Gaia Q2 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

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August 5, 2024

There are 7 speakers on the call.

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to Gaia's Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. Joining us today from Gaia are Jirka Rysidy, Executive Chairman James Calhoun, CEO and Ned Preston, CFO. After the speakers' presentation, there will be a question and answer session. Before we begin, Gaia's management team would like to remind everyone that management's prepared remarks contain forward looking statements and management may make additional forward looking statements in response to your questions, including, but not limited to, statements of expectations, future events or future financial performance.

Operator

These statements do not guarantee future performance and therefore undue reliance should not be placed upon them. Although we believe these expectations are reasonable, Gaia management undertakes no obligation to revise any statements to reflect changes that occur after this call. Actual events or results could differ materially. These statements are based on current expectations of the company's management and involve inherent risks and uncertainties, including those identified in the Risk Factors section of Gaia's latest annual report on Form 10 ks filed with the SEC. All non GAAP financial measures referenced in today's call are reconciled in the company's earnings press release to the most directly comparable GAAP measure.

Operator

This call also contains time sensitive information that is accurate only as of the time and date of this broadcast, August 5, 2024. Finally, I would like to remind everyone that this conference call is being webcast and a recording will be made available for replay on Gaia's Investor Relations website at ir.gaia.com. I will now turn the call over to Gaia Executive Chairman, Jirka Risavi. Please proceed with your.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon, everyone. So for the quarter, we continue to build in our increasing momentum. During the Q2, which is our true virus season the slowest, we grew revenue at the same rate as we did in first and by 11% to 22,100,000 dollars We expect revenue growth to be similar during the Q3 and then to increase to about 15% in the 4th quarter. The member count during the quarter grew by 10% to 850,000 members, up from 774,000 in the year ago quarter. Including some of the nonrecurring expenses we have in the quarter, our loss was similar as the last year and $0.09 per share.

Speaker 1

Free cash flow was 700,000 for the quarter and $1,600,000 for last 6 months, which is $2,000,000 improvement on the top of $8,400,000 improvement we delivered during last year. In 2016, Gaia invested $10,000,000 and we recently raised $12,000,000 from outside investor for our subsidiary, Igniton, with Gaia still retaining 71% of equity. Igniton used $10,000,000 of cash to raise cash raised to acquire exclusive worldwide license for Igniton Health Technology. Technology uses concentrated quasi particle transmitted by the sun to improve cognition, memory and longevity. Technology can be delivered by various means from embedded food supplements to control or release from coated microchips like for example from Gaia connected TV device.

Speaker 1

And James will now speak more about the business at Vanis.

Speaker 2

Go ahead.

Speaker 3

Hello, everyone, and thank you, Jirka. Our Q2 results reflect our ongoing commitment to delivering transformative content and growing our community. During the Q2, traditionally our slowest, we achieved an 11% increase in revenue and a 10% growth in membership year over year, while also marking our 5th consecutive quarter of positive free cash flow. We have also implemented a price increase for new members starting in July, which we expect to positively impact our revenue by the end of the year. The timing of this increase was moved from Q2 to Q3 to strategically align with our 3rd party partners, ensuring minimal disruption to our members.

Speaker 3

Traditionally, we have grandfathered existing members on old pricing. However, we are currently testing a price increase for all new members in Great British Pounds. Should this test be successful, we would roll out price increases for all members from Q4 onwards, which will be the first time we have done this the history of the company. Additionally, as of today, we are excited to officially announce the public launch of Gaia Marketplace to our entire member base and community. This initiative not only strengthens our community engagement, but also introduces an alternative revenue stream to the Gaia business.

Speaker 3

Gaia Marketplace offers transformative tours and experiences for Gaia members to connect with like minded community from across the globe. From exploring ancient civilizations in Egypt, delving into transformative healing practices in Costa Rica and awakening 1's highest potential in curated retreats with leading teachers from Gaia's platform. Members will also have access to powerful courses, training programs, events, workshops and conscious products chosen and backed by research for exceptional quality and impact. Gaia Marketplace underscores the company's continued commitment to creating a global conscious community, and you can find out more about this initiative at marketplace. Gaia.com.

