This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.
spk03: Greetings and welcome to the InnoVid fourth quarter 2022 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are on a listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. It is now my pleasure to introduce your host, John Williams, InnoVid's Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.
spk00: Thank you, operator. Before we begin, I'll remind you that today's call may contain forward-looking statements and that the safe harbor statement in today's earnings release, available on our investor relations page, also pertains to this call. Changes in our business, competitive landscape, technological or regulatory environment, and other factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed by the forward-looking statements made today. Our historical results are not necessarily indicative of future performance, and as such, we can give no assurance as to the accuracy of our forward-looking statements and assume no obligation to update them except as required by law. In addition, today's call may include non-GAAP financial measures. We use these non-GAAP measures in managing the business and believe they provide useful information for our investors. These measures should be considered in addition to and not as a substitute for our GAAP results. Reconciliations of the non-GAAP measures to their corresponding GAAP measures, where appropriate, can be found in the earnings presentation and earnings release available on our website and in our filings with the SEC. Hosting today's call are Zvika Netter, Innovid's co-founder and CEO, Tanya Andreev-Caspin, Innovid's CFO, and Tal Chalozin, co-founder and CTO, who will participate in our Q&A session. I'll now turn the call over to Zvika to begin.
spk02: Thanks, John, and thank you all for joining the call today. I'll start with a few comments on the current environment and its impact on InnoVid, some high-level thoughts about the fourth quarter, and some recent business highlights. Our CFO, Tania Andreev-Caspin, will then provide details on our performance and initial 2023 guidance, followed by Q&A. I'm excited to share with you an update on Innovit's progress, including our fourth quarter and full year 2022 results. We recently completed our first full year as a public company, and I'm proud of how our team has executed against our strategic objectives in a challenging environment. Innovit remains exceptionally well positioned as the clear leader in building the critical technology infrastructure for the future of TV advertising. We believe that the CTV segment is and will continue to be their area of growth in the advertising industry. And this is why it's our primary area of focus here at Innovit. In 2022, we had a number of important accomplishments. Our full year revenue grew 41% year over year. We continued our drive towards positive adjusted EBITDA and our balance sheet remained strong. Measurement became a significant revenue driver for Innovit this year. following our acquisition of TV Squared and represented 20% of our full year annual revenue. We're excited about the synergies realized through the acquisition as well as the growth opportunities ahead. We built meaningful client relationships and added a number of exciting wins. Our clients make a strategic decision to invest in our critical and independent infrastructure software and continue to do so despite headwinds in advertising volume and lighter spend across the overall market. We remain very focused on the things that we can control, executing against our strategic objectives, leveraging the synergies and accelerating the growth of our TV Squared acquisition, cross-selling, and deepening our customer connections. The shift from linear to CTV continues to drive our growth as we add more customers and gain more share. In Q4, we reported 13% revenue and 19% impression growth in CTV, compared to the same period in 2021. Our CTV accounted for 49% of revenue and 52% of total video impressions, excluding TV Squared. For the full year, total revenue grew 41% to $127.1 million, and we delivered $1.2 million in adjusted EBITDA. Our results offer clear evidence that demand continues to grow despite difficult advertising environment. Let me cover some additional highlights from the quarter. There are three key metrics that we report annually to demonstrate how mission critical our platform is for our customers, even in a challenging environment. Our net revenue retention or NRR in 2022 was 111% and our core client count in 2022 increased by 60% overall. Equally important, our core client retention rate was 90%. Simply put, our customer base is growing, and the customers we have are not only staying with us, they are using our platform more and more every year. I'm happy to note recent new wins, including CMI Media Agency, plus one other large player in the pharma and healthcare vertical. I'll also note several recent client cross-selling expansions, including Canva and Goodway Group. as well as several partnerships, including Fox, the Trade Desk, Visio, and Kinetic. We recently announced two very exciting leadership updates, an