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Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Ziff Davis first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. My name is Tom, 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. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. On this call will be Vivek Shah, CEO of Ziff Davis, and Bret Richter, Chief Financial Officer of Ziff Davis. I will now turn the call over to Bret Richter, Chief Financial Officer of Ziff Davis. Thank you. You may begin.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Ziff Davis investor conference call for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026. As the operator mentioned, I am Bret 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. This presentation and our earnings release are available on our website, www.ziffdavis.com. You can also access the webcast from this site. 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. After completing the presentation, we'll be conducting a Q&A. The operator will provide instructions regarding the procedures for asking questions. In addition, you can email questions to [email protected]. 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 could 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-K filings, recent 10-Q filings, various proxy statements and 8-K filings, as well as additional risks and uncertainties that we have included as part of the slideshow for the webcast. We refer you to discussions in those documents regarding safe harbor language and forward-looking statements. In addition, following our business outlook slides are our supplemental materials, including reconciliation statements for non-GAAP measures to their nearest GAAP equivalent. Now let me turn the call over to Vivek for his remarks.

Thank you, Bret, 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's 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. 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 for 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. 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." 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 and shopping, offset by nearly 3% growth in the rest of the company. I'll share some observations about each of our four continuing reportable segments. Starting with tech and 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 and 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 a 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 and 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 and 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 onto 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 roadmap without proportionally 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.

Thank you, Vivek. Let's discuss our financial results. Our earnings release reflects both our GAAP and adjusted financial results for Q1 2026. My commentary will primarily relate to our Q1 2026 adjusted financial results for continuing operations, excluding the connectivity division and their comparisons to the relevant prior period. Please see slide four for the summary of our Q1 2026 financial results. Q1 2026 revenues were $267.6 million. This reflects a decline of 1.9% as compared with revenues of $272.8 million for Q1 2025. Q1 2026 adjusted EBITDA was $63.4 million, as compared with $71.4 million for the prior year period.

Our adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter was 23.7%, down 2.5 percentage points as compared with adjusted EBITDA margin of 26.2% in Q1 2025. Q1 2026 adjusted diluted EPS was $0.73 as compared to $0.77 in the prior year period. These results are largely consistent with the Q1 2026 expectations we provided last quarter when we forecasted overall revenues flat to slightly down year-over-year and a decline of approximately 3 percentage points in our adjusted EBITDA margins, with our adjusted diluted EPS benefiting from a year-over-year drop in our shares outstanding due to our active buyback program. Slide five reflects performance summaries for our two primary sources of revenue, advertising and performance marketing and subscription and licensing.

Q1 2026 advertising and performance marketing revenue declined 5.1% as compared with the prior period, while subscription and licensing revenues increased by 1.9%. Other revenues increased by approximately $1.8 million year-over-year in Q1 2026. Slides six through nine reflect the Q1 financial results of each of our four continuing reportable segments. Tech and shopping margins declined due to lower revenue, particularly reflecting a reduction in high-margin affiliate marketing traffic. Gaming and entertainment margins were slightly lower year-over-year due in part to a larger revenue contribution from the e-commerce business at IGN Store. Health and wellness margins were lower despite a modest revenue increase.

Margins reflect a revenue mix shift due in part to some of the booking delays that Vivek noted earlier, as well as a higher revenue contribution in the quarter from the Consumer Division. In our Cybersecurity and MarTech Segment, margins were down year-over-year due in part to revenue mix shifts among the MarTech offerings. Please refer to slide 10 as we review our balance sheet. As of the end of Q1 2026, we had $520 million of cash and cash equivalents and $100 million of long-term investments. However, please note that these figures exclude approximately $26 million of cash and cash equivalents associated with our connectivity business. We continue to have significant leverage capacity on both the gross and net leverage basis.

