Dolphin Entertainment, Inc. Q4 FY2025 earnings call

Bill O'Dowd started by reviewing key financial and operating highlights. Dolphin uplisted to NASDAQ in 2017 with an acquisition strategy and in 2025, the first year without a major acquisition, results started paying off. Highlighted full year and Q4 revenue and adjusted EBITDA growth. Discussed partnership with DealMaker, a market leader in online capital raising, to unlock community capital for entertainment - led consumer product and lifestyle companies. Introduced Dolphin Intelligence, a new division focused on AI - driven marketing strategy and execution. Continues to pursue selective disciplined venture investments. Mentioned directional commentary for 2026 including expected revenue growth, adjusted EBITDA margin expansion, and catalysts like organic growth, DealMaker partnership, Dolphin Intelligence, lease savings, and full repayment of bank debt.

Full year revenue grew approximately 10% to $56.7 million. Fourth quarter revenue was $15.6 million, up 27% year-over-year. Full year adjusted EBITDA reached $2.9 million, up over 200% from $900,000 in 2024. Q4 adjusted EBITDA came in at $1.7 million compared to a loss of $0.5 million in Q4 of 2024. Dolphin has significant federal and state net operating loss carryforwards of approximately $127 million.

Expect continued revenue growth in 2026 on an organic basis with additional contributions from DealMaker - related marketing engagements and Dolphin Intelligence services as they ramp in the second half of the year. Expect adjusted EBITDA margin expansion to continue. Believe adjusted EBITDA will grow significantly faster than revenue again in 2026 as in 2025. Note the business has seasonality with the first quarter being lightest and fourth quarter typically strongest. Highlight catalysts like continued organic growth, DealMaker partnership revenue, growing adoption of Dolphin Intelligence services, lease savings, and full repayment of bank debt.

Q: Congrats on the quarter. I wanted to ask about just the DealMaker partnership you had outlined. I was wondering if you could touch a little bit more in terms of the revenue opportunities from that. You had mentioned marketing and equity, but I was wondering maybe if you could get a little more granular in terms of how that's tied directly to deal flow and how those opportunities will be sourced just the inbound, outbound process?

A: Sure. And thanks, Derek. Yes, we're pretty happy with Q4, as you can imagine, right? DealMaker, yes. Well, first, a couple of pieces of context. DealMaker represents to us a partner that allows us to scale a massive opportunity in our business, which is to launch consumer products with our own clients, whether individuals or companies or to attract new clients because we have the ability to partner with DealMaker and raise the capital to launch new products. The ecosystem of capital fundraising for raises under $5 million is very small. Many investment banks or funds won't fund in amounts of $0.5 million, $1 million, $2 million, yet those are the exact amounts that it usually takes to launch a liquor brand, a cosmetics brand or oftentimes consumer products and other verticals. To have a partner like a DealMaker that could help us raise that money for our clients and then be able to do the follow - on raises and participate in raises that in success, those brands need another $2 million to $5 million 12 to 18 months later and then another $5 million to $10 million 12 to 18 months after that, it was very exciting for us. In these raises, we would get a marketing fee for promoting the product, of course, during the fundraising process. And what we're also doing is we're building the strength of our clients and our future clients because we would obviously only look to do partnerships wherein our group was marketing that brand. And part of the use of proceeds of the fundraise could be for the marketing campaigns that we're creating the strategy for and then would be asked to execute upon. So I would imagine that in most cases, those marketing campaigns would be in the 6 figures per year per brand. We would certainly expect that. In terms of deal flow in, the reception in traditional Hollywood to the fact that Dolphin has now partnered with the leading online community fundraising platform has been very welcoming. I've done 3 or 4 meetings with our most traditional talent agency partner. I have a call later tonight on a potential brand that would like to use this service with a well - known influencer fronting it. So we expect a very strong and robust pipeline from our friends in the community, the Hollywood community, but we have our own clients and brands that we work with also that could benefit from this service. So the deal flow should not be a problem for us. Was that helpful?