addition and a promotion, that further align our leadership around operational excellence. The addition of David Hendrick as Innovate New Chief Commercial Officer, who leads the commercial alignment across our revenue-related functions, including sales, marketing, and account management. The promotion of Ken Marcus, previously our Chief Client Officer to Chief Operating Officer, who now leads operational alignment across the organization. Both Dave and Ken are up and running in their new roles and are closely partnering to deliver on scale and profitability. I'm very excited to have them both in these new important positions. And finally, in November, we hosted our first ever Investor Day and the replay is still available on our website. It was a great event with members of our senior leadership team highlighting our strategic initiatives and the significant opportunity ahead of us. Innovative approach since day one has always been neutrality. We don't buy or sell media at all. And we firmly believe the advertising industry needs to separate critical infrastructure and measurement technology for advertisers from media buying and selling. That's how we built and run our business since day one. focus on advertisers' very clear desire and need for transparency and alignment of interest with their tech providers. The recent antitrust suit filed by the Department of Justice against Google for monopolizing multiple digital advertising technology products reinforces our view that neutrality in this industry is critical to our customers and to the industry at large. We'd encourage everyone looking to understand the current state of competition and the total addressable market opportunity in the advertising and advertising technology sectors to read the complaint. We're glad to see that the industry is becoming more aware of the risk of mixing both business models under one umbrella. And we're looking forward to showing our existing and potential customers just why our approach is better for them and better for the industry. As the industry evolves, Innovit is in a leading position. Let me focus on how we are directly addressing the current macro environment and why Innovate is positioned for success in 2023. First, I'm confident we'll continue to take market share from Google Campaign Manager. When the economy and the ad market bounces back, we believe we are well positioned to see growth multiplier effect as our growing customer base ramps back up and our clients activate more features of Innovate capabilities. Our platform remains mission critical for our customers and our ad server personalization and measurement capabilities remain highly differentiated. Second, we remain laser focused on profitable growth. We expect positive adjusted EBITDA for the full year of 2023, which Tanya will discuss later. And we reiterate our long-term and target of 30% plus adjusted EBITDA margin over the long run. And finally, we are maintaining a strong balance sheet focused on a maximum capital flexibility and optionality. We believe our quarter-end cash position provides more than enough runway to comfortably fund the business as we shift from burning to building cash. I'm proud of what Innovate and its team has accomplished in 2022, and I'm even more excited about the future. With that, I'll hand it over to our CFO, Tanya Andreev-Caspin, to discuss our fourth quarter results and the 2023 financial outlook. Tanya?
spk05: Thank you, Tzvika, and good morning, everyone. We are pleased with our Q4 and full year results, particularly given the challenging macroeconomic backdrop in 2022 and the fourth quarter specifically. Q4 revenue grew 30% year-over-year to $33.7 million on a reported basis, or 5% on a performer basis. Measurement which has become a significant revenue driver following our TV squared acquisition grew 16% on a pro forma basis and represented 22% of total revenue in Q4 and 20% of full year revenue. Ad serving and personalization services were up a combined 2% year over year and represented 78% of total revenue in Q4 and 80% of full year revenue. As a reminder, our ad serving and presentation revenue closely correlates with ad impressions volume served through the InnoVid platform. Q4 CTV volume grew 19% year over year and represented 52% of all video impressions. This is up from 46% in the previous year. Mobile volume decreased by 6% and accounted for 35% of all video impressions, while desktop volume decreased by 8% and represented 13% of all video impressions. As the overall ad environment bounces back, we expect growth in our core CTV business will continue to outpace other channels and continue to grow as a percentage of overall video impressions. Additionally, our unique combination of CTV ad serving, personalization and measurement solutions will further boost our growth over time. On to our geographic breakdown. In Q4, US revenue grew 27% on as reported basis and represented 89% of our total revenue in the quarter and 90% for full year 2022. The US remains the global center of CTV innovation and adoption, and is where Innovit deploys most of its investment. International revenue grew 57% year over year and