CuriosityStream Q3 2025 Earnings Call - AI Licensing Revenue Soars 425%, Fueling 46% Overall Growth

Conference Operator: Greetings and welcome to the CuriosityStream Q3 2025 Financial Results Conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. The question-and-answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press 0 on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to your host, Tia Cudahy, CuriosityStream’s Chief Operating Officer. Please go ahead.

Tia Cudahy, Chief Operating Officer, CuriosityStream: Thank you and welcome to CuriosityStream’s discussion of its Q3 2025 financial results. Leading the discussion today are Clint Stinchcomb, CuriosityStream’s Chief Executive Officer, and Brady Hayden, CuriosityStream’s Chief Financial Officer. Following management’s prepared remarks, we will be happy to take your questions. But first, I’ll review the safe harbor statement. During this call, we may make statements related to our business that are forward-looking statements under the federal securities laws. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, but rather are subject to a variety of risks, uncertainties, and assumptions. Our actual results could differ materially from expectations reflected in any forward-looking statements. Please be aware that any forward-looking statements reflect management’s current views only, and the company undertakes no obligation to revise or update these statements, nor to make additional forward-looking statements in the future.

For a discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to our SEC filings available on the SEC website and on our investor relations website, as well as the risks and other important factors discussed in today’s press release. Additional information will also be set forth in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2025, when filed. In addition, reference will be made to non-GAAP financial measures. A reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to comparable GAAP measures can be found on our website at investors.curiositystream.com. Unless otherwise stated, all comparisons will be against our results for the comparable 2024 period. Now, I’ll turn the call over to Clint.

Clint Stinchcomb, Chief Executive Officer, CuriosityStream: Thank you, Tia. We delivered strong Q3 results. Revenue grew 46% year over year to $18.4 million, exceeding guidance. Adjusted free cash flow rose 88% to $4.8 million, and adjusted EBITDA improved by $3.4 million year over year. Our three complementary growth pillars - subscriptions, licensing, and advertising - are driving momentum and strengthening CuriosityStream’s position at the intersection of knowledge, media, and AI. I’ll briefly recap the underpinnings of Q3 and then look ahead to 2026 and beyond. Licensing revenue increased over 400% year over year, reflecting the strength of our team, demand for our corpus, and the trusted relationships we built with both traditional media partners and hyperscalers. We engaged with nine key partners across video, audio, script, and code, and delivered over 1.5 million distinct assets.

To achieve dominance as a provider of AI training data, we’ve assembled a nearly two million-hour library of video and audio across multiple genres, content that largely cannot be scraped from the open web. We’ve also expanded our large-scale data structuring and metadata capabilities so we can meet partners’ volume requirements and bespoke specifications for high-integrity, enriched data sets. In parallel, we broadened traditional content partnerships with leading global broadcasters, streamers, and pay-TV networks, including AMC, Netflix, Foxtel, and a range of licensees across Asia. Overall subscription revenue, retail and wholesale combined, was down year over year, but increased sequentially every quarter in 2025. Importantly, our sequential growth in subscription revenue has been driven by daily operating focus, not simply by implementing price increases like many subscription services.

In Q3, all three of our subscription services launched with partners in key English-speaking markets, the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand, as well as in our top non-English market, Germany. Extensions with partners like Amazon and new multifaceted agreements with partners like TMTG further support this growth trajectory. While not yet a separate revenue pillar at scale, we continue to build on the solid foundation of our advertising business. Our U.S. Hispanic and flagship FAST channels recently launched on Amazon, Roku, LG, and Truth Plus. We also launched a two-hour branded block on Australia TV’s Free the Air broadcast channel, an initiative we plan to replicate with additional partners. Given the quality and volume of content we control, we see meaningful advertising and sponsorship opportunities across FAST, AVOD, Social, pay-TV, and Free the Air.

