Gaia, Inc.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in today's conference call to discuss Gaia's financials results for the second quarter ended June 30th, 2023. Joining us today are Gaia's CEO, Yurka Rizavi, and CFO, Ned Preston. Following some prepared remarks, we will open the call for your questions. Before we get started, however, I would like to take a minute to read the Safe Harbor language. The following constitutes the Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The matters discussed today include forward-looking statements that involve numerous assumptions, risks, and uncertainties. These include but are not limited to our ability to attract new members and retain existing members, our ability to compete effectively, including for customer engagement with different modes of entertainment, maintenance, and expansion of device platforms for streaming, taxation, customer usage of our service, fluctuations in quarterly operating results, service disruptions, production risks, general economic conditions, future losses, loss of key personnel, price changes, brand reputation, acquisitions, new initiatives we undertake, security and information systems, legal liability for website content, failure of third parties to provide adequate service, future internet-related taxes, Our founders control of us, litigation, consumer trends, the effect of government regulation and programs, the impact of public health threats, including the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic and our response to it, and other risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q. Gaia assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. With that, I would now like to turn the call over to Gaia's CEO, Irka Roussevi. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, everyone, and I'm glad that we can report positive results. Revenue for the second quarter increased again sequentially to $19.8 million from $19.6 million. But it's still down from the last quarter of 20.7 million due to post-COVID subscriber construction as experienced industry-wide during 2022. Member count increased during the quarter by 8,000 to 774,500, with virtually all the growth coming from our direct subscribers. Our ARPU, which is showing steady growth, as it increased from 795 in 2019 to 846 in 2020 to 860 in 2021 and 875 in 2022. It now shall be further supplemented by the launches of Gaia Marketplace, which is now rolling to a select group of our members. The total operating expenses in the quarter were about $950,000 higher than in the year above quarter. still including a tail of the contracts and related expenses incurred as a result of our 20% staff reduction that was completed during the first quarter. While we've still reported gap loss, the company has returned to net cash generation. Cash balance in June 30 was $10.9 million, and I would let Annette now speak more about the results.

Thank you, Juerka. Revenues for the second quarter were 19.8 million, a slight sequential increase for the second consecutive quarter, continuing the return to growth in our member base during the first half of 2023. Compared to a year ago quarter, revenues declined 4%, due primarily to the hard compare against Q2 2022, which benefited from the COVID-related subscriber growth experienced in 2020 and 2021. In the quarter, we continued to invest in and release new content, particularly to support our language expansion efforts. As a result of these strategic growth investments, gross margins were 85.7% during the second quarter of 2023, and we expect them to remain at this level the near term as we expand our language offerings and tactically support the growth of the business. Total member acquisition costs during the quarter were 8.2 million, or 41% of revenues, compared to 7.2 million in the year-ago quarter. In the quarter, we benefited from our efforts to optimize customer acquisition costs over the past several quarters, with per customer acquisition costs down 9% sequentially. In the second quarter, we experienced growth in our direct member base, which is a continuation from the first quarter. Additionally, we witnessed a return to growth among our largest third-party partners, which is a reversal of the contraction we experienced in the first quarter. The growth in both our direct member base and third-party member bases during the quarter is building our confidence that we are through the worst of the post COVID member unwinding. Selling and operating expenses, including marketing and member acquisition costs in the second quarter were 8.9 million or 45% of revenues, which is up slightly from the prior year period. This increase reflects the end of contracts and related expenses incurred as a result of the company's cost improvements that were completed during the first quarter. Corporate GNA, and corporate expense in the second quarter were 1.5 million or 8% of revenues, down 15% from the prior year period. We expect to realize most of the benefits of the cost reductions undertaken in the first quarter in the second half of 2023 and anticipate the cost improvements will support the financial state of the business going forward. During the second quarter of 2023, we recorded a net loss of 1.7 million, or negative $0.08 per share compared to the net income of $0.1 million in the year-ago period. The decline was primarily driven by the reductions in revenues between periods. Adjusted EBITDA was $3.1 million, or 16% of revenues, in the quarter, and we generated free cash. Our deferred revenues for the second quarter were $15.5 million, an increase of $1.4 million from the year-ago period. We expect to continue to benefit from the inherent negative working capital cycle in our business model as we continue to grow our member base and revenues. In addition, we expect to be in a position to continue generating cash flows from operations in excess of the cash flows we reinvest back into our content library and production enhancements going forward. Due to our in-house production capabilities and lack of contractual commitments tied to our content production, we have significant discretion in the amount and timing of our investments. This flexibility allows us to adjust our investment levels as needed to withstand a downturn in the macroeconomic environment if necessary. Through the company's focus on accelerating growth and a return to positive operating margins, we have made tremendous progress over the past several quarters on numerous key areas of improvement for the business. With continued disciplined execution and the launch of Gaia Marketplace, We are well-positioned to continue growing revenues and to remain cash flows positive going forward. With that, I will hand it back to Jirka for some closing remarks.

