Banzai International - Earnings Call - Q1 2025

Executive Summary

• Q1 2025 delivered sharp top-line acceleration with revenue at $3.38M (+213% YoY) and gross margin expanding to 82.1% from 64.7% YoY, while net loss narrowed to $3.64M and adjusted EBITDA was a loss of ~$1.7M.
• Relative to Wall Street consensus, BNZI posted a modest beat: revenue $3.38M vs. $3.20M estimate and EPS -$0.15 vs. -$1.20 consensus (consensus and comparison values from S&P Global)*. Drivers included margin expansion and gains on extinguishment of liabilities, partially offset by transaction-related expenses and debt issuance losses.
• Management maintained full-year 2025 pro forma guidance of ~$20M revenue and $1.4M GAAP net income, reiterating the goal of cash break-even operations in 2025.
• Strategic catalysts: confirmed $20.3M debt repayment ahead of schedule (balance sheet de-risking), launch of Create Studio 4.0 (AI-heavy feature-set), and continued progress toward Act-On acquisition (financing contingency remains).

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Revenue growth and margin expansion: revenue rose to $3.38M (+213% YoY) with gross margin improving to 82.1% (vs. 64.7% YoY) on product mix and scale benefits.
• Balance sheet actions and equity improvement: $20.3M debt repaid ahead of schedule; stockholders’ equity improved by $5.7M in Q1, positioning for financial strength.
• Product and enterprise traction: Create Studio 4.0 launched with AI voice/image/video generation; expanded OpenReel agreements (e.g., RBC) and longer multi-year customer contracts supporting stickier revenue streams.

Selected management quotes:

• “Our pro forma revenue for full year 2025 is projected to be $20 million… Pro forma net income is projected to be $1.4 million in 2025”.
• “We completed a $20.3 million debt repayment ahead of schedule in Q1… which will also create a material benefit to net income for the full year 2025”.
• “Create Studio 4.0… has a ton of AI features: AI voice generation, AI image generation, AI video generation”.

What Went Wrong

• Losses persist: GAAP net loss was $3.64M, and adjusted EBITDA remained negative at ~$1.7M; operating expenses elevated at $7.68M including $1.4M one-time acquisition-related costs.
• Liquidity and risk disclosure: 10-Q includes a going-concern note citing substantial doubt about continuing operations without additional financing; management stated no liquidity concerns on the call, creating a narrative gap to monitor.
• Financing mix and cost of capital: reliance on high-cost term notes (Agile at 44%) and convertible structures adds execution and dilution risks until organic cash generation improves.

Transcript

Joe Davy (CEO)

For our products. We are seeing immediate results from having Vidello's next-generation video creation, editing, and marketing suite and OpenReel's digital video creation platform in the Banzai family of products. We achieved gross profit of $2.8 million in the quarter, an increase of 297%. Gross margin expanded significantly year over year, from 64.7%-82.1%. A few more highlights. We achieved annual recurring revenue of $14.9 million in the first quarter. This represents a 268% annualized ARR growth rate compared to Q4 of 2024. Adjusted EBITDA was a $1.7 million loss, which compared to a loss of $1.5 million in Q1 2024. Net loss improved by $4 million compared to Q4 2024. We acquired Vidello, a technology provider of video hosting and marketing suite solutions for businesses.

We signed a definitive agreement to acquire Act-On Software, an enterprise marketing automation platform provider, which is projected to increase FY 2025 revenue by $27 million on a pro forma basis and is subject to closing conditions. We completed a $20.3 million debt repayment ahead of schedule in Q1, which fully satisfied our outstanding debt obligations to several key vendors. We are extremely pleased to deliver this improvement in the balance sheet, which will also create a material benefit to net income for the full year 2025. Our customer base expanded to over 90,000 total customers. We launched Create Studio 4.0, the latest version of Vidello's award-winning video creation app developed by our Vidello subsidiary. We secured expanded agreements with RBC Capital Markets and other prominent enterprises for OpenReel.