We have not included our Q1 leverage ratios on this slide due to the exclusion of our connectivity business from adjusted EBITDA from continuing operations and the fact that the receipt of the cash proceeds associated with the transaction is still pending. Our balance sheet remains strong, and we intend to provide updated leverage ratio information on a trailing 12 months adjusted EBITDA basis, assuming the connectivity sale is finalized and we receive the proceeds from the sale. We continue to dedicate significant investable capital to our stock buyback program. During the first quarter, we bought back approximately 1.2 million shares under a 10b5-1 plan. We deployed $51.6 million related to share repurchases in the quarter, including $6.7 million related to stock-based compensation net share settlements.

Since April 1st, 2026, we have also repurchased approximately 560,000 additional shares in the open market. Cumulatively, since the start of our current buyback program in mid-2020, we have repurchased more than 15 million shares. The total amount currently available for repurchase under our board's current buyback authorization is approximately 9.7 million shares, and we plan to continue to be an active repurchaser of our stock. As a reminder, given our ongoing review of potential value-creating opportunities, there may be periods of time when we are not able to repurchase shares under this authorization. We did not complete any acquisitions during Q1 2026.

In Q2, so far we have completed one acquisition, which Vivek mentioned in his remarks, and we plan to be a disciplined acquirer in 2026 as opportunities arise to add businesses at attractive prices and offer the potential for strong cash-on-cash returns. Looking ahead to the rest of 2026, our primary financial objectives remain unchanged, driving profitable growth, generating robust free cash flow, and highlighting the intrinsic value of our businesses to our shareholders. As we noted in our earnings release, we are not providing annual guidance for fiscal 2026, as our exploration of value-creating opportunities is an ongoing process. However, I would like to offer some insight related to certain of our expectations for the balance of 2026. We expect our Q2 2026 results from continuing operations to largely reflect our performance in Q1 2026.

Revenues in Q2 are expected to be down at a slightly higher year-over-year rate than in Q1. Q2 2026 adjusted EBITDA margins are expected to reflect a similar year-over-year decline in Q2 as compared to Q1 2026. Some of this impact to adjusted diluted EPS will again be offset by a year-over-year reduction in our shares outstanding due to our active buyback program. Our goal is to return to total year-over-year growth in revenues from continuing operations for the second half of 2026, with the fourth quarter being stronger than the third. This would reflect an improvement in the rate of decline of tech and shopping, with modest overall growth from the combined contribution of Gaming and Entertainment, Health and Wellness, and cyber and MarTech.

This should result in an improvement in adjusted EBITDA margins from continuing operations, allowing our consolidated margin to approach the levels we saw in the second half of 2025. Margins continue to be a focus of our company. In 2025, our connectivity business was our business with the highest adjusted EBITDA margin percentage, and we are very conscious of the impact that the sale will have on the company's adjusted EBITDA margin from continuing operations. As we continue to pursue valuation enhancement opportunities, we will simultaneously seek to identify opportunities to improve our post-transaction margins through the implementation of new approaches, practices, and in particular, the use of AI. Turning now to our supplemental information. Slide 13 provides a summary of our adjusted results from continuing operations for each quarter of 2025, as well as the first quarter of 2026.

Please note that these figures include approximately $2.8 million of certain overhead expenses in the full year 2025 in our corporate segment, which were previously reported in the connectivity reportable segment. For a period of time after the closing, a portion of these expenses are expected to be offset by payments received for certain transition services that we expect to provide to Accenture. Slides 14 through 17 show reconciliation statements for the various non-GAAP measures to the nearest GAAP equivalents. Slide 18 includes a reconciliation of free cash flow on a combined basis, including the free cash flow associated with the connectivity business. Q1 2026 reflects negative free cash flow of $3.2 million as compared to negative free cash flow of $5 million in the first quarter of 2025.

As a reminder, our TDS Gift Cards business is a significant user of working capital in the first quarter of each year. Overall, during the last 12 months, our free cash flow was nearly $290 million, and our free cash flow conversion from adjusted EBITDA, including connectivity, was nearly 60%. Please note that in 2026, we expect our conversion rate of adjusted EBITDA to free cash flow to be negatively impacted by certain professional fees and taxes associated with the sale of connectivity. However, excluding certain discrete items such as this going forward, we expect continued strong free cash flow conversion of our continuing operations adjusted EBITDA. Overall, we are very pleased with what we were able to accomplish in the first quarter of 2026, and we are encouraged by the revenue growth exhibited by a number of our businesses.

