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spk01: Thank you for standing by and welcome to the Market Wise first quarter 2022 earnings call. I'd now like to hand the conference over to Jonathan Shanfield, head of investor relations at Market Wise. Thank you. Please go ahead.
spk06: Thank you and good morning. Thanks for joining us on today's conference call to discuss Market Wise first quarter 2022 financial results. On the call today, we have Mark Arnold, our chief executive officer, and Dale Lynch, our chief financial officer. During the course of today's call, we may make forward looking statements, including but not limited to statements regarding our guidance and future financial performance market demand growth prospects business strategies and plans and our ability to attract and retain customers. These forward looking statements are based on management's current views and assumptions should not be relied upon as of any subsequent date and we disclaim any obligation to update any forward looking statements. Actual results may vary materially from today's statements. Information concerning a risk, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause results to differ from these four statements are contained in the company's SEC filings, earnings press release, and supplemental information posted on the investor section of the company's website. Our discussion today will include certain non-GAAP financial measures. These non-GAAP financial measures should be considered in addition to, but not as a substitute for, or in isolation from GAAP measures. Reconciliations to non-GAAP measures can be found on earnings press release and SEC filings. Now I'll turn the call over to Mark.
spk02: Thanks, John, and good morning, everybody. Welcome to our first quarter earnings call. Before we get into the financial results for the quarter, I'd like to talk a bit about some of the dynamics that we're seeing in the markets and in our business right now. At MarketWise, our vision is to be the platform of choice for the self-directed investor. And to that end, Our relationship with our subscribers is of the utmost importance, and we believe it's our greatest asset. That is why at times like these, when we are seeing disruptive forces in the financial markets, we seek to provide the subscribers with the research and tools that they need to navigate the current situation. In the first quarter of this year, as the world and the U.S. increasingly returned to the pre-pandemic activity, Russia invaded Ukraine, and we saw the first full-scale war in Europe since World War II. This accelerated inflationary pressure caused by global supply constraints, and it showed in the data as inflation spiked to 40-year highs. The Fed in turn signaled that it is prepared to combat inflation through a series of interest rate increases. We also experienced havoc in the bond market throughout the first quarter. Against this backdrop, it is no wonder that investors in general, including our subscribers, have stepped back to evaluate the situation and determine whether to continue with their previous investment strategies or change course. This has resulted in what seems to be some consumer hesitance and indecision regarding their investments. We believe this combination of factors also impacted our current financial performance. For the first quarter of 2022, our revenues grew 14% year-over-year to $136.8 million, Our billings declined 47% year-over-year to $136 million, and our adjusted cash flow from operations was $1.1 million. They will provide more color on this shortly, but our adjusted cash flow from operations was lower this quarter for several distinct reasons. First, we continued to invest in marketing spend longer than we might have otherwise, as we felt it was important to continue to test what investment ideas would resonate in these volatile markets. We also had some timing differences in working capital accruals that temporarily reduced cash flow by approximately $18.1 million. Additionally, as we have discussed for several quarters now, and as other direct-to-consumer businesses have recently discussed in their quarterly results, we experienced higher subscriber acquisition costs and somewhat lower consumer engagement. They will also discuss this in more detail shortly, but engagement metrics for us were relatively flat in the first quarter of 2022, as compared to fourth quarter 2021. However, they remain approximately 18% below the average engagement metrics we observed over the past two years during the pandemic. With the great reemergence trend continuing at pace, cost to market through display ad channels remain elevated, causing us to add fewer new subscribers in recent quarters. I should note that we are not strangers to these types of challenges. We have faced similar situations over our 22-year history, and successfully navigated periods of volatility like the one that we are experiencing now. While this market has been volatile so far this year, it has not been near as difficult as the financial crisis in 2008 and 2009. During that period, we managed our business through the cycle by developing new content that addressed the financial environment in that post-crisis world and ultimately resumed significant organic growth. So what are we doing to address these market conditions? First of all, we believe consumer reaction to this market is entirely understandable. In light of the downdraft in many asset classes, we believe investors are weighing more offensive growth-oriented investment ideas that have been successful in recent years versus more defensive strategies. Investors are taking time to weigh the alternatives and evaluate their risk appetite. We see this in lower overall paid conversion rate among our lower ARPU subscribers. However, our high value and ultra-high value conversion rates remain in line with historic levels, indicating that our best subscribers are continuing to purchase from us at similar rates. Our professionals are accustomed to changing market forces, and we are adjusting to these forces like we have previously. Our teams are hard at work calibrating our content to help self-directed investors navigate this uncertainty. They are also hard at work to ensure that we can address today's markets and return our business to attractive organic growth levels. We believe these efforts will show up in our performance as the year progresses. Remember, our research covers a broad variety of investment strategies, appropriate for both bull markets and bear markets, and for traders as well as long-term investors. This helps ensure that we have content that resonates in changing market conditions. There appear to be some major thematic changes occurring in the United States and globally as investors shun riskier assets and retreat to safer ones. So as the market shifts, our editorial teams are contemplating where things are headed and developing additional content that they believe will fit these emerging trends. Some of these themes that our research teams have been emphasizing include the following, deglobalization and shortening supply chains, trends in oil prices and U.S. energy independence, broader-based commodity price inflation, inflation protection themes, such as gold and other metals, real estate, inflation-protected bonds, investing in income, like high-quality dividend-paying stocks, deep value themes across asset classes, and the critical need to keep asset allocation and position size in mind as our readers go forward. In addition to increasing the emphasis on these investment themes, we are looking at ways to mitigate subscriber acquisition costs while driving incremental sales. Given that unit costs to acquire new subscribers are high, we continue to focus on enhancing incentives to cross-sell content between our operating brands. And we have been working on a number of these campaigns recently. There are no incremental acquisition costs paid to third parties when we do this. We have seen significant ARPU and retention benefits from similar initiatives in the past. As we think about the future, and as we have communicated over the past year, there are a number of very important strategic initiatives that we continue to execute on that should drive extractive growth. One area of focus for us is more explicitly marrying our investment research with technology. We have been moving in this direction for some time now, and a good example of this is our recent acquisition of Chaykin Analytics, which has been tremendously successful for us. Chaykin Analytics was founded by Mark Chaykin, a 40-year Wall Street veteran, and Mark developed a series of proven quantitative stock selection tools and indicators, including the Chaykin Power Gauge and Chaykin Money Flow, that help investors make better investments. When we introduced Mark's products to our audience, they loved it. Last year, Chaiken Analytics generated $27 million in billings, which is far beyond the revenue it had before we partnered with him and far beyond what we paid for