Welcome to the Deezer Quarter Three 2022 Revenue. My name is Caroline, and I'll 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 register your questions. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero and you'll be connected to an operator. I will now hand over to your host, Jeronimo Folgueira, the CEO, and Stéphane Rougeot, Deputy CEO, CFO, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Deezer's Third Quarter 2022 Revenue conference call. I am Jeronimo, CEO of Deezer, and I'm joined today by Stéphane, Deputy CEO and CFO. Starting today, session on slide three . I will first provide you with some key highlights on the third quarter. As you will see, our revenue growth has further accelerated, driven by all segments and all geographies. Then Stéphane will go into more details about our third quarter revenue performance, and after that, we will discuss our 2022 revenue guidance, that we have confirmed. Lastly, we will be happy to take your questions. Moving to slide five . I am very happy with the strong performance we achieved in the third quarter and the momentum we have. Since our listing, we have been fully focused on execution, and I'm very pleased with our ability to deliver on our plan.
Our revenue growth has further accelerated in the third quarter, up 14% year-on-year and showing double-digit growth in every segment and every region. I'm particularly satisfied with our strong performance in France, our main core market, where Deezer's B2C subscriber base has continued to expand, growing by 10% year-on-year in the third quarter. Our B2C ARPU also increased substantially, thanks to price increases implemented along the year. In B2B, our revenue also grew double digits on the back of new deals in Brazil and Europe and a strong ARPU increases. All of that demonstrates the strength of our unique B2C, B2B model and the relevance of our new strategic focus.
I am confident that we're perfectly positioned to keep accelerating our growth further, and based on our strong nine months revenue performance and the plans we have for Q4, I am pleased to confirm once again our revenue guidance at approximately EUR 455 million for 2022. On another matter, we held in early October our first Investor Day in London. This event was an opportunity to provide an overview of our strategy and key initiatives to deliver long-term profitable growth and shareholder value creation. I would like to thank again the people that attended the event, and for those interested in learning more, the supporting presentation is available on our investor relations website. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Stéphane to go over more details about our Q3 revenue performance.
Yes. Hi, everyone. Thank you, Jeronimo. Moving now to slide seven . As you can see here on the left side, which is the third quarter, we reported total revenues of EUR 115.2 million in the third quarter of 2022. This is up 13.8% year-on-year. As mentioned by Jeronimo, we've seen double-digit growth across every segment and geography. In B2C, we reported revenues of EUR 79.8 million in the third quarter, reflecting a double-digit growth of 11.6% year-on-year. This is largely due to a significant increase in ARPU at +14.8%, which reflected the impact from price increases and the group's new focus on key markets with higher ARPU.
We also benefited from the continued growth of our B2C subscriber base in France that partly offset the decline recorded in the rest of the world in line with this new strategy. In B2B, revenues amounted to EUR 30.5 million in the third quarter, up 13.2% year-over-year. At constant currency, B2B revenues posted growth of +9.3% in Q3, more than doubling compared to the 4.4% revenue increase recorded in the first half of the year. This mainly reflects the good performance of our recent partnerships such as SFR in France and Globo in Brazil. We also recorded a further acceleration of our B2B ARPU growth at +16% year-over-year, driven by improved offer mix within our partners as well as price increases. Lastly, our other revenues now includes the consolidation of Driift revenues in the quarter.
As you can see on the right, for the first nine months, we delivered total revenues of EUR 334.6 million. This is up 12.7% year-on-year, and you can see here that B2C grew 12% year-on-year, and B2B revenues grew almost double digit at +9.7%. Let's move now to slide eight , and I will spend now a few moments discussing our Q3 performance by geography. Our performance was particularly strong in France, where our revenues increased 13% year-on-year to reach EUR 69.7 million in the third quarter.
This is largely due to the further expansion of our B2C subscriber base, which stood at 3.4 million subscribers at the end of September, increasing 9.5% year-on-year. We added 87,000 subscribers compared to the end of June 2022. We also benefited in France from a higher ARPU due to the price increases that we have implemented since the beginning of the year. In the rest of the world, we posted revenues of EUR 45.6 million in the third quarter, up 15.1% year-on-year. On a constant currency basis, revenue growth reached 8.9% in the third quarter. We benefited from a pace of activity in B2B, thanks to the growth of our recently launched partnership in Brazil and in Europe.
In B2C, the strong improvement in ARPU more than offset the decline of our subscriber base, in line with our new strategy to focus our business on key selected markets. On the right-hand side, if you look at it year-to-date, our revenues grew 11.7% in France and +14.7% in the rest of the world. Sorry, +14.1% in the rest of the world. Moving to page nine. On the left side, you can see the evolution of Deezer B2C subscriber base, which slightly declined year-on-year by -2.2% to reach 5.6 million subscribers at the end of September 2022. More importantly, compared to the end of June, we are quite satisfied that we have now been able to stabilize our B2C subscriber base. In France, we've continued investing.
