I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today for the Inuvo first quarter twenty twenty five shareholder update call. Today, Inuvo's chief executive officer, Richard Howe, and chief financial Wally Ruiz will be your presenters on the call. We would also like to remind our shareholders that we plan to file our 10 Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission this morning. Before we begin, I'm going to review the company's safe harbor statement The statements in this conference call that are not descriptions of historical facts are forward looking statements. Relating to the future events. And as such, all forward looking statements are made pursuant to the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. When used in the call, the words anticipate, could, enable, estimate, intend, expect, believe, potential, will, should, project, and similar expressions as they relate to Inuvo Inc. Are as such a forward looking statement. Investors are cautioned that all forward looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ from those anticipated by Inuvo at this time. In addition, other risks are more fully described in Inuvo's public filings, with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which can be reviewed at www.sec.gov.

The company makes no commitment to disclose any revisions to forward looking statements or any facts, events or circumstances after the date hereof that bear upon forward looking statements. In addition, today's discussions will include references to non GAAP measures. The company believes that such information provides an additional measurement and consistent historical comparison of its performance. A reconciliation of the non GAAP measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures is available in today's news release on our website. With that, I'll now turn the call over to CE Al CEO, Richard Howe.

Thank you, Katie, and welcome, everyone. We're thrilled this morning to be able to announce yet another record breaking quarter ended 03/31/2025. Where we achieved a 57% year over year growth rate generating $26,700,000 in revenue our largest order ever. Equally compelling about this result is that it occurred in what is typically our weakest seasonal quarter. Trailing twelve month revenue for Inuvo is now $93,500,000 putting us on track to beat and break through the $100,000,000 barrier in this year. Once again in this quarter, virtually all the important financial metrics improved year over year including our adjusted EBITDA our operating cash, and gross profit, which was up 41% year over year. Both the platform and the agencies and brands product lines were up materially. In the first quarter. It may also be appropriate to note for our shareholders that over roughly the last five years Inuvo has had a 6.8% compounded quarterly growth rate. For reference, the average for public companies between 50 and 200,000,000 in annual sales by our analysis is about 3.4%. Wally will share more details about our financials in his discussion. Inuvo's financial strategy for 2025 is to grow both platform and agencies and brands revenues at double digits.

Keeping product margins steady while generating cash from operations. The product strategy is to accelerate platform growth through automation, and within agencies and brands to support growth through AI performance enhancements and self serve functionalities. The people strategy is to end the year at no more than 90 people adding engineers and data science professionals within platform. And in agencies and brands to continue building out our sales and account management teams. At roughly $1,000,000 of annual revenue per employee, for a technology company, Inuvo is operating at the high end of the comparable efficiency curve. The valuation strategy for the company includes items on the proxy that I will touch on in my closing statements. Within platform, grew 61% year over year. As we had mentioned on previous calls, we began re engineering technologies and services within this product line in 2023. Anticipating market changes, which have now come to fruition. We see continued strong demand here and a healthy pipeline of new business opportunities. Campaign volume within platform was up 100% year over year. And is reflective of the adoption of our capabilities by media buyers. And an indication of the scalability of the platform product line. The more ads we show, and the higher the quality of leads we deliver, the more revenue we generate in platform.

Within two of our key platform clients, we actually saw a 200% year over year increase in ad impressions. One of the technological bottlenecks within this product line is our ability to onboard new websites. And to monitor existing websites within the overall network. In this regard, we have reduced by 50% the time takes to onboard these new sites. We have significantly enhanced our reporting, monitoring and quality control capabilities. As we had mentioned on our year end call, the market we serve with our platform technologies and service is roughly a $10,000,000,000 annual market. This market is in the midst of undergoing significant changes that we are in a unique position to capitalize on at this point in time. We have three large paying clients for these services. Two of which have grown materially. Year over year. And the third is roughly flat. But that's only because the growth opportunities in the others have had our focus. And will continue to have our focus in 2025. For our agencies and brand clients, we experienced a 31% year over year growth rate within the first quarter of twenty twenty five. We entered the year with a strong pipeline of new business opportunities Our client base has grown 23% year over year and we've added roughly 20 new clients thus far in 2025.