the business. This is truly a trifecta, a win for Mark Chaiken and his team, a win for us at MarketWise, and most importantly, a win for the subscribers. When we combine technology products with our content brands, we have found significant ARPU improvements as well as better subscriber retention. Going forward, we plan on further offering additional quantitative tools and products with our investment research, both in our existing brands as well as in our M&A efforts. We have previously spoken about the development and rollout of a pan-market-wise content and tech platform for our subscribers. Our technology team continues to develop this platform to accommodate our multiple brands and allow consumers to explore the investment content that we publish. The vision that we are pursuing is that this umbrella platform will host a community of millions of readers, enabling us to enhance engagement, improve our marketing efficiency, and ultimately provide us with a source of traffic to expose our investment research to at scale. This platform will also encourage more cross-selling between brands, which should drive better retention and ARPU. We've completed our full rollout of this new platform for our Stansberry Research brand this quarter, And we've had a strong initial response to the platform from users. Here are a few of the highlights. We've seen a threefold increase in average time on page on our new investor platform since its launch. And helping to drive this increased engagement time are a series of new interactive features that were recently developed, including our new member dashboard, enhanced interactive charting tools, and video and media engagements. And so far, we're doing well against other investing sites. with our members now spending more time on our site as compared to alternative investment content providers. We also continue to develop a broader way to integrate affiliates and their marketing onto the platform as a precursor to our larger PanMarketWise efforts in 2022. We now feel confident that we'll have most, if not all, of our affiliate content on this new platform over the course of this year. We also have previously described our plan to make greater use of data science throughout our business. In fact, this is one of the primary reasons we partnered with Ascendant Digital last year. Last week, we announced an engagement with SubScale and its founder, Michael Birdsell, to provide data science, enhanced analytics, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to MarketWise. We believe this effort will lead to improved performance in several ways, including increased intelligence about consumer behavior, higher subscriber engagement, better free-to-paid conversion rates, improved subscriber retention, greater marketing efficiencies, and ultimately hire ARPUs. Our goals are no different today than they have been since our founding, and that is to be the platform of choice for self-directed investors. Our subscriber community relies on our analysts for rich investment research, educational content, and valuable technology and tools in order to better navigate the financial markets. We continue to strive to meet these goals and deliver the high-quality research products that our subscribers are accustomed to receiving and for which we are known. And with that, I'll turn the call over to Dale to discuss some of our financial results in more detail.
spk05: Thanks, Mark, and good morning. As we've mentioned in the past, our mission is to provide the kind of research that we would want if our roles were reversed. In the challenging environment we've experienced over the past three quarters, it's especially important that we stay true to this mission and this vision. This is a point in time where we have the opportunity to have the greatest impact to self-directed investors. This is a very synergistic relationship. When we provide high-value investment research that resonates, our subscribers have stayed with us over a long period of time, creating value for both our subscribers and our shareholders. We've been discussing this since last spring, some challenges that many direct-to-consumer companies such as ours have been facing, as the great reemergence trend from COVID took hold and continued. This has manifested itself with volatility, lower levels of consumer engagement, combined with higher customer acquisition costs driven by higher display ad costs as the travel and leisure industry crowds back into that advertising space. These dynamics have been in place for approximately a year now, but we believe these impacts will begin to wane later this year as COVID is more in the rear view mirror. As previously mentioned, first quarter 2022 brought additional factors into play. Factors that are particularly impactful for us as a publisher of investment research content and software. Much of the NASDAQ and technology stocks in particular are in bear market territory. Cryptocurrencies have been hit. And we've seen the fastest rise in interest rates in a generation. With all this uncertainty, it's not surprising that we're seeing some consumer hesitance and indecision about their investments. We believe this may be causing some of our lower ARPU customers and prospective customers to delay purchases. resulting in a lower paid conversion rate this quarter. Importantly, though, as I'll highlight later, our high-value customers' conversion rates remain strong. I've just listed a number of pretty significant challenges to the investment markets. This is a time when MarketWise should shine. We've done just that over our 22-year history, as we've provided our subscribers valuable insights after the telecom and internet crash in the early 2000s, the financial crisis in the late 2000s, the rapid emergence of new opportunities such as cryptocurrencies, and continued bullish recommendations throughout a melt-up that many sophisticated investment professionals thought was going to end many years before it actually did. As Mark mentioned, our professionals are hard at work developing new content that will help our customers protect their investments and ultimately make money. From the time of conception to the time we actually sell new content, it generally takes two to three months, and we expect the majority of this content will be impactful in the second half of this year. Before turning to financials and KPIs, I first wanted to touch on consumer engagement and conversion rates. In first quarter 2022, our landing page visits were largely stable on a sequential basis. However, they're still about 18% lower than the average quarterly amount for the past two years. The good news here is, despite the challenges we've mentioned, our landing page visits have largely stabilized since second quarter 2021, and we're not seeing ongoing significant declines. Regarding conversion rates, our direct-to-pay conversion rates have been stable over the past couple of years, if you exclude first quarter 2021, which was an exceptional quarter. That is until first quarter 2022. The overall conversion rate declined for us about 16 basis points from fourth quarter 2021. And this had an impact on both billings and new subscriber additions this quarter. It's notable that this declining conversion rate is being driven by our low RP customers Our high value and ultra high value conversion rates this quarter remain right in line with our averages over the past year, indicating that our most valuable subscribers continue to purchase additional content, and in fact, our cumulative high value and ultra high value conversion rates rose to all-time highs as we disclose in our 10Q filing today. We believe this is a good indication of customer satisfaction, and we take great confidence and pride in the fact that these subscribers find value in our products and remain with us for the long term. As we turn to the financials, remember first quarter 2021 was a record in all regards. Even without a volatile economy and stock market this quarter, we would not have expected to meet or exceed those levels from the prior year. So turning out of the financials, revenue was $136.8 million this quarter compared to $119.7 million in the year-ago quarter, an increase of $17.1 million or 14.3%. The increase in revenue is driven by an $11.3 million increase in lifetime subscription revenue and a $7.2 million increase in term subscription revenue. This is partially offset by a $1.4 million decrease in non-subscription revenue. We recognized $109.8 million in deferred revenue this quarter. Billings were $136 million compared to $255.3 million for the year-ago quarter, a decline of $119.3 million. We believe the decrease is due in large part to post-COVID reduced engagement of consumers, which began in earnest in second quarter 2021. First quarter 2022 brought additional challenges with uncertainty stemming from external factors we've mentioned earlier. Sequentially, 136 million in first quarter billings declined 15.4 million, or 10%, from fourth quarter 2021. Earlier, we mentioned that a direct-to-pay