Dolphin Entertainment (DLPN) 2026 年第二季財報電話會議：營收成長 2.5%

重點摘要

• 2026 財年第二季營收年增 2.5% 至 1,440 萬美元。 上半年營收成長 3.8% 至 2,720 萬美元。
• 營業損失自去年的約 10 萬美元擴大至 100 萬美元。淨損失為 160 萬美元，而 2025 財年第二季為 140 萬美元。
• 調整後 EBITDA 從 62.8 萬美元下降至約 24.3 萬美元。管理層將大部分變化歸因於約 40 萬美元的留任獎金以及約 40 萬美元的訴訟相關法律和專業費用。
• 管理層預計，隨著留任獎金影響消除以及訴訟相關費用趨於正常水平，第三季獲利能力將出現「顯著提升」。
• Dolphin 預計其兩大主要營收業務 The Digital Department 與 42West 的業務活動，將有助於受惠於季節性較強的下半年。
• 管理層對第一個 DealMaker 合資項目在年底前推向市場保持信心，同時 Graviteur Studios 與 Copper Books 提供了額外的長期成長選擇。

核心財務業績

2026 財年前六個月，營收為 2,720 萬美元，較 2,630 萬美元成長 3.8%。調整後 EBITDA 虧損約為 22.4 萬美元，相比之下去年同期虧損約為 8.2 萬美元。

業務與營運表現

Dolphin 旗下機構持續活躍於娛樂與行銷活動，包括坎城國際創意節、翠貝卡影展、VidCon Anaheim 與聖地牙哥國際漫畫展。公司亦強調了 42West 客戶獲得艾美獎提名的殊榮。

The Digital Department 預計將繼續是核心成長業務。管理層表示上半年表現令人滿意，8 月初的指標令人鼓舞。其業績極大程度取決於返校季與假期宣傳活動，品牌通常會在 9 月和 10 月開始與網紅簽約。

與 Kynetic Media Ventures 共同成立的 Graviteur Studios 將開發由創作者主導、用於串流媒體、電視及院線發行的內容。Dolphin 預計項目預算將低於其典型的電影項目，並打算盡可能降低或分攤融資風險。

與 DealMaker 的合作旨在為 Dolphin 帶來現金行銷費用及股權資產，且無需動用其資產負債表上的資金。目前正在評估兩筆潛在交易。管理層的長期目標是建立每年推出三至四個合資項目的節奏。

Copper Books 使 Dolphin 能透過 Simon & Schuster 獲得全美乃至全球發行管道。管理層表示，該合作也有助於吸引行銷客戶，儘管建立項目管道仍需要時間。

管理層展望

管理層預計第三季獲利能力將有所改善，主因是缺乏非經常性留任獎金以及訴訟費用下降。管理層亦將下半年描述為 Dolphin 季節性較強的時期，特別是 9 月至 12 月。

公司預計在兩年多後到期的銀行債務，最終將消除每年近 220 萬美元的本息支出。位於紐約與洛杉磯的主要租約將於 2027 年下半年到期，管理層認為這每年可帶來約 100 萬美元的節算。

Dolphin 還擁有約 1.27 億美元的營業淨虧損扣抵額。管理層認為這將使大部分預期的償債與租金節算轉化為淨利。

關於 DealMaker，管理層對第一個項目在 2026 年底前推向市場保持信心，並希望隨後能完成第二筆交易。管理層指出，如果今年順利完成一筆交易，2027 年完成兩筆交易將會是合適的初期節奏。

風險與關注事項

• 第二季與訴訟相關的法律和專業費用仍高居約 40 萬美元。管理層正致力於降低這些成本，但恢復正常的時機與程度仍存在不確定性。
• The Digital Department 與 42West 在季節上依賴下半年較強勁的業務活動，因此 9 月至 12 月的宣傳活動需求對全年業績至關重要。
• 美國針對《Youngblood》的串流媒體協議尚未完成，且耗時超出管理層預期。國際銷售可能取決於多倫多國際影展與美國電影市場展。
• Graviteur Studios、DealMaker 與 Copper Books 仍處於初期階段。其項目管道與經濟貢獻仍需要時間發展。
• 現金及現金等價物從 2025 年底的 880 萬美元降至 770 萬美元。

分析師問答集錦

Graviteur Studios 融資：管理層預計創作者主導項目的預算相對適中，在某些情況下可能在 100 萬美元左右或以下。Dolphin 計劃在可能的情況下，與發行夥伴分攤或轉移融資風險。

數位業務展望：The Digital Department 上半年營收同比微幅成長，但部分核心營業利益指標下降了數十萬美元。管理層預計季節性重要的下半年將決定該部門的全年成長。

Dolphin Intelligence：客戶興趣已開始顯現，但該 AI 行銷服務目前正整合至現有的公關合約中或作為附加服務。管理層目標是在年底前將其確立為獨立產品，並簽下指標性客戶。公司表示，除了已進行的投資外，該服務不需要額外成本。

DealMaker 項目管道：Dolphin 與 DealMaker 正著手評估雙方皆看好的兩個項目。公司最終目標是在三到四年內建立由 6 至 12 個活躍項目組成的投資組合，潛在涵蓋消費品、現場活動及其他領域。

法說會逐字稿全文

完整財報電話會議逐字稿

管理層陳述

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.

分析師問答

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.