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spk04: and welcome to the Enthusiast Gaming Third Quarter 2023 Financial Results Conference Call. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. Should you need assistance, please signal a conference specialist by pressing star then zero. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your touchtone phone. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Matt Chesler, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
spk10: Thank you, Operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the Enthusiast Gaming third quarter 2023 results conference call. I'm Matt Chesler of FNKIR. And with me today is our Chief Executive Officer, Nick Bryan, and our Chief Financial Officer, Alex McDonald. We'll begin with some prepared remarks and then open the floor to questions. Before we begin, I'd like to remind everyone that today's presentation contains forward-looking information that involves known and unknown risks and uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from current expectations. These statements should not be read as assurances of future performance or results. A more complete discussion of the risks and uncertainties appears in the company's management discussion and analysis for the three-month period ending September 30th, 2023, which are available under the company's profile on CEDAR, as well as on our website at enthusiastgaming.com. You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as the date of this presentation. The company disclaims any intention or obligation, except to the extent required by law, to update and revise any forward-looking statement as a result of new information future events, or for any other reason. And now I'd like to turn the call over to Nick Bryan, CEO of Enthusiast Gaming. Take it away, Nick.
spk03: Thank you, Matt, and welcome to everyone joining our call today. We are making solid progress against our business strategy to build the most scaled gaming communities in North America, creating a platform for infinite growth. The core building blocks are our sites, panels, events, and esports, Our creator communities are producing the most compelling content to engage with their communities as we witness their growing influence in today's creator-led economy. As we continue to invest in our vision to become the leading gaming, media, and entertainment company in North America, we are extremely thoughtful and deliberate, focusing on our largest opportunities. Today, over 56 million users visit our site games, and channels each month to play, learn, create, and connect. Certainly, traditional media's declining audiences across linear TV and movies helps us maintain our position as America's number one gaming media platform as measured by ComScore. Our single-minded focus is to achieve profitability in quarter four by prioritizing high-margin brand solutions revenue in favor of low margin programmatic media revenues. The decision we took in quarter two to focus primarily on North America is bearing fruit as we continue to drive cost efficiencies and consolidation across every area of the business. Today's clear operating model built on a unified technology platform and supported by the most professional functions is reducing internal friction and increasing our speed to market for each of our products and services. Collectively, these initiatives will enable us to exit the year as a profitable business. We're fortunate to operate in the largest and fastest-growing entertainment sector globally. The continuing growth of diverse gaming audiences worldwide demonstrates their passion to play and connect with like-minded communities and the immersive gaming experiences that the industry imagines. There are today 3.4 billion gamers worldwide in an industry expected to reach $665 billion in value by 2030 with a CAGR of 13.4%. This exponential growth will demand innovation to craft the next generation of tools, products, and platforms to satisfy gamers' hunger for stimulation and creativity. It's clear that the impact of video games will not be limited to the video game industry. Innovation, skilled talent, and a large audience supported by deep-pocketed developers will flow across entertainment sectors. We're already seeing the convergence, as the Unreal Engine is now powering games and revolutionizing film and TV production. Game IPs are becoming hit movies, and Wave VR and other studios are transforming live musical performances. The industry's growth across all age ranges defies the traditional game of stereotypes as young men playing console games in their parents' basements. Microsoft closed their largest ever acquisition of Activision Blizzard, completing their vision to bring great games to players everywhere on any end point. Already with Game Pass, they are redefining how games are distributed, played, and discovered. I'm not alone in believing that the high price also reflected, the high price they paid, also reflected the value of Activision's gaming IP, given the player spent hundreds of hours over many years with the games that they love, creating remarkable brand equity for some of the most famous games in the world. We are witnessing the continuing transfer of gaming IP to Hollywood, with leading creators being hired by top gaming companies to ensure that their content strategies are not only creative and compelling, but also authentic and faithful to their original game design. The power of gaming IP in such a crowded digital media world supports Netflix's decision to create a streaming video game service as the next big growth bet. Gaming is increasingly exciting to brands and their agencies. There is a growing realization that gaming media is no longer a nice to do, but a need to do, as their elusive Gen Z audiences abandon traditional media to focus their attention on social media, gaming content, and interactive experiences. Brands are now competing for attention in the creative economy, where content is created and consumed in fundamentally different ways than even five years ago. It's exciting for us to pioneer the next generation gaming media and entertainment company for players, creators, and brands. Operationally, we have consolidated as one company on a unified technology platform to ensure that our products and services are streamlined to create more efficient brand solutions for marketeers and advertisers. Our rapidly improving programmatic stack ensures that our ad networks is optimized to reduce unsold impressions and increase yield. We recently initiated a cloud services review to ensure that our web hosting costs are optimized, our critical AI functionality is fully integrated across the business. Across our site, we continue to demonstrate our ability to capture momentum and audience attention around tentpole game releases. u.gg The leading data and insights player site for the League of Legends, with over 9 million users, strengthens its product-to-platform strategy as it extends to the World of Warcraft site with data source from Blizzard's API. U.GG launched its League of Legends desktop app in alpha in quarter three to enhance gamers' performance and provide a personalized experience. we've gotten over 250,000 downloads without a dollar in marketing spend. In the month of September, we recorded 630,000 user sessions with an average session duration of an hour and 18 minutes. This is 819,000 hours of audience attention. The time on site metric is indicative of the stickiness and the added value of desktop apps. It's able to provide real time, live, data-driven insight and advice through our user