represented 11% of quarterly revenue, up from 9% in Q4 last year. As you know, our target clients are composed of the largest global TV advertisers. We defined a core client as an advertiser or publisher that generates at least $100,000 of annual revenue. Note that prior to acquiring TV Squared, we only included advertisers in that definition. In 2022, our core clients generated approximately 88% of our annual revenue, versus 91% last year. At year end 2022, we had 174 total core clients, which includes 41 from TV Squared versus 109 at the year end of 2021. Excluding TV Squared contribution, Innovit core clients growth exceeded 20% in 2022. Core Clients' annual retention was 90% on a pro forma basis, down from 97% retention of Core Innovate Platform clients in 2021 prior to the acquisition. Annual Core Clients' net revenue retention was 111% compared to 127% in 2021. 2022 retention metrics were impacted by the expansion of our Core Clients' definition and the inclusion of a different client mix following the TV Squared integration. Both metrics, however, are showing strong, healthy trends in a year with particularly challenging macro trends impacting advertisers' spend. Moving on to expenses. Cost of revenues increased by $3 million in Q4 2022 as compared to Q4 2021. The increase is primarily attributable to the TV Squared acquisition. Revenue-less cost of revenues was 75% of revenue in Q4 2022, down from 79% in Q4 2021. Again, due to this TV Squared acquisition and the subscale nature of TV Squared as a standalone entity. We believe the fully integrated business will eventually operate at or close to our pre-acquisition margin. We expect this metric to improve over time as revenue bounces back, the business scales, and the cross-selling accelerates. Total Q4 operating expenses, excluding depreciation, amortization, and impairment costs, were at 35.8 million dollars. up 3.3 million, or 10% year over year. Most of the increase, 3 million, is due to an increase in stock-based compensation. The remaining increase is due to our acquisition of TV Squared, which was largely offset by a reduction in one-time expenses, particularly IPO-related expenses incurred in Q4 of last year. We ended this year with 531 employees. an increase of 1% year over year on a pro forma basis. And this is before the head count reduction that is taking place in the first quarter of 2023. Net loss in the fourth quarter was $3.4 million, or per share loss of 3 cents. Adjusted EBITDA in Q4 was 3 million, representing 9% adjusted EBITDA margin, up from 7% last year. We are very comfortable with our cash position and liquidity given our margin profile and our expectation for positive full year 2023 adjusted EBITDA. We ended the year with $47.5 million in cash and cash equivalents and short-term bank deposits on our balance sheet and $20 million in debt. We also have available an additional $30 million revolving line of credit at favorable terms if needed. Year end share count was 133.9 million shares. Finally, I would like to discuss our outlook. While the macro environment has reduced visibility, we remain confident in the resilience and strong strategic positioning of our business. and are committed to profitable growth in 2023. For the first quarter of 2023, we expect total revenue in a range of 27 to $29 million, representing four to 12% year over year growth on as reported basis. We expect Q1 adjusted EBITDA in a range of negative $3 million to negative $1 million. As typical, we expect Q1 will be the lowest point in the year for adjusted EBITDA margin. By the end of Q1, we expect to complete our recently announced 10% headcount reduction. And our outlook today includes the impact of those cost savings actions on our operating model. We will also remind you that when the TD squared acquisition took place in Q1 of 2022, There were $4.4 million in the one-time acquisition and IPO related expenses reflected in those quarterly results that will not repeat in Q1 of 2023. Also beginning in Q2, we will no longer distinguish between pro forma and as reported basis, since we will be lapping a full year since the TV squared acquisition. We have seen some encouraging early indicators in 2023. But today, given the current advertising market, we suggest modeling flat revenue year over year as a starting point, with a return to more normal quarterly revenue seasonality than we saw in 2022. We are carefully managing operating expenses and expect full-year 2023 adjusted EBITDA margin will improve on a year-over-year basis. To be clear, even if revenue is flat year-over-year, we expect improved profitability versus 2022. Given our focus on cost management and operational efficiency, we expect to be even more profitable if the environment improves. In conclusion, Inovit is very well positioned to emerge from the current macro downturn strategically and financially stronger with a unique and fully integrated platform that is absolutely critical for our customers. We are taking actions today to ensure our future success. Thanks again for joining the call. Tzvi Katal and I are now ready to answer your questions. Operator, please begin the Q&A session.
