Good afternoon, thank you for attending today's Leafly fourth quarter and fiscal year 2022 earnings call. My name is Jason, and I'll be the moderator for today's call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I'd now like to pass the conference over to our host, Keenan Zopf with The Blueshirt Group. You may now begin.
Good afternoon, and welcome to Leafly's full year and fourth quarter 2022 earnings call. Joining me on the call today are CEO, Yoko Miyashita, and CFO, Suresh Krishnaswamy. Today's prepared remarks have been recorded after which Yoko and Suresh will host live Q&A. A copy of our press release, along with an accompanying earnings presentation can be found on our website at investor.leafly.com. Today's call will contain forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements include statements regarding the services offered by Leafly, the markets in which Leafly operates, business strategies, performance metrics, industry environment, potential growth opportunities, and Leafly's projected future results and financial outlook, and can be identified by words such as expect, anticipate, intend, plan, believe, seek, or will.
These statements reflect our views as of today only, should not be relied upon as representing our views at any subsequent date, and we do not undertake any duty to update these statements. Forward-looking statements, by their nature, address matters that are subjects to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations, and we caution you not to place undue reliance on such statements. For a discussion of the material risks and other important factors that can affect our actual results, please refer to the risks discussed in today's press release, our annual report form 10-K filed with the SEC on March 31st, 2022, and on form 8-K filed on May 2nd and December 2nd, 2022, and our other periodic filings with the SEC.
During the call, we will also discuss non-GAAP financial measures, which are not prepared in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. A reconciliation of the GAAP and non-GAAP results is included in our earnings press release, which has been filed with the SEC and is also available on our website at investor.leafly.com. With that, let me turn the call over to Yoko.
Good afternoon. Amidst macroeconomic and industry headwinds, we ended 2022 with meaningful progress against our key initiatives. We grew full year revenue 10% over 2021 in what overall has been a challenging environment with overall cannabis sales down 1% in the United States. Growth was primarily driven from retail revenue, which was $36.7 million, up 9.3% year-over-year. Revenue from brands was $10.6 million, up 12.9% year-over-year. Ending retail accounts were up nearly 10% in 2022, and we saw a stabilization of MAU to an average of 8 million monthly active users. Brand spend, typically outsized in the period between Thanksgiving and December holidays, was more muted in 2022 than in previous years, and we continue to see softness in brand advertising spend.
We focused on driving more value to retailers in 2022. Contributing to growth in the year were the launch of new products, including our new delivery-first shopping experience, prominent Marquee ad units, and improved functionality of our retailer platform and services. We also rolled out our enhanced bidding capabilities more broadly. Our recent partnership with Uber Eats in Ontario has been successful with delivering an increase in orders to Toronto retailers by 254%. Most notably, the actions we took to control costs in 2022 delivered an improvement in our adjusted EBITDA loss. We delivered negative $23 million adjusted EBITDA for 2022 above our expectations. Much of this was done through a right-sizing of the business in October, meaningful cost-cutting initiatives, and tight spending controls across the company.
We continue to prudently manage expenses and protect cash, and are implementing additional headcount reductions of approximately 40 positions expected to yield annual savings of $8 million beginning in Q2 as we continue to rationalize our cost base and be nimble in a difficult cannabis environment. Most notably, we are adjusting our go-to-market strategy to ensure we are allocating resources to our highest value clients while maintaining our local approach and proven track record of bringing new retailers onto the platform. As market consolidation continues to accelerate, we are focused on building deeper relationships and increasing customer spend across Leafly's full suite of products and services. As has been the case for the past many months, our focus will continue to be on prioritizing projects and product enhancements that will result in the highest returns and maximizing cost efficiencies across the business.
Our operational plan for 2023 builds on these priorities. We expect considerable improvement to adjusted EBITDA on an annual basis going forward. This plan also allows us to preserve capital as we seek an improved path to profitability. Despite headwinds, I want to highlight the continued success we've seen from our local market strategy to enter less penetrated markets at lower price points with a focus on upsell. Both New Mexico and Montana are great examples of this. These 2 recreational markets opened last year. New stores opened. Our sales team focused on getting them subscribed to the platform and upselling them with our existing and new advertising products.