Well, with the cost tail of our staff reduction now being gone, our annualized gross profit for employees recently reached an all-time high of over $610,000. With the number... With the member growth in July running above the pace for the second quarter, plus guy marketplace beginning to be rolled out to improve our ARPU and revenue, we can look for a stronger second half of the year. And with that, that concludes our remarks, and I would like to open it for the question. Please, Maria. Operator, please.

Thank you, sir. We will now be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may press star two if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Mark Argenjo with Lake Street. Please proceed with your question.

Hey, York. Hey, Matt. I just wanted to drill down a little bit on customer acquisition or subscriber acquisition costs. Are you seeing, you know, the costs to acquire in terms of going out buying keywords or other types of online ads? And, you know, what trends are you seeing there? And do you think it's sustainable to be able to kind of cost-effectively acquire at this point?

Hi, Mark. Thanks. We – Generally, we'll see right now the cost of acquisition is definitely improved from the last year when this, you know, the whole world environment was much more negative still with the post-COVID. So this year, we target generally about 39% to 41% of revenue. It depends on efficiencies. We were on the higher end of it because the efficiencies start to be good. And I kind of hope that that will kind of continue as what it is. With COVID gone, also seasonality came back, and second quarter was historically our slowest quarter. So we were pleased with the actual results. And I think as we are kind of focusing on some new initiatives, we talk about it now for a little bit, for focusing on the members with higher retention rather than just low cost. it's definitely the overall growth start to be helped by the improver attention. Does it answer your question?

Yeah, no, that's helpful. It sounds like a little better environment. Hopefully it continues there. Just shifting gears quickly, obviously nice to see you guys cash flow positive in the quarter. I think in your prepared remarks, did you say you anticipate that being cash flow positive going forward? Is that what I'm hearing?

Yes, yeah. Hey, Mark, it's Ned. Thanks for the question. That is correct. So Q2 was a big transition quarter for us in moving to that positive cash, and we do anticipate forecast that continuing for the second half.

Yeah, the improvement in the quarter from the first quarter was about $1.3 million in a positive way, direction. And so we kind of hope that with all the tail of the staff reduction being gone, that obviously that will improve.

Great. It's good to hear. This last one for me. In terms of the marketplace, could you just refresh us on what should we look for there in terms of a rollout or how does that stage out over the next quarter or two?

Yeah, so we just kind of right now rolling it to small amount of people be putting it from about 10 to 20,000 our members active members and see kind of the response so we kind of know how to market because there's several way to display it mostly and on a screen of those people as we can target. And as we're kind of looking a lot for, like, experience rather than products, our first product ties to our ancient civilization series. We also have a conference, what's called Pre-Dulubal Civilization. So we go and have a remarketing tour to Pre-Dulubal Egypt, which is probably about 8,000 to 10,000, you know, range. We kind of, obviously, jobbing it out, we keep about 30% of that. That's what we'll be booked as a margin. We won't book the whole price, only the 30% we keep. However, of that, you know, our members, if they're members, they get 10% discount. They come from our side. So that's roughly how it goes. We're going to slowly increase The number of people at Venice, you know, we see it's running smooth. We had other experiences of potential some products. So it's something what I think as we go to end of the year, it should start really meaningfully improved our ARPU and hopefully also the revenue, of course.

That's super helpful. I appreciate it. I'll hop back in the queue. Thanks.

Thank you.

Our next question comes from Thierry Wollode with Water Tower Research. Please proceed with your question.

Yes, greetings, Jocha and Ned. Mark covered quite a few questions there, but I was curious, you had some good momentum, you told us, from the foreign language subscribers earlier this year. Is that continuing? Can you give us some color there?

Yeah, that's kind of started, you know, already like a couple quarters and it's increasing. You know, we did invest in the languages over the last two years as, you know, we were dealing with COVID. We didn't have, this was more challenging marketing environment and we didn't want to fight it. We would rather reserve the cash last year. We did spend it on getting ready for the language offering, especially in the French and German. The Spanish was existing before. So obviously those are the languages we kind of going there. And anytime you go to new languages, especially in some European countries, we're kind of ahead of the curve. There's not a really strong offering on those languages. So we so far... see both acquisition cost and retention being better than in the U.S. So we're probably spending more as a percentage of revenue in those countries than we spend in the U.S. right now. So overall, our international kind of increasing. Our international membership, it's right now about 35% overall because our direct, so our third parties like Amazon, YouTube, Comcast, they're all in English. So if I take our percentage of our direct, it's probably more on the high 40s as a percentage. But either one, if you look at Netflix, they're about two-thirds. So I expect over the next few years, our international percentage will grow, providing the trend what we feel right now will sustain.

