Good day, everybody, and welcome to the iAccess Alpha Buyside Best Ideas Spring Conference 2024. The next presenting company is LiveOne Incorporated. If you would like to ask a question during the webcast, you may do so at any point during the presentation by clicking on the Ask Question button on the left side of your screen. Type the question into the box and hit the Send button to submit your questions. I'd now like to turn the floor over to today's host, Rob Ellin, CEO of LiveOne Incorporated. Rob, the floor is yours.
Welcome, everyone, and thank you. This is Rob Ellin, CEO and founder of LiveOne. I'm going to start off with a short video. I'll give you a little bit of taste of what LiveOne is built and why we're growing so fast. Thank you.
Hopefully, everyone got a little flavor of what LiveOne is building. We are a direct competitor with Sirius Radio and Spotify. We fall right in between that lean-back experience and one of the 12 DSPs on Earth in this massive TAM. And that massive TAM, Spotify has just come out, said there's going to be 1 billion subscribers on the Spotify platform, and Goldman Sachs has said there's going to be 1.7 billion paying subscribers alone by 2027. So as you turn the page, we are an award-winning Creator First music and entertainment and technology platform focused on delivering premium experiences and content worldwide through memberships and live and virtual events. Listen, watch, attend, engage, and transact. Highlighted financials. The company has been a massive growth engine.
We've grown somehow since COVID has hit from $38 million, even though we lost all of our live partners in Live Nation and iHeart and AEG and all the live events that we had over 5 billion engagements across. We still have been able to grow our business from $38 million. We publicly said that we will close this year between $115 million and $120 million. Now, that closing is March 31st, so we're a couple of weeks away. And as you go into next year, we've just announced our biggest partnership in the history of the company, a $20 million-plus contract with a Fortune 500 company, one of the biggest streaming networks in the world, and we raised our guidance to $140 million-$155 million. And with that, we stated that our audio division alone will do $130 million-$140 million with $20 million-$25 million of EBITDA.
As you turn to the next page, you look at the multiples and you look where they're trading. We are trading well below our peer group. The peer group is trading almost 2.5 times revenues and the core, and those are even higher today as you look at where they've gone over the last couple of weeks. We're trading at 1x revenue. So we've gone from a story stock to a growth stock. We're now trading as a value stock. Go to the next slide. We've acquired 6 companies, and we built multiple different subsidiaries to create this very unique moat and flywheel around music subscription: audio, video, podcasting, audiobooks, pay-per-view publishing, and the ability to deliver messaging and chatting as well as merchandise simultaneously. LiveOne's model addresses five large vertical markets.
Over 660 million paid subscribers globally in 2023, estimated to grow to 1.1 billion by 2030, 177 million listens to podcasts, podcast ad spending to exceed $2 billion in 2026. We cross over this massive music market in music subscription, fast-growing podcasting, live streaming and pay-per-view, merchandise, and music publishing. As you turn to the next page, you're looking at some pretty remarkable, staggering numbers. We've had 334 million live streams. We streamed to 220 countries. We just passed 3.6 million subscribers, and that's up from 400,000 when we acquired Slacker Radio. 2,900 of the biggest artists in the world have streamed on our network, 6.6 billion listens, 2,200 hours of music. And we have these amazing partnerships with Tesla and YouTube and TikTok and Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. Turn to the next slide. You get to see our acquisition of PodcastOne.
In PodcastOne, we bought the company from Norm Pattiz, who built Westwood One. We built that from $20 million in revenues losing $5 million to today doing close to $50 million. We said we're going to do $45 million-$50 million with $4 million-$5 million of EBITDA, 350 episodes produced weekly, 600 million downloads. We just moved from number 17 when we acquired it to number 10 on Podtrac, 34.7 million monthly downloads, 5.9 million unique listeners. As you flip to the next page, you're going to see some of the best talent in the world on our platform, everyone from Adam Carolla to Jordan Harbinger. We are probably the largest female network in all of podcasting: LadyGang, Off the Vine. There's so many of them. We just added Jackie Schimmel to line up.
As you see those advertisers, we went from 7 advertisers to over 600 advertisers on our platform in the four-year period. As you turn to the next page, our pay-per-view business, over 126 events, 217,000 tickets sold, everything from music to social media to boxing across our platform. Apologize. Page is turning a little slow. Our merchandise business, a $400 billion global business. We've just announced our first celebrity-branded products, starting with Birthday Sex with Russell Bevan in conjunction with Jeremih. We very uniquely launched that product from Jeremih's tour with 50 Cent and Chance the Rapper, and we're able to launch that successfully and sell out of every single bottle in the first six weeks.
