Audioboom Group plc (BOOM) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Audioboom Group plc investor presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll. And if you'd give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I'd now like to hand over to CEO, Stuart Last; and CFO, Brad Clarke. Good afternoon.

Thank you, Jake. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Audioboom's Q1 2022 update. It's fantastic to be here. Really happy to be able to tell you more about the business after what is really a fantastic quarter of growth for the company, fourth successive quarter of triple digit growth where we have great KPIs, very strong growth in our EBITDA profit. I'm just excited to be here today. I think to tell you all about what we've been doing over the last quarter to look ahead to the rest of 2022 and to answer some of your questions. So make sure you send those questions in. We'll get through as many as possible at the end of the presentation. And the first part of the presentation is for anyone that's new to Audioboom. So welcome to you if you're new to the company and you're here to find out more. We'll take a look at our business model, where we sit within the industry, and look at our strategy. But first of all, a couple of introductions for you, for those that don't know us yet. My name is Stuart Last, I'm the Chief Executive of Audioboom. I've been the CEO for the past 2 years. Before that, I was the COO of the company and launched us here in the U.S. I'm based in New York, I launched the business here successfully back in 2015. Before Audioboom, I worked on another podcast and AdTech business called Voxnest also based here in New York. And before that, I was back in London at the BBC driving their digital audio strategy. And joining me today is Brad Clarke, our CFO.

Thanks, Stuart. Hi, everyone. Thanks for joining today. Yes, I'm Brad, CFO here at Audioboom. Been with the company since March 2018, so into year 5 now, which is a great privilege to be able to say that. Obviously, the company has changed a lot over the last few years, but it's really been the last 18 months or so where the growth really has taken off with record results last year. The share price has improved significantly over the last 15 months or so, which is really pleasing to see as well. So like I said, I was with Audioboom for the last 5 years. Prior to that, it was with another good company, Brave Bison for a couple of years and prior to that I was with News U.K. publisher of the Times and the Sundays papers amongst other things, the 5 years in various roles there. But it's this role really in this company, which has been the best part of my career so far. It's great to see the company is doing so well. Back to you, Stuart.

Thanks, Brad. So Brad will be back in a moment to give you a kind of an in depth view on some of the financials. But I'll kick off here today, and we'll take a look at the business model and the operations of the business. This is just an overview of podcasting and the podcasting space. And Audioboom plays a vital part in podcasting. We power podcasting. We connect advertisers with content and then we connect that with an audience. So podcasting is effectively a 3-sided marketplace. Each of those components is obviously very important in its own right, advertisers, content and audience. But without someone in the middle to bring them all together, to join them together, it just doesn't work. There's no value there. So Audioboom is -- and the platform is bringing those 3 components together and creating and maximizing that value. We're connecting the content with the advertisers and then we distribute out to the audience globally. And it's the combination of those 3 elements and Audioboom sitting in the middle of it, really driving those connections that creates value in podcasting. So we play a very important integral role in podcasting. And at the heart of that is the Audio Group platform. So this is a cloud-based, very scalable engine and it drives our content business. So that platform is separated into 3 elements. It's a content management system where podcasters and creators upload their content, manage the publishing of that content. They distribute through that content management system out to Apple Podcast, out to Spotify, out to Google Podcast, those connections with the audience. And then we gather and collect all of the analytics and the data coming back, so the podcaster and the creator can learn about their audience and design their content around the audience, and we can use that data to sell advertising to drive value for the show. The second part of that Audioboom platform is really our advertising technology stack. So that's the ability to serve -- dynamically serve advertising into those podcasts. It's a yield-up system that finds the best pricing for those -- for that advertising inventory from all of our various demand-side sources. It's a new piece of technology we launched last year called AdRip which replaces old ads with new ads, so we can keep refreshing the back catalog and making money for our creators out of that back catalog. And it's a new marketplace showcase, which we launched in November of last year, which connects content up to a variety of demand-side sources. And that's scaling very quickly for us and is proving very successful and it is growing its contribution to the group revenue. The third part of that Audioboom platform is our inventory management system. It's called Lyrical. It's built on the Salesforce platform. This allows us to actually execute that advertising to make sense of the inventory that's available across our 8,000 podcast channels. It gives us great intelligence around the pricing and allows us to drive pricing higher. It automates the billing process and just creates a level of automation from start to finish in the sales process that allows us to stay very lean and ahead of our competitors. So those 3 elements create the Audioboom platform. Sitting on top of that is our content business, and that's today 8,000 podcast channels running through Audioboom, and they're being distributed out to all those listening destinations. It's being downloaded. That content is being downloaded more than 130 million times every single month. And we reached 34 million unique listeners. So we have some really great scale in that platform today. But as you know, it's growing very quickly, and it's very scalable without a lot of further investments. So we can take this to 25,000 to 50,000 podcast channels. We can take you to 500 million or 1 billion monthly downloads at 100 million unique listeners without having to invest