Good afternoon. Thank you for attending today's BBTV Holdings Inc. to host second quarter 2023 conference call. My name is Hannah, and I will be your moderator for today's call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call, with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1. I would now like to pass the conference over to our host, Nancy Glaister with BBTV. You may go ahead. Welcome to BBTV's second quarter 2023 conference call. I'm Nancy Glaister, Chief Legal Officer for BBTV. During the course of this conference call, we may provide forward-looking information and make forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. These are statements regarding the company's current expectations, goals, and beliefs about future events relating to or which may impact the company, its business, and results. These may include forward-looking statements regarding our expected or anticipated financial position, growth, diversification, expansion, operations, plans, and objectives. Forward-looking statements are statements about the future and are inherently uncertain. Any financial or other goals discussed are goals only and are not meant to be taken as future-oriented financial information or guarantees of future results or performance. Certain financial outlooks, in particular, are provided to aid in understanding management's goals and expectations regarding future financial matters and may not be achieved. Such financial outlooks may not be appropriate for other purposes. All of our forward-looking statements are necessarily based on a number of assumptions and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in our forward-looking statements. These include the risk that our assumptions may not be accurate, as well as the risk factors contained in our press release and MD&A issued today, as well as in our latest annual information form filed on sedar.com. We undertake no obligation to update these forward-looking statements except as required by law. You can read more about these assumptions, risks, and uncertainties in our press release and MD&A issued today, as well as in our AIF, dated March 31, 2023, and our prospectus dated October 22, 2020, filed with Canadian Securities Administrators at sedar.com. Our commentary today will include adjusted financial measures and ratios, which are non-GAAP measures. Although the company believes these non-GAAP financial measures and ratios are useful in evaluating the company, these should be considered as a supplement to and not as a substitute for financial information prepared and presented in accordance with IFRS. Reconciliations between the two can be found in our earnings press release and our MD&A, which are available on our investor website and on sedar.com. Lastly, we also report on certain metrics, such as views and RPMs. A further discussion of these metrics, which are also non-GAAP measures, can be found in our earnings press release and our MD&A. I now turn the call over to BBTV's Chief Executive Officer, Shahrzad Rafati. Hello, everyone, thank you for joining me and our CFO, KB Brinkley, on this conference call to discuss our Q2 2023 financial results. For the first few minutes, I will review our operations and current market conditions. After that, KB will review our financial results, then I will close with our outlook before we take analyst questions. BBTV is the largest professional creator network worldwide. From individuals to global media companies, professional content creators rely on BBTV to generate meaningful revenue for them while they focus on their core competency, which is creating content. Our roster of thousands of content creators continue to grow, over 600 million viewers interact with their content monthly. In Q2, YouTube Shorts views represented 52% or approximately 59 billion views of the total 114 billion views for the quarter. In total, views were up 20% compared to last year and 1% compared to Q1. This is the second consecutive quarter with a year-over-year increase in views, which is positive for our outlook. Although for YouTube Shorts, it is in early stages, which means the revenue per thousand views, which we call RPMs, is a fraction of the value for regular length content. Over time, Google has publicly stated that Shorts monetization should have similar RPMs as regular content, and RPMs are trending in that direction. However, in the meantime, at least for 2023, Shorts monetization should depress overall RPMs during the ramp-up stage. For approximately 55 billion standard content views calculated at a $1.14 RPM, which is about 2% less than last year, that is pretty stable considering the overall market conditions. The second quarter overall RPMs were down approximately 43%- $0.54 due to the impact of YouTube Shorts. Investors would probably be concerned that YouTube Shorts becomes the dominant form of viewership, which would reduce monetization rates further. It's the creators' and YouTube's best interest to focus on standard long-form content entirely. We believe we are near peak short-form monetization now, with RPMs monetization increasing for Shorts and with viewership plateauing at just north of 50%. We believe that Q1 was an RPM trough, with