conversion rate fell approximately 16 basis points from fourth quarter 2021, and this is attributable to our lower R2 subscribers. This 16 basis point decline is what primarily drove the sequential decline in billings this quarter. Approximately 37% of our billings this quarter came from lifetime subscriptions, 62% from term, and 1% from other. This compares to 45% from lifetimes 54% from term, and 1% from other in the year-ago quarter. Cost of revenue is $17.6 million this quarter compared to $132.8 million for the year-ago quarter, a decline of $115.2 million. This decline was primarily driven by a decrease of $114.3 million in stock-based compensation expense related to the holders of Class B units, which was partially offset by a $1.8 million increase in salaries and benefits due to higher headcount. The quarter's stock-based compensation included $0.5 million expense related to our current incentive stock award plan and our employee stock purchase plan. This compares to $114.3 million in Class B compensation expense in the year-ago quarter. If you exclude stock-based compensation from cost of sales in both periods, sales margins as a percent of revenue would have been 88% this quarter compared to 85% in the year-ago quarter, and generally in line with our historical averages. As a reminder, from the time of combination with ascendant in July and through the end of first quarter 2022, there was no longer any stock-based compensation attributable to our original Class B units. Prior to the transaction, these units were treated as derivative liabilities rather than equity and therefore had to be re-measured each quarter in the change in fair value included in stock-based compensation. Also, any distributions of profits paid to the Class B unit holders were treated as stock-based compensation. Since the transaction and going forward, as those original units converted to straight common units, straight common equity, we have and continue to expect to recognize significantly lower stock-based compensation. It will be recognized at a level that we believe is consistent with the traditional stock-based compensation plan. For first quarter 2022, our total stock-based compensation expense was $2.6 million. Sales and marketing costs were $68.2 million this quarter compared to $91.8 million in the year-ago quarter, a decrease of $23.5 million. This decline was primarily driven by a $20.7 million decrease in marketing expense as we reduced our marketing spend due to higher per-unit costs and a $14.1 million decrease in Class B stock-based compensation expense. This was partially offset by an $8.2 million increase in deferred tax and a $2.2 million increase in payroll and benefit costs due to higher headcount. Included in these amounts were stock-based compensation of $0.6 million this quarter compared to $14.1 million in the year-ago quarter. Excluding stock-based compensation expense, sales and marketing expense decreased by $10.1 million, primarily driven by decreases in cash marketing expenditures this quarter. Turning now to G&A. G&A costs this quarter were $30.5 million as compared to $507.4 million in the year-ago quarter, a decline of $476.9 million. This decline was primarily driven by a $472.7 million decrease in Class B stock-based compensation expense. This is partially offset by a $2.1 million increase in stock-based comp and a $1.4 million increase in payroll and benefits costs due to higher head cap. Included in these amounts were $1.5 million this quarter stock-based compensation expense compared to $472.7 million in the year-ago quarter. Excluding stock-based compensation expense, our G&A costs declined $5.7 million year-over-year. Net income in first quarter 2022 was $23 million compared to $615.1 million lost in the year-ago quarter. We recognize stock-based comp at $2.6 million this quarter and stock-based comp related to Class B units of $601.1 million in the year-ago quarter. Now, let's turn to cash flow. Adjusted cash flow from operations was $1.1 million in first quarter of 2022, compared to $98 million in the year-ago quarter, with the decline primarily due to the decrease in billings. Adjusted CFFO margin was $0.8 million this quarter, as compared to 38.4 percent last year. Additionally, while per-unit costs remained high in first quarter this year, We didn't decrease marketing expenditures as much as we might have otherwise, as our marketers continue to test investment themes amidst the changing market. Keep in mind that we control that on a day-to-day basis, and we can reduce that spend any time we need to. Adjustment CFO this quarter was further impacted by net changes in working capital, excluding changes in deferred revenue and changes in deferred cash, which reduced cash by $18.1 million. Keep in mind, this only represents a timing difference in terms of receiving the cash. Our paid subscriber base declined from 1 million at the end of the first quarter of 2021 to 909,000 this quarter, a 9 percent decline. The decline was driven by a decrease in overall consumer engagement, lower direct-to-paid conversion rates, and the impact of additional churn realized from the outsized cohort from first quarter 2021. we saw our free subscriber base continue to increase from 10.9 million a year ago to 14.5 million this year, a 33% increase. New subscriber additions in first quarter 2021 were significantly higher than any of our prior or subsequent quarters and contributed to increased subscriber churn count in first quarter 2022. The absolute number of additions in the year-ago quarter, well in excess of our historic average quarterly additions, contributed to the total amount of churn this quarter. In fact, we estimate that the absolute size of this cohort last year generated an additional 60,000 churn subscribers in first quarter 2022, despite the fact that the percentage churn rate was right in line with historical averages. Additionally, our clues of subscribers who churned this quarter continue to be in line with the approximate purchase price of our entry-level publication, which is well below $100 generated. As we get past this outsized cohort, this dynamic should significantly decline as we believe this is just another adjustment to a post-COVID environment. And in fact, April's churn rates have returned to our historical averages that we've disclosed in our 10Q. Turning to ARPU, ARPU declined to 636 this quarter from $825 last year. This is being driven by a 15% increase in the average trailing four-quarter paid subscribers combined with an 11% decrease in the average trailing four-quarter billings. The increase in four-quarter paid subscribers is still significantly impacted by the rapid increase in our subscriber base in the first half of 2021. The decrease in four-quarter billings is due in large part to first quarter 2020 billings, our largest quarter ever, falling out of the trailing 12-month calculation. We've shown that over time our subscribers continue to invest in our platform by purchasing higher end subscriptions, which have tended to drive increases in ARPUs. As of March 31st, 2022, we have 9% and 21% more high value and ultra high value subscribers than we did a year ago. Now, before I finish, I want to provide a quick update on our share repurchase program, as we've been pretty active in the market this quarter. During the quarter, we repurchased approximately 2.1 million shares for approximately $11.5 million in total value. And programmed to date from its initiation in December of last year, we have repurchased 3 million shares for a total of $16.4 million. The past several quarters have been a challenge indeed. However, Mark previously stated, we've been here before. Navigating markets through the changing environments is absolutely the core of our value proposition. It's our time to shine, and we're fully intent on doing that. With the new content that we're rolling out, combined with the various strategic initiatives that Mark discussed, we believe we're poised to add good value to both our subscribers and to our stockholders. With that, I'll turn the call back to you, Mark.
spk02: Yeah, thanks, Dale. Just a final thought from me before we move to taking your questions. As you all very well know, financial markets are cyclical, and our business reacts and adapts to changes in the market environment. And whether markets are going up and investors are looking for growth or Our markets are going down and readers look for more wealth preservation. Our goal is to supply them with high quality research. We have a long-term approach and we know that providing high value, actionable tools and research to our customers will over time play out in their favor and in ours. Despite this market disruption, we continue to invest in technology and people to improve and grow our business. We look forward to the opportunities ahead of us and continue to pursue several M&A opportunities and believe they could provide terrific value to and complement our business. With that, I'll turn the call back to the operator for your questions.