We recorded a growth of almost 10% year-on-year, and as mentioned earlier, we added 87,000 subscribers compared to the end of June. Our subscriber growth year-on-year reflects an increase in family mix, the continued optimization of our acquisition funnel, as well as a reduction of our churn rate despite the price increases. In the rest of the world, the number of B2C subscribers declined by 15.8% year-on-year. This is a similar trend to what we saw in the first half, and that's the result of our strategy to focus on key selected markets. We have indeed significantly reduced unprofitable spend in non-core long-tail markets, which therefore impacted the acquisition of our new B2C subscribers in these markets. You remember, we also closed down our Russian business in March this year.
Lastly, as you can see on the right side of this slide, our B2C ARPU grew strongly, thanks to the price increases we implemented over the period and the positive impact of our new focus on higher ARPU geographies. B2C ARPU reached EUR 4.7 in the third quarter, and that compares to EUR 4.1 a year ago and EUR 4.6 at the end of June 2022. Moving now to slide ten, and looking at B2B, we had a total of 3.8 million B2B subscribers at the end of September 2022. This represents a small decline of 2.8% year-on-year, mostly due to a change in offer mix within our partners. Compared to the end of June 2022, our B2B subscriber base remained stable.
Our B2B ARPU recorded a double-digit growth year-on-year at +16.2% in the third quarter, driven by price increases implemented within at some partners, and also an improvement in offer mix in the rest of the world. Compared to the end of June 2022, B2B ARPU further increased by 0.2 EUR. All in all, our total number of subscribers, including B2C and B2B, stood at 9.4 million as of the 13th of September 2022, slightly down -2.5% year-on-year, but stable compared to the end of June 2022. In addition, our total ARPU grew double-digit year-on-year. Let me now move to the last page and talk to you about the outlook, moving to slide 12.
As a conclusion, we're very happy with the revenue performance that we have achieved in the first nine months of the year and in the third quarter. With a highly competitive product and our new clear strategic focus, we've made great progress, as reflected by the significant ARPU increase throughout our businesses and geographies, and the continued B2C subscriber growth in France, as well as the dynamic B2B momentum. With regard to the second half, we expect to benefit from the progressive ramp-up of the RTL partnership that was launched mid-August, as well as the incremental impact of price increases implemented throughout 2022, as well as in the fourth quarter. Additionally, our business has shown a strong resilience to the recent macroeconomic uncertainties. Currently, we do not see and we do not expect any significant negative impact on our activity or financial performance.
Accordingly, we are pleased to confirm again our 2022 revenue guidance, and we expect to generate revenues of approximately EUR 455 million for the Full Year 2022, which represents a growth of approximately 14% compared to full year 2021. This concludes today's presentation, and Jeronimo and I will be pleased to respond to your questions.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We will take the first question from line, Nicolas from HSBC. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi. Hi, everyone. Two questions, please. On the first one, you have obviously raised tariffs earlier this year, but can you explain how higher B2C tariffs can be repeated or replicated in the B2B deals? I was wondering if you have the same flexibility in terms of timing or range of increase within your deals. The second question is about the subscriber base in France. That was strongly up 9.5%. I was wondering if you can provide us the equivalent in terms of packages sold. I mean, subscriptions. How maybe if you can provide some color around the proportion of free trials into the numbers and how they contribute to that growth. Thank you.
Yeah. Let me take the first one. On the B2B side, when it comes to price increases, yes, indeed, we have flexibility, and it depends a little bit on each partner and agreements, of course. We do have flexibility to increase prices. By the way, this is important that we can align prices that are done directly when we go B2C to subscribers and when we go through partners. We cannot afford to have, for a long period of time a meaningful difference. We do have that flexibility, and then we implement it. Sometimes we implement it, at the beginning only for new subscribers, and we maintain existing subscribers on the previous price. Then later on, we also increase for previous subscribers.
Sometimes we do it all at once. We have different ways of doing that. We have discussion with the partners, and then we implement. This is what we have done. When we increase prices in France in B2B towards the end of January, we didn't immediately implement price increases throughout our partners in France. We've done that progressively in the course of the year in the rest of the year. That's how we do that. Yes, it's not done all at once, and there is flexibility.
Can I ask just to follow up on this? In terms of how much you keep from this price increase, is that. Obviously, I suspect your partner gets a share of it, or does it falls 100% onto your balance sheet?
No, well, as you know, we explained that during the Capital Markets Day, there's not a single model of revenue share with the partners. Generally, in many of our partnerships, we have a revenue share of a certain percentage of the top line, which means that when we increase the top line, they get a higher share in absolute value. Yes, there is also a benefit for the partner when we do that.
Okay, thanks.
On your question on the subscribers, we report subscribers the same way as Spotify, which includes sub accounts and trialists. We do not provide further detail in terms of splitting of the subscriber base.
Okay, fair enough. Thank you.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We currently have no questions coming through. Thank you. We have one question from line. Silvia from Deutsche Bank. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and congratulations on the results. Thanks for taking my questions. My first one is related to the 2022 guidance and the implied revenue growth acceleration for Q4. Can you please comment if you already see further acceleration in October? Or can you talk about what other factors would contribute to faster growth in November and December? Secondly, about the RTL partnership related to the earlier question. Maybe can you please share some color about how the first months have gone in terms of consumer feedback and take-up of the music bundle? And shall we expect to see more of a pick up in B2B subscribers numbers in Q4? Finally, just about the recent developments in the competitive landscape. Do you see any read-across from Apple raising the Apple Music prices in the U.S..?