Speaker 3

Looking forward through the end of the year, we will continue to execute on increasing the number of members on our new higher pricing, expanding the rollout of our marketplace initiative, scaling our member growth in our premium tier and overall making improvements on free cash flow generation and increases in annualized ARPU. Our CFO, Ned Preston, will now provide more detailed financial insights.

Speaker 4

Thank you, James. Turning now to our financial results for the Q2 ended June 30, 2024. Revenues for the Q2 grew $2,200,000 or 11 percent to $22,100,000 from $19,800,000 in the prior year ago period. This also marked our 4th sequential period of year over year top line growth. Member increased 10% to 850,000 as of June 30, 2024, up from 774,000 members as of June 30, 2023.

Speaker 4

Gross profit in the 2nd quarter increased to $18,700,000 up from $17,000,000 in the year ago quarter. Including non recurring expenses, net loss was negative $2,100,000 or negative $0.09 per share, which is the same as the year ago quarter. Operating cash flows for the 1st 6 months finished at $3,900,000 representing a $2,600,000 improvement from the 1st 6 months of 2023 and continues the momentum we've delivered in the prior 4 quarters. Free cash flow for the 2nd quarter was $700,000 up from $200,000 in the year ago period. The Q2 of 2024 was our 5th consecutive quarter of positive free cash flow.

Speaker 4

In the last 6 months, both revenue and member growth were stable at over 10% with an improvement in free cash flow of $2,000,000 on top of the $8,400,000 improvement delivered during 2023. As of June 30, 2024, our cash balance was $5,500,000 with an unused $10,000,000 line of credit. That completes my summary. I'd like now to turn the call back over to Jirka for his closing comments. Jirka?

Speaker 1

Yes. So for the summary, we expect increasing annual revenue growth rate with continuing growth of ARPU and increasing gross profit per employee and continued generated of positive free cash flow. And this concludes our remarks, and I would like to open the call for questions. Operator, please.

Operator

Thank you. We'll now open the line for questions from the company's publishing Our first question comes from Mark Argento with Lake Street. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 5

Hey guys, a few different questions here. Maybe James will start off with the price increase. Could you just walk us through kind of what your plan was previously and then the new plan, it sounds like you're shifting it out the taking price a little bit to align with the subscriber with some of your partners. Can you just walk us through kind of that process and then the actual price increases? I know you talked about something about the Great Britain the British pound denominated, but just kind of walk us through that again, that would be helpful.

Speaker 3

Sure, Mark. So, first of all, we increased our pricing in Great British pounds and euros in Q2. And we had intended to increase price for new members that is. And we had intended to increase price for new members in USD and rest of world currencies in Q2 also. However, that was pushed until the start of Q3 just in terms of lining up price increases with our 3rd party partners.

Speaker 3

Some of them like our biggest partner, Amazon was not able to increase until Q3. With Great British Pounds, we are testing for the first time ever increasing the price for all existing members. As a company, we have traditionally grandfathered members on existing legacy pricing, but we're currently testing an increase for all members in Great British Pounds. We're anticipating that this increase will be successful and that we make a margin on the delta from the increase to in relation to any losses. If that is the case, then we would anticipate considering increasing for all members in the Q4 period.

Speaker 3

So, hold for more information on that as the year goes on.

Speaker 5

And do you anticipate a similar cadence in the U. S. Or just focus right now in terms of the British pound?

Speaker 3

So after we test the Great British pound impact on member losses, then we'll anticipate rolling out to USD price increases and other rest of world currencies as well in remaining countries.

Speaker 1

Yes. It was kind of targeting about $2 in the U. S. We actually it was more in U. K.