spk01: Thank you. At this time, we'll be conducting a question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you'd 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. Our first question comes from the line of Devin Ryan with J&P Securities. Please proceed with your question.
spk03: Thanks. Good morning, Mark and Dale. How are you guys?
spk05: Good. Thanks for having me.
spk03: good good um first question um so so you know obviously it's a challenging investment backdrop you know we've seen this before who knows whether we have a recession or not um but you take a step back you know just looking historically periods of stress and dislocation have always been the biggest opportunities for investing right so so obviously you can't call a bottom but you know in terms of thinking about the longer term these have been opportunities so when i look at your free subscriber group, it would seem that investor education just around some of those themes or around how markets work could be very valuable both to them, but then also kind of to kind of that next product purchase, if you will, or the ability to bring them into the paid subscriber base. And so I just want to maybe think about that and what you guys are doing now to maybe nudge given that, you know, we are in a tough investing backdrop, but opportunities are likely to be created here. And then, you know, Also, just kind of thinking about the business historically, I'm assuming there's a lag in subscriptions relative to, call it, you know, the S&P price or, you know, pick your index, but that, you know, the market starts to move higher and then subscribers kind of increase. Is that the right correlation as well, or is there something else we should look at in terms of, you know, historical timing that you've seen in your business?
spk02: Yeah, so, Devin, those are two really good points and I'm heartened because you know we didn't know you very well not so long ago but but your questions hit on two dynamics about our business that are dead right the first is to your point about free subscribers and tough markets being up an opportunity for them you're exactly right as I've described over the course of the past year it does take us some time between when a a free subscriber and comes onto our platform, starts consuming the content for us to build up that relationship with them. And in particular for them to develop a relationship with the editors. But that relationship does, once it starts to develop, um, become strong and it becomes strong for the very point that you're making, which is the editors are talking to the readers about what's going on in the markets, how they should think about it, whether they should be panicking or whether they should be calm. and the opportunities that exist based on what the editor happens to see going on in the market. And you're exactly right. In fact, this morning I was reading one of our free pieces when they were saying exactly that the comment was just essentially that while these markets have been volatile, it might be time to take advantage of the drawdown in the, in the aftermath of the decline in the tech stocks. And it may be time to evaluate and jump back in on them. Now I'm not making a recommendation and neither were they, But the point is that the editor was talking to the readership about how they should be thinking and feeling about the markets and the disruption that they're seeing. And to that point, it takes some time to develop that trust and the credibility between the editor and the reader. And so in times like this, that's where that relationship is really taking hold, but it's not instant, to your point. And so as the readership develops relationships across our platform with the editors, I do expect them to move on to paid status and then the high value and then the ultra high value like our prior cool accords have. It's just not instant. It takes time for people to develop that relationship. And to your second point about the lag in subscriptions to indices, that too is exactly right, which means that as the indexes are rising and falling, investors' emotions about what's happening in the markets are not always instant either. So It's a paradox in our business that sometimes when you have an investment sector that's going gangbusters and has gone, made meaningful moves up in recent periods, that's when the readers, the retail investors and the self-directed subscribers tend to want to pile into those positions when they become most popular. But as you know, that sometimes can be dangerous because if it's in a bubble territory, that can be the exact opposite of what they should do but they're trying to preserve their wealth or grow their wealth. And so there's a paradox in our business about that. But on the downside, when things have been rough, like they have been so far this year, that may be tremendous buying opportunities, but it's not an instant relationship because like I just described, it takes a little while for the editors and the readers to form that bond and for them to feel comfortable moving back into investment products, paying more for our research and moving in their own portfolios.
spk03: Got it. Okay. Really appreciate the call over there, Mark. Helpful. Another topic you hit on at the end of the call, but it sounds like you're still having some healthy M&A conversations for the firm. In an environment where everything's working for everyone, M&A can be more challenging and bid-ask spread can be wide. Bid-ask spread can also be wide when there's a lot of volatility like we're in now. So I'm kind of curious, how the conversations are going. Cause it sounds like there may be some things that are progressing there. And then, um, you know, how can you get a deal done in an environment where, um, you know, prices are in flux and, you know, sellers may still have really high expectations. Are there other ways to structure where there's kind of a win-win for everybody and how are you feeling about kind of progressing on some of those?
spk02: Yeah, that's a good question too, Devin. And you're also right on there. Um, Just like there's a lag in the market sometimes, there's a lag in valuation sometimes. And so in some of the conversations we've had, people are rooted and straining to hold on to market valuations that were more appropriate last year in 2021. And you can see why they would do that. It makes sense. But at least in our experience, the valuation multiples have come down since then. All the information we're getting points to that. But you can see where that natural tension would develop, and we're working through that. And to your point, there are ways you can structure around that. I thought you were going to ask about our share value. And, of course, we would not want to use equity at this stage, given where our share price is, because we just think it's deeply undervalued. And so we are exploring other ways to structure deals in order to navigate around that. But I'm very happy. I mean, like I said and have been saying since we went public, our theory that our M&A pipeline would fill up with really high-quality people and high-quality businesses has borne out. And I can't make any comments on specifics, but it's moving along very nicely. I'm very happy with it.
spk03: Yeah, got it. Great. I'm going to squeeze one more quick one in here for Dale just on the – subscribers and, uh, the churn that you saw in the quarter, uh, heard the comment that, you know, April seen or saw some stabilization, um, or reversion to kind of historical levels, any other kind of data that would suggest maybe, maybe we're, um, stabilizing there or, um, you know, that's just one data point. So anything else you can help with there would be, would be great.
