Yahoo Finance Zedge, Inc. (AMEX:ZDGE) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript
Zedge, Inc. (AMEX:ZDGE) Q3 2024 Earnings Call Transcript June 10, 2024
Operator: Good afternoon. Welcome to Zedge’s Earnings Conference Call for the Third Fiscal Quarter 2024 Results. During management's prepared remarks, all participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today's presentation by Zedge’s management, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] I will now turn the call over to Brian Siegel.
Brian Siegel: Thank you, operator. In today’s presentation, Jonathan Reich, Zedge’s Chief Executive Officer, and Yi Tsai, Zedge’s Chief Financial Officer, will discuss Zedge’s financial and operational results that were reported today. Any forward-looking statements made during this conference call during 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 in the future to differ materially from those discussed on today’s call. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, specific risks and uncertainties disclosed in the reports that Zedge periodically files with the SEC. Zedge assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements or to update the factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those that they forecast.
Please note that our earnings release is available on the investor relations page of the Zedge website. The earnings release has also been filed on Form 8-K with the SEC. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jonathan.
Jonathan Reich: Thank you, Brian. And thank you all for joining us today. I will start by briefly reviewing our third quarter results, which continued to show the positive impact of our investments in FY ’23 to set Zedge up for sustainable, long-term growth. After my remarks, Yi will provide a deeper dive into the quarter. Q3 revenue increased 14% from last year as we continued managing the geopolitical, macroeconomic, and industry-specific challenges spanning the landscape. The Zedge Marketplace was the driver of this performance, with ad revenue up 20% from last year and Zedge+, our marketplace subscription offering, boosting revenue by 35%, including the first jump in net subscriber gains in over seven quarters. Additionally, Zedge Premium's GTV, or gross transaction value, was up 44%, primarily driven by improvements to content and monetization.
These factors resulted in average revenue per monthly active user, or ARPMAU, jumping 39% to a record $0.074. Let’s turn to our strategic priorities for the fourth quarter and the beginning of fiscal 2025. As you recall, one of our goals for this year was to build a full-stack marketing team. We’ve achieved much of our goal, as the core team now has dedicated SEO, ASO, user acquisition, and creative resources that are focused on unlocking growth. Going into fiscal ’25 we expect to address influencer marketing and also invest in product marketing. Furthermore, the additions and upgrades that we’ve made to our product development organization are resulting in innovation and product diversification while also driving cost efficiencies that we expect to propel revenue and profit growth in the years to come.
Take Generative AI. We introduced pAInt in 2023 and, since January 2024 alone, our users have created close to 14 million wallpapers. pAInt led to the development of a standalone Gen AI creation app, WishCraft, which is currently in beta with select invited users. Additionally, we introduced a print-on-demand capability, enabling AI creators to print their art on home décor, tees, hoodies, and the like. We are also in the midst of expanding the Zedge Marketplace's AI capabilities, which will provide users with fun, exciting, and easy ways to transform themselves into creators, beyond the app itself, so that users can apply the same techniques to items from their personal photo libraries. At GuruShots, we forked the game’s codebase, enabling us to inexpensively develop AI Art Master, a hybrid casual game that remains in soft launch while we focus on returning GuruShots to growth.
These initiatives are aside from the operational benefits that we are realizing by embedding AI into many aspects of our operations including marketing, coding, and analysis. Emojipedia didn’t perform as well as in past quarters, which we primarily attribute to an issue relating to the website redesign not yielding the outcome we expected. After identifying the issue, we promptly remedied it. In addition, we are looking forward to releasing several new, exciting features ahead of this year’s celebration of World Emoji Day on July 17th. Moving to GuruShots, where the mandate is to unleash the growth that was core to our investment thesis at the time of the acquisition. As previously reported, our upgraded team is heavily focused on feature development, which, hadn’t received the attention it deserved since the acquisition.
The updated product roadmap is full of innovative new features designed to drive the 10% to 30% revenue growth that successful new feature intros delivered in the past, by making GuruShots more accessible to a broader audience. Additionally, by innovating and tying marketing dollars to new features, we are being more efficient with our ad spend. Currently, we rolled out a new onboarding experience to 25% of our Android audience, which is already monetizing better than the legacy experience. While it is too early to know if this is scalable or sustainable over the mid and long-term, it does give reason for optimism. By creating an outstanding onboarding experience, we enable newbies to immerse themselves in gameplay in a seamless, intuitive and simplified manner.
