Kartoon Studios, Inc.

To the Board of Directors and Stockholders of

Kartoon Studios, Inc.

Opinion on the Consolidated Financial Statements

We have audited the accompanying consolidated balance sheets of Kartoon Studios, Inc. and Subsidiaries (the “Company”) as of December 31, 2025 and 2024, and the related consolidated statements of operations, comprehensive loss, stockholders’ equity, and cash flows for the years then ended, and the related notes (collectively referred to as the “consolidated financial statements”). In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the consolidated financial position of the Company as of December 31, 2025 and 2024, and the consolidated results of its operations and its cash flows for the years ended December 31, 2025 and 2024, in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States of America.

Substantial Doubt About the Company’s Ability to Continue as a Going Concern

The accompanying consolidated financial statements have been prepared assuming that the Company will continue as a going concern. As discussed in Note 1 to the consolidated financial statements, the Company has suffered recurring losses and negative cash flows from operations since inception and expects to continue incurring losses and negative cash flows in the future. These matters raise substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern. Management's plans in regard to these matters are also described in Note 1. The consolidated financial statements do not include any adjustments that might result from the outcome of this uncertainty.

Basis for Opinion

These consolidated financial statements are the responsibility of the Company’s management. Our responsibility is to express an opinion on these consolidated financial statements based on our audits. We are a public accounting firm registered with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (United States) (“PCAOB”) and are required to be independent with respect to the Company in accordance with the U.S. federal securities laws and the applicable rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the PCAOB.

We conducted our audits in accordance with the standards of the PCAOB. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the consolidated financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether due to error or fraud. The Company is not required to have, nor were we engaged to perform, audit of its internal control over financial reporting. As part of our audits, we are required to obtain an understanding of internal control over financial reporting but not for the purpose of expressing an opinion on the effectiveness of the Company’s internal control over financial reporting. Accordingly, we express no such opinion.

Our audits included performing procedures to assess the risks of material misstatement of the consolidated financial statements, whether due to error or fraud, and performing procedures that respond to those risks. Such procedures included examining, on a test basis, evidence regarding the amounts and disclosures in the consolidated financial statements. Our audits also included evaluating the accounting principles used and significant estimates made by management, as well as evaluating the overall presentation of the consolidated financial statements. We believe that our audits provide a reasonable basis for our opinion.

Critical Audit Matters

The critical audit matters communicated below are matters arising from the current period audit of the consolidated financial statements that were communicated or required to be communicated to the audit committee and that: (1) relate to accounts or disclosures that are material to the consolidated financial statements and (2) involved our especially challenging, subjective, or complex judgments. The communication of critical audit matters does not alter in any way our opinion on the consolidated financial statements, taken as a whole, and we are not, by communicating the critical audit matters below, providing separate opinions on the critical audit matters or on the accounts or disclosures to which they relate.

Accounting for Complex Equity Transactions

Description:

As disclosed in Notes 13 and 16 to the consolidated financial statements, on May 14, 2025, there were changes in facts and circumstances impacting the Company's warrant agreement associated with the Company’s December 2024 offering. Based on these changes in facts and circumstances, the Company reevaluated the classification of the warrants under ASC 815-40 and determined that equity classification is appropriate. The warrants were remeasured to fair value immediately before the reclassification. As of May 13, 2025, the warrants were revalued at approximately $5.7 million, resulting in a recognition of a $0.7 million decrease in the liability. The change in value was recorded as a Gain on Revaluation of Warrants within Other Income (Expense), net on the consolidated statements of operations. Subsequently, the total liability of approximately $5.7 million was reclassified to additional paid-in capital.

On October 22, 2025, pursuant to the terms of the October 2025 Purchase Agreement, the Company closed the registered direct offering of the 3,000,000 October 2025 Shares and the October 2025 Pre-Funded Warrants to purchase up to 6,903,049 shares of common stock to the October 2025 Investor. In the Concurrent Private Placement, pursuant to the October 2025 Purchase Agreement, the Company also sold to the October 2025 Investor unregistered October 2025 Common Warrants to purchase up to 9,903,049 shares of common stock, with an exercise price of $0.738 per share. Each October 2025 Share and privately placed October 2025 Common Warrant was sold at a combined public offering price of $0.738, and each October 2025 Pre-Funded Warrant and privately placed October 2025 Common Warrant was sold at a combined public offering price of $0.737, for aggregate gross proceeds at closing of approximately $7.3 million, prior to deducting placement agent fees and other offering expenses. In addition, the Company issued Placement Agent Warrants to purchase 693,213 shares of common stock to the placement agent and its designees with an exercise price of $0.8118 per share. The warrants were deemed to be equity classified.

The accounting for the transactions required an assessment of the particular features of the warrants, and the impact of those features on the accounting and classifications of the warrants. The complexities and significant estimates required a high degree of auditor judgement and an increased extent of audit effort.

Response:

Our audit procedures related to management’s judgements of the accounting treatment for the warrants and classification, as well as the determination of fair value of the transactions. Our audit procedures included, among others, inspecting the agreements and evaluating the terms and conditions of the agreements and assessing the reasonableness of management’s interpretation and application of the appropriate accounting authoritative guidance. Our audit procedures also included utilizing personnel with specialized skill and knowledge to assist in assessing the appropriateness of conclusions reached by management by evaluating the underlying terms of the agreements and assessing the appropriateness of management’s application of the authoritative accounting guidance. We evaluated the methodologies and assumptions used to estimate the fair value of the warrants on the date of grant as well as the date of the reclassification of the warrants originally issued with the December 2024 offering. In addition, we evaluated the Company’s footnote disclosures in relation to the warrants.

Impairment of Intangible Assets

Description:

As disclosed in Note 9 to the consolidated financial statements, as of December 31, 2025, the Company had $17.6 million of intangible assets, net. During the year ended December 31, 2025, the Company recorded an impairment charge of approximately $0.8 million related to the Frederator and Wow tradenames due to a reduction in the estimated present value of their expected future cash flows. The Company completes the annual intangible asset impairment tests at the end of each fiscal year. Intangible assets have been acquired, either individually or with a group of other assets, and were initially recognized and measured based on fair value. Subjective auditor judgment was required to evaluate certain key assumptions used to determine the fair value of the intangible assets. For the intangible assets, the key assumptions included the discount rates used in the present value calculations and the forecasted revenue growth rate and operational cost trends. Changes to these key assumptions could have had a substantial impact on the fair value of the intangible assets and the amount of the impairment charges. Additionally, the audit effort associated with the estimates required specialized valuation skills and knowledge.

Response:

The following are the primary procedures we performed to address this critical audit matter: We evaluated the Company’s third-party specialist and their valuation report and checked it for mathematical accuracy. We reviewed key valuation inputs and reviewed the comparable company guidelines for reasonableness. We evaluated the forecasted revenue growth and operational costs for reasonableness by utilizing historical rates to benchmark and also used peer company data. We evaluated the Company’s discount rates by comparing the assumptions and data used by management to develop the discount rates to publicly available market data and historical experience. In addition, we involved valuation professionals with specialized skills and knowledge, who assisted in evaluating the appropriateness of the valuation method utilized, specific inputs used in the valuation as well as performing a parallel analysis for reasonableness.

/s/WithumSmith+Brown, PC

We have served as the Company's auditor since 2024.

Whippany, New Jersey

March 30, 2026

PCAOB ID Number:100