Earnings Call: Q1 2022

Apr 13, 2022

Earnings release

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Audioboom Group PLC investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time via the Q&A tab that is just situated on the right-hand corner of your screen. Please simply type in your questions at any time 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 of the questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. These will be available via your Investor Meet Company dashboard, and we will notify you by email when these are ready for your review. Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll, and if you would give that your kind attention, I am sure the company would be most grateful. I would now like to hand you over to CEO Stuart Last and CFO Brad Clarke. Good afternoon. Thank you, Jake. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Audioboom's Q1 2022 update. It is fantastic to be here. Really happy to be able to tell you more about the business after what is really a fantastic quarter of growth for the company. Fourth successive quarter of triple digit growth. We have great KPIs, very strong growth in our EBITDA profit. I am just excited to be here today to tell you all about what we have been doing over the last quarter, to look ahead to the rest of 2022, and to answer some of your questions. So make sure you send those questions in. I will get to as many as possible at the end of the presentation. The first part of the presentation is for anyone that is new to Audioboom. So, welcome to you if you are new to the company and you are here to find out more. We will take a look at our business model, where we sit within the industry, and a look at our strategy. But first of all, a couple of introductions for you. For those that do not know us yet, my name is Stuart Last. I am the Chief Executive of Audioboom. I have been the CEO for the past two years. Before that, I was the COO of the company and launched us here in the U.S. I am based in New York. Launched the business here successfully back in 2015. Before Audioboom, I worked at another podcast and ad tech business called Voxnest, also based here in New York. Before that was back in London at the BBC, driving their digital audio strategy. Joining me today is Brad Clarke, our CFO. Thanks, Stuart. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining today. I'm Brad, CFO here at Audioboom. Been with the company since March 2018, so into year five now, which is great. It's a privilege to be able to say that. Obviously, the company's changed a lot over the last few years, but it's really been the last 18 months or so where the growth really has taken off. With record results last year, the share price has improved significantly over the last 15 months or so, which is really pleasing to see as well. Like I said, with Audioboom for the last five years. Prior to that, I was with another good AIM-quoted company, Brave Bison, for a couple of years. Prior to that, I was with News UK, publisher of The Times and The Sun newspapers, amongst other things, for five years in various roles there. It's this role really in this company which has been the best part of my career so far. It's great to see a company doing so well. Back to you, Stuart. Thanks, Brad. Brad will be back in a moment to give you all an in-depth view on some of the financials. I'll kick off here today and we'll take a look at the business model and the operations of the business. This is just an overview of podcasting and the podcasting space, and Audioboom plays a vital part in podcasting. We power podcasting. We connect advertisers with content, and then we connect that with an audience. Podcasting is effectively a three-sided marketplace. Each of those components is obviously very important in its own right. Advertisers, content, and audience. But without someone in the middle to bring them all together, to join them together, it just doesn't work. There's no value there. Audioboom and the platform is bringing those three components together and creating and maximizing that value. We're connecting the content with the advertisers, and then we distribute out to the audience globally, and it's the combination of those three elements and Audioboom sitting in the middle of it, really driving those connections that creates value in podcasting. So we play a very important, integral role in podcasting. At the heart of that is the Audioboom platform. This is a cloud-based, very scalable engine, and it drives our content business. That platform is separated into three elements. It's a content management system where podcasters and creators upload their content, manage the publishing of that content. They distribute through that content management system out to Apple Podcasts, out to Spotify, out to Google Podcasts, those connections with the audience. Then we gather and collate all of the analytics and the data coming back so the podcaster and the creator can learn about their audience and design their content around that audience. We can use that data to sell advertising to drive value for the show. The second part of that Audioboom platform is really our advertising technology stack. That is the ability to dynamically serve advertising into those podcasts. It is a Yield Ops system that finds the best pricing for that advertising inventory from all of our various demand-side platforms. It is a new piece of technology we launched last year called AdRip, which replaces old ads with new ads so we can keep refreshing the back catalog and making money for our creators out of that back catalog. It is our new marketplace Showcase, which we launched in November of last year, which connects content up to a variety of demand-side platforms, and that is scaling very quickly for us and is proving very successful, and it is growing its contribution to the group revenue. The third part of that Audioboom platform is our inventory management system. It is called LIRICAL. It is built on the Salesforce platform. This allows us to actually execute that advertising to make sense of the inventory that is available across our 8,000 podcast channels. It gives us great intelligence around the pricing and allows us to drive pricing higher. It automates the billing process and just creates a level of automation from start to finish in the sales process that allows us to stay very lean and ahead of our competitors. Those three elements create the Audioboom platform. Sitting on top of that is our content business, and that is today 8,000 podcast channels running through Audioboom, then being distributed out to all those listening destinations. It is being downloaded. That content is being downloaded more than 130 million times every single month. We reach 34 million unique listeners. We have some really great scale in that platform today. As you will