This led our market penetration to reach 75% in both of these markets by the end of 2022, from just over 50% at the start of the year, as well as achieve increase in ARPA of greater than 50% in both markets. This playbook is one that we've replicated multiple times as new markets come online. We will continue to increase penetration in markets where we see the greatest growth opportunities, both in landing new retailers and through upsell, which we believe will drive ARPA up in the long term. In the short to medium term, with many markets still under-penetrated, ARPA will vary market by market. As we look ahead to 2023, we continue to operate in a weak macroeconomic environment and a challenging cannabis vertical.
We expect the environment to be similar to what we saw exiting 2022, with growth muted and high variability from market to market. Cannabis prices are down. Economics are difficult, with some markets like Massachusetts, Oregon, and Arizona seeing significant reductions in the wholesale price of flower. These dynamics certainly have an impact on the retailers and brands who use our services. With this in mind, we continue to take a cautious and focused approach by managing the inputs we control, including cash flow and expenses, and driving significant improvements towards profitability. Our approach for the new year is rooted in the successes we made in 2022, knowing that the product innovations we have brought to market over the last 18 months, along with the focus and discipline on our cost base, have set us up to sustain ourselves through this turbulence and thrive once it subsides.
Despite some of these industry and economic challenges, consumer interest in cannabis is persistent and remains high, with volumes of product orders holding steady. Consumers are looking for deals and value as we see them trading down to lower price point products. What does this mean for us? Targeted solutions for the cost-conscious consumer, like price comparison and deal and discount discovery, to connect them with the same quality products they seek for less. We have a tremendously diverse set of products, more than 150,000, available on the platform today. This also provides us with an immense amount of data that we can share with our retail and brand customers to further establish trust and reinforce the value of our platform. Part of servicing the consumer means continuing to improve the consumer experience and increase retention, which is critical to our success.
We're focused on a couple of different things in 2023. First, consumer enhancements. We're building off our proprietary data to drive better personalization, curation, and effects-based shopping, which allows consumers to shop based on how they want to feel. We'll also focus on getting more deals to consumers to deliver what they're looking for in today's market, and that is value. In mobile apps, we've seen significant growth, and we continue to emphasize native. More than 1 million downloads of the Leafly app occurred in 2022, an 18.5% increase year-over-year. Mobile is where our most engaged customers are. They search more, they shop more, and we have an easier path to retention and engagement. Our app creates a sticky, closed-loop experience where we can more freely interact through notifications, offers, and relevant content.
Orders on mobile saw tremendous growth, 384% year-over-year, partially fueled by our Uber Eats partnership announced in October. This relationship is an extension of our strong belief that mobile is a critical component to our strategy. We are encouraged by early successes and continue to ramp up in Ontario. While still in its nascency, we think the Uber Eats partnership and our belief in a delivery-first shopping experience has tremendous opportunity as local markets embrace e-commerce and delivery. We also believe that reducing friction for our retail and brand customers will continue to demonstrate our commitment to making working with Leafly as easy and beneficial as possible, creating efficiency and value for our partners. We're hearing from our customers more and more that they want to understand how they can best leverage the Leafly platform to grow their business.
We have a lot of information and data, 2023 is about bringing that to life and making that data actionable for our customers and combining it with our expertise and know-how. Third-party integrations, which are critical for reducing friction for our retailers, will benefit from a new and more robust ordering API. We'll improve ordering features with scheduled pickup windows, giving retailers greater control to manage their order flow. To deliver for shoppers, we'll make it easier for retailers to create deals on Leafly and offer new deal types. We will continue to innovate and improve on our ad products, including the extension of our Marquee ad units into our mobile apps, providing an increase in impressions on our most engaged platform. We will streamline the ad creation process through an improved ad builder, giving retailers and brands greater control.
Looking at 2023, we are seeking an improved path to profitability through sustainable revenue growth and cash conservation. We see opportunities to rationalize our sales and support cost base by offshoring some operational support tasks while focusing our talent on higher-value activities, such as in-market activations and building stronger relationships with our highest-value customers. We'll continue to manage this year through a conservative approach as we seek a path to profitability, preserving cash, and targeting our resources against the key opportunities ahead. That's in places like Missouri, which just recently opened their rec market. They have approximately 200 stores in-market that drove $100 million in sales of cannabis in its first month. We are in that market, in front of licensees, bringing them onto our platform and activating ordering. At full penetration across Missouri, that's a sizable revenue opportunity just by using our current ARPA rates.
