WEBTOON Entertainment Inc. (WBTN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

All right. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the final day of the Morgan Stanley TMT Conference. My name is Matt Cost from the Morgan Stanley U.S. Internet Research team. Very happy this morning to be joined by David Lee, CFO of WEBTOON. Thank you for being here.

Sure. Absolutely.

So quickly going to go through the disclosures. For important disclosures, please see the Morgan Stanley research disclosure website at morganstanley.com/researchdisclosures. If you have any questions, please reach out to your MS sales representative.

All right. So maybe, David, let's start with the platform overview here. Maybe for people who are newer to the WEBTOON story and in the audience, tell us about your platform, tell us about your user base, what brings people to WEBTOON and what keeps them there?

Yes. Thank you. Well, WEBTOON is a global storytelling company. On the one hand, we have over 24 million creators, many of whom are amateurs. They have full-time jobs like you and me, but they feel like they have a passion and a story that they want to tell. We made it super easy as a technology platform, we call it CANVAS in English to let these over 24 million creators have a chance to tell their story. And oftentimes, you see lives change. We recently saw the success of Lore Olympus, which is being greenlit by Amazon Prime to be a featured animation series. As an example, Rachel Smythe was a graphic designer in New Zealand that had a story in her mind called Lore Olympus, and we allowed that story to live globally on our platform, but also to be a great story outside our platform. And on the other side, we have 163 million monthly active users. These monthly active users spend a considerable amount of high engagement time on our platform, finding new stories, 30 to 60 minutes on average per day. And they're paying to do so. Our average monthly ARPU is around $12, still a small amount for the amount of, I think, value we offer, but an indication that more and more parts of the world are realizing to find original new stories, there aren't so many destinations. In terms of the scope of the business, we're in over 150 countries. We just had recently -- as we were talking about our release for Q4 and for fiscal 2025. So it's about a $1.4 billion revenue business. And it's generating in the most recent quarter, positive operating cash flow. So you have a business that I think is set for continued growth. In terms of growth, we're really dominant in our countries of origin like Korea, but you're seeing us -- we're the #1 app in Japan now for several quarters running called LINE MANGA based on data.ai per revenue. And that includes mobile games. And we're seeing really interesting growth here in the U.S. And so we're really excited to continue that growth.

Let's stay on that theme about user engagement. You mentioned how you've been the strongest in Korea for a very long time. Japan has been a recent major success story. What has driven the strength in those regions? And what is the road map to replicate that depth of engagement in other countries, but especially in the U.S.?

Well, I think the starting point actually is fortuitous for our business outside of it, meaning the consumer. So it turns out that younger generations of consumers, what we call Gen Z, 18- to 25-year olds, but even some Gen Alpha, they're desperately looking to discover and be able to share in their community stories. They pull from the digital universe really interesting ideas, whether it's a TikTok reel or in our case, a great story on Wattpad or WEBTOON. That fundamental tailwind of the next generation of digital app-first consumers looking not for a retread of the same story before, but something brand new that they feel they can discover is a benefit to the company. And then if you look, for example, how we started in Korea, how we've become the #1 consumer app in Japan, how we're growing in the U.S., those consumers don't want just great stories. We're really excited about our partnerships with IDW. It's great to have Godzilla and Sonic the Hedgehog and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on our platform, but they want original stories. So here's where those 24-plus million creators come in. No one else can power a story from some creator in some part of the world with a passion. And then our technology, our AI makes it super easy for anyone with a story in their head to turn it into this unique format of either a digital novel or what we call a WEBTOON, which is a combination of just enough visuals, a very quick self-gratifying way to see where a story is going, but then also to see consumers engage for 30 to 60 minutes. So that combination, original stories, a creator flywheel, a consumer that's already looking for the next story, I think, is the core from a fundamental standpoint. From a business standpoint, it's a lot of time and effort by our founder over the last 20-plus years in order to fulfill a product format that one we have. Like we're very privileged to be partnering with Disney. I want to live up to the promise that we are one of the best operators digitally of global storytelling formats for webcomics. And I think that's a key to our success, too. And that is replicatable from one market to another. In fact, just to mention new breaking news as a part of that, to speed that up, we've announced the promotion of one of our own, Yongsoo Kim is now our President, he's going to help run across the business units. JK is obviously our Founder and CEO, and I'm running the COO, CFO stuff, but it's great to have someone to be able to take what works in one region like the AI personalization engine that we've seen success in, for example, in Korea and quickly expand that product and digital offering across the rest of the world. So I think that's what the future will bring too.