Q: Yes, that's very helpful. I guess just one more on that. Generally, what do you expect the length of deals to be? And who's typically the investors that are buying these deals?

A: Sure. Well, I'll use a Reg CF offering. And I realize that today's earnings call is probably the most business school speak earnings call we've ever done, right? But many people are probably familiar with Reg CF and Reg A, their regulations that came into effect with the Jobs Act, maybe 15 years ago or so. Reg CF allows you to raise up to $5 million per raise every 12 months with one company or brand. And typically, we look at taking 6 to 8 weeks of preproduction, as we would call it, in the movie business, but assembling the paperwork and filing since these are registered securities offerings. So let's say, 2 months of prework. And then once the raise goes live online, we would look to complete the raise in full within 4 months typically. DealMaker's averages that, if not a little less. And their success rate is off the charts. I believe in the last few years, it's been over -- well over 90% of all raises started have been completed successfully, which is just unheard of, right? In that world, the how do I say the typical investment size is probably $1,000 to $2,000. You're building an online community, 2,000 people invest $2,000 each and you just raised $4 million. So that's why the marketing of the offering is so important, both the performance ad marketing capabilities of DealMaker with their own in - house agency and then combine it with the earned media, the PR and the influencer marketing of Dolphin, and you have a pretty compelling case for creating awareness of the fundraise.

Q: Got it. That's very helpful. And then on a related note, just your venture portfolio. I was wondering if you had any timing on your end in terms of when you think to add additional ventures, if there's a target for the year and as well as if there's just any potential monetization events on the horizon as well?

A: Sure. Well, I mean, obviously, the DealMaker strategic partnership allows us to go faster and broader with potential venture opportunities once we ramp it up. So we're about a month into the partnership. We had given ourselves a 60 - day window to go through all the different processes together and then start vetting the first most promising deals that come in through our pipeline. So we would expect to do that vetting by somewhere -- start the process, I should say, somewhere in the second half of April, maybe near the month -- the end of the month of April. And DealMaker has an internal scoring metric. Dolphin has our own process of evaluating these opportunities. And I would hope to be in market with the first one this summer. And instead of doing 1 to 2 in a 12 - month period, I think it will be 2 to 3, we would hope, if not more. But as we ramp it up, I think we'll get faster and stronger in subsequent years because we'll have gone through the process together. And in terms of which types of products, we're certainly looking at traditional verticals that entertainers typically have fronted over time. So obviously, liquids in general, we have a couple of those in the pipeline, and that may be liquor, it may not, right? Again, I've definitely talked extensively about our desire to have skin care and cosmetics. And then really beyond that, it ties into categories where you traditionally see especially influencers and influencers of scale, people with followings of 5 million, 10 million, 15 million can play in areas from suntan lotion to wellness products would be another category to, I guess, even sports adjacent consumer products. Those would be areas that we would focus on. Athletes are certainly an area that we would focus on as well.

Q: Okay. Great. And then turning to the other new department of the business, the AI and Intelligence segment you've laid out. Could you maybe just talk a bit about how you expect that to contribute to growth and just the opportunity you see with current customers?

A: Sure. Yes, we see that as additive, as I was trying to indicate in the prepared remarks, our existing clients, we expect will have an interest in receiving the services of Mark's division, starting with doing an audit of how they show up now in generative AI searches and also an audit of how they're seen by the large language models or not seen. It's a very simple test, and it's pretty powerful in the room with a CMO or a brand marketing team to just simply enter into ChatGPT or into Claude or whichever engine you want to use. What do you think of brand X, Y, Z or I'm shopping for a tomato sauce. What are the -- what are your 3 favorite ones, right? What are the 3 best tomato sauces out there, et cetera, and just see where the brand comes up. Since consumer behavior has started to shift and actually ask those types of questions at the moment of purchase in the grocery store and in front of the aisle and not just entering the search, but maybe taking a picture of the offerings on the shelves and entering that same question into a search engine, I think most of the brands we've spoken to understand the incredible importance of strategizing their generative AI approach to the market. And that idea of going to the existing clients with that capability and just becoming even more of a trusted partner to them. And then secondly, quite frankly, just like DealMaker, Dolphin Intelligence is a business development tool for us. We can approach people that we would like to be in business with and talk about not just the incredible earned media powerhouse that's been built with SureFire, with the door, with 42West with special projects and what the group can do and that cross - selling is obviously working given our numbers, right? But now we can add on capabilities that in the case of Dolphin Intelligence, very few marketing companies have and certainly in the earned media space. And then in the case of DealMaker, I'm unaware of any marketing company that's got a strategic partnership like what we have with DealMaker. And so we believe that those will be real differentiating factors as we go attract new, bigger customers as well and with bigger budgets.

