LiveOne, Inc.

Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call

6/29/2022

speaker
Operator
Thank you for standing by the conference will begin momentarily. Again, thank you all for standing by the conference will begin momentarily. We'll be right back. Thank you. Thank you for standing by and welcome to the LiveOne Incorporated fourth quarter and full year fiscal 2022 webcast. My name is Sam and I will be your moderator for today's call. All lines will be muted during the presentation portion of the call with an opportunity for questions and answers at the end. If you'd like to ask a question at this time, please press star one on your cell phone keypad. I'd now like to turn the call over to our host, Aaron Sullivan, interim CEO. Aaron?
speaker
Sam
Thank you. Good morning and welcome to LiveONE's Business Update and Financial Results conference call for the company's fourth quarter and full fiscal year ended March 31, 2022. Presenting on today's call are Rob Ellen, CEO and Chairman, and myself, Aaron Sullivan, Interim CFO. I would like to remind you that some of the statements made on today's call are forward-looking and are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that involve various risks and uncertainties. These statements include but are not limited to statements regarding the future performance of the company, including expected future financial results and expected future growth in the business. Actual results may differ materially from those discussed on the call for a variety of reasons. Please refer to the company's filings with the SEC for information about factors which could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements, including those described in its annual report on Form 10-K, to the year ended March 31, 2022 and subsequent SEC filing. You'll find reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures discussed today in the company's earnings release, which is posted on its Investors Relations website at ir.live1.com. And the company encourages you to periodically visit its IR website for important content. The following discussion, including its responses to your questions, contains time-sensitive information and reflects management's views as of the date of this call, June 29, 2022. And except as required by law, the company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise this information after the date of this call. I'd like to highlight to investors that this call is being recorded. The company is making it available investors, and the media via webcast, and a replay will be available on its website in the investor relations section shortly following the conclusion of the call. Additionally, it is the property of the company, and any redistribution, retransmission, or rebroadcast of the call or the webcast in any form without the company's express written consent is strictly prohibited. Now, I would like to turn the call over to LiveOne CEO, Rob Elland.
speaker
Rob Ellen
Thank you, Aaron, and good morning, everyone. I would like to thank you for joining for our fourth quarter in fiscal year 2022 business update and financial results. Despite this challenging environment, we posted a record $117 million in revenues in fiscal year 2022 and in March 30, 2022. A year-over-year increase of over $51 million or 79%. And revenue for the quarter of $23.4 million an 11% increase compared to last year. I'm happy to report we are maintaining our previous guidance of $125 million to $140 million and adjusted EBITDA of $5 to $10 million. For the current first quarter of fiscal 22, we expect to report revenues of approximately $23 million, adjusted EBITDA of $500 to $1 million positive. This will be the first time in the company's history that we will achieve positive EBITDA. As the environment and the backdrop in the capital markets has changed over the past two quarters, we have strategically pivoted to accelerate our path and timeline to achieve positive EBITDA. As part of LiveWarm's plan to focus on generating cash for operations on a consolidated basis, our team has implemented a cost and expense reductions from both operations and corporate overhead, which has anticipated the result in over $23 million in current savings. I believe we still have an opportunity to further increase efficiencies and reduce costs as we focus on streamlining our business operations and generating positive EBITDA. In addition to cost savings, we improved our balance sheet again with over $5.5 million in payables and short-term liabilities extinguished. As many of you may know, through our nine-year exclusive partnership with Tesla, a live on Slack radio membership is pre-installed as its default radio service in every new Tesla car sold in America. LiveOne is paid directly from Tesla for all these memberships. We recently completed our user interface refresh of all new and top stations within Tesla Car and proudly announced we have added our podcasts into the cars as well. In December, we launched LiveOne's music streaming service, including Podcast One content, on google android's automotive platform this launch brings live one into the car with a seamlessly integrated in-car user experience without the need for your mobile device and allows us to reach all current and upcoming vehicles we have now passed over 86 cars up from 45 last year allowing consumers to