海豚娱乐 (DLPN) 2026财年第二季度业绩电话会议：营收增长2.5%

核心要点

• 2026财年第二季度营收同比增长2.5%至1440万美元。上半年营收增长3.8%至2720万美元。
• 营业亏损从上年同期的约10万美元扩大至100万美元。净亏损为160万美元，而2025财年第二季度为140万美元。
• 调整后EBITDA从62.8万美元降至约24.3万美元。管理层将大部分变动归因于约40万美元的留任奖金以及约40万美元与诉讼相关的法律及专业费用。
• 管理层预计，随着留任奖金的消除以及诉讼相关费用回归正常水平，第三季度的盈利能力将实现“实质性提升”。
• Dolphin预计，其季节性走强的下半年将受益于旗下两大营收主力业务The Digital Department和42West的业务活动。
• 管理层仍有信心首个DealMaker合资项目将在年底前推向市场，同时Graviteur Studios和Copper Books将提供额外的长期增长选择。

核心财务业绩

2026年前六个月，营收为2720万美元，较上年同期的2630万美元增长3.8%。调整后EBITDA亏损约为22.4万美元，而上年同期亏损约为8.2万美元。

业务与运营表现

Dolphin旗下的代理机构在各类娱乐与营销活动中保持活跃，包括戛纳国际创意节、翠贝卡电影节、阿纳海姆VidCon网红节以及圣地亚哥国际动漫展。公司还强调了42West客户获得的艾美奖提名。

The Digital Department预计仍将是核心增长业务。管理层表示，上半年表现令人满意，8月初的早期指标令人鼓舞。其业绩比重高度倾向于开学季和假日营销活动，品牌方通常会在9月和10月开始签约网红。

与Kynetic Media Ventures联合成立的Graviteur Studios将开发面向流媒体、电视和院线发行的创作者主导型内容。Dolphin预计项目预算将小于其典型的电影项目，并打算在可能的情况下降低或分摊融资风险。

与DealMaker的合作关系旨在为Dolphin带来现金营销费用及股权，且无需消耗其资产负债表上的资金。目前正在评估两笔潜在交易。管理层的长期目标是建立每年推进三到四个合资项目的节奏。

Copper Books使Dolphin能够通过西蒙与舒斯特出版公司（Simon & Schuster）获得全美乃至某些情况下的全球发行渠道。管理层表示，该合作关系还有助于吸引营销客户，不过构建项目储备库仍需时间。

管理层展望

管理层预计，随着非经常性留任奖金的消除和诉讼费用的下降，第三季度的盈利能力将有所改善。管理层还将下半年描述为Dolphin季节性表现较强的时期，尤其是9月至12月。

公司预计，在两年多后到期的银行债务最终将消除每年近220万美元的本金和利息支出。纽约和洛杉矶的主要租约将于2027年下半年到期，管理层认为这每年可带来约100万美元的节省。

Dolphin还拥有约1.27亿美元的净营业亏损结转。管理层相信，这将使大部分预期的偿债和租赁节省直接转化为净利润。

对于DealMaker，管理层仍有信心首个项目将在2026年底前推向市场，并希望随后能达成第二笔交易。管理层指出，如果今年能完成一笔交易，那么2027年完成两笔交易将是合理的初始节奏。

风险与关注事项

• 第二季度与诉讼相关的法律及专业费用仍处于高位，约为40万美元。管理层正在努力降低这些成本，但恢复正常的时间和程度仍存在不确定性。
• The Digital Department和42West在季节性上依赖于下半年更强劲的业务活动，这使得9月至12月的营销活动需求对全年业绩至关重要。
• 关于《Youngblood》的一项美国流媒体协议尚未达成，耗时超出管理层预期。国际销售可能取决于多伦多国际电影节和美国电影市场。
• Graviteur Studios、DealMaker 和 Copper Books 仍处于早期阶段。它们的项目储备和经济贡献需要时间来发展。
• 现金及现金等价物从2025年底的880万美元降至770万美元。

分析师问答环节亮点

Graviteur Studios融资：管理层预计创作者主导的项目预算相对适中，在某些情况下可能在100万美元左右或以下。Dolphin计划在可能的情况下与发行合作伙伴分摊或转嫁融资风险。

数字业务展望：The Digital Department上半年的营收同比略有增长，而部分核心营业利润指标则下降了数十万美元。管理层预计，季节性关键的下半年将决定该部门的全年增长。

Dolphin Intelligence：客户兴趣已经显现，但该AI营销服务目前正被整合入现有公关合同中或作为附加服务提供。管理层旨在将其确立为独立产品，并在年底前签署首个标杆客户。公司表示，除已做出的投资外，该服务不需要额外成本。

DealMaker项目储备：Dolphin与DealMaker正在评估双方均看好的两个合资项目。公司的最终目标是在三到四年内构建包含6至12个活跃项目的投资组合，潜在领域涵盖消费品、现场活动及其他类别。

业绩电话会议完整文字记录

完整财报电话会议逐字稿

管理层陈述

Operator

Good day. Welcome to the Dolphin Entertainment Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Please note this conference is being recorded.