As we move forward in 2026, we remain focused on executing our plans to continue to deliver shareholder value in the coming quarters. With that, I will now ask the operator to rejoin us to instruct you on how to queue for questions.

The first question this morning is coming from Cory Carpenter from JPMorgan. Cory, your line is live. Please go ahead.

Hey, good morning, Vivek and Bret. I had two. You mentioned the off-platform strategy that you're implementing. Could you just talk about, you know, how far are you along in that off-platform strategy for some of your digital properties? What are some of the initiatives that you're working on there that you're most excited about?

Vivek, appreciate your update on capital allocation. Should we think of this as a permanent shift in your strategy, or is this kind of a temporary thing as you work to refine your portfolio and, you know, unlock value of your existing assets? Thank you.

Yeah, great questions, Cory. I'll start on the traffic side. We've had a lot of success in generating monetization out of our footprint on social media, so that's, you know, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook primarily, where if you look at a number of our brands, we have pretty significant follower counts, and we're able to leverage those follower counts into ad programs and ad revenue. Video is also pretty important to a number of our brands, in particular IGN. If you look at the IGN YouTube subscriber base, it's significant. That's also a key part of our off-platform activity. I would also say that we have partnerships. Within the health business, I mentioned Cleveland Clinic.

We also have the Mayo Clinic, we're working on some other medical partners where we are their advertising, exclusive advertising monetization partner. There's email, there's apps. There are a variety of different ways in which we can engage. CTV also is another important one. It's a pretty diversified set of off-platform traffic. As I've said, you know, that can replace the web traffic, the organic web traffic that's under pressure. I will point out two things, however, that there is, you know, I said this the last time or in the last call, there's certain traffic, particularly the affiliate commerce-oriented traffic, when somebody's seeking a buying guide or a product review that is harder for us to replace. The unit economics there are pretty compelling.

Also with respect to platforms, some of these platforms come with essentially a rev share or a tax. Those are things that, you know, are dynamics as we look at this evolution. On your second question, yes, we do view asset monetization as a new ongoing tool in our kit. As I said, as long as the public market value of our EBITDA remains low, and it does, we're gonna continue to pursue asset monetization. If we see recovery in the public market value of our businesses, then we might find ourselves holding longer. The overall message is that we view the portfolio as dynamic and ultimately optimized for shareholder value.

Great. Thanks, Vivek.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Robert Coolbrith from Evercore. Robert, your line is live. Please go ahead.

Hi. Thanks so much for taking the questions. I just wanted to ask a little bit on the MedPage bookings. Any more color there? Yeah, I think, you know, generally speaking, you know, throughout the quarter, we've heard about a lot of strength in, you know, HCP spend, particularly in rare disease, but just generally. Any competition from any emerging players, or is that really, you know, being sort of managed separately as part of a search budget, or does that sort of bleed over?

Bret, you know, as you look at the strategic review process for other parts of the business, you know, do you think that there is the ability to sort of neatly carve out whole segments, or is there, in your view, you know, less likely sort of probability of finding a single last dollar buyer for sort of whole segments? Yeah, I'll just leave it there. Thank you.

Let me start on the question relating to MedPage and then, you know, let Bret get in on the second one. We had a tough Q1 for MedPage. I think it's a combination of timing, some very specific advertisers who weren't booking in Q1. As I said, we're seeing improvement going into Q2 into the balance of the year, hopefully this is largely timing. At the same time, I think there's just more market entrants. I think HCP, the HCP part, the healthcare professional part of the pharma ecosystem, does have just a number of new entrants in it, and that's adding inventory, I think, to what has fairly been a pretty tight market.

It is a little bit of a tale of two cities, where on the consumer side we had a very good quarter, a very strong one on the, you know, direct-to-consumer side. On the direct-to-provider side, it was more challenging. Having said that, the continuing medical education business, which is called Prime, which operates a little bit differently, not your conventional HCP engagement advertising, that continues to do well for us. Look, it's a mixed bag. As you know, the health segment has been a very strong segment for us for a while now. I kind of view these as hopefully temporary glitches in what's going on.