This reflects our strategy of expansion in the enterprise and is an example of one of the key sectors where we are continuing to provide an increased value to customers. I just want to highlight again the milestone we achieved in fortifying our balance sheet, which is the $20.3 million debt we have repaid under our September 2024 restructuring plan. This has already delivered a meaningful impact to stockholders' equity with a $5.7 million improvement in Q1 and positions us for financial strength going forward. Moving on to our products. To date, we have consolidated three leading video assets within Banzai, all of which help marketers leverage video to engage their leads and customers more effectively. These include our recently acquired OpenReel and Videlo businesses, as well as our Demio product, which we are using to deliver this webcast.

If you run webinars in your business, please check out Demio. Again, this consolidated business delivered revenue of $3.4 million in Q1 2025, which was a 213% increase compared to 2024. In January, we announced a definitive agreement to acquire Act-On Software Inc. Act-On is a leading marketing automation platform provider. The acquisition is subject to closing conditions but could grow Banzai's pro forma consolidated revenue substantially in 2025. We have substantially scaled our customer base to now over 90,000 customers, which covers some blue-chip names across a variety of sectors. Some of our key customers and partners include RBC Global Asset Management, which we just expanded, as well as Cisco, Adobe, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Microsoft, Dell, Capital One, and thousands of others. We serve a variety of industries, including healthcare, financial services, e-commerce, technology, and media, and we have customers in over 90 countries.

We remain focused on targeting the mid-market and enterprise segment while continuing to support our small business customers. We are taking a disciplined approach to focus on acquiring stickier, high-value customers. Our flywheel business model continues to be at the center of our strategy. Developing great products leads to growing customer usage. This drives additional data and content on our products, which enables us to create additional value through integrations, automation, and AI features. We are building a moat in two key areas: integrations and AI enablement. Integrating multiple products on a single platform allows us to simplify our customers' workflows and deliver on our brand promise of 10 times faster and easier solutions. Continued investment in AI enablement will ultimately be key to our long-term success.

We believe that adding more solutions will, over time, expand the context available to us and will enable us to deliver more powerful AI capabilities. Our vision is to generate substantial long-term value by scaling inorganically in addition to the growth of our existing products. Our acquisition framework is centered around profitable businesses that align with Banzai's target enterprise and mid-market customer profile and our data and AI-driven strategy. We evaluate candidates on their ability to attract leads, engage, harness data and intelligence, and measure results. The opportunity for Banzai is twofold: first, to increase our product capabilities by acquiring strategically aligned products that serve our core customer base; and second, by accelerating our path to profitability and scale, and to hopefully benefit from multiple expansions along the way. I will now turn the call over to Alvin Yip, Interim Chief Financial Officer, to discuss our financial results.

Alvin Yip (Interim CFO)

Thank you, Joe. Hi, everyone, for joining the call. I would like to discuss our financial results for Q1. The total revenue for the first quarter of 2025 was $3.4 million compared to $1.1 million in the first quarter of 2024. However, we believe the non-GAAP metric, annual recurring revenue, or ARR, is more meaningful in evaluating the company's performance. ARR was $14.9 million for the first quarter of 2025 and represents a 268% increase from the fourth quarter of 2024. Gross profit for the first quarter of 2025 was $2.8 million compared to $0.7 million in the first quarter of 2024. Gross margin was 82.1% in the first quarter of 2025 and an increase of 1,700 basis points compared to 64.7% in the first quarter of 2024.

