Hello, and welcome to the Deezer Q3 2024 revenue conference call. My name is Rushdie, and I will be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this call is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen only. However, you will have the opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to.
Mr. Alexis Lanternier, CEO, and Carl de Place, CFO, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Deezer Q3 2024 revenue conference call. Moving on to slide three, I am Alexis Lanternier, CEO of Deezer, and I'm joined today by Carl de Place, our CFO. As you know, I joined Deezer in September, and I'm beyond thrilled to be part of this adventure at such a key moment. Deezer is a very inspiring French tech pioneer and is uniquely positioned to support the major changes happening in the global music industry. I'm looking forward to continuing to build on the unrivaled strength of Deezer, enriching fan lives through unique music experiences, and working with the strategic partners to expand the scope of music lovers. I've been extremely impressed by all the Deezer teams and the opportunity to meet over the past few weeks.
It is a very powerful mix between state-of-the-art expertise on all domains and a common passion for music and innovation, and as you will see, it translates into very impressive results. I also want to take the opportunity to thank all the Deezer employees for their significant effort in the past few months in delivering better results with less resources, and I also would like to acknowledge my predecessor, Jeronimo, for having put the company on a sustainable trajectory, and Stu for delivering on the vision during its interim, so I will start with the key highlights of this quarter, and Carl will then go into more detail on our performance. After that, we'll discuss the 2024 outlook, and at the end of our presentation, we'll answer your questions.
So moving on to slide four, we achieved a strong performance in Q3 in terms of top-line growth, reflecting the successful execution of our strategy. This is in line with our top-line expectation, with a revenue of EUR 134 million in Q3, growing 11% year over year, which is a 13% at constant currency. This is a combined effect of ARPU increase and solid subscriber base dynamics, notably in partnerships and France. With a strong H1 result published in July in this new quarter of double-digit growth, we can now confirm our 2024 financial targets in terms of growth, profitability, and cash generation. We are also able to confirm our ambitions planned in 2025, as we are on track to achieve positive Adjusted EBITDA next year. Moving on to slide five, let's spend a few minutes discussing key business highlights for this third quarter.
Moving on to Slide 6, since July, we have continued to lead the industry with several strategically important initiatives. First, on the partnership side, we have continued to expand among different verticals and geographies. We signed iconic leaders in the media space, namely TF1+ and DAZN. We continued our expansion in hardware enablement with Titan OS that is powering the Philips TV. And finally, we continued our geographical expansion with WIM in Mexico. These deals highlight the strong added value proposition Deezer can bring through music experiences to a variety of partners across different verticals and geographies. On the Deezer platform itself, we continue to innovate, leveraging our unique AI capabilities, and we released AI-generated playlists in global beta. We also rolled out our fan experience in Brazil, which is called Purple Club and delivers exclusive events to our most loyal users.
This initiative demonstrates Deezer's ability to innovate and enhance fan experience with music. Lastly, we renewed our support to some of the biggest musical events of the summer in France, strengthening our commitment to live the music. This concludes my introduction, and now I will pass it on to Carl for the financial section.
Thank you, Alexis, and good morning, everyone. I'm thrilled to present to you today the details of our strong Q3 2024 results. Moving on to slide eight, our subscriber base reached 9.9 million at the end of the third quarter. During the quarter, we removed nearly 0.4 million inactive family accounts from our subscriber base, mainly in our direct base in France. This optimization mechanically increases our profitability with no impact on our revenues.
Also, on a sequential basis, our partnership subscriber base was impacted by the conversion of the first cohorts of Meli+ subscribers from trial accounts to premium accounts with higher margins. This was partially offset by the growth of other partnerships, including RTL. Adjusted for the removal of inactive family accounts, we added 0.4 million subscribers compared to last year, or 4.1% growth on a like-for-like basis. This was driven by our partnership subscriber base, growing 11% on a like-for-like basis on the back of recently signed deals, while our direct subscriber base in France grew by 3.2% like-for-like. Our direct rest-of-the-world subscriber base declined by 9.2% year- over- year on a like-for-like basis, but it was stable sequentially, which is positive given our strategy to focus on selected key markets. Moving on to Slide 9, as highlighted by Alexis, our Q3 revenue increased by 11% year- over- year.