To thoughtfully capture this opportunity, we plan to install a proven leader to run the business in early 2026. We are particularly proud that adjusted free cash flow increased 88% to $4.8 million this quarter. This reflects a focused growth strategy and a sustained commitment to rationalizing our cost base, especially hard, largely non-discretionary costs. Cost discipline is a strategic advantage, one that supports pricing power, resilience, and durable growth. Despite higher storage and delivery expenses for managing a large content library, we more than offset those increases through disciplined expense management. Looking ahead, while we are not yet providing guidance for 2026, we expect overall subscription revenue, retail and wholesale, to grow faster in 2026 than in 2025, supported by a strong launch pipeline and new pricing and packaging across our own services, including our premium tier.

We anticipate high-growth licensing to continue, and believe licensing will exceed subscription revenue in 2027, possibly earlier. We expect significant year-over-year growth with existing partners and believe our roster of AI licensing partners could double or even triple in 2026. Beyond training, we see additional monetizable grants of rights becoming part of our agreements. Given the quality and scale of our corpus, which we expect to more than double in 2026, and our ability to structure and deliver data at scale, we believe we will solidify our position as the leader or among the top two or three video licensors for AI development. In summary, we believe that we will continue double-digit growth in both revenue and cash flow, driven by our three complementary pillars: subscriptions, licensing, and advertising, while continuing to improve efficiency. We intend to pay 2026 dividends from cash generated by operations, as we did in 2024.

Our balance sheet remains strong with over $29 million in liquidity and no debt, giving us substantial flexibility. At today’s share price, we’re a growth company that also offers a dividend yield of well over 8%. It’s an exciting time to be in the media business. Opportunities abound, and we intend to swarm them with discipline. Over to you, Brady.

Tia Cudahy, Chief Operating Officer, CuriosityStream: Thanks, Clint, and good afternoon, everyone. Our full financial results will be in the 10-Q that we’ll file in the next day or two. But let me hit some of our Q3 highlights. As Clint said, in Q3, we reported revenue of $18.4 million, exceeding our guidance, and a 46% increase compared to $12.6 million a year ago. Likewise, we reported another quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA, which came in at $3 million. This was an improvement of $3.4 million from a year ago and essentially flat from last quarter, which was a record quarter for us. This was also our third sequential quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted free cash flow came in at $4.8 million, an increase of $2.3 million compared to last year. This also represented our seventh quarter in a row of positive adjusted free cash flow.

Q3 revenue was led by our subscription business, which came in at $9.3 million, a sequential increase. Content licensing came in at $8.7 million in the quarter, an increase of over $7 million, or 425% from last year, driven by continued growth in AI training fulfillments. Looking at our year-to-date numbers, licensing generated $23.4 million through September, which in perspective is already over half of what our subscription business generated for all of 2024. Q3 gross margin was 59%, improving from 54% last year. We continue to see reductions in non-cash content amortization, although our distribution and storage costs have increased slightly due to licensing and acquisition of content through revenue share arrangements. Combined costs for advertising and marketing plus G&A were higher by 52% compared to last year.

This increase was the result of a non-cash charge for stock-based compensation of $7 million, or about $0.12 on a per-share basis. G&A also included a number of one-time expenses associated with our August secondary stock offering, where if not for the non-cash SBC and the common stock sale, G&A would have declined in the quarter. We reported a Q3 net loss of $3.7 million, or $0.06 a share. This compares to a $3.1 million net loss in Q3 of 2024. While our revenue was up materially from last year, the net loss was driven by the one-time charges and non-cash SBC. Were it not for these specific non-recurring or non-cash charges, we would have posted our third quarterly net income this year. And as we said earlier, adjusted EBITDA was $3 million in the Q3 compared to a loss of $0.4 million a year ago.

Adjusted free cash flow was $4.8 million in the quarter, compared with $2.6 million a year ago, and through the first nine months of 2025, adjusted free cash flow was $9.6 million, which is more than the company generated for all of last year. In September, we paid our regular $4.6 million dividend, and we ended the quarter with total cash and securities of $29.3 million and no outstanding debt. We believe our balance sheet remains in great shape. Based on yesterday’s share price, CuriosityStream is generating an adjusted free cash flow yield of over 7% and a current dividend yield of over 8%. Also, just after quarter end, on October 14, 6.7 million of our warrants expired unexercised.

