Earnings Labs

CuriosityStream Inc. (CURI)

Q3 2020 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 12, 2020

$3.14

-5.97%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Lisa, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the CuriosityStream Q3 2020 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. I would now like to turn the call over to Ms. Denise Garcia, Investor Relations at CuriosityStream. Please go ahead, ma'am. Denise Garcia;Managing Director & Founder, Hayflower Partners: Thank you. Welcome to CuriosityStream's discussion of its third quarter 2020 financial results. Leading the discussion today are Clint Stinchcomb, CuriosityStream's Chief Executive Officer; and Jason Eustace, CuriosityStream's Chief Financial Officer. Following management's prepared remarks, we will be happy to take your questions. But first, I'll review the safe harbor statement. During this call, we may make statements related to our business that are forward-looking statements under the federal securities laws. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, but rather are subject to a variety of risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Our actual results could differ materially from expectations reflected in any forward-looking statements. Please be aware that any forward-looking statements reflect management's current views only, and the company undertakes no obligation to revise or update these statements nor to make additional forward-looking statements in the future. For a discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to our SEC filings available on the SEC website and on our Investor Relations website as well as the risks and other important factors discussed in today's press release. Additional information will also be set forth in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the 3 months ended September 30, 2020, when filed. In addition, reference will be made to non-GAAP financial measures. Now I'll turn the call over to Clint.

Clint Stinchcomb

Analyst

Thank you, Denise. I would like to thank everyone for joining our third quarter 2020 earnings call, CuriosityStream's first as a public company. I'm delighted to have with us today our COO and General Counsel, Tia Cudahy; our CFO, Jason Eustace; and our Chief Product Officer and EVP of Content Strategy, Devin Emery. After my comments, I will turn the call over to our CFO, Jason Eustace, to review the third quarter financials. At the close of Jason's review, we will open up the call for questions. CuriosityStream's mission is to provide premium factual entertainment that informs, enchants and inspires. As a pure-play streaming service, we are capitalizing on the worldwide trend favoring on-demand content. Our flexible business model with multiple avenues of content monetization and our differentiated content offering provides us with several key competitive advantages. Other providers have tried to enter the streaming market with more limited business models, expensive programming and narrower go-to-market strategies with little success. Our focus on factual content, which has longevity and is engaging across multiple demographics and geographies, is key to our success. Let me talk about our success in the third quarter. We closed a strong third quarter at CuriosityStream. Revenue grew 83% over third quarter 2019 to $8.7 million, driven by continued strength in direct-to-consumer and distribution revenue. Revenue increased across the business, and we continue to be on track with our 2020 and 2021 revenue goals. Sequentially, Q3 revenue declined as expected following an outsized revenue contribution from program sales in the second quarter. On a year-over-year basis, we more than doubled our subscribers in Q3 with notable increases in subscribers on annual plans and international subscribers. At the same time, we reduced churn and customer acquisition costs. We continue to build our content library and completed our business…

Jason Eustace

Analyst

Thank you, Clint. I'm excited about the transition to becoming a public company and enjoy meeting many of our investors throughout the process. I look forward to updating you on our progress each quarter. Now I'll give you a brief look at what third quarter results were. CuriosityStream's Q3 2020 revenues grew by 83% to $8.7 million, up from $4.8 million in Q3 2019. This was led by direct-to-consumer and distribution subscription revenue. We continue to increase all of our revenue lines year-over-year with the majority increasing triple digits over third quarter of 2019. Cost of revenue was $3.4 million or 39% of revenue compared to 41% of revenue in Q3 of 2019. As a result, gross margin expanded from 59% in Q3 2019 to 61% this year. Advertising and marketing expense was $7.8 million, a 17% decrease year-over-year driven by CuriosityStream's continued direct-to-consumer subscriber growth plan and brand marketing, offset by the increase in subscribers while reducing customer acquisition costs. Next quarter, we plan on increasing our advertising and marketing spend over $5 million from Q3 to approximately $13 million in total. This includes increased spending on brand awareness to capitalize on the current market opportunity Clint mentioned previously. CuriosityStream's overall operating expenses decreased by 7% to $12 million from $12.9 million in Q3 2019. EBITDA improved from a loss of $10 million in Q3 of 2019 to a loss of $6.7 million this quarter. CuriosityStream reported a net loss of $6.7 million in Q3 2020 compared to a net loss of $9.7 million in Q3 2019. CuriosityStream's ending cash and investment balances on September 30 totaled $23.3 million as compared with $38 million at the end of 2019. The company ended Q3 2020 with stockholder deficit of $126.1 million. On October 15, at the closing of our business combination with Software Acquisition Group, we received $49 million. And again, we are on track with our plans for this year and for 2021. For fourth quarter, we expect revenue of at least $11.3 million and revenue of at least $39.5 million for the year. For fiscal 2021, We expect revenue to be at least $71 million, consistent with our disclosure during the business combination. And now I'll turn it back over to Clint and open the line for questions.

Clint Stinchcomb

Analyst

Please open the line.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Zack Silver with B. Riley.

Zachary Silver

Analyst

The first one for me is just as you laid out some of the initial projections, the revenue guidance contemplates a couple of large deals bundled in corporate, association bulk sales side. And just wondering if you could update us on the cadence of those deals and how the pipeline looks as we move into 2021.

Clint Stinchcomb

Analyst

Yes. I think we're on track to meet our revenue target for year-end 2021. I have great confidence in that. The nice thing about our business is we have multiple avenues of content monetization. And so we're seeing great growth in our direct business. You mentioned bundled partnerships. We're in lots of conversations there and are confident that those will deliver and that we'll meet our revenue target.

Zachary Silver

Analyst

Got it. A couple more, if I could. I think that you gave a few KPIs on the direct side. But more qualitatively, anything you can share around consumer engagement, customer sat?

Clint Stinchcomb

Analyst

Consumer engagement continues to increase. Customer satisfaction continues to increase. We're monitoring it closely. Our churn is among industry lows. We continue to have overwhelming majority of people adopt our annual plan, which leads to deeper engagement and minimizes churn.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Zack Silver with B. Riley.

Zachary Silver

Analyst · B. Riley.

Okay. The other one that I had just around the, how you're thinking about deploying some of the cash you received? You have this large and global TAM. And when you think about balancing content spend and building the library with marketing, how are you kind of attacking this?

Clint Stinchcomb

Analyst · B. Riley.

Great question. We're going to use the proceeds to increase our investment in programming first and then second in the marketing. We announced a few series quite recently, including BEYOND THE SPOTLIGHT today. So you can see our programming money going to work there. And we'll have a steady stream of new content announcements going forward. And as to the mix of that, Zack, we'll invest in high-quality original content. At the same time, we're extremely opportunistic on the acquisition side. We have lots of great and deep relationships with the best factual producers and distributors around the world. And we'll continue to leverage those relationships to build out the quantity of our library. So the big, high-profile specials tend to bring people in. Quality and quantity is what keeps them.

Operator

Operator

And at this time, there are no further questions. Are there any closing remarks?

Clint Stinchcomb

Analyst

No. I just want to thank everybody for joining the call today.

Operator

Operator

And this does conclude today's conference. You may now disconnect.