A lot of exciting stuff in there, but maybe just lingering for a moment on Japan and Korea. What are the levers for growth in those markets where you've already achieved so much success? How long is the runway? And is there room for user growth? Where is the play in those markets that remains?

Yes, it's really interesting. Korea, as an example, we have, what, 50% penetration, arguably, we're an everyday household name. Some journalists have written articles in the past that say that the major hits that Korean consumers see on the big screen actually originate as stories on what we call NAVER WEBTOON, our platform offering. So then you would think that, wow, will Korea grow? And I believe absolutely yes. If you look at the most recent quarter, for example, we saw the MAU of Korea grow 3-plus percent. And there's a benefit to having that much habit formation already in a market when consumers know and trust that they can go in Korea on NAVER WEBTOON and find a story that they have never seen before. Because remember, we have a content generation engine that nobody else has and know that they might even discover it somewhere on the big screen or the small screen through a streamer, Netflix, Amazon Prime, et cetera. That has a lot of power to grow. We're just getting going in Korea. It's funny, my former days included mobile gaming and e-commerce, where so much was around community. When 2 people are playing the same game for my former life, they can share stories. They can exchange chats. They can send each other's gifts. They have virtual profiles. This is a well-known phenomenon. We're just scratching the surface. We're just beginning to consider doing some of what is clearly available to us in markets like Korea and Japan around community. And I think that's a growth lever in the future. And you've seen historically Korea have fluctuations in MAU because we are 50% penetrated in that market. But you see from an MPU and ARPU and a revenue standpoint, I think there's room to run. In contrast to Korea, Japan is a relatively recent phenomenon. We had purchased a business, I call it the launchpad business of eBookJapan. This is a great major distributor of stories. In Japan, you have -- well, first, if you just look at our ARPU, right, it's multiples of -- you have a clear consumer. And by the way, the number of consumers in Japan, they're not just spending a lot more from an ARPU standpoint, but there are a lot more of them, right? They have a history of wanting to seek out digital content. It's not just Manga, by the way. It's every genre on LINE MANGA. And so there, the key for success is to enable that creator ecosystem in Japan to have a chance to publish in any language and be able to go to a great creator in Japan and say, you may have been relegated to a few publishers of a particular type of content in one language in Japanese. Welcome to a global franchise that can publish you and make you a global hit in English, in the U.S., in French, in Korean. And with a history of 100 rich film adaptations, we are enabling many of them to break out off our platform as well. I don't think anybody else has that. And so I think our growth -- I think we're #1 as rated by data.ai in revenue, including mobile games in Japan. I want to say for at least 3-plus quarters, I'll have to check with my team. But there, we're only sub-20% penetration of the market, a market that is really very much accustomed to purchasing digital story. So I think Japan will be an enormous growth engine for us. I want to note, Japan already is something like 40% to 50%. It might be around 45% in the last quarter of the company's total revenue. So it already is an important business, but it's quite early. I think both those businesses have room to run.

Great. Maybe moving on to partnerships, which is a really exciting series of announcements in 2025, especially with Disney, but I think also with Warner. Can you talk about the strategic rationale behind the partnerships, how you're leveraging external IP to expand content breadth and how that's strengthening the platform?