While these warrants have been trading well out of the money for some time, this expiration of all of the company’s outstanding warrants reduces potential dilution and should eliminate any lingering share overhang associated with these instruments. Looking ahead for Q4, we expect revenue in the range of $18-$20 million, which would imply full year 2025 revenue in the range of $70-$72 million, or a 38%-42% revenue increase from 2024. We expect Q4 adjusted free cash flow of $2.5-$3.5 million, which would imply full year 2025 adjusted free cash flow of $12-$13 million, or a 27%-37% free cash flow increase from 2024. We’re not yet providing guidance for 2026, but we believe that our top-line and bottom-line growth will continue into next year.

And although we’re obviously using some of our cash and investment reserves to pay our dividends in 2025, we intend to fully cover our 2026 dividends from operating cash, as we did in 2024. With that, we can hand it back to the operator and open the call to questions.

Clint Stinchcomb, Chief Executive Officer, CuriosityStream: Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press Star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press Star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the Star keys, and our first question will come from Laura Martin with Needham & Company.

Laura Martin, Analyst, Needham & Company: Hi there. So, Clint, a strategy one for you first, and that is, so I know you’ve been a media CEO for a long time, but the returns on capital in this new revenue stream of licensing are like 10 times higher. So what I don’t understand is why are we taking these fabulous revenue and investing in hiring a guy to do media in Australia, which is offshore, lower margin, lower returns on capital? Why don’t we just stick with the, you know, stick with focusing on becoming sort of the go-to de facto AI guys that are independent and put all, say no to media stuff, which is our path? Why are we adding stuff that’s lower return on capital just because that’s where we came from? Let’s start with that one.

Clint Stinchcomb, Chief Executive Officer, CuriosityStream: I appreciate the question, Laura. You cut out a little bit. The Australia reference was, I just, I didn’t hear what you’re referring to in Australia. I think I got the basic.

Laura Martin, Analyst, Needham & Company: Well, you’re hiring him, right? What’s the new guy going to do when you hire him?

Clint Stinchcomb, Chief Executive Officer, CuriosityStream: Oh, we haven’t hired anybody new. We just, we announced a promotion of one of our guys who has been focused on helping to craft our AI relationships. We announced that last week, if that’s what you’re referring to.

Laura Martin, Analyst, Needham & Company: No, I thought you said on the call that you were going to.

Clint Stinchcomb, Chief Executive Officer, CuriosityStream: Okay, yeah, I did say on the call that we’re going to hire a sales leader, yes, and I think your question is a good one, and so I think we’ve done a great job, you know, certainly on the cost side here, and we’ve done a really good job, you know, across the company getting this business rolling. But we do need some additional sales leaders, you know, even some who are really seasoned, and so there’s an opportunity for us to do that. You know, sometimes if you get a chance to bring somebody into the mix, it’s a little bit like the NFL draft.

You’re not necessarily drafting for pure position, but, you know, if you can bring on an, you know, A-plus player with real talent, you take the opportunity to do that. And so I didn’t mean to imply that he would be, or she would be working in, in only one area, but really helping on the revenue generation side. That is a, you know, key for us is we do need, we do need some help there. And, you know, as I said, feel like we’ve done a nice job on the cost side, and we’ve laid some good groundwork so that, you know, if we bring in, you know, a couple of really strong players, it can have an accelerating impact on what we’re doing. I mean, to dodge, hopefully I got, hopefully I addressed that.

If I didn’t, Laura, ask me to clarify.

Laura Martin, Analyst, Needham & Company: I just want to be sure we’re staying in the AI business and not.

Clint Stinchcomb, Chief Executive Officer, CuriosityStream: Yes, oh, 100%. Yeah. Yes, yeah. Absolutely, Laura. Absolutely. And, yeah, and I know that you’ve expressed some concern in the past about smoothing out the revenue, and I’d love to address that if, if that’s still a question on your end.

Laura Martin, Analyst, Needham & Company: That was my second question, which is.