spk03: Thank you. The floor is now open for questions. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your touchtone phone at this time. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up the handset before pressing the star keys. Once again, that's star 1 to register a question at this time. The first question is coming from Andrew Boone of JMP Securities. Please go ahead.
spk01: Hi, good morning. Thanks so much for taking my questions. I'd like to start with the DOJ case against Google. Can you guys help us understand what that could mean for InnoVid and how clients are actually talking to you about it? And then secondly, just on the guide and thinking about 4Q revenue, It's really healthy growth in terms of core clients. That was really exciting to see. But can you just help us understand more what's going on with individual clients? Should we think about that as a headwind of per client spend? Or how do we think about just the deterioration there? Thanks so much.
spk02: Thanks, Andrew. And thanks for the questions. Yeah, as you can see, I mean, we are very... Engaged, excited, interested in this case clearly because neutrality has been a core part of Innovit since day one, 15 years ago, 10 years ago. We talked about how critical it is to, and we don't come from EdTech, Tyler and I are the co-founders. We entered this industry from a banking industry and we saw that there is a flaw in the system where media buying and selling technology is mixed together and media assets are mixed together with infrastructure software. And we decided strategically that Innovate is not going to buy or sell media at the same time as providing infrastructure. And this is why we built Innovate as a critical software infrastructure company for the future of television. And we kept true to that for years and years, so you can make a lot of money in media. And finally, and not a lot of people heard and understood that, but this is a very long-term play for us as we are planning to become a very large, scalable organization to provide infrastructure for the future of TV advertising. And it is very encouraging that the U.S. government is basically saying what we've been saying for a long time, that there is a significant issue in the system where you own both the media and the platform, the technology platform. So the fact that there is a focus there is definitely, we expect, and we hope will help us tell our story, both to this audience, the investors, and, of course, to our customers or those, more so importantly, those who are not our customers, that they, assuming they're going to go and read this, whether it's in the newspaper or read the lawsuit itself, the attention to that should help us tell our story. That's on the DOJ. And I think, you know, it's definitely going to take years, but the focus on it is definitely something that we share the same passion about the separations of entities. And when it comes to the guide, the 4Q, you said the core clients and the overall, I mean, As you indicated, we are closing more business, and it's kind of connected to your first question. On a strategic path, our differentiation from our competition, which is mostly Google Campaign Manager, our investment in additional products like personalization and measurement, upselling to existing clients, retention rate, all these KPIs are very, very strong throughout Q4, which was not as strong from a top-line perspective. And also, if you look, we see our outlook as we see it for the year at this point, It's, you know, at least we are seeing the industry, and this is all, from our perspective, all affected by macroeconomic, where everybody's seeing advertising and TV spend is going down. Overall advertising spend is going down because of the economical situation. And that is the only thing that we see that when we're factoring in, we're saying all the core KPIs that we control continue to do very strong. But the macroeconomic is such that we basically planned the budget. We planned against a flat year, and we took measures and are taking measures to make sure it's a profitable year, so that under any circumstances, the plan is that we'll have a better EBITDA this year than last year. And this is all part in our journey to get to 30-plus percent EBITDA, and we know we get a lot of questions on that, and this is why we're committed, even in this environment, to keep and be profitable. And if the outcome is better from a top line, if the economy recovers faster than what we think, as some of our peers, then it's an upside.