know, it is growing very quickly and it is very scalable without a lot of further investment. We can take this to 25,000, 50,000 podcast channels. We can take it to 500 million or 1 billion monthly downloads and 100 million unique listeners, without having to invest too heavily in that platform. It is the platform that drives the business. As I said on the previous slide, it is the platform that really links together the podcast market, connects creators with advertisers, and distributes out to audience. This is a little view on how we treat content within the business and how we make money for the business and for our creator partners. Our content model is pretty straightforward. We have Audioboom Studios. That is the creative and the production arm of Audioboom. That is creating shows in-house that we develop ourselves, that we produce ourselves, that we own the IP for, or that we co-produce with our partners. For example, we are the producer for the official Formula 1 podcasts. That is all done in-house with Audioboom Studios, so that is a smaller group of shows. As I will show you later, it is very valuable to the business and an area of investment going forward. The Audioboom Creator Network is a much wider group of over 7,000 podcasts. These are either hobbyist creators at the bottom end or professional podcasters at the top end who are seeing their shows being downloaded hundreds of thousands or even millions of times per episode. That is our wide group of creators. They are producing their shows. They are marketing their shows. They have great audiences already connected to their shows. Then beneath that, the widest group of podcasters, the wider podcast landscape, and we are able to monetize podcasts that are not exclusive to the Audioboom network as well. This could be any podcast in the U.S., the U.K., or globally as well. Those top two tiers, Audioboom Studios, Audioboom Creator Network, that is all being powered by the Audioboom platform. The podcast landscape sits outside of that, but we have ways to monetize and to grow revenue from that also. Alongside that is our advertising model. 99% of the revenue that we see within the group is coming from one of our three advertising models. We have our premium sales unit. That is our high-value, bespoke sales that is sold against individual episodes and individual podcasts, comes with high CPMs and high unit pricing. And we are selling that against our Audioboom Studio shows and then the top 250 shows within that Audioboom Creator Network. Showcase, which is our global marketplace, this is an ad tech advertising solution. It is automated. All of our podcasts in Audioboom Studios and the Audioboom Creator Network flow through that marketplace. We connect them with various demand-side platforms, a programmatic ecosystem, sales teams in Australia, in Canada, in Europe. This is a lower value play. The pricing is at a lower level, but it is a volume play. It is about scale. We see it as a kind of a secondary advertising model. It is great for monetizing back catalogs and older content. As I said before, it is growing very quickly for the business right now. Then the third part of our advertising model is Sonic Influencer Marketing. It is a unit that we operate. They are based in Austin, Texas. And they are actually. That is a platform that is able to monetize any content. So it can monetize Audioboom Studios, it can monetize our Creator Network, but it also has the ability by working directly with brands and advertisers, in monetizing and accessing advertising inventory within any podcast in the world. It has the ability to go out and to make that connection with some of the biggest podcasts in the world that do not belong to the Audioboom network. And again, Sonic is now in its third year and is growing very successfully and is having a fantastic 2022 so far. Quick look at those revenue contributions that I touched on earlier and also the gross margin from each of those areas of the business. So Audioboom Studios is there first. It is a small contribution to today, when it comes to revenue, just contributing around 3% of the group's revenue, but has a very strong gross margin, when compared to the rest of our business. It is the most premium of all of the content that we work with. Because we are in control of the development and the production cost around those shows, we are able to drive a higher gross margin there for Audioboom Studios shows. That is also why I said before, it is a very big and important area for Audioboom going forward. We will be investing further into Audioboom Studios after we launched the U.K. arm of Audioboom Studios last year. We will grow that 3% contribution over the coming years. Our Creator Network is obviously key for driving a significant amount of that group revenue. It is responsible for 70% of the revenue that we see at Audioboom, comes with a slimmer gross margin. It is more competitive to sign and to work with those shows, particularly at the top end of those shows in the Creator Network. It has that slimmer 21% margin, but it is an area of fast growth, and it is very lucrative to the business. Showcase, our automated marketplace, has that slightly stronger gross margin. We are able to create a stronger gross margin when we are monetizing back catalogs for our shows and for our creators. That very quickly, the contribution of Showcase revenue is hitting 11% in this first quarter, up from under 10% last year. So we are seeing good growth in the marketplace. It is very efficient, and it is the part of the business that will grow very strongly over the coming years too. Then Sonic Influencer Marketing, responsible for 16% of our revenue, has that much slimmer gross margin. It works directly with the brands, and is working on a very traditional kind of advertising agency gross margin and commission structure. It has the slimmest gross margin within the group, but again, it is growing very quickly and contributing after, now in its third year, significantly to group revenue. Let us go ahead and take a quick look at Q1, which I said before was just another excellent quarter for us. That momentum from 2021 has just continued into Q1. It is traditionally a much slower and soft period in terms of advertising spend. We have not seen that as much this year, although obviously, the quarter revenue is slightly down on Q4 of last year because of that seasonality in advertising spend. But year-on-year, fantastic growth. 