too heavily in that platform. So it's a platform that drives the business. And as I said on the previous slide, it's the platform that really links together the market -- the podcast market, connects creators with advertisers and distributes out to audience. This is a lower view on how we treat content within the business and how we make money for the business and for our creator partners. Our content model is pretty straightforward. We have Audioboom studios. That's the creative in the production arm of Audioboom. That's creating shows in-house that we develop ourselves, we produce ourselves, that we own the IP for or that we coproduce with our partners. For example, we are the producer for the official Formula 1 podcasts. That's all done in-house with Audioboom Studio. So that's a smaller group of shares. But as I'll show you later, it's very valuable to the business and then the area of investment going forward. The Audioboom creative network is a much wider group of over 7,000 podcasts. These are either hobbyist creators at the bottom end or professional podcasters at the top end who are seeing their shows being downloaded hundreds of thousands or even millions of times per episode. So that's a wide group of creators. They are producing their shows. They are marketing their shows. They have great audiences already connected to their shows. And then beneath that, the widest group of podcast is the Wider Podcast landscape, and we're able to monetize podcasts that are not exclusive to the Audioboom network as well. So this could be any podcast in the U.S. or U.K. or globally as well. Those top 2 tiers, Audioboom Studios, Audioboom creator network, that's all being powered by the Audioboom Platform. The podcast landscape sits outside of that, but we have ways to monetize and to grow revenue from that also. Alongside that is our advertising model, 99% of the revenue that we see within the group is coming from 1 of our 3 advertising models. So we have our premium sales unit. That's our high-value bespoke sales that they sold against individual episodes and individual podcast, comes with high CPMs and high unit pricing. We're selling that against Audioboom studio shows and then the top 250 shows within that Audioboom creator network. Showcase, which is our global marketplace. This is an AdTech advertising solution. It's all automated. All of our podcasts in Audioboom Studios and the Audioboom Creator Network flow through that marketplace. We connect them with various demand side platforms, programmatic ecosystem, sales teams in Australia, in Canada, in Europe. And this is a lower value play. The pricing is at a lower level, but it's a volume play. It's about scale. We see it as kind of a secondary advertising model, it's great for monetizing back catalogs and older content. And as I said before, it's growing very quickly for the business right now. And then the third part of our advertising model is Sonic Influencer Marketing. It's a unit that we operate. They're based in Austin, Texas. And they're actually, that's a platform that's able to monetize any content. So it can monetize Audioboom Studios, it can monetize our creator network, but it also has the ability by working directly with brands and advertisers in monetizing and accessing advertising inventory within any podcast in the world. So it has the ability to go out and to meet that connection with some of the biggest podcast in the world that don't belong to the Audioboom network. And again, Sonic's now in its third year and is growing very successfully and is having a fantastic 2022 so far. Quick look at those revenue contributions that I touched on earlier and also the gross margin from each of those areas of the business. So Audioboom Studios is there first. It's a small contribution today when it comes to revenue, just contributing around 3% of the group's revenue, but has a very strong gross margin when compared to the rest of our business. It's the most premium of all of the content that we work with. And because we are in control of the development and the production cost around those shows, we're able to drive a higher gross margin there for Audioboom Studio shows. And that's also why I said before, it's a very big and important area for Audioboom going forward where we investing further into Audioboom Studios after we launched in U.K. Audioboom studios last year. We'll grow that 3% contribution over the coming years. Our Creator Network is obviously key for driving a significant amount of that group revenue. It's responsible for 70% of the revenue that we see at Audioboom, comes with a slimmer gross margin. It's more competitive to sign and to work with those shows, particularly at the top end of those shows in the Creator Network. So it has that slimmer 21% margin, but it's an area of fast growth and it's very lucrative to the business. Showcase, our automated marketplace, has a slightly stronger gross margin. We're able to create a stronger gross margin when we are monetizing back catalogs for our shows and for our creators. That very quickly, the contribution of showcase revenue is hitting 11% for in this first quarter, up from under 10% last year. So we're seeing good growth in the marketplace. It's very efficient, and it's the part of the business that will grow very strongly over the coming years too. And then Sonic Influencer Marketing, responsible for 16% of our revenue. It has that much seamless gross margin. It works directly with the brands and is working on a very traditional kind of advertising agency gross margin and commission structure. So it has the seamless gross margin within the group, but again, it's growing very quickly and contributing after -- now in its third year, significantly to group revenue. So let's go ahead and take a quick look at Q1, which I said before, was just another excellent quarter for us. That momentum from 2021 has just continued into Q1. It's traditionally as much slower and soft period in terms of advertising spend. We haven't seen that as much this year, although obviously, the quarter revenue was slightly down in Q4 of last year because of that seasonality in advertising spend. But year-on-year, fantastic growth, 107% growth on that revenue line, getting us to $19.7 million. And that, as I said before, our fourth quarter of triple-digit revenue growth. So just continuing that momentum into 2022. And one of the -- just for some background, I think, on the softness of advertising spend in Q1. One of the -- I think one of the key kind of factors there is that we work off the U.S. broadcast calendar. And that first quarter of the year is effectively a 12-week quarter rather than a 