawsuit with OpenAI, so could you just talk about what led us down this path versus licensing? Thank you.

Vivek Shah, Chief Executive Officer, Ziff Davis: Yeah. So just on the on the first question, you know, so the upfront is actually upfront commitments for the full year. So it gives us a visibility at this point this year versus last year, how much money has been booked and committed. Now these are commitments. Right?

They can always be unbooked, but it was pretty it was pretty strong. So we’re excited for that. Both, by the way, because I think this is something that I talked about last year, we had some challenges on the direct to provider pharma side. The direct to consumer side has been very strong for quite a bit, but we had one large pharma kinda rotate out of marketing against physicians, providers, you know, script writers. That is now one, we’re lapping it, but two, that’s that’s that’s reversing itself.

So we’re optimistic about the provider side. And and so and it’s always instructive. Right? Because, you know, with you and again, this is now things that you can kinda, parse when you start to look at, you know, the the the segment information that we’re disclosing. But, you know, the the everyday health, the consumer business is, you know, the second largest.

It’s right behind tech and shopping in terms of our ad franchise. So it’s important. We don’t have in the other categories, if you were asking, we don’t have as much visibility. The contracts are kinda booked, quarter to quarter, so we can’t give you that more of a down the line look. With respect to your, second question relating to to our suit, look, we’ve made clear, you know, that our content is highly valuable and that we’re gonna defend our intellectual property.

We did attempt in good faith to to address and resolve OpenAI’s unauthorized use of of our content both in in its training activities and in its rag activities. We didn’t get to acceptable terms. And so, look, legal action was something that was always available to us. I do encourage everyone to read the suit. I think there’s a lot that you’ll get from it and you’ll see from it.

It is a copyright infringement suit in chief, but we’ve got some trademark claims and the d m DMCA claim. And and so, look, there’s a lot here. It’s important that we defend our content. We are owners of intellectual property. We are resourced to do this, frankly.

And so we think this is an opportunity to basically capture, monetization and and payments that are owed to us. Look. I mean, if if if frankly, if we’re gonna if someone’s gonna steal, we’re not just gonna sit by and do nothing.

Ross Sandler, Analyst, Barclays: Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. Thank you. The next question is coming from Cory Carpenter from JPMorgan. Cory, your line is live.

Cory Carpenter, Analyst, JPMorgan: Hey. Good morning. Thanks for the question. I had two. Vivek, you’ve given some pretty helpful color and stats on just the generative search or or lack thereof impact on the business.

Could you just give us an update on what you’re seeing there? And then secondly, on on the advertising side, we’ve heard from some companies a shift from direct sales to programmatic in in recent weeks or months. Could you just remind us of your direct versus pro programmatic exposure and if you’re seeing anything similar? Thank you.

Vivek Shah, Chief Executive Officer, Ziff Davis: Yeah. Great question. So with respect to just Gen AI, it’s probably worth repeating, you know, what we discussed last quarter. So so roughly 35% of our revenues depend on traffic. So right there, I think this is important because I think that is very different than maybe other similarly situated companies or companies within our industry.

So 65% of our revenues are not traffic based or traffic dependent. Within traffic, about 40% of it comes from search. Right? So you multiply those two, you get to to a a very different percentage. Now we’re talking about, really, AI overviews.

And so AI overviews is another percentage. That percentage has gone from roughly 12% to a little over 20% of the top queries that that generate our traffic now generate an an AI overview. So I think if you multiply all this, it’s like a 3% case. And and so sometimes I think maybe the attention on AIOs is is not commensurate to to kind of its importance, you know, within our business. And I’ll also point out that it’s not clear if AIOs are positive, negative, or zero sum.

Right? So that’s another thing when it comes to clicks. Like, I’m not we’re not sure on that. It’s hard for anyone to divine and, you know, you’ve heard things from from Google that that might suggest they’re positive. One thing that we have been tracking and now are able to track is how often we’re cited in AIOs that appear on the queries that matter to us, and it’s about a third of the time.

So about a third of the time, we’re getting cited, and and presumably citations in AIOs is a good thing. Right? Because that it comes with with with with links. So, look. I think that, you know, you know, something to watch.

I I think maybe the emphasis is is not proportional to kind of its import within the within the context of the business. And then you had a question, I think, on programmatic versus direct. As you know, or it’s worth reiterating, our programmatic business is intentionally relatively small inside of of, you know, inside of our company, you know, in terms of, you know, the percentage of of revenue that that programmatic represents. Overall, you’re probably 3% of the company’s revenue. So it’s not it’s not it’s not a big number.