spk03: Andrew, did you have any additional questions? Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you do have a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad at this time. The next question is coming from Sean Patel of Susquehanna. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hey, guys. Congrats on the first year at the public company. I have a few questions. First, in terms of the guidance, you guys just commented a little bit on it, but I'm just curious, how are you guys thinking about, you know, the seasonality, the linearity of the guide by quarter, say, you know, QQ and 3Q? And how much of the outlook for the year would you say is, you know, macro, kind of what you're seeing now versus other factors? And how much of it is, you know, what you're actually seeing here from customers versus kind of taking additional conservatism on top of that?
spk02: So I would address your second question first. You know what? Let's start with the first one. It makes more sense. So As you indicated, we saw software Q4 versus Q3, which is a very rare thing for this industry. If anybody knows the advertising, definitely the TV advertising industry, Q1 is the lowest, Q4 is the highest, and it kind of goes up and goes down and goes up and goes down for tens and tens of years. So it's actually a pretty predictable model. What happened since COVID, we started seeing different shockwaves in this industry. And while 2021 was a normal cycle, and 2022 started as a normal cycle, in Q4 we started seeing a decline, and that's why you saw a difference between Q3 and Q4, which is a rare situation, and then software Q4, I believe, for the entire industry, not just innovate. So to your question in terms of cycles, we are assuming that this year the seasonality will be normal, quote unquote. because the macro economy is already impacting. You see Q4, you see Q1. So based on our analysis and our budget and plan, we took that throughout the entire year in terms of the plan. So there's an overall macro compression with a normal seasonality, if that makes sense. So obviously, if, again, some people suggested that things will be better sooner, So then you'll have another abnormal seasonality where you have a weaker than normal first half, let's say, and a stronger second half. We're not saying that's what we're suggesting. But so what we're planning against is a normal seasonality on a weaker economy. And to your last question, absolutely 100%. What you're seeing on the top line is a factor of macroeconomics. Because if you look at the old core KPIs, retention of key core clients and the amount of core clients, We closed more logos in Q4 and in Q1. We retained a lot of them. We're upselling more. Our NRR, even for software last year, was 111%. So strategically, Andrew asked about Google and the DOJ, which Google is the biggest source of market share for us. So currently, we're not aware of any macro dynamics that will impact our internal KPIs. But because we are pure software and we're not a media business, we don't have a lot of margin to play with. We're not buying and selling. We're selling software. And it's based on volume. So once volume goes down because spend goes down, it impacts our top line. Once it goes up, it will improve not just the top line, but the way we configure the company at this point, dramatically our bottom line.
spk06: Thank you. And then I had a quick follow-up. It seems like this is coming to kind of earnings reports. you know, not just this quarter, but over the past couple of quarters, you know, connected TV and retail media are the two biggest trends in media right now. Um, certainly on connected TV, you guys are, you know, variable position. We kind of all know how you guys are involved there, but regarding retail media, how does that, you know, how, how, how, you know, can you talk about how that could be an opportunity for you guys or how you feel about that opportunity going forward?
spk02: Sure. I have my co-founder Tal here, which I'm sure would love to answer that. Tal?
spk07: Sure. Thank you very much, Svika. And thank you, Sean, for the call. So, yeah, you're absolutely correct. As you've seen from many other players in the space, CTV is clearly the biggest trend in media followed by retail media. And we've been saying it for a very long time. Something interesting to see is that as we've shown, software can really make an impact in television, same goes for retail media. So far, all of the focus has been, just in the other companies, has been on the media targeting space. But obviously, retail media can play a lot in measurement by virtue of using data for better outcome and on personalization in a shape of a more personalized commercial leveraging the data of a retail media network. We've spoken in the past about strong partnership we have with Target, leveraging innovative personalization. We spoke last quarter about retailers such as eBay leveraging InnovateXP for better measurement. And we're going to share a lot more in the future on that line. But we're absolutely aligned that CTV and retail media network are a great utilization of how software is going to innovate in media.
spk06: Thank you, guys.
