Earnings Call: H2 2021

Jan 20, 2022

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Audioboom Group plc investor update. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen-only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time by the Q&A tab situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Please simply type in your question and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll, and if you could give that your kind attention, I am sure the company will be most grateful. I would now like to hand you over to Stuart Last, CEO, and Brad Clarke, CFO. Good afternoon to you both. Hi, everyone. Pleased to be joining you again. Joining you today from a very snowy and very gloomy New York. I think the good thing is that these Audioboom results we are about to talk you through are much sunnier and much happier and the outlook is super bright for 2022 as well. So just really pleased to have you all here. Welcome to our shareholders. Welcome to anyone that is new to the business. We are going to step things back and take a look at Audioboom, in terms of our business operations and our position in the industry and give some good background information. We will then take a look at the 2021 results and finances in a little more detail. We will go into 2022 and talk through our focus for the year ahead. I think it is going to be a really exciting year. Then at the end, there is some time for some questions. So submit any questions that you have. We will try and get to as many as possible. Things are always a little tight in these sessions because we have got a lot to tell you about, but we will fit in as many of those questions as possible. You will have seen in the trading update, I kind of described 2021 as a transformative year for Audioboom. A year in which we redefined shareholder value. So we are coming into this in a very positive place. Last year was just fantastic for the company, for our investors, for our shareholders. The team at Audioboom have just done an incredible job to build this business. So we are super excited to tell you more. Just by way of introductions, for those that are new to the business, I am Stuart Last, CEO of Audioboom, and I stepped up to the role of CEO two years ago. Previous to that, I launched Audioboom in the U.S. back in 2015, and was the Chief Operating Officer ahead of that. I have a long history in podcasting and audio. I was an executive at a podcast tech business called Voxnest here in New York City before launching Audioboom here. Previous to that, spent 10 years in audio and digital audio at the BBC in London. So go pretty deep in podcasting and just love the business that we have here at Audioboom and I cannot wait to do more. I will let Brad say hi and introduce himself. Thanks, Stuart. Hi, everyone. Thanks, everyone, for joining this afternoon. I'm Brad, CFO here at Audioboom. I've been here since March 2018, so that's coming up for four years. Like Stuart, delighted to work here, very privileged to form a small part of this fantastic team who continue to break records in this very exciting, fast-moving industry. Chartered accountant, been in and around media companies for what? 15 years or so in terms of finances, so lots of experience there. It really is this company and this role which genuinely excites me, and I'm very pleased to form a part of it. So back to you, Stuart. Thank you, Brad. I'm just going to turn my camera off so we can focus a little bit on the slides here. As I said, first section, really going to step this back and just look at the business model and the operations for those of you that are new to the company or anyone that wants a recap. I think the key thing here is just to highlight the really important position that Audioboom plays in podcasting. We power podcasting. We sit between content advertisers and audience, the three key elements of any media business. Our kind of key role here is to connect content with advertisers and then push it out to audience. So we sit in between content and advertisers. We take great content. We connect it up to the right brands, and then we distribute to audiences globally at massive scale. So we play an incredibly important role in the industry. Without being able to combine those three elements of podcasting, then there would be no ability to monetize, no ability to grow this industry, and no ability for podcasting to become the fantastically engaged and powerful medium that it is. So Audioboom is powering podcasting, and we're empowering the content creators that we work with to build their podcast audiences and to monetize their content. At the heart of that connection that we create between advertisers, content, and listeners, is our platform, the Audioboom platform. So I want to kind of walk through that just a little bit. This is really driving those connections and that distribution and doing it at scale. So we've built out, over the past five or six years, a very scalable technology platform. That platform is the key reason why we can create that connection between advertisers and content. At the heart of the platform is a content management system that's allowing our podcast partners to upload their audio, to host their audio, to manage and to schedule the distribution of that audio. It's one-click distribution out to Spotify and Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts and all of those listener interaction points. Then it collects fantastic data and presents that back to the podcast producer to give real insight into audience and help them to improve their product. So that's the content management system that's at the heart of our platform. On top of that, we've built out an advertising technology stack to monetize that content. So it's an ad server. It's a Yield-Op system that ensures we get the best pricing for all of our content. It's our recently launched AdRip inventory creation system, which is proprietary to Audioboom, doesn't exist anywhere else in the space. That removes baked-in host endorsement ads and replaces them with new ads to continually monetize and remonetize that content. Then it's our marketplace, which is our automated and programmatic advertising marketplace that launched in November and is already impacting and having a strong impact on the success of the business after just a few months. On top of that advertising tech stack, we've then built out an inventory management system that drives the entire process. It's based on Salesforce. It delivers ad execution, automated billing, business intelligence around pricing, and the