Speaker 1

Probably 3 plus, right? Because the difference in currency, so we try to catch it up to the dollar. So it's higher increase in the U. Than we would do in the U. S.

Speaker 1

But so we're targeting about $2 in the U. S.

Speaker 5

So is that roughly kind of a 20% in a blended average or how do you guys think about that?

Speaker 1

Yes. I mean the $2 is about $17.5 but if you kind of take this some 3rd parties depends on the currency, then probably 20% is probably accurate.

Speaker 5

Great. And then just pivoting quickly to marketplace. I know it's early and you just got to kind of up and running, but what are your expectations in terms of what does that business, does it incrementally generate meaningful revenue this year? Is this year more testing year? Think about adding incremental revenues meaningfully next year?

Speaker 5

What should we kind of expect to see in terms

Speaker 3

of Sure. So we've been primarily testing marketplace in beta up until today. So today there was a release that went out prior to our earnings release announcing the rollout of Marketplace to our entire member base. Based on our testing to our beta groups, we're optimistic about the revenue opportunity contributed from Marketplace. We do see that growing sequentially over time, typically because of how the revenue is attributed.

Speaker 3

So we anticipate most of the revenue to come from retreats and experiences. And so if we take sales for a retreat now in Q1, we'll be building up that deferred revenue in marketplace. So much of the sales that we take now and for instance in Q3 and Q4, a majority of that would also be deferred revenue, which would hit in Q1, Q2. So we see a stacking effect of that throughout the year. And alongside price increase, where like Jirka had hinted at in his script, we see our growth rate increasing from double digits currently to sort of mid teens in Q4.

Speaker 3

We anticipate that marketplace will contribute to that mid teens growth as we go into 2025 alongside the price increase attribution as well.

Speaker 1

You should look at community mark sorry, the marketplace as a part of the community. Our goal is Gaia is to ultimately be a conscious community worldwide. And we would plan to launch actually the actual community kind of by end of the next year. And so marketplace is kind of part of that. We spend no marketing, no basically separate marketing expenses is basically only to our members.

Speaker 1

So there's kind of email and being on-site. So it's pure increase to ARPU. It should break even pretty quickly. It's not breaking even now. So contributed to some of the losses this quarter will probably in a third because we already stopped and we don't have the revenue yet.

Speaker 1

But that will get pretty quickly because we just use about 4 people. And so when you kind of look at it, look at it as beginning of the community. So global community of like minded people, that's how we look at it.

Speaker 5

Great. Well, that's one for me. You've mentioned this Ignaton, I think I'm pronouncing that right, that you guys have invested some money and raised some additional capital. Is this a product at this point? Is it are you going to be able to commercialize this?

Speaker 5

Maybe talk through a little bit of your the concept here, what it is and how over time do you think you can monetize it?

Speaker 1

We would assume that we'll get started monetizing next year. It's a technology, as I mentioned, kind of concentrate and stabilize it, this subatomic particle from the sun, which is known to engines, but it was never used that way. So we right now embedded in this food supplements, which was tested over the last 2 years. And typically, the results of the studies, they were actually published in peer reviewed medical journals. And thus improved the memory 80% to 100% within 30 days.

Speaker 1

So it's very significant, lot of interest. We're not monetizing it yet. But ultimately, the idea with Gaia that we can release some kind of device, connected TV device and we can deliver it through the increase on coated microchips using Gaia Broadcast. And so it's obviously a few years off for that part, but it was always very promising. The results are stunning.

Speaker 1

People who get a sample as we did with our employees. And so also improve your brain capacity cognition. So it's very promising, but it's early. But that's why we kind of decided to raise some outside money. So it doesn't chew on Gaia additional free cash flow because we pretty much committed to this free cash flow at Gaia.

Speaker 3

I would also just add to that Jirka and Mark that these two use cases that Jirka suggested on the embedded food supplements and the microchip are just 2 potentials for the technology. So it's very exciting that we have this announcement for this quarter.

