Key insights
- Angel Studios reported strong Q1 2026 revenue growth and improved EBITDA, but the stock's pre-market reaction was muted. Despite past declines, analysts see upside potential. The company's performance highlights its growing presence in independent film distribution, but its overall market capitalization remains relatively small, limiting broader market impact.
Angel Studios reported a remarkable 143% year-over-year increase in revenue for Q1 2026, reaching $115 million. The company also achieved a positive Adjusted EBITDA of $4 million, marking a significant improvement from a $28 million loss in the same period last year. Despite this strong performance, the company’s stock showed a modest pre-market increase of 1.66%, trading at $3.07. This comes after a 5.3% decline in the previous session, closing at $3.02. The stock has faced significant headwinds, declining 76% over the past year and 52% in the last six months, according to InvestingPro data. The current market capitalization stands at $563 million, with the stock trading near its 52-week low of $2.04. Despite the volatility, InvestingPro analysis suggests the stock appears undervalued at current levels, appearing on the platform’s Most Undervalued list.
Angel Studios delivered exceptional results in Q1 2026, marking a pivotal moment in its journey towards profitability. The company’s revenue surged by 143% compared to Q1 2025, driven by significant growth in Guild memberships and strategic theatrical releases. This growth positions Angel Studios as a formidable player in the independent film distribution market, outperforming competitors like A24 and Neon in domestic box office revenue from 2023 to 2025.
Angel Studios projects a fiscal year 2026 Adjusted EBITDA loss of $25 million or less, a significant reduction from a $132 million loss in 2025. The company anticipates continued growth in Guild memberships and plans to expand its streaming library to nearly double by the end of 2026. Analysts remain optimistic, with price targets ranging from $6 to $9, suggesting substantial upside potential from current levels. For investors seeking comprehensive analysis, Angel Studios is one of 1,400+ US equities covered by InvestingPro’s detailed Pro Research Reports, which transform complex Wall Street data into clear, actionable intelligence.
CEO [Name] stated, "Our Q1 results reflect the successful execution of our strategic initiatives, particularly in expanding our Guild membership and theatrical releases. We are committed to leveraging our community-driven model to drive sustainable growth."
During the earnings call, analysts inquired about the company’s strategy for international expansion and its plans to leverage AI in content production. Management emphasized their focus on achieving profitability in the U.S. before pursuing international markets and highlighted recent AI-driven production breakthroughs that enhance efficiency and reduce costs.
Operator: Good morning. I would like to invite everyone to Angel’s Q1 2026 earnings call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. The question and answer session will follow a formal presentation. You may be placed in the question queue at any time by pressing star, then one on your telephone keypad. If anyone should require assistance, please press star zero. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to Luke Janssens, Head of Investor Relations. You may begin your conference.
Luke Janssens, Head of Investor Relations, Angel Studios: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Angel’s first quarter 2026 earnings call. Joining me are Angel’s Co-founder and CEO, Neal Harmon, and Angel’s CFO, Scott Klossner. Before we begin, I would like to remind everyone that certain statements made on today’s call, including statements regarding future financial performance, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on management’s current expectations and assumptions and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. Information regarding these risks and uncertainties is included in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our most recent annual report on Form 10-K and subsequent quarterly reports on Form 10-Q.
These forward-looking statements represent our outlook only as of the date of this call, and we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements except as required by applicable law. During this call, we may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measures are available in our earnings press release. These cautionary statements apply to all forward-looking statements wherever they appear in this call, including in the question and answer session. Our earnings press release is available on our investor relations website at angx.com, where we also encourage you to sign up to our email alerts. Neal and Scott will take approximately 20 minutes for their opening remarks before we turn the call over to questions. Thank you all for joining us, and now I’ll pass the call over to Neal.
Neal Harmon, Co-founder and CEO, Angel Studios: Thank you, Luke, good morning, everyone. It’s great to be with you for Angel’s first quarter 2026 earnings call. As you may have seen from our earnings release, we achieved a milestone in Q1 with positive Adjusted EBITDA of $4 million on revenues of $115 million, both significant improvements over Q4 results. This shows the strength of Angel’s recurring revenue model. We’ll get into these strong results in more detail later on the call, especially when Scott discusses our financial performance. Now I wanna excuse me, now I wanna focus on what sets Angel apart today and what has set us apart from the very beginning. That is our commitment to having the audience decide, to give them the power, and to align our filmmaker partners with the audience by sharing the upside.
We intentionally set out to redefine the relationship between filmmakers and the audience by inviting Guild members to watch, screen, and vote on which films and television series are produced and distributed, both on the Angel platform and in theaters. Our community is living on the other side of the screen. They’re part of the production process. We have built a global community of over 2.2 million paying members in just over 2 years. Annualized, that membership base represents approximately $365 million in annual recurring revenue. The Angel Guild now accounts for more than 72% of our total revenue, and filmmaker royalties have continued to grow right alongside of this. In fact, filmmakers have earned $255 million in cumulative royalties as of March 31st, 2026, over a quarter billion dollars.
Our growth is driven by aligning artists and the audience, we believe the untapped total addressable market ahead of us is more than 35 times where we stand today in the U.S. alone. How do we continue to achieve this kind of growth and success in the TV and streaming market when there are big multi-billion-dollar players with huge checkbooks competing with us? We remain laser-focused on our audience-centric model, which happens to be attracting world-class talent in some of the most watched genres to Angel. I’ll give you a few examples. During the quarter, Angel’s release of Solo Mio starring Kevin James crossed $25 million at the domestic box office with a right-sized marketing spend.
A large streamer offered up a check to buy the film before the release, but the Solo Mio team came to Angel because they believe the film would be best served by being experienced in theaters, that the Angel Guild would champion the release, and that they would share in the upside. Boy, they were right. Now Angel, without offering a big upfront check, we get to be the ones to attract new Guild members with one of the highest-rated rom-coms in cinema history. Theatrical is strategic. Investors have asked, why are we in the theatrical business if we intend to simply break even on our theatrical activities? That’s an incredibly important question. Theatrical business is all about growing the Guild, and the Guild is the economic engine of Angel. Solo Mio is just one example.
We’ve signed 10 filmmakers for theatrical releases in 2026 who made a similar bet on themselves, their projects, and on the Angel community. Most received competing upfront offers. Without committing upfront capital, our theatrical business helps Angel to compete effectively for premium titles and genres that likely would have been sold to competitors, some with multi-billion dollar checkbooks. Each theatrical release is a community-building event designed to do 3 things simultaneously. First, to retain existing Guild members, help them be happy with their memberships. Second, increase the caliber of filmmakers who want to build with us. Third, attract new audience segments to the Guild as theatrical titles are released exclusively on our streaming platform after their theatrical run. Angel films like Sound of Freedom, The King of Kings, and most recently David are released, premium Guild members redeem complimentary tickets and have higher retention.
Our Guild members say that they want to impact the film industry, theatrical releases are visible cultural events that remind them of their broader impact on the culture. In addition, theatrical titles are consistently ranked as the most popular on Angel’s streaming platform. Theatrical improves Guild retention both in theaters and on streaming. Our 2026 theatrical slate also reflects another important trend, that world-class talent is now increasingly turning to Angel. Animal Farm, which opens tonight on roughly 2,500 screens, features one of the most unexpected voice casts of well-known stars, including Seth Rogen, Woody Harrelson, Glenn Close, Kieran Culkin, Jim Parsons, Kathleen Turner, and Gaten Matarazzo. Angel’s summer slate begins with Young Washington, an event which opens July third, the day before America celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
It stars Golden Globe winners Kelsey Grammer and Mary-Louise P