Hello, and welcome to today's LiveOne special Slacker webcast and conference call. My name is Bailey, and I'll be your moderator for today. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call, with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you would 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 Aaron Sullivan, Chief Financial Officer of LiveOne. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to LiveOne business update regarding Slacker Inc., our wholly-owned subsidiary. Presenting on today's call with me today is Rob Ellin, CEO and Chairman of LiveOne, and Bradley Konkol, Head of Slacker. I would like to remind you that some of the statements made on today's call are forward-looking and are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that involve various risks and uncertainties. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the future performance of the company, including expected future financial results and expected future growth in the business. Actual results may differ materially from those discussed on this call for a variety of reasons.
Please refer to the company's filings with the SEC for information about factors which could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements, including those described in its annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended 31 March , 2023, and subsequent SEC filings. You'll find reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures discussed today in the company's call, which is posted on its investor relations website. The company encourages you to periodically visit investor relations website for important content. The following discussion, including responses to your questions, contains time-sensitive information and reflect management's views as of the date of this call, 1 November , 2023. Except as required by law, the company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise this information after the date of the call.
I'd like to highlight to investors that this call is being recorded. The company is making it available to investors and media via webcast, and a replay will be available on its website in the investor relations section shortly following the conclusion of the call. Additionally, it is the property of the company and any redistribution, transmission, or rebroadcast of this call or webcast in any form without the company's written express consent is strictly prohibited. Now, I would like to turn the call over to LiveOne CEO, Rob Ellin.
Thank you, Aaron. LiveOne has made the determination that based on market conditions for SPACs and overall market conditions, and most importantly, exceptional performance of Slacker's management in numbers, we believe that the company is worth way more than $160 million that the company was valued at six months ago by Roth Capital. This allows us now, with our bankers at J.P. Morgan, to explore all options. There's an opportunity today to roll up multiple other companies in the space. We have four to five potential acquisitions in the audio business alone that would fit in very nicely with the company and be extraordinarily accretive to revenues and bottom line. We also could explore a sale or a strategic investor, including some of our current customers or investors.
We also will explore a direct IPO as the markets change and fair market value for the numbers that we've delivered are available. We also can, just today, focus all of our energy on the terrific numbers we announced this week, focus all the energy on B2B partnerships that we'll talk about shortly. And then we can now use our capital to continue aggressively buying back stock at this low market cap. Today, LiveOne is trading at a $90 million valuation with just Slacker Radio reporting alone. Slacker, when we acquired the company in 2008, it was doing $20 million in revenues, $7 million in losses, had $47 million of short-term payables and 400,000 subscribers that we were losing 25,000 a month at time of growth. We now have hockey stick growth across all of those.
We now have 3.3 million subscribers. We're growing about 60,000 a month. We've just put out our numbers for the first time ever in Slacker and delivered $31 million in revenues and $9 million in EBITDA for the quarter... I'm sorry, for the six months. We've just put out guidance of $65 million and $17- 19 million of EBITDA for this year. We've stated that we're going to hit over 800,000 new subscribers this year. The management and board are pounding on the table on the buyback. We've bought over 3.7 million shares to date. We will continue to buy aggressively, and we've just raised our buyback to $8.5 million, leaving almost $5 million of additional buying available.
With our balance sheet cleaned up, we are now expanding our sales team dramatically and focusing our energy on B2B partnerships with over 25 blue-chip customers in the pipeline and five plus super accretive acquisitions in the pipeline. With that, I want to hand it off to Brad Konkol, who heads up Slacker Radio and has just done an amazing job of turning this business and building the business, and he'll talk through some of the opportunities in that pipeline. Thank you, Brad.
Thank you, Rob, and thanks to everyone for being here today. As Rob stated, we continue to see excellent member growth, particularly with our paid members, in large part due to our business to business focus.
...In addition, we continue to see record low churn among our B2C members. We're in an industry that's expected to see 150% paid member growth by the year 2030, so there's an amazing abundance of opportunity on the horizon. We see bright signs that business to business is the most efficient, the most cost-effective means to continuing our growth by offering our music services and our first-in-class bespoke programming capabilities to our partners, which in turn will drive continued growth. It should also be stated that from a technical standpoint, we continue to invest in IP that allows us to quickly onboard partners and to support these custom bespoke music experiences for them. To double down on the B2B focus, we recently hired Bill Witter as our SVP, Head of Business Development, who's had an impressive storied career across media, technology, fintech, you name it.