base. This success informs our decision to pursue additional desktop app properties, and the next launch will be Valorant in November. IT Vein has launched a brand new content management system to support Diablo 4, and in the month of July, IT Vein set a record for unique users in a month, 5.9 million, 26 million sessions and 1.7 million hours of time spent on-site from our user base. This gives us a positive use case to further expand our CMS to enable us to repeat this success over and over to make IC Veins and U.GG the dominant multi-type of gaming community and insights platform. Addicting Games continues to rationalize its portfolio of casual games and strengthen the competitiveness of its key titles. Shockwave has added a new collection of daily games, resulting in a 57% increase in page views in quarter three, up 18 million from quarter two. Tight Racer has seen a 250% increase in subscriptions from quarter two to quarter three by simply increasing the number of accepted payment methods. Akes.io underwent technical refactoring to reduce load time by 90%, leading to a 13% growth in users and 15% more new users compared to quarter two, 2023. With this impressive improvement in growth, we're now focusing on in-game economy and user retention with daily bonuses. The Sims resource is a vital contributor within our portfolio, providing a unique resource to enable the Sims 4 community to celebrate its creativity and culture across generations. Our strategic initiatives kicked off in quarter two to focus on converting free traffic into paid subscribers while increasing LTV and ARPU and low insurance. We've launched several projects to ensure smooth payment processing globally while aligning pricing geographically to optimize for conversion. This includes a soon-to-be-launched change on the site, which will require all users to provide us with an email address in order to perform a free download of our content. The TSR team is using landing pages, email marketing, paid media, and social media to drive conversions, engagement, and education with the goal to increase retention and conversion rates. Social media and community engagement are providing users and visitors with a strong sense of value from the TSR offering, as well as driving new traffic into TSR. The momentum continues into quarter four and beyond, with a new email marketing platform with new data attributes to help us drive engagement and conversion rates. A new landing page platform will enable rapid testing and optimization of new billing and pricing configurations, an option to determine the most effective scenarios to increase conversion rates globally and drive overall revenue growth. Pocket Gamer remains the preeminent mobile games conference organizer globally. During quarter three, we ran two Pocket Gamer Connect conferences, one in Toronto and one in Helsinki, and two fringe events, the Metaverse Mixer and the Top 50 Games Makers Dinner at Gamescom in Germany. Pocket Gamer celebrated its eighth edition of PG Connect Helsinki, and next year, Pocket Gamer Connect celebrates its 10th anniversary. In that time, we've hosted over 44 Pocket Gamer Connect conferences in 14 countries with over 40,000 delegates attending. All event activity generated a profit in quarter three, with Helsinki registering a 52% gross profit, while Pocket Gamer Toronto live delegate numbers increased by 28% year-on-year. Following a successful June event in Dubai, we're now currently in negotiations for a three-year partnership with the Dubai Economic Forum to run the Dubai Games Expo Summit powered by PG Connect from 2024 to 2026. We'll also have an active discussion with the local agencies in Singapore about potential activity in the APAC SEA region in 2024 to 2025. Gaming communities continue to demonstrate their insatiable desire to consume gaming-related content. whether on the major streaming channels such as Twitch and Kik, or leading social media networks such as YouTube and TikTok. Content remains, therefore, a major strategic pillar of our business. Final Boss Studios, which launched in quarter two, now operates in five key verticals to maximize content resources and cross-functional support in post-production, tentpole creation, the NFL Tuesday Night Gaming and the ONO Activation, animation for families, and luminosity content. Our content calendar, with new content series and channels, is spanning the cross-section of gaming, esports, and popular culture. Our channel expansion strategy begins with Bit Slam Comedy, which sold out the Bourbon Room in LA within 24 hours. This innovative approach for leading gamers playing against leading comedians generated partnership interest in some of the biggest names in the comedy business. Luminosity, our esports and talent organization, continues to thrive and expand throughout the esports winter that sees many larger competitors struggling with unsustainable business models. Throughout 2023, we have pursued a prudent cost structure that will lead to a sustainable and profitable esports business in 2024. This is a key part of building our creator community to fuel our growing talent needs while directly supporting our various sites and channels. We launched the Luminosity Smash Channel, breaking 2 million views in the first 60 days since launch, as well as our Pokemon Unite documentary, which surpassed 10,000 views in a week. There is no shortage of creators who want to become part of the enthusiast network, whether it's through Luminosity or Omnia Media, as they understand the value that enthusiast gaming can bring to them throughout their creative journey, leading to increased revenue and brand activation opportunities. New brand partners tapping into our internal talent rosters on Nintendo, Bandai, Netflix, Nickelodeon, Coca-Cola, and many more. Brand solutions continues to improve its performance since its establishment in quarter two, both in the revenue and a gross margin point of view. We've strengthened the team with some key external hires. George Devado joined us in Barstool Sports to lead revenue operations. Madison Lockhart joined from Epic to lead product marketing. And Jerry Liu just joined us from Sony to drive our thought leadership effort while coordinating all our research and insights. Account management has now been fully integrated into the brand solutions org, enabling a deeper specialization of sales support to flip our approach from reactive selling to proactive solutions creation and delivery, creating engaging campaigns that can span multiple business units. We have an exciting pipeline of new brand partnerships in quarter three, with both new and returning clients, including Coca-Cola, State Farm, the UPS store, AT&T, Toyota, Netflix, Shell, and Dove for men. State Farm and Dove are both new sponsors for the NFL Tuesday Night Gaming, with State Farm being a six-figure deal and the largest deal in our history. AT&T, Shell, Netflix, and the UPS Store have all partnered with us to create custom maps in leading games. It's growing appetite by gamers to explore user-generated content, in many of the biggest games, such as Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite, is only set to continue. Our industry-leading partnership with the NFL continues to bear fruit as we iterate and optimize NFL's Tuesday night gaming week in and week out to improve program innovation and strengthen user engagement. Year-to-date, we've generated 40 million total impressions across all NFL TNG platforms, representing a 72% growth in overall impressions compared to Season 1. To date, the NFL Tuesday Night Gaming has increased the number of advertisers