I will now turn the conference over to your host, James Carbonara with Hayden Investor Relations. James, you may begin.

James Carbonara

Thank you, operator. And once again, good afternoon, everyone. 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 results. Please refer to the forward-looking statements contained in the earnings release published today as well as the most recent SEC filings and reports.

During the call, management will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures including adjusted EBITDA or loss, the company believes that 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. Bill, please proceed.

William O'Dowd

Thanks, James, and welcome, everyone. As always, I'll start by walking through the key highlights, and then Mirta will take you through the detailed financials before we open it up for your questions.

Revenue for the quarter came in at $14.4 million, up 2.5% year-over-year and $27.2 million for the first half, up 3.8% compared to last year. Driving that top line was another busy quarter for our agencies. We are front and center at several large events since we last spoke in May, including the Conn Film Festival, the week after our last earnings call. And the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity in June, which is the preeminent conference of the year for the marketing industries. Also, 42West had a big presence at the 25th Tribeca Film Festival in June and picked up multiple Emmy nominations last month. The digital department ran the creator gifting lounge at VidCon Anaheim. Elle's clients were on stage at the Nexus Global Summit in New York City and just a few weeks ago, we were all over really all over San Diego Comic-Con, where I'm pretty sure we saw James Carbonara dressed up as Darth Vader.

But the thing I really want to spend a minute on is something new, Graviteur studios. We announced this after we last spoke in May and then announced it -- excuse me, in June time to the start of the Cannes Lion Festival I just mentioned. We built Graviteur with our partners at Kynetic Media Ventures which is run by David Freeman, someone Dolphin and myself have been doing business with for over 15 years.

David ran the digital division of CAA since its inception. When he left at the start of the year to start Kynetic, we developed together the idea of a production studio for leading creators and influencers, many of whom he signed at CAA. Both Kynetic and Dolphin believe that audiences will follow creators across platforms, and we certainly witnessed that with the box office success of 2 movies directed by creators this spring.

In fact, the name of our studio is a Port onto Gravity and Altor, signaling that these creators are as in their own right and that they yield gravitational pull on their audiences who follow them. We believe we can help produce, distribute and market creator-led content across streaming platforms, television networks and theatrical releases. It's a natural extension of everything we've learned running a marketing consortium sitting inside pop culture for years. We know these audiences, we know these creators. And now we have a vehicle to actually build and own something with them. We're early days here, but we think this can become a meaningful part of the story over the next few years, and we'll keep you posted as it develops.

Now let's talk about the bottom line because the numbers this quarter need just a couple of notes of context. Two things to note. In fact, one, we had about $360,000 of onetime retention bonuses land in the second quarter across a few of our subsidiaries; and two, legal and professional fees related to our litigation ran about another $360,000 in the quarter. We believe this number will come down to normal levels in Q3 and going forward. And the underlying business held up just fine anyway. We expect a real step up profitability in the third quarter as these 2 items roll off.

Here's how we think about the bigger picture. The core engine of this business has already pointed toward meaningfully better free cash flow, independent of anything new we do. Our bank debt matures in just over 2 years, actually 2 years from next month. Freeing up almost $2.2 million a year in principal and interest payments. Our large New York and Los Angeles leases roll off in the back half of next year, which we believe will lead to savings of another roughly $1 million a year.

And with approximately $127 million of NOLs on the balance sheet, almost all of those savings will flow straight to the bottom line. That's the base case and it doesn't require anything new to go right, just running the businesses we already have.

Finally, with insiders holding a substantial stake in the company, management remains deeply aligned with shareholders in the pursuit of long-term value. In fact, under the 10b5 buying plan currently in place for myself, I expect to own over 5% of the DLPN common stock in the next week or 2. What DealMaker and Graviteur Studios represent is optionality on top of that. With respect to DealMaker, our strategic partnership began in February, and we used the rest of Q1 and Q2 to put together our respective teams and processes and to evaluate a pipeline of potential deals.