Yes. So when you think about what we call the platform of the flywheel, I think these partnerships strengthen all 3 components. So let's kind of go through them. There's the appeal for creators to pick us. And we have never had any challenge in keeping our 24 million and growing. I think our K is out later today after the close, and you may see a more specific growth number there. But creators continue to pick us because we're the only example where they may never have been able to see their story published on our platform. And there's a wonderful way for them. Our top creators on our platform can make over USD 1 million per year on our platform. But then to see -- I think of Netflix's top 10 projects of all time, I think 2 of them have come from our platform. So to be able to have these relationships with folks who can take a creator's dream and make them a huge success on WEBTOON, but then also see them transcend culture and language and barriers to be on the big screen, the small screen or video game. Lore Olympus is a New York Times bestselling book in print as an example, all formats is, I think, really compelling. So that's why we love our partnerships with everyone in the ecosystem. The work emerging from Disney is exciting, 12 stories already being told originally from their universe on our platform. We call them reformatted titles and stories that I grew up loving like Star Wars and Spider-Man, et cetera. But as well a new consumer app that we're launching in partnership with Disney. We committed to announcing in the last quarter, we're doing it by the end of the year. That's just another way for the nascent U.S. consumer to get these great stories from their universe, 35,000-plus stories from their universe. But then even pre-existing Disney, we have a long history, I mentioned IDW, there are others, where we love presenting original stories for our creators, but for the second part of the flywheel, for our consumers, why not be a destination for not just our original stories, but any great story. A lot of consumers across time may not have seen like Gen Z may not have seen Star Wars as a webcomic or realize just how interesting that storyline is. And there's something to this format, I think, for the users. That's why it's appealing to the younger generation. And then if you think kind of beyond the consumer and as well the creator, there's the role we play from a technology standpoint. We're a tech company by birth out of NAVER, now a self-standing publicly listed company. But leveraging AI to fight piracy, to personalize recommendations for the consumer, to identify the hits that could become a hit on Amazon Prime or Netflix, like that's -- all 3 of those things work together when Disney picks us to partner or we announced the Warner Bros. deal. We're really excited about our work with these partners outside our platform, too. So we talked about in Japan, having 20 anime projects, and we're on track with that. I'm super excited to later tell you when and how they're going to be released. So consumers are going to see us not just on our app, they're going to see us everywhere they see a story. And these partnerships speed that up and help us on our platform as well.

Maybe following up just on something you touched on there, which is the user response to this content. I guess, how is this part of your strategy to expand into English-speaking markets? Is this content a means of attracting people to WEBTOON? How does it play in?

Yes. So first, the dynamic of the business, let's talk about the business here in the U.S. We have a really large portion of our business in the U.S., which is this attractive Gen Z consumer. And the Gen Z consumer and the Gen Alpha consumer is different than the days of yore when I was a consumer of stories. They want to discover and pull on their own stories. And they're increasingly -- like I think we haven't talked about this recently, but we did this big consumer study for the U.S. And the consumer said, hey, we think your experience is more fun than really great consumer apps that I admire, folks like, well, I don't want to name them. And we ask them why? Like why do you love WEBTOON here in the U.S.? And it's because they can't find the stories they find on our platform anywhere else. It is as simple as we have original stories and oftentimes, you can't find that anywhere else. So because of that, when you think about what is the role for partnerships, how do we grow the U.S., think about the last year since going public. You saw us make investments. We said we really believe we have product market fit in the U.S. Let's grow webcomic app MAU on our English platform. And you saw quarters of double-digit growth. And in this most recent quarter, you saw me announce it was very notable that we have MPU growth now. So as the consumers for free, it's usually 4 or 5, like, for example, if you were interested in Star Wars or Spider-Man, you can, for free, see a lot of episodes. But when you get hooked on something you feel like you've discovered or rediscovered, it's only $0.15 to [ $0.17 ] for you to see that next late-breaking episode. And that is a natural human behavior we find for the U.S. consumer. What we find is when they voluntarily cross the threshold and become MPU that we don't have to spend money to convince them because they have confidence they're going to find another story. So I think the role of partnerships is in all 3 areas, right? It's to introduce stories that perhaps have never been seen in our format before in our platform, like what we've done with those 12 reformatted titles. It's to introduce brand-new stories that you can't get anywhere else through our originals. But then it's also to use our technology to help them find in a personalized way, the way we use AI to help them find the next story. I've never been part of a consumer business where I'm not squeezing static content for the last legs of its viable monetization. There's 120,000 stories arriving on our platform on some days every day. So because of that evergreen source, we have the privilege of being very patient. We're not in a rush. The work we're doing with Disney and IDW in the past and others, they're really important partnerships. And so we will take our time to make sure the quality is there.

Great. I guess shifting over from the user experience to the creator ecosystem. When I go on the WEBTOON app, one thing I can't see is the amount of work that goes into curating and nurturing that creator ecosystem. So what does it take to keep that healthy?