ability for us to really optimize that business. So that's the platform. We still iterate on it. We still develop it. We still innovate around that. But essentially that platform is there, it's built, and it now powers a huge amount of content. So we have 8,000 podcast channels running through that platform. We reach 116 million-plus downloads every single month. We get into the ears of 32 million-plus unique listeners every single month. So we have some really good scale there. But that platform, as I've said before, is much more scalable than that. So we could be running 100,000 podcast channels through that platform. We could be reaching 1 billion monthly downloads and 100 million unique listeners, and our platform can handle it, and it can help monetize and distribute at huge volume. So the platform is super strong, and it really drives the core business through it. Then we kind of look at how we work with content and what our revenue model is, and the Audioboom revenue model is built around advertising, as I've said before, and connecting content with the right advertisers. To do that, we have to match up the right content with the right types of brand and the right advertising model. On the left-hand side here, you'll see the types of content that we work with. I break those down into 3 categories. At the top, it's Audioboom Studios. These are our own productions. These are the shows that we create in-house or we co-produce with a partner. We have production teams in the U.S. and in the U.K. There's fewer of those shows, just around 25 of those Audioboom Studios shows. But they are the most valuable shows to us. They come with the highest gross margin. We sell them at the highest advertising rates. Then beneath that is our Audioboom Creator Network. This is a much wider group of shows, around 8,000 podcasts, just under 8,000 podcasts. These are shows that we don't create the content, the creator is making those podcasts independently, and we work with them to monetize and to distribute their content and their shows widely. Then the third kind of part of content is what I call here the podcast landscape. These are podcasts that are not contracted to the Audioboom network. We don't have direct deals with those podcasts. But through the advertising model we have created, we can effectively still monetize any podcast that's in existence anywhere in the world, whether that be Pod Save America, whether that be Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert, whether that be My Dad Wrote a Porno in the U.K. It's pretty much any of the major podcasts out there. We can seek value and create value from those podcasts as well as the ones that belong to the Audioboom network. How we do that is through our three advertising models. The first advertising model is a premium sales model. Premium sales are high-value advertising units that are voiced by the host of the podcast. The podcast host is voicing those adverts. They're endorsing the products. They're engaging with their listeners around those products, and it allows us to sell them at very high advertising rates. We can do that against Audioboom Studios shows, and we can also do that against the top tier of our Audioboom Creator Network as well. The second advertising model that we have is recently launched and branded as Showcase. That's our global marketplace, and this is an advertising product that is infinitely scalable. It's all about volume, much lower pricing in there. But we can reach any podcast, and we can continually remonetize that episode. So whether an episode is listened to today or in 10 years' time, the marketplace can continue to monetize that with fresh advertising. Again, the marketplace runs across Audioboom Studios shows, and it runs across the Audioboom Creator Network. Then the third piece in our advertising model is Sonic Influencer Marketing. Sonic Influencer Marketing can monetize content at Audioboom Studios in our Creator Network, but importantly can also monetize content outside of the Audioboom network. So Sonic works directly with the advertiser and represents the advertiser, and therefore can go out and get beyond the Audioboom network to place advertising for that brand in any podcast that is available globally. So, a great content and advertising model, and this is at the heart of our success and our revenue growth over the past few years. This slide, I think breaks down the key revenue lines within the business. I'll just talk you through that to give you some background. Those key revenue lines being Audioboom Studios, the Creator Network, Showcase, our marketplace, and Sonic Influencer Marketing. The top section is highlighting the contribution to our group revenue. Then the bottom section there is the gross margin on each of those revenue lines. So you can see today that Audioboom Studios is a small part of our overall revenue, but it gives us a strong gross margin. That's why it's important for us to continue to invest and build out Audioboom Studios, and grow its contribution to group revenue. Our Creator Network is a key driver of revenue. 67% of our revenue comes from the work we do with those independent creators and monetizing and distributing their content. It has a slimmer gross margin, around 23%, and that margin is slimmer just because of the competitiveness in the industry to sign and work with and represent those shows. The kind of influence, I think, over the past couple of years of the Hollywood talent agents who represent the key talent and key creators within that network. They can obviously use that leverage to get the best deals for their talent. We have seen a slimming of that gross margin on the Creator Network over the past couple of years. But 23% is a good place to be, and we'll hold that gross margin there in coming years. Showcase, that has a slightly stronger gross margin. Obviously, that's hitting both Audioboom Studios and the Creator Network, and is 11% of our revenue contribution for 2021. That's a key area of growth for us. As I said, it's extremely scalable part of the business. We expect that contribution to group revenue to grow significantly in 2022 and beyond. Sonic Influencer Marketing, fast area of revenue growth for us. It's gone from zero to 18% in just the two or three years that it's been within the Audioboom Group, but comes with a slimmer gross margin. So, works on a 12% gross margin, but is a very important part of the business. Hopefully, that slide just gives you a sense of those key revenue lines, and how important and how they make up and come together to build this Audioboom business. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about the life cycle of a podcast, because I think it really highlights the importance of having those various advertising models within the business. If you take a look at this slide, what we're really showing here is that when an episode launches, the first window to monetize that episode is around 90 days. So we will sell a high-value premium host read advertising unit into that episode, and that will be kept in the episode for the first 90 days. We're charging somewhere around $30 for every thousand downloads of that episode during the first 90 days. We have four ad slots per episode on average. The host is voicing those advertisements, and it creates strong engagement with the listener and good conversions and sales for the advertiser. So that's the product we sell in the first 90 days of an episode's life. At 90 days, where you see that red line, that's where our AdRip tool that we launched in July of last year really comes into its own. That automates the removal of those premium ads after 90 days and replaces them with ad markers that allows us to remonetize that content. As I said, it's an automated process. It removes a lot of the need to manually edit content, which can be time-consuming, takes a lot of resource. Again, it allows us to do this at scale on behalf of our content partners and our creators. After that 90 days, those ad markers are pushed into an episode, and we use dynamic ad insertion to remonetize that content. Dynamic ad insertion is automated advertising that gets pushed into the episode in real time, fresh ads for every listen. It allows us to monetize at 90 days, but also allows us to monetize that content even if it's heard 10 years later. We increase the number of ad slots in that episode. The pricing is lower, somewhere around $12 per thousand downloads, but the increase in the number of ad slots, the ads are generally shorter, maybe around 30 seconds rather than a minute, so we can increase the ad slots in each of those episodes. Just continue to drive revenue to back catalog episodes. I think in an earlier trading update, we talked about the level of consumption on Audioboom that is that first window or to the back catalog. Back catalog consumption is now just under 50% of all consumption on Audioboom. Having the ability to remonetize and to do that at scale and do it in a very efficient, automated way is very important to this business. To be able to do both parts of this is a key differentiator between us and our competitors in podcasting. That is the business. Hopefully, that gives you some good background on what we do and how we do it. Next, let us take a look at 2021 and the performance and the incredible year that we delivered during 2021. These are just the financial highlights, the big numbers. You will know these by now, I think. First one here, $60 million of revenue. That was 125% annual growth, so an incredibly strong year of growth for us. Just to highlight the Q4 revenue of $20.5 million as well. We stepped that revenue up every single quarter, and then $60 million of revenue was just a fantastic place to end the year. Q1 here in the middle, $3 million of adjusted EBITDA profit. We talked this time last year about the need to break even. We understood where we needed to get this business to, and we went out and we executed that. That was a maiden EBITDA profit for Audioboom. Just creating a self-sustainable business was so important to us, and we achieved that, and we went beyond that, and we delivered $3 million there too. Also, just to highlight the maiden net profit also of $1.4 million. Fantastic to get to that point also. The third key number here is that $3 million of cash. A key part of that really for me is that we are fully funded for the current growth trajectory. We do not expect to slow this thing down and that cash just allows us to keep building the business and to keep growing very strongly. Two other kind of indicators of our performance level here on this slide. It is not just about those revenue numbers and the profit numbers and the cash number that I showed you before. This puts that performance of 2021 into some kind of context. The first chart on the left here is Audioboom's revenue growth versus the industry growth. Every single year since 2017, we have outperformed that industry growth. We did that again in 2021. Significantly, we outperformed industry growth by over 100%. We are very quickly here gaining market share, and making Audioboom a bigger part of a podcast industry that is already growing strongly. That podcast industry is expected to hit $1.75 billion this year. In that last four or five years, we will have increased Audioboom's market share from less than 2% to around 5%. We are growing that market share out quickly, and we expect that to continue into 2022 as well, where we will be looking to outperform the wider market. The chart on the right is not about revenue, but it is about audience growth. Obviously, audience growth is integral to revenue growth here. Audioboom is now the fourth largest podcast publisher in the U.S., per the Triton Digital Podcast ranker. We started 2021 in sixth position and moved up two positions across the year. We now reach almost 6 million U.S. listeners per week, which is a very strong number. If you look at the annual change column there on the right-hand side, we have moved faster and quicker than any of our competitors. Again, we are not just increasing our position in the space, we are punching above our weight when we look at our competitors. Stitcher Media is owned by SiriusXM. Audacy Podcasts belongs to a billion-dollar radio company here in the U.S. Wondery is part of Amazon. Cumulus Media, another billion-dollar radio corporation here in the U.S. We are doing with this kind of pure play focus on podcasting, and the automation we have built into the business and the business model we have created, we are growing quicker and faster than any of our competitors. Again, by these measures, alongside the financial parts, 2021 was just a fantastic year for the business. Let us have a look at why we grew so quickly and what the key drivers of that growth were in 2021. We have had this focus on content expansion, building bigger and stronger and more highly consumed content on top of that Audioboom platform over the past two years. We did that again in 2021. We signed new partnerships and launched new content initiatives with some major podcasts, Dark History, Unfiltered, Red Handed, Micro, Fantasy