Cannabis, with all of its regulatory hurdles and starts and pauses, is a long game. We're going to see for the first time how cannabis performs in a down economy, and what we see gives us reason for optimism. We're adjusting to give consumers what they're looking for, value, and providing retailer and brand clients with clearer and simpler paths to reach shoppers. We've positioned ourselves in the market to benefit as opportunities start to take hold, and we believe we're positioned well for the year ahead and set up for success when the market re-accelerates. Now I'll turn it over to Suresh.
Thank you, Yoko, and welcome everyone. As Yoko discussed, we're operating in a difficult environment. We started to see a shift in our business in the second half of 2022, with ad budgets coming under increased scrutiny. This shift in the market impacted results and our sales growth slowed. Revenue in the fourth quarter was $12.1 million, essentially flat year-over-year. Breaking that down, revenue from retail was $9.5 million, up 4% year-over-year. Revenue from brands was $2.7 million, down 12% year-over-year, reflecting the softening we started to see in the second half of last year. I'll speak to our retail results first. During the fourth quarter, we continued to focus on growing our market share in both new and more established markets.
Our success in this area led to ending retail accounts growth of 10% year-over-year. We had bright spots with healthy account growth in Montana, New Mexico and California. We continued to see softness in the same markets we have called out previously, like Oklahoma and parts of Canada. Our retail ARPA in the fourth quarter was $554, a decline of 7% year-over-year and flat quarter-over-quarter. We expect to see continued pressure on ARPA this year. We're prioritizing growth of accounts in newer markets, and these come on at lower average ARPA. We also continue to see industry and market dynamics put pressure on how customers approach ad spend. Turning to brands, on a sequential basis, revenue declined 3% compared to Q3. We started to see brands pulling back on advertising spend in the third quarter.
Given the importance of the holiday and the historical seasonality in brand spend, we had anticipated an uptick for December. However, the typical boost in ad spend in the period after Thanksgiving did not materialize. Looking at Q1 activity, brand spend continues to be soft given the macro environment as brands are not activating at the same levels they were in 2022. Turning to gross margin. Total gross margin in the fourth quarter was 88%, in line with levels reported in the year-ago quarter. Our team is focusing on cost management measures and optimizing resources. As a result, we expect gross margin to remain at similar levels in 2023. Moving on to operating expenses. Our Q4 total operating expenses were $16.3 million, which was relatively flat compared to Q3. Today, we announced additional cost-cutting measures and a reduction in force.
The measures we're taking will align our cost structure to reflect the current industry and macroeconomic environment while also focusing on our largest opportunities. We are reducing headcount by approximately 40 positions or 21% of the company's workforce and expect a one-time cash restructuring charge for the layoffs of approximately $700,000 in Q1 of this year. We expect total annual cash savings of approximately $8 million, with about half of that realized this year. Moving forward, we will be intently focused on three priorities. One, aligning all of our resources around one common theme, building a stronger marketplace. Two, supporting the areas of the business that will provide the greatest return from a near-term revenue perspective. Three, continuing to improve operating efficiency and preserving cash.
Our team is laser-focused on managing costs in order to extend our cash runway and stay on course to achieve profitability as we have outlined previously. Turning to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $24.6 million in cash. Our team has been diligent in managing our cash resources. We remain committed to prudently managing our capital, and our cost reductions starting last October are a testament to this. We will continue to operate with this disciplined approach and focus on improving efficiency. In light of recent events, we wanted to inform investors that we do not have a banking relationship with SVB, Signature Bank, or First Republic. We diversify our cash balances across several banking relationships to mitigate risk, and we're actively evaluating options to increase cash protection. To our guidance.
Given the challenging environment and the lack of visibility for the year, we have decided not to provide full year guidance at this time and instead only provide quarterly guidance for the near term.