Well, it does take some real technology. But I would tell you, our business benefits from a lot of the efficiencies that you get at scale. So we recently -- we call it CANVAS, for example. CANVAS is our user-generated amateur creator platform that makes it really straightforward for anyone with a story in their head to become a professional storyteller. We have recently talked about our heavy continued investment in upgrading and improving CANVAS. We will do that. That's part of the cost structure of the business. It's already embedded in it. That's real technology, and it leverages learning globally. We can learn from our LINE MANGA business, our Korea business because our creators are global, right? The 24 million plus because the 10-K will be released later, you'll get the next number, but it's obviously higher. Those creators have given a signal on how they want to be able to create. So there's a fair amount of work there. But then we have such a body -- I mean, I mentioned 120,000 potential new stories arriving every day. There's a huge amount of technology and work we have underway to make sure we discover the right content for the right consumer. So this AI personalization engine, which has been core to the success of reigniting growth in Korea recently, what we intend to do and talked about doing in Japan next and potentially here in the U.S., that's a big part as well. So again, we're an interesting blend of being a tech company at heart, but a huge at-scale content machine with 24-plus million creators and a product format that appeals to Gen Z and the next generation of digital consumers. That's kind of the way we think about the company.

Got it. And I guess from a financial perspective, obviously, a huge part of the ability to create content at a professional level on WEBTOON is what the money that you make from it. And you mentioned some of your top creators are making $1 million a year. So I guess how should investors think about balancing compensating creators for the work that they're doing versus the margin and profitability goals of WEBTOON?

Yes. I think it's important to look at the last quarter because we benefited from the last many years of achieving the scale on the financial standpoint. So in Q4, I think we delivered roughly around $330 million of revenue, but the gross profit margin of 24.3% grew 100 bps year-on-year. Why? Why is your margin increasing even as you're talking about making these investments for growth? We are positive cash flow from operations. I think it was about $11.7 million or so. So we are self-funding organic growth. Part of the reason is that our business benefits from a profitability standpoint, the more we grow outside of our country of origin. So every -- think about how much we contribute to, say, a creator in Korea has a great story. They have a full-time job. They go through the process with us, and we say, congratulations, you can become a professional creator, and it starts in their original language of Korean. But we have this technology, this global reach, this product format that transports across language well, we can enable that creator to be a hit off platform on Netflix or Amazon Prime in Korea, but then across regions to be a global hit in multiple countries, and we have lots of examples of this. There's so much value we create with the creator, but we're very generous. We haven't needed to reduce, we probably could, our commitment to creators, and it's on a rev share model. So unlike a lot of businesses, I don't have to make a human judgment bet on what's going to be a next hit story. My platform tells us, and we can, in good faith, go to our creators and say, we are totally aligned, like wherever your story goes, we will enable it and empower it because we fair share it. Now maybe 20 years ago, when Junkoo Kim, our CEO and Founder, began this dream, it would have been an investment to create both sides of the market. But we're now at a point where we're generating positive operating cash flow, we're growing. We're becoming #1 in new countries like Japan, and we can self-fund. One of the great criticisms of the company from investors is, David, you haven't used your nearly $600 million in cash you got from the IPO. And it's not because I don't intend to create shareholder value, but I do see a natural self-funding mechanism now within the company that doesn't obligate me to use it. And so -- and we talked about double-digit growth by the end of Q4. And we talked about how our 1 quarter out guidance for Q1 may be misunderstood because it includes timing stuff from the crossover IP part of the business. 8% of our revenue, of our $1.4 billion annual revenue comes from movies and stuff outside of our platform. But sometimes in a given quarter, 8% of $1.4 billion can swing a quarter. So -- and as you look at the course of 2026, double-digit revenue growth by the end of 2026 also means accretion to variable profitability if we execute well. And so that's why we're so focused on growth because the bottom line takes care of itself in this business model.

You made an interesting comment in there. I want to revisit just for one second about, well, if JK were trying to do this today, it would -- there'd be all these barriers, whereas 20 years ago, he started building it and you've come to the position that you're in by building it incrementally over time. How do you view the barriers to entry in businesses like yours now just because you introduced that idea. If I were to go on [ Claude Code ] tomorrow and say, I'm going to build a WEBTOON, what would be the roadblock in my way to prevent me from scaling that business?

