Earnings Labs

Zedge, Inc. (ZDGE)

Q4 2018 Earnings Call· Wed, Oct 24, 2018

$3.34

-0.89%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to Zedge’s Fourth Quarter and Full Fiscal 2018 Earnings Conference Call. During management’s prepared remarks, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation by Zedge’s management, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] In today’s presentation, Tom Arnoy, Zedge’s Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer; and Jonathan Reich, Zedge’s Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer will discuss Zedge’s financial and operational results for the three-month period and full fiscal year ending on July 31, 2018. Any forward-looking statements made during this conference call either in the prepared remarks or in the question-and-answer session whether general or specific in nature are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those which the company anticipates. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to specific risks and uncertainties disclosed in the reports that Zedge files periodically with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Zedge assumes no obligation either to update any forward-looking statements that they have made or may make or to update the factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those that they forecast. Please note that the Zedge earnings release is available on the Investor Relations page of the Zedge website. The earnings release has also been filed on a Form 8-K with the SEC. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Arnoy.

Tom Arnoy

Analyst

Thank you, operator, and thank you all for joining us today. I’m Tom Arnoy, Co-Founder and CEO of Zedge. Welcome to Zedge’s fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2018 earnings conference call, recapping the three and 12 months ended July 31, 2018. Joining me today is Jonathan Reich, our Chief Financial and Chief Operating Officer, who will provide insight into the numbers that we reported earlier this afternoon. Fiscal year 2018 was comprised of some major undertakings, more subtle, but mission-critical initiatives, coupled with fluctuation in the monthly active user base and continued negative shift in the geographic concentration of our users, resulting in moderate year-over-year revenue growth. Most significantly, we started rolling out Zedge Premium, our marketplace for digital content, which now includes print on demand capabilities, after completing the Freeform Acquihire in September 2017. We continued overhauling our infrastructure and content serving engine in order to better scale, with greater flexibility, at a lower cost. We also continued working on improving the user experience in order to improve engagement and frequency of use. Much of this entailed upfront costs, with the benefits to be realized over time. Separate from those investments in our future, there is no doubt that we did not grow as rapidly as we would have liked to. This recognition forced us to take a hard look at what we must do better to grow the business and I would like to share our plan with you. We have learned that continued growth requires us to be more to our users than mobile phone personalization. While we have a strong position in phone personalization and a very loyal audience, our goal is to expand and be the “everything you” destination that users turn to when looking for digital content that expresses their essence, individuality, and…

Jonathan Reich

Analyst

Thank you, Tom. My remarks today will focus on our key operational and financial results for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2018, recapping the three and 12 months ended July 31, 2018. For a comprehensive and detailed discussion of our results, please read our earnings release issued earlier today and our Form 10-K, which we expect to file with the SEC by the end of October. Following my comments, we will open the call to any questions you may have. Monthly active users, or MAU, that is the number of unique users that opened our app during the last 30 days of the quarter, increased 9.8% to 34.8 million during July 2018 from 31.7 million in the corresponding period a year ago and by 1.8% on a sequential quarter-over-quarter basis. The year-over-year MAU improvement reflects year-over-year growth of 27.2% in the emerging markets, coupled with an 8.1% decline in the well-developed countries. As Tom mentioned, we are committing our resources to the initiatives that we believe can make us more relevant to a broader set of prospective customers. Total revenue in the fourth quarter was $2.6 million, a 1.3% and 1.1% improvement, respectively, when compared to the year ago and the most recent sequential quarters. Although MAU grew, both year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter in the emerging markets, it also declined in the well-developed markets, which command higher advertising rates negatively impacting revenue expansion. Revenue in fiscal year 2018 increased 8% to $10.8 million, compared to $10 million in 2017, primarily as a result of initiatives implemented in fiscal 2018 to improve our app’s core user experience, including the introduction of sideswipe and improved content recommendations, which, among other things, contributed to improvements in MAU and engagement during the first-half of fiscal 2018. Additionally, we launched new Android ad units…

Operator

Operator

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Joe Boskovich with Old West Investment Management.

Joseph Boskovich

Analyst

Hey, guys, how are you doing?

Jonathan Reich

Analyst

Hey, Joe, how are you?

Joseph Boskovich

Analyst

I’m doing well. Thanks.

Tom Arnoy

Analyst

Hi, Joe.

Joseph Boskovich

Analyst

Hi, Tom. So a couple of questions. I think, Zedge Premium is really exciting. And I see that you’ve added a ton of content over the past six months or so. And, Tom, you mentioned that you can’t give guidance on certain measures yet. And I understand that you can’t yet determine what percentage of monthly active users you believe will unlock artist content in the future. But can you guys give us, I guess, particular examples of what user engagement will look like for people on Premium, maybe one or two examples?

Tom Arnoy

Analyst

I don’t want to go into specific artists, obviously. But I can say on a general note that, like artists and brands we promote on the homepage, on the app consistently garner, I mean, in the MAU 10 million impressions in a week. We at least have 1 million users breaking through to engage with the contents, and how many users are going to download the individual content items, very much depends on if and how the material is monetized independents of – like a category really, priced items generally has even [indiscernible] in single digits and while over 30% of visitors usually done with items behind reward really is. And three items, of course, they see in higher percentages. So I hope that answered your question, but clearly…

Joseph Boskovich

Analyst

Yes, yes.

Tom Arnoy

Analyst

Yes.

Joseph Boskovich

Analyst

I think, that was helpful. So you mentioned the free items and that you see higher, I guess, user engagement there and that’s obviously I understand that. So earlier you talked about the musicians on Zedge Premium now. So I see that you have the virtual marketplace, as you mentioned for Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj and Paul McCartney, I saw that you have betting experience on there now. What – I’ve seen where several of these artists, right, whether it’s Lil Wayne or Nicki Minaj have posted on their Facebook pages and their Linkedin pages drawing their fans to Zedge to unlock white wallpapers on other content. Are you seeing from featuring those items and then the artists discussing it on social media, are you seeing some of their fans in turn come to Zedge and then increased monthly active users in those instances?

Tom Arnoy

Analyst

We are certainly seeing fans coming to Zedge. And in general, the engagements, we’re very happy to see the engagements with that content.

Joseph Boskovich

Analyst

Okay, great. That’s it from me. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Thank you. This concludes our question-and-answer session and conference call. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect, and have a wonderful day.