spk05: Yeah. So look, I mean, that, that, that, that is a good data point in and of itself. And we were looking for that confirmation. And when we saw it, that was, that was good. Right. So we've been, um, You know, we publish a turn rate in our queue, and I think we've been telling you folks, we've been kind of at that higher end of that range. I believe we give it as a range on a monthly basis. We've been at that higher end of that range, you know, for quite a bit of time now, maybe five quarters until this quarter came. And we sort of quantified what we think the excess turn was just given the outsized nature of that. So we adjusted for that, and when we adjust for that, our churn rate was actually a little bit lower than the higher end of the range of that, you know, our historic range. And then in April, as I mentioned, it came down. But there's a number of data points here that point to, you know, some stabilization, right? We touched on consumer engagement. We told you that our landing page visits were essentially flat sequentially. That's good news. And if you look at the average landing page visits, you know, now over the past several quarters, like trailing four quarters, this quarter and through trailing, We're right about at the average. So it looks like we've sort of bottomed out on that engagement dynamic, that post-COVID travel boom we've been mentioning for almost a year now. That feels like it's bottomed out. You know, our conversion rates for our high-value customers continue to chug along every quarter. I mean, they're plus or minus 10 basis points. So that stability is a good thing to see, too. Really what we're seeing is the new customer, right, which is about 60% of our customer base. They're the ones that seem to be the most indecisive and have slowed or paused their purchases right now. And that's what's causing that conversion rate, the paid conversion rate, to dip here in the quarter. So the message I would take away from this is, look, these guys will ultimately make decisions in the market and they'll need help with that. So we think this is a timing delay in purchase, not a foregone purchase. But we are seeing stabilization in everything around landing page visits, high-value conversions. And if you look at our subscriber ads, they are down versus a year ago or so. But if you look at this quarter and the trailing three quarters and you average them out, the gross ads we put in this quarter are within 1,000 of that average. So you've hit on a theme. I think that's important. It does feel like It's been a tough year. There's no way to sugarcoat that. But it feels like we have begun to form a base of support here. It feels like what we're seeing across a number of metrics is the formation of, okay, here we go. Now we're going to set ourselves and reset ourselves for organic growth going forward. And I wanted to expand on a point that you and Mark were talking about on our free subscriber base because it's really important. We give you conversion rates of 1% to 2% historically from that customer base. That should be higher. One of the reasons, one of the areas that our data science initiative is going to focus on is just that conversions are free to pay. First, you have to have really good content. Mark touched on that a bit in his comments, which I thought were very good. The content matters most, but the data science will support that, and that's one of the key focal areas that the team's going to look at first. So that will help, and that's really impactful, too, because if you look at the customer sets, you have direct-to-paid as a channel and free-to-paid. If you look at the free-to-paid over their lifetimes, though, they actually tend to spend more than our direct-to-paid channel. So what we're finding is the free-to-paid channel is a very, very valuable network for us, and so we really want to maximize that, and that's why we're turning the data science lens on that early on. Sorry, long-winded answer, but you really hit on a good theme around bumping along what feels like the formation of a base here across a number of our metrics. Yeah.
spk03: No, I appreciate the details. Always helpful, Dale. So thanks for taking all that. I will leave it there. Let someone else hop in. Appreciate it, guys.
spk01: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Kyle Peterson with Needham & Company. Please proceed with your questions.
spk08: Hey, good morning, guys. Thanks for taking the questions. I just wanted to touch on the marketing spend, and I know you guys kind of mentioned that you were at least testing some of the new content and campaigns in the first quarter that kind of made some of the spend a little elevated. Are you guys still testing that and letting some campaigns run longer? Like, has that continued into 2Q, or do you think some of these strategies have been pretty refined and tested, and you'll go more back towards normal spending, especially in an elevated CAC environment.
spk05: You want me to take that first, Mark, and then you can add your thoughts? Yeah, that would be fine. Yeah, perfect. Okay, so look, here we are, and this goes back to Devin's question earlier. This is a critical moment for us, right? The max volatility we're seeing across pretty much every asset class, generational changes in interest rates, So I would say that we are going to probably continue to test the market. Now, the absolute dollars of marketing spend have come down. Don't get me wrong there. In fact, if you look year over year, it's down pretty significantly. We mentioned $20 million. That's a pretty significant decline. But because the gross ads are lower right now, that's what's keeping the CAC elevated on a per-unit basis. So I would characterize it this way. We're going to continue to test the markets. We're not blind to margins, okay? We can slow or stop or whatever whenever we want to, and we're not going to stop marketing spend. That's the future lifeblood of the business, and it's the right thing to do for our subscribers. They need help and guidance right now, so we're going to continue to test it. So think of it as CAC is probably not going to decline materially, and we don't necessarily need it to. What we do need is that we need to come up with content that resonates. Content that resonates is the secret sauce to our business. Those conversion rates drive everything. So we'll continue to test, but we're still going to be keeping an eye toward margins. It's the right balance. So it's not all or none, right? Our unit costs are high. That's not great. The total spend is probably going to be lower than it would be otherwise. But, you know, we're going to keep testing new and new things. We have a lot of new content coming out, so that needs to be tested. And so there will be continuing marketing spend. But you just have to strike the right balance between that and margins. Got it.
spk08: That's helpful. And then I guess just one quick follow-up on capital allocation. Obviously, the balance sheet is really strong. How are you guys thinking about it? It's been good that you guys have been chipping away at the buyback. Do you anticipate kind of keep going at, you know, the current pace, or do you think with the shares at these levels, you know, would you guys be willing to kind of either accelerate that pace or step up in, you know, a bigger way, just given that the balance sheet is very strong right now?
spk05: So there's a balance there, right, Kyle? You have to... The biggest strategic technical thing impacting... our stock price is probably the float, the small float size, right? So we have to balance a combination of it's accretive to repurchase the shares. That's screamingly obvious. But the other thing is we have to be cognizant of the free float until we can execute a large secondary offering at some point and really solve that liquidity problem for the longterm. So larger investors can get involved and buy much larger positions. we're going to have to keep an eye toward both of those things. So the program is still out there. It's active. We have a 10B51 plan set up where our broker-dealer just executes that 10B51 according to the instructions. And so it just kind of operates. But we do have to be cognizant to the float. So we don't want to take too many shares out of the float. We have to balance that.
spk08: Makes sense. So, Paul, thanks, guys.
spk01: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Cram with UBS. Please proceed with your question.
spk04: Yeah. Hey guys. Um, wanted to come back to the discussion on cashflow just now. Um, I think over the last few quarters you've told us that, you know, no matter what, you know, you, you run this business for healthy profitability and you know, we just had two quarters in a row of pretty low margin, And, you know, basically if I'm hearing you correctly, you're saying you're still testing a lot on the marketing spend side, et cetera. So I guess the question is, well, when are you going to react? Are there other things you may have to pull outside of marketing? Is there any kind of margin you feel like you can commit to for the year? So we have a little bit more confidence and then, and then maybe just lastly, you know, that, that $18 million of working cashflow or working capital, Cash flow impact, can you just flush out what exactly happened there? Because again, two quarters in a row, fairly low cash flow. If I think about it from a cash perspective, what are the items that can actually swing cash that we should be thinking about as we think about the business? Thanks.