13-week quarter. It includes the week between Christmas and New Year, which is extremely soft, both for content creation and therefore, inventory and there also for advertiser demand. So effectively, we've done $19.7 million across a 12-week quarter. And obviously, comparing that against Q4 of last year, a very strong high demand, 13-week quarter. I think we've done very well just to keep up that strong demand and to deliver another excellent quarter of revenue. Adjusted EBITDA profit, just under $1 million. So significantly higher than the $30,000 of EBITDA profit this time last year. So really starting to see the gearing effect there and the delivery of close to $1 million of profit. That's the 15th consecutive month of EBITDA profit. So we're in a place now we're very confident of, obviously, never slipping back into loss-making quarters -- loss-making months and we just continue driving that profit forward. And we're in a great place when it comes to cash. At the end of the quarter, we had $3.3 million in the bank. We saw another $2.9 million come in the first week of April. And Brad will give you an update on cash position and future of that working capital when in his section in just a few minutes. So we're in a very healthy place. We're fully funded for the growth trajectory that we're on. We are able to invest that money back into content creation in other parts of the business where we see faster growth and probably since I've been CEO and since Brad has been with the company, this is the healthiest place we've been when it comes to the cash in the bank. Just to set that performance, I think, in some kind of context. I talk a lot about how we outperform the wider industry. And both of these charts are really highlighting that. So the chart on the left is showing our revenue growth against the industry over the past 4 or 5 years. And you'll see our Q1 growth is significantly faster here than the wider podcast industry. The U.S. industry is projected to grow around 30% this year. We're growing at over 100% so far. So once again, and for the fifth year in a row, we continue to beat our competitors to grow faster than our competitors. And as highlighted in that chart on the right-hand side, this is the Triton Digital U.S. podcast ranker. It highlights the biggest podcast businesses in the U.S. And this is showing off, and this is chartered by U.S. weekly reach. So how many unique listeners we reach in the U.S. every single week. And as you'll see there, again, we were the fastest-moving, fastest-growing company in the U.S. during 2021 into 2022. So going significantly quicker than our competitors moving up that ranker, taking market share. Our market share is close to 5% now after being just hovering around that 1% mark just 3 or 4 years ago. So we are on a great path, great trajectory, and everything is in a strong place to continue that path as we go forward. So what were the key drivers of that successful quarter in Q1 of 2022? I think the first thing I want to highlight is just the success of our Audioboom Studios launches. So those shows we develop in-house, those shows that come with the stronger gross margin. We set up and launched a U.K. production arm in the second half of last year, having already had a U.S. production arm for a couple of years. And Devils in the Dark was our first U.K. production, which we launched in February of this year. That show very quickly got to #1 on the U.K. true crime chart. It reached the top 15 on the overall Apple Podcast chart. So we're seeing great success from the work we're doing in Audioboom Studios, which is very pleasing to see. And it's obviously an area we'll continue to invest in. In our Premium Network, that area of the business that drives 70% of the revenue and is responsible for significant growth. I think the successes in that first part of the year have been around the renewal of long-term exclusive contracts for some of our key shows. So we've put together and have had signed long term 3-year deals with our top 10 shows, including Case File, Mile Higher, Lights Out, The Sesh, Strange & Unexplained. These are key contributors to our revenue. And it's just great to deepen our relationship with those shows and be working with those shows for the next 3 years. Pricing is something that we've done a lot of work on to increase over this past quarter. And I talked about it being a softer quarter for advertising spend due to that shorter structure of the quarter. But our biggest shows, our top 25 shows, the shows that really perform for the advertisers that deliver great ROI for the advertiser, those are in very high demand, and we've been able to drive pricing as a result of that. So our pricing for those top 25 shows in the first quarter was over $14,000 for each individual ad slot in 1 of those top 25 shows. And that compares to a year ago when those same ad slots were selling for just over $6,000. So that's 121% annual growth in the pricing that we're able to see in each of those individual ad slots for our top 25 shows. I talked earlier about Showcase being an area of success for us. That's our automated AdTech-based marketplace, 150% growth versus the revenue we are seeing through our AdTech a year ago, and that's now contributing, like I said before, 11% of group revenue versus 9% from last year. So it's growing faster, it's scaling quicker than the rest of the business, and it's also very efficient, comes with lower costs to operate than our other sales models too. So very pleased with the way they're showcasing, it's an area that we're focused on improving as well across 2022. And then feeding into showcase, as I'll work with our international monetization partners. So as you'll probably recall, last year, we started working with ARN in Australia to work with Rogers Media in Canada and with Idea Brew Studios in India to monetize those next 3 biggest markets for us. In this quarter, we signed a partnership agreement with NZME who are a big media and radio group in New Zealand, and they will be monetizing New Zealand inventory for us. That's our sixth biggest market. We are the second biggest public podcast publisher in New Zealand, and we now have a monetization partner that will be delivering us value on all of those listens that are happening in New Zealand. So those are the key drivers for further success of early 2022. Just going a little deeper on the financial performance, and you'll see here the quarterly revenue and EBITDA performance. I think, again, just to highlight, the seasonality of Q1, you'll see the drop from Q4 2021 into Q1 of 2022, just a slight drop on the revenue there. That is, as I said, seasonal and