Clint Stinchcomb, Chief Executive Officer, CuriosityStream: Okay. All right, good. You’re not the only one asking, so look, there’ll always be some lumpiness in licensing, but we’re going to smooth it out over time, and we’re going to accomplish this, and we are accomplishing this by both operational and contractual means, so operationally, as we increase our roster of partners, we reduce lumpiness. We believe that we’ll double or triple our number of partners in the AI licensing area by the end of 2026, and in 2027, possibly earlier, as more open-source models become accessible, there will potentially be hundreds and even thousands of companies who will need video to fine-tune specific models for consumer and enterprise purposes. Some refer to this as the open-source and tune evolution. Contractually, structurally, SaaS, something you’re, you know, familiar with, of course, software as a service. We know that’s beloved by the software industry.

We know that is beloved by investors. So with the type of volume we control, we’ve had discussions around structuring certain agreements as CAS or CAS, or content as a service, where we grant access over a term, so as a subscription, with access to loads of content with lots and lots of hours. Now, in these deals, we need to make sure we have proper minimums in place and a few other safeguards. But this is a proven model that I think a lot of people love and that will enable smoother quarters and tighter predictability over time.

Laura Martin, Analyst, Needham & Company: That’s great. Thanks very much.

Clint Stinchcomb, Chief Executive Officer, CuriosityStream: Yeah, appreciate it. Thank you, Laura.

Our next question comes from Jason Kreyer with Craig-Hallum.

Jason Kreyer, Analyst, Craig-Hallum: Well, thanks. Great, great job, guys. So maybe kind of building on just the library and the AI opportunity, Clint, just curious if you could talk about how AI licensing has evolved over the last year. You know, you had mentioned nine partners this quarter. Just maybe talk about how broad is the demand for your corpus and how frequently are those platforms coming back to get more and more of your content?

Clint Stinchcomb, Chief Executive Officer, CuriosityStream: Yeah, so we’ve done about 18 fulfillments to date, and we’ve done that, you know, across nine partners. And so without naming names, based on the math, I think we can represent that we’ve done, you know, two or three more renewals with some key existing partners. And as we look out into 2026, we see, we suspect really the revenue from our existing partners, they’ll probably comprise 60%-80% of the AI licensing revenue, and, you know, 20%-40% will come from new partners. So we do see the roster increasing significantly. And we also see real opportunity for licensing beyond simply a training right. Additional grants of rights like display rights or transformative rights or adaptation rights or even certain derivative rights or possibly even some that are as of yet unnamed.

I mean, we’re building long-term relationships, and we’re committed to making sure that as we enter into all of these agreements, it’s not one and done, and so I think from an, and then to answer your question about the evolution and the changes, I think if you look at the first deals that we did, it was, you know, just get people finished content, let them use that for training the models. Today, obviously, people are still looking for finished content, looking for raw video, but there’s a real advantage to being able to structure the data in a way that many of your competitors can’t, and what I mean by that is just the ability to clip content, to index content, to annotate, and to then, you know, deliver it in, you know, seven to 20-second clips with really detailed enriched metadata.

So one thing I didn’t mention on the call is in Q3, we entered into some of the highest cost per hour or cost per minute agreements, you know, by far that we had, you know, heretofore not entered into. So that’s a function of, you know, being able to create things that are a little bit more bespoke and, you know, a much enhanced ability on our end to structure our data.

Jason Kreyer, Analyst, Craig-Hallum: Clint, when you talk about having nearly two million hours in the library, how does that split between what’s available for AI licensing, what’s available for streaming by consumers, or is that the same number for both?

Clint Stinchcomb, Chief Executive Officer, CuriosityStream: Yeah, no, it’s not the same number. It’s a good question. The overwhelming majority of that is for AI licensing. So we have a lot of content partners, you know, probably, you know, over 150 different content partners for our subscription services and for our ad-supported services. And obviously, as we’re building our AI library, so those are some of the first people that we went to, but the overwhelming majority of that is for AI licensing. We are increasing our, you know, our volume of rights on our traditional platforms, but the overwhelming majority is for AI licensing.

Jason Kreyer, Analyst, Craig-Hallum: You’ve, you know, nearly doubled that in like the last quarter or two or doubled the library. I’m going to assume that’s a proxy for effectively doubling the AI library over the last quarter or two. Curious, is that an indication of, hey, you guys are getting better at figuring out what these AI platforms need and you’re going out and sourcing a lot more of that? Or is there a different reason that we’re not thinking about it, why you’re adding so much more content to the library?