We have roughly 15 clients using our self serve capability now, that have the potential to scale. Among which include a large technology and automotive company. Our two largest clients are both up year over year roughly 80% of the clients who were running in Q1 of twenty twenty four are currently running in Q1 of twenty twenty five. Within the first quarter of twenty twenty five, we beat our KPIs on average by a significant 61%. And these are the KPIs that we track for our clients. We provide this measure so our shareholders can understand generally how much better the performance of the intent key is to our competitors. Because ultimately the KPIs that we get from our clients are in fact the best competitor that they are using. Since launching the Enhance self serve version of the intent key earlier this year, we have seen a considerable increase in the number of visitors who are corporate and self serve website. Up roughly 430% sequentially. Self serve revenues, while still a small component of our overall revenue, have grown steadily month over month so far this year. As a reminder, this self serve product has the highest gross margin of any product Inuvo sells.

We continue to add salespeople most recently to handle the Texas region We have a number of major holding companies testing the new platform and anecdotally Inuvo brand awareness appears to be rising. We've had three recent client feedback notes that emphasize superior performance transparency and insights associated with our artificial intelligence. One of those clients reported seeing three times the number of conversions after activation. Another reported RAI was outperforming their other campaigns. And the third commended our technology's ability to signal purchase intent ahead of the implementation of the tariffs. Technologically, in addition to the launch of the enhanced self serve platform, we also began testing our newest ZIP code level targeting features. Using a number of channels, including the difficult to measure digital out of home channel. Which is the modern digital version of the billboard. Only dynamically targetable. As a reminder, when we empower our clients with our AI for discovering and targeting audiences, We also provide them with the reporting that measures the effectiveness of those audiences. [indiscernible] Using our proprietary machine learning technology. Which works even for hard to find channels like digital billboards. On a sequential basis, we've seen a 21% increase in our Inuvo newsletter subscriptions, and a 4% increase in our followers on LinkedIn.

At this time, I would like to turn the call over to Wally for a detailed assessment of our financial performance within the quarter. Wally? Thank you, Rich, and good morning. We delivered another outstanding quarter marked by significant revenue growth new clients and improved cash efficiency. Our continued focus on innovation, client partnerships, and financial management drove strong performance across all key metrics. Inuvo reported revenue of $26,700,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty five, a 57% increase over the $17,000,000 in the first quarter of last year. We saw growth in both client categories agencies and brands, and platforms. We had strong demand for our services from platform clients. Platform revenue was approximately $23,700,000 New products that launched last year emphasizing improved technology quality content, and compliance fueled the revenue growth in platforms. Agencies and brands revenue was was approximately $3,000,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty five. The growth in revenue was driven primarily by the signing of new clients, The reorganization of our go to market and support teams last year contributed to the higher revenue and agencies and brands in the current quarter. We expect the revenue mix from agencies and brands and platforms to remain relatively stable throughout 2025.

Cost of revenue increased to $5,600,000 That's up from $2,100,000 in first quarter of twenty twenty four. Primarily due to higher agencies and brands revenue, and to a new campaign with one of our platform clients. Cost of revenue is primarily composed of payments made to website publishers and app developers that host our advertisements. As well as to media payments made on behalf of our of brand clients. We reported a gross profit of $21,100,000 41% higher compared to the $14,900,000 for the same quarter last year. However, gross margin declined to 79% in the first quarter of this year, compared to 87.7% last year. The decrease in gross margin was due primarily to a new campaign with a platform client. We anticipate a small decline in gross margin in 2025 as revenues from this client scales. Operating expenses for the first quarter of twenty twenty five totaled $22,900,000 compared to $17,000,000 for the same period last year. Operating expenses include marketing costs, compensation expense, and general and administrative expense. Marketing costs primarily media costs incurred on behalf of clients were $17,500,000 in the first quarter of twenty twenty five compared to $13,100,000 in the same quarter last year.

The marketing costs were higher because of higher platform revenue. Compensation expense increased in the first quarter of twenty twenty five to $3,600,000 compared to $3,200,000 in the same quarter last year. The higher compensation expense was due to a benefit obligation arising from the death of an employee. And to higher incentive accrual. Our total employment, both full and part time, was 81 at the end of the first quarter of twenty twenty five compared to 93 for the same time last year. Or at the same time last year. Our 2025 budget includes hiring of seven additional people including engineers, data scientists, sales personnel, and account managers, of which three have already joined the company. General and administrative expense for the first quarter of twenty twenty five increased to $1,700,000 from $700,000 last year. And that's due to a $1,100,000 adjustment made last year to reduce the allowance for expected credit losses for an amount due from a former client that has been paid in full now. Other income was $541,000 for the three months ended March 31, 2025, and it was zero for the same period last year. In March 2025, the company received a refund from the Internal Revenue Service totaling $610,000 in connection with an amended Form that we filed in May 2023, for the employee retention credit.