Footballers. These are all shows that have strong built-in audience levels that we were able to monetize on day one, and to help them grow that audience, and to charge that premium pricing for. So the continued focus on signing new content partnerships, and growing the content footprint within the business. Second key driver is around pricing, and the levels that we have been able to charge for those premium ad units. The numbers here are quite kind of staggering. The price that we are charging for an ad unit in our top 25 shows grew to $9,000 in Q4 of last year versus $3,600 a year earlier. Just incredibly strong pricing growth because of the performance of those ads within our podcasts and the demand to access that content. Another key driver was the Marketplace launch. Revenue from our AdTech just increased strongly across the year, 3.5 times more revenue via the AdTech in December than in January of last year. So Marketplace Showcase or Marketplace really consolidated all of our revenue from AdTech in one place. AdRip built the amount of inventory that was hitting that marketplace, and it led to some very strong growth across the year. For December, we reached $1 million in monthly revenue from AdTech for the very first time. So a successful piece of work there that is ongoing around Marketplace and that automated advertising part of the business. Then finally, I think another key driver here was the work that we did to create monetization in some of our other key territories. We have been strongly focused on the U.S. and the U.K. over the past five years. We have built up a level of consumption in some other territories, Australia, India, Canada, the next three largest regions for listening for Audioboom, but we were not monetizing them effectively. At the start of 2021, we signed new partnerships with Rogers Media in Canada, Australian Radio Network in Australia, and Ideabrew Studios in India to monetize the listening that was happening in those regions. That led to an 8x increase in revenue from those regions between January and December 2021. Again, another key driver of the revenue for Audioboom leading to a successful 2021. This slide, I think, is just worth highlighting. I think you know much of the detail behind this. You know the revenue growth, you know the EBITDA numbers, but you will just see the quarterly increase in revenue in the dark blue there is creating a pretty beautiful pattern alongside the EBITDA increase and the move from being a loss-making business across 2020 to being a company that was in profit every quarter of the last year. Just a fantastic-looking chart to show you there, but not one I need to go into too much detail about. Just to back up all of this stellar performance, I think, from Audioboom is just a look at those three key performance indicators that we talk about during every trading update that we have. The first one being global downloads. I said it before. The more consumption to content via the Audioboom network there is, the more advertising inventory that we make available, the more chance there is to monetize it and to drive revenue. Across the whole of 2021, we built that download number up to a record of 116 million in October of last year. The Q4 average was 113 million downloads a month. We are really creating some great scale within the network and running through that platform. Brand count really speaks to the pricing that we are able to achieve. The more brands that we work directly with, particularly around that premium advertising model that we have, the more demand is created, the more we can improve our pricing and charge more for each of those ad units. Again, seeing record numbers across Q4. We worked with 409 advertisers directly in November, many thousands more via the marketplace, but 409 directly in November for that record quarterly average of 396. We keep that brand count growing and that customer count growing over the year. Then finally, eCPM is our optimization metric, how much revenue we are able to extract from every 1,000 downloads across the platform. Again, we hit new records in Q4 of $56 per thousand downloads. Now, obviously, when the global downloads number is rising so quickly, we expect to see a little flattening out of that eCPM because we continue to extract more even though the number of downloads are going up. Great to see it still ticking up, but obviously not as fast as it had been when downloads were a little flatter. Three just great-looking KPIs all heading in the right direction. No sign of those trending in any other direction either as we get into 2022. I will throw to Brad now to go into a little more detail on some of the other financial pieces. Great. Thank you very much, Stuart. Hi again, everyone. Yes, hopefully what's coming across today is a great story of growth from this company, and it's really pleasing to be able to build on the growth story that we've outlined across the last few Investor Meet sessions over the last 18 months and through our RNSs, through the communication to the market as well. The next couple of slides will build on the narrative that I've gone through previously on these sessions in relation to revenue and costs and also our very efficient working capital cycle as well. If you step back and you look at this company, the foundations were laid for this company many years ago before I joined, with that technology stack being created, the monetization of podcast content being proved, our U.S. office being opened, and our fantastic team being brought together. Particularly over my time joining the company over the last four years, we've been extremely focused on building on those foundations to create that company which delivers on its promises. So be that to our content partners, to our customers, our staff, and also to investors as well. We are now a company that delivers value, in my view, to all of those groups. In 2021, we not only delivered on those expectations, but we also exceeded them as well, which is what we're striving to do as a company. As we go through these numbers, obviously, these are unaudited financial numbers as we stand at the moment. We start our audit on the 31st of January, and we'll be aiming to release that annual report with those audited numbers towards the end of March. If we look at that first slide there in terms of revenue and cost analysis, obviously we've seen that fantastic growth curve. There's that accelerating quarter-on-quarter revenue growth. We ended just above $60 million in revenue. Revenue that grew 125% year-on-year, which was 108% faster than that of the wider U.S. podcast advertising market. Stuart has already highlighted those different revenue lines, which we have in the company, and the majority of revenue is being recognized in that premium level of advertising that we specialize in. So just to reiterate some of the stats that Stuart said earlier, but also give you a bit more insight into the different revenue lines. 