Good day, everyone. Welcome to Cineverse's fourth quarter and year-end fiscal 2023 financial results conference call. My name is Matt, and I'll be your operator today. Currently, all participants are in our listen-only mode. We will have a question- and- answer session following management's prepared remarks, at which time participants can press star followed by the number one to ask a question. If anyone needs operator help, please press star zero. Please note that this call is being recorded. I will now like to turn the call over to your host, Gary Loffredo, chief legal officer, secretary, and senior advisor for Cineverse. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining the Cineverse fiscal 2023 fourth quarter and year-end financial results conference call. The press release announcing Cineverse's results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended March 31, 2023, is available at the investor section of the company's website at www.cineverse.com. A replay of this broadcast will also be made available at Cineverse website after the conclusion of this call. Before we begin, I would like to point out that certain statements made on today's call contain forward-looking statements. These statements are based on management's current expectations and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions. The company's periodic reports that are filed with the SEC describe potential risks and uncertainties that can cause the company's business and financial results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements.
All the information discussed on this call is as of today, June 29, 2023. Cineverse does not assume any obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements except as required by law. In addition, certain financial information presented in this call represent non-GAAP financial measures. We encourage you to read our disclosures and the reconciliation tables to applicable GAAP measures in our earnings release carefully as you consider these metrics. With me today are Chris McGurk, chairman and CEO; Erick Opeka, president and chief strategy officer; Tony Huidor, chief operating officer and chief technology officer; John Canning, chief financial officer; Yolanda Macias, chief c ontent officer; a nd Mark Lindsey, executive vice president, finance and accounting, all of whom will be available for questions following the prepared remarks. On today's call, Chris will discuss fiscal year 2023 highlights, the latest operational developments, outlook, and long-term strategy.
John will follow with a review of our results for the fiscal fourth quarter and the year ended March 31, 2023. Erick will then provide some detail on our streaming business results and operating initiatives before we open the floor for questions. I will now turn the call over to Chris McGurk to begin.
Thanks, Gary. Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Fiscal year 2023 was a milestone year for Cineverse. By the end of the year, we wound down almost 100% of our legacy digital cinema business and are excited to be moving forward with a new name and brand that reflects our status as a pure play streaming technology and entertainment company. The wind down of digital cinema made our financial results rather lumpy over the last two years as we monetized the remaining assets in that business and adjusted our balance sheet as our equipment obligations diminished. During that same period, our core business of streaming content and entertainment grew very rapidly through a combination of organic growth and eight acquisitions of streaming content and technology assets.
Over the last two fiscal years, we basically doubled the size of our core content and entertainment business, increasing revenues from $28.2 million for the fiscal year ended March 31st, 2021, to a record $56 million for the fiscal year just ended. For this fiscal year, we reported consolidated revenues of $68 million, which reflects 21% year-over-year growth overall and 48% growth excluding our legacy digital equipment business. We reported streaming revenue of $32.2 million, up 59% year-over-year and up 230% on a two-year basis, exceeding the company's previously stated long-term goal of annual revenue streaming growth of 50% per year.
Now that digital cinema is essentially behind us, we do not expect to experience the lumpiness in our earnings that impacted us over the last two years, where we recorded $30 million in digital cinema revenues in what must have seemed like a random pattern to some of our investors, because the revenue recognition depended on the nonlinear timing of equipment sales and accounts payable reversals. That certainly had an impact on our top line results this quarter versus our last sequential quarter and the prior year fourth quarter. Last quarter, our fiscal Q3, we recorded $7.2 million in digital cinema revenue recognition. This quarter, we had only $800,000 in total digital cinema revenues.
In addition to this significant difference in non-core digital cinema revenues, in Q3, we also recognized $7.6 million in revenues from the release of Terrifier 2, which had its theatrical run and release into home entertainment in that quarter. That's $5.3 million more than the Terrifier 2 revenues we recognized in Q4. That led to the notable difference in revenues from Q3 to Q4. Taking out those two timing factors, which added up to about $11.7 million, the quarter-to-quarter revenues between Q3 and Q4 look much more seasonally in line. The key takeaway is, with these timing issues aside, we generated more than $40 million in revenues for the two quarters combined. The same holds true for the revenue comparison to Q4 of last year.
We booked $6.7 million in digital cinema revenues last year and only $800,000 this year. Excluding these legacy revenues, Q4 revenues look much more in line, both in terms of growth and seasonality. We anticipate these financial comparisons will become less complicated as we move further away from the sunset of our legacy digital cinema business and continue to concentrate on our core streaming entertainment and technology business. Overall, we believe our diverse business model and multiple revenue streams of paid subscriptions, advertising, content licensing, transactional digital sales, and technology services position us very well as we continue to expand our library of premium content, effective distribution and marketing solutions, and audience reach. We have more than 60,000 titles in our growing library, a portfolio of 26 enthusiast streaming channels with broad distribution, and an industry-leading content management and streaming technology in Matchpoint.