usually happens if we go back to the left-hand side of this chart, you'll see that drop off between Q4 of 2019 and Q4 of 2020. So that's just repeating that same pattern, that same seasonality in the ad market. I think the -- one of the key things to point out here that it didn't happen between 2020 and 2021, and that was because of the COVID impact and the subsequent rebound that was still happening in the ad market in Q1 of 2021. So last year, we didn't see that drop off, Q4 into Q1. But previously, we have seen that pattern and that is kind of a seasonality that happens across the entire advertising market, not just in podcasting, too. All of our key performance indicators were strong in the first quarter. So it feels -- obviously, we've with great optimism that these will continue to go up, and these are all drivers of revenue performance for the business. Global downloads, obviously, that's a proxy for how much advertising inventory we get to sell every single month. Global downloads number was up significantly, 45% annual growth in Q1 of 2020. We reached a record single month of downloads of 131 million in March. So our global downloads number is going from strength to strength and is growing every single quarter, and that data is verified by Trident Digital. And that's in compliance with a metric that all podcast companies have to use, which is the IAB's Podcast Measurement Standard. Our brand count dipped slightly from Q4. And as I said, that's due to softness -- that slight softness in the ad market in Q1 and also the 12-week broadcast month effectively in the first quarter as well. So we see a slight drop off there in the number of brands that we work with, but still our second highest quarter on the brand count. So these are brands that are advertising within our premium network of shows. We work with many thousands more in our -- in showcase, in our marketplace, but these are the brands that we work with directly for our premium network. And then ECPM, that's the value we extract from every 1,000 downloads on our network. And again, you'll see a drop off there and that's a function of 2 things really. That's the function of the number of downloads across the network, increasing very, very quickly across Q4 of last year and Q1 of last year -- of this year, combined with that softness in the revenue number in Q1. So we have some work to do, I think, there to get caught up again. There's always a lag between growth in downloads and then us delivering strong value against those downloads. We will start to see that ECPM number rise again in Q2 and Q3 of this year as well once we catch up on the sales process. It's only once you know how many -- how much inventory and how many downloads that you have available to sell that you can optimize the sale of that inventory and that does impact the ECPM number. But very still comparing very favorably at $51 to our competitors. We know from one of our competitors, Acast, who released their results publicly. They're working off a $31 equivalent ECPM, so significantly stronger than our competitors in that particular KPI as well. And I'll let Brad take over for a few minutes here to go a little deeper.

Great. Thank you, Stuart. So hopefully, everyone can see that the growth story continues here at Audioboom. Next few slides, we'll look at revenue costs. Next slide looks at the working capital cycle of the business as well. We've gone through these over the last couple of quarters, but we'll update that for the first quarter of this year. But just before we dive into that, a couple of dates via diary, so you know what's coming up. 25th of April, so a week on Monday, that's when our final 2021 numbers will be published. We, of course, told you on the 10th of January in record time what 2021 looks like, but we've got the formal release of those on the 25th of April. And then in July, we'll obviously update you on the first half of the year, as we always do. But for now, let's look at Q1 in a bit more detail. Obviously, the headline statistic of revenue increasing by 107% year-on-year, fantastic growth on the OpEx side, did increase by 47% year-on-year from $2.1 million up to $3.1 million. We'll explain why shortly. From Q4 to Q1, obviously, from 2.8% to 3.1%. I say, a 10% quarter-on-quarter increase. And just to build out some of the percentage increases across those revenue lines that Stuart mentioned. Obviously, we've got that mix of revenue streams that we have within the business. 70% of revenue comes from that. Premium advertising on the creator network that we specialize and are experts in selling that platform of advertising. That grew by 116% year-on-year. Pleasing growth from the marketplace, that now contributes 11% of revenue. That's up from 9% in Q1 of last year. That grew by 151% year-on-year. My biggest percentage that I'll give you today is that if you actually look back to Q1 of 2020, we booked just over $200,000. We booked $2.1 million in the first quarter of this year on that line. So that's 925% growth Q1 '20 versus Q1 '22. So clearly, that area of the business is becoming more material in terms of the overall revenue mix, which is pleasing. 3% of revenue comes from Studios, that grew 26% year-on-year. And another pleasing growth statistic from Sonic as well, that contributed 16% of revenue. That grew by 90% year-on-year when they reported $3.1 million of revenue in the first quarter of this year. [indiscernible] reported $5 million -- just over $5 million of revenue in the whole of 2020. So to report $3.1 million in the first quarter is pleasing. We do have a small amount of subscription revenue as well in the business. We don't talk it here because it's less than 1%, around 0.7% of revenue. So around 3,500 subscribers paying $10 or $20 a month to be able to use the platform. But obviously, that's a less material part of our business, which we don't actively invest in. So pleasing growth statistics across the board -- across the revenue streams. Looking at OpEx, 19% of OpEx relates to technology costs, the costs that are required to run the Audioboom platform. The material cost within that is the hosting and download cost of content. So when you go on to the place where you download your podcast, be that Apple or Spotify or wherever that may be, Audioboom are incurring the costs for you downloading that content. So that's the material cost that we have within technology -- that technology line. There was a 52% year-on-year increase from 0.4 million to 0.6 million in the first quarter of this year, and that's mainly due to the significant increase in downloads year-on-year, so downloads up to 131 million in March, which was a 45% year-on-year increase in downloads. Obviously, that flows through to the P&L. So as you see this business grow, do you see those downloads grow, typically, the download cost that we budget on is around 0.12% of the actual download number. So it's 100 million downloads, you're looking at $100,000 of cost, rough rule of thumb there. But as you see, this business continues to scale. That's one of the variable costs that we have in the business. 