spk05: Yeah, I'll start with the last first and go from there. So on that cash flow impact, there was a few things that drove that. Accounts receivable is one. Again, that's just a timing difference. And that was a big part of it. So you would expect to see that reverse, most probably in the coming quarter. So we'll get a majority of that back here shortly. And then there were some other changes in variable caustic rules and so forth. But it was really primarily an accounts receivable change this quarter that was sort of random that drove that cash flow decline. So if you kind of think about it, And keep in mind that the accounts receivable represent sales, right? So you could think of that as sort of cash income, right? So you might adjust that. But even to your point, adjusting for that, we acknowledge the margins are low, there's no doubt. Look, we have built a product and an infrastructure that is designed to capture more market share. We've grown pretty significantly in the last three years. With that has come an increase in our cost base, right? We have a lot of people, a lot of products, and a lot of affiliates. We want to have more. So there's always the tension between short-term impacts versus long-term goals, right? Long-term goal is to really scale this and be the platform of choice. So we have built up an infrastructure that's relatively large. We're seeing a revenue impact this year that's outsized. We've never seen a revenue impact like this, quite frankly. But we do think we're hitting sort of a bottom, bumping around on the bottom, and we're Our cost base is now relatively stable. Our overhead, if you look at that, our G&A was actually down year-over-year by $5 million. That's a good thing. The year-ago quarter had some costs related to our good public initiative that was in that quarter. But the good news is our G&A is stable, stable to probably down a bit year-over-year. And we'll keep an eye to that. Look, if there's efficiencies that we can affect, we'll do that. But we want to keep an eye toward long-term growth as well. So it's always going to be a balanced As far as margin percentages, Alex, I wish I could give you a number, but we're not really committing to guidance. But we are sensitive to the margins, and we are going to keep our eye on that. And we certainly acknowledge the last two quarters have been outlier quarters in terms of margins. We certainly would like them to be higher. We could get them much higher tomorrow if we just slashed our marketing spend. Slashing marketing spend probably isn't the right answer. It probably needs to be a more measured approach to that spend. because now is the time going back to Devin's first point around peak volatility like this is ultimately going to create massive amounts of investment opportunities. We have good analysts with great ideas and we're about to unleash and we are unleashing a lot of these ideas right now. So this is a unique situation point in time where I do think, you know, the margins are going to be a bit lower right here. The ultimate solution is to maximize that and turn it into revenue and get back to the growth trajectories that we have done historically. But in the short term, we're certainly keeping an eye on those margins. We want them to be higher, and we're going to look for efficiencies both on the marketing side and potentially efficiencies at other places in the business as well. But as far as a percentage, I can't give you that.
spk04: Okay, fair enough. I figured I'd try. Just a couple of – well, actually one quick one here. You mentioned that you still have success in upselling, and when I look at quarter over quarter relative to the fourth quarter – your ultra high net value client count actually increased nicely, but the high value actually went down. So just maybe just flush it out a little bit again. Seems like you're, you're having success at the high end, but in this kind of like initial upsell to high value there, you're still lagging anything particular going on there or anything else you, you, you, you, you're trying to do there to maybe do a little bit better.
spk05: Yeah. So on you look, there's going to be some oscillations around the absolute numbers, period to period. What we saw this quarter was when you see that outsized turn from that cohort, keep in mind that a lot of those subscribers that came in and Q1, um, uh, they bought a number of publications pretty quickly. Right. So, um, you know, that, that turn dynamic that we saw from Q1 21 manifesting in Q2 22, That could certainly impact sort of around the margins, those numbers that you're seeing on the high value conversion, like the count, right? Just there's fewer people in our subscriber base now than there was a year ago. So there's going to be a normal oscillation around the mean. But if you look at it on a percentage basis, which is really how we think about it, again, the conversion rates are plus or minus literally 10 basis points for high value and also high value for four quarters now, the current quarter and the previous three quarters. So for a year, I mean, it's been rock solid within 10 basis points on both of those metrics. The key for us is to stabilize and to begin to grow that sub base. Now I mentioned earlier, you feel like we're building a base right now across a number of our metrics. You look at the four quarter average across a whole stable of metrics. It does feel at the moment, like we've built a base of support here, and now we can start to anchor and move forward from there.
spk04: All right, just one quick one and I'll let you go. The landing page comment, I believe the Flattish comment was a 1Q comment. Did you say anything about April? And I missed it, but any update on landing page visits so far in the second quarter would be helpful. Thanks.
spk05: Yeah, I knew you were going to ask that question. So, and again, along the theme of building a base, so I would say quarter to date. second quarter to date if you will through through i think this is through last friday so just before the weekend you know our our visits are up a little bit you know four or five percent depending on which metric you're looking at we cut them a bunch of different ways but overall we're up there in that four percent sequential so if you compare quarter to date versus the first quarter of 22 we're up modestly conversion rates are pretty stable on the the direct to paid conversion rates, but the landing page visits are up modestly here.
spk04: All right, good to hear that. Thank you very much.
spk05: Thanks, Alex.
spk01: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Jeff Mueller with Baird. Please proceed with your question.
spk10: Yeah, thank you. So I understand the positive takeaway on the high-end conversion, but as I think about the typical migration up the value stack, I just, what are you trying to convey to us on the low-end conversion? I guess, should we be looking to that metric and the eventual inflection in that metric as kind of the leading indicator because there's a natural, I guess, migration up the value stack that includes that price point, or just... I'm trying to understand what you're trying to convey to us when you disaggregate the conversion rates at the different parts of the value stack.
spk05: Yeah, that's a really good point. So think about it this way, right? The folks that have not spent $600 with us, that by definition pretty much means pretty good certainty. They haven't yet purchased that higher, that high value, what we call back-end subscription, the richer investment content at that $750 to $1,000 price point. I mean, by definition, they haven't done that. Why? You know, we're not seeing them convert at the rates they used to historically, and that, in our mind, is really, I mean, that happened, that turned on a dime in the first quarter here, and that happened to the point in February when inflation spiked, depending on how you measure it, 8% to 12%, and the war started and rates spiked, and the markets kind of crashed. So that conversion rate fell very quickly. Those are our customers, right, that have not yet really formed that long-term bond with us. They haven't bought that high-value content yet. They're waiting to, and we certainly are going to work to get them there. The key for us is right now they're indecisive, right? Institutional investors, when things move quickly, institutional investors will often move quickly as well. when things move quickly, individual investors can be very different. They get a bit indecisive and they don't do, they don't take action right away, right? There's a lag to that. So the way to think about it is ultimately here, we come up with new ideas and new content and we present that content to these subscribers, these subscribers that have not yet fully embraced our, our value stack, right? Getting those conversion rates back to kind of where they were a couple of quarters ago or even just two quarters ago, you'd see a meaningful impact on billings. And so I think with the markets plunging like they have, there are going to be a raft of opportunities. These ideas will be going out in the form of our content. We just need to get that conversion rate back up, which means these guys are going to begin their higher value journey through our ecosystem, if you will, right? Right now, they haven't. It's sort of on pause. And I think we need some measure of stability on number one and number two, time for this content that Mark mentioned earlier to get into the system and for these folks to take action, right? Just the retail investor set, I think, moves a bit more slowly than what you guys are used to seeing. Okay. Yeah, I'll just add to that.