Along with that, we hold a competitive advantage due to our investment in research and development resources in India, where we have a large team of advanced software engineers currently working on taking our technology portfolio to an entirely different level by leveraging AI and machine learning. We also have no long-term debt, having reduced our debt by over $50 million since 2020, and only holding a $5 million line of credit. That is a very different situation than almost all of our competitors, who carry very large debt burdens. All those assets, combined with our debt-advantaged position, gives us a solid foundation for future growth. They've also advanced our scalability and positioned us to deliver improved financial performance in the current fiscal year, ending March 31st, 2024.
John and Erick will get into more detail on all of that in a few minutes, while I intend to focus now on two important Cineverse initiatives: our content acquisition and content financing strategy, our initiative to significantly reduce operating costs, improve margins, and achieve sustainable profitability. As I detailed in a recent press release, Cineverse is currently experiencing an unprecedented inflow of premium content, streaming channel, and library acquisition opportunities. This has happened for two key reasons. We've fully established ourselves as an industry force in streaming, technology, and content distribution. Second, the industry witnessed the tremendous success of the horror phenomenon we released called Terrifier 2, and particularly the unique way Cineverse made that success happen.
Produced for just $250,000, Terrifier 2 earned over $15 million at the box office, added hundreds of thousands of streaming viewers and paid subscribers to our Screambox horror channel, and has generated over $10 million in net revenues to Cineverse so far. In large part, this happened because the company brought to bear the full force of our assets to promote and virally market the movie in an incredibly cost-effective way. We promoted the film not just on Screambox, but across our portfolio of channels and their more than 70 million monthly viewers and billions of ad impressions, while Bloody Disgusting, our in-house horror group, created and implemented a viral marketing campaign for their huge social base of horror enthusiasts and influencers that was enormously successful.
The film was featured on The Howard Stern Show, in The New York Times, People magazine, and Saturday Night Live, among many, many others, and became a viral sensation. In essence, we created several million dollars worth of paid media by smartly leveraging our assets and expertise. We call this our 360-degree marketing approach and believe it will be fully applicable to the other genres where we have a channel base and access to millions of enthusiasts and influencers, such as the faith and family business and Asian content. Most importantly, all of this received notice in the entertainment industry, adding to the company's positive momentum and solidifying the idea that Cineverse has now become a key destination for important IP.
That's why, in addition to recently announced distribution and technology deals with partners such as GoPro and TCL, we have seen a flood of new partnerships and M&A opportunities emerge in the last 90 days. Some of these we've announced already, such as the highly anticipated franchise sequel, Terrifier 3, which we are planning to tease to horror fans as part of the re-release of Terrifier 2 next fall, and also the beloved Sid & Marty Krofft library, which will form the basis of a new Cineverse streaming channel. We are also close to signing a deal for distribution and channel rights for one of the most loved, successful, and profitable nonfiction television brands of all time. Also a highly valuable and recognizable children's IP library and also an iconic horror brand and library to complement our existing horror assets.
For all these deals alone, we beat out competing offers from at least three major studios and a major cable conglomerate. These time-sensitive, competitive opportunities are the reason we did our recent equity raise, even at what we believe is a significantly undervalued share price. We did not want to take on debt, and we did not want to lose these properties to our studio competitors, as they are a key part of the fuel for our future. We needed the funds to invest in our future immediately and maintain the company's momentum. Going forward, we are committed to finding alternatives to finance content acquisitions that provide more capital and do not require us to enter the equity market again. To that end, we've been working on developing a series of multimillion-dollar off-balance-sheet content funds to provide financing for our film and TV acquisition efforts.
These will be separate funds for horror, faith and family, and catalog content. There are no guarantees we will close these deals, our initial meetings at the Cannes Film Festival to sell in the first fund dedicated to horror generated very significant interest in our view. In addition, we are looking at project-specific financings for higher budget and higher profile films and TV series in return for financial participation in the projects. We are in conversations with potential investors in our faith and family and horror businesses who might also bring content to the table. Stay tuned for more on all of these initiatives in the coming months. Ultimately, our goal is to be able to completely finance the growth of our library and content acquisitions through internal cash flow.
The second area I want to cover now is our initiative to improve margins, streamline costs, and generate sustained profitability. This is the company's overarching goal. With no long-term debt and a strong pipeline of new premium content, channels, and technology partners, our plan is to achieve sustainable long-term profitability by the end of fiscal year 2024. We have mobilized the company now to target more than $10 million in annual operating cost savings via SG&A cuts, operating deal renegotiations that leverage our vastly increased scale, and through channel portfolio optimization. Much of these savings will come from the now nearly complete full integration of the eight streaming content and channel company acquisitions we made over the last three years, including Fandor, Digital Media Rights, Screambox, and Dove. These acquisitions brought us multiple new streaming channels, more than 15,000 hours of content and viable scale.
At the same time, these acquisitions brought increased operating costs that we identified as savings opportunities via full integration, which we are now approaching. For example, since late August, we've already reduced our workforce by 20%, with more significant savings to come. Erick will speak to the efforts we are implementing on the revenue side to generate high-margin new sources of revenue in our advertising, podcast, and other businesses. On the cost side, we're already seeing the results of our efforts take shape. This quarter, our gross margin was 45% in our core business, excluding legacy digital cinema, an increase of 700 basis points versus the fourth quarter of last fiscal year and much higher than our last sequential quarter. Both our direct operating expenses and SG&A decreased from last year versus a higher revenue number.