Of the total refund, dollars 5 and 33,000 was recognized as other income. While 77,000 was recognized as interest and included in net financing expense. Net financing or interest expense was approximately $28,000 in the first quarter of of twenty twenty five compared to $20,000 last year. The net interest expense this year is higher due to higher borrowing within the quarter and is net of the $77,000 of interest income that I just mentioned. Net loss in the first quarter of twenty twenty five was $1,300,000 compared to a net loss of $2,100,000 for the first quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA in the first quarter of twenty twenty five was nearly a breakeven at a $22,000 loss. Compared to a loss of $1,000,000 in the first quarter of last year. As of March 31, we had cash and cash equivalents of $2,600,000 and no outstanding debt. During the quarter, we raised $1,200,000 at an average price of $0.73 per share through the sale of stock [indiscernible] the market agreement. Our capital structure is composed of 144,000,000 common shares outstanding and 11,000,000 employee restricted stock units outstanding. Effective cash management has allowed us to reduce cash burn by $1,000,000 in the first quarter of this year over the same quarter in 2024.

And we expect to generate cash in the second half of this year. In Rich's closing remarks, we will touch upon proposals in the proxy. This is merely a reiteration and explanation of what is included in the proxy statement, is not meant to be a solicitation. Rich, Thank you, Wally. We achieved 57% year over year growth in the first quarter of twenty twenty five, hitting yet another all time revenue high of 26,700,000.0 and a trailing twelve month revenues now standing at $93,500,000 All our important financial metrics improved year over year. Building on strong momentum unaudited April results point to continued strength Consequently, we project second quarter twenty twenty five revenue growth to be no less than roughly 25% year over year. I'd like to close by saying something about our Annual Shareholder Meeting scheduled for May 22. But this year, we are asking shareholders to vote for what we expect will be a 10 for one reverse split of our stock. We've long known that at roughly 150,000,000 shares outstanding we are outside the normal and optimal range for public companies of our size. We've recognized that having so many shares outstanding results at times and a share price that prevents some buyers from owning our company.

That it can lead to greater volatility and potentially manipulation.

And that impacts that it does also impact earnings per share. And while also potentially undermining investor confidence. As part of this decision that's on the proxy, did analyze public companies with revenues up to $250,000,000 and we settled on shares outstanding of approximately $15,000,000 or the 10 for one that's on the proxy statement?

This reverse split is unrelated in any way to our New York Stock Exchange listing requirements nor is the company currently working on any capital raise activities. I will now turn the call over to the operator for questions. Sylvie?

Thank you, sir. On your touchtone phone. You will then hear a prompt that your hand has been raised. And should you wish to decline from the polling process, please press star followed by the two. And if you're using a speakerphone, we ask that you please lift the handset first. Before pressing any keys. So please go ahead and press star 1 now if you do have any questions. And your first question will be from Brett Kesselinger at Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead, Brian.

Hey, guys. Thanks so much.

Outstanding results.

We've heard demand from the automotive sector has dropped significantly since tariffs were implemented Has there been any meaningful changes from your new anchor customer that you discussed over the last few quarters since the April And then what's the percentage of revenue from automotive as a percentage of the first quarter revenues? I don't know what the answer to the last one is and I don't think we provide that as a rule. But I will speak to the primary question about tariffs. We've been thinking about this a lot as well, Brian. Probably in the same way every company in America is right now. We have not seen the decline in our largest automotive client. In fact, we've seen the opposite We've seen an increase Now, I mean, that could partly be related to the fact that they're trying to remove inventory that's already here. Ahead of the tariffs. But it's also interestingly for us a consequence of this customer consolidating the various vendors they use to help them. With finding and targeting audiences. So, we've benefited from consolidation a little bit. But yes, for us, as it turns out, it's up.

Great. That's good to hear. I guess I'd ask the same question not only on that other large new anchor customer retail but in general, has there been any changes in your customer base's demand for advertising? Since April of course. I have to say generally, no. And particularly not in the large customer. So the other large customer you're talking about, everything is going very, very well And so there's no no there in that particular client, we've already got a budget that we've discussed with the client, obviously, coming into the year. And right now there's no changes being made to that budget. In fact, we're already with them about how the budgets might change for next year. And anticipate growth there.

