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spk00: Good day and welcome to the GoPros Q4 2020 earnings conference call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Christopher Clark. Please go ahead, sir.
spk02: Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to GoPros fourth quarter and full year earnings conference call. With me today are GoPros CEO Nicholas Woodman and CFO and COO Brian McGee. Before we get started, I'd like to remind everyone that our remarks today may include forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements and all other statements that are not historical facts are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties which may cause actual results to differ materially. Additionally, any forward-looking statements made today are based on assumptions as of today. including but not limited to uncertainty related to the duration and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This means that results could change at any time, and our commentary about business results and outlook is based on the information available as of today's date. We do not undertake any obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events. Information concerning our risk factors is available in our most recent annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2019, and quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30th, 2020, each of which is on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and is updated in future filings with the SEC, including the annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31st, 2020. Today we may discuss gross margin, operating expense, net profit and loss, as well as basic and diluted net profit and loss per share in accordance with GAAP and additionally on a non-GAAP basis. We believe that non-GAAP information is useful because it can enhance the understanding of our ongoing economic performance. We use non-GAAP reporting internally to evaluate and manage our operations. We choose to provide this information to enable investors to perform comparisons of operating results in a manner similar to how we analyze our own operating results. A reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP operating expenses can be found in the press release that was issued this afternoon and which is posted on our website. In addition to the earnings press release, we have posted management commentary and slides containing detailed financial data and metrics for the fourth quarter and full year 2020. The management commentary and slides, as well as the link to today's live webcast and a replay of this conference call, are posted on the GoPro Investor Relations website to your reference. All income statement-related numbers that are discussed today during the call, other than revenue, are non-debt unless otherwise noted. Now I'll turn the call over to GoPro's founder and CEO, Nicholas Woodman.
spk01: Thank you, Chris, and good afternoon, everyone. Before we get started, I'd like to encourage everybody to read the commentary we posted earlier today to the GoPro Investor Relations page on our website. In addition to providing an overview of our quarterly and annual results, plus forward-looking guidance, the commentary provides our thoughts on our business going forward. I will now share some brief remarks, and then we'll go directly into Q&A. in 2020 we evolved gopro into a more efficient subscription oriented direct-to-consumer business we grew our gopro subscriber base by 145 percent year-over-year to 601 000 subscribers and generated more than 200 million in cash flow from operations in the second half of the year this represented 33 percent of our second half revenue and contributed to a year-end cash balance of $328 million. Strong Q4 performance resulted in $0.39 of non-GAAP EPS for the quarter and $0.08 of non-GAAP EPS for the year. We achieved this with disciplined expense management, an approach we are committed to maintaining. Our 2020 performance amidst the pandemic demonstrates GoPro's enduring relevance as a personal experience sharing solution for consumers and powerful creative tool for professionals. Looking ahead, our plan is to continue super serving our core customers with outsized GoPro subscriber benefits while expanding our relevance to users of other cameras and smartphones through software subscription offerings. We believe we can maintain our rapid pace of innovation, launching exciting new hardware and software products backed by significant world-class marketing, all within reasonable spend levels that are directionally in line with 2020. We're excited about 2021, even amidst the pandemic. We've proven time and again that GoPro can thrive during challenging times. We believe the steps we're taking to strengthen our business today will benefit us in spades when the world eventually rebounds from the pandemic in earnest. But fortunately, as a business, we do not have to wait for that to happen. I want to thank our employees around the world for their resilience and adaptability throughout 2020. Your dedication and world-class execution is why we are well positioned for the future. And now, operator, we're ready to take questions.
spk00: All right. If you would like to ask a question, you may signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. If you're using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. A voice prompt on the phone line will indicate when your line is open. Again, that is star 1 to ask a question. And we'll pause for just a moment to allow everyone an opportunity to signal. All right, we'll take the first question from Paul Schwong with JP Morgan.