65% of OpEx relates to salaries and sales staff commissions. There's a 44% year-on-year increase on that line from $1.4 million to $2 million in the first quarter of this year, and that's mainly due to the fact we've got more heads within the business. So throughout last year, there's been incremental increases in headcount, in sales, adopts production and the Sonic as well. So headcount was 43 at the end of March versus 35 at the end of March 2021. So still at 43. I view this as a very lean and streamlined organization. And also the cost increase on that salary line also due to cost of living increases applied across the team from 1st of January, plus also slightly higher commissions paid in the first quarter this year versus the first quarter last year. And as you look forward for this business, the OpEx is fairly settled. No plans to significantly increase that headcount from 43, but the variable costs that you'll see going forward are, as I've just mentioned, those download costs. They will vary with number of downloads that we record. Also variable will be commissions linked to the amount of revenue that we booked for that, and that we booking also promotional costs as well. So any new show launches that we have from Audioboom Studios, there'll be an associated promotional budget to let people know that show has been launched, and it's good to see that the U.K. production arm start to increase content. The first one, first major one being that Devils in the Dark, new show that was launched in the first quarter. So good to see some new shows coming out of that U.K. production unit. Stuart also talked through the EBITDA quarter-on-quarter movements, $0.9 million in the first quarter of last year versus $30,000 in the first quarter of last year. I've seen it written -- it's $300,000 in the first quarter of last year. It wasn't -- it was just $30,000 in the first quarter of last year. So significant growth there. We did report a $1.9 million EBITDA profit in the final quarter of last year. Obviously, $0.9 million. That's decreased. What are the reasons for that? Well, there has been higher OpEx in the first quarter of this year. So $0.2 million higher. Salaries and commissions in the first quarter of this year as we've increased that head count from the fourth quarter, higher commissions, also the cost of living salary increases as well. In the first quarter of this year, we also provided a small number of invoices, which went over 1 year old. It's our policy to provide anything that goes over 1 year old, we believe we will fully recoup those invoices because they're due from one of our largest customers in line with our policy, we provided for those in full. So that was a $100,000 provision there. We fully expect to recoup that and I'll come back to the P&L, hopefully, in Q2. Also on that gross margin line as well, that was lower in the first quarter of this year. A couple of reasons for that. First one being, we accrue for music licensing approvals in case we are required to pay any music licensing costs the music played in podcasts. We don't, at the moment, but we prudently accrue. So at the end of last year, we released our accrual relating to 2020. So we hold the full year provision for 2021, but there was a release in the fourth quarter in relation to 2020. And also as well in the last quarter of last year, we released provisions against podcast partner contracts with minimum guarantees where the inventory and value was weighted into the fourth quarter of last year. Having met those guarantees, we were able to release those provisions that we have built up during the last year. So those are the main reasons why that EBITDA number shifted from 1.9 down to 0.9 in the final quarter of -- sorry, in the first quarter of this year. So on to the next slide where we look at the working capital of the business, some insights here that I can give you now. All things being equal, when I come into the first quarter of the year, I view this as the toughest quarter for the business in terms of the pressures on the working capital and the cash requirements within the business. Now the reasons for that, they just come out of a seasonally high Q4 where you recorded those record revenues, everyone's happy, great top line growth, obviously subsequently in the following quarter, you need to pay your record revenue shares to those partners as well deservedly so. So you've got that pressure in the first quarter to settle those record revenue shares. We also have a number of recoupable advances that we pay to attract and retain leading talent that we work with. A number of those are due in the first quarter. They are recoupable, as I say, but there's a timing impact on the cash flow which we have to manage and also as while we pay staff bonuses relating to 2021 as well in the first quarter. So there's a number of pressures there. We need to make sure that our processes that we have are on point. And we've spoken at length before in terms of this business rate to scale significantly. From this graph, we can see if you look at Q1 '21 versus Q1 '22 across the 3 different categories that we can see here, revenue, cash collected payments made across all those 3 lines has been roughly a $10 million increase across each of those lines. So revenue, $9.5 million to $19.7 million. Cash collected $8.5 million up to $18.3 million, payments made $9.8 million to $19.8 million. Same business, same processes, but we're now obviously processing GBP 10 million more on each of those lines. So that's an indication to me that what we've built here is scalable and can handle the growth that we are recording. So, pleased to say that the cash that we hold increased by $0.3 million from $3 million at the end of December to $3.3 million at the end of March despite all the pressures that I've just outlined. But it could have been even better. What we've noted is that because of the amounts that we're billing and the amounts that our customers owe us, in my view, they are managing their own balance sheets and withholding cash until we're past the quarter end, which is why in the trading update, we detailed the fact that we collected $2.9 million in the first week of April. We normally see