spk03: Thank you. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, if you have a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad at this time. We will pause a moment for any additional questions. Once again, that is star 1 to register a question at this time. We do have a follow-up coming from Sean Patel of Susquehanna. Please go ahead.
spk06: Hey, guys. I have a few follow-ups as well, if it's okay if I ask these. On connected TV, I guess this is kind of an industry question as well as an intimate question. How do you see kind of the use of alternative IDs or IDs in general? Or maybe broader now, just targeting. It seems like there are some changes going on in the industry where some of the walled gardens that exist in CT gaming may try to hold back some data that was previously available for targeting. So I'm just curious what you guys see happening there and how you think Innovative is positioned to capitalize on that or take advantage of any situations that may come up.
spk02: Tad, do you want to take this question?
spk07: Sure. Thanks again for the question, Sham. First of all, I think you hit a very important point that when we do talk to investors, there is a big confusion on this point around walled gardens and the fragmentation of the connected television space. The market is extremely fragmented by many large players such as Amazon, YouTube, Roku, and many other kind of newcomers to the advertising space, Netflix, NBC+, all of them are behaving in somewhat of a walled garden, and to your point, creating their own identifier, creating their own ways to insert data and extract data out. So we think that the market is amazingly fragmented. This is why we think that a strong software platform that helps orchestrate media in the streaming spaces is mandatory for marketers. To your point about identifiers, we did share in the past our heavy investment in a product we call Innovate Key, part of Innovate XP, which is doing exactly what you just described. We don't believe that the industry needs yet another identifier because there are many out there and the market will become even more fragmented. So what we think is is the need for a spine that connects all of those identifiers in the best way possible and allow marketers to just traverse the industry and deliver the right message to everyone and collect as much data out. And this is what we're doing in partnership with many of the names that I mentioned. And we will continue to push on that front.
spk06: And can you guys talk a little bit more about, you know, your measurement offering, and what kind of uptake or kind of new business activity do you expect in a software macro? Is this something that encourages kind of accelerated adoption because of the need for greater efficiency and effectiveness? Or is it more of an additional kind of add-on that maybe is impacted by the macro? in a more negative way. How do you guys think about the measurement offering that you guys have and how the current macro will impact it?
spk02: Sure. I mean, the answer is yes and yes to those questions. And I'll explain. We are absolutely seeing the decision to acquire TV Squared exactly a year ago It was in a significant transaction for Innovate immediately post-IPO. It was a very strategic long-term move for us because what we heard from our customers is that the need to better understand how television performs versus CTV, so not just looking at CTV as a standalone, kind of almost connected to your question on identity and household identity. So the ability to see the entire household and saying, you know, X percent, let's say 70 percent is watched on linear and 30 percent watched on connected TV. When you're moving tens of billions of dollars from one site to another, it's really critical to see the entire picture. So for us, combining our excellence in CTV measurement and TV squared TV measurement combined created a very unique offering. So from the market acceptance perspective, we're not surprised by it because You know, we heard the customers before we made the transaction. So we're definitely seeing we're happy with the acquisition, with the integration, and the level of adoption we've seen is actually, from a revenue perspective, definitely around the number we expected to see this year. And this is a journey. These things, you know, measurement is a major play, and it takes years to build, you know, to build the traction, the adoption. and the acceptance because some of it is science and some of it is almost art. From that perspective, strategically, we're extremely happy with this and we're happy with the results and we're definitely seeing adoption. At the same time, as TV advertising, as all advertising budgets in an environment like this go down, that obviously affects also investment. Now, you could argue that in a time like this, you actually need – and Mark Preacher, the CMO of P&G, said I think last month at the keynote of the ANA conference in Florida, spoke about some key things that they want to invest in, and it's exactly what you said. It's looking at optimizing reach, how many households you reach, at what frequency, and what's the return on investment. kind of the basic stuff that any CEO and any CFO will do in this is optimizing return on investment. So measurement is absolutely a key component of that. But the tricky is, yes, there's going to be more interest and more investment in measurement while the budgets overall are going to shrink. So while our measurement product is more like SaaS, it's a fixed fee throughout the year, it will be naive to assume that a year like this, assuming it lasts for the entire year, is not going to impact the amount of money we make from that product, while adoption we absolutely expect will continue to go up.