enjoy our library of over 30 million songs and original exclusive content of 500 curated radio stations, 250 podcasts and vodcasts, and all the original live events. Android Automotive continues to see wide adoption from virtually all the major automotive OEMs, including Ford, Chevrolet, Nissan, Dodge, Volvo, Lincoln, and others. The LiveOne Slacker app is pre-installed in 85 days. as well as across major cell carriers, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile, which allows Slacker members to listen to their cars and their mobile devices. We have compelling growth opportunities for Slack by partnering with other automotive OEMs, just as we do with Tesla, through their default radio service, as well as white-labeled B2B partnerships through its Android Automotive Partnerships. As of June 26, 2022, We have now passed 1.6 million paying members and close to 2.4 million total members. We see a path for paid members to reach 2 million as we look over the next few years and ultimately reach 10 million paid subscribers by 2027. The addressable market is 1.7 billion. With that, that's under 1% of the current market and would put us in line to a billion dollars plus in revenues. Our wholly owned subsidiary, Podcast One, which we acquired in July 2020, is a leading advertising supported on demand digital audio network. It was ranked number seven on PodTrack. With its unique monthly audience exceeding 6.9 million and a global downloads and stream exceeding 44 million, that is ranking us above CNN, Fox, Barstool Sports as one of the top independent podcast platforms in a list of 10 podcast publishers. The market is growing fast with looking at over $5 billion in revenues by 2027. As we look out over the next four years as a top 10 provider of podcasts around the globe, there's a unique opportunity to expand those revenues We did over 8 million last quarter, and this quarter will be our largest quarter in the history of the company. Podcast One continues to experience robust growth as more than 50 new podcast series have been launched since 2020 upon acquisition. We've expanded our distribution by making Podcast One available in all Tesla cars, Android automotive devices, Spotify, Apple, Samsung devices. Simply put, the podcast team has done an outstanding job in both recurring new podcasts as well as securing meaningful advertising sponsors as we have now passed over 300 sponsors. It's important to understand that Podcast One has the exclusive advertising sponsorship rights for all of our podcasts, but people can access and listen to our podcast shows on both Podcast One's exclusive platform as well as a number of outlets including Spotify, Apple, Samsung, Podcast One, its franchise of exclusive shows, has grown to more than 250 podcasts and produces 300 podcast episodes per week. I would like to add, as a result of successful integration of our advertising and sales division, Live One has added over 100 blue chip sponsors, over 300 total, and has over 175 in our pipeline alone for the first quarter of this year. In fact, PopCamp's one has more 1 million plus sales leads in calendar 2022 than any time in the history of the company. On the pay-per-view front, since launching our pay-per-view platform in May 2020, we generated 26.7 million in pay-per-view related sales and live and pay-per-view events. Imagine live now opening up. The opportunity is massive. As many of you know, we previously announced our intention to spin out an existing pay-per-view business as a separately traded public company and plan to distribute a portion of the new company's equity to our existing LiveOne shareholders. We anticipate the pay-per-view spin-out to occur in fiscal 2023. I would now like to hand it back over to Aaron Sullivan, who will review the full fourth quarter numbers. Aaron?
speaker
Sam
Thanks, Rob. I'll spend just a few minutes to provide an overview of the results for our year end and fourth fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2022. Full year fiscal 2022 revenue was a record $117 million, a 79% increase as compared to $65.2 million in fiscal 2021. Contribution margin increased 48% to a record $24 million versus $16.2 million in fiscal 2021. And our adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $13.4 million, with record KPIs including a 47% net increase in paid members year over year. For full fiscal year 2022, our revenue was comprised of 34% subscription and 66% advertising, sponsorship, merchandising, and ticketing events, compared to 51% subscription and 49% advertising, sponsorship, and ticketing events in the prior year period. For the fourth quarter of fiscal 2022, revenue increased 11% year-over-year to $23.4 million, while contribution margin increased 12% to $5.1 million, and our adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $4.8 million. We ended Q4 with 1.48 million paid members, a net increase of $400,000 as compared to 1.07 million paid members reported at March 30, 2021. Total members, including free memberships, was over 2.35 million at June 26, 2022. Included in the total members are certain members who are the subject of a contractual dispute for which we are currently not recognizing revenue. Briefly turning to the balance sheet, we ended Q4 with cash of $13.2 million, including restricted cash of $300,000. And now let me hand it back over to Rob.