collections weighted towards the second half of the month, so to collect $2.9 million is a high number to record in the first week of the month. And actually, we've collected another $1 million in the first 3 days of this week. I must mention, of course, that $3.3 million number does include the exercising of warrants by our very supportive Chairman, Michael Tobin. So we exercised on hold warrants in the company, which led to circa $1.5 billion coming into the company. But overall, like I say, the processes that we have in the company to be able to record that quarter-on-quarter increase in cash is pleasing. And actually as well this morning, we've had confirmation from HSBC that they have confirmed a GBP 1.5 million multicurrency overdraft for the company as well. So not that I expect us to utilize that. And we expect the cash reserves of the company to grow, but to have that extra security, extra funding available to the company to invest as it cease to fit and also the accident of validation by our bank as well in terms of influencing that overdraft is another endorsement for the company. That's good news there. Collections. Good in the quarter, over 18 million for the first 12 weeks of the year, over 6 million a month. However, unlike Q4 where collections outstrip payments in the first quarter, the reverse happened because of those material commitments that I outlined earlier. Good downward pressure on those debtor days down to 77 from 94 at the year-end, and the similar pattern as last year with debt is increasing at a higher rate than our creditors, that has increased by $1 million. Creditors increased by $0.4 million. So overall, working capital of the business is good, balance sheet of the company is good. As Stuart said, there's more cash in the bank than at any time than I've been here. But like I said, the processes that we have in place within the company working very, very well, fully funded for the current growth trajectory of the company. And yes, I look forward to updating you further on the company's progress in July when we release that interim statement. Back to you, Stuart.

Thank you, Brad. Just to remind you, a couple of our slides left and then we'll do as much of Q&A as we can fit in before the end of the hour. So I get questions in now, I guess, there's still a few minutes to do that. And then I'll just finish off the presentation here by having a quick look at the rest of 2022 and where that focus is. I think one key stat is very pleasing to us. And is fantastic for understanding the future of the business is this top number here, this $60.5 million of advertising bookings that we already have contracted for 2022. So as a reminder, our entire revenue on 2021 was $60.2 million. So we already have more revenue booked for this year, than we saw in the entirety of 2021, which is just a fantastic place to be at the end of Q1. And when you think about the cadence of those bookings, you'll see if you go back into our trading updates that we added $15 million of bookings in that first quarter of the year. So I think in our last trading update, we were at $45 million. We're now over $60 million, and beyond last year's revenue already. So we'll keep focusing on building out those future advertising bookings. We have plenty of inventory left to sell. As we have done in previous years, we've held back a significant amount of the inventory in our top 25 shows. Again, reminder that those are averaging $14,000 per advertising unit in those top shows. So we've really held back selling the second half of the year in those top 25 shows as another way to drive demand and to increase that pricing. So we're at $60.5 million booked, lots of inventory still to sell, and we'll be pushing that demand heavily as we go into the second and third quarters of the year. The premium network, that key driver of revenue. We continue to see a very strong amount of opportunity coming into us from those key relationships that we have at the Hollywood talent agencies, they are bringing more and more opportunities to us every single week. There is such an organic increase in the growth of independent shows that they are now representing more and more creators more and more podcasters. They bring us those opportunities to create those partnerships with the creator. And it is a really efficient way to do our business development. So we'll keep building out that premium network. And then we have more key renewals coming up in 2022. So I talked about the ones that we've already renewed and made good progress with there. We have more renewals from some of our bigger shows coming up across the rest of 2022. So we'll focus on assuring that we renew as much of that opportunity as we can. Showcase continues to develop. We are kind of focused on adding demand to that marketplace. So bringing in more connections to programmatic platforms and ad networks to lift the sales side of showcase. And then we roll to add power our inventory creation tool to more of our partners. So we think across this year, and this is kind of an upgrade on our previous estimate of 3 billion. We upgrade that estimate to see 4 billion-plus impressions in that marketplace during 2022. So some huge scale going into that. And obviously, the focus now is to make sure that the demand is keeping up with the supply. So we're focused very much on adding more buy-side connections into that marketplace. We continue to invest into Audioboom Studios, particularly into the new U.K. arm of our production unit. More upcoming launches in 2022 in the U.K., and we will again commit strong marketing budgets to those launches and push our shows into the top levels of the U.K. podcast charts there as we grow out that consumer-focused brand. And then finally, we have a focus to continue that international expansion but in a very efficient way of doing so. So just as we've done in Australia, in New Zealand and in Canada, we'll create sales partnerships, monetization partnerships across the next group of territories. So we have partnerships now down to our sixth biggest territory, the next group, Ireland, Germany, Mainland -- and the rest of Mainland Europe, where we'll focus on creating revenue driving partnerships in those areas, too. So all-in-all, 2022 is continuing to look very exciting for the business. We know what we have to do to keep driving this company forward. Key thing is that once again, we're really focused on outgrowing and outperforming that wider industry growth of 30%. We're extremely confident that we'll be going well above that number across the year. And we're just in a great place to continue to take market share and to grow this business.