a 2% uptick in RPM this quarter, even with higher levels of Shorts views. To compensate for short-term monetization gaps, we are starting to work with our creators to produce more long-form content to help improve overall monetization for our creators and for BBTV, while YouTube Shorts RPMs scale over time. Overall, the revenue performance in the second quarter was in line with our expectations for the whole year. The softness in Plus Solutions revenue, we believe, is temporary, as we signed several new major Content Management contracts in both the first and second quarter, which were still being deployed. As a result, we're still confident that Plus Solutions revenue will demonstrate growth for the full year. It is probably a good time to remind investors that BBTV is currently providing Content Management solutions to some of the largest blue-chip clients in the industry, including Sony Pictures, Warner Music Group, the NBA, Paramount Global, Univision, Lionsgate, Universal Pictures, and more. Notwithstanding, we continue to manage expenses and focus on improving our margins to accelerate performance to sustainable positive adjusted EBITDA. As a result, we were able to reduce expenses by 34% compared to Q2 of the previous year, and by 28% for the first half of the year. KB will go into more details momentarily. Although actual performance is lining up in range of our forecast, we are positioned for further cost optimization across the entire business during the remainder of the year. We will continue to align our operations to capture more Plus Solutions opportunities, as we mentioned in our Q1 call. We began deploying a major Content Management contract with a global brand, and we announced two additional major contracts in Q2. Although Q2 Plus Solutions revenue was flat compared to the previous year, we are comfortable that Plus Solutions revenue will demonstrate growth in the second half of the year. During the quarter, we announced that we benefited from an $18 million loan forgiveness option for RTL related to our go-public transaction. Part of the loan was used to pay off a $15 million revolver. Overall, our goal was to improve our liquidity, and we believe that this transaction helped to accomplish our objectives. With that said, I now hand the line over to KB. Thank you, Shahrzad, good afternoon, everyone. The second quarter results reflect the continuation of the industry trends that impacted our Q1 results. While our views growth has been strong, our RPMs are still being affected by the ongoing shift in consumption patterns to short-form content. The monetization of YouTube Shorts remains at a much lower rate than it is for regular content. Yet, despite these pressures on revenue, we continue to make good progress towards our goal of achieving sustainable profitability at the adjusted EBITDA level. I'm encouraged by the success we've been seeing in closing some major Content Management deals as we remain focused on our higher-margin Plus Solutions. Looking ahead, our sales pipeline is strong, and momentum is building for this recurring and higher-margin revenue stream. We are also maintaining very tight control over our operating expenses. The total revenue for the quarter of $72.8 million was down 27% from the same period last year, which is consistent with what we saw in Q1. This is primarily due to the decrease in our Base Solutions revenue, reflecting the combined impacts of the shift in viewership towards YouTube Shorts and the decision we made in Q1 to not renew a number of our larger unprofitable Base Solution creators. Our total views were 114 billion in the quarter, which is a 20% improvement from Q2 last year, driven by the growth in popularity of short-form content, and it's a further 1% improvement sequentially from the first quarter this year. 52% of our views were from Shorts, compared to just 20% in the second quarter last year. Meanwhile, our natural viewership retention rate also remained very strong at 90% for the quarter. With the higher proportion of Shorts views, our Q2 RPMs were down 43% from last year. If we exclude Shorts, our RPMs would have declined 2% year-over-year, as the advertising market is showing signs of recovery from the reduced spending levels. Google continues to emphasize Shorts as an area of focus for it to drive its own revenue growth. As it does that, the monetization rate on Shorts should continue to improve in the long term. We expect this will benefit our overall RPM growth in the future. Our Plus Solutions revenue also declined, down 18% year-over-year to $10.7 million, which we believe is a temporary decline due to the timing of new contract deployments, signings, and solutions mix. With the recent successes we've had with the new Content Management signings and with our potential new deals in the pipeline, we expect an improving trend in the second half of the year. Our overall revenue mix is continuing to shift in the direction of our higher-margin Plus Solutions, which were 15% of total Q2 revenue, compared to 13% a year ago. The adjusted gross profit of $5.8 million, excluding PPA amortization, represents a gross margin of 8%, which is in line compared to 8.3% a year ago. Our