Total operating expenses for the first quarter of 2025 were $7.7 million compared to $4.1 million in the first quarter of 2024, excluding $1.4 million of one-time expenses related to acquisitions. Total operating expense totaled $6.3 million in the first quarter and is an increase of 54% year over year. Net loss for the first quarter of 2025 was $3.6 million compared to a net loss of $4.3 million in the first quarter of 2024. For the three months ended March 31, 2025, adjusted EBITDA was a loss of approximately $1.7 million, reflecting a decrease in the earning of approximately $0.3 million compared to a loss of approximately $1.5 million for the three months ended March 31, 2024. This period-over-period decrease is primarily attributable to increased gain on extinguishment of liability offset by loss of issuance of term notes and increased transaction-related expenses.

Now, I'm going to turn the call back to Joe for some closing remarks. Thank you, everyone.

Joe Davy (CEO)

Thank you, Alvin. Before I close, I'd like to review our 2025 forecast for our consolidated business. Our pro forma revenue for full year 2025 is projected to be $20 million, which would represent a 19% increase from full year 2024 actual revenue. Pro forma net income is projected to be $1.4 million in 2025, reflecting our transition to be a profitable company on a GAAP basis. We are still seeing solid revenue growth across our business at a much higher gross margin. Operationally, we're in a great position as we're positioned for cash break-even operations in 2025. We have worked diligently to strengthen our balance sheet and advance towards profitability and long-term growth. We have an expanding suite of synergistic products that drive real value for our massive customer base. Our business model, which is scalable and asset-light, is positioned for triple-digit revenue growth projection in 2025.

We are focused on generating sustainable value for our shareholders, and I look forward to providing additional updates throughout the year. Thank you, everyone, for attending, and I would now like to answer your questions. Operator? Let me see. I'm going to actually go through and review the questions that are in the chat. If you have questions that you would like to ask, if you can submit them to the chat, that would be great. We will see them come in here, and we will address them. I see a couple that have already come in. I am going to start from the top and work my way down here. I may loop in Alvin or Nancy as we go. The first question is, can you share any updates on the expected timeline for completion of the Act-On acquisition?

Also, how is the acquisition pipeline looking for 2025, given the macro uncertainty? Are you seeing any signs of caution from your customer base in terms of marketing or demand-generation budgets? Okay, looks like that was marked as answered. I will try to remember what the full question was. In summary, we are actively working on the Act-On acquisition. That's about all I can say at this time. We will continue to provide updates as we have them. I will just say that we are continuing to move forward there. How is the acquisition pipeline looking for 2025? I'll just say, from my perspective, I think it's looking great. We've obviously had a focus on getting through the process here with Act-On. That has, I would say, hasn't stopped us from pursuing additional acquisitions, but certainly that's our priority right now.

I think there are a number of other attractive companies that have reached out to us or that we've reached out to, and we're continuing to see a strong pipeline of interesting acquisition opportunities that I think would be a great fit for our business. Although we can't provide any specifics around it right now, I'll just say the pipeline is looking really good, and we're optimistic about what we'll be able to do with some of those additional businesses. As always, when you're looking at acquisitions, there are no certainties around will we be able to find deals that we love, find businesses that we love, etc. I think from a macro standpoint, there's definitely a strong supply of companies that we're seeing come into the market right now. The second part of the question was around macro uncertainty.

Are we seeing any signs of caution from our customer base in terms of marketing or demand-generation budgets? I would say it's quite the opposite. I will tell you, I can't reveal the name of the customer, but in Q1, we had a large enterprise that had previously been on a maybe one or two-year contract with us and renewed on a five-year contract with us. We're seeing many of our customers expanding or renewing on longer contracts. I think we're continuing to see strong demand. We've been seeing strong demand both in new and in the upsell side of things. Overall, I would say it's a very positive environment right now.

I think this is really being driven by there is macro uncertainty, but I think that macro uncertainty is leading companies to think about how they can be more productive, more efficient, how they can leverage technology to enable that. We are really well positioned to take advantage of that and to support customers in helping them make that transformation. I think it is actually a very exciting time. Everybody's trying to get more competitive and offer a better level of service and a better level of communication with their customers, and we're very well positioned to help with that. Thank you for the question. Let's see. Has the sales cycle changed with recent macro and tariff concerns? Obviously, this is related to the prior question, but I would say, no, we haven't really seen sales cycle change.