speaker
Rob Ellen
Great, Aaron, and thank you for the great job you've done. I've previously spoken about our unique flywheel business model, associated in a complementary business where the component pieces create a synergistic offering to consumers. Listen, watch, attend, engage, and transact. We are expanding revenue opportunities with B2C customers for further monetization through subscriptions and memberships, premium content, pay-per-view, and live events. Unspelling membership packages, including merchandise, NFTs, and integrating consumer products that will have ownership positioning. Our B2B activities and opportunities continue to grow traction, especially with the significant advertised sponsorship deals that we are securing from blue chip companies, as well as other NFT and gamification opportunities. I fully expect this year to be able to expand our partnership with sponsors Our seven-figure deals are growing almost on a monthly basis, and we fully expect our first eight-figure deal this year. We see significant opportunity to grow our Slack or streaming radio membership service, both through new partnerships with major automotive, Google Android platform, and with white-label partnerships of internet and things from smartwatches, markets to connected fitness devices, manufacturers to outdoor video. We also expect this year to be able to expand our relationship with carriers around the globe. As we see the cycle starting to change, carriers are fighting back with Apple and Android to own their own content and own their own partnerships with their consumers. We're excited about the return of our live music events through calendar 222 and look to really press the gas metal on live events in calendar 23. Lastly, we have strategically implemented significant cost and expense reductions from both operations and corporate overhead, and we are now positioned to achieve positive EBITDA for the first time in our history in current June 2022 quarter, with at least $500,000 to $1 million of EBITDA for the quarter. I want to thank everyone for their support, especially our shareholders for their continued support. All right, thank you very much, and I'll open it up to any questions.
speaker
Operator
Thank you. We will now begin the Q&A session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. And if for any reason you'd like to remove that question, please press star two. As a reminder, if you're using a speakerphone, please remember to pick up your handset before asking your question. We'll pause here for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Brian Kisslinger with Alliance Global Partners. Brian, your line is open.
speaker
Brian Kisslinger
Great. Thanks so much. Great to really see the cost cutting and the changes that are coming in the business. I could start with the cost. Can you break down the cost cutting effort at a high level? How much is people? How much is maybe office space or supplier agreements? I just want to get a handle on, you know, what's being cut.
speaker
Rob Ellen
Yeah, so to start with, Brian, you know, the beginning part of this is one of the big costs that we had last year is our content costs, right? And because the world was shut down for two years, in order to program all of our original programming, our award shows, our music events, and so on, the cost was close to $20 million. That cost is going to drop in half because you now have most of that programming has been built. Those franchises are built. And we now have well over 300 franchises across our platform. So that's a big cost savings. Then in terms of people, we've been able to consolidate as the doors have opened from COVID, right? We've been able to consolidate the six acquisitions and the cream has rised to the top of the stars of this company. And you're going to see more and more of those, you know, as you see the spinoffs of these divisions, you're going to see those operators of those divisions really shine, right? And be able to pick their teams across the board. So our head of sales, our head of marketing across the company, and we've been able to put those synergies together. And then we've worked hard to clean up our balance sheet. As you know, we acquired Slack and Radio. A big part of that acquisition is we took on close to $50 million of payables. We've done an exceptional job this year, and Aaron has done just literally a solution to the just a superstar CFO in doing this, has really cleaned the balance sheet up tremendously. You see that $5.5 million of additional extinguishment payables, and you're going to see more of those coming. I think you covered it, Rob. Thanks. So with the $20 million in
speaker
Brian Kisslinger
cost of content actually that's coming down dramatically. Is that where we'll start to see the gross margin expand to some of the goals that you had talked about in the past, maybe the mid to upper 20s? Is that what the majority of the cost cuts are and where we'll see the benefits to EBITDA positive? Aaron, you want to take that?
speaker
Sam
Yeah, I think there's a significant portion there. That's absolutely right. So we're expecting to see, you know, in the past we haven't had positive contribution margin from our live events business. We're expecting to see contribution margin in that piece of the business. But, you know, there is a substantial amount of operating expense that's coming out. So I would say you'd expect to see it in those two lines.