One of the exciting parts of our business is that we cross over with some of the largest companies in all music and media, and most of them are not only competitors, but they're also partners of ours: Amazon, Spotify, Sirius, across the board. As you look at it, you look at uniquely where we're positioned in the space. We've really positioned ourselves with over 45 patents. We've positioned ourselves with that crossover ability to do almost everything in this space across the board. As you turn to slide 16, this is a critical component of what we built here. We built distribution around the globe and growing, 220 countries.
As we grow this, if any of you know me in my previous career, when I built iWon.com and when I built Digital Turbine, we built those in the back of iWon.com was sold to Barry Diller, and then we built Digital Turbine, which went to its highest $12 billion. It was built in conjunction with these massive distribution platforms that have 10 million-3 billion eyeballs like Facebook. We've been able to secure those distribution platforms and continue to grow them. We're almost adding one almost every month to our platform. As you turn to page 17, our management team. We have a world-class management team who has built over $100 billion in media and technology companies. We have a team that is proven. Not only are they skilled at building these companies, but they're able to survive. We survived COVID.
We survived the banking crash. We've survived the microcap crash. And yet, we've come out of it stronger than ever and grown the business dynamically. As you look at page 18 as well, our advisory board and our board, one of the strongest in the business, you see gentlemen like Patrick Wachsberger, who took Lionsgate up by $20 billion. You see on the board Ken Solomon, who runs the Tennis Channel. You see Chris Wright , who is the current president of Michael Jordan Brands, Steve Bornstein, who built ESPN and the NFL Networks. As you turn to page 19, the numbers are uniquely moving. We bought PodcastOne. We bought Slacker Radio. The combined did about $40 million in revenues, losing $15 million, and we're losing subscribers.
We took those two businesses together to create this flywheel, added acquisitions in the merchandise business, publishing business to uniquely position ourselves that we've grown the business from $40 million, those combined businesses. We're now doing almost $120 million this year and on March 31st. And for next year, we've just put out guidance of $140 million-$155 million with $15 million-$20 million in EBITDA. On the audio side alone, $130 million-$140 million with $20 million-$25 million in EBITDA. So we've created that unique model, right, with this massive TAM. You have an audience that is growing in audio across the board from audio music subscription platforms to podcasting.
We've been able to generate now with the acquisition of PodcastOne that we moved from 95% subscription pre-COVID to today where our business is almost 60/40 now between subscription and advertising, and the advertising is moving up quickly to where shortly they'll be close to 50/50. We're really excited. This is a unique year for the company as we break $100 million in revenues cleanly. As we built to that, we start to understand exactly we took out over $40 million of cost, and we start looking at EBITDA, very substantial EBITDA and cash flows from the business. We are currently buying back a substantial amount of stock. I've just announced that I expanded the buyback from $4 million to $10 million. We've completed that $4 million, and you'll see us almost on a weekly basis continue to add to that buyback anytime the windows are open.
We have really unique partnerships. We've just extended our partnership with Elon Musk and Tesla for our 11th straight year. That partnership is growing dynamically. Every car that hits the road in North America, we add a subscriber for an average of seven years at between $3 and $3.50. We've just added our first major streaming partner, over $20 million in revenues guaranteed this year. We've announced that we've put together a team from Microsoft, a B2B team that now has 50 B2B deals similar to that in the works right now with billion- to multi-trillion-dollar companies. We fully expect to close at least 5% of those deals this year. On the podcast side, we have the largest pipeline in the history of the company, over 100 podcasts. We just announced this week our 27th new podcast.
That's 2.5 times we did last year. Those are adding about $500,000 each in revenues with substantial traffic and community added to it. With 100 podcasts for next year, we fully expect to beat that 30 number and be above that next year. We also have stated there are additional acquisitions that are in the works. On the podcast side of it, we have 10 podcast networks that are potentially candidates to roll up in and continue to grow this. With that, I want to open it up to Q&A and open up to any questions. Thank you.
So I'm just looking at... Sorry, go ahead.
Yeah, I'm just looking at the questions on the board. When could we expect you to purchase LVO stock? Personally, you did mention last conference call and recent podcast.
You and the board members will actively be purchasing LiveXLive stock. So right now, we're in the middle of the buyback, right? As soon as that buyback is completed, you will see myself as well as insiders adding to it. I've personally invested over $18 million in the company. I bought stock. I put in almost $3 million in the IPO at $4. I then bought additional stock all the way up to $6 and change. And you could certainly see at these low levels, myself as well as other board members continue to add to their positions. Regarding podcast-driving scripted shows, can you walk through the four different assets you're trying to monetize? So this is really one of the most exciting parts of the company.