For Q1 '23, we expect revenue of $11 million-$11.3 million and an adjusted EBITDA loss of negative $4.3 million to negative $4 million. We continue to focus on our path to profitability and are executing against our plans to achieve this in the next 24 months. Over 2023, we expect our annual cash burn rate to be approximately $10 million and are targeting a meaningful improvement over 2022 in full year adjusted EBITDA loss. While external factors are impacting our growth rates, we're focusing on the things we can control and taking the opportunity to realign the business for greater efficiency. The changes that we announced today are designed to better serve our customers, deepen our relationships, and help them navigate this challenging environment. We'll now open up the call for questions. Operator?
If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you'd like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, it is star one. Our first question is from Jason Helfstein with Oppenheimer. Your line is now open.
Hey. Thanks. Hey, everybody. Let's maybe help us think through this. In some cases, one would argue that as there's weaker demand, you know, advertisers or retailers would wanna lean into advertising to try to recapture a greater share of that lower demand. Do you think that there is like a price point at which, you know, your products, you know, if you lower the prices that starts to unlock that? Or is it really on the retailer side, we're just dealing with generally unsophisticated businesses and just, you know, when their demand is shrinking, they are willing to spend more?
You know, I would assume that on a brand side, they're more sophisticated, but just talk about how you think you can ultimately drive more demand through your platform from a, you know, a revenue standpoint. Thank you.
You know, let's break this up here between the brand side spend and the retail side. You know, as it relates to the brand advertising where we see the greater softness, I think, you know, remember that's very much top of funnel brand spend. It's not the bottom of the shop, funnel shopping type of spend where you can show that direct ROI. I think as pressure on brands and, you know, MSOs who carry brands to show a tighter path to profitability take over, you're just seeing that general pullback in brand spend. I think you need to really differentiate between what's happening on the brand side of this business and the retail side. I do think there's a macro aspect to this.
Price points, yes, have some sensitivity and can drive a little bit more of the demand, but I think what we just saw was that signaling from early on that they were pulling back on spend. They essentially sort of sat out the holiday season, slow start to 2023 on that end. At the same time, we're also seeing some of these brands come back into the market. That's the brand side of things. I think on the retail side, slightly different dynamics because of the products and services we have to service that account base. For them, it's all about showing the actual shopping and ordering activity, what I call that bottom funnel activity, to justify that spend. What we've heard consistently is when you can show that value to those retailers, they're willing to put more money into the channel.
How do you, just to follow me, How do you generate more retail demand if the macro environment stays weak?
Remember, more retail demand looks like two things in this space. One is new licenses, new stores, and the other is increasing share of wallet with existing licensees. We talked at length about our land and expand, capturing the new licensees that come into market. We don't bank that simply because we don't control when licenses are issued. At the same time, what we do have control over is the deepening relationships with retailers, building that stronger partnership to show them ROI on the platform, and also really working with them in that consultative capacity to show how we can make the platform work best for them. That's not just being on the platform with a subscription. It's about activating ordering, it's about activating deals, and it's about activating advertising as layers onto this to drive the kind of shopping behavior you wanna see as a retailer.
That's, like, think about that. That's a consultative approach that's very hands-on, which is what we're very excited to be focused on as we come into 2023 and make adjustments to our go-to-market strategy.
Last question from me. Do you think the lack of enforcement around illegal dispensaries is having an impact on the business?
I think as we recently published, there were 2 licensed stores in New York, New York compared to the 1,200 unlicensed counted in a given week. Listen, this is all structural as we know. I think what makes this space interesting isn't the fact that the consumer demand isn't there. It's all about shifting that consumer demand that already exists into the legal space. That's why this partnership, this push, the influence we need and the pressure we need to continue to put on regulators to issue licenses and open stores is so critical for the long-term success of this space.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Vivien Azer with TD Cowen. Your line is now open.
I wanted to start on the new incremental headcount reductions that you guys announced today. Certainly encouraging that you continue to challenge the organization to work more efficiently as you strive towards profitability. I was wondering though, if you could offer us an incremental color around where in the organization, which capabilities you're finding opportunities to find more operating leverage. Maybe we can start there. Thanks.
