Dolphin Entertainment, Inc. (DLPN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good day. And welcome to the Dolphin Entertainment, Inc. 2020 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. I would now like to turn the conference over to Bill O'Dowd. Please go ahead.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Bill O'Dowd, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Dolphin Entertainment, Inc., and it's my pleasure to welcome all of you. In accordance with the notice of meeting, I call to order this 2020 Annual Meeting of Shareholders. I will be servicing as Chair for this meeting. As described in our proxy statement delivered to all of our shareholders, our agenda for today's meeting calls for your vote on 3 matters. For the shareholders that haven't voted or those who wish to change their vote, the polls are now open and will close shortly. I would first like to introduce you to certain key people who are present virtually today. First, the other members of our Board of Directors, who will be standing for reelection; Michael Espensen, Nelson Famadas, Nicholas Stanham, Anthony Leo, Claudia Grillo, Charles Dougiello and Mirta Negrini, who also serves as our Chief Financial and Operating Officer. Also present virtually is the Director nominee, Leslee Dart. Also present is Jeff Balmer and Marisa Bond of BDO USA, LLP, our independent registered public accounting firm. Mirta Negrini will act as the secretary of the meeting to also be tabulating the proxies and ballots. The secretary has provided an affidavit of mailing to show that notice of the meeting and a proxy statement was mailed on or about May 4, 2020. A copy of both the notice and the affidavit will be incorporated into the minutes of this meeting. The notice of the meeting has been mailed to each shareholder who was a shareholder of record as of April 17, 2020. We have available at this meeting, a certified list of these shareholders, showing that as of the record date, there were 20,036,906 shares of common stock outstanding which is the only class that the company's issued in outstanding equity entitled to notice of and to vote at the annual meeting. The list of shareholders will remain available for inspection to any shareholder of record during the meeting. After this meeting, it will be preserved as part of the records of the company. The secretary has informed me that a majority of the shares of the company's common stock outstanding and entitled to vote is present on the call or by proxy, constituting a quorum for today's meeting. Because a quorum is present, we will proceed with the business of the meeting. Ms. Negrini, were there any additional director nominations or proposals for business for this meeting properly delivered by a shareholder to the company in accordance with applicable law?

No.

Thank you. In that case, the business of this meeting will consist of 3 proposals contained in the company's proxy statement for this meeting as filed with the SEC. I will describe the matters to be acted on at the meeting. The first proposal before the shareholders is the election of directors to serve until the 2021 Annual Meeting of Shareholders or until their respective successors are elected and qualified. The Board has nominated 9 Director nominees as follows: myself, Bill O'Dowd; Michael Espensen; Nelson Famadas; Mirta Negrini; Anthony Leo; Nicholas Stanham; Claudia Grillo; Charles Dougiello; and Leslee Dart. The second proposal is to ratify the selection of BDO USA, LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for the 2020 fiscal year. The third proposal is to conduct a nonbinding advisory vote on 2019 executive compensation as disclosed in the proxy statement. As indicated in the proxy statement, our Board of Directors has recommended that our shareholders vote for each of the nominees for Director for the ratification of BDO USA, LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for the 2020 fiscal year. And on the advisory vote for the compensation paid to our executive officers. As there are no nominations for other candidates properly before the meeting, the nominations are hereby declared closed. There being no other proposals properly before the meeting, the polls will be closing shortly regarding each of the 3 proposals properly brought before the meeting and described in our proxy statement. [Voting]

The polls are now closed. Will the secretary please report the results of the balloting?

Mr. O'Dowd, this initial tally is subject to verification and the final tabulation may reflect small changes in the vote I will now announce. The final tabulation will be set forth in a current report on Form 8-K which the company will file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I certify that a plurality of the votes entitled to be cast on the election of directors has voted for the election of each of the Director nominees. I further certified that a majority of the votes cast at this annual meeting has voted for the ratification of the selection of BDO USA, LLP as our independent registered public accounting firm for the 2020 fiscal year. I further certify that a majority of the votes cast have voted on an advisory basis for the approval of the executive compensation.

Thank you, Ms. Negrini. And congratulations to each of the directors for joining or rejoining the Board, staying on the Board. I thought I'd take a few minutes off formal script, just to give a little reflection on the past year and then open it up for any questions if we have any from shareholders. It's a tough thing to reflect on the past year, right? Even 6 months ago, it seems like forever, right? But -- and with respect to Dolphin Entertainment, we stayed consistent with our plan. As a reminder to those who've been with us since we uplisted onto NASDAQ in December of 2017, our plan has been initially to create an entertainment marketing supergroup by acquiring companies in 6 specific verticals. Two years later, we have not wavered from this plan. And in this past year, we acquired our fourth company, Shore Fire Media, a leading PR firm in the music industry. We acquired Shore Fire in December. The Grammy's, of course, are held in January. Shore Fire represented over 30 nominations for Grammy Awards, including 11 that won Grammy Awards, 7 in the categories of Best Album. They're certainly a leading music PR firm in this country. January was also a big month for Shore Fire as they promoted the Super Bowl Music Fest held in our headquarter city of Miami, Florida, maybe a while before our home team is in the Super Bowl, but at least we host them. And of course, the Super Bowl Music Fest included Adam Levine, Maroon 5, Guns and Roses, et cetera. Shore Fire is a perfect complement to 42West and The Door. All 3 of our PR firms in December were ranked in the New York Observer's Power 50 list. To put that in perspective, I think, for people on the call, it's believed that there are over 12,000 PR firms in this country. To be blessed with 3 considered in the 50 most powerful in the country is remarkable for us. All 3 are in the same industry, entertainment. 42West was ranked number four, the highest ranked entertainment PR firm. The 3 above 42West are not in the entertainment industry. And to our knowledge, we're the only company to have more than 1 PR firm in that Power 50 list, and we have 3. We certainly feel that we're on course for building this entertainment marketing Super Group with these 3 best-in-class PR firms. We're proud to have Viewpoint as our fourth company and expect to complete the Super Group with 2 more acquisitions, we hope by the time we meet next, if not sooner. I'll now turn it over for any questions. Okay. Since there are no questions, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all of you for attending the meeting today. This concludes the annual meeting of shareholders, and I look forward to seeing you at the 2021 annual meeting. This meeting is adjourned.

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.