Great.

One more tariff question, sorry, but it seems to be the hot topic, obviously, of this earning season. As it relates, you talked about new logo wins year to date. It was solid, And I'm wondering again, oftentimes since I've been covering Inuvo in times of uncertainty, business development namely new logo wins has slowed.

Customers tend to not look for new technology on certain times. Is that something you're experiencing now or as you discussed the brand is improving for Inuvo, has that been unchanged as well? Well, think we said we signed up 20 new ones this since the beginning of the year. So that's great. And the pipeline looks strong.

I think my answer to this question is I just I don't know. I mean, I think we're all kind of Brian, wondering how tariffs are going to impact whether they're going to continue what the outcome from it is. So at this point we're not seeing at least an impactful impact on our business. We are not.

Okay.

Great. My last question and numbers question.

Revenue was less in the fourth quarter compared to the first quarter yet you generated over $1,000,000 of EBITDA in the fourth quarter. And if we backed out a other income of $500,000 in the first quarter, you lost almost $05,000,000 in the first quarter in adjusted EBITDA. So I'm wondering, has the break even point changed I've already added back the non recurring 300,000 plus. Was there something else nonrecurring I'm wondering, or has the breakeven changed for a new bill?

Yeah, Brian, we had a couple of non recurring items. I think I referenced them in in my discussion. But also we have a new campaign with a with a platform client. [indiscernible] driving dollars right, revenue and driving dollars in gross profit was a little bit lower margin. And so it did affect did affect the number that you're referring to. To some extent.

So just to be clear, 25,000,000, is that ongoing? Or do you think it 25,000,000 a quarter should generally keep you at breakeven and higher than that profitable.

Yeah, I would say slightly higher than 25,000,000 you know, $6.27, [indiscernible] $2,627,000,000 in the quarter.

Great. Thank you. Thank you. Next question will be from Scott Buck at H. C. Wainwright. Please go ahead, Scott.

Hi, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking my questions.

Wally, to piggyback on that last question that new platform client that's driving a bit of a headwind on gross margin, You expect that to improve throughout the year though, correct? Is that business scales? Yeah. It's it's actually not a new client. It's a campaign within a New campaign. Client that we have. And yeah, we expect it to scale Yes, we do expect it to scale. And like I said, interestingly enough, it it has an effect on the gross margin itself. Making it lower. But it's driving a lot of gross profit dollars. And on the other side is that it has little to no marketing expense which is different than the rest of the platform clients. So So yeah, we're very happy with that business.

Great.

I appreciate that. And I'm curious, on seasonality should we expect typical seasonality to be maintained in 2025 or has that changed a bit? I think that hey, Scott. The reality of Q1 suggests that we're already out of what would be normal seasonality.

Typically, it's a Q1 is lower than Q4 simply because as we've said in the past, marketing generally and marketing budgets get reassessed in the first quarter and then they start spending them. In the subsequent Q2 quarter slowly and then accelerating in Q3 and Q4 although sometimes Q4 is a little bit lower than Q3. Don't know, it's kind crapshoot, depends on the year and the what's going on economically. Right now we appeared to be heading into this year strongly. And of course, I just gave at least some indication of where Q2 might be over last year.

So, things look don't know, right now they look pretty good for the year.

Yeah. Okay.

Perfect. And then last one, Richard, can we give a little bit of color on the initial feedback you're getting from the enhanced IntentKey self-service platform that you you launched earlier this year? And and how do you size that opportunity?

Well, we'd like to have that opportunity being many, many tens of millions of dollars in the next few years and there's no reason why it can't be. The market is sufficiently large The feedback is very positive and generally the feedback the positive feedback comes from the reality that like other large language based technologies, you know, the ability to simply prompt our AI and have it generate an audience and then execute on that audience it just has never existed before. [indiscernible] In advertising. So, the feedbacks positive on it. And at this point, we just we need more sales people and we need more visibility and we need more people knowing that this this capability exists. Great. Well, I appreciate the added color, guys. That's it for me.

Thank you.

Next question will be from John Hickman at Ladenburg. Please go ahead, John.

Wally, could you give us some guidance about the G and A costs going forward Without that million dollar I guess, I don't bad debt reversal. Should that expense line go back to what was kind of last year? Or should we go forward with the new number? So we've been running you if you back out that $1,100,000 reversal that occurred in the first quarter of last year. We've been running about 1,500,000.0 to 1,700,000.0. In G and A. A quarter. And we expect it to be in that $1,700,000 range. Going forward. Yes.