Yeah, sure, Vivien. Today we announced the 21% headcount reduction, right? To align our cost structure with the current environment. To put that in context, you know, we have been hyper-focused on costs and conserving cash since last year, right? The cost reductions today reflect about $8 million of annualized savings, and this is after the $16 million of annual savings from the reductions we announced back in October that we said would take effect in January. Taking into consideration all of these efforts plus additional OpEx cuts, we expect annual operating costs, excluding stock-based comp, to be a little over 20% lower than last year. In this cost level, we can support a similar revenue base and at the same time be well-positioned to take advantage of the growth opportunities as they emerge.
To give you a little bit more color on that, our OpEx structure really last year was about 40% each in sales and marketing and G&A. You know, with the cuts that we have announced, it's more like 30% in sales and marketing, 30% in PDE, and 40% in G&A. Of course, with all the numbers coming down. We have, as part of this sales restructure, really looked at how can we align our strategy with the environment that we're operating in, you know, continue to focus on our local go-to-market strategy. Again, you know, how can we do that with smaller, tighter, more efficient teams that can respond more quickly on the sales side and just align more closely with customers?
That's very helpful detail. Thank you very much for that. Just to follow up then on the sales realignment, you know, considering the challenging operating backdrop, you know, does your field team have like different scorecards where they would evaluate current and potential new relationships? Obviously, there's, you know, a fixed cost to onboard new relationships, either brands or retail. I'm just wondering if you're raising the bar at all there so that you're really maximizing the effort of that more efficient sales force. Thank you.
That's fun, Vivien. In terms of really thinking through, when we talk about, you know, higher value clients, we're really looking at the segmentation and the opportunity set that exists with existing as onboarding and onboarding new retailers. Just getting smarter and more judicious in how we leverage our resources as it relates to onboarding, as it relates to training, as it relates to client success, is a key part of this strategy going forward. We know based on the value we drive for retailers and brands, that there's greater monetization opportunities. How do we put those resources towards those opportunities as opposed to a more broad-based higher touch across many accounts approach?
That's very helpful. Thanks very much, Yoko.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Eric Des Lauriers with Craig-Hallum. Your line is now open.
Great. Thank you for taking my question. I know one of the key benefits of your platform or subscriber base is that, you know, there is a sort of, you know, ongoing recurring payment to you guys that gives you some of that increased visibility. I'm just wondering, you know, if you could comment on the overall, you know, kind of stickiness of the accounts that you continue to have, if you're starting to see any turnover, you know, perhaps, you know, in addition to some of the license, or I guess, you know, lack of license renewals with some of these licenses kind of falling off.
Just kind of speak to, you know, some of the, you know, potential changes in the stickiness of your customers, as this macro environment has kind of gotten a little tougher for cannabis. Thanks.
Yeah, sure, Eric. I could start off with some numbers there. You know, overall, I mean, retail is about 78% of our total revenue. Of that total, over 80% is subscription-like revenue, right? I mean, half of that is subscriptions. The other half are advertising units that we have a really good history on in terms of placements. They may change hands, but we have good visibility and confidence in that continuing. That really has led to sort of more predictability and stickiness on the retail side. You kinda see that in the numbers, even though growth has slowed on the retail side in the numbers, you know, we continue to see quarter-over-quarter increases.
We're certainly projecting those increases this year as well. The variability has been more on the brand side, as we've talked about. In the second half of last year, we saw the slowdown that has continued into the first quarter so far. That being said, just to give some color, you know, it was mainly in January. From what we've seen so far in March, I mean, February and March, you know, things have seemed to have stabilized. It's still very early to make any predictions on the brand revenue for the rest of the year, and that's one of the reasons we're not providing guidance.
In terms of, just talking about, you know, the stickiness, you know, we did see, you know, on the retail side, churn continue, in the same markets that we kinda saw last year. You know, we've called out Oklahoma. You know, we continue to see that. In terms of last year, we also saw Ontario, which had churn, especially in Q1 of last year. It's interesting that since our partnership with Uber and the value that that's created for both our consumers and our retailers, we've seen little to no churn in Q1 this year in Ontario. Just wanted to, you know, give a little bit of color around that.
Thanks. Appreciate that.
There are no further questions, so I'll pass the call back over to the management team for closing remarks.
Thanks, everyone. We look forward to speaking with you throughout the rest of the year and excited what lies ahead. Goodbye.
That concludes the conference call. Thank you for your participation. Everyone else has left the call.
Wait, guys. Hang up. Guys, hang up the phone.