That's great, Stuart. Brad, thank you very much indeed for your presentation this afternoon. [Operator Instructions] Brad, Stuart, as you can see, we've received a number of questions throughout today's presentation, and thank you to all investors for submitting that questions. If I could please just start you to run through that Q&A and why it's appropriate to do so read out the questions and give your response, and then I'll pick up from you at the end.

Thanks, Jake. So we'll do this one first. It's probably the #1 question on there from Matt, Nigel, Steve, lots of people asking questions along these lines really, which is we've seen speculation over the last 2 months about companies like Spotify and Amazon, just to name 2 of them, wanting to acquire Audioboom. Can you tell us more about that interest? So yes, look, it's great to hear that there's interesting in what we've built. It's really not surprising. It's kind of validation for the work we've done, the model that we've created. And as we've built out the brand and we become more successful and more visible to the wide industry, it's clear that we are a very attractive proposition. I've kind of talked about that more generally in the past as to why it would be attractive. But I think more specifically, when talking about companies like Spotify and Amazon, why we're attractive there is that those guys are kind of taking and making very high risk deals right now in podcasting. So they're laying down $60 million, $80 million, $100 million to work and to get access to individual shows, which is a very high-risk maneuver there. Audioboom and what we are fantastic at or what we're really great at and have been is that kind of incubator for podcast. So over and over again, we have recognized and created partnerships with podcasters and creators, and we've helped them really become mega successful. We've made them very valuable. We've worked with them, coached them around content and advertising and best practice. And we've played a big role in delivering that value. And we will keep doing that. So inside a bigger company, what we are able to do, what we'll be able to do is to kind of derisk that operation, play a key role there and kind of help them deliver that huge upside. So I think we are very valuable to a bigger organization in podcasting. We have the scale already and we continue to kind of perform better. So as you know, I think we are bound by the takeover code. So we are obliged to announce any firm interest. Of course, that doesn't mean that there might not be discussions happening that haven't reached the company yet or exploration of what that opportunity looks like, isn't happening. But I think one of my jobs is to ensure that shareholders see maximum value. And right now, we're in this fantastic growth trajectory. And I think what that's actually doing is kind of making us more and more valuable by the day. So I'm not surprised by the speculation. If anything -- if anything formal comes to Audioboom bound by that takeover code, you'll know very quickly. Next question I'll do here, kind of similar ones here from a couple of people, including [indiscernible]. Why is the guidance on 2022 revenue not being upgraded even with the strong results? Yes. So market expectation currently is for revenues of $83 million from Audioboom. And again, just to set that in context, that $83 million in itself would be growth significantly above what the industry is doing this year. So once again, we will be -- at $83 million, we would be outperforming the wider industry. As you know, I just spoke about we have that $60.5 million booked with lots more inventory to sell. So we are supremely confident right now of hitting that market expectation of $83 million and getting there. I think the key for going beyond the $83 million and then how far beyond that $83 million we go is how we deliver the renewal of those major contracts across the summer. So on an individual basis, each one of those renewals will push that revenue number above the $83 million. And if we're very successful across the renewal of those key contracts, then we will go significantly past that $83 million. So I think right now, we are in early negotiations on 2 of those summertime renewals. They are looking very positive. Other negotiations there will start a little later in the year. So really, as of today, I think, $83 million is still a good number. That's ambitious in the context of the wider industry, but it is one we expect to hit. And by the end of first half of this year, we'll have really great visibility on the remainder of the year and just how far beyond that $83 million will be going. Next one here that I'll do is -- the question is, will podcasting and Audioboom be negatively impacted by world events such as the war in Ukraine? It's a good question. So I think right now, I would suggest we are probably impacted to the tune of maybe 1% of our revenue potential because of world events. I think at a maximum, we could be impacted 2% to 3%. There are still COVID-related issues in the advertising market, particularly with brands who continue to have supply chain issues and therefore, they're limiting their spending in the space. I think there's still some kind of COVID-related issues there. We have seen, I think over the past 4 to 5 weeks, a little nervousness from brands due to the war in Ukraine. There's been kind of a low level, I think, of cancellations of the advertising bookings, but nothing that's too concerning. I think our top shows I spoke to earlier, our top shows that drive such a significant part of our revenue are the highest performers for brands. They deliver great ROI and they are unlikely to be impacted by any nervousness in the ad market. So there is, like I said, a small amount of nervousness, but said that against the continued expansion of the market, and I think the bigger picture really is overwhelming positivity about the growth of both the market and more acutely Audioboom. The next question I have here is management have sold shares earlier this year. What should investors read into that? Like I say -- I'd say don't read too much into that in