107% growth on that revenue line, getting us to $19.7 million. That is, as I said before, our fourth quarter of triple-digit revenue growth. So just continuing that momentum into 2022. Just for some background, I think on the softness of advertising spend in Q1, I think one of the key factors there is that we work off the U.S. broadcast calendar, and that first quarter of the year is effectively a 12-week quarter rather than 13-week quarter. It includes the week between Christmas and New Year, which is extremely soft both for content creation and therefore inventory, and therefore also for advertiser demand. So effectively, we have done $19.7 million across a 12-week quarter. Obviously, comparing that against Q4 of last year, a very strong high demand, 13-week quarter. I think we have done very well just to keep up that strong demand, and to deliver another excellent quarter of revenue. Adjusted EBITDA profit, just under $1 million, so significantly higher than the $30,000 of EBITDA profit this time last year. Really starting to see the gearing effect there, and the delivery of close to $1 million of profit. That is the 15th consecutive month of EBITDA profit. We are in a place now we are very confident of obviously never slipping back into loss-making quarters, loss-making months. We just continue driving that profit forward. And we are in a great place when it comes to cash. At the end of the quarter, we had $3.3 million in the bank. We saw another $2.9 million come in in the first week of April. And Brad will give you an update on cash position and future of that working capital in his section in just a few minutes. We are in a very healthy place. We are fully funded for the growth trajectory that we are on. We are able to invest that money back into content creation and other parts of the business where we see faster growth. And probably since I have been CEO and since Brad has been with the company, this is the healthiest place we have been when it comes to the cash in the bank. Just to set that performance, I think, in some kind of context, I talk a lot about how we outperform the wider industry, and both of these charts are really highlighting that. The chart on the left is showing our revenue growth against the industry over the past four or five years. And you will see our Q1 growth is significantly faster here than the wider podcast industry. The U.S. industry is projected to grow around 30% this year. We are growing at over 100% so far. Once again, and for the fifth year in a row, we continue to beat our competitors, to grow faster than our competitors. And that is highlighted in that chart on the right-hand side. This is the Triton Digital US Podcast Ranker. It highlights the biggest podcast businesses in the U.S., and this is showing off, and this is charted by U.S. weekly reach, so how many unique listeners we reach in the U.S. every single week. And as you will see there, again, we were the fastest moving, fastest growing company in the U.S. during 2021 into 2022. Going significantly quicker than our competitors, moving up that ranker, taking market share. Our market share is close to 5% now, after being just hovering around that 1% mark just three or four years ago. We are on a great path, great trajectory, and everything is in a strong place to continue that path as we go forward. What were the key drivers of that successful quarter in Q1 of 2022? I think the first thing I want to highlight is just the success of our Audioboom Studios launches. Those shows we develop in-house, those shows that come with the stronger gross margin. We set up and launched a U.K. production arm in the second half of last year, having already had a U.S. production arm for a couple of years. And Devils in the Dark was our first U.K. production, which we launched in February of this year. That show very quickly got to number one on the U.K. true crime chart. It reached the top 15 on the overall Apple Podcasts chart. We are seeing great success from the work we are doing in Audioboom Studios, which is very pleasing to see, and it is obviously an area we will continue to invest in. In our premium network, that area of the business that drives 70% of the revenue and is responsible for significant growth. I think the successes in that first part of the year have been around the renewal of long-term exclusive contracts for some of our key shows. We have put together and have had signed long-term three-year deals with our top 10 shows, including Casefile, Mile Higher, Lights Out, The Sesh, Strange and Unexplained. These are all key contributors to our revenue. It is just great to deepen our relationship with those shows and be working with those shows for the next three years. Pricing is something that we have done a lot of work on to increase over this past quarter. I talked about it being a softer quarter for advertising spend due to that shorter structure of the quarter. But our biggest shows, our top 25 shows, the shows that really perform for the advertiser, that deliver great ROI for the advertiser, those are in very high demand, and we have been able to drive pricing as a result of that. Our pricing for those top 25 shows in the first quarter was over $14,000 for each individual ad slot in one of those top 25 shows. That compares to a year ago, when those same ad slots were selling for just over $6,000. That is 121% annual growth in the pricing that we are able to see in each of those individual ad slots for our top 25 shows. I talked earlier about Showcase being an area of success for us. That is our automated ad tech-based marketplace. 150% growth versus the revenue we were seeing through our ad tech a year ago. That is now contributing, like I said before, 11% of group revenue versus 9% from last year. It is growing faster, it is scaling quicker than the rest of the business. It is also very efficient, comes with lower costs to operate than our other sales models too. Very pleased with the way that Showcase is an area that we are focused on improving as well across 2022. Then feeding into Showcase is our work with our international monetization partners. As you will probably recall, last year, we started working with ARN in Australia, with Rogers Media in Canada, and with Ideabrew Studios in India to monetize those next three biggest markets for us. In this quarter, we signed a partnership agreement with NZME, who are a big media and radio group in New Zealand. They will be monetizing New Zealand inventory for us. That is our sixth biggest market. We are the second biggest podcast publisher in New Zealand. We now have a monetization partner that will be delivering us value on all of those listens that are happening in New Zealand. Those are the key drivers for the success of early 2022. Just going a little deeper on that financial performance, and you will see here the quarterly revenue and EBITDA performance. I think, again, just to highlight the seasonality of Q1, you will see the drop from Q4 2021 into Q1 of 2022. Just a slight drop on the revenue there. That is, as I said, seasonal and usually happens. If we go back to the left-hand side of this chart, you will see that drop off between Q4 of 2019 and Q4 of 2020. That's just repeating that same