We're going to be adding to that roster with a consultant, shortly as well, and possibly more to come. In the time that Bill's been here, we've refocused on our pipeline, and we've established five key verticals or pipeline categories for partnership growth. These are automotive, carriers or telecommunications, retail/member services, consumer electronics, and transportation, which is different from automotive in that transportation is more like airlines, buses, things where people are traveling in bulk, as opposed to something that you might own personally. Currently, we have 25 blue-chip partners in our business-to-business pipeline across these five verticals that we are actively engaged with. We believe there's a perfect overlap with these categories, and frankly, what we do best is a music service, which again, I've said it several times, but bespoke programming, personal storytelling in between the music.
This allows our partner brands to make a personal connection with their customers. Lean-back listening, which is key to the experience in automotive, transportation, pricing flexibility, and platform flexibility. For many, many years, and it goes back to the roots of Slacker Radio, we have been developing our technology and our IP so that it not only serves us, but it serves our partners. We're extremely confident in our ability to continue growing our pipeline and closing deals by leaning into the aforementioned differentiators, in addition, by exploring expansion of our licensing outside of North America. So again, we're extremely confident in this approach. We've grown our pipeline by over 50% in the last several months by doubling down on the business-to-business focus, and we think we'll be able to continue growing that and continue to drive our paid membership growth as a result.
With that, Rob, back to you.
Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Brad, and great job. What I would add to that is now that we have cleaned up our balance sheet, we've now put ourselves in a position to expand our licenses overseas. As most people know, subscription businesses, 50% of them are usually U.S. and 50% overseas. So he's right today, even though a third of our traffic is from global, all of our revenues are from North America. There's a huge opportunity to expand it. We're also, as we look at next generation, and any of you who have been participants in my stock over the years, right? We always look at technology and where it's heading to. There's a gigantic opportunity right now in self-driving cars. In the next six months to two years, there's gonna be a massive opportunity to grow that.
And with our partnership with Tesla, they're the thought leader in it. I believe that Ubers and Lyfts and rental cars will be added to that. So if we just grew the 800,000 that we did this year, which we expect way higher next year at 800,000 additional subscribers at the same growth rate, that's not including any B2B deals of the 25 today in the pipeline and growing. All right? You're looking at next year, you're looking at revenues that again, are gonna grow 25%-30% over $85 million and would be well over, if you took the exact same number, well over $23 million of EBITDA. We think Slacker is extremely undervalued. Next. In the next week or so, we'll be reporting our overall numbers.
We've just talked about our podcast numbers as well, and I think the company is undervalued, and you'll see us buying substantial amount of stock in the open market shortly. With that, I'd like to open up to any questions, any Q&A that anyone would have.
Thank you. 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 today, please press star followed by one. As a reminder, if you are using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question, and please do ensure that you are unmuted locally. Our first question today comes from the line of Rana Khan from Joseph Stone. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hi, just following up, seem like things are going as planned, and all - when you hear these things, this sounds-
... extremely exciting, but somehow it doesn't translate into the stock. So what are we missing? Are we not communicating the right way? So just, where's the gap?
Yeah, it's a great question, and, you know, I've, I've been doing this a long time, right? So, I'm, I'm a 30-year veteran, right?
Yeah
... of running public companies and building public companies, as you know. And what I would say to you is, this is an extraordinarily difficult market. No excuses, right? We have to do a better job, and we're out there trying. And, you know, the thing anecdotally about, you know, the public markets and micro caps right now is, this is the largest curve in 40 years between large caps and micro caps. It's got to change, right? And when that change comes, it's gonna change in a very fast way. And, you know, this stock is, was- it was $2.16 only six weeks ago.
Mm-hmm.
It has, has had amazing runs. We've probably had 15 amazing runs, where the stock traded in the $5 to the $10 on a regular basis with big volume. We have to get that mojo back. So that's part of the reason for this call today. It's part of the reason the earnings call next week, we'll highlight the other overall business. This is the first time we've ever broken down Slacker numbers, so that people could just look at these numbers and just take, you know, just, just the numbers on, on this space alone, right? We did it in podcast, and the stock has doubled over the last couple of weeks after we reported the numbers, right? As you see these Slacker numbers, they're pretty staggering, right?
From $20 million, right, to $65 million, right, in five years, and taking those numbers from losing $7 million to making $17- 19 million. Yeah, that's-
Mm-hmm
... that's a gigantic swing. This is what we do, right? It's what the management is focused on. The biggest way we're gonna win is by delivering revenues and bottom line, right? We're gonna be in the forefront of technology, as always. We're gonna be aggressively out there, right, articulating our story, and we're gonna have another run in the very near future.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question today comes from the line of Richard Boyd from... Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yes, good morning. Hi, my question is, will the auditor, Macias Gini & O'Connell, will they update their opinion about LiveOne based on the new numbers that are coming out?
Not following the question.
Well, when you Google LiveOne auditors, there are a couple of paragraphs talking about LiveOne's debt, and the auditors' doubt about LiveOne as a going concern, and it seems to me that-
Got you
... that needs to be, if in fact that is inaccurate today, it would be a good idea to update that, that paragraph on the Internet.