Okay, so that's kind of a that was a more of a onetime item?

Oh, was definitely a one time item.

Why you back that out in your EBITDA? I'm not sure. Did we [indiscernible] we did not, I guess, back then. [indiscernible] No you did not.

Okay well anyway thanks for the color. So this new campaign that you've got with the platform customer, is that something that's like I mean, should that should that type of campaign, like, grow in the [indiscernible] Other can you still hear me? Sorry.

Yes. We got you, John.

Okay. So that new campaign yeah. That new campaign, is that a portent of what's gonna [indiscernible] Or is that just way brands and agencies are not in that category. Margins should be I guess, more historical.

I think may they'll answer this just because there's a couple of questions in there, John. Hopefully, get the answer you're looking for here right. But one is the demand right now for let's call it campaigns within platform is strong. In fact, we've got a backlog we can't even fill right now because we wanna make sure we have all the right right processes and procedures in place for onboarding.

So that's slowing us down a little bit, but demand's there. So the answer to the maybe the first question you got is, yes, there'll be more of these campaigns that we're anticipating as the year progresses and as we start to onboard these campaigns. The second thing is, as is typically the case with any activity, of whether it comes from our agencies and brands or within the platform, is always kind of the same. Campaigns usually start off less profitable maybe than they do once they've been running for a while, because that's when the optimizations kick in. It takes time, some history. So yeah, when campaigns come on, they'll probably impact margins a little bit, but then as three, six months out, they start to to improve.

So but to expand on Wally's comment that if you ex out the or if you add in the lower marketing expense, related to that Are they profitability wise about same as the brands and agencies.

Oh, you mean platform a platform campaign versus an agency's and brand?

Campaign? Yeah.

Yeah. No. Agencies and brand campaign if you net out the cost the marketing costs for the platform business then the margins on agencies and brands is higher. On campaigns within agencies and brands is higher. And certainly higher for anything self serve within agencies and brands. That's near 100% margin.

Okay. Well, thank you.

You bet.

Thanks, John.

Next is Jack Cordero at Maxim Group. Please go ahead, Jack.

Hi. Thank you. This is Jack Federa calling in for Jack Minoru.

To touch on the dynamic of the self serve front again, you mentioned double digit growth goal for agency and brands and then obviously the new 15 new self serve clients.

Would you expect to scale?

How do you explain kind of the scope of initial self serve deployments compared to other campaigns And how does that growth develop relative to other parts of the business? Thank you. It's much easier. Easier to onboard them. Jack was asking this question, right? Yeah, it's much easier, Jack, to onboard self serve. There's less friction across the entire process. One of the benefits of this self serve capability is we've basically embedded our AI into existing campaign systems, demand side platforms. And all a client who wants to use this capability has to do is go into those platforms once they've built a model with our capability, which can take five minutes That's the incredible part of this technology. They just execute against it and the campaign system collects the money and just remunerates us. So it's as easy an onboarding and client product as exists. We don't even need to have a contract with the clients. We already contracted with the campaign system. So I hope that answers you, but that's one of the reasons why we're excited about this, just the ease with which people can get up and running test, test lots of things, is value.

In this other than of course the capability to target audiences they could never target before. Okay, that's helpful. And then you know, given the strong quarter, you mentioned kind of seasonality is out of whack now, can you talk a little bit more about the broader market What sort of sentiment are you hearing from agencies, CMOs? What important factors do you think are going to change as we progress into 2025? Thanks.

I think that one, Jack, is is the discussion we had a second ago. I think everybody's sort of waiting to see how the the current US strategy vis a vis world trade and tariffs is going to pan out So there's some apprehension that we hear only because we're all talking about it, but we're not yet seeing the implementation of any major changes, at least in our business. Now that could change in as we progress in the year. But at this point, that's the best I can tell you is everybody's talking about it but we're not seeing anybody sort of act on it from an advertising perspective yet.

Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

And at this time, Mr. Howe, we have no other questions registered. Please proceed, sir.

Thank you, Sylvie. And I'd like to thank everyone who joined us today on the call. We appreciate your continued interest in our company and we'll talk again at the end of our second quarter.

Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, this does indeed conclude your conference call for today. Once again, thank you for attending. At this time, we ask that you please disconnect your lines. Have a good weekend.