We believe we're getting closer to having our first deal and to creating a steady flow of deals coming to market after that. We both like a couple of the names we're evaluating, and we still expect to have our first deal in the market before the end of the year. Between that, Graviteur and our other ventures, we feel we've got real upside sitting on top of a business that's already heading towards strong free cash flow on its own.

So with that, I'll turn the call over to Mirta Negrini, our Chief Financial Officer to walk through the numbers in more detail. Mirta?

Mirta Negrini

Thank you, Bill, and good afternoon, everyone. I will now review our 2026 second quarter financial results. Total revenue for the 3 months ended June 30, 2026, was $14.4 million, an increase of 2.5% from $14.1 million in the same quarter of prior year. For the 6 months ended June 30, 2026, total revenue was $27.2 million, an increase of 3.8% from $26.3 million in the same period in prior year.

Our operating loss was $1 million for the second quarter of 2026 compared to an operating loss of approximately $100,000 for the same period in 2025. Operating expenses for Q2 2026 were $15.5 million. As Bill noted, this included approximately $400,000 of nonrecurring retention bonuses for certain employees, which will not be included in Q3 of 2026 or Q2 of next year.

In addition, we had approximately $400,000 of legal and professional fees related to our litigation that we are working to reduce going forward. This compares to operating expenses of $14.1 million in Q2 of 2025. Net loss for Q2 of 2026 was $1.6 million compared to a net loss of $1.4 million in Q2 2025. Basic and diluted loss per share for Q2 2026 was $0.13 based on approximately 12.8 million weighted average shares outstanding compared to basic and diluted loss per share of $0.13 in Q2 2025 based on approximately 11.2 million weighted average shares outstanding.

Turning to adjusted EBITDA. After adding back noncash and other onetime items, our adjusted EBITDA for the second quarter of 2026 was approximately $243,000 compared to approximately $628,000 in the second quarter of 2025. As Bill discussed, the year-over-year change is driven almost entirely by the retention bonus time and the elevated litigation costs.

For the 6 months ended June 30, 2026, adjusted EBITDA loss was approximately $224,000 compared to a loss of approximately $82,000 in the prior year period, reflecting the same factors. This quarter, we've introduced adjusted earnings per share. Adjusted EBITDA basic and diluted earnings per share for Q2 2026 was $0.02 based on approximately 12.8 million weighted average shares outstanding compared to $0.06 basic earnings per share for Q2 2025 based on approximately 11.2 million weighted average shares outstanding and $0.04 fully diluted earnings per share for Q2 2025 based on 17.4 million weighted average shares outstanding. We think this gives you another way to track our progress on a per share basis, and we plan to continue reporting it alongside adjusted EBITDA for future quarters. Our cash and cash equivalents as of June 30, 2026 were $7.7 million compared to $8.8 million as of December 31, 2025.

With that, I'll turn it back to the operator to open the floor for questions. Operator, would you please poll for questions?

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And your first question today is coming from Derek Greenberg from Maxim.

分析师问答

Derek Greenberg

I wanted to ask about the Graviteur studios projects. Maybe if you could just explain the structure that a little bit more in terms of how much you own versus Kynetic kind of how much financing do you provide creators and just the overall economics of that project?

William O'Dowd

Sure. Derek, thank you for the question. Yes, Graviteur is something that was a natural for us and David. As I say, we go back 15 years with David, who ran the creator division, the digital division of CAA. And why? Because we're used to structuring films and TV shows and streaming series for -- we've done that for 30 years, right? And then using creators as either talent in front of the camera or talent as directors is certainly something that all of Hollywood has shown an interest in the last 3 or 4 months, I'm proud to say we were building this at the start of the year before it became vogue, mostly because we know that the people who follow these influencers will look for their content across platform.

We see in the world seeing popular people that do short-form video on TikTok are creating long-form videos on YouTube, and they're creating quite a following. And if anything, was proven by a couple of the films that were released in theatrically in May, they were wild successes, these movies, Backrooms and Obsession, highest grossing films in their distributors' histories is saying something. And they were each with creator directors who had built a following online and then made their first feature film or second feature film in one case.

And they don't need big budgets. Backrooms -- excuse me, Obsession was made for $750,000, and it's done over $200 million at the box office. So it gives you a sense of just how successful I was referencing. The level of success I was referencing. So in terms of financing, we'll look to finance those movies how we would if they were part of Dolphin films. Oftentimes, we lay off the risk when we can occasionally something like a Blue Angels that worked out very well for us. We might split the cost with a distributor like IMAX in that case.

In other cases, we may be able to lay it off entirely as we did for the most part with Youngblood, right? So the budgets will be a little smaller than the other projects, I would think, on average. Again, because with some of these projects, you can make them for even less than $1 million or around $1 million. So it wouldn't be a big capital investment anyway, but most of the time, we'll try and lay them off as they are. If that is helpful.