spk03: Hi, thanks for taking my question. So just on your full year 21 guidance, you know, given the large kind of seasonal mix in second half, what kind of gives you the confidence in providing, you know, some visibility there? And, you know, what kind of large factors can sway this higher to maybe possibly rebound to that 4 million kind of units selling per year that we've done in the past, and then have a follow-up. Yeah, hi, Paul. This is Brian. Well, let's talk about 2020. We sold through 3.6 million units, and we shipped in about 2.8 million units. And that delta is because we took channel inventory down about 800,000 units and ended the year at about 650,000 units in the channel. So that's an important distinction to make. And we think we've got the right channel inventory in place. As we look to 2021, We expect to continue on the DTC transition and shift our revenue up from the 32% that we had in 2020 to 38% to 42% in 2021. I'd say we have very good visibility into the first quarter, and our trends from the sell-through and sell-in perspective are hitting the mark related to our guide of 185. million in Q1. And so we think on a range that sell through is going to be in 3.4 to 3.6 million units right now and sell in in kind of 3.2 to 3.4. So we may see about 100,000 units or so reduction in the channel even in 21. And that's really due to the fact that we're growing our expectation is to grow more empty to see and so we would continue to trim retail inventories a bit and keep them at healthy levels in going into the end of 21 and into 2022. gotcha thanks for that and then you know your unit selfie was off by you know maybe around 100k relative to guidance kind of What drove the difference there? I noticed regionally EMEA and Asia were a bit softer, and you mentioned the pandemic. But, you know, is there kind of more preference for North American consumers to kind of go to the website? And what's been the split overseas for GoPro.com sales, and how are you driving more traffic there? Any comments you can make? Thanks. Yeah. GoPro.com did great. Record quarter. You know, we doubled the business on a year-over-year basis and up 92%. So terrific performance on DIPA.com. Our revenue came in within our guidance. Within the split between retail and consumer, we were within like 5% of our revenue was kind of split between. It went a little bit more heavy to retail than D to C. We definitely saw some slowness in EMEA. and APAC channels, largely related to COVID. And North America did do well and better than what we expected and made up for some of that in Europe and in Asia. We've also taken that into account as we looked at our forecast for Q1 and our trending on sell-through we think is trending right into the 700,000 units that we've provided on the commentary. Okay, great.
spk01: And then, Paul, just to add one more bit of color specifically to your, does there seem to be a preference with consumers for shopping offline versus online in certain regions like EMEA or Asia? And the answer to that is no. We definitely saw strong dot-com performance and then some softness as COVID lockdowns ramped up and consumer online shopping did take a hit. as a part of that. So we could map the softness to COVID lockdowns intensifying in certain regions. So there does not seem to be a headwind for us as it relates to growing our business internationally. The headwind is specifically the pandemic.
spk03: And then my last question is on the GoPro subs, very good progress there. What kind of features are users engaging with the most? And then next year when we kind of lap that large cohort of subs from year nine sales what kind of gives you the confidence in in low churn rates and retention and you know are there any kind of cumbersome or you know high switching costs for customer um maybe related to stores that would kind of deter them from moving off gopro um so subscription service thanks
spk01: Well, the consumer behavior and their taking advantage of the various GoPro subscription benefits is mapping to the consumer insights research that we did and that we do ongoing to understand what are the biggest drivers for people signing up as a subscriber. And I'm happy to say that they're taking advantage of the key benefits. And that gives us a good feeling as it relates to subscribers getting value out of the subscription. They're making use of the subscription benefits ongoing. And that just points to an engaged customer that we believe we're going to be able to do a good job of retaining. We have, as we've shared earlier, Very impressive retention and low churn rates. We're really happy with those. We continue to drive those down as we continue to improve both the marketing of the subscription, driving awareness of the benefits so that consumers can take advantage of them, then they're happier customers and we have better retention. And that's all moving in the right direction. So we feel really good about that. And that's just where we are today in February. So we've got a lot on tap for the rest of the year to further improve retention and keep churn low.