67% of our revenue comes from that Creator Network, where we exclusively represent those partners for advertising sales. That line grew 127% year-on-year. 11% of revenue comes from the Marketplace. That grew a fantastic 162% year-on-year. 4% from Audioboom Studios and the original content that's being produced, that grew 119% year-on-year. Sonic, which accounts for around 18% of gross revenue, that grew by 116% year-on-year. Even subscriptions as well, which we don't focus on here, that accounts for less than 1% of revenue. That grew by 9% year-on-year as well, which even though we didn't invest a single dollar in terms of promoting subscriptions, that still had a decent growth figure year-on-year as well. So overall, we can see that 125% year-on-year revenue increase, exceptional performance, but we've maintained that control and that focus on the opex throughout the year as well. So that increased 25% year-on-year from $8 million in 2020 for the year to $10 million in 2021. So an average of $2.5 million a quarter. But we are very focused on maintaining that opex, keeping good control of what we're spending within the company. Two main cost categories within opex, salaries and commissions, which account for 67% of cost, and technology costs, which account for around 18% of total cost. Now, there were increases across those lines in the year, but there's some quite straightforward reasons as to why they increased. Salaries and commissions increased by 27% year-on-year because commissions increased because we correctly incentivize our sales team to continue driving that revenue line upwards. Also, technology costs increased by 29% year-on-year, simplistically because there was more content that was downloaded in 2021 versus 2020. Just touch on headcount. We averaged 37 for the year, which was the same as 2020. We actually ended the year on 39 heads within the business. So it's a very lean and efficient team that we maintained throughout the year, and we'll maintain that going forwards as well. We do have plans for a small number of additional heads coming into the business to help support and enhance our growth. But there's no plans for exponential growth in headcount. We will maintain that small and focused and fantastically efficient team within the business as well. As Stuart said earlier, the focus was to get to break even this year, and we over-delivered on that promise, delivering $3 million of EBITDA on $1.4 million of net profit, which is fantastic for the company. Then if we move on to working capital. So when you've got revenue growth, which is absolutely significant, and you've also got a fairly limited cash balance within the business, you need to make sure that your internal processes are on point and working well. Otherwise, you're in trouble. But it's pleasing to report that we ended the year on $3 million of cash. That increased by $1.8 million from the third quarter, so we ended September on $1.2 million. We ended the year, 31st December, on $3 million of cash. 2021 collections, we just scraped over $50 million, which is fantastic performance. That monthly average was $4.2 million per month, and actually December was a new record at $6.8 million in terms of collections. If you look at the chart on that Q4 column, the particularly pleasing point for me is actually Q4. That was the first time in the company's history where collections at $17.6 million exceeded the payments of $16.1 million. So that's the first quarter that's happened. Obviously, that's the major factor in terms of why our cash balance increased from Q3 to Q4. So that's very pleasing from my perspective. Debtor days, we are going to report a debtor day figure of 94. It was 87 in 2020, so that's an 8% increase. But given there was 125% increase in revenue, I'd accept an 8% increase in the debtor day figure up to 94. Our payables days figure of 55 was actually 10 lower than 2020. So clearly we're paying people well, and actually with the leading podcast partners, we need to pay them on 30-day terms to remain competitive. Simplistically, if you look at collections taking on average a quarter to catch up with revenue recognized in terms of the previous quarter, we obviously have that timing delay in terms of payments and collections. You can see that on the graph as well. If you look at Q2 2021, revenue recognized of $13.3 million. In Q3 of 2021, $13.4 million was collected. In Q3 2021, $16.9 million of revenue was recognized. In Q4 2021, $17.6 million was collected. We can clearly demonstrate there. The 90-day debtor day figure takes a quarter to catch up in terms of collections, in terms of revenue recognized. Minimal bad debt within the company. Bad debt write-offs and provisions totaled a total of 0.02% of revenue recognized in the year, so very immaterial. We can see the asset in the company really is sat within trade debtors. That increased by $9.1 million year on year from $6.4 million to $15.5 million at the year-end. Trade creditors only increased by $3.5 million from $4.2 million up to $7.7 million. In terms of working capital within the business as well, there is a pressure there with advances, so we do pay a small number of recoupable advances to attract and retain talent, and we paid $1.8 million of those recoupable advances in the year, and we'll do so again throughout the forthcoming year, 2022, and we'll particularly focus in that first quarter. That's a pressure on cash within the business. I've got a lot of confidence in the processes that we have in-house to enable that relatively small cash number to sustain the growth that we have within the business. Hopefully that's given you a good overview, a bit more insight into the revenue cost and working capital, and the growth story doesn't stop here. We're absolutely focused on continuing to push that on as we go through the coming years. Back to you, Stuart. Thanks, Brad. Before we look at the year ahead, just to say again, get some questions in. If you do have any questions, put those down and we'll try and get to as many of those as possible. We've got five minutes or so left, I think, on just this final section, and then hopefully we can answer as many of