pattern, that same seasonality in the ad market. I think one of the key things to point out here is that didn't happen between 2020 and 2021, and that was because of the COVID impact and the subsequent rebound that was still happening in the ad market in Q1 of 2021. Last year, we didn't see that drop off Q4 into Q1. Previously we have seen that pattern, and that is kind of a seasonality that happens across the entire advertising market, not just in podcasting too. All of our KPIs were strong in the first quarter. It fills us, obviously, with great optimism that these will continue to go up. These are all drivers of revenue for performance for the business. Global downloads, obviously that's a proxy for how much advertising inventory we get to sell every single month. That global downloads number was up significantly, 45% annual growth in Q1 of 2020. We reached a record single month of downloads of 131 million in March. Our global downloads number is going from strength to strength and is growing every single quarter, and that data is verified by Triton Digital. That's in compliance with a metric that all podcast companies have to use, which is the IAB's podcast measurement standard. Our brand count dipped slightly from Q4, and as I said, that's due to that slight softness in the ad market in Q1 and also the 12-week broadcast month effectively in the first quarter as well. We see a slight drop-off there in the number of brands that we work with, but still our second highest quarter on the brand count. These are brands that are advertising within our premium network of shows. We work with many thousands more in Showcase, in our marketplace, but these are the brands that we work with directly for our premium network. Then eCPM, that's the value we extract from every 1,000 downloads on our network. Again, you'll see a drop-off there, and that's a function of two things really. That's the function of the number of downloads across the network increasing very, very quickly across Q4 of last year and Q1 of this year, combined with that softness in the revenue number in Q1. We have some work to do, I think there, to get caught up again. There's always a lag between growth in downloads and then us delivering strong value against those downloads. We will start to see that eCPM number rise again in Q2 and Q3 of this year as well once we catch up on the sales process. It's only once you know how much inventory and how many downloads that you have available to sell, that you can optimize the sale of that inventory, and that does impact that eCPM number. Still comparing very favorably at $51 to our competitors. We know from one of our competitors at Acast, who released their results publicly, they're working off a $31 equivalent eCPM. Significantly stronger than our competitors in that particular KPI as well. I'll let Brad take over for a few minutes here to go a little deeper. Great. Thank you, Stuart. Hopefully everyone can see that the growth story continues here at Audioboom. Next few slides, we will look at revenue costs. Next slide looks at the working capital cycle of the business as well. We have gone through these over the last couple of quarters, but we will update that for the first quarter of this year. Just before we dive into that, a couple of dates for your diary so you know what is coming up. April 25, so a week on Monday. That is when our final 2021 numbers will be published. We, of course, told you on January 10 in record time what 2021 looked like, but we have got the formal release of those on April 25. Then in July, we will obviously update you on the first half of the year as we always do. But for now, let us look at Q1 in a bit more detail. Obviously, the headline statistic of revenue increasing by 107% year-on-year, fantastic growth. On the OpEx side, that did increase by 47% year-on-year from, sorry, from $2.1 million up to $3.1 million. We will explain why shortly. From Q4 to Q1, obviously from $2.8 million to $3.1 million, that is a 10% quarter-on-quarter increase. Just to build out some of the percentage increases across those revenue lines that Stuart mentioned, obviously, we have got that mix of revenue streams that we have within the business. 70% of our revenue comes from that premium advertising on the Creator Network that we specialize and are experts in selling that form of advertising. That grew by 116% year-on-year. Pleasing growth from the marketplace. That now contributes 11% of revenue. That is up from 9% in Q1 of last year. That grew by 151% year-on-year. My biggest percentage that I will give you today is that if you actually look back to Q1 of 2020, we booked just over $200,000. We booked $2.1 million in the first quarter of this year on that line. So that is 925% growth, Q1 2020 versus Q1 2022. Clearly that area of the business is becoming more material in terms of the overall revenue mix, which is pleasing. 3% of revenue comes from Studios. That grew 26% year-on-year. Another pleasing growth statistic from Sonic as well. That contributes 16% of revenue. That grew by 90% year-on-year when they reported $3.1 million of revenue in the first quarter of this year. Now Sonic reported $5 million, just over $5 million of revenue in the whole of 2020. So to report $3.1 million in the first quarter is pleasing. We do have a small amount of subscription revenue as well in the business. We do not talk to it here because it is less than 1%, around 0.7% of revenue. So there are around 3,500 subscribers paying $10 or $20 a month to be able to use the platform. But obviously that is a less material part of our business, which we do not actively invest in. So pleasing growth statistics across the board, across the revenue streams. Looking at OpEx, 19% of our OpEx relates to technology costs, the costs that are required to run the Audioboom platform. The material cost within that is the hosting and download cost of content. When you go onto the place where you download your podcast, be that Apple or Spotify, wherever that may be, Audioboom are incurring the costs for you downloading that content. That is the material cost that we have within technology. That technology line, there was a 52% year-on-year increase from $0.4 million to $0.6 million in the first quarter of this year. That is mainly due to the significant increase in downloads year-on-year. Downloads up to 131 million in March. There was a 45% year-on-year increase in downloads, obviously that flows through to the P&Ls. As you see this business grow, as you see those downloads grow, typically the download cost that we budget on is around 0.11%, 0.12% of the actual download number. If it is 100 million downloads, you are looking at $100,000 of cost. Rough rule of thumb there. As you see this business continue to scale, that is one of the variable costs that we have in the business. 