speaker
Brian Kisslinger
Right. And then can you remind us of the seasonality in the revenue guidance based on Live events, I know you have some major events in Spring Awakening. You've got some seasonal businesses. How do we think about that based on basically COVID not being an impact to live events as much as it ever was in a while?
speaker
Rob Ellen
There's going to be seasonality in this business in multiple ways. Our tentpole events are going to kick in in the third and fourth quarter as well as that fourth quarter advertising and all advertising businesses. is going to grow substantially and then our merchandise business you know a large portion is going to come in that fourth quarter as well so yeah this was a terrific this was a terrific quarter and i think you'll see you know growth every quarter going forward as you look at that 125 to 140 million dollar guidance number all right you'll continue to see growth in each quarter going forward fourth quarter of december when advertising sorry
speaker
Sam
Just to clarify, that should be Q3. Our Q3 is where we see the advertising and the merchandising.
speaker
Brian Kisslinger
Two more questions. Firstly, how do you think about a recession impacting paid subscribers? You've done really well in the last two quarters adding paid subscribers. How could that impact that or turn and or ticket sales? Is that contemplated at the low end of revenue guidance?
speaker
Rob Ellen
I think we're pretty fortunate, and we've been very cautious in our numbers in this, in that just starting with Tesla, you have a $100 oil price plus. You're going to see a tremendous amount of automated cars hitting the road, and every car that hits the road, we pick up another subscriber. So I think we're being pretty conservative in those numbers. But then our expansion into these B2B partnerships that we've talked about, and I think you're going to see more and more of those across all platforms that have 10 million to 2.5 billion eyeballs. right? You know, we're, we're going to win this right on B2B partnerships. We're not going to win it on one customer at a time. So a lot of those partnerships already have a tremendous amount of subscribers, both free and paid that we're going to partner up with. And, you know, I think you're going to see in the second and third quarter, you can see a tremendous amount of those B2B partnerships. And it's the one area that we're growing the business, right? You know, I've gotten a lot of calls on that, you know, the last couple of days and that, you know, even though we've made substantial cuts, you're seeing us higher on the B2B side. And, We're only hiring, you know, as we land those B2B partnerships. Great.
speaker
Brian Kisslinger
Lastly, on Tesla, you know, on the connectivity side, customers staying connected, how could changes to their policies improve your churn or impact churn at all?
speaker
Rob Ellen
Yeah, I mean, it's been quite interesting, you know, and this has been exciting for us. We're built into the connectivity package now and It's hard to imagine with a $70,000 average car that anybody is ever going to have a car without connectivity ever again. Right. You know, especially at those levels. So we're seeing a tremendous poundage that's built into that $10 package for the first time. You know, Tesla has always paid us directly. They're going to continue to pay us directly, but they're starting to take some of their costs out because consumer is paying for probably, you know, probably 10% of those so far. And by the end of this year, it'll be, 30% of those are going to be paid directly from the customer to Tesla and then to us, right? We get our piece of that $10. So I think it's excellent and I think it's exciting and, you know, puts us in a very strong position, you know, going forward to continue to grow that. And, you know, who knows, you know, next is hopefully we expand and we've talked about this a lot. You know, it's been hard for us to expand with those payables outstanding, you know, with record labels and publishers. We're getting pretty close now. where we can really expand overseas and expand the rest of the world. Okay. Thanks, guys.
speaker
Operator
Thank you, Brian. The next question is from John Hickman with Leidenberg. John, please go ahead.
speaker
Brian
Hi. Rob, Aaron. I was wondering if you could elaborate a little bit on your kind of the key event, live events for the September and December quarters. I know there's Spring Awakening, but could you talk about the others that you're expecting?
speaker
Rob Ellen
Yeah, and I want to be a little bit careful on this in that we've announced that we're going to spin out our pay-per-view business. Just this weekend, just the last two weekends alone, we did T-Pains, we did BIs, so you're going to see a lot of those digital live events and that full flywheel kicking in where it's a live event, but it also is a pay-per-view event, right? And so as many of you know, our social boxing, right, will be a 10-pole event this year again. And, you know, stay tuned. You know, there'll be an announcement on that quickly. We've just announced a partnership with Ben Silverman, right, to produce The Office and some of the biggest reality TV shows in the world, not only to do that next event, but to actually launch a league and react and announce a reality TV show around it and I think you're going to see the spinoff of that division very shortly. And as that happens, there'll be multiple announcements where like, like UFC or like wrestling, you're going to see many events happening around that. And, you know, that was, that was, that was a big part of revenues for live last year. And then we've announced over a hundred live music events, right. And, you know, those continue to grow. So you're going to see it from all fronts. I don't think you're going to see, you know, that it's, I don't think you're going to see just one event. I think you're going to see many events and, We're really excited to talk about that in this upcoming quarter.