from 11 in Season 1 to 14 in Season 2. Our sponsors include some of North America's most recognized brands, Campbell's Chunky, Carnival Cruise Lines, State Farm, Lego, USAA, The Wonderful Company, Travel Texas, Little Caesars, Netflix, the US Navy, Warner Brothers, DAZN, and ESPN. Our active creative success with the NFL has reinforced our ability to work with major IP holders, leading to active conversations with other leading US sports leagues. Our commitment to operational excellence is the opportunity to harness the power of automation and AI to improve our product and business performance across the entire organization. We're actively using the testing chat GPT as the most widely applicable AI chat bot for campaign creative concept brainstorming to coding QA. Active campaign for sales email marketing to leverage subscriptions and remarketing. Unbounce to build landing pages for A-B testing, testing subscriptions. QBuddy is a tool to drive channel growth for YouTube. ZIQ for channel analytics of all YouTube videos. And SEMrush for SEO optimization. tracking, and search ranking. We currently utilize a number of automation applications such as Power BI for data visualization and revenue dashboards, Monday.com as a program management tool, BoostUp for all order management, media plan development, rate card management, and ad server management, and assertive yield for automated, centralized reporting for our programmatic performance of all SSPs. We have made significant operational progress in establishing a stable platform for profitable growth. Much of this progress has not yet been reflected in our income statement, as we have eliminated low margin revenue that represented a drag on profitability and focused on strategic or higher margin opportunities. These initiatives are resulting in significant gross margin expansion, a reduction in unsold impressions, and higher CPM. and serve as the foundation for future financial improvement. We expect you will see this progress manifested in the fourth quarter, and we look into 2024 with a fully integrated, efficient platform for sustained profitable growth. No great business was ever built on its capabilities alone. We believe passionately that a more disciplined and accountable culture is necessary to build long-term success for all stakeholders. We also recognize that great cultures require sustained effort and commitment to ensure that the most talented people are fully motivated to deliver their best performance each and every day. Leveling up is easier said than done. Our people and culture function continues to make great strides in many important areas of talent management, specifically in DEIB progress and women in gaming and women in leadership roles. We have tripled the number of female senior leaders since inception in April 2023. We signed the California Equal Pay Pledge. We've established a Raise Your Game, ERG, employee resource group focused on elevating women in gaming and supporting women enthusiasts in career growth and leadership opportunities. It was launched in April and it already has 26 members. We're partnering with the Historically Black College and Universities And these HBCUs are providing us with mentoring, career opportunities, and a development pipeline of great talent. Last but not least, we are committed to creating the highest standards of commercial acumen across the organization to ensure that we are optimizing the yield of every single dollar of revenue we earn. Today, I'm pleased to announce that we have hired Felicia de la Fortuna as our new Chief Financial Officer. Felicia joins us from BuzzFeed, where she has worked for the past eight years. Felicia joined BuzzFeed in 2015 after serving as a senior finance director of Viant Technology, the parent company of MySpace, and various financial leadership roles at 19 Entertainment and Ernst & Young. Felicia's deep digital media expertise across BuzzFeed's many media brands, content channels, commerce sites, and live events makes her ideally suited to help us fully optimize our portfolio of assets today. At the same time, her extensive public markets and fundraising experience strengthens our commercial prowess as we focus on reducing cash burn and driving profitability. Alex McDonald has performed a pivotal role in both the creation and growth of Enthusiast Gaming. We're extremely proud and grateful for the massive contribution Alex has made from day one to diversify our business, serve our community, and build a strong team that lays the foundation for our future profitable growth. Alex will transition to the role of a consultant and work with me and the board on a number of key strategic projects while collaborating with Felicia to ensure the smoothest handover of all finance, and accounting functions. This ends my prepared remarks, and I'd like to now hand over to Alex McDonald to talk through the details of our financials. Over to you, Alex.
spk08: Well, thank you, Nick, and thank you to all of our shareholders, analysts, lending partners, and other stakeholders for joining us today to discuss the progress made in this third quarter, 2023. During the third quarter, we continue to advance the initiatives Nick has been speaking about since becoming our chief enthusiast officer. We are continuing to focus on profitable revenue streams and margin expansion, as well as creating comprehensive grant solutions and leveraging our diverse assets as a platform. The results of these initiatives include margin expansion and narrowing losses as we move towards profitability. I'll speak on the numbers shortly, but first, Here are my usual notes. I note that our results are presented in Canadian dollars. The significant majority of our revenues and expenses are measured in U.S. dollars and are translated into Canadian dollars for presentation in our financial statements. The exchange rate between the U.S. dollar and our presentation currency of the Canadian dollar should be monitored and considered when analyzing or forecasting results. And I note that our business is affected by seasonal trends in digital advertising with sequential increases each quarter throughout the year. driven by increasing ad prices and demand, which peaks in Q4. This seasonality is isolated to our media and content revenue streams. Now let's get back to the financial results. Q3 revenue was $45.6 million, which is down 10% year over year, but up approximately 7% compared to Q2. Q3 revenue by source was as follows, media and content $39.8 million, subscription $3.7 million, and esports and entertainment $2 million. Q3 media and content revenue of $39.8 million compares to a $44.5 million reported in Q3 2022, a decrease of 11%. The decrease was primarily driven by a decrease in RPM caused by lower CPMs in the programmatic markets. Our web RPMs were down 14%, while our video RPMs were down 22% in Q3 year-over-year, with similar trends observed in the broader programmatic markets. These year-over-year RPM declines narrowed in Q3 compared to Q2, and we expect them to continue to narrow with further improvements being noticeable subsequent to September 30. The decrease in Q3 media content revenue was offset by higher video views year-over-year, with 6.4 billion video views being measured in Q3 2023 as compared to 6.1 billion video views in Q3 2022. Web page views also increased year-over-year, with 3.7 billion web page views occurring in Q3 compared to 3.6 billion in the same quarter last year. Notably, total views once again crested over the 10 billion milestone for Q3. Q3 subscription revenue was 3.7 million down, slightly by 2% year-over-year. Paid