spk02: Sorry to cut in. I'll just add two cents quickly. This is what I was saying when I said earlier that I thought the reaction from the subscriber community was understandable. If someone has built up a trust relationship with us and their editors and they know the quality of the content and they have confidence and conviction around what's going to happen, well, then they've continued to spend with us and continue to subscribe to the higher value products. But for someone who's newer, as I was touching on earlier with Devin's question, that relationship takes some time to build. And when the market is doing what it's been doing – and you don't have necessarily clear conviction around which way the market's going to go or what strategies you want to pursue, we feel like most people are sitting tight and waiting to see which direction emerges if one does. And so while they're doing that, they're consuming the content at a lower price point, but they just haven't worked up the conviction or the trust to be able to step up to higher price points. And that just takes time. So I agree with what Dale said. It's just a little extra color that there is a lag between when someone comes on our platform and when they feel strongly about when to spend more with us.
spk10: Got it. And if you look at the free subs group, how is their engagement, their readership? Are you seeing them highly engaged because they need the help and they're just not making that purchase? Or are you still in this lagged period of where your editors are adapting the content for the current environment and there's some lower level of readership or engagement among the free subspace?
spk02: Well, it's both. I mean, the free group is so large that we're continuing to see a lot of engagement from a bunch of them, but where we've seen the churn is at that lower price point. So you've got both going on. A bunch are engaging with the content, developing the relationship with the reader, They just haven't stepped up higher price points at rates that we're accustomed to seeing. And some others are essentially disengaging from the platform, and that's resulted in the churn from the year-ago cohorts that Dale was mentioning.
spk00: Okay. Thank you.
spk01: Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Hugo Arunian with Web of Securities. Please proceed with your question.
spk07: Hey, guys. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe first, is there any way to think about, you know, to be able to kind of parse out the impacts from reopening versus the market volatility that you're seeing in terms of engagement and conversion to paid subscribers? And then the second question, talked about marketing and kind of what you're doing. But within that, the testing, could you speak a little bit more about what you're learning, maybe a little bit more color on specifically what you're doing and you expect that to impact as we move forward and, you know, hopefully things start to stabilize a little bit more. Thanks.
spk05: Mark, you can take the second one.
spk02: Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to do. I'll go first if it's okay. As far as the testing goes, we had a long period of bull market activity where people were chasing cryptos, alpha, microcap securities, just go-go bull market type activity. And so we saw that in both what our editors were recommending to try to take advantage of that environment and also what our readers were looking for and responding to, both, which helped propel this up over the past couple of years. But now things feel different in the investing environment. I think everyone would agree to that. You've seen a big drawdown in the NASDAQ and the tech trade and a move towards safer investments where you're either escaping the volatility or you're waiting to see whether a recessionary type environment and more bull market strategies are going to take hold. And so what we're doing internally is we've got editors who are assessing that choice and and dealing with it in turn. And each editorial team is different. They've got different strategies around what they do in that environment. And then of course, our marketers also are trying to see what resonates with readers at all of our price points around those themes. And so what we are testing both of the editorial and marketing levels are messages of commodities, gold, real estate, inflation protection, income investing, some of the lists that I was describing earlier in my comments. And so when I describe what we're testing, it's that, right? We're trying to see, based on the editorial conviction around the ideas, what messages will resonate with the readers, and that's why I describe the behavior that we're seeing amongst the readership like I am, which is there's a little bit of hesitancy amongst the lower-priced subscribers that we've got as they assess what they want to do around the investing strategies, and as the editorial teams do too. So we'll continue to do that. That's why we've let the spend go a little longer than we ordinarily would, because we think the market environment requires it, and we want to test around it to make sure we're optimizing our marketing metrics. Hopefully that helps.
spk05: your first question. Trying to parse the effect between sort of what I would call the post-COVID engagement dynamic, right, that's been going on for quite a year, as contrasted to now this new first quarter 22 development, which is just all the market volatility, interest rates, inflation, war, and all that. Certainly, we have some internal calcs that have sought to do that. The metrics that we use that aren't really disclosed, but I'll try to give you some directional insight. Think about it this way. We talked with Devin around some of the fact that some of our key metrics seem to have been bottoming, right, the last three quarters. A lot of these key metrics have kind of formed a base. It feels like if you average them and then you compare them to the first quarter metrics, a lot of them are pretty similar. gross ads, churn rate, all those things have stabilized. Landing page visits seems to have stabilized. So that's all good. Now what happened in the first quarter? Our billings in the fourth quarter were roughly 151 million. Our billings this quarter were 136 million. So if engagement was relatively similar between Q4 and Q1, which it was, it was down 2%, but not materially, You might then draw the conclusion from that that that delta, right, that step down from Q4 to Q1 is largely the impact of what we're seeing of this new dynamic, the sort of individual investor indecision, right, the decline in the conversion rate that I mentioned in my commentary, the 16 basis point decline in landing page to converted paid customer conversion rate. That really is due to what we believe is this first quarter dynamic because it turned on a dime in February. when inflation went through the roof and the war started and rates went from, you know, up 100 plus basis points. So I would look at that delta between Q4 and Q1 in our billings as a good relative indicator of the immediate impact of that volatility on our customer base. In particular, it's the less seasoned customer base. It's like the the ones that have not yet spent that $600 with us, right? Those are the ones that are being most hit and being sort of, you know, just pausing, right? And I think that's how I would think about the delta between the COVID effect that we've been seeing for several quarters and now this new effect here in terms of billing purchases.
spk00: All right. That's a really helpful call, I think, is that.
spk01: Thank you. Our next question – I'm sorry. If you'd like to ask a question, as a reminder, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from mine of Jason Helstein with Oppenheimer. Please proceed with your question.
spk09: Hey, I've got three questions, and I'm a little surprised no one's asked. So, I mean, it's clear that you guys really can't forecast the business, and so not criticizing you for not giving guidance right now. But, you know, what you can do is manage to a minimum level of adjusted free cash for the year – And it seems that's what the market wants to hear based on the way other companies have reported, market reaction, all that. So is there any reason why you can't commit to a minimum level of free cash flow for the year given the leverage you have around sales and marketing? So that's question one. Question two... It seems like we're hearing on the call a little bit less of a focus of this marketing ROI. And, you know, is there more of a shift of marketing dollars to tech and product? I mean, is that something we should be seeing over the next two years, given your prepared remarks? You know, and it kind of begs the question, should you be centralizing marketing more and removing it more away from the brand? And then I guess the third question is your ability to reduce G&A from current levels And you could kind of maybe tie that back to the point about adjusted free cash flow thing.
spk00: Thanks, Jason.