And that’s really out of design because we’ve organized our business to be a combination of highly endemic, must buy direct program because we’re number one in tech, number one in gaming, number one in health. When you wanna go endemic, you come to us. I think if you are broad based, more general proposition, I think you’re selling horizontal, and that does lend itself to programmatic. But we’re dealing with programs that are pretty pretty involved, you know, often custom programs for our for our clients. And then on the other piece, we have a fair amount of performance marketing, which is which is not a CPM based business, which programmatic is.

It’s more CPA, cost per acquisition, CPL, cost per lead, CPC, cost per click. So, you know, we’re not, we’re not really, you know, a programmatic player in the way that maybe you you’ll see in some other, entities.

Cory Carpenter, Analyst, JPMorgan: Thank you very much.

Operator: Thank you. Thank you. And the next question will be from Ygal Arounian from Citi. Ygal, your line is live.

Ygal Arounian, Analyst, Citi: Hey. Good morning, guys. I wanted to ask about capital allocation. You made a few more tuck in deals this quarter. Just what are you seeing in the M and A market right now given the volatility?

And then, you know, with with where the share price is and then where I know, you know, how you guys feel about the valuation of shares, how you think about buybacks since you bought a little bit more in 1Q than 2Q? And maybe include within all this the desire or ability to to lever up, to be more aggressive on buybacks and keep the m and a opportunity open? And then just to follow-up on on on the OpenAI suit. Not sure how much you can comment on this, Vivek, but, OpenAI also went to the White House a few months ago, and they’re trying to push the administration of this AI action plan to kind of, you know, unburden some legal tools and regulations around, copyright for better development of AI. Any thoughts on that?

Was that part of, your consideration to to to go down this route? Would love to get any thoughts you have on that, if if you do have any. Thanks.

Brett Richter, Chief Financial Officer, Ziff Davis: Thanks, Carl. Let me, it’s Brett, and I’ll take the first part of that question. I think, first and foremost, our capital allocation program continues to be very active. And I think you saw that shift in 2024 when we were active on all prongs, both M and A where we deployed $225,000,000 or so of capital, significantly accelerated our share buyback program. And as Vivek highlighted, we bought 4,250,000.00 shares in the last four quarters, shrinking our cap by almost 10%.

And as we enter 2025, it’s continued. We’ve talked about the number of deals that we’ve already consummated and or signed. And we can never predict the future, but based on what we’re seeing, we have an anticipation that that will continue and balancing that with continuing to buy back stock, which we both mentioned in our prepared remarks. M and A the overall M and A environment, I’d say, is favorable to us in the following respects: one, we have five divisions that are all active and looking at deals. And I think importantly, if you look back over the last handful of quarters, you’ve seen participation in M and A from certain of our divisions that have been sidelined for a couple of years.

Our Cyber and Martech business has participated. Our Gaming and Entertainment business has participated. Last year, the absolute dollars were more dedicated towards tech and shopping. We’ve also consummated over a more extended period of time a number of transactions, which have you know, diversified us away from advertising revenue into subscription revenue. Lose It falls into that category.

TDS falls into that category. And even in our advertising businesses, we found ways to identify businesses that generate interest from their communities in a different way like the scheme, which is essentially an email business. So I think there’s opportunity in front of us. We also see opportunity to find a home for companies that may be struggling in the current environment. And when we do that, sometimes we absorb a P and L that is not quite at the margin that we expect it to be, and it takes us several quarters to bring that up to our expected performance.

And I think a couple of the deals we’ve done in the last twelve plus months fall into that category. So overall, really active, and I think we intend to continue to be active. With regards to using leverage, we’re thoughtful about that. We have a $350,000,000 revolver, which other than a letter of credit or two is completely undrawn. But taking your widening the lens despite we temper our optimism, as we’ve talked about, based on our recent performance and our expectations for the year about what’s happening in the macro, and, you know, that factors into our thinking of, using leverage as well.

Vivek Shah, Chief Executive Officer, Ziff Davis: Yeah. The only thing I might add, before I address the the OpenAI question is, look, the the valuations in digital media are attractive. Right? And so, you know and and the fears that, frankly, represent a weight on our stock are also affecting the valuations of others in digital media. So we’re inclined to lean into the fears as they as they relate to us, and that expresses itself in buybacks and as it relates to potential acquisition targets within the industry.

So look, if if, you know, if they’re gonna be fears and we’re gonna see things at significant discounts, we’re gonna be buyers on on all fronts than we have been. You know, with respect to, you know, just the question around OpenAI, look, I think what is heartening are recent developments, you know, that that are in some other cases. The Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters won on fair use at the advanced stage summary judgment in the same court we’re in, alright, the District Of Delaware. The New York Times and and a couple of other plaintiffs defeated a motion to dismiss brought by OpenAI. So some of these some of these developments are are are give us some confidence.