This performance was slightly affected by the impact of foreign currency, notably in Brazil and Mexico. Adjusting for this impact, our growth was 13% at constant currency rate. Looking at the performance by segment on the left-hand side of the slide, you can see that our partnership segment delivered 21% growth. The segment now represents close to one-third of our total revenues. This performance reflects the successful execution of our strategy and the contribution of recent partnerships, notably RTL+ and Mercado Libre, which drove the acquisition of new subscribers at plus 0.5 million year- over- year on a like-for-like basis for this segment. Adjusting for the impact of foreign currency, the growth of this segment amounted to 26.7%. We also reported growth of 4.1% year- over- year in the direct segment. This was driven by the continued expansion of our subscriber base in France on a like-for-like basis.
It grew by 3.2% compared to the end of September 2023, and by increase in ARPU, mainly as a result of price increases. Other revenues, mainly consisting of advertising and ancillary revenues, increased by 63.8% compared to Q3 2023. The main factor for the increase in other revenues was the contribution of the licensing of Zen. Then, looking at our revenue performance by geography on the right-hand side of the slide, we recorded solid revenue growth of 9.4% in France, driven by the subscriber growth and the improvement of ARPU. In the rest of the world, revenue was up 13.3% thanks to the strong performance of our partnerships, slightly offset by the expected decline of the direct subscriber base in the region. Moving on to slide 10, the nine-month revenue is in line with our expectations.
Consolidated revenue amounted to EUR 402 million, up 13.6% compared to the first nine months of 2023, 14.1% at constant currency. As for the third quarter, revenue growth for the first nine months was mainly driven by the profitable expansion in partnerships, which grew by 32.8% year- over- year at EUR 128.3 million, and the performance of direct, 4.5% at EUR 257 million. I will now turn the call over to Alexis to discuss the 2024 financial outlook.
Thank you, Carl. Moving on to Slide 12, as discussed, we experienced strong revenue performance for the first nine months of the year. This reflects the successful execution of Deezer's strategy, driven by the expansion of partnerships and the development of our direct segment on our main markets. Looking ahead, we've confirmed that Deezer is in a very strong position to achieve its 2024 revenue target, and that is despite a strong comparative base in Q4 2023. Moving on to Slide 13, as signaled by our strong profitability performance in H1, we expect Adjusted EBITDA to be better than -EUR 10 million in 2024, as per the guidance. This will represent a significant reduction from the -EUR 29 million we had in 2023 and the -EUR 56 million we had in 2022. And that puts us in a very strong position to deliver positive Adjusted EBITDA in 2025.
Finally, given the strong profitability improvement already achieved and positive free cash flow generation presented in H1 2024, we also confirm our ambition to achieve positive free cash flow in 2024. Thank you, everyone, for listening in. Carl and I will now open the discussion for questions.
Thank you, sir. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question or make a contribution on today's call, please press star one. We'll take our first question from Silvia Cuneo from Deutsche Bank. Your line is open. Go ahead.
Thanks. Good morning, everyone. My first question is on subscribers' conversion. You talked about how the first quarter of the Mercado Libre partnership conversion was positive for partnership subscriber numbers this quarter. So I wanted to ask if you could talk about your views on partnership subscribers for the remainder of the year based on the deals you had signed at the end of last year. And the second question on the number of direct subscribers. You've focused on rationalizing the geographic footprint first and now the inactive accounts. So can you please help us understand how much further room you see to streamline the subscribers, and when do you expect the rest of the world number to return to growth potentially? And then finally, if I may, I wanted to ask for some early thoughts on 2025 growth potential since you confirmed the positive Adjusted EBITDA.
I was wondering if you can share some early thoughts on drivers of growth, if you already have a pipeline on partnerships, for example, that gave you confidence. Thank you.
Hello, Silvia. Thank you for your question, so I think your first question was related to the conversion of our subscribers in the partnership segment, so as we mentioned, we are happy with the results that we've been able to achieve on Mercado Libre, which were higher than our initial expectations. We'll continue monitoring for that. As you know, this is the largest partnership we have with a 12-month trial, which gives rise to a substantial conversion, so I think this is really the one on which we are focusing right now, and therefore, there are no other partnerships at this moment on which we need to dig into the conversion number, and of course, we will keep you updated on the trends of conversion of Mercado Libre in the coming months. We expect the trend that we've seen recently to continue over the next few quarters.