those questions as we can at the end. Talking about future focus then, really, I think one of the key parts I wanted to really highlight for 2022 is our focus and investment on building out Showcase, our global marketplace, even further. I talked about how that launch of Showcase in November meant that we moved our revenue via AdTech up to three and a half times what we were seeing earlier in the year. The potential here, I think is just incredibly strong for us. This, because it runs fully through our advertising tech, the scalability that we have from this global marketplace can really help drive the business on significantly over the next few years, and that is a key area of investment for us. Just stepping it back, what exactly does the Showcase do? Well, it is a marketplace. It connects buyers and sellers. What Audioboom is building, and what we have done very well is to, on one side, on the buy side, to consolidate, to create partnerships and consolidate all of those various monetization routes. On the sell side, we are consolidating incredibly high levels of advertising inventory. We put those together within that marketplace, match them up through the advertising tech. We get best prices and high fill rates, and drive revenue very quickly through Showcase. Just to break that down even further, on the buy side, the advertiser side, the monetization side, our in-house Audioboom teams can sell into Showcase. Our Sonic team can sell into Showcase. Our international sales partners, ARN, Rogers, Map Media in the U.K., Ideabrew, they can all sell into Showcase. We launched a self-serve buying portal that allows advertisers and brands and agencies to build their campaigns in that portal and submit those advertising campaigns directly to our team to confirm and then begin the execution process on those. Then we have a programmatic ecosystem that we have developed as well. Our Showcase is available within more than 25 demand-side platforms so that advertising buyers, wherever they are in the world, can access Audioboom inventory alongside all of the other inventory that they are creating a campaign for. An example of that, just to simplify it a little bit, is if a buyer who is representing McDonald's is building out a campaign, and they are building that campaign across websites and digital, Audioboom's content will be available to buy against within the same software package, within the same system that that buyer is using to build out their digital campaign or their TV campaign or their streaming campaign as well. So being in those places is super important, and again, it is just creating that vast scale and lots of different routes for the monetization. On the sell side, on the supply side, we are and have been consolidating content and advertising inventory for many years now. But more than ever, we are pushing it through this marketplace. So that is the back catalog from those top-tier shows. We use AdRip, like I said, to remove the premium advertising from there and to allow it to be pushed into the marketplace to be resold over and over again, whether an episode is listened to today or in 10 years' time. We have 8,000 of our podcast channels connected to the marketplace to Showcase, so that for a podcaster, they simply click a button on the back end of Audioboom, and their content is exposed to all of these various sales channels. Right now, we are making available within Showcase around 250 million ad impressions each month. So we are looking at somewhere around 3 billion available advertising impressions being created within Showcase in 2022. So that is just a huge number for us. That is 3 billion available ad impressions within Showcase that will get exposed to all of those sales and buying channels that we have created as well. We see this as a big growth area for the business. It allows us to continue to scale. It's very efficient. It's all delivered via the AdTech, and we'll continue to invest to build out more sales channels on the buy side and more content on the supply side as well. That's a key area of focus for us in 2022. Like I said, the goal there is for us to increase the contribution to Audioboom's revenue via Showcase. The other key areas of focus for us, I think that the top line says it all, that the goal for us is to outperform the wider industry growth yet again for the sixth year in a row. Wider industry growth is projected to be 30%. We think we'll go well beyond that. You may have seen our analyst number takes us beyond that as well. We expect, once again, to outperform the wider industry growth. What gets us there, demand remains very high for not just podcast advertising, but Audioboom's podcast advertising unit. Going into this year, we already have $45 million of advertising booked via the upfront process. That's the advertising process that happens in October and November of the preceding year, where we go out and we tell agencies and brands about what we're doing in the following year and allow them to book early against the entire year. $45 million already secured through that upfront advertising bookings process. Strong demand. Obviously, that strong demand then leads to high pricing. I talked earlier about the fantastic growth of pricing for an ad unit in one of our top 25 shows, how it had gone from $3,600 in late 2020 to $9,000 in Q4 of 2021. That was a big jump. But already we're seeing pricing above that $9,000. $11,340 is the average slot price for one of our top 20 shows that we've seen through that upfront booking process for 2022. Immediate 26% growth there during that upfront process on our top 25 shows. I talked about Marketplace, and Showcase is the name of that, a lot during this. Just continued investment there into that advertising optimization and the scaling out of Showcase. We continue to focus on expanding our content footprint, working with the biggest and the best shows out there, and then launching new shows through Audioboom Studios. Audioboom Studios has new productions and co-productions launching in the first part of 2022. Big shows including "National Park After Dark," "Devils in the Dark," "Could I Get In Your Pantry?", all those are lined up through Audioboom Studios, ready to go. We continue to work with and build our relationships with those Hollywood talent agencies at WME, UTA, and CAA to partner with them and their clients to launch shows and to monetize and distribute the biggest names in podcasting. I think the final point and the final area of focus for me for 2022 is continued international expansion. We've seen and I've