We have seen some customers, especially larger customers, moving to longer contract terms. This has been a positive thing for us. There are opportunities here where we can lock in customers for two, three, five years. That provides, obviously, guaranteed revenue for us over that period of time. It is beneficial to the customer as well because it gives them price certainty, which is something that they care a lot about right now. I think that a lot of procurement departments are looking to lock in longer-term agreements where they do not have to worry about potential inflationary pressures and things like that in the future. We like that because it gives us more certainty in terms of our planning and everything going forward. Thank you for the question. Let's see. This question, are there any plans to become break-even or cash flow positive in Q2?

I will say, so there are not liquidity concerns, to answer your question. I think we're fine from that perspective. A lot of our cash expenses in Q1 were, as we said, really one-time expenses, mainly related to audit and legal expenses around acquisitions. And as any of you who have been through this process know, it can be time-consuming and cumbersome and expensive to go through that process. You only have to go through it once. Now, of course, everything can be reviewed and audited on a consolidated basis. That is much more efficient for us and dramatically brings that cost down for us. I think we're I won't comment as to I'll stand by my prior statement that we're looking to reach cash flow break-even in 2025.

I won't give a specific commitment as to when, but I'll say we did make a major, major improvement. I think if you look at net income in Q1 as compared to 2024 or as compared to 2024 Q4, both of those were major improvements. I think it was a $4 million improvement. Huge improvement there. We obviously believe that we can continue that trend. Thank you for the question. Here's a question from Sandra. What conditions precedent remain to be satisfied to close the Act-On deal? It's really simple. It's financing contingency. We're working on it. We'll keep you guys updated as we make progress on this. Keep an eye out for that. Here's a question. Would you consider AI acquisitions in EMEA? Yes. We actually did make an acquisition in EMEA. The Videlo business, as many of you know, is a London-based business.

We are definitely open to other acquisitions. I think, actually, EMEA presents some really interesting opportunities because I think there are a number of companies. EMEA has historically just not benefited from as robust of a tech capital market as the U.S., frankly. I think, from our perspective, that is a little bit of an advantage when you are there. You can typically find similarly attractive assets, similarly attractive products, really high-quality products, high-quality businesses. Sometimes the valuations can be a little bit more attractive, and sometimes that makes for a better deal. I think that was the case with Vidello, for example. We are really pleased by that. Yes, we will continue to look at opportunities in EMEA. Again, not making any commitments as to any future acquisitions, but definitely something we are looking at and part of our strategy. Thank you for the question. Let's see.

You mentioned upcoming new partnerships at the last call. Can you say something about it now? Yes. I will say we have signed partnership agreements with several groups this quarter. I think some of them are still to be announced, but we're really excited about the progress the team has made here. We're focusing on partner enablement right now. We also have pending deals that we're working on with a couple of very large organizations kind of in the channel of our distributor side of things. We're really excited about the progress the team is making here. Lee Firestone is heading this up. He previously was the CEO of OpenReel. He's very focused on this. I think Lee's doing a great job. I think the whole team is doing a good job supporting him.

Nancy and her team have done a lot to support Lee in putting those agreements together. Yeah, we're very excited to see how this works. I think, especially with the inclusion of Act-On, if and when that happens, I think we'll be really well positioned to be able to, I think Act-On has a couple of really attractive channel partners that they work with today that we'll be able to then fold in, and vice versa, we'll be able to take that product into our new partner base. I think this is a very high-leverage activity, especially with a strategy like ours, because you can leverage those partners across a variety of different products. Kind of the more products you have, the more effective it can be. We're really excited to see that come together. It's still new for us.