Thank you, Carl. I'll try to answer the two other questions. The second one is about subs growth and subs growth on different geographies. As you can see in the slides, we have a positive momentum in France. The rest of the world is declining. What we can see recently is the fact that this is plateauing. The strategy has been to improve the profitability and moving to positive profitability for Deezer, which has made us be more selective in the way we invest in terms of marketing and making sure we invest in markets where we can see that the return on the investment is positive for Deezer. So that's the reason why we are growing in France and over the rest of the world has been declining. And we'll constantly test and see if we need to reinvest and we should reinvest in other markets.
And so we'll tell you more as it goes and as we're discovering new opportunities for growth in other countries. In terms of the future, we don't comment and give precise numbers on prospects. But what we can say in terms of drivers of growth is that Deezer has demonstrated its ability to grow on leveraging two main drivers, one being the partnerships and the other one being the direct in the main market, mostly France. What we can tell you is that in terms of partnership, we are signing partners across different verticals and geographies, which demonstrates the appeal of our offer and the growth reservoir. We know there is some organic variability from quarter to quarter, but overall, our recent successes are clear proof that our model is relevant and remains attractive for partners.
We are confident in our ability to continue to grow in that segment in the future. For direct in France, our rebranding is clearly showing traction among French populations. We see leads increasing year- over- year at a faster pace. And so we are focused on converting and retaining this user, which will fuel growth in the coming quarter. Finally, in terms of growth reservoir, again, not giving any precise projection, but what you can see is that we have been able to raise price twice in the past 24 months. And we believe that over time, as we continue to upgrade the experience to add value to the user, there will be potential for price increase in the market, given the fact that the music streaming value is pretty compelling to compare to other entertainment solutions for users.
Okay. Thank you very much.
We'll take our next question from Christophe Cherblanc from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. The first one was on the move on inactive sub-accounts or family accounts. So can you be a bit more specific on what that implied and whether that is an issue that we may be seeing at other platforms? So that's the first question. The second question is on the 3% growth in DTC subs in France. To the best of your knowledge, do you believe that's in line with the market or you're ahead of the market? If we had the numbers of Spotify and Apple and Amazon, would they be similar? That's the second one. The third one is on the super fan tier. The industry has been talking about it for quite some time. I just wanted to know what's your sense of what can be done and how can it be done in practical terms?
Would that mean putting exclusive content out of reach for regular clients? Any idea there would be great. And the final one is on the price. In the past, you've been leading in price increases. Do you believe that without adding new features like super fan tier or other functionalities, there is room to increase prices in 2025? Thank you.
Thank you, Christophe. So I'll take the first question, and then Alexis will take other questions. So on the inactive family accounts, first commenting on the second part of your question, which is, could we see that in other platforms? We don't know. We are not privy to the details of other companies, so it's hard for us to comment. Now, coming back to our situation, so we removed nearly 400,000 inactive family accounts from our subscriber base, mainly from our direct segment in France and the rest of the world. And obviously, we've done that because this helps us accelerate our gross profit. And this is a contractual thing due to the nature of agreements with the providers. We don't expect that trend to continue materially in the next quarter.
The mechanism for that is that once a user reaches a certain seniority and is inactive, we do pay some penalties, so we'll continue to remove those users, but the effect will be much less significant than what we've seen for this quarter.
Thank you, Carl, and thank you, Chris, for your questions. I think, on the growth of the sub base in France and how it compares with competition, hard to know exactly and be sure. What we can tell you, what we can look at, is the app downloads. That's information that is public, and we can see that our share of app downloads has remained pretty stable in terms of share of the market, which gives us a sense that we're probably in line with the market trend with our 3% growth. On the super fan tier monetization, as you pointed out, I think it's a big discussion in the industry. It's obviously something where we want to be at the forefront. There are several models that are under assessment with our partners. We believe a lot in it. I think there is a clear appetite.
We have seen many studies from many partners confirm the appetite of fans to be able to access more services. What we have started now is to roll out the Purple Club, which is a way for us to give more value to the fans, to people that really care about dedicated artists, and we want to value our most loyal users, and so we are on top of that topic, and we are working to expand into more opportunities on this. In terms of price increase, it's obviously difficult to predict exactly the timing. Again, I would encourage you to look at the past as a good prediction of the future. We've seen, again, among the past 24 months that we were able to increase the price twice while still growing the sub base.
And I think that's a reflection of the fact that the value of the music streaming is extremely compelling to users. So I think there is no reason not to think that it's going to be impossible to continue at that trend in the future, knowing that, of course, that will be accompanied by additional value to the user and keeping innovating to create that value.