highlighted what a fantastic job we've done with monetizing content in Canada and Australia and India. This year, we look at those next three regions, New Zealand, Ireland, Europe, and focus on how we extract value from the listening that we are able to achieve in those regions too. I think there's a lot to do here. There's clearly some fantastic data points here that highlight where growth is going in 2022. Like I say, we'll expect to outperform the market once again. I think as Brad said earlier, the growth story hasn't ended yet. Q1 is looking extremely strong for us against last year's Q1. We're just in a really good place as a business. I've said it a few times over the past couple of years, about us just getting started and just hitting our stride. We firmly hit our stride now, and it's just an exciting industry to be in and an exciting business to be in. We really appreciate your support. I hope you see the path forward for this business and where we're going in the future. I hope we continue to get that support from you guys. I think that's probably it from us. Stuart, Brad, that's great. Thank you very much for your presentation this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q&A tab that's situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Just while the company take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I would like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard. Stuart, Brad, we received a number of pre-submitted questions from investors ahead of today's event. If I may, I wanted to start off the Q&A session with these. The first one reads as follows: You had previously announced results would be released on January 19th, but released them on the 10th. Is there any reason for this? Yeah. So in an earlier trading update, you're correct. We had suggested that January 19th would be the date that we would release results. We went early on the 10th. I think that the two main reasons for that were firstly, if we have good news, then why hold onto it? Let's get it out there and tell the world about it as quickly as possible. As you know, we had fantastic news, so we were really keen to put that out there, get it into the market, help everyone understand what that means for the business. We've seen some strong share price growth off the back of those results. The second reason, I actually think the more important reason for the long term, speaks to the level of automation and processes that we've built into the business. We now have the ability to close out a month, close out a quarter, very quickly. I've talked about the platform that we have and a Salesforce-based inventory management system that we've developed. That allows Brad and his team to do their jobs very quickly at the end of every month. We have great intelligence around advertising bookings, the execution of those adverts, to ensure that the ad ran and we can charge for that ad. It flows through the entire system, right back to Brad's team, and then beyond out to the advertising agencies ready for invoicing and billing too. Let's get great news out there, and let's also focus on just the strong automation that we have within the business. It allows us to do things quickly and get the messaging out early. That's great. The second pre-submitted question that we got from investors was, do you see M&A activity continuing in the space in 2022? Is there an opportunity for Audioboom here? I think there was a couple of other questions came in during the session. Similarly, one from John C. here, which is also similar to that. I do see M&A activity continuing in the sector. It's really been focused over the last couple of years, from three businesses. From Spotify, from Amazon, and also, from SiriusXM. Then a little bit of M&A activity from the radio companies in the U.K., like Audacy and iHeartMedia. But those big three, Amazon, Spotify, and SiriusXM, have spent a considerable amount of money in the space. I don't see it slowing down. I think there are more mega companies stepping into podcasting very quickly and two of those being Google and YouTube, and also Facebook. This year, Facebook have launched the ability for podcasts to be listened to in feeds and consumed in feeds. They are doing a lot of work in the background to consolidate content within Facebook. They're clearly making a play in audio. Google and YouTube have always had a good podcasting footprint. YouTube is a key distribution point for podcasting. But it's been kind of somewhat ignored from the business, but they are now focused on podcasting too. I think there's potentially more M&A coming because there are more huge organizations focused on how great podcasting can be for them and the benefits of podcasting to their businesses. Yes, M&A will continue. More opportunity out there. Is there an opportunity for Audioboom? I think absolutely. If you look at the Triton Digital ranker that I showed you earlier in the presentation, Audioboom is the leading independent podcast business out there. No one else has the scale and the structures and the volume that we have. Certainly, no one else on the independent side is profitable. We are the only company of this size and with this level of independence that is actually making money in podcasting right now, so we have to be attractive. We have to be a great option for someone that is looking to build a presence in podcasting. That's great. The third question that we got relates to dividends, and it reads, "Please can you confirm whether it's intended to pay a dividend this calendar year? I ask because the last six months as the share price has increased rapidly, social media has speculated as to whether some of the profits will be returned to shareholders. Yeah. Again, similar sort of questions that came in during the presentation from Graham E, and then Noel C. here has asked the same too. I think just a little too early to talk about dividends at this point. Let's just be super happy we've reached that breakeven point. Let's build up those cash reserves. Let's think about where we want to invest that cash first for stronger growth. I think that should be our first point of focus as to how we use that cash to grow the business, make the business stronger. We understand shareholder excitement around the idea of a dividend, but I think it's a little early in our life as a profitable company to be thinking about that at this point. That's great. The second to last question that we got here from investors was, your analyst released an $83 million as this year's revenue forecast. Is that too