Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to IZEA's earnings call covering the third quarter of 2026. I am John Francis, SVP Sales and Marketing Operations at IZEA. Joining me on the call are IZEA's Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Venetucci, and IZEA's Chief Financial Officer, Peter Biere. Thank you for being with us today. Earlier this afternoon, the company issued a press release detailing IZEA's performance during Q3 2026. If you would like to review those details, please visit our investor relations website at izea.com/investors. Before we begin, please take note of the safe harbor paragraph included in today's press release covering IZEA's financial results, and be advised that some of the statements that we make today regarding our business, operations, and financial performance may be considered forward-looking, and such statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially.
We encourage you to consider the disclosures contained in our SEC filings for a detailed discussion of these factors. Our commentary today will also include the non-GAAP financial measure of adjusted EBITDA. Reconciliations between GAAP and non-GAAP metrics for our reported results can be found in our earnings release issued earlier today in our publicly available filings. With that, I would now like to introduce and turn the call over to IZEA's Chief Executive Officer, Patrick Venetucci. Patrick?
Thank you, John, and good afternoon, everyone. Our third quarter results reflect continued progress in IZEA's transformation to an enterprise-focused creator marketing company. While our overall revenue performance remains below our expectations, we are seeing encouraging signs that our strategy is working, particularly in the strength of our largest client relationships, the acceleration of contract bookings, and the continued improvement in our operating efficiency. Today, I would like to focus on four areas: our financial performance, enterprise client momentum, progress against our strategic priorities, and our outlook for the fourth quarter and beyond. Third quarter revenue was $6.2 million, a decrease of 23% compared to the prior year. This decline reflects two distinct dynamics. First, we continue to experience uneven spending across our enterprise client portfolio, driven by macroeconomic uncertainty, client restructuring, and delays in marketing investments.
Second, we intentionally transitioned away from smaller non-core customers that we had in Q3 2025 to concentrate our resources on larger enterprise relationships where we believe we have greater competitive advantages and long-term growth potential. Importantly, revenue from our top three enterprise accounts grew faster than the market quarter-over-quarter, demonstrating the growth potential of our enterprise model. Our objective is to replicate this performance across a broader portfolio of enterprise accounts. The most encouraging financial indicator this quarter was the significant acceleration in contract bookings. Managed Services bookings increased 94% year-over-year to $7 million, representing 54% sequential growth over the second quarter. This improvement was driven by stronger commitments from existing enterprise clients and a broader group of customers making meaningful investments in creator marketing. At the same time, we maintained our focus on financial discipline.
Total costs and expenses declined 16% year-over-year as we continued aligning our organization and resources with our enterprise strategy. We ended the quarter with a strong cash position and no long-term debt, providing substantial financial flexibility to invest in both organic growth and strategic acquisitions. Our largest enterprise relationships continue to validate the strength of IZEA's capabilities and our position as a strategic partner to leading global brands. During the quarter, our top three accounts delivered their strongest combined revenue performance in our history. All three accounts grew compared to the prior year quarter, reflecting our ability to deepen client relationships, expand our scope of services, and capture a greater share of their creator marketing investments. This is the model we intend to scale, building long-term strategic relationships with enterprise clients, delivering differentiated creator-led solutions, and expanding our business within those accounts over time.
We also made progress in developing new enterprise relationships. Our sales team won new business from major entertainment and technology leaders, including Disney's ABC, HBO Max, Hulu, and ASUS. For our existing clients, we executed high-profile creator marketing programs, including Nestlé Vital Proteins at the US Open, Lionsgate, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, and Ravensburger Oh My Pigeons! launch. These programs showcase the breadth of our capabilities and our ability to execute sophisticated creator marketing initiatives for leading brands. While our largest accounts are performing well, we recognize that growth across the broader enterprise portfolio has been inconsistent. Improving client retention at the lower end of our portfolio, expanding account penetration, and strengthening new business conversion remain critical priorities. Throughout 2026, we have been reshaping IZEA around three strategic priorities: enterprise specialization, operational excellence, and technology differentiation. First, we continue to sharpen our go-to-market focus.