Thank you. Can I add just a quick follow-up to what Alexis was saying? What is exactly an inactive account? Is it someone which is paying for an account and never consuming any content? Is it a family account where there were five members, and you realize there are only two members consuming any content? What's the definition, to be clear?
Yes, Christophe, thank you for that question. So yes, the inactive account is a sub account from our family offer, meaning that once you create a family offer, you have access to a number of sub accounts that can be used by several members of your family. And sometimes what we find out is that some of those sub accounts that were initially created are not used anymore. And therefore, within a certain time frame, we've decided to deactivate them in order to eliminate the penalties that we have on the contractor side.
What you were saying meant that even though there were no consumption, you had to pay some kind of amount or minimum amount to content providers, right? Okay. Okay. Makes sense. Okay. Thank you.
There are no further questions from the audio participants for now. I will hand over to the host for webcast questions. We still have one more question from the audio participants, which is from Mr. Eric Ravary from CIC. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Two questions. First one is on the number of subscribers in partnerships at end September. So it decreased slightly versus end June. So could we have some explanation there as RTL+ and Meli + continue to progress? And the other question is on the other revenue segment with a strong growth over Q3 thanks to the application Zen by Deezer. Could you confirm that this segment is providing higher gross margins than the direct and partnerships segments? Thank you.
Thank you, Eric. So on the partnership number and commenting on the sequential evolution of our sub base, the impact that we've seen relates mainly to the conversion of the first cohorts of Mercado Libre from Q3 last year. As you may remember, these subscribers signed up for a 12-month trial period, and that period ended in Q3 this year, with part of these cohorts converting at full price. While the conversion rates are higher than we initially anticipated, this impacted, obviously, our subscriber base. And we expect, as I mentioned, that that trend will continue in Q4, although partially offset, of course, by the new incoming cohorts, thanks to the good news that we've extended our partnership with Mercado Libre until the end of 2025.
And as you rightly mentioned, this will also be offset by the fact that we are seeing more growth on some other partnerships like RTL, as you mentioned. So that's for your first question. Now, on your second question on Zen, yes, obviously, as we mentioned in the past, the Zen content is for us a great opportunity to improve our profitability because we incurred the cost already. So those are mainly fixed costs in terms of developing the content, creating the content. Those costs have been incurred already in 2022, in 2023. And now we have a full catalog that we can distribute, exploit, and sell. This is what we have done. And therefore, I can confirm that the margins are much, much higher on that product than they are elsewhere in other business.
Very clear. Thank you, Carl.
With that, I will hand over back to the host for webcast questions.
Okay. Thank you. So we have a question from Ronan. So the first question is, in terms of partnerships, do you see further potential to increase our pool in coming quarters? And if so, to what degree this growth materializes? And the second question, which is regarding the number of subscribers, would we anticipate a continued trend in Q4 for deactivating inactive family sub accounts? Or would you say that most of this process has already been addressed? So coming back to your second question, I answered this a little bit earlier. As I mentioned, the big one-off, we took it in Q3 this year. We'll continue to monitor that, but to a much, much lesser extent. It will not be material in the following quarters.
On your first question regarding partnerships, obviously, when we implemented the price increases last year in Q3, which had impact in Q4, this was mainly on our direct subscriber base. We then initiated those price increases on the remainder of our subscriber base, and notably on Orange in France. This started in Q1 next year. So we can expect to continue to see some growth in Q4 and a little bit of growth in Q1. And of course, that will be a tailwind for us, although to a lesser extent than what it was in 2024. Next question is, are there any plans to address the CNM tax, so the streaming tax with a price increase like Spotify?
Yeah. Thanks, Jack, for the question. At Deezer, we tend to start with the user in mind, and we believe that the price that we have put in place last year is the right one given the value we're bringing to the consumers, so we don't want to adapt that based on variation in taxes. However, we have worked with our partners in the music industry to make sure that everyone takes his fair share of the tax so that we limit the impact that will weigh on our P&L, and then in terms of potential price increase that will address that kind of tax, it's something that I already addressed in the call earlier. It's something that clearly we think is possible in the future.
Okay. So I think we have no further questions on the line and on the webcast. Thank you, everyone, for attending the call today. And we will see you again for the publication of our full year results in February. Have a good day.
That concludes today's conference. Thank you for joining. You may now disconnect.