Then I'll just throw in, because we're talking about health and wellness and, while you didn't ask, the parenting and pregnancy piece, that is also one where the traffic challenges, particularly with respect to, you know, affiliate commerce within BabyCenter and What to Expect when someone is clicking on to buy, you know, a stroller or, you know, layette or something like that also has had the search challenges have presented themselves there. I'll pause there and let Bret answer the second question.

Thanks, Vivek, and thanks, Robert. I think the way I'd approach this answer is our goal is to pursue the per share value enhancement. As a result of that, we leave the aperture open for all sorts of pursuits and possibilities, transactions and transaction structures. Obviously, through the sale of connectivity, that was one of our reportable segments, one of our five divisions. The governor is not to limit ourselves to a transaction like that or exclude another transaction like that. The facts and circumstances will present themselves as we pursue different opportunities. Sometimes it's a reaction to inbound, sometimes it's an effort to stimulate inbound.

Essentially, the governor is our perception of the implied value of a business based on how our stock is trading versus what the private market value might be, and is there an opportunity to realize that gap in some efficient manner?

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Ron Josey from Citi. Ron, your line is live. Please go ahead.

Great. Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to drill down a little bit more on the operations of the business, and I was interested in your comment that a little more than 75% growth in social views for shopping and how you view social. So I want to understand how do you view social as a way to manage traffic longer term and other sources of call it distribution longer term as we have these call it traffic headwinds to search? Then as it relates to AI, your commentary on where we stand and how product development should improve. Talk to us about how this improvement is manifesting or how you can see this build into more products that can lead to even greater or actual return and greater growth. Thank you.

Yeah, great questions, Ron. You know, I think with respect to what you're referring to, the off platform views or the distributed media, I think what's developed over the last handful of years and maybe potentially sort of underreported is how much consumer engagement, in fact, we get far more consumer engagement off platform, meaning outside of the websites we own and outside of the apps we own, and get far more engagement for our content in places that we don't. You have two things happening. I think 1 is you've seen the shift in consumer behavior. We've all experienced it. If you look at your screen time, if you use an iPhone, you'll see how much of your time is actually not in the browser and is on these platforms.

We're gonna go where the consumer is, and so we've done that. The other piece that's come together is the ability to monetize that. I think in the early days of social media, it was difficult to figure out how to extract a rent. That has been solved across all of these platforms, and I think the platforms understand that we feed them with high-quality content, high-quality audience, and are more than happy to allow us to extract the rent, and they often share in that extraction of rent. I think that ecosystem has come together nicely. I think it's been somewhat well-timed with some of the challenges we've had, I think, as an industry with search.

On your question around where does what we're doing in AI show up, I think it's gonna show up and has started to show up in product features. I've talked in the past about things that we have implemented that I think have driven growth at properties like Lose It! and at VIPRE. Then I've talked about Halo and Clara and IMAGINE and the AI-based ad targeting and insights engines that we've created. We've had a number of products that I would call customer-facing, whether it's consumer-facing, or, you know, market-facing from a B2B point of view. Also from a product and engineering velocity point of view, we have long pipelines across all of our various products of things that we wanna have happen and do.

In the past, where we would talk four quarters out or five quarters out, we're now talking weeks out to push product. I think that velocity is gonna be really valuable in unlocking revenue. One of two things happens. Either we're in a business where a pipeline isn't, you know, the product pipeline, and what we're looking to do isn't deep, at which point this is gonna be a cost savings because we're gonna be able to use, you know, fewer resources to do same, or it is very deep, and we're using same resources to accelerate. Either way, we see value creation.

Look, I think the nuance that I was trying to convey in my prepared remarks is that I think, you know, at the start of AI, we were viewing it more as sort of the quote-unquote copilot. It is now the pilot, and I think that putting AI at the center of our work really is changing the velocity with which things are happening. I'm super excited for it.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Ross Sandler from Barclays. Ross, your line is live. Please go ahead.