Speaker 1

We probably also as this product will launch in the form of supplements, it will be launched in one of the channels will be in Gaia marketplace.

Speaker 5

Great. Appreciate the color guys. I'll hop back in queue.

Operator

Our next question comes from Kiri Woollab with Water Tower Research. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 2

Yes, good afternoon. Mark covered quite a few spots there. But maybe on marketplace, is it going to be a challenge to scale it up? Or how do you see that working? I mean, I'm looking at maybe trips to Egypt or offering of that kind.

Speaker 2

Can you really offer that to the whole membership base, which is obviously very large at this point?

Speaker 3

Hello, Thierry. Good afternoon. Thank you for your questions. So with Marketplace, we anticipate building revenue slowly over time. And like I'd mentioned in my previous answer, a lot of the sales that we might be taking now would be deferred into future quarters as the way we book it when the retreat happens or this tour happens.

Speaker 3

So this is something we'll be growing over time and testing into and now our beta tests to small segments of our member base were very promising And we're excited about the opportunity of this in particular in terms of how it's going to help us move towards the sort of mid teen growth in 2025. With regards to the tours, you mentioned Egypt. This applies to a segment of our audience in particular that is interested in one of our tentpole series, Ancient Civilizations. But we have also now on the marketplace side a varied array of retreats, tours, experiences, courses, training programs, live events that now cater to many different segments of our member base and different content and shows that our members have grown to love. So you'll see that we have different experiences and offerings to cater to all these member subsets.

Speaker 3

And we anticipate that given our capacity to be able to target these members through on-site and in app contextual promotion and email promotion and notification promotion, we'll be able to reach these members with these exclusive offers and discounts and build that momentum in revenue attribution over time.

Speaker 2

Okay, great. On the price increase, I was wondering, do you have expectations in terms of you increase the price by $2 or by £3 Do you have an expectation as to what kind of attrition could be caused by that? And how do you balance the trade off?

Speaker 3

Well, we don't really have any benchmarks. So there's certainly no other companies that publicly publish benchmarks that relate to price increases. However, when we've done this in the past in terms of acquisition, we do see that we make the delta on the increase. And we anticipate that we would be doing the same as we roll out these tests into Great British pounds and further. And so that's what we're currently aiming for.

Speaker 1

Yes. We never raised money before for existing members. For new members, we did raise the price for about $2 in 2019. And so that time was about 20% price increase and the kind of increase in conversion and basically losses, but it was more kind of increases I mean decreases in conversion took about 8% out. So the gain was about 12%, 11.5%, 12% that time for the new members.

Speaker 1

We have no above existing members. We have this test going in Britain and we probably wouldn't know for another 30 days.

Speaker 2

Okay. Finally about Ignitone, you talked about food supplements, you talked about microchips. It seems the food supplements would be maybe a more straightforward way to deliver the product or the substance. How closely how close are you to maybe some revenue from that or from launching that?

Speaker 1

Well, I just answered that question. We expect to do that early next year. We already have it. It's we can do it effectively now. We're just finishing some more studies.

Speaker 1

But all the technologies and equipments in a place, so we can technically do it even Q4, but our plan is to do it. We might be able to do it before for Christmas, but our target is for next year.

Speaker 2

And do you have a sense of what channels you're going to use to market that?

Speaker 1

Well, there is several different channels, which I mentioned one of them would be on our marketplace. 2nd, Igniton has a network of distributors in 50 countries, targeted mostly practitioners, hospitals and research labs. And so we would use our existing channels in Ignaton. And there would be few other channels, which will be finalized over the next 90 days.

Operator

Our next question comes from Fahim Ismailo with Freedom Broker. Please proceed with your question.

Speaker 6

Yes. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. My question is about your media library. Can you share your plans for expanding your media library?

Speaker 6

And what level of investments are you targeting this year and possibly next year as a percentage of your revenue? Thanks.