Great. Thank you. In terms of your, I guess, not just your US, but all your subscribers, your members, do you have any color on consumption? Are you seeing more consumption of your content or no real differences there post the whole COVID situation?

Well, I mean, during the COVID, especially when we're talking about from mid-2021 to mid-2022, which we still compare it to, we had more viewing and more subscribers there. But, you know, after the post-COVID wave, when those subscribers, you know, like everywhere left. So we kind of saw, obviously we kind of saw decrease the post-COVID, but I have to say that starting this year in the first quarter, which is kind of, going to, you know, that people start to have a free time last year. I mean, they could travel like they can do now. We actually see increases this year. Again, we used to see it before COVID, and COVID went quite high. It was like it came down, but now we see increases on the viewing again.

Okay. Any update on, do you have some event-plus scheduled for the balance of the year? Can you give us some updates there? Sure.

We have about two weeks. We have one of the main conferences, what we call Ancient Civilization, which is about 10, 11 speakers, which is kind of one of our key conferences. So it's coming, I think, 12, 13 of August. with another one like a few weeks later. So we're going to, you probably see our cadence and promotion of all events plus will probably increase with the kind of, we obviously have a little bit of disruption through COVID, so we're picking up where we kind of stopped before. So I think it's a, We didn't focus on it till beginning of this year, but I think the second part of the year, it will be focused on it. And I think with Gaia Marketplace getting launched, we also have a better way how to promote it.

Okay, great. Well, thanks. I appreciate the update. Thank you.

Our next question comes from Mark Argento, Blake Street. Please proceed with your question.

Hey guys, just a quick follow-up. So, you know, kind of just going everything down, maybe just an update on at five, 10,000 feet, kind of the strategy, you know, for the company here, you know, now that it looks like you're able to cost effectively acquire subs again, you're going to lean into growth a little more aggressively, maybe just, you know, maybe a little higher level, Yurka, how you see the world right now and kind of where you guys are after, you know, the high and the low of the, you know, the, COVID and then the post-COVID overhang, it seems like maybe we're kind of normalizing a little. But, you know, given the kind of the environment we're in and what you're seeing, what, you know, what's the higher level strategy at this point? Thanks.

Well, it's, it's just like from the like, you know, the CL level, it's, I actually could see from my point that because now we kind of the, you know, the new team as we have a couple of new additions, it's kind of side of click, and it's a really good team, you know, as a chemistry-wide. So I'm very pleased with that. And obviously with the growth and increasing ARPU, I feel pretty good about, you know, where we're heading. So I think you can expect the company acceleration and producing, say, with positive cash flow. And I think the question cash flow versus growth, I think we want to really – start to increase the growth, but at staying in positive cash flow. So basically, we want to stay in positive cash flow and we generate more dollars, we put it back in the growth. But we don't want to go negative on free cash flow. So I think that's pretty much where it is. It's pretty simple right now. You know, grow as fast as we can without going negative in the cash flow. And the cost per employee, which is the gross profit per employee, which is which you start to be up there. And as long as we can keep it on these levels, I think that the cash flow and profitability would kind of come from there as well. But I think it's grow as fast as we can while staying positive cash flow is the strategy.

Yeah, and Mark, if I could, this is Ned. I'll just elaborate just a little bit. As the person that's just been here for a month, it's a big reason why I came to Gaia. But just because of that leverage, I'm just very impressed with a company that, you know, runs with, you know, around 110, 120 full-time employees driving over $80 million of revenue. But the efficiencies that I've seen and the ability to pull the levers when needed around increased marketing spend for the right reasons, it really is impressive. So as I said in my commentary earlier, the continued execution against the existing plans is very much what I look forward to here. But we just really look forward to the upside leverage of that model.

And also to mention, as Ted talked about leverage, you know, as Ted mentioned, our gross margin came, you know, 90 basis point or something down. It actually was purely because we keep growing, you know, putting new content and with the revenue slowdown last year, It changed the ratio compared to revenue, but if you look at what we call net, we have basically a line, what we call a cash contribution. It's basically cash margin that how much, what it will cost to have a new customer. That's kind of the same number, but less amortization. That actually increased from 93% to 94% of revenues. So from the cash point, how margins are actually expanding is where we're talking free cash flow.

Very helpful. Good luck the rest of the way this year, guys. Thanks. Thanks, Mark.

There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the floor back over to Ayurka Rusavi for closing comments.

Well, thank you, everyone, for joining. And we look forward to speaking with you when we report our third quarter, which should be in early November. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.