Great. Vivek, it's sort of related to what you just answered on that last question, but it sounds like, you know, just from, you know, 90 days ago, and certainly from last year, we've had a bit of a tone change around internal use of AI to not only kind of push content, but also to manage costs across the organization. Could you just talk about, you know, how the thinking might have changed on that? Related to the off-platform growing and some of the, like, kind of legacy affiliate, high margin declining, you know, how does that combined with, you know, managing costs vis-a-vis AI impact your view of like operating margins or EBITDA margins across the businesses over the next couple years? Thoughts on that would be great. Thanks, guys.

Yeah. Look, I think what is I don't know if anything's changed in terms of our views around the impact and the positive impact AI can make on our business. I think the toolkit has just improved significantly. I mean, it is, and we're seeing it, I think across the board. I mean, it is pretty extraordinary how much more powerful some of these models have become and their capabilities. I think that's part of it. I also think that it's how we are staffing and how we are training our population. We've put a lot of effort into an AI-forward mindset across the entire company, and I think that's starting to engage.

I think, look, as things succeed in some parts of the portfolio, other parts of the portfolio, you know, we have a very good healthy internal competitive dynamic inside the company. People see things that are happening in one place and wanna see them replicate. I think this is, you know, only going to improve. Tell you that, you know, I think we are really focused on bringing in, you know, every new hire we're making is very AI native hire. I think that's a very important perspective as well. I think on your questions around margin, look, this is the trick. We've always been a very margin-focused company. As Bret pointed out with the pending close on the connectivity business, you know, that was our largest margin business.

We're gonna look to try to improve margins in the businesses we own, notwithstanding some of the pressures around high margin revenues being replaced by lower margin, but still very good margin businesses. Our free cash flow orientation is built into the DNA of the company. It is how we think. It is how we value potential acquisitions. It is honestly the source of all of our capital allocation, right? I mean, this is what we do. We generate free cash flow, and we recycle that free cash flow, whether it's share repurchases or it is acquisitions of companies or capital investments in our business.

Look, I don't, you know, I think we're very focused on we're a margin first probably, company maybe more than anything else, and we recognize these dynamics, and we're gonna work through them.

Thank you. Your next question is coming from Shyam Patil from Susquehanna. Shyam, your line is live. Please go ahead.

Hi, this is Daniil on for Shyam. Thanks so much for taking our question. I was just wondering if you could elaborate a bit on the acquisitions of Popular Science, Dwell, Domino, and Business of Home. Just what was the rationale behind these deals, and how do you see Ziff Davis adding value to these businesses in the coming years? Thank you.

Yeah. Look, I think that you've heard me talk about this a lot. I'm a big believer in the value of brands. It is very hard, particularly in today's market, to build brands. When you get a brand like Popular Science, which was founded, you know, 150 years ago, arguably the most famous well-known science media brand ever, you know, you get excited about that. We're going to incorporate it into our tech group where science has always been an area of interest for our audience. I think it's a natural tuck in for our CNET group. For the home and lifestyle brands, you know, Dwell is a great architecture-oriented brand. Domino is a great interior design brand.

Business of Home, anyone that's in the trade knows it, reads it, and, you know, will swear by it. Getting into a category and all brands, by the way, Dwell and Domino in particular, with very strong social footprints. From our point of view, I think helping those businesses unlock the social value that is, I think, embedded into these brands, as well as unlocking other product development opportunities that exist within those spaces. Look, I think in the end, I think I pointed this out, you know, this was from an acquisition price point of view, a very attractive one for us. That's one thing that I'll say is that, you know, the market fears to us present a really unique opportunity to be an active buyer in the space. I mean, the valuations are compelling.

While these businesses are experiencing headwinds, not unlike the ones we're experiencing, I think we're showing some resilience, and we're showing the ability to manage through, transform, and come out the other side with very, very valuable assets. Back to this, you know, as a manager of assets inside of the company, these are assets that I'm excited for us to own.

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

Thanks, Tom. Thank you all for joining us today on our Q1 2026 earnings call. As always, we value your time and investment in our company. We look forward to continuing to engage with you in the coming months.

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines at this time, and have a wonderful day. Thank you once again for your participation.