Derek Greenberg

Okay. Got it. I was wondering if you could possibly unpack how to think about the performance of the business across all your divisions. If you're seeing like relative outperformance in certain areas versus others specifically maybe within the digital department. I was wondering how growth is there and how that segment is performing.

William O'Dowd

Yes. The digital apartment, it's definitely the subsidiary that we believe will have tremendous mid- and long-term growth potential for us. We are happy with how the first half of the year went. Also, we have some visibility going into their prime season of the second half of the year. So much of their success in any given 12-month period depends on the time period between back-to-school and the holidays, especially the holidays.

So you generally -- you don't need to wait until November and December for that. You'll get a really strong indication by September because the brands will start reaching out to talent, the influencers in this case, to contract for brand campaigns that will be running in November and December. They'll need to start contracting in September and October. We certainly don't have a reason to believe that the business won't grow from last year when it really had a great second half of the year. We believe that will happen again this year.

We're seeing encouraging signs on that already here in the first half of August. we're so weighted to -- a couple of our companies are so seasonal, I should say, like the digital apartment that the first half of the year numbers, while very comparable to last year, revenue is up a little. Some core operating income metrics might be down a couple of hundred thousand, but it really comes down to the second half of the year for us and what our success will look like as we continue to grow the companies.

Derek Greenberg

Okay. And then on the Youngblood movie. I was wondering, I think last call, you said there is still potential for an international distribution agreement possibly streaming distribution agreement. I was wondering if there's any updates on those 2 items.

William O'Dowd

No. And that's -- the streaming is a little disappointing to us. We had thought that we would have a streaming deal by about now. International will often take through the international sales markets, which are in the second half of the year have not occurred yet. You'll -- that's often Toronto Film Festival, which is the week after Labor Day and the American film market, which is in Los Angeles in November, in the first week of November. So we might need those 2 markets to start firming up some of our international sales on Youngblood. But we're working with our distributor, Well Go to really make a stronger push to get a streaming sale in the U.S. certainly here in the second half of the year, but it would be great if we could see if we could -- what we can do here in Q3. But it has not occurred yet.

Derek Greenberg

Okay. Got it. And then on other initiatives that was fairly new, the Dolphin Intelligence marketing capabilities for AI. I was wondering just how that's progressing, what you're seeing there?

William O'Dowd

I would say we have a couple of big calls coming up here in the next 2 weeks and many clients have expressed an interest in it, but it's -- what we're seeing in the early days is we're folding it into existing PR contracts or it's being layered on top of existing PR contracts. And what we're going to try and do is break out the service to be more of a stand-alone because we think it's valuable in its own right. And we haven't had the signature client yet that would take it and say, look, we've signed up blank for this service. So I think that's a mission for us here in the second half of the year just because it's all upside to us.

If we get it, there's no additional cost to us to service or provide the service from what we've already invested in. So it's something that we're excited about because it's just -- it's a great return on investment from this point forward, right? So I think that one is something we're looking to accomplish before the end of the year. And I think definitely speaking of upside, the first of the DealMaker ventures to enter market will be the poster child for upside for Dolphin as we put pipeline together, as I mentioned in my prepared remarks, with DealMaker to be able to do ventures together with consistency.

But just to remind everyone, those would be what qualifies as a venture, I should say, would be something that a start-up or an existing company that's starting a new product line or a venture of some sort, which would pay Dolphin through its subsidiaries, cash marketing fees that we would get paid to market the venture but we would also receive an ownership stake in the venture as well. So those are the perfect combination of upside with cash contracts.

We're not trading our work for equity. We're actually getting both. And with DealMaker being a tool in our tool belt together with the venture to go raise capital, then it won't be for lack of funds that someone could actually then hire Dolphin and its subsidiaries to market the product. So it's a pretty interesting one-two punch of you get the best-in-class marketing companies with access to capital that DealMaker provides. So that -- I would say that's our biggest focus as management is to get the first deal in market before the end of the year. And then maybe even how close can we be to announcing a second venture by the end of the year as well. That's where our focus is.

Derek Greenberg

Yes. Great. That's super helpful. Maybe just on DealMaker. Just maybe if you could talk about the pipeline a little bit more. I mean, you just said that you could possibly have another deal right after. I was wondering the cadence of how many deals per year kind of the timing from here?