Furthermore, we have capped the number of participants in each onboarding challenge in order to increase a player’s chances of winning. The funnel will introduce more features and complexity as the player progresses in the game, enabling skill-based user segmentation, which ultimately creates a more fun experience for everyone. We are also poised to overhaul the game’s economy. The release of our new multi-currency, coin-based economy is imminent, and we believe that it will be crucial in adding and retaining new users by opening up significant opportunities for more players to earn and spend in-game resources. By enabling more value-adds for players, we can manage resource consumption to optimize coin purchases further, while making the game even more captivating and fun.
While our focus is on attracting new users, switching to a new economy will potentially introduce some volatility from existing players who maybe averse to change. Despite falling short of the initial expectations we had for GuruShots at the time of the acquisition, GuruShots remains the leading photo competition game available on the market with more than 170 million photos that have been in active GuruShots competitions. Photography in general continues growing exponentially due to the ubiquity of mobile phones, and with the advent of AI enhancement tools, high-quality pictures are within everyone’s reach. With all the innovation opportunities in the pipeline, I believe we are approaching a turning point for this business, and I look forward to sharing details as they unfold in Q4 and fiscal 2025.
In summary, I believe we are on the right path to accelerate revenue growth and profits, and we are just beginning to realize the potential in each of our products. When combined with our stock’s low valuation and our active buyback, I believe we are well-positioned to deliver shareholder value in the quarters and years to come. Now, I would like to turn the call over to Yi, who will review our financial results. Yi?
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Yi Tsai: Thank you, Jonathan. Total revenue in the third quarter was $7.7 million, up 14% from last year. This growth comes despite decreases in MAU, which came in at $27.7 million for the month of April. Digital goods and services, which encompasses revenue from GuruShots, came in at $0.9 million, down 20% from last year. GuruShots’ revenue continues to be negatively impacted by Apple’s ATT framework, macroeconomic issues, and geopolitical unrest. Subscription revenue was up 35% versus last year. This metric was up sequentially for the fourth straight quarter as our net active subscriber trends continued to improve, and our higher value iOS subscriptions and value-added Zedge+ offering for Android replaced lower-cost legacy subscriptions, which only removed ads.
Zedge Premium's GTV, which came in at a record $590,000 grew 45% from last year. ARPMAU was a record $0.074, up 40% year-over-year, reflecting stability in ad pricing and the positive impact of our new iOS and Android subscriptions. Cost of revenue declined by 9% and was 5.9% of revenue. SG&A increased by 35% to $6.8 million. This increase was driven mainly by marketing expenses related to an increase in paid user acquisition, which is helping to drive growth. As we scale, we expect to see operating leverage rebound. Additionally, the higher marketing expense reflects the growth in subscription revenue which means we receive cash upfront, but also pay higher upfront fees to Google and Apple. Note that revenue on these subscriptions is recognized over the life of the subscription, but at a 100% operating margin.
GAAP loss from operations was $0.1 million versus a loss from operations of $8.4 million last year. Last year’s loss included an $8.7 million, non-cash, accounting write-down related to acquisitions. GAAP Net income and EPS for were $0.1 million and $0.01, versus a loss and loss per share of $7.7 million and $0.55, respectively, in the prior year. Last year’s loss reflected the tax-adjusted, non-cash, accounting write-off for acquisitions I just mentioned. Non-GAAP net income and non-GAAP diluted EPS for the quarter increased 60% and 54% to $0.5 million and $0.03 versus $0.3 million and $0.02 in the prior year, respectively. Adjusted EBITDA was $0.9 million versus $1.7 million in the prior year. Note that D&A decreased 35% versus last year primarily due to the impairment loss on intangible assets recorded in Q2.
From a liquidity standpoint, we added nearly $2 million in cash to our balance sheet and finished the quarter with $19.9 million in cash and cash equivalents. We also bought back 60,000 shares of stock, as average daily trading volumes were lower and our buyback parameters were fixed ahead of the closed window period. When our window opens up in a few days, we plan to more aggressively buy back stock in the market. Thank you for listening to our third-quarter earnings call, and I look forward to speaking with you again on our year-end call in October. Operator, back to you for Q&A.
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