Speaker 3

Okay. Sorry, I didn't quite catch your name there. It's James here, the CEO. And I'll also pass to Ned for some sort of more specifics on this sort of confirm. With regards to investment in our media library, one of the unique points of difference we have as a streamer is that we own over 85% of our content library.

Speaker 3

We also have over 98% worldwide rights

Speaker 4

for all of

Speaker 3

our owned content and any licensed third party content. Currently, we're spending circa 11 point 5% of our revenue on content production.

Speaker 1

I would kind of say that's on direct because we also do licensing, right? So it's probably total about 14%.

Speaker 3

On that like Jirka said about 11%, 11.5% on produced content, 14% total including 3rd party acquired content. We'd anticipate in 2025 potentially increasing the produced content percentage over time and adding to that media library asset. We've also spoken Ned and Jirka and I on potentially having our media library re valued. We did have it valued a number of years ago and we see it as a huge strength to the business, earning that much content on our balance sheet and being able to leverage it into new languages and new markets as we grow and expand?

Speaker 4

Yes. Hey, Syene, it's Ned Preston. Thanks for the question. Yes, you've probably seen some language in our Investor Relations deck or presentation on our IR website. On the balance sheet, we make some notes and anyone who's met with us in person that we're quite proud of our media library.

Speaker 4

We value it at least $150,000,000 And I know from transitioning from auditors, this past Q4 that that's a solid number. We have gone out and looked at doing a formal revaluation here in the middle part of the year. We feel comfortable that that $150,000,000 will stand or could even be slightly higher. But back to James's earlier point is that we use a lot of data to evaluate what content, what to add to our media library. And also in that presentation deck, you can see that over time, a lot of our content is timeless.

Speaker 4

A lot of it really retains its value over long periods of time and thus the fact that our library value doesn't shrink. If anything, it will grow as we add new content. So I'd love to talk about it with you in more detail as we get to know you and the Freedom Broker team further, Syed. Thank you.

Speaker 1

And I would generally say, because we produce our content very differently that pretty much anybody on streamers, They mostly hire independent producers and the producers then hire what's called spot labor. So the overall margins where they have to book in the content what gets on the balance sheet is more than twice what we do. We also know when we produce content for like PBS or Discovery that roughly if you get a budget from them, we would cost us about half what the budget would be because we use pretty much only as a full time employees who move to our studios to Colorado. So you can also other ways you can see that if you kind of see the number of content what we have in the balance sheet compared to other streamers, you would see that we would have maybe 2, 2.5 to 3 times higher GP contribution than they would have because our cost and balance sheet is probably half what they would would somebody else would put it. So it's our big advantage compared to future.

Speaker 6

Okay. Thanks for your question. And I have another

Speaker 4

Maria, did we drop or did we lose Sane?

Operator

I think, Syene, are you muted?

Speaker 6

Can you hear me now?

Speaker 3

Yes.

Speaker 6

Yes. As I said, I can see that your net cash flow from operating activities is negative and is quite large negative. Can you explain it for me please?

Speaker 3

For Q2?

Speaker 4

Yes. So through the 1st 6 months, our operating cash flows are positive and as you can see free cash flows in the quarter were positive. In the second quarter, we had a number of non recurring expenses hit us, left over from a restatement that we announced at the end of Q1, as well as some of the work that went into launching Ignaton. So that's really at the core of why operating cash flows were negative for the quarter. We expect to get that back on track in the Q3.

Speaker 1

Yes. We as a company and we kind of said at beginning of the year, we operate based on a free cash flow, which was positive. And we expect to be positive. So we generate cash every quarter for last 5 quarters.

Speaker 6

Okay. Thank you.

Speaker 3

Thank you.

Operator

At this time, this concludes our question and answer session. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Russavi for his closing remarks.

Speaker 1

Thank you, everyone, for joining. And we look forward to speaking with you when we'll report our Q3, which will be by October. Thank you very much.

Operator

Thank you for joining us today for Gaia's Q2 2024 Earnings Conference Call. You may now disconnect.

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