spk03: And, Paul, the thing I guess I would add on top of it is we have that visibility. We are seeing solid traction even in Q1 on GoPro.com. And that's also what's helping to drive up our ASPs. We're seeing margin improvement. You saw it in Q4. We've given a little bit of an expanded margin in our guide for 21, 38% to 39%. And the implied guidance in our management commentary would point to a very profitable GoPro in 2021 with, again, solid test generation in the $150 million or so range. So we're very happy with how the results went in Q4 and the look ahead in 2021. Great. Thank you.
spk00: All right. Once again, that is star one to ask a question. If you find your question has been answered, you may remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Our next question is from Andrew Urquitz with Oppenheimer and Company.
spk03: Hey, gentlemen. Thanks for letting me ask a couple questions. The first one, I guess, is probably for Nick. With the new, I guess, the new 999 subscription, Presumably this is trying to capture the MAUs that are using the GoPro app that don't have cameras. So how should we think about that number as it fits into your subscription number for the year? And if you could shed any light on how you'll hopefully convert those folks to traditional GoPro users.
spk01: Sure. Thanks, Andrew. Yeah, we're really excited about the upcoming revamp and subscription-based offering of the GoPro app. You're spot on. It's a way for us to serve as a personal content solution, helping users of any camera, including smartphones, get the most out of their personal photos and videos. We all suffer from the bottomless pit that is our camera roll. And you know the feeling when you capture a great photo or video or have one sent to you and you save it to your camera roll. And you have that moment where you wistfully look at it and you acknowledge there's a good chance you're never going to see that again. And that's a very widespread problem shared by everybody that uses a phone. And with a phone, they're lucky because they actually know where their photos and videos are. And so with the upcoming GoPro app revamped with the mural wall feature, it makes it really easy for you as a user to send that photo or video that you know the moment you see it, that that's something that you're going to want to keep track of and revisit later. And you send it to the app. You don't even have to open the app to have it go there. You can send it straight from your camera roll. and it'll be presented to you on your mural, which serves as a chronological feed of your personal favorite moments. And then combined with that are all of our top-tier powerful editing tools, auto video generation capabilities, and ultimately the GoPro app is going to scale over time as the most enabling yet simple tool app to help you get the most out of your personal content. And we think that this is a significant sized market globally. We think our brand is really well positioned to solve this problem for people. And importantly, we have the brand to drive awareness to grow usage of this app at what we believe will be impressive scale. It's directly in our wheelhouse. We don't have to take on very much additional OpEx to go and make this possible for people that don't own a GoPro because we're already building this solution for GoPro users. But by making it subscription-based, we can extend access to it to anybody that owns a smartphone or another camera And over time, we think that this is going to become a really meaningful solution for people that is going to punch way above its weight class in terms of its value proposition to what a user will pay to use it on an annual basis. So we're pretty excited about it.
spk03: Yeah, got it. I appreciate that additional color. I guess the next question.
spk01: Well, sorry to answer. There was one part of your question and the answer is, You know, the Quick app, which we sunsetted about a year and a half ago, has roughly 8.6 million monthly active users. That's a free app. It's very outdated relative to the new GoPro app experience. And it's a pretty significant opportunity for us to market the new GoPro app experience to these quick users and migrate them over time to the GoPro app. And then, of course, we have the roughly 5 million monthly active users at the GoPro app itself that, you know, assuming they're not already GoPro subscribers for $49.99 a year, that's also an opportunity for us to upsell them to the $10 a year functionality that includes the mural experience as well as a slew of premium editing tools that we're going to roll out over time. So those are just two of many growth initiatives that we've got for this new subscription service. Got it. That's helpful.