Q: Okay. Got it. That's really interesting. One more, just on the Youngblood, you talked about the biggest opportunity is up ahead with selling the streaming rights. I was wondering how that process is going and potential time line or expectations relative to box office performance?

A: Yes. On independent movies like this, much like with our Blue Angels, typically, your streaming sale is larger than your box office and sometimes 2 or 3 times larger. In Blue Angels case, it was 5 times larger. I don't know what it will be with Youngblood. We'll find out. We've presented the film to all the major streaming services through our distribution partner, Well Go. And in addition to the streaming sale, we have a second window, as we call it, even before the streaming sale, which is what we call electronic sell - through or pay - per - view. So when you go on to Amazon or Apple or wherever and you can rent or buy the film a few weeks or months before it hits a streaming service. That's what we mean by that window. That window is opening up here at the end of the month of March. So we'll have a better indication by the time we get to our Q1 earnings call in the middle of May, how that window did and then where we stand with the streaming sale. That's what we've modeled for this film was higher revenue in those 2 categories on a what we call a programmer like this. This is a very popular genre, very commercial type of property, a hockey movie, right, sports movie in general.

Q: Okay. That makes sense. Last question, just overall performance this year, double - digit organic growth. Do you think that level is sustainable going forward?

A: From your mouth to God’'s ears, Derek. We're certainly going to get -- try as hard as we can. I do believe we're going to grow every year just organically like this. I'm very pleased with last year. Obviously, we surged in the fourth quarter more than even projected. 27% year - over - year revenue growth is incredible for a company like ours. But what I think we were indicating in the prepared remarks that I feel strongly about is that we do anticipate that if we're with each incremental dollar of revenue, we would believe that much of it will fall to the bottom line. And therefore, our margin expansion will continue to grow as well. We hit 5% last year, which is fantastic, again, coming from years of acquisition and building a group that would eventually earn enough to overcome the cost of being public, which is where we passed and now 5% margin, we're striving for 6%, 7%, 8%, 9%, 10%, right, and keep growing our margin expansion. So as the revenue grows, whether it stays in 27%, we'll find out, right? But it should -- any incremental revenue growth should have an outsized importance on the margin expansion. And ultimately, we think we're going to be judged by our profitability and our free cash flow. So you combine that margin expansion with the cash flow catalysts that we outlined as well, a reduction in lease expenses in both New York and L.A. We'll have offices in New York and L.A., but they certainly won't be as expensive as the rents that were predate COVID. And then, of course, just simply the free cash flow we're going to save or generate, excuse me, from paying off our term loan with the bank. Obviously, we'll save the cash of the principal, but we'll also have the profit enhancement by not paying the interest on that loan. So we're excited about those. And what we're always on the horizon, that horizon has just gotten a lot closer, Derek, right? We're in March of '26. Our New York lease is up in December. Our L.A. lease is up in November of '27, and our bank loan matures September of '28. So it's like 3 dominoes in 3 straight years. And the end of those dominoes is only 2.5 years away. So we're pretty confident that we're going to have a pretty good cash flow engine that's already started in the fourth quarter and all of '25 really, but we'll continue to accelerate because of those cash catalysts as well.