conservative? I think it's a good place to start the year, right? When you look at what that $83 million means in context of the wider industry, it means that we are outperforming industry growth by over 30%. When you look at it in that context, Audioboom will do a fantastic job at $83 million because we will have significantly outperformed the wider industry. We will have grown significant market share. We will have moved up the rankers in podcasting if we grow at that speed. I think $83 million is a good place to start the year, and we are really, what, 15 days, 19 days into the year. We want to make sure that we achieve that market expectation. It has been something that Brad and I have been very focused on the last few years, is to ensure that we deliver on the promises that are made. Let's make sure we do that $83 million. What gets us beyond that? I think it is really the opportunity that we do not yet have visibility on. What we have visibility on makes us very confident on the $83 million number. When I talk about that, it is the visibility on the contracts that we have with our podcast partners, the visibility on the demand that is out there for advertising in our podcasts. What goes beyond the $83 million is some of the stuff that is not visible. What new opportunities might come our way across the year to partner with major podcasts, for example. Those kind of opportunities can take us well beyond the $83 million number. I think as a starting point for the year, that is the $83 million as that initial target, and let's ensure we get there, and we are very confident of doing that. Thank you. I know you have just touched on opportunities, and the last pre-submitted question reads as follows. It says, "Spotify and Apple have both launched a podcast subscription platforms last year. How is that impacting the industry, and is it a threat or opportunity for Audioboom? Yeah. I have seen in the questions that Jeff has also asked about Spotify's Open Access platform, which is their subscription platform. Yes, Spotify launched that earlier this year, and Apple launched something similar as well. That is the ability for podcasters and creators to charge a subscription fee or a pay-as-you-go fee to access content within those platforms. In the early stages of that, it does not seem to have created huge traction. It seems to get used mostly by digital media businesses, like Vox Media, for example, to offer their initial podcast products. Where I think it will actually get used the most is via those podcasts with very niche subject matter. So those will be podcasts that have small audiences, but extremely passionate audiences. So those podcasts where the audience members really love the content and will pay to access it. The podcast doesn't have enough listenership to really make any money out of advertising. That's where those will get used the most. I don't see them as a threat to our business. We are working with podcasts that have a huge built-in audiences that are used to hearing ads, are used to receiving the product for free. As a podcaster, we are making them significant money through advertising. Switching lanes and taking a risk of moving to any other model is not something I believe any of them would be willing to do. So I don't see too much of a threat there. In fact, I actually think there may be some opportunity there for Audioboom, particularly around our Audioboom Studios shows, to receive incremental revenue. If we're great at monetizing Audioboom Studios shows in the U.S. and the U.K., maybe in South America or in Europe, we charge a subscription fee to listen to that content. So those are the kind of opportunities I think that comes from that. Some incremental revenue opportunity, and some interesting new models around our own products and our own Audioboom Studios shows. Stuart, Brad, thank you for that. Stuart, I'm not sure if time permits for any further questions, but if there are any that come through from investors and you believe it would be appropriate to address, if I could hand back to you to respond to those. If not, obviously we will make all questions available to you after the presentation has ended, and we'll publish all of those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Yeah. I think we've answered a good variety of the ones that have come in both today and previously as well. We'll take a look through and answer any additional ones on the platform just for time constraints right now. That's perfect. If I could just hand back to you to read out those questions and give responses where it's appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you afterwards. Sorry. I probably wasn't clear. Because we've headed over the time limit now, we won't do any more of those questions live, but we'll try and answer some of those after the presentation and get them on the platform for you. Sorry for that. Stuart, Brad, thank you for addressing all of those questions that you can from investors today. Of course, ladies and gentlemen, as you've just heard, the company will review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the Investor Meet Company platform. Stuart, Brad, just before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to the company, could I please ask you for a few closing comments? Thank you so much. Sure. I think firstly, I want to say thank you to our shareholders and potential shareholders for continuing to support the business. I also want to thank the Audioboom team. As Brad said, it's a very small team of just 36, 37 people. We punch above our weight. We do an amazing job. We have a really talented team. So thank you to the Audioboom team. I think I summed it up earlier. We've hit our stride over the past two years. We're fully in our stride now. We have a lot of growth ahead of us. The growth story will continue into 2022. We're building a fantastic model, a model that I believe is more intelligent and stronger than our competitors. We're gaining market share. We continue to build revenue. We have a super strong business here. I am excited about what is coming in the next few years, and I hope everyone else can be too. Stuart, Brad, thank you for that. That is brilliant, and thank you for updating investors this afternoon. Could I please ask investors not to close this session, as you will now be automatically redirected for the ability to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I am sure it will be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Audioboom Group plc, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.