Now look, litigation’s uncertain. Right? But our cost benefit analysis basically suggested that litigation is a prudent course for us to take. This will take a while to play out. Right?

So I you know, we’re not sitting here saying it’s this is gonna get addressed overnight, but it needs to get addressed. There needs to be finality. In the end, we need to know, what the law and the interpretation of the law is. Thank you. Very helpful.

Operator: Thank you. Thank you. And the next question is coming from Robert Kulbirth from Evercore. Robert, your line is live.

Robert Kulbirth, Analyst, Evercore: Great. Thanks for taking the question. Going back to the tech and shopping trends, it certainly seemed quite robust. But just wondering since we don’t yet have the quarterly detail from prior quarters, was there a particular inflection in performance or anything you can maybe tell us about the organic trend? And then when you look at the trends within that business in the quarter and maybe quarter to date as well, just wondering if you could talk about the sustainability of that or any perspective you have there, whether you’re seeing any pull forward from the consumer or advertisers ahead of tariffs and just any additional commentary there.

And then a follow-up on AIO, Realize it’s quite small, but is there any way for you to determine at this point whether there’s a conversion benefit? Is the is the traffic that comes from an AIO page more qualified or or productive in any measurable way? Thanks.

Vivek Shah, Chief Executive Officer, Ziff Davis: Yeah. No. That’s a you know, I’ll take that second question first and then just to go back to tech and shopping. We don’t know. Right?

It’s a very good point, which is does an AIO click is that a more refined click? And does that fact that it’s more refined have more value? It’s very hard. A lot of the tracking is just not there. This is actually work that our mass business is working on.

It’s interesting because the market demand to better understand AIO, the rate of AIO presence, the rate of inclusion in AIO, the performance out of AIO, that’s actually a data need that can’t be addressed through Google Search Console. And so now looking for third party answers, and so in many ways, we’re getting a lot of customer interest at Moz, you know, because we’re in the SEO analytics, business there to better understand that. And we internally leverage Maaz and stat, which is a which is an enterprise solution within Maaz, in our company too, by the way. So we’re we’re lucky that we have some real experts on staff that you know, because we happen to own the business. Look.

I think on the tech and shopping side, there’s a lot of things going on here. Clearly, there’s a benefit from CNET being in the quarter this quarter versus last year. But PCMag, you know, 10% organic growth in that set of of of properties, so that has done very well. RetailMeNot has been essentially slightly up at, you know, kind of a flat proposition, and then we have offsets. Remember, we have the plan decline significant actually in in b two b.

I mean, that that revenue probably fell by a third, but again, there was no EBITDA. It was negative EBITDA in q one of last year, and it is positive EBITDA in q one of this year. So lots of puts and takes there, but what I would say is generally positive. And and it really is, you know, the consumer tech plus, retail me not. And, we we know what the revenue drag will be from b to b, but it is a EBITDA contributor.

And so that’s where sometimes maybe the revenue growth, while very robust, would have been, in fact, more robust if you excluded, b to b in that equation.

Brett Richter, Chief Financial Officer, Ziff Davis: The only the only thing I might add there and the only thing I might add there and we did receive some requests for that historical information, which we will disclose. When you see the quarterly information on our quarterly segment basis, you may see some various up downs and that don’t present themselves as clear trends. And there’s reasons for that. All the reasons that Vivek mentioned, the different components that have different impacts over time, including the decline in certain businesses, which we’ve talked about for extended period of times and the incremental additions in M and A, but also tying back to some of the other conversation we had earlier on this call is we’re not really a price times quantity business where we’re just monetizing traffic in the marketplace and you could see trends based on the macro or others. We are very much first party, very much campaign driven.

Those campaigns often rise and fall in quarters based on product releases and far more product releases in gaming. So you will, when you see these historical quarters, see some up downs that won’t necessarily present as trends.

Robert Kulbirth, Analyst, Evercore: Got it. Thank you. Thank you.

Operator: Thank you. There are no other questions in the queue at this time. I would now like to hand the call back to Brett Richter for any closing remarks.

Brett Richter, Chief Financial Officer, Ziff Davis: Well, you, Paul. Thank you, everyone, for participating in the call and your continued interest. We look forward to continuing to connect with each of you later this quarter in our upcoming conferences, and we hope to see some of you at these events. Thank you again, and have a great day.

Operator: Thank you. This does conclude today’s conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.

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