Yes. So what's interesting is when you think about the WEBTOON business, we actually don't see, and this is despite many large players trying over the last 20 years, any real competition we feel threatened by. And let me explain why because that's a bold statement. So first, we think human storytellers are the best storytellers right now. We argue that we have some of the best AI, and we have -- unlike a lot of pure AI model-based companies, we have a lot of data that we have access to. We have proven hits and a library for over many, many years. So we have a lot of information about what AI should do and can do. But we think human storytellers are really, really good at telling stories if you have a global pipeline to all of them, which we have. And that's taken a fair amount of time. So having the credibility to say, hey, we have a rev share model with 24-plus million global creators and a proven track record of helping them transform their lives on our platform, but become hits off our platform is really hard to replicate. And we're fascinated with AI. We use it extensively in the company. And in no way am I -- I'm in no way making a comment on its future growth. But I think we're in the best position as a company to leverage any new technology to help creators and tell the best stories. I really believe that. I think the other piece is it's very hard to build a global destination for Gen Z that's durable that having demographic goal, but also 30 to 60 minutes on average engagement every day and having a next set of stories every day is really hard. I've been a part of a lot of other companies in the mobile gaming space, in the consumer space. And there's always been this dynamic of having to go to the same sources for a supposed proven hit because they had created one before. And it was never really a data-driven choice. And part of the reasons why I came out of public company retirement to join Junkoo and WEBTOON is I think what's unique about our business is we have an evergreen source of stories. And that started with his vision very early on 20 years ago of being in the same place as creators trying to create a great legacy for them and for us, this rev share model. I don't think anyone else has that. And then the consumer dynamic is important, too. The accumulation of so many hits and so much data, knowing what consumers love, we are a data-driven tech company. We have more data than most by frame of a WEBTOON on who's loving it and why and also webnovels with our Wattpad business. And I think that's an advantage that accrues. Because of our tech and our data and our market position, I think it's increasingly hard for anyone. That said, every great success in genres competition, we welcome it. We want the consumer and the creator to win. We just think we have a very big advantage in this area.

So I have to cancel my plans to launch [indiscernible] then.

So question is, what AI will you be?

That is the debate. So on the advertising side, so obviously, another exciting and important opportunity for the business. How have users responded to ads on the platform as you work to grow that business? And how are you thinking about the opportunity now compared to where you were when you first took the company out in terms of the ad opportunity?

Well, I think we're really nascent on, in general, our ad business. If Paid Content is roughly 80%, and I mentioned crossover IP is roughly 8% in the last quarter. That 12% of advertising theoretically should be much larger. And here's why. It's not just that I'm greedy as the CFO. From a consumer standpoint, when -- we call her Maddie, our Gen Z typical consumer, say, here in the U.S. When Maddie discovers the [ romantic ] comedy or whatever story she's discovered and she wants to pay that $0.15 to [ $0.17 ], and she's hooked, like she wants to see the next episode, being able to offer her a highly relevant video ad and maybe it's affiliated to her own interest because we have a lot of contextual data one day. Maybe it's a beauty ad. Being able to have her see that in lieu of making that $0.15 to [ $0.17 ] doesn't really cost the company anything because even if she chooses to watch an ad here and there, we know she's going to continue to want to see where the story goes. She'll still be a great paid consumer. And it helps a generation of Maddies have just different ways to get habit formation on stories that they can discover. It's very different than in other businesses where to introduce an ad model, you're fundamentally cannibalizing the user experience away from the Paid Content model. That's not the case to the same degree here. All our consumer research says the same thing that if we do this well, and it's taking us time to do it well, we actually can create more habit formation on Paid Content even as we monetize highly relevant high CPI interactive ads. Korea is the best example where because we have 50% penetration, we have a really strong advertising business and team. But I think we're really early on other markets like in Japan, where it has been a great growth story for the company. But the U.S., we've really held back on pushing for short-term growth because we want to put in place the fundamentals to do this well. We don't see the need to grow an ad business. There's plenty of growth in Paid Content, but we see it accelerating Paid Content growth if we do it well. And arguably, we're taking our time. The Wattpad business, an important business, one that I just took direct control of operationally. It's such a great UGC platform that I don't want us to make quick moves in advertising at the expense of the user experience. And I don't think we need to, to achieve the results that we're talking about delivering this year. So we are being patient, but we think it's a big opportunity in the long term.

Got it. I guess one on AI content creation. I get the sense in a lot of creative industries, certainly including webcomics and webnovels, but really across entertainment that how creators are using AI is sort of a contentious subject. How are WEBTOON creators using AI to generate comments, to generate stories? What's your posture towards that? And what does it mean for the platform?