William O'Dowd

Yes. It's a little bit like starting up Graviteur, right, or a film slate. You need a few months or whatever period of time depending on what you're starting, right, to build the deal flow or have the pipeline no different here. We announced this project at the end of February or second half of February, I believe. And worked with DealMaker to evaluate -- we set out that we will give each other 3 months. I think I even said that maybe on the last quarterly earnings call and evaluate deals together and then pick the first one we'd go out with.

We have 2 deals we like quite a bit. We both would look to proceed, and we're in the process of seeing if we can close on them to then take them to market. I think we were hoping to do at least one by the end of the year. I feel very confident we'll be able to do that and hopefully another one, like I said. And I think I mentioned we would be comfortable saying we could do 2 next year if we did this year. But obviously, we're in a shoot to get to the point where we could do 3 to 4 a year with pretty steady regularity. That's our hope.

And then since they can span all types of industries and/or categories. Some might be consumer products, some might be live events. Some might be something unique that's not in 1 of those 2 categories. It allows us to both create a variety in our slate as well as put different subsidiaries of ours as kind of like the lead marketing agency. So it won't be 6 straight ventures that all need 1 agency to market a particular consumer product that they have an expertise in. We would be spreading it out, and that allows us to create a pretty robust and steady pipeline.

And then we just imagine the day in 3 years' time and we've got half a dozen to a dozen of these in market in 3 or 4 years, and you've got these choose your flavor, right? Optionality, lottery tickets, upside catalysts, whatever it may be, that any 1 of them we would hope would have exit values to us in the -- in the certainly 8 figures and hopefully even higher. So that's what makes it a venture versus just a joint project of a couple of our companies. So that's what we're building, and we're pretty excited about it.

Derek Greenberg

Okay. That makes a lot of sense. Last one for me, just on the Copper Books partnership. Just maybe if you could talk about how that's going.

William O'Dowd

Sure. On the Copper Books. And one other thought I had just as I wrap that last one, I just remember a fact. And I should point out again, with the DealMaker partnership, those ventures I was mentioning require 0 capital of Dolphin. So each of that slate, those projects we envision having in 3 to 4 years that are growing in the market, we hope to an eventual exit, they required 0 capital off our balance sheet. So that's why we went looking for a partnership. That's why DealMaker was so strategic to us.

As a matter of fact, in each of those ventures, we imagine we're getting paid to market. So that's the upside for us. In terms of Copper Books, yes, a lot of our publicists, a lot of our PR agencies, in general, are excited about having this partnership. We have many of our clients want -- either want to write books or have already written books, many of our clients have already written books and want to write more. So having that partnership that gives us national distribution in many cases, global distribution through Simon & Schuster is really a great asset.

We're fans of Ali Trowbridge, who started Copper Books and is the CEO, and she's very tight with many members of our senior management. And we're excited. We're -- it will take us time just like with Graviteur and just like with DealMaker to build up a pipeline of things that would otherwise go through this partnership, a book that's already been written and finished in the last 6 months already has a distribution partner. So it will take a little bit of time to create the get the water through the pipes, so to speak.

But it's a great tool for us to have. It's something different from any competitor in the PR space or the influencer space that we know of and it could become a nice little resource for us, too, to who knows, identify new clients that we can offer this to that sways them to hire our marketing firms for it because, of course, we'll be marketing those books as well. So it might take a minute.

Maybe we'd have something to say on Q3, I would imagine by the time we get to the 10-K next year, we'll be able to talk about it more in depth, but it's another -- of the 3 announcements we made in the first half of the year that speak to the upside potential of having built this group, DealMaker, Copper Books and Graviteur. That's how we see all of them. They're great in their own right, and they're additionally great business development for us because they're differentiated. No one competitor of any of our companies has any of those 3 capabilities. So we're pretty excited for all 3.

Operator

There were no other questions in queue at this time. I would now like to hand the call back to Bill O'Dowd for closing remarks.

William O'Dowd

Well, thank you. And thank you, everybody, for listening. We're continuing to build, as you heard, and get every quarter is 3 months closer to the happy days of the free cash flow from the leases that expire in the second half of the year now in next year. And 1 year after that, we're finished paying off our bank loan that was used to make those acquisitions that built this super group.

So brick by brick, as I say. And we're entering our fun season. The second half of the year is always better for us than the first half of the year. And many of our companies surge, as I said, between September and December. TDD, the digital apartment is certainly one of them. 42West is another. And of course, those two are our biggest revenue companies.

So when they swing up, the whole company swings up. But many of our companies are having a great start to the second half of the year. Sure Fire is doing very, very well, to name a leader for us. And we're excited to report our numbers in November. So with that said, I look forward to speaking to everybody again then. Thank you very much for your time.

Operator

Thank you. This does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.