Lynn Powers
Analyst · George Kelly with Craig-Hallum
Thanks, Steve. Echoing Jirka and Steve’s comments, I am pleased by our 2012 second quarter results and I am confident in our performance for the balance of the year as we continue to focus our attention on our top 3 priorities: growing our unique Gaiam brand, evolving and expanding our distribution and licensing business and launching our subscription services. Let me begin by reviewing our business segment, the segment that continues to perform very well for us with the internal revenue growth of 52.8% compared to the second quarter of 2011. I am particularly pleased with the ongoing integration between Gaiam and Vivendi Entertainment to date.
With this recent acquisition, we will have an additional sales volume of approximately 20 million units and expected annualized net revenue and gross margin of approximately $25 million while significantly increasing our ability to leverage from economies of scale and other operationally efficiencies through reduction in third party distribution cost, lower post production and digital distribution cost and the elimination of redundant overhead. This is important, this operational efficiencies and digital positioning will help offset any top-line DVD headwind and become a crucial competitive differentiator that will further help position Gaiam Vivendi Entertainment as the largest independent and the second largest overall media distributor in the U.S. for non-theatrical content.
There is also some very good industry news this year, according to IHS Screen Digest, after several years of decline total revenue from home entertainment content was projected to rise 3% in 2012 in their May report and has since been revised to 8% in their July report. With the expansion of Blu-ray and digital offsetting DVD decline. Blu-ray sales were up 13% with digital content up 22% for the first half of 2012 based on information supplied by a Digital Entertainment Group.
I am also pleased to announce the renewal of our licensing agreement with Discovery, which includes all the Discovery Channel brands including TLC, Discovery and Animal Planet. We have also secured a new agreement to distribute the Olympic Games highlights and collector series which is already receiving pre-orders on Amazon in Blu-ray and DVD and will be available for the first time ever for digital purchase and rental on iTunes, Amazon, Xbox, Sony PlayStation, Vudu and Google Play.
Importantly, as we secure new agreements, we are having success with also securing digital distribution, an important driver for our future business. I look forward to announcing additional new partnerships in the coming weeks.
We continue to expand our media category management role that we started in 2009. We now have over 5,600 doors in the U.S. under management including being 1 of 2 independent aggregators for media in the Target entertainment department and sole aggregator in Target for fitness media. In terms of market share, according to Nielsen VideoScan for second quarter, Gaiam remains at the top of the charts in fitness with 43% market share, which is up from 33% last year and double our nearest competitors. Additionally, as of the end of the second quarter, the Gaiam Vivendi is the number 2 distributor in non-theatrical, with 15% market share, up from 11% last year, with only Warner Studios ahead of us.
In addition as noticed earlier we continue to invest in our digital asset management and deliver platform, having direct agreements with all major digital players and further strengthening our media business to support a robust digital future. We retained a great digital team with our acquisition of Vivendi Entertainment and are leveraging their expertise and digital footprint.
With regards to our efforts to continue to grow our business segment, we are seeing strong customer demand across Gaiam brand accessories. Our top 25 retailers are up over 30% in the aggregate for the quarter, with some retailers reaching 50% increases.
Sell through also continued to comp well with retailers that report those statistics to us. In regards to our fitness products we continue to see great success from our restore line of at home rehabilitative and restorative accessories along with our Gaiam Sol Premium Yoga Line and our SPRI professional’s line. Our restore products have 2 of the top SKUs in Target and are among the best performing at other Gaiam stores, in store locations and our SPRI brand is expanding to 400 Sears stores this fall.
We will continue to grow these lines of products during 2012 both in terms of SKUs as well as retail locations. We also continue to focus much of our efforts in our stores and store concept which is now in place at over 15,000 doors during the quarter. We expect to utilize the strategy at Gaiam restore brand and the SPRI brand as well as for our studio partners. Turning now to the direct to consumer business which had a 3.4% internal growth, we plan to follow-up on the success of the FIRM Express and the early February airing of the Gaiam branded Jillian Michaels product line with new fitness content that will allow for continued growth from this segment as we enter the second half of the year.
Of course e-commerce is an integral part of what we do. During the first quarter we repositioned our e-commerce business to shift towards proprietary branded products and apparel and started work on our new Web platform and creative look. Gaiam customers will now have a greater online assortment and an overall more engaging shopping experience. The new website which we expect to launch in the fourth quarter will enable us to be even more connected and accessible to our customers, including through mobile friendly design for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices.
These initiatives are now well under way and should be ready to launch in the coming weeks and begin to yield results in the fourth quarter of the year as we enter the holiday shopping season.
That’s also been the thinking behind one of our more exciting businesses, Gaiam TV. As Jirka mentioned, we are finished with our beta stage and should be entering the marketing phase in the next couple of months with an increased marketing spend towards the end of the year. The investment in Gaiam TV in Q2 was approximately $1.4 million in negative operating income. We have a one of a kind library of digital titles across fitness, health and wellness and personal development, which together with our in-house capabilities to create compelling content with low incremental cost should make Gaiam TV a very appealing offering to consumers interested in learning more about these areas and bringing the world a fitness, health and wellness and personal development closer to them through their computers, mobile devices, tablets and on their TVs.
While this business has had a negative impact on operating income, we believe it's an exciting new initiative that will have great drop through as soon as we hit breakeven on subscribers. In closing, we are focused on the fundamentals of executing our multi-channel business, expanding our product assortment and improving the customer experience. I am both confident and excited at the potential for all 3 of our main businesses, from our ability to develop our Gaiam brand halo across product lines and channels, to been an aggregator that packages and markets content across all distribution channels including digital and non-traditional retail, to Gaiam TV which is quickly becoming a key part of how we build our brand in the digital world. Gaiam is a mainstream brands oriented, licensee and distributor of non-theatrical content, a market leader in the fitness of wellness programming and branded equipment and a pioneer in digital distributor and subscription services. We are taking decisive actions to position and grow the business, strengthen our balance sheet and create shareholder value. Of course, none of this would be possible without everyone at Gaiam coming together to achieve these results and I would like to take this opportunity to thank the entire team at Gaiam for their continued dedication and amazing talent. We look forward to been active in our investor outreach over the coming months and I hope to see many of you in various conferences and investor events throughout the balance of the year, including our upcoming attendance at the Telsey Advisory Group's Third Annual Fall Consumer Conference which will be held October 2nd and 3rd in Las Vegas. Thank you for your continued interest in Gaiam and your participation today.
With that I would like to turn the call back to the operator and take this opportunity to answer questions. Chantal?