We are very pleased with that progress and are committed to improving it even further. Competitively, our gross margin percentage is higher than most of our competitors, we want to increase it further. To that end, we are also committed to sacrificing lower-margin revenues for higher-margin growth and profitability, as we have already culled some of the underperforming channels in our portfolio, so we can focus our resources on the high performers. Unlike our competitors, we have multiple streaming channels, 26, in fact, a wide diversity of channel genres and deal structures and multiple revenue streams that allow us to undertake a true portfolio management approach to the business. Most of our competitors generally have only one channel and just one or two revenue streams, and therefore cannot replicate our portfolio approach.
Another important initiative we are undertaking to streamline our cost structure while improving margins and efficiencies is to further leverage one of the company's most important assets, Cineverse India. We have already talked on these calls before about how our industry-leading content distribution and streaming technology platform, Matchpoint, will be a huge part of future value creation. From a cost efficiency standpoint, Matchpoint is unparalleled and is saving significant costs for us already. We're also planning to leverage that technology with third-party partners, like our recent deal with TCL, one of the largest global TV and mobile device manufacturers. As the size of our content catalog continues to grow at a rapid pace, we are investing in developing next-generation search and discovery technology using AI, machine learning, and computer vision for the creation of enhanced contextual metadata and more. More news on this initiative will be coming shortly.
Our Matchpoint technology was developed by our talented team of experienced engineers from the Cineverse India Group based in Kolkata. After having worked with them for nine years and fully owning the operation for the last 2.5 years, we are convinced that Cineverse India can play an even bigger role in the company's future. To that end, we are going to be much more aggressive in consolidating offshore in India many of our current outsourced workflows and back office headcount in the United States through the creation of Cineverse Services India. We believe this move could potentially save the company multi-millions of dollars. Cineverse India is already a high-performing asset for the company, we strongly believe that in addition to cost savings, this move could potentially streamline our current workflows and increase efficiencies even further. With that, I'll now turn it over to John's.
Thank you, Chris. I'll start by reviewing our financial results for the full fiscal year 2023 and briefly go over those for the fourth quarter. For the fiscal year ended March 31st, 2023, Cineverse reported consolidated revenue of $68 million, an increase of 21% from $56.1 million in the prior fiscal year. Content and entertainment accounted for more than 82% of revenue in fiscal year 2023, compared to over 67% of revenue in fiscal year 2022. Growth in our continuing operations was driven by organic user growth, new film performance, as Chris mentioned, increasing market demand for Cineverse's extensive connected television ad inventory, and the launch of new streaming channels versus the prior year.
Total streaming and digital revenue increased 47% to a record $40.4 million, primarily as a result of an expanded channel portfolio, increased platform distribution, advertising revenues, and paid subscriptions. Erick will provide additional detail on the operational drivers behind our financial results. Streaming revenue of $32.2 million on a standalone basis increased 59% over last year and 230% on a two-year basis, exceeding our previous long-term guidance of 50% annual streaming revenue growth per year. Net loss attributable to common shareholders was -$10.1 million or -$1.13 per diluted share, compared to net income attributable to common shareholders of $1.8 million or $0.20 per diluted share in the prior fiscal year.
This was primarily due to increased operating expenses from the acquisitions we made and the winding down and subsequent decrease in revenue contributions from the legacy cinema equipment business. Adjusted EBITDA was $0.1 million in fiscal year 2023, compared to adjusted EBITDA of $11 million in the prior fiscal year, as a result of the increased net loss caused by an increase in total operating expenses, most of which were related to the investments, including eight acquisitions of content, channel, and technology companies we made to support the company's growth, as Chris described earlier.
Increased OpEx for the content and entertainment segment compared to prior year was primarily due to $8.3 million higher content and licensing costs, including royalties, participation, and distribution expenses related to the continued growth and revenue noted above, as well as a $2.9 million increase in expense related to DVD manufacturing and fulfillment due to the success of Terrifier 2. Moving to the quarter, for Q4 fiscal 2023, we reported consolidated revenue of $12.5 million, compared to $16.9 million in the prior year period and $27.9 million in the prior sequential quarter, Q3 of fiscal 2023. Q4 is typically a weaker quarter following the peak holiday season in Q3.
Q3 also saw significantly higher revenue contributions from the legacy cinema equipment business of $7.2 million, as well as $7.6 million from the initial release of Terrifier 2. We also saw only $0.8 million in cinema equipment revenue in Q4 fiscal 2023, compared to $6.7 million in the prior year period. As Chris noted, taking that factor into account, Q4 revenues looked much more in line with historical seasonality and growth. Content and entertainment revenue rose 14.5% to $11.7 million, and streaming and digital revenue increased 18.7% to $7.3 million, primarily driven by increased contributions from DMR following its acquisition in March of 2022, and an 8.1% increase in base distribution revenue due to the theatrical success of Terrifier 2.