Clint Stinchcomb, Chief Executive Officer, CuriosityStream: You’re 100% right on the first part. We are sourcing specific content. So that, that’s part of it. At the same time, we feel like one of our advantages is the fact that we have existing relationships with so many production companies, so many distribution companies, so many creators, so many people who own and control large libraries of content that, you know, wherever it makes sense, we want to put our foot on the gas. And, you know, we’re not going to be the number one subscription service in the world. I mean, Netflix and Amazon, you know, they’ve got escape velocity. They have that covered. However, we believe that we can be, you know, if not number one, you know, one of the top two or three licensors of video for AI training and other purposes.

And part of the way that you do that is you try to generate some escape velocity on your own. So as we build out the volume of our library, it makes us more appealing as, you know, even more so as a one-stop shop for any of our partners.

Jason Kreyer, Analyst, Craig-Hallum: Got it. Thank you, Clint. Appreciate it.

Clint Stinchcomb, Chief Executive Officer, CuriosityStream: Thank you.

Moving on to David Marsh with Singular Research.

David Marsh, Analyst, Singular Research: Hey, guys. Congrats on the quarter, and thanks for taking the questions.

Speaker 0: Thank you, Dave.

David Marsh, Analyst, Singular Research: I wanted to start, Brady, if I could. Could you give us a little bit more explanation of the stock-based comp here in the quarter? It’s, yeah, I know you had some comments about it in your prepared remarks, but I’m still a little bit confused by it. So I was just hoping you could maybe just give us a little bit more color.

Speaker 0: Yeah, sure. The 10Q will be out either tomorrow or the next day, possibly Friday. A lot of the details from that will be for the stock-based comp in that document. A number of employees received market-based SBC warrants and awards during the quarter, actually in July. You’ll see some of those in the Form 4s that the executives filed, and a number of other employees received those as well. The market-based components of those were something new this quarter. Because of that, we had to take a much higher grant date fair value than we would have if the awards had just been purely time-based or purely internal performance-based. Because of the stock market component of those awards, the market-based component, we have to value those differently.

So I think that the total value, you know, this will be in the Q, but it’s into the eight figures, the total value of all of those awards, and that has to be expensed over an aggressive period of time, a more aggressive than if they were purely time-based over four years. That’s why we had the unusually high SBC in this quarter. And you’ll see we have another, we disclosed an amount that will need to be expensed over the next several quarters. So hopefully that’ll be easier for you guys to factor into your models. Was that helpful, Dave?

David Marsh, Analyst, Singular Research: Yes, that’s really helpful. I appreciate it. Yeah, it looks like almost seven million in the quarter. A couple of follow-up questions on that. How is that reflected in the current diluted share count, if it is at all, and how will it impact the share count going forward? And then just, you know, again, around SG&A, I mean, would you expect it to, you know, retreat, you know, pretty substantially in Q4? Is this an annual, like, accrual type thing, or is this recurring, you know, quarterly?

Speaker 0: Yeah. So if you do the math and you look at all of our public filings, we, I’d say it was a majority of what we will do in a year was, were granted in the quarter. I wouldn’t expect there to be anything to that level in the next several quarters. I don’t know exactly what our SBC will be for Q4, but I think the majority of what we will do for this year’s grants, we had to expense in Q3.

David Marsh, Analyst, Singular Research: Okay. That’s really helpful. Turning kind of more strategically, Clint, you know, thanks for the color around the licenses. It’s helpful. Could you talk about content or subscriptions a bit, though? You know, you guys have launched a number of, you know, new, you know, kind of new markets over the last several quarters. Just give us an update on, you know, reception and you know, what kind of momentum you’re seeing in some of those new markets and new platforms, please.