spk03: And I guess when I think about your unit guidance for 2021, it looks like it's coming in – a little bit down year over year. Is that on a sell-through basis? Sorry, on a sell-through basis. Is that mostly just caution around COVID? Or is there something more to it related to just fewer stores and just a further decline in retail? Any color there would be helpful. Yeah, hi, Andrew. It's Brian. It's related to the number thing. COVID for one and being cautious. I think as the world opens up, there's opportunity to expand that. You recall last year early on in 2020, we were at about $3.2 million to $3.4 million. We raised it up to 3.6 uh same with seltzer so we have the ability to um step it up and and that would increase profitability further right because we get a lot of financial leverage from that um and so that i think that's that's solid upside um we will also see more movement to the to the high end or 300 $200 and more price point and less on the lower end as well. So that's helping to drive AFPs. It's going to be supported in gopro.com. That's helping with margins and profitability. So we think, you know, it's on balance with visibility we have today. And I think there's hopefully upside as the world comes back. Got it. And then this last question, it looks like based on your guidance, your cash balance by the end of the year is going to be a healthy amount, one we haven't seen in a while. How is that affecting your view on potential investment opportunities, whether it's M&A or internal? How are you thinking about that use of cash going forward? Yeah, well... There's a few uses of cash. In 2022, we'll pay back, I think, $125 million of debt, right, on the convert. And there's more in 2025. We split that up and actually paid some off early in Q4, which is good. I think from an OpEx perspective, we said we would continue to be hawkish. We will continue to invest in innovation and technology. and improving the website experience for GoPro.com. So those are key initiatives for the company that I'll take investment. And there's other areas that we'll be able to be more prudent and cut back. So we want to stay in the $305 to $315 million range for OPEX in 2021. And it's upside because, you know, our revenue is up too. So that's also contributing it to go up. But we're definitely going to make those investments and be prudent about our cash balances. And actually, to your point, we're at $328 million ending the year. we haven't had a $300 million number in cash for a number of years. So, you know, the cash generation in the second half was well above $200 million, which was – those are records for the company. Two quarters in a row where we had $100 million in operating cash flow.
spk01: Got it. Thank you so much, guys. Great quarter. Thank you.
spk00: All right. We'll take the next question from Jim Silva with Citigroup Investment Research.
spk03: Thank you, Nick and Brian. And I sincerely want to say congratulations on managing through a very, very, very challenging year of 2020. quite remarkable results. I have one question for Brian and one for Nick.
spk02: Brian, you being CFO, we normally talk to you about seasonality, quarter to quarter, and I realized 2020 was very difficult, and you gave in your commentary some very good 2021 outlooks. For revenues and EPS, is seasonality kind of still in place largely, or with COVID lapping us And, you know, think about vaccines being prevalent more as we increase to the year and maybe people go on vacations and travel and do more extreme stuff later on the year.
spk03: Is there a chance the second half could be even seasonally stronger, stronger, stronger than expected?
spk02: Or I'm just kind of wondering about what you've built into your guidance. And then for Nick, you know, CEO, you know, your move to subscription model has been fantastic. Are there a couple of
spk03: um apps or interface items or variables whether it be video editing or the upload function that really surpassed your expectations it seems to really draw the subscriber base in even more i was just kind of wondering because i know that you have a lot of enhancements which you know one two or three really are you know bringing in uh bringing in so much thank you yeah hi jim thank you let me start um We expect on a year-over-year basis to grow in every quarter in 21 over 2020. The biggest growth, of course, will be in quarter one and quarter two. And, you know, because we'll be up, our guidance implies 55%. growth in Q1 21 over Q1 20. Obviously, in the first half is when the pandemic hit of 20. So there will be some seasonality. Q2 and Q4 tend to be seasonally stronger for the company. And so you should expect that kind of in the modeling.
spk02: Great. Thanks, Brian. And Nick, anything on the apps that really is bringing in the subs so much?