subscribers were 265,000 as of September 30, 2023, as compared to 260,000 as of September 30, 2022. The yield on a per-subscriber basis decreased slightly year-over-year. Q3 esports and entertainment revenue was $2 million, down slightly from $2.3 million in Q3 of last year. The decrease in esports and entertainment revenue is mainly attributable to decreased esports sponsorship activity and slightly lower event revenue. Gross profit was $16.7 million in Q3, up 1% compared to the $16.6 million of gross profit recorded in Q3 2022. Gross margin increased 400 basis points to 36.7% from 32.7%. This gross margin increase reflects the greater contribution of brand solutions and subscription revenue to our overall revenue profile, as well as the elimination of certain unprofitable products and channels, as well as the year-over-year decline in market-driven CPMs. In other words, our strategy to reduce our reliance on networked programmatic revenue and focus on profitable revenue is driving improvements in our margins profile. Total OpEx was $25 million, down 6% from the third quarter last year. Operating expenses in Q3 this year include non-cash items of amortization and depreciation of $2.6 million and share-based compensation of $1.4 million. The decrease in cash-based OpEx year-over-year was primarily due to decreases in professional fees, advertising and promotion, office in general, and salaries and wages, relating primarily to certain restructuring efforts. Also, the prior year third quarter included approximately $1.1 million in fees related to the annual general meeting. This year, the meeting was held during the second quarter. Additionally, the third quarter reflects costs associated with the kickoff of Season 2 of NFL CNG. Net loss was $59.1 million in Q3, including a non-cash impairment charge of $51.7 million. Net loss per share, both basic and diluted, was $0.38 in Q3 2023. Due to a combination of higher interest rates, inflation, contracting equity valuation, and continued industry pressures, the company determined that indicators of impairment were present in Q3. Therefore, the company performed impairment testing across its seven CGUs. The results of this testing were impairment charges totaling $51.7 million. This is a non-cash adjustment, and the details and assumptions surrounding this expense are disclosed in Note 9 to the financial statements. Turning to the balance sheet, we ended the quarter with $2.8 million in cash, and in addition had an available operating line of $4.5 million for total available cash of $7.3 million as of September 30, 2023. Subsequent to the quarter end, we announced that we had extended and amended our credit facilities, providing additional liquidity of up to approximately $7 million. Given the improving trends we are seeing in our business and industry, along with the benefit of the amendment to our operating line, we are confident we have sufficient liquidity to execute our near-term objectives. We continue to believe we will exit 2023 and enter 2024 as a profitable business. And as we drive through Q4, we do have certain expectations surrounding key drivers for the rest of the year. We expect relative consistency across total views, with a recent short-term trend towards increased video views to be maintained. We expect an increase in CPMs across both web and video, and we know positive pricing movements observed subsequent to September 30. However, we remain cautious that seasonal trends in the programmatic markets while returning, will not yet be as strong as would normally be expected. Similar to all other large digital publishers, we are watching closely as we approach Black Friday and the holiday season, a period which typically sees significant CPM increases. We expect to set records for total direct sales in Q4, and this number is key to profitability. Direct sales is expected to be an all-time quarterly high for the company. And we do not expect a significant movement and subscription revenue in Q4. The results of all the above will be continued growth margin expansion expected to result in an all-time high growth profit. It is in the growth margin that short-term profitability will initially be found and expanded throughout the next year of profitable growth. For all these reasons, we believe the company has a clear sight line to a successful and profitable Q4. It is an exciting time for the company particularly as our year of transformation comes to an end and the company sets its sights back toward growth. I take particular pride in what has been built here and my role in that over the past five years. I want to thank Nick for his kind words earlier and for the opportunities he's provided to me to date as CFO, including being part of an exceptional executive team, which is leading change across the organization. I also wish to thank our board of directors, particularly our chairman, Adrian Montgomery, for their partnership over the years. I look forward to continuing to work directly with Nick and the board on a number of strategic projects. But perhaps my greatest pride is the finance team that has been built at Enthusiast Gaming. They know exactly who they are, a best-in-class group led by the VP of Finance, Nathan Teal himself, a key member of the company's senior leadership. The company is in good hands with them. And speaking of being in good hands, I welcome Felicia, the incoming CFO of the company. Felicia's deep digital media expertise will be a tremendous asset to help lead the next phase of the company's evolution. Between Felicia, the rest of the executive team, and of course, Nick, our CEO, I have full confidence that the best arrangements will continue to be made for our business. And of course, ladies and gentlemen, our business is the business of gaming. Thank you. Operator, I kindly turn it back to you.
spk04: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, you may press star, then one on your touchtone phone. If you're using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. If at any time your question has been addressed and you would like to withdraw your question, please press star, then two. At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Our first question comes from Griffin Boss with B Riley. Please go ahead.
spk01: Hi, thanks for taking my questions. So just to start off in the last earnings call, I think, Nick, you mentioned that you were hopeful to have a deal signed in Q3 for another content partnership similar to NFL Tuesday Night Gaming. with a different major U.S. sports league? And I know you talked about continued progress on that front in the prepared remarks, but just curious if there was any sort of delay there or what the cause of delay is and just, I mean, just more broadly how you're thinking about those conversations.
spk03: Yeah, well, hi, Griffin, and thank you for the question. Yeah, it has been delayed, and I think that only directly down to the fact that some of the biggest advertisers that we experienced in season one for the NFL were from the entertainment sector. And, you know, with the Hollywood strike and also combined with the auto workers strike, we saw some of those categories come down. So the revenue expectations from this particular league and the minimum guarantees and the negotiation around that have extended. We're confident we're going to get it. finalized. I'm in New York this week. One of those meetings is to get that moving in the right direction to get it finalized. So we remain extremely bullish and very excited about it. But yes, has it taken longer than I would have thought? Yeah, but I understand the reasons why.
