comScore - Earnings Call - Q2 2025

Executive Summary

• Q2 delivered 4.1% revenue growth to $89.4M, with 60% cross‑platform growth and another double‑digit quarter in local TV; adjusted EBITDA rose 25% YoY to $8.9M and margin expanded to 10.0%.
• Versus consensus: revenue beat ($89.4M vs $85.9M*), while EPS and EBITDA missed on S&P’s definitions; EPS was pressured by FX losses, higher interest, and taxes; note company reports adjusted EBITDA excluding FX whereas consensus EBITDA includes FX*.
• Guidance maintained: FY revenue range $360–$370M and adjusted EBITDA margin 12–15%; Q3 revenue expected roughly flat YoY due to timing of a large enterprise contract recognized earlier in the year.
• Potential catalysts: expanded U.S. JIC certification (now full national currency readiness with personified demographics) plus MRC accreditation, and an announced strategic review with Goldman Sachs—update promised by or before the November Q3 call.

Values marked with an asterisk (*) are retrieved from S&P Global.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• Cross‑platform momentum: “60% growth in cross‑platform solutions” driven by Proximic and adoption of Cross‑Platform Content Measurement (CCM), with CEO highlighting “best in class products” and audience scale across digital, TV, and social.
• Local TV strength: “another quarter of double‑digit growth in our local TV offering,” which remains the only MRC‑accredited local TV measurement in market; expanded JIC certification reinforces national currency readiness.
• Profitability mix improvement: Adjusted EBITDA increased to $8.9M and margin to 10.0%, supported by higher‑margin cross‑platform products; CFO noted cross‑platform margins are expected to be higher.

What Went Wrong

• EPS/GAAP profitability headwinds: Net loss widened to $9.5M (10.6% margin) due to FX losses, taxes, and interest on senior debt, driving loss per share to $(2.73).
• Segment softness: Research & Insight Solutions declined 7.4% YoY on lower deliveries of custom digital products; declines in national TV and syndicated digital offset syndicated audience strength elsewhere.
• Cost pressure: Core OpEx rose 4.6% YoY to $90.4M, primarily higher employee compensation and cloud computing costs tied to a large enterprise platform client, partly offset by lower data costs.

Transcript

Speaker 3

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Comscore second quarter 2025 financial results conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during this session, you will need to press *11 on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, John Tinker, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Speaker 4

Thank you, Operator. Before we begin our prepared remarks, I'd like to remind all of you that the following discussion contains forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements include comments about our plans, expectations, and prospects, and are based on our view as of today, August 5, 2025. Our actual results in future periods may differ materially from those currently expected because of a number of risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties include those outlined in our 10-K, 10-Q, and other filings with the SEC, which you can find on our website or at www.sec.gov. We do this to claim any duty or obligation to update our forward-looking statements to reflect any new information after today's call. We'll be discussing non-GAAP measures during this call, for which we have provided reconciliations in today's press release and on our website.

Please note that we will be referring to slides on this call, which are also available on our website, www.comscore.com, under Investor Relations Events and Presentations. I'll now turn the call over to Comscore's Chief Executive Officer, Jon Carpenter. Jon.

Speaker 1

Thanks, everyone, for joining us this evening. With 4% year-over-year revenue growth alongside 25% adjusted EBITDA growth, we delivered a solid print in the second quarter on both the top and bottom line, driven by accelerated growth across our cross-platform solutions, along with another quarter of double-digit growth in our local TV offerings. With 60% growth in cross-platform, I remain encouraged by our efforts to build and bring to market best-in-class products that demonstrate Comscore's cross-platform measurement suite of capabilities, products that are buoyed by the audience scale that this company has across digital video, traditional TV, and social. Additionally, Comscore continues to establish itself as the gold standard for local audience measurement, the go-to for both traditional and new media clients here in the U.S.

Currently, we remain the only TV measurement offering available to the market that is both an accredited product by the MRC and that has been certified by the U.S. JIC, two independent bodies comprised of our media clients. In the quarter, I'm also pleased to report that we were able to expand on our longstanding partnership with Google and deliver on a project earlier than we had anticipated, which from a timing perspective benefited us in the quarter. Our ability to deliver on projects like this ahead of schedule highlights our progress in becoming a more agile and efficient organization. At the beginning of the year, we laid out what it was going to take for us to drive growth, execution across platform, coupled with a relentless focus on driving currency adoption. Through the first half of the year, I'm proud of the progress that has been made.

Cross-platform growth through the midpoint of the year has been 40%, driven by solid progress in Proximic, our cross-platform audience activation offering, as well as great early adoption of our cross-platform content offering, Comscore Content Measurement (CCM). In addition, with MRC accreditation of our TV offering at both the local and national level, coupled with an additional JIC certification of our demos, our Comscore TV currency product delivers more accurate, stable, and consistent TV measurement that our clients can count on. As we pivoted to the second half of the year, we've continued to sharpen our focus, and our goals remain clear.

We believe that the next era of measurement will be defined by Comscore's ability to unlock our full stack of cross-platform measurement capabilities, breaking down the silos that act as a tax placed on today's market by a past that continues to hold on to old ways of doing things. That is why we're so excited about Comscore Content Measurement, a product we just launched in January. Comscore Content Measurement exists to answer questions about audience behavior holistically and across platforms, tied to the content being consumed. Whether it's a show being watched on traditional TV or the ability to reach an audience streaming a piece of content or engaging with an influencer on a social media platform through a mobile device, CCM is built for clients to plan and reach their desired audiences regardless of the platform. The early adoption has been exciting, and we continue to iterate.

