Dolphin Entertainment, Inc. (NASDAQ:DLPN) Q1 2024 Earnings Conference Call May 14, 2024 4:30 PM ET

Company Participants

James Carbonara - Investor Relations
Bill O’Dowd - Chief Executive Officer
Mirta Negrini - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Allen Klee - Maxim Group

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the Dolphin Entertainment First Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this call is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Mr. James Carbonara, Investor Relations. Sir, the floor is yours.

James Carbonara

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone and thank you for joining us today for Dolphin Entertainment’s first quarter 2024 earnings call.

Before we begin, I’d like to remind everyone that during the course of this conference call, management may make forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on management’s current expectations and beliefs and involve risks and uncertainties that could differ materially from actual events. Please refer to the cautionary text regarding forward-looking statements contained in the earnings release published earlier today as well as the most recent SEC filings and reports.

During the call today, management will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures, including adjusted operating income or loss. The company believes these will provide helpful information for investors. Reconciliations to the most comparable GAAP measures are provided in the earnings release.

Now, I would like to turn the call over to Bill O’Dowd, Chief Executive Officer of Dolphin Entertainment. Bill?

Bill O’Dowd

Thanks, James and welcome everyone. I’ll start by reviewing some of the key financial and operating highlights from our record setting first quarter of 2024 and then Mirta will provide a more detailed financial overview before we open it up for Q&A.

Starting with the headlines, well, as you may have seen in our earnings release a few minutes ago, total revenue for Q1 was $15.2 million increasing 54% compared to Q1 last year and which was also a significant increase of 27% over our previous quarterly revenue record of $12 million, established one quarter earlier in Q4 of 2023. On the bottom line, we delivered positive adjusted operating income of $1 million. For those unfamiliar, adjusted operating income strips out non-cash and non-recurring items and is the primary metric we use to evaluate our performance.

Reporting positive adjusted operating income is tremendously gratifying and validates the success of our strategy, especially compared to the $1.9 million adjusted operating loss in Q1 of 2023. Our positive adjusted operating income of $1 million also represents another significant sequential increase of 236% over the positive operating income of $23 million we reported for Q4 of 2023. By concentrating on organic expansion among our top tier marketing entities and launching complementary ventures at a steady pace, we believe we are strategically positioned for sustained growth in both revenue generation and adjusted operating income, the crucial financial metric against which we gauge our performance as I said earlier. We believe that this accelerating growth we’ve reported today highlights the powerful combo of our industry leading marketing and publicity services firms firing on all cylinders, coupled with tangible payoff as we begin to commercialize our premium content ventures with Blue Angels simply being the first venture to monetize and have an exponential impact on our financial results.