spk01: Sure. Okay, yeah, that makes sense. Thanks for the color there, Nick. And then just sticking with Tuesday Night Gaming, the engagement, the 72% increase in impressions year over year is Strong, it's nice to see. I'm just curious because I believe you transitioned this season from YouTube to Twitch. So is any of this increase in impressions maybe a result of easier discoverability on Twitch or do you think it's really just more a function of sustainable growth due to just, you know, growing popularity in the content?
spk03: Very good question. I think it's a combination of both. I mean, as people, you know, it's obviously word of mouth spread. It started to build its own audience and I just think there was There was a lift up with Twitch being such a strong streaming channel and this being essentially a live experience. And then we also had a growth in our highlights, our short highlights that we were developing with YouTube. So I think it's a combination of those two things. And those are certainly what we're going to be looking to build on as we go into season three.
spk01: Got it. Okay, great. And then just last quick one for me, and I'll jump back in the queue. Alex, I think I missed some of your programmatic talk, and I was just curious. I think we've been hearing, among other companies we've talked to, sort of about pockets of stabilization in programmatic CPMs for display and video particularly. So just curious, that's going into the fourth quarter, so curious to get more color on sort of what you're seeing currently in the programmatic market.
spk08: Thank you. Yes, I think stabilization is certainly a good word to use. Stabilization in the market, and we have seen subsequent to September 30th positive movement. The interesting point in time we find ourselves at is you would typically expect, even in the next week, significant movements that would continue through December. We are still cautious about that, as I said. I don't think it will be a similar pattern to, say, 2018, 19, 2020. However, I'm quite hopeful that some form of normalcy to the seasonal pattern is starting to return and stabilize. A return to normalcy would be a tremendous thing for us. I also note that year over year, declines in CPMs are normalizing, right? So we've absorbed a lot of that. You know, our declines narrowed in Q3, and that number will continue to narrow in Q4. So cautiously optimistic on the programmatic markets.
spk01: Okay, great. Thanks, Alex, and thanks for taking all my questions. You know, glad to see the progress on gross margins, so congrats, guys.
spk02: Thank you.
spk04: Our next question comes from Kevin Krishna with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
spk05: Hey there, good evening. Kind of a follow up on the last question. So RPM, you know, losses year over year, trends may be narrowing. The other lever you have there to revenue is views over the 10 billion mark again this quarter. Can you talk about, you know, how you can increase views either by opening up more inventory, entering more deals for content? Can you just broadly talk about the thoughts there as the other lever.
spk02: Yeah. Alex, do you want to take that one?
spk08: For sure. Hey, Kevin. So I'll start with one thing. It is nice to see. We have noted that this year particularly, and the back half of last year, we were trimming. We were not going to spend extra OpEx in order to take on... low profitable or non-profitable channels. Think of them as almost useless views for P&L. However, even after doing that, look, the organic growth still comes back and the trend is back up. It's not huge as quarter, but I actually like to see that metric. It's a measure of inventory for financial purposes, but it's also a measure of audience and a measure of engagement. So it is nice to see the the strength shining through there. With that said, you know, we're seen in a number of areas. We are bullish on video. We, you know, the part of it is a proliferation of video due to the monetization of YouTube shorts. So we have huge amounts of that type of content that is in its infancy of being monetized. So there's opportunity there. there. However, I would say I would point more at what Nick was talking about in his remarks about all the optimization and effort and attention that's being put into the programmatic stack that applies more to our web impressions. So it's not necessarily that we need to generate more impressions. We, for lack of a better term, I always say we have inventory coming out of our ears. We have plenty, but reducing the unsold amount, further optimizing the making sure our inventory is selling to the highest rate possible at the highest price possible. The, you know, the networks are optimized with the proper number of SSPs and partners in there. But I think, you know, Nick, Nick, as you saw highlighted that his comments and he's a big believer in that. I'll steal his words here and say, like he says, programmatic important. It's how we make money when we sleep. So it's important to us. It's a, it's a key initiative of the company. And I think that's, is how we unlock additional revenue. Not necessarily by grabbing more views, which we will do, but by monetizing them better and more optimized and selling a higher percent of our inventory.
spk05: Awesome. Yeah, gotcha. Thanks for all that color, Alex. Maybe moving down the P&L, the gross margin, if you highlight a record gross margin percentage in the quarter, I couldn't recall. I know you're going to do record gross profit in the next quarter. Does the gross margin go up as well? Last Q3 to Q4, it was up 100 basis points. Just wondering what you get there. You talked about some other things that you're doing in the model, some web host optimization. And you also mentioned that gross margin profile, sorry, gross margin in brand solutions was up quarter over quarter. I think you said that. Can you talk maybe about what the gross margin profile looks like within brand solutions. So, yeah, I guess, number one, do you expect to see quarter over quarter improvement in gross margin? And then number two, you know, where does the upside come from? Is it, you know, strength in brand solutions?
spk08: Sure. So, overall, I'll start with the core as well. Yes, we expect to set records of gross profit, and that will be driven by the gross margin. So, I would expect records and gross margin as well. That growth is back, which I love to see. For me, that's always been a KPI. The profile of the P&L on those top two lines is back to growth, certainly. I would expect that for Q4. A lot of it is driven by brand solutions. The profile of the brand solutions itself, margins have been going up there. The reason that's happening is is really a lot of it is the, uh, custom content, particularly NFL TNG, um, which have very low variable costs. Their costs are quite in some ways fixed. So the, the, the growth revenue we bring in is higher margin on those deals, as opposed to when we sell certain types of inventory, um, or other assets, which may have a variable cost. So as you know, NFL is, you know, selling more. And as we, um, capitalize on some of those 10-pole content initiatives, we reap the gains and the profit from the investments we made in OpEx to that over the years. And it doesn't necessarily increase. A lot of these sponsorships, the show already exists. You can layer in sponsorships for very little additional cost. So the investments made, that's going to be a key driver going forward to the gross margin and the gross profits.