Content and entertainment gross margin improved to a record 45% in the quarter, an improvement of 700 basis points over the prior year quarter, driven by targeted reductions in operating costs. As Chris mentioned, total operating expenses improved in the quarter, declining to $15.2 million from $18.4 million in Q4 fiscal year 2022. Net loss attributable to common shareholders of - $3.2 million or - $0.35 per diluted share, compared to net loss attributable to common shareholders of - $2.6 million or $0.30 per diluted share as a result of lower revenues. Adjusted EBITDA loss was - $0.9 million, compared to adjusted EBITDA of $3.6 million. We had $7.2 million in cash and cash equivalents on our balance sheet as of March 31st, 2023.
We previously announced that we completed an equity financing on June 16th, raising approximately $8 million in net proceeds, and we maintain a small revolving working capital facility as additional dry powder for key content acquisitions. We have no long-term debt.
Moving to guidance. We felt it was important for us to set more specific financial targets, so the investment community can better gauge our progress in the quarters to come. We have narrowed and refined previously announced financial objectives and have outlined revenue, gross margin, and adjusted EBITDA guidance for the current fiscal year, ending March 31st, 2024, or our fiscal year 2024. The company expects consolidated revenue of between $62 million and $70 million for fiscal year 2024, with content and entertainment revenue representing 95% or more of consolidated revenue.
This compares with consolidated revenue of $68 million in fiscal year 2023, with content and entertainment representing 82% of total revenue, or $56 million. While we anticipate some negative impact on margins following the sunsetting of the legacy Cinema Equipment business and ongoing investments in content, distribution, and technology, we expect gross margins of between 45% and 50% for fiscal year 2024, as compared to gross margin of 47% in fiscal year 2023, which includes the legacy Cinema Equipment business. Excluding that business, margin was 36%. We continue to make progress on our cost reduction initiatives and anticipate that the full effects of these savings will be realized in Q3 fiscal 2024. We aim to maintain OpEx at a certain percentage of consolidated revenue on an ongoing basis to ensure that we are making prudent investment decisions in line with the growth of our business.
Adjusted EBITDA is expected to range between + $2 million and + $4 million in fiscal 2024, which compares to adjusted EBITDA loss of $8.6 million in fiscal 2023, which excludes the legacy digital, the legacy Cinema Equipment business. Please keep in mind, these guidance assumptions are based on, among other factors, the company's existing business, current view of existing market conditions, and assumptions for fiscal year 2024. With that, I'll turn the floor over to Erick.
Thank you, John, and thanks to everyone for joining the call today. First, let me briefly discuss the current streaming business climate, and then I'll discuss our top-line streaming business results and provide some key strategic initiatives that we'll be focusing on to achieve the guidance John just laid out. Regarding the current operating climate. As we all know, the current macroeconomic climate has shifted companies away from the growth at all cost strategies that were prevalent for most of the last decade. This has been very true in streaming, as companies vied to take on Netflix and later, Hulu and YouTube for advertising dollars and subscribers. This was also true in specialty streaming, our arena, and many companies took on considerable debt loads to purchase assets at peak valuations. However, as strategies have had to shift, companies are now focused on cost savings and deleveraging.
Ad dollars have also taken a hit. Consumers are paring back on discretionary spending to include subscriptions. In the face of all this, I believe our diversified approach to streaming, combined with the technological ability to achieve superior margins versus our micro-cap peers, has and will continue to enable us to outperform in this fiscal year and for years to come. For example, per the Standard Media Index released just a few days ago, ad revenues were down an average of 7.4% during calendar Q1 or our fiscal Q4. Due to the efforts of our ad ops team, our Matchpoint technology, and expanded distribution efforts, we were able to drive ad impression growth by an increase of 14.6%, a significant performance margin over the industry prevailing rates.
While we did see CPM and single-digit negative growth on the third-party platforms where we don't control the advertising, the part where we do directly control it, we're greatly able to outperform the market. Additionally, our portfolio and enthusiast strategy on the subscription side of the business are typically non-correlative to macro and market conditions. For example, we grew our horror service, Screambox, subscriptions, 438% year-over-year, despite a softer overall industry subscription growth rate. Our thesis is that the engagement and loyalty of enthusiast consumers that are invested in personal fandoms will ultimately lead to lower long-term churn rates and brand loyalty has been proven in our horror and faith verticals. To sum it up, no streaming company can ever be immune from the world in which they operate.
Our diversified portfolio approach and enthusiast properties, along with our technical abilities, leading to superior margin ability, means we can thrive in conditions that are gonna prove challenging for our competitors, especially those that are overleveraged. Let's discuss some business highlights during the quarter. First, total streaming minutes the quarter rose to approximately 3 billion, up 31% over the prior year quarter and 73% sequentially. This could be directly attributed to the expansion of our services in recent quarters with partners like Roku, VIZIO, Pluto, Tubi, and Amazon. Additionally, our investment in exclusive and original content, along with premium library content, led to increased engagement and watch times, and this directly impacted growth. Total subscribers to the company's subscription video streaming services increased approximately 1.24 million, representing an increase of 28% over the prior year quarter, in line with expectations.
