01/10/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 01/10/2025 15:41
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Happy New Year everyone and thank you for joining the call today.
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As you probably read from my email, we announced some big news this morning.
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After months of thoughtful discussion and conversations with our board, we now have an agreement with Getty Images in what we think is a transformational merger that combines our complementary strengths and offerings to create a premier visual content company.
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We are bringing together two iconic brands to offer our customers a more diversified content library with greater depth and breadth, and an increased capacity to invest in growth, for example in innovative content, expanded event coverage, and customer-facing technologies and capabilities, such as search, 3D and generative AI.
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It also provides contributors greater opportunities to reach new customers around the world.
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So as you can see, I am excited about this merger and I believe it will make us both better - I want you to be excited about it too and help your teams through this change.
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Yes, we have signed an agreement, but we all need to understand that there are additional steps remaining before we close the transaction.
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We will need to meet a number of closing conditions, such as shareholder approvals, regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. Close is targeted in the second half of 2025.
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During this process, a small number of us will be discussing the specifics of the future combined organization with members of the Getty team. We are setting up an integration team and will let you know when we have that team identified.
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What we know now is that upon close, the newly combined company will be called Getty Images and the current CEO of Getty, Craig Peters, will become the CEO of the combined company. I will serve on the board of Getty Images and will step down as CEO.
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We will have 4 board seats and Getty will have 7 - one of which will be Craig the CEO.
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We also know that they fully expect Shutterstock to continue as a brand and website based on the incredible brand equity built by all of you and all of those who have worked here. You should be proud of that.
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Both companies will continue to operate independently and will remain business as usual.
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In fact, we are full steam ahead on our 2025 plans and our expectations remain the same. It's important that you know that we will continue to invest in our business during the pre-close period.
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A great show of this is the news that we are welcoming our new Head of Marketplace, Matt Furlong on January 13th. He is very excited to join and I look forward to him and the team getting started together. Thanks to the Marketplace team for their patience and for the great work they have been doing during our search.
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We're going to continue to invest in Envato. We're going to continue to invest in GIPHY - and move forward on our integration plans.
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We're also going to move forward with our brand refresh that we have planned early this year.
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I realize you probably have lots of questions right now. Including, what does this mean for me and for my team? How will I keep my team motivated and attract talent for my open roles? Those are all the right questions and some we can answer now and some we will work with you to figure out.
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But what I will commit to you is that we will communicate openly and honestly and tell you what we can tell you when we know it.
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I sent an FAQ with my email this morning. We also will provide you with talking points and a copy of what we are calling our Rules of Engagement which gives you more clarity on what we should and should not say or do during the pre-closing period.
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You'll see a lot about how we are able to communicate when referencing this deal. Stick to the talking points - don't go off script, we're going to talk about only what we know to be true - no assumptions, and it's ok to be honest when we don't know.
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So what else do we need from you? We need you to lead your teams and help them stay focused on our 2025 strategy and goals. It is business as usual unless you have been told otherwise. Please help us minimize distractions, gossip and swirl. |
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We HAVE to deliver our plans and we're looking to you to manage this.
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We have goals to grow our business in 2025 and that remains unchanged. It is very important that we continue to work hard, stay on track and not get distracted during this pre-close period. Our customers rely on us to deliver and we need to keep that promise.
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And now we want to get focused on our OKRs for the year and communicate that to the company. You'll be hearing from us on this shortly.
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Now we are going to open it up to questions and answer what we can.
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