spk05: Got it. Last one for me. Clarification. Do you expect to be EBITDA profitable for Q4 or exiting, i.e., could it be the month of December? I'm just trying to understand some of the commentary you talked about exiting being profitable. Thanks.
spk03: I think when we say exiting the quarter, it's what the quarter represents. And that's what we're aiming for. Do we see that the real energy of that is in the month of December? Yes, but we've yet to get into that. So, again, the focus is on making sure that we are profitable in quarter four and we're able to take that kind of energy into 2024. So we're not going to give a specific forecast on the month of December yet.
spk05: No, got it. Just wanted to make sure profitable for the quarter versus maybe a month, but exit rate. Okay. No, that's all for me. I'll pass the line. Thanks, guys.
spk02: Thanks, Kevin.
spk12: Our next question comes from Gianluca Tucci with Haywood Securities.
spk04: Please go ahead.
spk07: Hi, guys. Good afternoon. Just a question pertaining to brand solutions revenue. What's the target there in terms of percentage of overall sales, given that it is a major margin driver? And could you give us an update as to the headcount in brand solutions compared to about a year ago?
spk03: Well, in terms of the – well, hi, John, first of all. Thank you for the question. Yeah, you can see that if we look at it on a global basis, of the line of business in advertising, we've been aiming for a total of about 30% of the ad line of business. And as I said, with a number of the key hires we've made to strengthen the infrastructure around brand solutions, it's been not on direct sellers. A number of actual sellers is held steady. What it is, it's the expertise around pricing and packaging that George has provided and Madison on the product side to ensure that our conversion rate increases of the RFIs we're responding to as well as the fact that we are able to generate a high yield on what we're selling so I would imagine that as you know this is a relatively new part of our business to evolve it from the direct sales as was we're going to continue to drive that up, especially when we have big tentpole opportunities that we were talking about that we're looking to grow beyond just the NFL TNG, which is of itself is a whale opportunity for us. In my mind, I've set our targets of being 50% of our ad revenue coming from brand solutions over time. That, I think, you call it direct sales in the past. But at the moment, Headcount, we've repurposed. Headcount has increased across the organization. We've repurposed talent, and we've basically changed roles and responsibilities and found consolidation in other areas to really provide this support resource to ensure that we're doing around solutions as well as we can.
spk07: That's great color. Thanks, Nick. And in Q3, I don't know if you guys read, perhaps I just missed this, but in Q3, how much of brand solutions came from existing customers?
spk02: Excellent.
spk07: Great. And I just, I'm sorry, Nick, please go ahead.
spk03: No, just saying, we're very excited about that. When I look at our book of business and we look at the balance, I was just talking about this with the board, um you know it's really encouraging to see and and again this tracking that we've now put in place so we're seeing where every dollar of revenue is actually coming from and what's in the pipeline and the volume of returning clients of current clients versus new logo is a really healthy sign because we're dealing with some of the biggest brands in the world some of the biggest global marketeers and as we talk about whether you're in with general mills and with coca-cola women with unilever Once we get in with one brand, as you know, there's multiple product divisions, there's multiple brands, and to see them come back and spending more is really exciting.
spk07: Yeah, that's a great percentage and an excellent color. Thanks again. Just lastly for me, perhaps a housekeeping item for Alex, in terms of OpEx, how should we be thinking about that in terms of
spk08: percentage of revenue going forward after all the companies I guess repurposing if you will I mean it's it's fairly normalized now this quarter of course we have NFL T you know TNG is in there so so that's normalizing and you will see that again in Q4 and And then, you know, somewhat in Q1. So, you know, and of course, I mean, I'll say it as a, you know, you're back into the revenue, but look, what do we want to do? I mean, at least subject to adjusting for non-cash items, as a percent of gross profits, we want it just under 100%, right? So that's how we're thinking that on a percent basis, at least in comparison to the gross profits. But it is, normalizing now. So we had a bit of front loaded stuff for TNG, of course, again, right? Season two kicking off changes there, production investments again. So I wouldn't anticipate any significant increases from any angle in the next few quarters.
spk07: Okay. Thanks for the color, guys. Talk soon.
spk02: Thanks, John.
spk04: Our next question comes from Scott Buck with HCE Zane Drive. Please go ahead.
spk11: Hey, good afternoon, guys. I appreciate the time. Just a follow-up question from something earlier. What percentage of your inventory are you actually monetizing today, and where could that potentially go to over time?
spk03: When you say – well, first of all, hi, Scott. Can you just clarify? When you say inventory, are you talking about our total impressions Of the total questions we're generating?
spk10: Yes, exactly.
spk02: Well, I think in this quarter, 60% has been converted, sold.
spk03: As Alex said earlier, when we were talking with Kevin, this is not about us generating more impressions. It's about us being very clear and focused in our ad tech stack that we're optimizing the yield and we're reducing, let's say, the bad impression or those that are just, they're being put into the auctions and they're not being bid on for whatever reason. And that focus of our engineering team and our yield optimization teams is to ensure that we get that percentage higher of the impression sold.
spk11: Yeah, that's helpful. And then I was curious if you could give us just some color around the decision to delist from NASDAQ and maybe where and what some of those cost savings could be.
spk03: Yeah, well, the delisting decision was one that the board took after careful consideration. As you know, we received notice from NASDAQ of the requirement to get our share price up to a certain level to maintain that listing. The costs involved, the time involved, it was a thoughtful decision by the board to remain on the CSX and to voluntarily delist as opposed to affect the share consolidation. Overall corporate costs as a consequence will reduce on a year-on-year basis, and I think we had a range on that. Alec, did we give a range on the NASDAQ listing costs to be saved?