As noted earlier, this was mainly driven by the 438% growth in Screambox on the back of the Terrifier 2 release. The subscriber growth was partially offset by an expected seasonal decline of approximately 56K low ARPU, third-party subs, particularly around Dove, which had a minimal impact on revenue and they only affected the top-line sub number. During the quarter, we continued to optimize our streaming portfolio. Like any portfolio, we look to rebalance the composition by adding new high profile, high potential concepts while eliminating unprofitable properties. In the current year, so far, we've added FUBU and GoPro to the mix, both of which we hope to launch later in the calendar year. During the quarter, we made some adjustments to our own portfolio. First, we wound down the Docurama linear channel. We founded a poor candidate for the linear format.
Channel continues to live on successfully as an SVOD and AVOD service, where it's thriving. We also shut down CONtv Anime, where we merged it with our much larger and most more popular anime service, RetroCrush, which came through the DMR acquisition. This allowed us to half our operation costs and improve the RetroCrush offering. Lastly, we ended the relationship management with tech ops for the core TV streaming service. We're gonna continue to evaluate channel performance and change the portfolio as needed throughout the year to improve overall profitability and increase margins. We continue to expand the Cineverse podcasting business with our emphasis on one of the fastest subgenres of shows, audio dramas. We've now reached more than 90 million downloads to date across more than 30 shows, and we're rapidly becoming one of the most important networks in the space.
After the quarter end, we had a top 50 podcast with Re: Dracula, a modern take on the classic Bram Stoker novel, and also entered into a deal with Electronic Arts to bring their billion-dollar franchise, Dead Space, in the audio fiction world. We expect to see many more brands and launches like that coming this year. We've also become a major player in the scripted podcast category. As we noted, our show, Mayfair Watcher Society, was picked by Apple as a top podcast over the last year, and we had more than five shows in Spotify's top 50 fiction charts. We're gonna continue to scale this business with forthcoming interlanguage launches of key shows and the launch of shows, including the new Living Dead property from George Romero, and many more to come.
Let me just talk about the company's four-part strategic plan to keep revenue growth going, improve gross margins, and deliver positive EBITDA while we drive innovation in the new fiscal year. On the revenue side, as I noted earlier, our goal is to continue to find and launch new partnerships, to add both new channels to the portfolio, to add significant content to our family of channels, including Cineverse. So far, as Chris noted earlier, we've added some great brands that fit that bill, including Sid and Marty Krofft's entire library, FUBU, entrepreneur Daymond John, new African American-oriented streaming service based on his pioneering cultural brand, EntrepreneurTV, in partnership with Entrepreneur Magazine, and GoPro, a new action sports channel in partnership with the namesake technology brand.
As Chris alluded to, we have several additional imminent channels, all of which bring highly valuable, instantly recognizable IP and brands. Our second key initiative is scaling up our third-party advertising and distribution business. Our goal is not only to build and operate new channels with partners, but to expand the monetization for third-party channels and podcasts that need help on ad sales and distribution. This business is CapEx light with very high margins, and we're seeing incredible interest in this offering as we bring it to market. We've put in place a great team, and we're gonna be making some announcements in the coming weeks on this specific effort. Third, we're gonna continue to expand our subscriber base with the focus this year on the horror, Asian, and faith and family verticals.
Our goal is to expand the content in these verticals by utilizing, as Chris mentioned, off-balance sheet, risk remote vehicles to acquire and finance the content, which will reduce the company's need for growth capital. Our focus on driving new subscribers will be a mix of strategic partnerships with third-party platforms, hardware OEMs, such as our recent TCL deal, as well as focused ROI-driven customer acquisition marketing. Fourth, we're continuing to drive the expansion of Cineverse. Since we last outlined our mission to bring the 90% of users of content to users they can't find on the major streamers, our bigger peers have shown exactly why this model is needed.
From more than 1,500 hours of shows being pulled from Disney+, Hulu, and Max, to the massive cuts of Turner Classic Movies, access to broad-based media choices is under attack. Given our massive library and technological prowess, we're perfectly suited to continue executing on this strategy. Launched just last September, we're already a top 10 streaming service in terms of content, volume, and breadth.
One last point I wanna mention is our commitment to technological innovation. While most of our peer companies, from the largest to the smallest, are spending their time figuring out how to build scale, infrastructure, and digital supply chain, something we solved more than six years ago, we're moving on to the next generation of capabilities and features. Our team of engineers includes talented data scientists who we have tasked to build the next generation of streaming technologies, with a focus on solving search, discoverability, and personalization of the streaming experience, utilizing machine learning and AI.
Our long-term goal is simple: We want to make using a service as fun and unique an experience as the movies and the shows themselves. Cinema is deeply rooted in our company and employee DNA. We're laser- focused on bringing that magic and collective experience of the movies to the experience at home. We can't wait to show and tell you what we've been working on later this year. With that, operator, let's open it up for Q&A.
If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If for any reason you would like to remove that question, please press star followed by two. Again, to ask a question, press star one. As a reminder, if you're using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question. We will pause here briefly as questions are registered. The first question is from the line of Dan Kurnos with The Benchmark Company. Your line is now open.