We have organized our commercial efforts around industry verticals where we believe our expertise, client relationships, and capabilities provide meaningful competitive advantages. Our marketing organization is increasingly aligned with these priorities through targeted account-based campaigns. During the quarter, 27% of our target accounts engaged with our website, compared to 10% in the first quarter. We are seeing improved engagement with prospective clients, and our focus now is converting that engagement into qualified opportunities and bookings. Second, we are putting in place operational systems to build a more efficient and accountable organization. We have taken deliberate steps to simplify our structure, align talent with our strategic priorities, and manage costs. These actions have reduced our expense base while preserving the capabilities we believe are essential for long-term growth.
Despite significant organizational change, employee engagement remains strong at more than three times average company engagement, which is important as we continue executing our transformation. Third, we are investing in technology as a competitive differentiator. Following the launch of ZED, our proprietary AI-powered creator marketing operations platform, 100% of new campaigns are managed through ZED. We continue developing ZED's capabilities in creator intelligence, brand safety, campaign management, and workflow automation. Our longer-term vision is to leverage proprietary technology and AI to deliver greater value to clients, improving operating efficiency, and monetize this investment. Turning to the fourth quarter, we entered the period with strong momentum and confidence in our ability to deliver revenue growth. Following a significant increase in third-quarter bookings, we are providing a fourth-quarter revenue outlook to offer investors greater visibility into our revenue conversion.
While we typically do not issue financial guidance, we are making a one-time exception to share these insights. The significant increase in third-quarter bookings provides improved visibility into upcoming revenue, and continued demand from our largest enterprise clients supports our outlook. We expect fourth-quarter revenue to increase meaningfully on both a sequential and a year-over-year basis. Although this improvement will not fully offset the revenue shortfall experienced earlier in the year, we believe it represents an important step towards restoring consistent growth. Our immediate priorities are clear: convert our enterprise opportunities, expand our largest accounts, grow our new business pipeline, and maintain operating discipline. Finally, I want to address our approach to capital allocation and strategic growth. IZEA's balance sheet remains one of our most important strategic assets.
With $46.4 million in cash and no long-term debt, we have the financial resources to pursue opportunities that can materially accelerate our transformation. We continue to pursue strategic acquisitions that can expand our capabilities, diversify our revenue streams, leverage our technology offering, and increase our scale in the creator economy. The creator marketing industry remains highly fragmented, creating opportunities to make strategic acquisitions that create a more comprehensive and differentiated platform with new combinations of capabilities. We remain disciplined in our approach, prioritizing opportunities that offer strong strategic alignment, attractive economics, and a clear path to long-term shareholder value creation. In closing, while 2026 has been a challenging year, we are encouraged by the progress we made during the third quarter. Our largest enterprise clients are growing, contract bookings have accelerated significantly, our cost structure is improving, and our technology platform continues to advance.
We recognize that we have more work to do to deliver consistent growth across the entire business, but we believe the foundation we are building is increasingly aligned with the opportunities ahead. Our focus remains on translating this progress into sustainable revenue growth, improved profitability, and long-term shareholder value. Thank you for your continued support. With that, I'll turn the call over to Peter Biere, our Chief Financial Officer, for a closer look at the financial results.
Thank you, Patrick, and good afternoon, everyone. Earlier today, we reported our third quarter of 2026 results and filed our Form 10-Q with the SEC. I'll focus my remarks on the factors affecting our quarterly results, review our financial position, and provide our outlook for the fourth quarter. Revenue was $6.2 million, down 23% from the prior- year- quarter. Enterprise customer performance was mixed. Revenue from our three largest customers grew 21% year- over- year, and we saw contributions from new enterprise customers. However, lower activity across other enterprise relationships and the remaining year-over-year impact of our transition away from non-core SMB business outweighed those gains. Managed Services bookings during the quarter totaled $7 million, up 94% from the prior- year- quarter, which supports revenue growth in the coming quarters. Bookings reflected stronger commitments across a broader group of enterprise customers, including both existing and new relationships.
As a reminder, it takes an average of approximately seven months to fully recognize revenue from Managed Services bookings. Gross margin for the quarter was 37% compared to 49% in the prior- year- period. The decline reflects greater revenue concentration from a large enterprise customer with comparatively lower margins, as well as higher internal delivery costs. Unlike direct campaign costs, internal labor costs are less variable, as we maintain the staffing needed to support anticipated revenue growth. Operating expenses, excluding the cost of revenue, declined 26% year-over-year to $3.1 million. The decrease primarily reflects lower personnel-related costs following the reductions we've made over the past year. We believe our current expense levels can support higher revenue without a corresponding increase in operating expenses. For the quarter, we reported a net loss of $0.4 million compared to net income of $0.1 million in the prior- year- period.
Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $0.2 million compared to positive adjusted EBITDA of $0.4 million last year. The decline in profitability primarily reflects lower revenue and gross margins, partially offset by our reduced operating costs. Looking ahead to the fourth quarter, as Patrick mentioned, we expect revenue to be between $7.5 million and $8.1 million, representing year-over-year growth of approximately 24%-34%. Turning to our financial position, as of September 30, 2026, we had $46.4 million in cash and cash equivalents, a decrease of $4.4 million from the beginning of the year. The decrease reflects approximately $2.7 million in cash used in operations, including working capital changes, as well as investments in our technology platform and share repurchases. We remain well capitalized with no long-term debt on our balance sheet.
Finally, recall that our board of directors authorized a $10 million share repurchase program in the fall of 2024. As of September 30, 2026, we've repurchased approximately 909,000 shares, investing $2.6 million, primarily through our Rule 10b5-1 trading plans, including approximately 386,000 shares for $1.3 million since our current plan was adopted this past May. We believe our strong balance sheet positions us well to support organic growth initiatives and to pursue strategic acquisition opportunities. Thank you for your time today. We'll now open the call for questions.
Thank you. We will now be conducting a question-and-answer session. We ask that you please limit yourself to one question and one follow-up. If you would like to ask a question, please press star then one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star then two if you'd like to remove yourself from the question queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the keys. We'll pause momentarily to assemble our roster. The first question will come from Jeff Bronchick with Cove Street Capital. Please go ahead.
Excuse me. Good afternoon, gents. Hey, there was a comment that, quote, "You book a Managed Services contract and then it's five to seven months before it hits revenue." So, when I see Managed Services bookings total $7 million, up 94% in this quarter, and then you are looking at fourth quarter revenue up 25%, are those two different dynamics that are happening? The Managed Services that was booked this quarter is going to hit next year, and Q4 revenue is the result of things that were signed two quarters ago?
Hey, Jeff Bronchick. It's Patrick Venetucci. Yes. I mean, obviously, there's a mix of booking duration, if you will. So, and fourth quarters, and especially towards the end of the year, some seasonality begins to happen. So, obviously, holiday is a big time for marketers, and they begin working on those campaigns in Q3, so the duration of some of those bookings tend to be shorter. On the other hand, in Q4, with some of our longer-term, bigger enterprise customers, we will have bookings that are really about 2027 that happen at the end of the year and have longer duration. So, depending on the time of year that bookings hit, that average duration can be different. But in general, across the year, it's seven months.
Got it. So, if I sum up what you are saying, Q4 is usually big, obviously, at marketers' attention, so bookings in the Q3 tend to hit earlier than a Q1 booking for, quote, "sometime over the year." Would that be a fair explanation of what you are saying in your press release? Okay, got it. Second question would be, you came in, you saw, you fixed, running breakeven, and obviously, looking at acquisition targets and things to be more valuable to your clients. What would you say you have learned over the course of the year in that process as far as what's available, what's affordable, the value of something big versus little bite-sized things, or maybe any wisdom that you can share with us?
Yeah. No, great question. I mean, we have learned to go bigger, right? As everyone has seen, years ago, we did smaller deals, which really didn't make a sustainable impact. So, that's part of the reason we have been more patient in pursuing the larger deals. As I have been saying all year, we have been putting a lot of energy against pursuing acquisitions, and it's been strategic.
As I have said before, we have been focused on three things, so looking for expanding our capabilities, deepening our vertical expertise, and increasing our scale. Especially that last part. We believe that scale is important to stay competitive and create value for all the stakeholders. Our M&A activity is at an all-time high for IZEA, both in the number and the size of opportunities that we have been pursuing. Some of these opportunities have the potential to be transformational. So, we are aiming high.
We remain disciplined on strategic fit, valuation, integration readiness, and financial returns. We are committed to executing the right transaction at the right value.
Great. Thank you.
Again, if you have a question, please press star, then one. This will now conclude our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the floor back over to management. Mr. John Francis, please go ahead for closing remarks.
Thank you so much, Chuck, and thank you, everyone, for joining us this afternoon. As a reminder, a replay of today's call will be available shortly on our website, izea.com/investors. We appreciate your continued interest and support, and hope you'll join us for our next conference call to discuss the fourth quarter and full year 2026 results. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your participation. This does conclude today's teleconference. Please disconnect your lines, and have a wonderful day.