speaker
Brian
Okay. One more question. So if I look at your guidance for Q1 and your $23 million and $23.5 million and your EBITDA of $0.5 to $1 million, it looks to me like you're going to have to have cash operating expenses somewhere in the $8.5 million range. Am I calculating that right? Aaron, do you want to take that?
speaker
Sam
Yeah, I think that's pretty close to what we have.
speaker
Brian
Okay, and then there was a fairly big drop in stock-based comp for Q4. What do you expect going forward?
speaker
Sam
I think it's going to, there was a one-time impact there. I think you'll see it increase, but not quite to the levels it has been previously.
speaker
Brian
More like a million dollars a quarter, something like that?
speaker
Sam
I think that's probably a good benchmark, yes.
speaker
Brian
Okay, thanks. That's it for me. Nice quarter, by the way.
speaker
Rob Ellen
Yeah, and John, just to highlight that, as we said earlier, We expect $5 to $10 million of EBITDA, right, this year. So each quarter is going to grow significantly from here. And, you know, a lot of these cost savings, a lot of the changes we're making are just kicking in. So it's really exciting to see this company. And you've been around me for a long time. And, you know, when the cycles change, right, you've got to change with it and you've got to move quickly. So we're fighting hard and, you know, we're shooting for $10 million this year.
speaker
Brian
Okay.
speaker
Operator
Thank you, John. The next question comes from the line of Kevin Deedy with HC Wainwright. Kevin, please go ahead.
speaker
John
Thanks. Good morning, Rob, Aaron. Thanks for taking my call. So, Rob, when does your superstar CFO become permanent?
speaker
Rob Ellen
Yeah, it's a great question. I couldn't ask for him to have done a better job and You know, he's just completed the K and moved from there. So, you know, stay tuned. It's coming imminently. And I mean this serious. He's done as good a job as anybody, you know, I've worked with over the years and really, really proving in a difficult situation, right? Stepping up, you know, and, you know, Mike Q was excellent. You know, Mike took a very, very big job. You know, Aaron had to step in at the last second, really replaced most of his team. He's just done an outstanding job, and I keep hearing the credits across the board from our banks to investors across the board what a great job he's doing. So we're proud of Aaron, and stay tuned.
speaker
John
You mentioned 2 million subs, right? So that's paid subscribers, and is that this calendar year is your target?
speaker
Rob Ellen
Yeah, so we haven't given an exact date on it. Yeah, we haven't given an exact date. We haven't given an exact date on that. But, you know, listen, if just on Tesla alone, if they do a million cars this year, you got to expect, you know, they could sell every car they can make right now. You're going to grow substantially on that. Now being in 86 other cars, the partnership with Android Automotive. And as I said, you're going to see more of those B2B deals like we did. We did with Facebook for pay-per-view and like we did with TikTok. We did Music Lives. We're going to be leveraging and partnering with massive audiences across that are already built, right? Who need music. And I think that, you know, and I've been talking about this for a long time and it was part of why we hired JP Morgan, right? You know, as you know, you know, you're just going to see more of these B2B partnerships. And, you know, like when I built Digital Turbine, you're starting to see that cycle change. Every seven to eight years, the carriers start fighting back, right? And all these distributors are starting to fight back with it. A, they want to own their own content. B, they want to own their own relationship with their customers. And we're seeing telltale signs that the floodgates are opening to massive B2B partnerships like Tesla's, like we have with Verizon and T-Mobile and Sprint in the past. I think those doors are starting to open back up. And as that cycle changes, it puts us in a very strong position that we have so much robust content. We have all the commodity content, right, that everyone else has. We're half the price, right, of our competitors. And we're offering all this original programming, five cured radio stations, 2,000 artists on our platform, 300 original podcasts, And I just see telltale signs that there's going to be a lot of B2B deals coming that have very low risk to us, excellent margins, and real substantial upside to us. Without us having to go out and market and spend $80 a sub, we're going to be partnering with those partners who already have those subs and already have that traffic and audience.