Great, thanks. Good afternoon. First question for you guys is just around the content acquisition strategy. You do the raise. I don't know if you guys are willing to comment, at least directionally, on how much of that was for Terrifier 3, but obviously there's some incremental additions to that, and it sounds as the way that you put it, Chris, there's a competitive bidding process. Maybe you can just talk about expected ROI on that spend, timing, realization, and just generically, why you guys can, you know, outbid the competition and flow it through your ecosystem at the winning bid price.
Those were a lot of questions all wrapped up in that, Dan, thank you. The Terrifier 3 is a big chunk of that race. You know, of all the things that got noticed in the company, as I mentioned in my remarks, the performance of Terrifier 2 got noticed across the industry. I've probably been involved in 500 or more films in my career, both big and small, across the industry, at the major studios and independents I worked at, I've probably never been involved in such a high- ROI film and a film that had such a remarkable marketing spend to box office ratio. We spent $100,000 in marketing that movie, the rest of it was our viral marketing campaign, and it did $15 million at the box office.
Those are remarkable economics that were noticed by just about everybody in the industry. We ended up in a situation where there were competitive bids that reflected, you know, a lower ROI than what we achieved on the movie. We stepped up. We paid a lot more for the movie, this movie, than we did for Terrifier 2. Remember, what we're doing is we're fostering a franchise, okay? By having Terrifier 3 and Terrifier 2, we're able to package and promote each and achieve bigger results on each one. For instance, as I mentioned, we're gonna reissue Terrifier 2 next fall, and we'll have a teaser on it for Terrifier 3. The biggest upside from it, as Erick described, was its impact on our streaming channel, Screambox.
Our subscriptions were up 438% on Screambox, and they've stuck directly attributable to Terrifier 2, and that's a real annuity for us. Even outside of our streaming business, we target more than a 30% ROI on every acquisition that we make. As I said, I think the most important thing that we're trying to do right now is figure out ways to finance our acquisition strategy through these off-balance sheet vehicles that I mentioned and that Erick mentioned, and also to do single project financings where we bring in partners for higher budget projects, so we don't have to go to the equity markets like we did this time, which is principally a timing issue because all of these opportunities came together essentially at once.
We think that'll be a big factor going forward to enable us to continue to bring this premium content in without diluting the company, and service our channels, which is really the most important reason why we're doing this. We're willing to give away some of the upside in traditional distribution if it drives the kind of subscribers to our channels that Terrifier 2 drove to Screambox.
Got it. That's, that's helpful. Thanks, Chris. Just on the cost savings efforts, you know, I think certainly we've been looking for that inflection point. John, I don't know if I caught exactly your comments right on the timing. I don't know if you meant that the full flow-through would be next year for what Chris called out as, you know, $10 million in savings, annualized savings. Correct me if I have that wrong, but just in general, the cadence of recognizing those savings, and, you know, on a go-forward basis as we look into next year, or this fiscal 2024, how much contribution to the top line from the new stuff versus organic growth and against that savings drives kind of the EBITDA that you've arrived at?
Sure. Let me speak to the cost savings first. The $10 million is what we expect to realize through the fiscal year in terms of total SG&A savings, based on our initiatives. As we continue to grow, certainly we'll be investing against the new revenue that will, you know, commensurately go against some of that cost savings as we invest in revenue-generating folks and processes. It will be throughout the year in terms of the cadence, but that's our goal for this year. The second part of your question, could you repeat that for me?
That pretty much encompasses it, John. I just wanted to understand the balance of some of the new stuff contributing to the revenue outlook, but also, you know, you had just addressed the investments in new revenue-generating initiatives against-
Very good.
SG&A savings. Last one, I guess, and then I'll step aside. Just for Erick, I know, thanks for the color on the marketplace. You know, we talk about Matchpoint a lot, sort of waiting for something sort of marquee, a headline, anything? I know you guys are super high on the tech, and the industry is too. Is there anything that kind of think about that might be on the way for Matchpoint specifically?
Sure, sure. You know, I think one of the things that gets, you know, when we talk about Matchpoint, you know, sometimes it can seem quite amorphous of what it is and what it does. I think the best way to really think about what Matchpoint is think of it as almost like an operating system, combined with a supply chain for streaming. It's an end-to-end solution, it's really been designed to operate at an incredible amount of scale. That's part of the reason why, you know, we're working with a partner like TCL, which is the second largest TV manufacturer globally after Samsung.
The scale of Matchpoint and the amount of processing that it can do on video, you know, incidentally makes it one of the most compelling platforms for next-generation technology, right? Because if you think about how to create large language model datasets or other things that you're gonna use for new experiences for users, new user interfaces to interactive content, you need to be able to process a tremendous amount of video, audiovisual data. Just so it turns out that our engineering team that built the product happened to be, you know, PhD data researchers on big data and worked on these big problems for MCR, like a decade ago on the video side. We've really pretty rapidly adapted the technology to take advantage of this.
One of the more compelling elements is, you know, while most partners out there are trying to just figure out how to, you know, get a basic search box to work, you know, we're doing some pretty extensive machine learning tools to, you know, find, you know, ideal captioning points, to, you know, use third-party language libraries and other tools to deeply encode metadata. So the level of things that we're doing, that we initially built to make our lives easier, we're finding are, the ideal tools that, you know, have really generated some market opportunities that big players are interested in.