Plus Solutions continue to ramp up and become a larger portion of our total revenue mix. We still forecast our gross margin to improve year-over-year on an annual basis and move towards double digits. Our Operating Expenses continue to trend lower as we remain laser-focused on cost optimization. The total OpEx for the quarter of $10.6 million is a 34% improvement from last year and a 12% sequential improvement from the first quarter this year, which reflects the hard work by each of our teams to contain spending as much as possible. Going forward, we are still pursuing a number of opportunities to further reduce our cost base in order to accelerate our path to profitability. With the benefit of these incremental cost savings, our adjusted EBITDA loss improved by $2.7 million from the same period last year, despite the lower revenue. We continue to converge towards profitability at a faster rate, even with the temporary headwinds in the macro environment. Included in our results for the quarter was a CAD 18.3 million gain arising from a favorable amendment to our promissory note agreement with a subsidiary of RTL Group, which granted us the option to retire this debt early at a significant discount under certain conditions. This is discussed in more detail in our financial statements. This one-time gain resulted in our positive bottom-line result for the quarter, but I would like to remind everyone that this is a one-time accounting item only. We ended with a cash balance of CAD 14.4 million on June thirtieth, and total long-term debt of CAD 44.3 million, with maturity substantially in 2026 and 2027. I will now turn it back to Shahrzad. We're excited about Content Management for the second half of 2023. Content Management has proven to be a sticky solution for enterprise customers, with resilient, high margin, recurring revenue streams. As we have mentioned earlier, during the second half of the year, we will continue to be deploying the large Content Management deals that we signed during the first half of the year. To put this into perspective, four of these are amongst the largest that we have ever signed. We're encouraged that the pipeline for Content Management continues to grow, and we are confident that we'll continue to convert large enterprise deals out of that pipeline in the second half of the year. As KB articulated earlier in her prepared remarks, cost optimization will continue to be a primary operational focus for BBTV in the second half of 2023. Since the second quarter of 2022, we have been able to gain $5.6 million of optimized expenses, which as of Q2, has reduced total expenses by 34% compared to last year. We are intent on getting adjusted EBITDA profitable as soon as possible. With further cost optimization plans and growing high-margin revenue in the second half of 2023, we have put ourselves on a solid path towards positive adjusted EBITDA. Although our operational focus remains on efficiencies and cost reductions, the market conditions for monetization are steadily improving. Views are up year-over-year for two quarters in a row, which indicates a return to historical trends in viewing behavior. Although overall RPMs have declined due to early stage monetization of YouTube Shorts, which now represents over 52% of total views, we have seen growth in Shorts RPM for the past few months. We're encouraged that the natural increase in RPMs is beginning to occur, as Google has previously indicated. Seasonality usually means that the second half, and in particular, the fourth quarter, generates the highest RPMs for the year. This should boost both long form and short form RPMs for full year, which should grow revenue in the second half across key lines of business. Although macroeconomic conditions have been challenging for our industry, I'm proud that the BBTV team has worked hard to improve our efficiencies while also positioning us to thrive as the market recovers. With Content Management leading the way, BBTV has enormous opportunity in front of it, and we have never been as prepared to capture it as we are now. With that, I will turn it over to the operator for analyst questions. Certainly. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by 1 on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by 2. Again, to ask a question, press star 1. As a reminder, if you're using a speakerphone, please drop or pick up the headset before asking your question. Briefly, as questions are registered. The first question comes in from Adhir Kadve with Eight Capital, you may proceed. My questions. I just wanted to talk about the OpEx. I know it continues to trend down, so congrats to the team on achieving that. KB, you mentioned that you'll be extending some of the cost optimizations here. I'm just wondering, how much more do you think you will need to kind of get to a steady state, and when do you plan on kind of getting there? Thanks. Yeah, maybe I can jump in here, if you want to add. Sure. Of course. Go ahead, Shahrzad. Adhir, great question. I mean, you know, yeah, thank you, KB. Cost optimization is very much the top of mind because obviously we want to accelerate our path to profitability. You know, we kind of, in the first half