We've listened to client feedback, and our product roadmap has us delivering against a number of the most important features by year-end, well ahead of initial plans. I'm encouraged by the momentum we've seen, and I look forward to updating everyone on the progress we make here down the stretch. With that, let me turn it over to Mary Margaret Curry for more detail on our financial results in the quarter. Mary Margaret.

Speaker 2

Thank you, John. Total revenue for the second quarter was $89.4 million, up 4.1% from $85.8 million the same quarter a year ago. Content and ad measurement revenue of $76.8 million was up 6.3% from the prior year quarter, driven by growth in our cross-platform and local TV offerings. Cross-platform revenue of $12.8 million was up 60% compared to the prior year, driven by higher usage of our Proximic and Comscore Campaign Ratings solution, as well as the adoption of Comscore Content Measurement, which launched at the beginning of the year. Syndicated audience revenue of $64 million was flat compared to the prior year quarter, with the declines we've seen in our national TV and syndicated digital products fully offset in Q2 by growth from our other syndicated offerings, including double-digit growth in local TV from higher renewals and new business.

Our movies business also remains strong, generating $9.6 million of revenue in the second quarter, up 3.6% from the prior year. Research and Insight Solutions revenue of $12.6 million was down 7.4% from Q2 of 2024, in line with our expectations, primarily due to lower renewals and the timing of deliveries for certain custom digital products. Adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter was $8.9 million, up 24.5% from the prior year quarter, resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 10%. A year-over-year increase in adjusted EBITDA was largely driven by revenue growth from our cross-platform products, which, as previously mentioned, are expected to generate higher margins. While we remain disciplined in our cost execution, our core operating expenses increased in the second quarter, primarily due to higher employee compensation approvals and an increase in cloud computing costs related to work we're doing for a large enterprise platform client.

We also continue to transform how we operate and invest in new products and capabilities, which include enhancements to existing products, upgrades to our tech stack, providing faster data delivery, and increasing interoperability as we continue to roll out key integrations. Based on current trends and expectations, we're maintaining the revenue guidance we gave on our last earnings call, with revenue expected to be in the low end of our range of $360 to $370 million. We remain encouraged by the growth in our cross-platform and local TV offerings and believe our guidance reflects a balanced view of what we expect to see in the back half of the year. We currently expect revenue in the third quarter to be roughly flat compared to the prior year quarter, which accounts for the shift in revenue related to the Google contract that John mentioned earlier.

We are also maintaining our adjusted EBITDA guidance for the full year, with an anticipated margin of 12% to 15%. With that, I'll turn it back over to John.

Speaker 1

Thanks, Mary Margaret. Before we open it up for questions, a quick update on our board's ongoing strategic review. We hired Goldman Sachs to advise on strategic and capital structure alternatives for the company that should benefit our shareholders. We expect to be able to provide our shareholders with an update on this engagement and any potential outcomes on or before our next earnings call. With that, let's go ahead and open it up for questions, Operator.

Speaker 3

Thank you. At this time, we will conduct the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, to ask a question, you need to press *11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. Please stand by while I compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Jason Kreyer, from Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead.

Speaker 0

Thank you. This is Cal on for Jason, and congratulations on the quarter. Maybe just to start on the cross-content measurement product, you noted in the slide deck substantial client demand, some positive feedback. This is a newer product that we haven't really heard much about. Just curious if you can talk more about what you're seeing early on and the longer-term opportunity you see in this product.

Speaker 1

Hey, Cal. Thanks for the question. As we talked about in the prepared remarks, our cross-platform content measurement product really brings together a holistic view of audiences across platform. It's tied directly to the content that's being watched, whether that content is an episode of a sitcom or an influencer's video on a social media platform. It's really this unified and deduplicated view of content and audiences that allows both the buy side and the sell side of media to plan and act on a complete cross-platform view of the world. I think as we look at who's engaged, given the product's capability and the scope of the product, it's not surprising to us that we're seeing strong interest here from broadcasters to streamers to advertisers to agencies and platforms. We're really encouraged by the strong response we've received here in the early innings of the product's development.

Speaker 0

Great. Just as a follow-up, it seems like this was another strong quarter for Proximic. I'm just kind of curious where you guys continue to gain traction. Is this more with partners, or is this more of an organic, direct go-to-market strategy that's resonating in the market?

Speaker 1

Yeah, the vast majority of the business continues to scale with the partner set that we have across the programmatic ecosystem. The team's done a really nice job of engaging with our partners in that space, but also the efforts in the second quarter here around direct selling, really working closely with our agency partners and their brand clients to really help drive demand of the cross-platform activation product that continues to scale really nicely. We have been pleased with the combination of both the efforts of the team to direct sell against brands and agencies, as well as the momentum that we're seeing across some of the biggest programmatic platforms.

Speaker 0

Great. I appreciate the details.

Speaker 3

I am showing no further questions at this time. I will now turn it back over to CEO Jon Carpenter for final remarks.

Speaker 1

Okay, great. Thanks, everyone. Let me just take a moment here to recognize our employees and thank everyone for their hard work here to help us really deliver a strong quarter and continuously help us day in and day out deliver for our clients. I would like to thank our investors, as well as our clients, for your continued trust and support and partnership. Thanks, everybody, for joining us this evening, and we'll look forward to talking to everybody soon.

Speaker 3

Thank you for your participation in today's conference. This does conclude the program. You may now disconnect.