I would expect to see more progress on this. We'll put out updates on this as we're making progress that we can share publicly, but very excited about what we've done so far here. Thanks. Let's see. Got a question here from Ed Wu. I think this is Ed Wu. It is. Hey, Ed. Ed asks, "What is your AI strategy and benefits? Have you had to invest much more in R&D for AI in your products?" I'll give a couple of real concrete examples, Ed. I think the way that we think about this internally is we think about we call these Mario mushrooms, okay?

I don't know if you've ever played Super Mario brothers, but in Super Mario brothers, you run around, you get the mushroom, you get bigger, you can jump higher, maybe you get one that lets you shoot fireballs, maybe you get one that gives you the little raccoon tail and you can fly. There are superpowers that you get as the user when you get that mushroom. We think about our products in those terms, right? What superpower does our customer get by having that product? What does it enable them to do that they couldn't do before that helps them to be more effective in their strategy and growing their business? I mean, a great example of this is in Demio, the product we're using right now. We have a feature we rolled out last year called AI Moderator that's been fantastic.

This is something that comes with anytime you set up an on-demand or automated webinar, you can attach an AI moderator to it. You can train that AI on your business, your presentation, if you've got a nonprofit, train on that. Whatever the context is, you can train that AI, and it will then be able to join the chat anytime somebody joins that on-demand webinar, whether it's 4:00 in the morning or whether it's 2:00 in the afternoon, anywhere in the world, and it will be able to chat with them, and it will be able to talk to them in their language, and it will be able to answer their questions about your business. That's super powerful. That's something that previously you would have had to have a team of salespeople to sit by and wait for people to join that, be able to access that.

We actually just published a piece of content about this. You can go to our YouTube channel and check it out from one of our customers. It has been a super powerful thing for a lot of customers where they, I think the customer in question was a company in the Midwest U.S., and they used Demio for recruiting. Previously, they were doing three live webinars a day. They were able to turn this into automated webinars that they could just run all the time. They were able to have the AI moderator answer questions, and that tells them how they need to follow up on stuff. It dramatically reduces the amount of time that they have to spend on this.

I mean, it takes it from hours and hours a day down to maybe 15 minutes-20 minutes a day to just go through the leads, which is a tremendous superpower for that customer. Another great example is our Create Studio product. We just launched Create Studio 4.0. It has a ton of AI features: AI voice generation, AI image generation, AI video generation. It will build you based on a description of what video you're trying to build. It will pull scenes. It will build an entire thing for you. It will let you customize it. It will actually deliver a finished video that you can just take and publish. It is just incredible. You think about the traditional barrier to creating and publishing video content can be days, weeks, months to produce a piece of video content. This allows you to do it in minutes.

That is just super, super cool. It is a huge superpower for our customers then to be able to do that. We like to think about this in terms of stuff that our customers maybe have always wanted to do, but they just could not do because they did not have the ability to do it with either their knowledge or their resources or their staffing or their time or the money that it costs or whatever. I mean, the Create Studio example is a great one because it can cost $20,000 to build a really high-quality 3D video. Using Create Studio, you can do it yourself. You can do it very quickly. It is only going to cost you $500 a year for an all-access pass to Create Studio. If you are interested in producing video, go check out createstudio.com and take a look at that.

Thank you for the question, Ed. There are many, many more examples. I guess I should say one more thing about this before we wrap up because I think that is the last question we have. My view of this, my vision of this is that I think AI is going to completely eat marketing. I think AI is going to touch everything that can be done behind a keyboard and mouse in the next five years. I think it will completely eat marketing. I think it is going to permeate every aspect of marketing. Our ultimate vision of this is having the tools that can create assets, can create email campaigns, can create videos, can create webinars, can create maybe ads and ad campaigns for you, landing pages, all this stuff, can optimize that, can test that, but can also put together a strategy for you.