Yeah. Well, to start with, auditors and, you know, don't, don't change opinions middle of the year, but we don't have any debt anymore, right? So $21 million of debt converted at $2.10, right, in February. So there's no debt left-
Right
... on the company. Right, so we can't give you any forward information or what the auditors would tell you or not, but what I can tell you is that all of the debt converted to equity.
Okay. I just wanted to mention that to you.
No, I appreciate, appreciate it. And, you know, and again, just, just to highlight that, you know, conversion to $2.10 is double the market price today, and this is a pretty sophisticated investor, Jeff Osher at No Street. You know, veteran, he's been a partner of mine for 20 years, investor in my deals for many years and converted at double the market price. So I think that's a telltale sign of both the company buying back stock and your, you know, top investor, one of your top two shareholders converting at $2.10. So there is no debt left in the business.
Okay, well, then that investor owns 10 million shares, something like that?
No, not at all. It's conversion to $2. It's $15 million converted to $2.10.
Okay. Well, thank you.
Thank you. The next question today comes from the line of Brian Kinstlinger from Alliance Global Partners. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Great, thanks for taking my question. Just one, we have a trend where subscriber services revenue from Slacker is growing at about 12% slower than subscriber growth. Can you just go through that dynamic? We've been seeing that for a couple of quarters now.
I'm sorry. Can you say it one more time, Brian?
Yeah. You have the revenue growth is somewhere around 29% ± for Slacker, I believe, year-over-year. The subscriber growth, paid subscriber growth, is about 40% year-over-year. So the subscribers are growing faster, and we've seen that trend for a couple of quarters. Can you just help explain, what's going on there, and will that continue, or do you think subscriber growth and revenue growth from Slacker will eventually mirror each other?
... Aaron, you want to take that?
Yeah. Thanks, thanks, Rob. Hey, Brian. Yeah, that's primarily as a result of our disputed subs, which we've kind of disclosed in all of our materials. So the rate of revenue growth is just off the actual kind of sub, sub growth, but that's the reason for it. You know, going forward, in the near term, I would expect it to continue. Mid-term, it would probably tail off a little bit, and then long- term, you know, we would hope to kind of have that mirror each other exactly.
But that's, you know, in the near term, and that would be kind of for the rest of the fiscal year and into next year. I would expect there to be a divergence between sub growth and revenue growth, kind of consistent with what you've seen over the last couple of quarters.
So if I understand, are you saying it's the subscribers that are in question are actually in the premium subscriber number, but not in the revenue number? Just to help me understand what you're saying. I'm a little confused.
Correct. Yeah, we don't, we don't recognize revenue related to those subscribers that are in dispute, but they do, do contribute to our subscriber count.
But do they-- They weren't... That, that was the same as last year, right? In 2Q of-
Correct. Correct.
There's been no change, there's been no change in that-
Yeah
... for the last several years. Yeah. Let me... Yeah, and let me just help you there, Brian. This is not something we have a choice on. It's a way we have to report it, right, from audit standpoints. So it's not something that we can change yet, but I think you will see, we will see, as Aaron said, that'll start to tail out, and obviously, that is all fully disclosed in the audits.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question today comes from the line of Jon Hickman from Ladenburg Thalmann. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Hey, Rob, could you mention attach any names to the 25 deals that are in the pipeline?
Yeah, we can't because a lot of these are either under NDA, so, you know, actually giving the names. But what I can tell you is these are blue-chip, you know, billion-dollar plus companies, right, that fit exactly in the realm of what Slacker has done for 20 years, right? Remember, Slacker is, is partners with Verizon, T-Mobile, AOL over the years. They've been partners with, you know, pretty much Samsung, right? So they crossed over hardware companies, right? Phone companies, carriers, the likes of, you know, when you think about retailers, anyone that competes with Amazon online is gonna need content. And then you've seen so many of our partners that we've had over the years, John, right? From the levels of Facebook down, there's gonna be people that need a music service. And again, as Brad articulated, we have three distinct advantages.
Okay, number one is our pricing. We're the Walmart of this space, right? We're one-third the price of Spotify and Apple and Amazon. They're all raising their prices. Okay? Number two, number two is service. Because we're small, we're able to be nimble and uniquely be able to do things that no one else is gonna be able to do for these companies because they're just too big. And number three, is we're able to white label, right? So like we do with Tesla, right? We are Tesla Radio, right? It doesn't have to be Slacker Radio. We're Tesla Radio, and it just again, shows how Elon was so much smarter than any other car company, and that he gets to talk to his customers every day as the cool kid in school who's playing the music for him.