Yes. Well, we're pretty clear about being all for our human storytellers, our creators. We use our technology to protect them, to help consumers find their stories. That's core to the philosophy of the business. But we also are a tech company, and we have a lot of technology, and we have a lot of AI. We've been using AI, for example, to fight piracy, to personalize recommendations, to help creators produce more productivity with less labor and effort. And we think that's aligned to the human storytellers' interest. And so there's that. That said, we are a platform that enables a creator to use whatever technology they want to be able to tell their story. We don't need to place bets on which AI will win. We want human creators to have all the advantages of whatever is accelerating in the technology space. And it's because we have a rev share model, frankly, where their benefit and our benefit are mutually aligned. I think what we're seeing is that -- let me give you an example. And this is work that's not powered by AI, but it's important work. You've seen us introduce Video Episodes, right, where in the U.S., for example, you can read a webcomic, a lot of people do, but you can also choose to watch a video. It almost looks like a near form of animation that's -- because what is a webcomic? It's a series of really engaging frames of visuals, motion and just enough text. And if you string together a set of webcomic frames, you can imagine it can make a great video episode. And so we'll go where the creator and the consumer wants to go. And if Video Episodes becomes a hit, we are well positioned to do it. You're also seeing us experiment. In Korea, we introduced something we talked about called Cuts. This is much more of a very short, quick format for our -- we have a lot of creators in Korea, and they may want to be able to play with the idea of telling a short video story. So having an ultra short-form video product offering keeps us relevant with our consumers. Now we don't need to talk about using AI for any of that, like we're really for the creator, and we will go where the consumer wants to see the story. And we'll use the technology that pleases both ecosystems. And because we're so early, and I think our growth in our Paid Content business, I don't need to artificially force the implementation of tech, I think, to grow the model. I do need to accelerate the growth. I recognize that for our investors clearly. But right now, I think we're in a good position to protect the human storytelling.

Got it. Maybe quickly in the last few minutes, we can touch on the IP business. How should investors think about the role of the IP Adaptations business inside the WEBTOON platform? How should we frame the economic and financial opportunity when we see projects or IPs that are converted over into kind of that linear entertainment format? And what does that mean for WEBTOON?

Well, I think for the business, -- when you see a major hit outside our platform, it's one of the best ways to stay relevant to creators, if you don't want to put in financial terms, to potentially reduce the burden on the company to attract great creators continuously. It's also one of the lowest forms of customer acquisition costs. So in this last quarter, in English, like you saw us talk about numerous greenlit projects that are super exciting. We talked about Lore Olympus, Chasing Red is another one, even from this last year, Sidelined 2: The Quarterback Back and Me with Sidelined 1 that came after Thanksgiving. When consumers in the U.S., for example, where we're nascent, get to see on Amazon Prime, like Marry My Husband or on Netflix, one of the many Crunchyroll collaborations or on Tubi, a great story. The fandom interest means they want to know, well, what else did this creator create? Are there other stories? Where can I go to learn more about something that I'm enjoying on the big screen? And that draws interest back to our platform. It's also a wonderful way to have us to kind of fight for the success of our creators that start on our platform in one part of the world. So I think it's an enormously important strategic part. Now financially, I've talked about it only being 8% of our revenue base and it being lower gross profit margin as a stand-alone business compared to Paid Content, which is all true. But it's one of the most effective, most efficient financial means to speed up adoption, in my view, to stay relevant with creators, to have people choose to pay on our platform in emerging markets like the U.S. without having to invest as much in marketing. So I think it's going to play an increasingly important role. We're really excited about it. Live action releases are happening across all of the regions we participate in, notably Japan, Korea and the U.S. But other formats like the announced deal with Warner Bros. from an animation standpoint, anime as a separate category, all these things you're going to continue to see us focus on.

Great. If I could squeeze in the last few seconds, just a big picture question on AI. In your conversations with investors, obviously, you just reported earnings this week, so starting to ramp up those conversations again. What would you highlight to the market as what you feel is the most underappreciated opportunity driven by AI for WEBTOON and maybe an underappreciated challenge that you're executing through?

Well, first, I don't think investors give us any credit for the amount of technology we have. And that is an indictment on me and management, not a criticism of our investors. I think we are really well positioned to leverage technology to protect creators as well as through the areas we talked about, but also to promote discovery of stories by the consumer fundamentally. And I think we are uniquely in a position to leverage a huge amount of data and a distribution platform for the benefit of that tech that others are struggling with. Others are tech-only looking for the data or they have some of either, but they don't have a business model that shows up in revenue every single day. I think we have the ecosystem to be able to do all of it. But I think we have to demonstrate that to the investors, and that will take time.

David, thanks for being here.

All right. Thank you.