I think eventually marketers will be able to come in and say, "Here's what I want to accomplish. I want to launch this new product to my existing customer base. Go pull my customer list. Write my emails for me. Build my webinar content for me. Set up my webinars. Set up my schedule. Run the webinars for me. Build videos. Build my landing page." It will be able to figure out which pieces of that you need to engage as part of your strategy. It will be able to go build out that content. The marketer's job will really shift from being more of a creator and a manager of all this stuff to being an editor, right? The marketer will be able to go in and say, "Okay, yeah, here's what I want to tweak about what this has produced for me.

Here's what I want to do in terms of the business analysis. They will not be so focused on the details of the implementation itself. I think that is going to be extremely powerful because today marketers get so much time sucked up by that implementation. Our vision is we put more and more of these pieces together. We integrate these pieces. It is going to be to ultimately be able to leverage those tools as kind of you can think of this as like the tentacles on an octopus, be able to go out and say, "Okay, great. We can reach into the email platform. We can reach into the webinar platform, the video platform, the lead database, the CRM, all these different tools. We can pull data down. We can push assets back up. We can create campaigns.

We can do all this stuff. We're looking at all kinds of opportunities around that. Sometimes we're looking at businesses that already have enabled some of this stuff. I think Act-On is a great example. They've made huge progress on that. Sometimes we're looking at businesses that maybe haven't enabled yet but have that piece. Like Demio is a good example of that. We bought Demio. It didn't have any AI features. We built those, but it had a great webinar platform. We knew we could take that core webinar platform and build some really powerful AI tools on top. Create Studio, same thing. It had some, had AI voice maybe, but it didn't have all the video generation features and things like that that we launched last quarter.

We're really excited to continue this strategy because I think as we scale this up, the more solutions we get, the more problems we can solve, just the more powerful this is going to be for our customers. I think it's going to ultimately, I think it's going to be huge. Look, I think if you look at the financial results for last quarter, as Alvin said, we're seeing a really strong increase on just about everything. Pretty much every single number improved last quarter. Hopefully that gives our shareholders confidence that we're heading in the right direction as a business. I think it certainly gives me that confidence. Got one last question here from Van. Thank you, Van. Any thoughts on share price? Yeah, look, I have lots of thoughts on share price.

I mean, I think it continues to be detached from the reality of this business, to be perfectly honest. That's my personal opinion. Nancy probably won't like me saying that, but I think everybody's got to make their own decision about what this is worth. We certainly have a couple of analysts that seem to agree with us. I think Ed has a much higher price target on the business. I know that Gao Xi has a much higher price target on the business. To be honest, I think we're trying to just do what we can to help spread the word, make sure that people know that we exist, make sure that people understand our story. I think that these Q1 numbers are obviously fantastic numbers. Hopefully when these numbers get reflected, I think a lot of people have been just looking at the trailing Qs.

Frankly, they did not paint a very pretty picture. I think now we are starting to see that picture show up in the numbers, be reflected in the numbers. I think it is a much prettier picture. Hopefully as we start, and I think the analysts have known this for a couple of quarters because they are real smart people and they watch this. I think now that the numbers are actually starting to get reflected, this will just hopefully continue throughout the year. As the numbers are starting to get reflected, I think that we will hopefully see continued improvement here. Hopefully that will be reflected in the share price at some point. The market can be irrational. That is just how it is. Stock markets are like that. We wish we had control over that.

I think what we can do is just continue to put up better numbers. Again, every single number in here is a huge win over the year over year and the quarter over quarter, pretty much. I think we are going to just continue to deliver better results. Hopefully we will see that start to reflect soon. All right. Not seeing any further questions. Let me go back to my script here. I want to say thank you all for joining the conference call today. I look forward to continuing to update you on our ongoing achievements, innovations, and growth. If we were unable to answer any of your questions, please reach out to our IR firm MZ Group. I will pull up their contact information here. Chris Tyson, reach out directly to them, and they will be able to assist you.

Thank you very much for joining the call today.

Alvin Yip (Interim CFO)

Thanks, everyone.