spk02: Where to begin? So, I'll just take it from the top. Your first comment about committing to a minimum free cash flow margin, we're not doing that. We decided not to give guidance, and I explained that in our last quarterly call. We think that's the right thing to do for the management of the business. And that dovetails into both aspects of the rest of your question. In other words, what we try to do, and you're right, we do have leverage and control around our marketing spend. It is a big part of our expense on the P&L. But what we have done, as I described earlier, was we extended some of that testing that we do because we're trying to feel out different investing strategies based on what the editorial teams are seeing and what they're thinking. And we do that as time goes by, and you saw that from Q4 to Q1. We'll continue to do that throughout the year. What we don't know is what the customer acquisition costs will be and what the ad platforms will be charging now or in the future. We're continuing to manage the business the way we have, which is when the market makes it inexpensive for us to acquire customers, we do more of it. And when it gets very expensive, we do less of it. And you've seen that over the quarters that have followed since we turned public. I think that's very consistent with how we manage the business, and I think we've been consistent about the messaging around that. In terms of marketing ROI, our marketing teams are doing what they typically do, which is we're testing those themes around different investment strategies and different products. And they're trying to see what's going to resonate with the subscriber base, depending on what's going on in the markets. And as we've described at length, what we're seeing is hesitancy amongst the lower priced subscribers that we've got to step up to higher price points as they try to figure out what they're going to do in their portfolios going forward, given the volatility that they're seeing. And so our marketers are, constantly testing that, but they are letting the marketing spend go longer than they would because they try to, as they try to feel out what investing strategies people are going to end up pursuing and want to subscribe to. And around G&A, I would just echo what Dale was describing earlier, which is We've been doing this for a long time. I feel like we've touched on this a bunch, but we've got a 22-year operating history, and what our operators are experienced at doing and constantly trying to optimize is the short-term results versus our long-term goals. If we wanted to, we could eliminate the marketing budget altogether, and we could do massive layoffs if that's what we wanted to do to maximize profits. We don't think that's in the best long term interests of our business or for our investors. And so we don't do that. Instead, what we do is we pursue a balance of trying to bring on subscribers of folks that who we think will be the right types of subscribers that will be interested and committed to learning about investing, because we believe it's a lifelong pursuit. And that will move along in our environment, the way our customers have historically. In other words, that they'll come on as free, move up to different price points as they explore different investing strategies and as they try to navigate the financial markets. And we try to balance that with some of the things we're trying to do strategically to provide for long-term growth for the business. Things like I described earlier, the PanMarketWise platform, data science, and some of the other things we're doing around M&A and people. And so that's what our operators are doing. And that's what I want them to do. I think that's what investors will want them to do, which is manage the business for the long-term prosperity of the shareholder base as well as our subscribers.
spk09: I know we're going a little longer. I was specifically asking about G&A. So not, you know, you just answered the question about sales and marketing. I'm just saying, again, given that, again, you're a public company, so you have to, you should care, I guess, about your public shareholders. but the market wants to see more discipline on the cost side. That is what the message is being given to every single company. So the question is, do you have flexibility to get your G&A down if you wanted to this year?
spk05: Yes, we do.
spk09: Okay, thank you.
spk05: Yeah, Jason, look, I think I mentioned earlier that, you know, the marketing spends one thing, and we're looking for efficiencies on the G&A side for sure. Well, we should always be doing that, right? But there's going to be a bit of a lag to that, right? We want to make sure that we keep the infrastructure that we've built over the last few years so we can maximize on the market opportunities. What we're seeing right now is creating massive amount of new investment possibilities here and probably not in the too distant future. And what you're seeing is such a purge across so many different things. There's going to be a myriad of opportunities and ideas that are going to resonate with folks. What we are in here is a lag, right? We're in a time lag between shock of what's happened, new ideas being propagated, and then those resonating with folks and then buying. That will happen, right? Is it going to be 30 days or 60 days? I don't know, but it will eventually happen. But to your point, yes, we're looking at G&A, and we're absolutely looking for efficiencies there. And you should also expect that our marketers, too, are looking for efficiencies. The unit costs are high. One of the data science projects we're working on is related to that. The terminal that Mark mentioned also should, over time, lead to more efficient per unit acquisition costs. There's a lot of technologies that are being rolled into that platform that we think will help do that, provide some synergies. So over time, marketing spend should get more efficient. We should be able to reduce our own unit costs despite market forces. And we are not at all less focused on ROI. I'm not sure how that came across, but that's absolutely not true. We couldn't be more focused on marketing ROI. Yes, the per unit costs are high. That's one thing. That's the cost side of it. The revenue side is what produces the return. And what we're seeing is a delay in the revenue side because I think the shock the individual investor is in right now, which I think is understandable given everything we've talked about.
spk09: Thank you.
spk05: I'm not sure if that helps or not.
spk01: Thank you. Our next question is a follow-up to the line of Alex Cram with UBS. Please proceed with your question.
spk04: Hey, guys. Sorry. I apologize for dragging out the call. Just very quick, given maybe the challenge to upsell people to pay subscribers right now, and you're clearly gaining a lot of new subscribers, and the numbers have obviously ballooned over the last couple of years. Are you giving any thought about maybe monetizing that free cohort a little bit more? Are there other business opportunities you can do with that valuable customer base at all, or is that too early to maybe shift strategy here on that side?
spk02: Thanks, Alex. I'm not sure what you're suggesting in terms of monetizing the free base. So far, what we've done is stick with our strategy, which is provide them high-value content that we think is value-add compared to other stuff they can find out there around investing strategies, and then put content and offers in front of them from a paid standpoint that we think we'll find attractive. That has been what we're doing. we've been doing, and that's what we plan on keep doing. But I'm not sure if that gets to your question around what else we would do with that group.
spk04: Yeah, I guess, not to barge in here, but obviously there's other models in the industry, right, of companies that are more focused on advertising, et cetera. And I think maybe you do that to some degree very little, but clearly you have a committed free subscriber base that is engaged. I think you said it earlier, engagement on your website is still ongoing. pretty healthy, right? So clearly people that are interested in financial markets, maybe for whatever reason, they're not really interested in spending hard dollars for content. And, you know, that's the prerogative. So just wondering if you think that that customer base or potential customers could be monetized more. But again, this is not your business model so far. I'm just wondering if you're spending more time on thinking about things like that.
spk02: Yeah, we do. I in our business largely as a result of legacy activity that happened in an acquisition that we've done and so that's fine we don't have really anything against it but to your point that it really hasn't been our business model up until now we think one of the reasons why the free user base keeps coming back to our content is because to a large extent it's not it doesn't look like everything else that you find out there having said that that doesn't mean we have a categorical ban on ad revenue. It's just not something that we've really pursued with any great emphasis so far.
spk04: Yep, fair enough. Just figured I'd check. Thanks again.
spk00: No problem.
spk01: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes our question and answer session. I'll turn the floor back to Mr. Arnold for any final comments.
spk02: Yeah, thank you. I just want to thank everyone for their participation today and your interest in MarketWise. Hope you have a great day.
spk01: Thank you. This concludes today's conference. You may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.
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