speaker
John
So it just seems to me, and apologies for my ignorant perspective on this, but it seems to me that in order to expand that, as rapidly as you hope, you're going to need a little more international expansions. Could you give us an update on where that stands and the acquisition of licenses you'll need?
speaker
Rob Ellen
Yeah, so twofold. We fully expect to start announcing licenses in the very near future, right, expanding those. As you know, about a third of our audience is overseas already, right, that trafficking audience coming in. So we're already seeing advertising dollars and sponsored dollars come that way. but next will be subscription. And you know what I would say to you is that 2 million number does not include any overseas, right? As you know, Spotify is 50% us 50% overseas. Same, same thing with Netflix, right? So we've land those overseas licenses. We're going to be talking about a lot bigger number in the very near future.
speaker
John
And then a last question for me, Rob, please just give us some insight on your conversion from, you know, members to, to paid subscribers. Can you give us any indication on the trends you're seeing and churn?
speaker
Rob Ellen
Yeah, I mean, we have the lowest churn in the industry. The membership program is starting to really kick into high gear. What we've always talked about is superfans, right? We're a creative-first platform focused on superfans. Those superfans spend money on everything from subscriptions right? And having that audio music, so on, to watching our live events, to our pay-per-view events, to buying a hat, buying a t-shirt, buying an NFT, right? As you know, we did our first dollars in NFTs last year, and it was millions of dollars. We expect that to grow substantially. So what we're looking for is create a first platform, focus on those superfans. The more superfans we get, the stickier they are and more relevant they are in terms of spending across our entire platform. And we're seeing more and more of that every day. And we're Seeing the same customers. It's so exciting to put our podcast and Tesla and now be able to see not only a subscription, but also be able to have our creators talking to that audience on a regular basis. And, you know, the same thing across our website, the same thing across our app. Right. We're seeing more and more of that traffic translate into super fans that want to stay with us. And not just listen to the audio, not just listen to a podcast, not just watch pay-per-view, be able to touch all the tentacles we built here. And all those TAMs across all those subsidiaries, right, all have massive upside. But together, the sum of the parts gives you the most significant membership I think ever created in music, right, that is built on original programming. And if we keep beating, you know, and keep building on original programming, have that uniqueness to us, we're really putting ourselves in a unique position to build this company.
speaker
spk03
Okay. Thanks for the detail, Rob. Appreciate it. Thank you. Great job, Aaron.
speaker
Rob
Thank you.
speaker
Operator
Thank you, Kevin. We have a follow-up from the line of Brian Kisslinger with Alliance. Brian?
speaker
Brian Kisslinger
Great. Great. Thanks. I have a few, first of all, you've added more than a hundred thousand paid subscribers for three consecutive course, which obviously is great. Uh, and it makes sense given Tesla sales have been so strong. I want to look at it a different perspective. If what is the conversion cycle for non paid members and what is the conversion rate? I know Tesla is doing so strong, but on the other side of the business, you know, how well are you doing conversion converting and how long is it taking?
speaker
Rob Ellen
That's a great question. We're converting about 6% to 8% into long-term memberships. As we said, live is just opening back up. It's just the beginning of it. The conversion of a ticket buyer, the conversion of a pay-per-view buyer. You know the habitual behavior of that consumer. You know what music they like. You know what sports they like. You understand what they're doing in advance. It's a lot easier to tailor. Our tech team and our tech is one of the greatest in the world. Right. And so much of that is now built again for those super fans. I think, you know, we're going to continue in that 68% rate. And if we do, we're going to succeed and, and beat that, you know, 2 million number quickly. And most important is, is for long-term investors. We've said, we're going to get to 10 million subscribers. That's less than 1% of the addressable market by 2027. If you get to 10 million subscribers, that's a half a billion dollars in revenues, which is only 1% of this, of this market. In podcasting, podcasting is growing to $10 billion. It's just starting. It's just taking off. It was a $600 million industry. We're now talking about well over a billion going to $5 billion by 2027. We're number eight in the world in it. Our pay-per-view business, same thing. As you cross over these, the more you hit those superfans, the better the conversion is. It's not just conversion. It's that stickiness and how long they stay with you and how much they spend. Right. You know, we're never going to we're never going to beat Spotify or in them to get to, you know, hundreds of millions of subscribers. We're focused on those super fans, those sticky fans. And we're giving them this amazing content. Right. All for half the price of any of our competitors.