We think that's gonna be a very significant opportunity for us, I would say pretty rapidly, just given, you know, some of the relationships and conversations we've already announced, like TCL and others, and that we're having right now. You know, if you think about it, you know Chris mentioned nine years. We 've been investing in this capability technology for almost a decade, and really with, over the last, you know, few years, it's come to a scale and endpoint where, you know, making it a market product is imminent.
I know that's something that we've been talking about for years, but, you know, market forces around the needs around processing big, large amounts of data around video have really opened up some opportunities that we weren't even contemplating six months ago. It's a pretty exciting time on that.
Awesome. Super helpful. Thanks, everyone. Appreciate it.
Thank you for your question. Next question is from the line of Brian Kinstlinger with Alliance Global Partners. Your line is now open.
Great. It's great to see the drop in expenses and the right sizing of content and entertainment to be profitable in 2024. Can you talk about the early traffic and/or revenue contribution from Cineverse? How long before you think they'll be a material contributor, and what is the marketing strategy that is educating the consumer about this offering?
Sure. Thanks, Brian. Um- That's one for Eric.
Sure, sure. Yeah, you know, if you, if you really think about the phases, 'cause we've gone through this with several different channels launches. You know, the thesis of Cineverse, right, is it needs to be a scale product that has an incredible amount of content. Phase one is just getting into the market and getting the product beyond a minimally viable product and having a base of content, number one, that fulfills on the mission that we're talking about. The good news is that's the first phase that we've been working on over the last quarter and a half or so, which is going from zero to, you know, ranking in the top 10 for title count.
Now that we've got the title basis in the service, we're working on a lot of the tools that fulfill the promise of what we've been talking about, right, which is that next generation search capability, and some major innovations on user interface and interaction, and a few other game-changing things which we're gonna be revealing, you know, over the next quarter or so. So that piece, we think, combined with, you know, that capability, fulfills on that piece of it. The second piece of it was distribution. Our strategy for Cineverse is less about us, you know, doing paid marketing, and it's more about OEM, and strategic partner partnerships to get the product out there.
You know, we've announced a couple early partners with Vidgo, TCL, and, you know, we are gonna be, you know, adding more partners to that mix. We think that model is a way for us to very more rapidly get the service in front of people. We will do traditional paid marketing and other things. But we'll probably be doing that later in the year, close to calendar Q4, our fiscal Q3. I would say, you know, meaningful revenue contribution should be coming at the back half of this year or, you know, Q3, Q4, fiscal Q3, Q4, as we progress through these phases of getting the service up to scale. We also have some, you know, other things that we will be doing to dramatically scale up the content offering.
To me, that's the single biggest thing, right? That's the value proposition, is having more choice, more channels, more assets than almost anyone else in the market, and the tools for people to use it. We think we have to have that first to be differentiated.
Great. That was super helpful, Erick. Can you quantify what percentage, roughly, advertising is? How much of a headwind, assuming it is, were CPMs in the quarter?
In the prior quarter, you know, we've been making the evolution from being what I'd call a value player. You know, our content that we had on most of the services, you know, it was not, you know, The Avengers and others. It was specialty and niche content. Our brands have been really growing and driving a lot of recognition in the market, especially with the major streamers, streaming platforms like Samsung and others. As we've established ourselves and we've also upped the game on content, right? We've made tremendous investments in it over the last year and a half. That is actually our CPMs have actually improved significantly. We also did a major reset in January of this year.
January is normally one of the worst advertising times of the year. A lot of companies basically set their CPM floors to zero and take what they can get. We bucked the trend, and we actually raised our rates. We raised them up to $15, $16. We brought a new ad team. We have a new head of ad sales in the company. We really wanted to establish ourselves as not a low-tier player, but as somebody who has good quality brands with great audience and good data. We did that during the quarter, you know, and we actually, you know, increased revenue during the quarter, just simply because we were aggressive on our CPMs, and reestablished ourselves as a specialty and premium player, as opposed to a value player.
CPM, I think going forward, as we ramp direct sales in the back half of this year, you know, when you blend, you know, the $30-$35 CPMs we'll get from direct campaigns against our, you know, $16-$18 through most of the year, $20 during the holidays, you're gonna see a much higher CPM rate in the back half of the year. I feel pretty bullish on our CPMs. The other thing about CPMs is advertisers pay for innovation, and features, and capabilities that you can't get on other platforms.
As Cineverse really starts to become a viable property in the market, I think one of the big benefits to that is, you know, imagine if a platform had, you know, capabilities and features that you just couldn't find on any other platform, especially around ad optimization, and yield, and other things. Well, those are the kinds of things that we're developing, and I think advertisers are really gonna be impressed as we roll those features out in the coming quarters.
It's really helpful, but if I could ask a follow-up, y our digital and streaming business has been posting exceptional growth, but this quarter, you only posted 18.7% growth, one of the slowest in a very long time for you. If that's not CPMs, it sounds like, what was the rationale for this quarter that had a slow year-over-year growth rate, which accounts for seasonality?