65% of OpEx relates to salaries and sales staff commissions. There was a 44% year-on-year increase on that line from $1.4 million to $2 million in the first quarter of this year. That is mainly due to the fact we have got more heads within the business. Throughout the last year there has been incremental increases in headcount in sales, ad ops, production, and in Sonic as well. Headcount was 43 at the end of March versus 35 at the end of March 2021. Still at 43, I view this as a very lean and streamlined organization. Also the cost increase on that salary line also due to cost of living increases applied across the team from 1st of January, plus also slightly higher commissions paid, in the first quarter of this year versus the first quarter last year. As you look forward for this business, the OpEx is fairly settled. No plans to significantly increase that headcount from 43. But the variable costs that you will see going forwards are, as I have just mentioned, those download costs. They will vary with the number of downloads that we record. Also variable will be commissions linked to the amount of revenue that we book. Also promotional costs as well. Any new show launches that we have from Audioboom Studios, there will be an associated promotional budget to let people know that show has been launched. It is good to see that the U.K. production arm is starting to release content. First major one being that Devils in the Dark, new show that was launched in the first quarter. Good to see some new shows coming out of that U.K. production unit. Stuart also talked through the EBITDA quarter-on-quarter movements, $0.9 million in the first quarter of last year versus $30,000 in the first quarter of last year. I have seen it written, it is $300,000 in the first quarter of last year. It was not. It was just $30,000 in the first quarter of last year. Significant growth there. We did report a $1.9 million EBITDA profit in the final quarter of last year, obviously at $0.9 million, that is decreased. What are the reasons for that? Well, there's been higher OpEx in the first quarter of this year, so $0.2 million higher salaries and commissions in the first quarter of this year as we've increased that headcount from the fourth quarter. Higher commissions, also the cost of living salary increases as well. In the first quarter of this year, we also provided for a small number of invoices which went over one year old. It's our policy to provide for anything that goes over one year old. We believe we will fully recoup those invoices because they're due from one of our largest customers. In line with our policy, we provided for those in full. That was a $100,000 provision there. We fully expect to recoup that, and that will come back to the P&L, hopefully in Q2. Also on that gross margin line as well, that was lower in the first quarter of this year. Couple of reasons for that. The first one being we accrue for music licensing accruals, in case we are required to pay any music licensing costs for music played in podcasts. We don't at the moment, but we prudently accrue. At the end of last year, we released our accrual relating to 2020. We hold the full year provision for 2021. There was a release in the fourth quarter in relation to 2020. Also as well in the last quarter of last year, we released provisions against podcast partner contracts with minimum guarantees, where the inventory and value was weighted into the fourth quarter of last year. Having met those guarantees, we were able to release those provisions that we had built up during the last year. Those are the main reasons why that EBITDA number shifted from 1.9 down to 0.9 in the first quarter of this year. On to the next slide, where we look at the working capital of the business and some insights here that I can give you. All things being equal, when I come into the first quarter of the year, I view this as the toughest quarter for the business in terms of the pressures on the working capital and the cash requirements within the business. The reasons for that, you've just come out of the seasonally high Q4, where you've recorded those record revenues. Everyone's happy, great top-line growth. Obviously subsequently in the following quarter, you need to pay your record revenue shares to those partners as well, deservedly so. You've got that pressure in the first quarter to settle those record revenue shares. We also have a number of recoupable advances that we pay to attract and retain leading talent that we work with. A number of those are due in the first quarter. They are recoupable, as I say, but there's a timing impact on the cash flow, which we have to manage. Also as well, we pay staff bonuses relating to 2021 as well in the first quarter. There's a number of pressures there. We need to make sure that our processes that we have are on point. We've spoken at length before in terms of this business is ready to scale significantly. From this graph, we can see if you look at Q1 2021 versus Q1 2022, across the three different categories that we can see here, revenue, cash collected, payments made. Across all those three lines, there has been roughly a $10 million increase across each of those lines. So revenue, 9.5 to 19.7. Cash collected, 8.5 up to 18.3. Payments made, 9.8 up to 19.8. Same business, same processes, but we are now obviously processing £10 million more on each of those lines. That is an indication to me that what we have built here is scalable and can handle the growth that we are recording. So, pleased to say that the cash that we hold increased by $0.3 million, from $3 million at the end of December to $3.3 million at the end of March, despite all the pressures that I have just outlined. It could have been even better. What we have noted is that because of the amounts that we are billing and the amounts that our customers owe us, in my view, they are managing their own balance sheets and withholding cash until we are past the quarter end, which is why in the trading update, we detailed the fact that we collected $2.9 million in the first week of April. We normally see collections weighted towards the second half of the month, so, to collect $2.9 million, is a high number to record in the first week of the month. Actually, we have collected another $1 million in the first three days of this week. I must mention, of course, that that $3.3 million number does include the exercising of warrants by our very supportive chairman, Michael Tobin, so we exercised unheld warrants in the company, which led to circa $1.5 million coming into the company. Overall, like I say, the processes that we have in the company to be able to record that quarter on quarter increase in cash is pleasing. Actually, as well, this morning, we have had confirmation from HSBC that they have confirmed a £1.5 million multicurrency overdraft for the company as