of 2023, we very much so concentrated on very much so aligning our operations to focus on high margin opportunities and to really further automate our lower margin Base Solutions. In addition, we also further optimize our costs across Base Solutions and in the overall business to accelerate performance to persistent positive adjusted EBITDA. If you look at the operating expenses, they were about $10.6 million for the quarter, which is about, you know, kind of there were 34% improvements when you're looking at the same period last year. This was very much so due to the cost optimization programs that we applied across Base Solutions. As we continue to look at the cost optimization exercises moving forward, we will be looking at that across the whole business, including shared services. We're very much so excited about not only looking at further automating our solutions, leveraging technology, including generative AI, but also leveraging economies of scale as we actually scale our Plus Solutions. Okay, thank you. That's very helpful. Just maybe then on the latest on the Content Management progress. You said you saw several deals in the pipeline. I think last quarter you also mentioned one of the largest deals. How long do those generally take to ramp up? When do you think that would really kind of start impacting? Would it be more into Q3, Q4, or are we thinking more Q4, Q1? Just kind of thinking about how, you know, the rest of the year is going to really shake out when it comes to Plus Solutions revenue. Yeah, for sure. I mean, as KB mentioned, you know, if you look at the actual Plus Solutions decline, it was temporary, and it was primarily due to the timing of the new contracts, the deployment, the signings, and the solution mix, and the ramp-up is going well. You know, here there are complex deployments that, you know, once they're finished, it will generate strong incremental and profitable revenue. We are still very much so confident that Plus Solutions revenue will demonstrate growth for the full year. You know, again, you know, as we highlighted, for the quarter, you know, we closed CBS and Universal Pictures, you know, to have the, you know, potential to become actually amongst our top five largest Content Management deals. In addition to that, you know, this is also closing Warner Music Group, as you mentioned, in Q4. And a lot of these, as we highlighted, you know, they're, you know, deals that we're signing very much so around, you know, 360 deals that we have, and the type of deal that we work on, Content Management, that includes anything from rights management to channel management, to content deployment, to greater integration. And, you know, and, and, you know, it's also important to highlight that, look, we work with some of the largest crucial clients in the industry, from Sony Pictures to Warner Music Group to the NBA, Paramount Global, you know, obviously, Univision, as I mentioned, and Lionsgate and others. you know, we're very much we're still confident that Plus Solutions revenue will demonstrate growth for the full year. Okay, and then last one for me, just at the end there, you go, you were mentioning, some of the RP- you're seeing higher RPMs in, in YouTube Shorts. Is that, is that a fair comment? Sorry, can you just go through that the YouTube Shorts commentary that you, you went through toward the end of your preamble there? Shahrzad, that'd be really helpful. I think I missed that part. Yeah, for sure. I mean, the RPMs increased sequentially by 16%. Then if you look at the average sequential increase over the last two years, it was 12%. Really, RPMs are showing signs of growing sequentially at a faster rate than they have in the past. As we said, you know, if you look at short viewership, short viewership has increased significantly. If you look at it, you know, just within one year, the increase in percentages of views coming from YouTube Shorts from 20%-52%. I think, you know, the best way to kind of look at this is to remove the actual YouTube Shorts and look at actual pure RPMs based on regular content. You know, and, and when you look at that, obviously, you know, so, you know, we're seeing obviously, a good trend. Also sequentially, when you're looking at, particularly RPMs on, you know, a quarter-over-quarter, we also saw an increase, you know, for YouTube Shorts. As you saw, Google also has stated publicly that, you know, over time, they expect to close the monetization gap between YouTube Shorts and regular content. You know, and, and we're, we're confident that, you know, again, RPMs will begin to improve once monetization of YouTube Shorts actually matures, of course, across the entire library. Depending on the uptick, of course, it could represent significant incremental revenue for the company. Excellent. Thanks, guys. I'll, I'll pass on. Thank you. That concludes our question and answer session. I would now like to pass the conference back to Shahrzad for any closing remarks. Thank you so much. Thank you everyone for joining. We appreciate your time and have a wonderful day. Thank you. That concludes today's conference call. I hope you all enjoy the rest of your day. You may now disconnect your lines.