Do you see further room for Deezer to raise its consumer prices in 2023 on the back of that? Thank you.
Thank you, Silvia. I will take your first and your last question. I'll let Stéphane comment a bit more on RTL. In terms of Q4, indeed, by confirming the guidance, you will see that we are implying a substantial revenue acceleration in Q4. We feel quite comfortable on that, on the back of the momentum we see. That is driven primarily by two things. One is additional price increases that have been rolled out at the end of September, October and November. We see that those price increases, and in particular, the roll-up of new prices, of higher prices in iOS users to the whole base, will have a substantial impact. That will come entirely in Q4.
On the B2B side, obviously the ramp-up of the RTL deal and a full quarter consolidation of Driift. Basically on those three things, we expect
On all three segments, that gives us the confidence of the acceleration in Q4 to deliver the Full Year 2022 items. Then addressing your comment about the company landscape. It is extremely good news for us that Apple has decided to follow our footsteps into price increases, and also it's very encouraging the comment from Spotify that they will probably do the same, early in 2023. Because as we have been the first ones to raise prices, very successfully, and now that the competitors follow, obviously that's good for the industry as a whole. It also makes us more competitive once the competitors increase prices, and drives growth for the industry as a whole.
It also opens the door for further price increases down the line. Currently, we do not plan additional price increases in 2023. We always remain flexible when it comes to pricing, so we will always do whatever is best for the business.
Yeah. Let me give you a little bit of flavor on the RTL partnership. Of course, there is not much I can really tell you from a number standpoint because RTL being a listed company, they are the ones who communicate and publish any information they wanna give on their RTL+ offer. Nothing I can do. We are quite happy with the way the business has been progressing. We start to see some impact in terms of subscribers. We have already some subscribers, of course. Now, in the grand scheme of the 3.8 million subscribers that we have on B2B, before it really starts to move the needle, it will take a few quarters.
Again, we're quite happy with the way all this partnership is starting, then more to come in the next quarters.
Thank you.
Thank you. There's no further question at this time. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question or make a contribution to this call, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We will take the next question from line, Nicolas from HSBC. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Hi. Sorry, me again. Your comment on the macro, you indicated that you were seeing no negative impact, and you were not expecting any negative impact. How much of surveys are you doing on that front? Because we start to see some, I mean, in other industries, some cost-cutting on TV products, for example, something that we thought was pretty resilient. Yeah, how do you base your assessment that eventually macro will not have negative impact? It's a very general question, obviously. Thank you.
We feel very strongly that the macroeconomic situation should not have a material impact on our business. We have addressed that during the Capital Markets Day. You can see some additional information on that presentation. Overall, it's based on the data that we currently have, and the performance that we see. Also on the fact that music is extremely good in terms of value for money. You have access to the full catalog for EUR 10.99, and people consume more than 30 hours plus a month of music. What we see is that people will cut the second or third VOD subscription.
They will stop going out once to save EUR 10 rather than cutting the music that they listen to basically every single day of the week. We feel very strongly that given the low price point, the high consumption, the fact that our customers basically have one subscription that we should not see any impact in terms of the economic crisis. That has been further supported by the fact that whenever we did price increases, we saw almost no churn, like very, very little churn on that because people still value music a lot.
Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you. Maybe another one. Yesterday, Apple commented on this call about the reasons for increasing prices for Apple Music, and one underlying reason was the increasing cost for licensing. Can you give us a bit more information on that? Is it something you also face, I suspect?
We have a revenue share with the labels. Obviously the price increase, it's benefiting the labels as well and shared with the labels. As part of the price increase, what we have done as well was to add Hi-Fi. Now all of our subscriptions include Hi-Fi as a standard quality, which is what Apple and Amazon wanted to do. Obviously, they would not give back Hi-Fi for free. In our case, it was compensated by the price increase. In the case of Apple, they follow with the price increases to do that. I think it's going to become the new standard of having better quality music at a slightly higher price. Spotify, for example, does not offer Hi-Fi at the moment.
Still your price increase is more driven by your decision to eventually milk your customer base and, you know, creating some value there rather than strong pressure from the labels to extract more money from you.
The price increases was our decision. In our case, the price decision was ours. We decided to increase Hi-Fi to include Hi-Fi and do price increases.
Yeah.
Because we felt that it was the right thing for us to do as a business. I think in the case of Apple, it's different because they're focusing on selling hardware, so obviously they want higher quality in order to improve the value of their hardware because that's not a music business. In the case of the other competitors, each of them will make their own decisions. For us, it was really driven by us, not by the labels.
Okay. Yeah, which is encouraging. Okay, cool. Thank you. That's it for me.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We currently have no questions coming through. Thank you. There are no further questions, so I will hand over back to your host to conclude today's conference. Thank you.
Yes. Thank you everyone for attending this call, and if you have any additional question later, feel free to reach out to us and to our investor relation. Have a good day.
Thank you.
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