spk01: Yeah, it's a good question. Well, as I shared before, we're happy to see that both our research and the reality of how consumers are taking advantage of subscription benefits are aligning. Of course, the savings at GoPro.com are important, and we're seeing the lion's share of lifestyle goods and accessory sales going to subscribers who are taking advantage of the 30% to 50% savings that they get at GoPro.com on non-camera items. That's really good to see because that shows, one, that there's a comprehension of those savings, and two, We're seeing subscribers pay for their $49.99 annual subscription very quickly with the savings that they're getting through their backpacks or their mounts and accessories for their cameras, the hats and shirts that they're buying. There's real value there, and it adds up quickly to the $49.99 annual GoPro subscription. So that's a really positive sign. But as it relates to the app, Content backup is really important to our customers. We're a company that helps people capture some of the most exciting and meaningful moments in their lives, and they want to safeguard those moments. So our cloud backup is of significant value, and we're seeing good usage there. And then the editing tools that we offer in the GoPro app are really important to our subscribers. And that's one of the reasons we're really excited about the upcoming GoPro app revamp because we're going to be introducing new editing tools at a steady clip for our customers ongoing. And as well, of course, the neural content management wall which is going to do a phenomenal job of helping people keep track of the content that they're capturing and generating and can easily share from their wall. And I think it's going to be a significant enhancement to the overall experience, building on what our customers are already using and capitalizing on the feedback they're giving us of what they want to see next. you know kudos to uh our research consumer research team uh and our product teams for um both going out and learning what our customers want from us and then going and building it for them uh it's it's paying off in spades and i think that's the you know underlying strength in the business that you see is that this is gopro's serving a real purpose in people's lives and we're doing a terrific job of it and i think that's why you're seeing the business perform so well sir congratulations to you and your team on on a great year and looking forward to 2021 thank you yeah thank you we're really we're really looking forward to 2021 because if gopro can perform this way amidst the pandemic as i mentioned in my prepared remarks um we don't need the pen we all want the pandemic to go away for obvious reasons but as a business We're not sitting around waiting for that to happen. We're driving a successful and growing business, and we're well-placed for when the world begins to snap back.
spk00: All right, we'll take the next question from Nick Toradov with Longbow Research.
spk03: Yeah, thanks, guys. Brian and Nick, when you guys announced your plans to transition to a direct business model in Q2, at the time I think you expected GoPro.com to become majority of your sales in 2021. You got it below 50% for GoPro.com in 2021, and I think the fourth quarter was the second quarter in a row where GoPro.com sales came a little bit lower than your expectations. I just wonder, has anything changed since the original comment you made when you announced the plan to go direct? And should we expect GoPro.com to become majority of their sales at some point in time? Let me start with that one, Nikolai. When we first talked about that back in May, retail was completely shut, quite frankly. And we sold on our website, I believe we were over 40% in Q2 of 2020. And it also wasn't clear how retail was going to come back, quite frankly, and when the pandemic was going to end. But we can have visibility on our own business, which on our site, we doubled it on a year-over-year basis. And so since then, we've seen retail come back. It's still an important channel. So we have two strong channels. that we get product to consumers, Gopro.com plus a retail channel globally. That's actually a real advantage, I think, from a distribution perspective for the company, that we have that reach, whether it be Gopro.com or retail. Gopro.com is obviously a more profitable channel for us, and we'll continue to drive that in subscriptions, But we're very happy with the fact that we were able to, throughout 2020, raise our numbers. And part of that was due to retail coming back. And a good chunk of it was GoPro.com driving quite a lot of business.
spk01: Yeah, I would add to that. You're never going to hear us complain about retail coming back better than expected and being a healthy channel for us. I mean, thank God for our retailers and many thanks to them for their continued support of GoPro. We've got a saying, one of our core values at GoPro is strength in numbers. Going it alone is a lot riskier than when you've got a number of strategic partners to help you succeed, and that's the case at GoPro. That said, the bounce back of our retail channel's performance is actually helpful to GoPro because it reduces the risk significantly as we continue to make investments to improve our direct-to-consumer capabilities, whether it's being able to do a better job Direct marketing to consumers as more as an individual as opposed to just a mass market blast to everybody and you're not even sure who owns a camera or not. Those are investments that we're making that are going to yield significant returns for us this year. And as well, we're investing significantly in our e-commerce platform to do a much better job of merchandising the cameras, upselling accessories, and again, having a better understanding of who the customer is and what they might actually want to buy from us and where they are in their GoPro lifecycle. And these are all investments and developments that take time. and it's it's fantastic that uh our teams were able to double our uh direct to consumer gopro.com revenues last year but about how quickly we had to do that and what uh improvements we were able to make to our approach from a technical standpoint the team got a ton done but it's just a fraction of the little opportunity we have to enhance our capabilities So while we have a strong retail channel to help us drive our business while we make these investments and improve our direct-to-consumer capabilities, I don't see how that could possibly be seen as a negative. And that's another way of answering the question that we absolutely see significant opportunity to grow our direct business over time. And this is a marathon, not a sprint. And there's just a lot of greenfield opportunity to improve our approach.