spk08: Yeah, they're estimated to be incurred at about US $2 million annual, and I would expect that to start normalizing on a quarterly basis next year, particularly in Q2. We are still a registrant with the SEC, so that hasn't changed. And I would expect that to start normalizing in Q2 of next year. But, yes, the number we provided was U.S. $2 million of annual costs.
spk02: Perfect. I appreciate that, guys. That's it for me. Thank you. Thanks, Carl.
spk04: Our next question comes from Robert Young with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
spk09: Hi, good evening. I just wanted to get a little more color on the profitability here in Q4 and then into Q1. If I read the comment earlier, Nick, it's that the pace of business in November and December is really the determinant on whether Q4 will prove to be EBITDA positive or not. Did I hear that correct? if it's driven by top line, should we assume that seasonality in Q1 will push EBITDA back negative in Q1?
spk03: All those assumptions are valid because we know that ultimately Q1 revenue is obviously considerably lower. We know that quarter four is usually, as Alex said in his prepared remarks, exactly what happens with Q1. The whole Thanksgiving and the Black Friday period is really important. As well as seeing what level of commitment comes back for the movie industry, the Hollywood strike, what happens. I mean, there was a lot of content that wasn't produced. So I think we're... I mean, my view of the fourth quarter, I just was studying the trade desk. I mean, I think as a DSP, they are the snare in the coal mine for the economic woes. I mean, they work with every single one of Ad Age's top 200 advertisers. And, you know, they had a great Q3. At the same time, they were very cautious. And we've seen so many of the media, the big media companies also release their Q3 and explain their cautiousness for what's happening in Q4. So we need to be thoughtful about that. And that's why We've got a very tight grip on expenses, and we're focusing like laser, as I said in my remarks, on those areas of our business that we're going to see a really tangible increase each single week, every single month, and make sure we get maximum impact for that. So I'm not here able yet to give you that precision as to how quarter four is going to end up, because here we are. and it's only the 13th of November and we've got these, these are very critical six weeks. What's gonna happen in quarter one? Obviously quarter one will come back from quarter four, it always does, CPMs will, ADBEN does, but we go into next year as a much stronger business with a lot of the organization and the transformation challenges that we've taken on board this year that will be bearing fruit in 2024 and that starts in January.
spk09: Okay, thanks a lot for that call. That's very helpful. The comments previous on the repeat revenue from repeat customers, I think you said 69% or 70%. Very strong. And I was curious, you know, the NFL contract, I'm not too sure what the contribution would have been in the quarter or if that would have been a significant, you know, driver behind that growth and repeat. And then I think you said State Farm. was the large deal. I'm pretty sure that's a repeat customer if I remember from past calls. And so, you know, if you were to, if you were to normalize for those two big deals, would it still be up? You know, would repeat business still be the, the up year over year? I assume it's still a big driver of the business. I'm just curious about the movement.
spk03: Yeah. Yes, it absolutely would. It absolutely would. I mean, obviously quarter three, we had, because it's the start of the season. I mean, it's the start of season two. So, you know, we always said, and we said that in quarter two, that we were very much anticipating a, a more exciting, you know, quarter three with the beginning of the football season. But, you know, to see brands come back and then significantly up their spend like State Farm has done, and we've got others as well, is testament to the fact that, you know, this is an exciting time in the industry. I mean, this is where gaming culture meets sports culture, meets entertainment culture, meets, you know, geek culture. It is pop culture. And it's got to be that way for many years to come. So this is a really exciting time when the NFL, and we've got some significant announcements to make in quarter four about the continued energy and effort the NFL are putting into their gaming property and their gaming platform, which they're extremely proud of having created with Tuesday Night Gaming. So we remain extremely bullish with the number of the big brands that are choosing to kind of get integrated into this fusion between gaming culture and the biggest sports franchise, you know, one of the biggest sports franchises in the world and certainly the biggest in the U.S.
spk09: Yeah. Okay. And the last question for me is just on the subscriber business. In the prepared comments, I think you said that the subscriber count was up and there was some big growth in some of the parts of the business and subscriber growth. but the revenue is down. I'm trying to understand what the driver might be. Is that a temporary thing? I think you mentioned KPIs or some sort of a change in the way you're measuring things. Maybe just talk about that, especially given you said it'd be flattish in the current quarter.
spk03: Then I'll pass the line. To be clear, the biggest driver of our subscription business is the Sims Resource. We've got a whole new team, leadership, you know, really focusing on every element of this, and there's been a number of painful elements, whether it be on back-end code, whether it be on payment providers, whether it be on pricing. I mean, there's a huge focus going in, and there's change that's been happening to make sure maybe we go back ever so slightly to go forward. I mean, here we have the SIMS resource, you know, 75% of our traffic globally is non-UX. I mean, our subscriptions, when we think about our subscribers to users, you know, around the rest of the world. We haven't been testing different pricing structures. We haven't really focused on managing what's really going on when it comes to payment and how well we can do that. I mean, not every country in the world, you know, we've got a big business in Brazil. They don't use Stripe. I mean, it's payment. We've got to be working with the best payments. We've got to have great back-end code. Things have got to work well. So our focus here is on net new subscribers, personalization and customization. We have to make sure that email is fully integrated in everything we do. We have a whole new email marketing campaign program. We have to make sure that's fully privacy compliant. And so what is the role here with the CSR? It's to convert and keep our traffic and it's to grow the top of the funnel, the traffic drivers. I mean, we have 210 000 subscribers but we've got two and a half million registered and active they're registered and they're active we've got over 10 million users who are active but they're not registered at all they're anonymous so our opportunity in this business is significant but we are making a number of strategic changes in both the way we're managing our product which is the artist as well as managing our merchandising which is around all the asset management that we need to do, as I talked about in my prepared remarks. So, you know, work, heavy lifting work has been done on all these elements to ensure that we have a stronger, more profitable growth business in our subscription area in 2024.
spk02: Got it. Thanks for all that. I'll pass the line. Thanks, Robert.