speaker
Brian Kisslinger
Great. Two more on numbers. What would the impact of spinning off pay-per-view be on your EBITDA guidance? And is it meaningful?
speaker
Rob Ellen
Well, remember, you know, we're not it's still going to be a wholly owned subsidiary. We're only spinning out a piece of it. right? And being careful on these valuations, right? You know where these valuations are, right? We're trading at such a low valuation that A, we're buying back stock. We just announced we bought back 1.2 million shares, right? We're going to expand that buyback now to the 2 million shares we promised. I personally, as well as board members have been buying back stock. We're trading at such a low valuation, but if you separate the parts of this, we're only going to sell a percentage of any one of these divisions. And Hold on tight. When that happens, we may unleash a tremendous amount of value to our shareholders, including A, they'll get a piece of the subsidiary, and B is that those subsidiaries got to get valued in the fair, in the open market privately. These valuations are way more robust than we're looking at today and where we're trading at 50% of this year's revenues. that opportunity is really unique to spin out the division. But the revenues and bottom line will still fall to live one, and that will have the control position of that subsidiary. And it may be multiple subsidiaries that ended up spinning out in this market.
speaker
Brian Kisslinger
Got it. Okay. And then lastly, I didn't see the 10K. Maybe it's out since the call. But given the buybacks as well as using stock to, I think, pay for – to take out some of the payables, Where is the outstanding show count today?
speaker
Rob Ellen
It's right about $80 million, fully diluted, maybe a little bit lower now with the shares that we bought back. And we've just gotten our approval to. No, no, $80 million.
speaker
Brian Kisslinger
Sorry, sorry, sorry. Yeah, yeah. I was thinking something else. Yeah, sorry.
speaker
Rob Ellen
Yeah, about $80 million. So, again, we're trading at a $60 million market. market cap on $125 to $140 million in revenues. So we're going to continue to buy back. And, you know, we just got the approvals, right, to continue that buyback. And, you know, we certainly plan to do that. And, you know, as I've stated to the street, every time the window's open, I continue to buy in the open market, as well as many of my board members. And, you know, so we'll continue to do that. And as we do the spinout, right, you know, as you do that spinout, it's going to give us a bunch of cash as well. It's giving them an opportunity. Maybe that expands the buybacks. you know, at that point if it continues to trade the way it's trading today.
speaker
Brian Kisslinger
Okay. Great. Thank you so much.
speaker
Operator
Thank you, Brian. We have no further questions waiting at this time, so I'd like to hand the call back over to Robert for closing remarks.
speaker
Rob Ellen
I just want to thank everyone for their support. It's a difficult market. This is an exciting time for LiveONE. really hitting just about every metric across the board. Billions of downloads of our podcasts. We've now broken through 50 billion listens across our audio since inception. We've had 5 billion engagements across our live streaming. Not only did the consumer listen and watch, they actually repurposed that and sent that back out to their socials. So we're starting to build a brand. We're starting to build a mode here that, you know, I see the tremendous amount of upside and, you know, and I look forward to our queue coming out, which is only a couple of weeks away and showcasing that EBITDA positive, the changes that Aaron and I have implemented, the disciplines that we've implemented. And I expect that EBITDA to continue to grow. And, you know, as I said earlier, five to 10 million this year, but my entire team is focused on hitting that $10 million EBITDA number. So thank you everyone. And I appreciate your time and, And I appreciate all of you as shareholders in this difficult market.
speaker
Operator
That concludes the LiveWord Incorporated fourth quarter and full year 2022 webcast. Thank you all for your participation. You may now disconnect your line.
Disclaimer

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