well. If not, I expect us to utilize that, and we expect the cash reserves of the company to grow. But to have that extra security, extra funding available to the company to invest as it sees fit, and also that external validation by our bank as well in terms of implementing that overdraft is another endorsement for the company. That is good news there. Collections are good in the quarter, over $18 million, for the first 12 weeks of the year, over $6 million a month. However, unlike Q4, where collections outstripped payments in the first quarter, the reverse happened because of those material commitments that I outlined earlier. Good downward pressure on those debtor days, down to 77 from 94 at the year-end. The similar pattern as last year with debtors increasing at a higher rate than our creditors. Debtors increased by $1 million, creditors increased by $0.4 million. Overall, working capital of the business is good. Balance sheet of the company is good. As Stuart said, there is more cash in the bank than any time that I have been here. But like I say, the processes that we have in place within the company are working very, very well, fully funded for the current growth trajectory of the company. Yeah, look forward to updating you further on the company's progress in July when we release that interim statement. Back to you, Stuart. Thank you, Brad. Just a reminder, we have a couple of our slides left, and then we will do as much of a Q&A as we can fit in before the end of the hour. So get questions in now, I guess, while there is still a few minutes to do that. Then I will just finish off the presentation here by having a quick look at the rest of 2022 and where that focus is. I think one key stat that is very pleasing to us, and is fantastic for understanding the future of the business is this top number here, this $60.5 million of advertising bookings that we already have contracted for 2022. As a reminder, our entire revenue on 2021 was $60.2 million. So we already have more revenue booked for this year, than we saw in the entirety of 2021, which is just a fantastic place to be at the end of Q1. When you think about the cadence of those bookings, you will see if you go back into our trading updates that we added $15 million of bookings in that first quarter of the year. So I think in our last trading update, we were at $45 million. We are now over $60 million and beyond last year's revenue already. So we will keep focusing on building out those future advertising bookings. We have plenty of inventory left to sell. As we have done in previous years, we have held back a significant amount of the inventory in our top 25 shows. Again, a reminder that those are averaging $14,000 per advertising unit in those top shows. So we have really held back selling the second half of the year in those top 25 shows as another way to drive demand and to increase that pricing. So we are at $60.5 million booked, lots of inventory still to sell. We will be pushing that demand heavily as we go into the second and third quarters of the year. The premium network, that key driver of revenue, we continue to see a very strong amount of opportunity coming into us from those key relationships that we have at the Hollywood talent agencies. They are bringing more and more opportunities to us every single week. There is such an organic increase in the growth of independent shows, that they are now representing more and more creators, more and more podcasters. They bring us those opportunities to create those partnerships with the creator. It is a really efficient way to do our business development. We will keep building out that premium network. Then we have more key renewals coming up in 2022. I talked about the ones that we have already renewed and made good progress with there. We have more renewals from some of our bigger shows coming up across the rest of 2022, so we will focus on ensuring that we renew as much of that opportunity as we can. Showcase continues to develop. We are focused on adding demand to that marketplace, so bringing in more connections to programmatic platforms and ad networks, to lift the sales side of Showcase. Then we roll AdRip out, our inventory creation tool, to more and more of our partners. We think across this year, and this is an upgrade on our previous estimate of 3 billion, we upgrade that estimate to see 4 billion plus impressions in that marketplace during 2022. Some huge scale going into that. Obviously the focus now is to make sure that the demand is keeping up with the supply. We are focused very much on adding more buy-side connections into that marketplace. We continue to invest into Audioboom Studios, particularly into the new U.K. arm of our production unit. More upcoming launches in 2022 in the U.K., and we will again commit strong marketing budgets to those launches, and push our shows into the top levels of the U.K. podcast charts there as we grow out that consumer-focused brand. Then finally, we have a focus to continue that international expansion, but in our very efficient way of doing so. Just as we have done in Australia, in New Zealand, and in Canada, we will create sales partnerships, monetization partnerships across the next group of territories. We have partnerships now down to our sixth biggest territory. The next group, Ireland, Germany, and the rest of mainland Europe, we will be focused on creating revenue-driving partnerships in those areas too. All in all, 2022 is continuing to look very exciting for the business. We know what we have to do to keep driving this company forward. Key thing is that once again, we are really focused on outgrowing and outperforming that wider industry growth of 30%. We are extremely confident that we will be going well above that number across the year. We are in a great place to continue to take market share and to grow this business. That's great. Stuart, Brad, thank you very much indeed for your presentation this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just using the Q&A tab that's situated on the top right-hand corner of your screen. While Stuart and Brad 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. Brad, Stuart, as you can see, we have received a number of questions throughout today's presentation, and thank you to all investors for submitting their questions. If I could please just ask you to run through that Q&A tab, and where it's appropriate to do so, read out the questions and give your response, and then I will pick up from you at the end. Thank you. Thanks, Jake. We will do this one first. It's probably the number one question on there from Matt, Nigel, Steve, lots of people asking questions along these lines, really, which is, we have seen speculation over the last 2 months about companies like Spotify and Amazon, just to name two of them, wanting to acquire Audioboom. Can you