spk03: Got it. Then maybe a more question on overall demand trends and sell-through. I mean... If I look at the implied full-year guidance, it sounds like you're still expecting sell-through to be down in the second half of the calendar year. I think most people operate under the impression that there's going to be some normalization from COVID, but maybe you're thinking differently, and that's part of the reason for that guidance. I think if you look at the broader consumer electronics space, I think the expectations are that there's if not growth for 2021, that demand will be at least flat versus very challenging, very easy to compare from 2020. How are you thinking about overall demand environment for GoPro as we go forward?
spk01: I'll pick that up and then, Brian, if you want to add anything. You know, we shared our demand outlook in terms of our guide. I think where we differ from traditional consumer electronics, per se, is that in many ways, we're tied to human activity. And the more active humans are, consumers are, the more they're out and about, the more they're celebrating life and sharing experiences, the more of a, you know, valued proposition we represent to those consumers. So if you're talking about, you know, streaming video game sales or video game platforms, you know, consoles or things that remain in the house when somebody finally goes outside and travels more and is more active. We don't fall into that same stay at home consumer electronics category. So that relates to my point that we're very well positioned for to succeed during the pandemic. and even better positioned to thrive on another level as the world, even if it takes baby steps, bouncing back. You can imagine the outsized positive impact that can have on our business. Now, we're not factoring that into our guide. Our outlook is that You know, the world continues to go along the way that it's been. In certain areas of the world, there'll be a better condition as it relates to the pandemic. In others, it might be hit harder. But net-net, we think that we're positioned to succeed. And make no mistake, the world will bounce back at some point and we'll be there waiting.
spk03: And, Nicola, I think the other point to make is if you look at the distribution by quarter, it's more evenly distributed, which is actually kind of more normal, at least within the content. You have Q4 going up for seasonality, of course. That enables us to be profitable in quarters two, three, and four. And so we guided for basically break-even distribution plus or minus, I think, $0.03 in Q1. So we think we can be profitable in Q1, and we haven't done that in quite a long time. And a very profitable GoPro in 2021 and continuing to generate a lot of cash. And if the demand profile comes back stronger, as Nick had mentioned, if the world comes back, we have the opportunity to drive more profitability and more revenue growth. But, you know, we're forecasting 20% to 25% up on a year-over-year basis, which is pretty darn good, most of that on units, but also some on ASP as we continue to shift to the high end, a strategy we've taken on since basically 2019 that's worked very well for the company and for the consumers for the product they get.
spk02: Okay. Thanks, Brian.
spk03: And the last question, you know, Nick, I think last quarter you shared some metrics about conversion rate to subscription on purchases through GoPro.com. I believe, if I'm not mistaken, that number was 80% to 85% on people who bought flagship cameras online. Maybe can you provide us an update on that metric, and how should we think about conversion rates on retail? It seems like you mentioned it's much lower. I wonder if you can give us some numbers. Thanks. Yeah, maybe I can start on that one, and then Nick can chime in. Yeah, on the conference call back in November, we saw the initial uptake for subscription on broker.com in the 80% to 85% range, as you had mentioned. Through the quarter, that continued to climb, and I believe we ended at close to 90%. conversion on GoPro.com. So it definitely stepped up, which helped the subscriber growth number. And that's continued, quite frankly, even into Q1. So that's a very nice metric. And organic through retail is obviously much lower. And I think those rates are somewhere around 7% to 12% kind of range. So obviously the lion's share of subscribers is coming from gopro.com. Okay. Got it. Thanks, guys. Good luck. Thank you. Thank you, Nicola.
spk00: Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. And we'll take the next question from Eric Woodring with Morgan Stanley. Eric, your line is open if you would like to ask a question.
spk03: Can you hear me? Yes.