If you look at my team, our team from Patrick Wachsberger to Ken Solomon, we've created some amazing movies and television, Patrick, CODA, and La La Land and Twilight. Myself, I was fortunate to be involved in the movie 300 and producing 300 and The Spiderwick Chronicles and billions of dollars in revenues. What we're seeing in podcasting is that scripted podcasts can now transform themselves into TV shows and film. We've just announced for the first time, our first show, Vigilante, has sold to a major studio as a TV show. We've also sold The Opportunist as a documentary for one of the seasons, Die PG. We now have five shows that are original programs, scripted original programmings that we can see easily selling to television and film.
For all of you, I highly recommend that you listen to our newest show, which Patrick Wachsberger and our team co-produced called Varnamt own. It's one of the most exciting stories. It's a true crime story in line with shows like True Detective and Fargo and many others like that. That is a story, a little town in North Carolina, 500 people, and an REO Speedwagon plane lands in North Carolina. All of a sudden, everybody starts getting rich and drugs and tons of money and Pablo Escobar involved. So if you have an opportunity to listen to it, I think there's going to be a bidding war from the studios to purchase this show. Guys, I know the next question. How much of PodcastOne do you own? PodcastOne, we own 75% of PodcastOne.
We just did a very successful spin-out, which all of the debt was converted, $8 million was converted. All of it that was converted was converted at $3, well above where podcast is trading today. We were also able to acquire the assets of Kast Media at $8 a share, which is where Roth valued the company and Nasdaq valued the company. Roth actually valued it between 8 and 12, and Nasdaq, who makes the final decision, valued it at 8. The partnership opportunities with Slacker Radio. I talked about these 50 B2B deals across Slacker and really over the entire company. But these are distributors, very much like we did in Digital Turbine. And the reason Digital Turbine went to $12 billion was off the backs of partnerships with carriers and hardware companies.
Because we're both audio and video, we get to expand that dramatically in that we can partner with anyone from retailers to social media companies. And you've seen multiple partnerships with TikTok and Facebook along the way for LiveOne, as well as carriers, companies, number one partnership, most important part today in the company. It's now $millions and millions a month and continues to grow on a daily basis. We woke up this morning to 7,000 new cars, right, just for today alone. So these B2B partnerships are really unique. They're really unique and unique opportunities for us to grow the business. And the highlight of that is our newest deal we just announced with the streaming platform, Fortune 500 company, $20 million plus. And you're starting to see that revenue scale up this quarter.
We fully expect this quarter will be one of the most exciting quarters in the history of the company. Aaron, do you see any other questions?
Yeah, Robert, refresh. Read them out if that's easier for you.
Do I just refresh your next? Okay, sorry, guys. Okay, beautiful. Got it. So Spotify increased the subscription fee. Does LiveOne have any plans to follow? So we probably will at some point raise our prices, but we really positioned ourselves as the Walmart of music. We positioned ourselves with three huge advantages. Number 1, we're the lowest price. We're 1/3 of our competitors, and they're going up in price. We don't need to because our margins are over 30% versus 16% for our competitors. So going into the B2B deal, that $20 million deal, this will put our content to tens of millions of people, right, and showcase that content.
And it may work out way better than this, the $20 million of revenues. It could work out way better than that because there's so many people that get to see our content that hopefully they will also convert into subscribers, right, and come onto the platform long term. So discuss the partnership opportunities with Slacker Radio, with verticals. The most exciting vertical is audio to start, is the auto market where we have this long-term partnership as the exclusive content inside of Tesla. We fully expect to have a second car company this year. The second most important vertical probably is in the same space I was in in Digital Turbine, which is carriers and carriers around the globe. As interest rates go up, these companies must find it's critical for them to have a much deeper relationship, right, a much deeper relationship with their customers.
Because we're a creator-first platform focused on super fans, this is a critical time for it. Very much like we did in Digital Turbine, when I built Digital Turbine, I built it off of partnerships with 58 carriers around the globe. We've already partnered with Verizon and T-Mobile. We see massive opportunities to continue to do that. I love the retail space, Walmart, Costco, Best Buy, many others. I see huge opportunities that they must have in music service to compete with Amazon. Hotels, airlines, these are huge opportunities for us to have big audiences that need music service for their loyalty programs. I fully expect that you're going to see, as I articulated earlier, you're going to see many of those partnerships come into fruition this year. Very little of that is built into our guidance.