spk04: Our next question comes from Drew with RBC. Please go ahead.
spk06: Yeah, thanks very much, Nick. You just answered one of mine. So just two left here. First, on the revenue optimization where you're pruning for the most profitable revenue streams, are you largely done that now from your perspective? And then secondly, on just liquidity, and cash, maybe for you, Alex. You've talked a little bit about the working capital swings as we've moved through 2023 here. What do you see for Q4 and anything you'd care to comment on as we head into next year? Thank you.
spk03: Thank you, Drew, and thank you for the question. I'll answer the first one on revenue streams, and I'll say the work is never done. We're always going to be looking to optimise but there is not one area of our business, not one of our lines of business that we are not now tracking with granularity. Every single dollar of revenue, every single dollar of cost. So if it is not delivering the kind of margin we expect, we're obviously doing the analysis to find out why not and how, and how we're going to be driving that. So there's heavy work in progress. As I said in my notes, within addicting gains, That's a very large portfolio play. And without breaking that down, which hadn't been really done in the past to the way we're doing it now, you couldn't always identify those individual areas of gains or sites that weren't pulling their weight. And now we either fix it or we resolve what we're going to do with it. But there's no area of the business that we're tolerating an underperformance. And as we focus with that kind of granularity, And that's across our sites, our games, our channels, our e-sports, and even our event business. Every single one of our core pillars has clear attention to both what top-line revenue should be and, most importantly, what is conversion level. What is the conversion from gross revenue to gross margin to then EBITDA? And that is aggressively underway, and it goes on every single day. So is the job done? No, I don't think it's ever going to be done. Have some of our problem children been identified and the necessary action taken by the existing team or by a new team?
spk01: Yes.
spk03: There's not an area of the business that has not been unpacked and rebuilt across anything. So that's what I can say on the revenue streams. Alex, did you want to take the second question? The second one of Drew's questions on liquidity?
spk08: Yeah, no problem. So on liquidity, I mean, you know, looking where we're at, of course, ended that quarter, there's now 2.8 million in cash, 4.5 million available on the line of credit. That's 7.3 million available cash. We remain laser focused on our cash flow, big time. You know, I've quoted, I think, in prior calls, talking about how much value there is in the working capital, and we continue to unlock that value. That's notable in the cash use and operations number, which is actually quite a low number. And then, of course, subsequent to the quarter end, you know, we announced the amendment to our credit facility. There's another up to $7 million liquidity. So those things, you know, between – you know, working the cash flow and the working capital, the available cash at the end of the quarter, and of course the subsequent liquidity injection. Those things help us, you know, get through our near-term objectives. Key near-term objective, Q4, obviously profitability. So that gives us a long runway. Also to point out, the amendment comes in multiple ways, like our principal payments on our debt, you know, turned off for six months. Additional line of credit, room for us, which is our lowest cost of capital possible. So I love that you use it. It's the lowest cost capital. When you don't use it, you don't pay. Um, that's, that's great. And then of course, further extensions being made available. Uh, and then we're, and then it's a different ball game, right? When we crest that business model, um, it gets that validation to it. Uh, you know, we're, we're into next year. Um, and, and it's a whole new ball game. I, I think of course, you know, we're in denial. The long-term capital structure of this company does need to be improved and addressed because we want to go back to growth. That's what Nick's saying. Next year, this was transformation velocity. Next year, it's growth velocity. But with this structure in place and reaching profitability and flirting with rate even already, it really opens up a lot of new ways for us to turn our sights back towards growth. But in the meantime, we're covered for the near term through all the things that I mentioned.
spk02: Yep, understood. And yep, thank you both. Thanks, Drew.
spk04: This concludes our question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Nick Bryan for any closing remarks.
spk03: My closing remarks to everyone on the call is what we said we would do I want to have my first call with you. This is a year of transformation and transformation velocity. The exec team and the board at SLT, the senior leadership team, know that gross margin leads to the profitability. And if we manage our costs as tightly as we are, and we're optimizing everything we're doing by being smarter about the revenue, and there are certain elements in the media and advertising industry that we know that the The gross margins really are poor. We know that we also, so while we're focusing on really strengthening our ad business and the gross margins, not just through direct sales and brand solutions, but by making sure our ad tech stack is fantastic and we've really optimized every element of our ad service, our DSP, our SSP partnerships, our partnership with Google, what we're doing with Omnia, and then also focusing on the great sticky revenue subscription and then subscriptions leading to commerce and then our event business as well we start to diversify our revenue streams and we start to really focus on growth and next year is a year of growth velocity i made it very clear to the executive team we are not going to take those operational and internally focused organization and reorganization elements into 2024 they have to be done and finished and completed in 2023 and we are well on track to do that in fact we're ahead of target so this is the business that is built on that stable really solid unified platform on top of that platform we have great products on top of the product we have the services to make sure we excel brand solutions content solutions publisher solutions the opportunity remains really strong And I'm very excited that we've become that business that really is tech-enabled, data-driven, and ideas-led. And we take that into the market with a very proactive point of view that these are the audiences that are the most engaged audiences in the history of the planet. And they are not lazily scrolling through an Instagram feed. They're certainly not watching linear TV. So they are gaming. They are connecting with gaming content. They're connecting with their communities and their friends. And brands have the opportunity to truly integrate in native, creative, and highly impactful ways. And brands and advertisers and their agencies need to pay for that privilege. And unless we price it accordingly, they will buy it as cheaply as they can. And that's how I spent 30 years of my career on the buy side. So I know what that is. And now I am that poacher turned gamekeeper. And these are our products and our communities and our sites. And this is our precious inventory. And we need to make sure our currencies are really stable so we get maximum yield for the efforts we're putting in. And you will see that bear fruit significantly in 2024. So thank you for your time, your attention, and your enthusiasm for Enthusiast Gaming.
spk12: The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may all now disconnect.
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