spk00: Yes, we can hear you. Go ahead.
spk03: Okay, perfect. Sorry about that, guys. So I just wanted to follow up on one of Andrew's questions earlier. Just obviously significant cash balance, but at the same time, you know, your CapEx has fallen to I think it was $5 million in 2020. I'd love to get your outlook on how you think about that growing. If you do think about that growing into the future, why not ramp that higher as you're building your business, becoming more profitable, generating more cash? And then I will follow up. Yeah, a lot of the CapEx, quite frankly, is related to two things. Point of purchase displays in retail, which I think is a lion's share of it, and then tooling and such from an engineering perspective. We've been able to really do a good job managing much more tightly in engineering CapEx spend. So good on the engineering team for being much more prudent and efficient in how we go about doing that. um so that's important to note and on pop because we're reducing retail footprint we don't need to spend as much money on pop and that's another reason why uh going more direct is actually a more efficient and effective uh method for us to go to market and why you know better from a profitability perspective okay that's helpful um The second question would just be, I love that you're trying to solve this problem of having all these pictures and videos lost in your camera roll. It's something I suffer from as well. But I consider myself someone that's aware of the brand. How are you guys going to... get that brand awareness out to those consumers that perhaps aren't GoPro users and that are only smartphone users and perhaps don't know the GoPro brand as well. Just curious how you guys think about going about doing that. Thanks.
spk01: Well, there are a number of ways to drive awareness for apps. that we'll be employing that we haven't really had to do before for the GoPro app because we really only target the GoPro app at GoPro hardware owners. That's true. But it's not rocket science. We've had a lot of success with the Quick app, which I mentioned. We sunset that almost two years ago, and it still has 8.6 million monthly active use. It's incredibly well-regarded in consumer reviews, very highly ranked in the app stores. And so we'll be employing the same tactics that we use to grow the popularity of the Quick app to scale the GoPro app's awareness of the GoPro app and its popularity outside of the GoPro community. But make no mistake, I think that the GoPro fan base It's in the neighborhood of 45 million, 46 million social followers, direct followers. And then, of course, you have the extended follower base of all the influencers, athletes, and celebrities that we work with. It's a very large brand network that we've got that we're going to be leveraging to drive awareness of this new product that we've got. So on the marketing front and on the branding front, We're feeling very good because I think we're pretty well regarded for being a strong marketing organization. And then it's all about value and really solving problems for people And as you know, when you have a great product and you make your customers successful, they also do a wonderful job of driving awareness for you through their advocacy. And because the GoPro app is centered around helping you get the most out of your photos and videos, when you're doing that and sharing them more often from the GoPro app, that is also going to virally drive awareness for the app. So the list goes on in terms of the number of ways that we have to drive awareness and ultimately scale the GoPro app subscription into something meaningful over time.
spk03: No, that's really helpful. Thank you for that, Colin. I guess last question for Brian. Just curious, you guys obviously gave guidance for OpEx in 2021, but we're just curious how you're thinking about that from a sales and marketing relative to R&D, relative to G&A perspective, if you're going all of those items, if you're pulling back and then growing some of them. Thanks. Yeah, I think we'll see some growth in R&D. There'll be a little bit of growth in sales and marketing, but some things we're able to spend less on are basically being offset by investment, and we'll see reductions in GMA. Okay. That's awesome. Thank you, guys. Thank you.
spk00: All right. It appears there are no further questions at this time. Mr. Woodman, I'd like to turn the conference back to you for any additional or closing remarks.
spk01: Thank you, operator. Thank you, everyone. I'd like to reiterate our excitement for GoPro's future and for 2021, where we plan to super serve our customers through high-value subscription offerings and in parallel scale GoPro's margin profitability and, importantly, predictability. We believe we can continue to succeed during this pandemic, which puts us in a strong position for when the world begins to recover in earnest. Thank you again to all of GoPro's employees and partners who are making this possible. We're grateful for this group win. And thank you to everyone for joining today's call. We genuinely appreciate your time and support. This is Team GoPro signing off.
spk00: This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
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