spk06: Thank you. I just had one last one, if I could sneak this one in. Any commentary you guys can offer in terms of, you know, I'll give you some context. You know, we've heard other companies talk about, you know, the scatter market and the impact on you know, connected TV grows. Just curious if there's anything you can offer there on the scatter market. I'll leave it there. Thank you.
spk02: Dan, you want to take this?
spk07: Of course. In general, I think those terms, scattered or spot, have been thrown on by many other companies. Something important about Innovate is that we service the whole market. We absolutely don't care what part of the market is picking up more and more benefits, the programmatic, the reserved one, and upfront buys or others. There's clearly throughout the years always fluctuation from one side to another. When times are a little tight, we are seeing a little more focus on the programmatic side of the house. At the beginning of the upfront season, we are seeing a big focus on that market. But again, the beauty of our offering is that we really don't pick sides. We offer software solutions for marketers across the board that service nearly every impression and every side of the market.
spk06: Thank you, guys.
spk03: Thank you. Once again, that is star one for any questions that you may have at this time. The next question is coming from Shweta Kudaria of Evercore ISI. Please go ahead. Okay.
spk04: Can you please talk about the intra-quarter trends that you saw from Q3 to Q4? Seasonally, Q4 is the strongest, but you mentioned that it actually worsened. So help us think about what you saw. Um, anything that in particular you can call out and then what you've seen so far, we're, uh, two months, almost two months into the quarter. So if anything that you can call out this quarter that you've seen, uh, as it progressed, that'd be helpful.
spk02: So, uh, you're absolutely right. The, the, the trend, basically the way, the way to look at this is 2021 was a normal year in terms of seasonality. 2022 started normal. And in Q4, I would argue you could see it also something like YouTube results, which is obviously you could see like you already started seeing some decline in Q3 and definitely Q4, it was felt by the industry and you see it all over. So I would say that if you look at 2022, the seasonality was disrupted after a nice run in terms of seasonality sequencing. Was it disrupted in Q4? and resulted in us, you know, taking action to make sure, because profitability is extremely important to us and in this environment also to our shareholders, we took action to make sure that in plan 2023, in a way that under even flat circumstances, we are going to be profitable EBITDA positive while maintaining our, you know, strategic goals. So in terms of Q4, specifically some people ask us about, you know, vertical, specific verticals, because that's like kind of a post-COVID supply chain issues and there were like ripple effects where one part of the industry will be hurt more than another part of the industry. So, you know, we're happy to report that auto, which is, again, you see it on television. So the stuff you see on television is how we make money. So auto has recovered and kind of, quote, unquote, back to normal. And we see in Q4, like consumer electronics, technology, telco was declining more than usual, right? So it's like, But these are specific verticals. The key thing here is the macro, because the macro impacts everybody. So even if you'll see different verticals and you'll see some recovery in Q1 from certain verticals, the big story here is the macro environment and their overall spend. And I'm not sure anybody has a crystal ball to say how exactly this year will pan out from the economy perspective and advertising spend perspective. But in terms of how we model this year, we modeled it as a flat. normal, but normal cycles. So normal seasonality. And if there'll be a recovery earlier, then you'll see a much stronger H2 than compared to H1. But this is not how we are modeling our investments for this year.
spk04: Okay. Thanks, Sita.
spk02: Thank you, Shweta.
spk03: Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this brings us to the end of today's question and answer session and today's teleconference. We would like to thank you for your participation and interest in InnoVid. You may disconnect your line to log off the webcast at this time and enjoy your weekend.
Disclaimer