I would say most of our revenues this year are almost guaranteed at this point. Our subscription continues to grow. Our traffic and audience continues to grow, which means the advertising dollars are going to be there. CPMs are starting to go up. Advertising is getting better. It's a very rough year last year. We're seeing telltale signs that CPMs are going up. So we're very, very confident that $140 million-$155 million, most of that is already secured for this year. And there's substantial upside from there if we land additional B2B deals. Did we cover all 14 now? I think we've covered everything. Aaron, do you see anything else?
Yeah, just quick refresh again, Rob. There's one, two, more on the Tesla relationship.
Got it. I don't see them, but just on the Tesla relationship, we've just extended another 18 months.
We have been a partner of Tesla now for over 11 years. Our customers are consistently utilizing our service. We're averaging about 7 years on those subscriptions. We couldn't be more excited about the opportunity and hope to grow that relationship with Tesla globally, as well as hopefully, in the near future, have opportunities with other assets that they own, including X (Twitter), maybe their satellite business. So we couldn't be more excited about that partnership. They've been a terrific partner, and I think we've been a terrific partner for them. And we've literally delivered on the three components. We deliver our content at the lowest cost. We deliver excellent service to them. We have 45 patents around our technology. We have a world-class technology team that came out of the San Diego world.
And over $180 million was invested in Slacker Radio before we acquired it, as well as in PodcastOne, over $35 million. So that's $210 million, almost $215 million. And our team has just done an absolutely spectacular job of turning that $40 million of revenues between those acquisitions into what will this year be $150 million approximately of revenues. Aaron, do you want to read the next because it's not opening on mine? Sure. I think we could. There's a couple around Tesla, but I think you basically covered all those. There's one. Let's see. Does Tesla limit you adding in other B2B deals, specifically other automakers? No. There's no restrictions on our agreement. And again, I think it's been a spectacular partnership that will just continue to grow. But it leaves us opportunities to really expand with other car companies around the world. Right.
Can you talk a little bit about the balance sheet? Yeah, this is the strongest balance sheet we've ever had in the history of the company. We acquired Slacker Radio. We acquired it with $55 million of payables, losing money. We acquired PodcastOne. We acquired it losing money. We just announced about $11 million in cash, $28 million in short-term assets. And for the first time, all of our debt last year converted at $2.10. So we substantially cleaned up the balance sheet and strengthened it. And that's what gives us the confidence to be able to buy back stock, as well as we publicly said that the audio business will do over $17 million of cash flow this year.
All right. There's just one. You kind of answered. There's a couple with that response, Rob. There's one last one. Can you tell if customers are using the product outside of Tesla vehicles or just in the car?
Yeah. So our customer base has been across Verizon, T-Mobile. The artists themselves, we've had over 3,000 artists on our platform. We've got 5 billion engagements. The artists themselves, those 3,000 artists, almost every single one of them, from Bruce Springsteen to Taylor Swift, across the board, has hit their social media and told their fans to come listen and watch on LiveOne. The usage has continued to grow, and we couldn't be happier with the customer base. And really, again, we're probably the only platform that is super focused as a creator-first platform focused on those super fans. And what I've told the street is I fully expect that we've grown from 400,000 subscribers to 3.6 million.
Our confidence level is that we will, by 2027, have over 10 million subscribers. That may be a very low number, right? Spotify just came out and said they're going to have 1 billion subscribers, right? We'll be a very small percentage of that, but we'll be offering a consumer a very unique offering with unique content you can't get anywhere else. We're highly confident in that number. One B2B deal can take you over 10 million the next morning. So we're highly confident that we'll be there. The 10 million, we'll be doing over $1 billion in revenues with $150 million in cash flow. We'll continue to grow this and continue to grow this flywheel. We're well on our way.
Okay. I think we have concluded the presentation. Do you have any final comments there, Rob?
Yeah. No, I think this is going to be our breakthrough year. This is the most exciting year in the history of the company. We started taking costs out of the business over three years ago. We recognized that the market was changing. We've recognized where the world is going. It was important for us to get the EBITDA. I couldn't be more excited about it. We're going to continue to buy stock as a company, as a board. And this should be the best year in the history of the company. And my team has really proven to be extraordinarily resilient, fighting through really tough periods of COVID, losing all of our live partners, fighting through a banking market for small companies to collapse, and fighting through a very difficult microcap market. We're starting to see some signs that it's coming back.
We couldn't be more excited about where the business is going. I want to thank everyone for spending the time today. I look forward to hearing from all of you down the line. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much. That does conclude LiveOne's presentation. You may now disconnect.