tell us more about that interest? Yeah, look, it's great to hear that there's interest in what we have built. It's really not surprising. It's kind of validation for the work we have done, the model that we have created. As we have built out the brand and we have become more successful and more visible to the wider industry, it's clear that we are a very attractive proposition. I kind of talked about that more generally in the past as to why it would be attractive, but I think more specifically when talking about companies like Spotify and Amazon, why we are attractive there is that those guys are kind of taking and making very high-risk deals right now in podcasting. So they are laying down $60, $80, $100 million to work and to get access to individual shows, which is a very high-risk maneuver there. Audioboom and what we are fantastic at, what we are really great at and have been is that kind of incubator for podcast talent. Over and over again, we have recognized and created partnerships with podcasters and creators, and we have helped them really become mega successful. We have made them very valuable. We have worked with them, coached them around content and advertising, and best practice. We have played a big role in delivering that value, and we will keep doing that. So inside a bigger company, what we are able to do, or what we would be able to do, is to kind of de-risk that operation, play a key role there and kind of help them deliver that huge upside. So I think we are very valuable to a bigger organization in podcasting. We have the scale already, and then we continue to kind of perform there. As you know, I think, we are bound by the takeover code, so we are obliged to announce any firm interest. Of course, that doesn't mean that there might not be discussions happening that haven't reached the company yet or exploration of what that opportunity looks like isn't happening. But I think one of my jobs is to ensure that shareholders see maximum value. Right now we're on this fantastic growth trajectory, and I think what that's actually doing is kind of making us more and more valuable by the day. I am not surprised by the speculation. If anything formal comes to Audioboom, bound by that takeover code, you will know very quickly. Next question I will do here, kind of come similar ones here from a couple of people, including RK. Why is the guidance on 2022 revenue not been upgraded, even with these strong results? Yes. Market expectation currently is for revenues of $83 million from Audioboom. Again, just to set that in context, that $83 million in itself would be growth significantly above what the industry is doing this year. Once again, we will be at $83 million, we would be outperforming the wider industry. As you know, I just spoke about, we have that $60.5 million booked with lots more inventory to sell. We are supremely confident right now of hitting that market expectation of $83 million and getting there. I think the key for going beyond that $83 million and then how far beyond that $83 million we go, is how we deliver the renewal of those major contracts across the summer. On an individual basis, each one of those renewals will push that revenue number above the $83 million. If we are very successful across the renewal of those key contracts, then we will go significantly past that $83 million. I think right now, we are in early negotiations on two of those summertime renewals. They are looking very positive. Other negotiations there will start a little later in the year. Really as of today, I think $83 million is still a good number that is ambitious in the context of the wider industry. It is one we expect to hit, and by the end of the first half of this year, we will have really great visibility on the remainder of the year and just how far beyond that $83 million we will be going. Next one here that I will do is, the question is, will podcasting and Audioboom be negatively impacted by world events such as the war in Ukraine? Just a good question. I think right now, I would suggest we are probably impacted to the tune of maybe 1% of our revenue potential because of world events. I think at a maximum, we could be impacted 2%-3%. There are still COVID-related issues in the advertising market, particularly with brands who continue to have supply chain issues, and therefore they are limiting their spending in the space. I think there is still some kind of COVID-related issues there. We have seen, I think over the past four to five weeks, a little nervousness from brands due to the war in Ukraine. There has been a kind of a low level, I think of cancellations of their advertising bookings, but nothing that is too concerning. I think our top shows, I spoke to it earlier, our top shows that drive such a significant part of our revenue are the highest performers for brands. They deliver great ROI, and they are unlikely to be impacted by any nervousness in the ad market. There is, like I said, a small amount of nervousness, but set that against the continued expansion of the market. And I think the bigger picture really is overwhelming positivity about the growth of both the market and more acutely, Audioboom. The next question I have here is, management have sold shares earlier this year. What should investors read into that? Look, I would say, don't read too much into that in terms of the future success of the business. I think we are very much continuing to bet on ourselves to build this business further and to continue to strengthen shareholder value. Firstly, some of the options that were sold were part of management compensation from several years ago. So really it is kind of crystallization of some of that compensation linked to work done in 2014 and 2015. It was also a very small percentage of management options that were sold. So, we still have, I think, significant skin in the game, and like I said, continue to kind of bet on ourselves there personally. As I think you will know, I am based in the U.S. Taxation on stock options works differently here. I also don't qualify for things like EMI tax relief. So I have a taxation need to exercise and hold those shares so they qualify for lower capital gains tax. So there is a major upfront cost to that, the cost of exercising those plus the tax on the spread there. So, in order to do some of that, I have needed to sell some of those options as well. But overall, I think we have increased our individual holdings over the past year. I think we will continue to do that also. And like I said, we very much still heavily betting on ourselves to build the business further. Next question here. On Twitter, you talked about Audioboom's advertising model being unique. Can you explain why it is unique? And is it the reason you are growing faster than the industry? So yeah, this is something, I think from last week, I