Clint Stinchcomb, Chief Executive Officer, CuriosityStream: Yeah. Yeah, appreciate that question, and if I may, if I could just add a little color to what Brady shared, I want everybody to know that, you know, all of our employee equity grants at this point, including or especially mine, are linked to financial performance of the company, all quantitative goals, so as a company, we’re very tightly aligned around business and performance compensation. It’s a key, key pillar of culture, and it’s a key pillar of our compensation structure. We are not a bloated media company where people, you know, cling to fat-based salaries and guaranteed bonuses. We really strive to be the farthest thing from that, you know, as a, as a performance-based company. So equity is a critical component of this pursuit, and it’s also a way to help maintain a competitively advantageous operating budget.

But getting back to your question around subscriptions, we have had a number of new launches with partners like Amazon in, you know, Australia, in New Zealand. And as they roll out subscription-based services around the world, we want to roll out with them. And it’s building a subscription business, you know, is something where there are huge barriers to entry. And so for us, like, you know, beyond just the reliable recurring revenue of our subscription services, it’s a moat and it’s a competitive advantage in our licensing acquisition efforts. And as a result of these deals, Dave, you know, our sort of pipeline visibility, we’re supremely confident that our overall subscription revenue, retail and wholesale, will grow at a higher rate in 2026 than in 2025.

Again, we’re confident because the visibility in their third-party pipeline, meaning new and meaningful wholesale distribution agreements, which will kick in, as well as channel store launches inside and outside the U.S. for our SFOD services, and also because we’re diligently planning and taking the requisite steps to execute new pricing and packaging in 2026. I mean, if you look at, you know, a lot of public and private companies in the subscription space, the way that they’ve grown is through simply, or I might add, often just lazily raising price. That’s, you know, that’s something we have the capacity to do, but we’re trying to, you know, get to the core of, you know, what we really need to do based on our marketing spend to grow subscribers.

Speaker 0: Dave, let me jump back in. I think I forgot to answer your question on dilution. A portion of the RSUs for Q3 already vested. Those did factor into our share count for dilution purposes. Obviously, we reported a net loss for the quarter. So it was overall anti-dilutive. But going forward, assuming we’re for net positive quarters, we’ll certainly have to include all of those for fully diluted.

David Marsh, Analyst, Singular Research: Got it. Got it. Hey, thanks, guys. Appreciate you taking the questions.

Clint Stinchcomb, Chief Executive Officer, CuriosityStream: Thanks, Dave. Thanks.

Patrick Scholl with Barrington Research has our next question.

Patrick Scholl, Analyst, Barrington Research: Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Just the first one on the guidance in the quarter, could you maybe just talk about the free cash flow guidance? Seems like, you know, relative to the increase in revenue, there’s kind of limited free cash flow growth in the quarter. Is that mostly just a timing issue, or is there anything to keep in mind there?

Speaker 0: Timing issue. Yeah.

Patrick Scholl, Analyst, Barrington Research: Okay. And then on the content library for AI licensing, just maybe talk about, like, the different markets between the content that you have that is from maybe your partners that also work with you on the streaming side versus other partners, and just maybe the different dynamics on margins and maybe use cases and partners for licensing there.

Clint Stinchcomb, Chief Executive Officer, CuriosityStream: Yeah. No, that’s a, it’s a good question, Pat, and thank you. So when we were first building our library for AI licensing, we went to people with whom we had great existing relationships. And, you know, most of those companies are in the factual space, nonfiction entertainment, science, technology, history, travel, lifestyle, etc. In an effort to try to generate, again, escape velocity or dominate in the space, we then, at the same time, or shortly thereafter, started reaching out to people that we knew, distributors who controlled content in other genres, general entertainment, sports, as an example. And so with that type of corpus and with the way that we’re able to structure some of that data, that’s made a real difference as it relates to our overall proposition.

I mean, people love our content and love working with us because we have diversity of content, we have high quality, and we’re able to just enrich the data in a way that’s unique. But we do have some content, whereas a lot of the content that we have in our AI corpus, we could put on our services. There is some content that goes well beyond the factual content that you would see on any of our subscription services or our ad-supported services.

Patrick Scholl, Analyst, Barrington Research: Okay. Thank you.

Clint Stinchcomb, Chief Executive Officer, CuriosityStream: Thank you, Pat.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today’s teleconference. You may disconnect your lines and have a wonderful day.