So I think you're gonna see a lot of those B2B partnerships, and, you know, as Brad articulated, you know, the new gentleman that we brought on board out of Microsoft and RealNetworks has done these deals over and over again and is a perfect complement to us, and I think you'll see us add more and more B2B sales people to this team over the very, very short window.
Yeah, and just to add to that, Rob, John, two deals that we can speak about, which have closed and which are, you know, close to launch is with OTT Studio. They've had a successful cord-cutting app called Free Movies Plus. They're repeating that with music, and we're powering the audio in that application. That was submitted to Roku last week and is expected to go live any day now. That's been, you know, in work for several months now. After Roku, they're gonna launch it on Fire devices and then LG Smart TVs after that. We also closed another deal earlier in the year with a company called Telly, which is co-founded by Ilya, a former Pluto founder, and that is a very unique partnership in that they are giving away TVs.
They're multi-screen TVs, and the business model there is that there's a screen that's always on, that's advertising. There's over 400,000 customers that are already in queue to get one of these free TVs. They just recently launched their beta program, which is expected to continue for the next couple of months, but starting in the first quarter of next year, we expect that to very quickly ramp up to the 400,000 or beyond mark, wherever they are at that point. We are the default music experience in those TV devices, so we're really excited about that opportunity as well. So just a couple to give you an idea.
Okay, thanks.
...As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Calvin Hori from Hori Capital. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.
Yeah, hi, Rob. Now that the Slacker deal with the Roth SPAC is expired, are you gonna explore other avenues to kind of get the valuation that you deserve for Slacker through an IPO spin-off or whatever?
Yeah, and I think I answered that before, but just to repeat it and highlight it, right? We already had the S-4 done, right? We've already done all the work on it, so it's very likely that we will have a registration statement in place that if we see market conditions for IPOs changing, right, and especially with the massive growth now, and we're talking about very different numbers, right? When we signed that deal, I think it was seven to eight months ago, it feels like a lifetime ago, right? We signed that deal, right, you know, the business was a way smaller business and way less EBITDA, right? So we've gone from $8 million to call it, you know, $17-19 million of EBITDA. But we're gonna be talking about next year's numbers very shortly, right?
'Cause we're a March 31st year-end, so most likely, you know, they'll—we will move with a S-1 and be prepared, like if the market does change and the dynamics change. Number two is, is we hired J.P. Morgan, going back, and J.P. Morgan, you know, was there, you know, to start with, they were there on the offensive side, right, for us to continue to buy companies because we've acquired eight companies, right? And we're gonna keep growing it. We then, you know, revitalized that and talked about on a defensive basis, right? And that was when the stock was $4, right? That we're a strong candidate, that everybody in the industry, including some of our partners, may try to buy us, and we wanna make sure that, you know, as a fiduciary, we protect each of the subsidiaries as well as the whole company, right?
That we protect the fiduciary, that we get, you know, maximum value on that. So we're definitely gonna have to... we're gonna have to be prepared for that. Number three is we're gonna continue to roll up assets, and what's happening right now in the audio business is our competitors, they who are not the Spotifys and the Apples are just decimated. They've never figured out how to make money because they're all focused on B2C. We don't spend any money on B2C. I owned Kazaa years ago, everyone remembers Trinad. We had a great run, but we lost so much money, right, you know, trying to acquire customers, that $80 a sub with 30% breakage is just an impossible model.
And, you know, and you can see it by Spotify, how they struggle to make money, and, you know, they've raised, you know, tens and tens of billions of dollars to get there. For us now, you know, we're, we're so confident in the B2B side of it and where the direction when it's going. When you think about spending money on B2C, you know, there are some great small companies that we can add in and tuck-in acquisitions that we've proven we know how to turn around, we've proven we know how to make them work, and we've proven that we know how to get them the cash flow. $80 a sub times 800,000 subscribers means that anybody else is spending $65 million acquiring those a year. We spend no money marketing.
We're gonna continue those B2B deals and keep focusing on those B2B deals.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. There are no additional questions waiting at this time, so I'd like to pass the call back over to Rob Ellin for any closing remarks.
I just want to thank everyone, thank everyone for spending the time, and we look forward to our quarter-end call next week or the week after, obviously before the fifteenth. We're really excited about the overall numbers, and you know, each of the subsidiaries of the company are now tracking. We've got almost every division profitable. We've still got a little bit work doing our merchandise business. Our podcast business is really growing terrifically. It looks like it's on the same direct trajectory as Slacker. As you put those together, you've got, you know, an amazing audio business that we said this year is gonna do between $100 -110 million. So I'm really excited about where we're going.
Again, we're gonna pound the table and be a buyer of the stock and continue to buy back stock and show our confidence in the company and show our confidence. I'm proud of my management team, and I thank everybody for spending the time today.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your lines.