referenced a thought piece from an advertising executive who highlighted why they would pay up to 100% more for our advertising model versus various models used by our competitors, which, as I said at the time, was great validation for the work we are doing and the model we have. It is very nuanced, but to break it down a little bit, I think, fundamentally, brands will traditionally pay to buy audience or to buy content. And what I mean by that is if you want to buy audience, you are saying, "I want to reach 2 million people in Texas and California with my message." If you buy content, you are saying, "I want to align my brand with sports shows." Both of those are very effective, but what we are doing really is we are enabling brands to buy influence. So to utilize the influence, the personality, and the engagement of the podcast host. And that is what makes our advertising model so impactful in driving sales and ROI. And therefore, we can charge a premium to it. But what we then do is we supercharge that by ensuring that the ads are delivered in single ad breaks, that brands have competitive separation within episodes, so their competitive brands can't be on that same episode, and that the ad is delivered native to the content for better audience engagement. We use attribution technology to measure the effectiveness of those ads and the reach of those ads. So that supercharges that work we do, allow us to charge even more for those ads by connecting with the influence of the hosts. At the same time, many of our competitors are now watering down the model, right? Because they are, particularly those ones that are now part of a bigger organization. They are having a different advertising model imposed on them that may not be best for podcasting. It's not making the most of the podcast host and the influence of that podcast host. What it does, because they're part of a bigger organization, is it makes things efficient, but they're having to sell advertising in the same way that they might sell streaming or digital advertising because that fits well with the overall model that the organization has. But that does water things down, makes our advertising model more effective. So yeah, I believe we have the most effective advertising model in the business. It is why we are growing so quickly. It's why we're able to deliver so much value to our creators. It's why people want to come and work with Audioboom. And it's why brands also trust us to deliver for them. I realize I just have a couple of minutes left. So we'll have a look here through some more. This one's a question about AdRip. Is AdRip destined to remain exclusively for Audioboom use? Do competitors have their own version of this tech? Could it be licensable? I think right now it's such an effective tool that it's not something we would look to license out because it gives us an incredible competitive advantage to be able to remonetize content over and over again, and create this vast back catalog of advertising inventory. Not something I think we'll license out. Today, I don't believe there is anyone else in the industry or in the market that has that piece of technology. So, that will remain exclusively for Audioboom use and it is very, very effective for us. I'll try and fit a couple more in, guys. Spotify has introduced call-to-action cards for podcast advertising. Is this something Audioboom are utilizing? If so, what's the impact on conversion? Yeah, it got a little press a few months ago. It's basically a kind of a click-through visual card, when you're using Spotify that allows you to go straight to a website page and buy product there, and then measure the conversion. It's not something we get access to. It's for podcasts that are exclusive to Spotify. We are working, though, with a number of attribution services that allow us to measure the impact on conversion of our own ads. As I said before, they do deliver great ROI. So, we work with attribution services to do that, which gives us a great look at that. See if there's anything else quick I could do here. A question from Chris about Sonic Influencer Marketing and how that works with Audioboom. So yeah, Audioboom and Sonic work just as Audioboom would work with another advertising agency or platform. Sonic can access advertising inventory on Audioboom in that same manner. No change there, really, and it does deliver a higher overall gross margin to the full business because it is the Sonic gross margin plus the Audioboom gross margin there. It is just recognized on the Sonic side separately. I think we will probably leave it there. We have gone past the top of the hour. Thank you for all those questions. Hopefully, we got through a few more than we are usually able to. Thank you everyone for joining us today and for your support. Stuart, that is great. Brad as well, thank you for addressing all of those questions that you can from investors this afternoon. Of course, ladies and gentlemen, the company will have the opportunity to review all of the questions submitted today, and we will publish those responses where it is appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet Company platform. Stuart, perhaps before redirecting investors to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company, if I could please ask you just for a few closing comments, that would be great. Thank you. Yeah. As you know, Brad and I are always here for feedback, so you can always reach out to us or ask for any kind of clarification on any points from today. Yeah, just wanted to really say thank you for joining us. Thank you for the support or for your interest in the business. We are in a great place. We are really excited about the year ahead of us. We are doing things that our competitors are not able to do. We play such a key role in podcasting. Without Audioboom, podcasting does not have anywhere near the value it otherwise does. The whole industry is moving quickly, but we are moving much faster. We do things smartly. We do things in a very lean and efficient way. The platform is super scalable. We have the best sales model in the business. There is just more and more opportunity coming into Audioboom to scale our content business. So lots of exciting things happening. New shows from Audioboom Studios. New shows joining our Creator Network every single day. We are just in a great place to continue growing, and making sure that 2022 is another successful year. That is great. Stuart, Brad, thank you very much indeed for taking the time to update investors this afternoon. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you will now be automatically redirected for the opportunity 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 and I am sure 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. That now concludes today's session. So good afternoon to you all.