Sure. Well, to clarify on the advertising side, keep in mind, we have two types of deals where we're generating advertising. There's deals where we control the inventory, and then there's deals where we rely on third parties to sell that inventory. If you think about us, we are compared to, you know, the Tubis, Plutos, and others of the world, we're not anywhere near their scale, so we have more opportunity to grow. There's more room on growth on the upside. Bigger players who are already at scale, who, you know, do deal a lot more with pre-sold advertising, you know, those players saw a hit in Q1.
Most of the platforms that we rely on to sell the inventory, they just didn't see the volume on the platforms that we saw. You know, net-net, we saw, you know, those, you know. I think we, you know, I don't have the exact number in front of me, but, you know, we were high double digits, o r sorry, high teens or more on the ad side. When you take into account third parties who aren't at scale, those parties were down in that quarter. I think everything's rebounded since then, you know, I think as we scale up our own inventory and inventory that we sell for other people, it will be less impacted by, you know, macro ad market conditions. It'll be more in our control as that pie shifts back towards more of us selling than them selling.
Yep. That makes it a lot more clear. Thank you. You've discussed clearly Terrifier 2 and 3. Can you talk about the timing of theatrical releases in general in fiscal 2024, and how that might impact your results? Maybe timing, meaning-
Yes.
Yeah, we haven't formalized a release schedule, we've got probably three more theatrical releases, you know, between now and October. We're talking about the October- December timeframe for a reissue of Terrifier 2, which I mentioned, where we're gonna add material for Terrifier 3 on it. We think it'll do quite well because if, as you recall, last October, we really didn't know what we had when we first released Terrifier. Now we know what we've got. We've got, you know, a horror franchise that has great awareness right now, and an iconic character in Art the Clown, who's a lot of people are comparing to Jason Voorhees or Freddy Krueger.
We're really focused on maximizing that reissue, setting up the release of Terrifier 3 in the following year. We'll probably have two more theatricals or day-and-date theatrical and VOD releases, you know, in the first calendar quarter of next year, our fourth calendar quarter.
Those will be limited releases, I take it initially, other than Terrifier, instead of national releases?
Yeah.
You'll see where that goes.
These are-
Or no?
Pardon, I didn't understand. New theatrical releases-
I'm just trying to understand.
is what I'm talking about.
Yeah, theatrical releases, but you have some that are nationally or widely released, sorry, I should use the term, versus a limited release.
Well, we-
I take it for now...
We-
Terrifier will be...
Yeah, we consider every release on a case-by-case basis. As I said, I think one of our huge competitive advantages now is that we figured out with Terrifier 2, how to, like, turn the machine on, so that we can take a film out on 800 or 1,000 screens, spend virtually nothing in marketing, and get the kind of results we got on Terrifier 2. We have one film in the works for the fall that I think is going out on the 880 screens, another horror film. We've got an animated film called Warrior King, that we're trying to fit in the schedule, and that'll probably go out in between 500 and 1,000 screens.
On Terrifier 2, the reissue, it'll probably be on, y ou know, we haven't set that, it may be 1,500 screens, and we think on Terrifier 3, we can go out wide on 3,000 screens. You know, I've been quoted in the industry, and I've been in the industry far too long, in saying that theatrical releasing business would be a great business if you didn't have to spend any money on marketing. Well, I think we figured out how to do that with Terrifier 2, and that is gonna be a big competitive advantage for us, particularly since the primary reason we're doing all this, as I said, is to drive subscribers and viewers to our channels, you know, which creates in subscriptions and viewership, you know, an annuity going forward.
I think we've got a great model, and which is one of the reasons why, you know, we did the equity raise, because we need to put more content into that model now.
Great. Last question. Thanks for taking all my questions. This is the first time you've given revenue guidance. It sounds from Erick's remarks that the third-party business has come back a little bit. Can you talk about kinda how you think about seasonality? Clearly, the third quarter is your strongest quarter, but maybe just high-level seasonality as you think about the revenue guidance and how we should think about it?
Yeah, I think, just specifically in terms of next quarter is a quarter that's very similar to this quarter in terms of percentage of the year. You know, the third fiscal quarter, by far and away, is the strongest quarter. The other quarters, you know, there's not that much disparity between them, except for me to say that both in our streaming business and in our content business, they're not as strong as the fourth quarter. You know, maybe we can get you some more information on the historical performance of our content distribution and our streaming business quarter- to- quarter to give you a better sense of-
Got it.
... of the, you know, we update that, you know, because obviously things change, and it's changed as our streaming business has become a bigger percentage of our revenues.
Great. Thanks so much.
I think it. You should probably look at next quarter in pretty much the same way you looked at this quarter.
Thank you for your question. There are no additional questions waiting at this time, so I'll pass the conference back to the management team for any closing remarks.
Yeah, this is Chris. Well, thank you all for joining us today, and please feel free to reach out to Julie Milstead or our investor relations firm, The Equity Group, with any additional questions you might have. We look forward to speaking to you all again, on our next quarterly call in August. Thank you very much.
That concludes the conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.