terms of the future success of the business. I think we're very, very much continuing to bet on ourselves to build this business further and to continue to strengthen shareholder value. I mean, firstly, some of the options that were sold were part of management compensation from several years ago. So really, it's kind of crystallization of some of that compensation linked to work done in 2014 and 2015. It was also a very, very kind of small percentage of management options that were sold. So we still have, I think, significant skin in the game. Like I said, continue to kind of bet on ourselves there personally. As I think you'll know, I'm based in the U.S., taxation on stock options works differently here. I also don't qualify for things like EMI tax relief. So I have a taxation need to exercise and hold those shares. So they qualify for lower capital gains tax. So there's a major upfront cost to that, the cost of exercising those plus the tax on the spread there. So in order to do some of that, I needed to sell some of those options as well. But overall, I think we've increased our individual holdings over the past year. I think we'll continue to do that also. And like I said, we're very much still heavily banging on ourselves to build the business further. Next question here. On Twitter, you talked about Audioboom's advertising model being unique. Can you explain why it's unique? And is it the reason you're growing faster than the industry? So yes, this is something -- I think from last week. I referenced a thought piece from an advertising executive who highlighted why they would pay up to 100% more for our advertising model versus various models used by our competitors, which as I said at the time, it was kind of great validation for the work we're doing in the model we have. It's kind of it's very nuanced, but to break it down a little bit. I think fundamentally, brands will traditionally pay to buy audience or to buy content. And what I mean by that is if you want to buy audience, you're saying, I want to reach 2 million people in Texas and California with my message. If you buy content, you're saying I want to align my brand with sports shows. Both of those are very effective. But what we are doing really is we're enabling brands to buy influence. So to utilize the influence, the personality and the engagement with the podcast host. And that is what makes our advertising model so impactful in driving sales and ROI and, therefore, we can charge a premium to it. But what we then do is we supercharge that by ensuring that the ads are delivered in single ad breaks, the brands have competitive separation within episodes. So their competitors -- competitive brands can't be on that same episode and that the ad is delivered native to the content for better audience engagement. We use attribution technology to measure the effectiveness of those ads and the reach of those ads. So that supercharges the work we do and allow us to charge you even more for those ads by connecting with the influence of the hosts. And at the same time, many of our competitors are now watering down the model, right? Because they are -- particularly those ones that are now part of a bigger organization, they are having a different advertising model imposed on them that may not be best for podcasting. It's not making the most of the podcast host and the influence of that podcast host. What it does, because they're part of a bigger organization, is it makes things efficient, but they're having to sell advertising in the same way that they might sell streaming or digital advertising because that fits well with the overall model that the organization has, but that does water things down, makes our advertising model more effective. So yes, I believe it's -- we have the most effective advertising model in the business. It is why we are growing so quickly, that's why we're able to deliver so much value to our creators, that's why people want to come and work with the Audioboom. And it's why brands also trust us to deliver for them. I just have a couple of minutes left. So we'll have a look here through some more. This one is a question about AdRip. Is AdRip destined to remain exclusively for Audioboom use? Do competitors have their own version of this tech? Could it be licensable? I think right now, it's such an effective tool that it's not something we would look to license out because it gives us an incredible competitive advantage to be able to remonetize content over and over again and create this vast back catalog of advertising inventory. Not something, I think, we'll license out. Today, I don't believe there is anyone else in the industry or in the market that has that piece of technology. So that will remain exclusively for Audioboom use, and it is very, very effective for us. I'll try and fit a couple more in guys. Spotify has introduced call-to-action cards for podcast advertising. Is this something Audioboom utilizing? If so, what's the impact on conversion? Yes, it got a little press a few months ago. It's basically kind of a click-through visual card when you're using Spotify that allows you to go straight to a website's page and buy product there and measure the conversion. It's not something we get access to. It's for podcast very exclusive to Spotify. We are working though with a number of attribution services that allow us to measure the impact on conversion of our own ads. As I said before, they do deliver great ROI. So we work with attribution services to do that, which gives us a great look at that. So if anything else quick I could do here. I have a question from Chris about Sonic Influencer Marketing and how that works with Audioboom. So yes, Audioboom and Sonic work just as Audioboom would work with another advertising agency or platform. So Sonic can access advertising inventory on Audioboom in that same manner. No change there really, and it does deliver a higher overall gross margin to the full business because it's the Sonic gross margin plus the Audioboom gross margin there. It's just recognized on the Sonic side separately. I think we'll probably leave it there. We've gone past the top of the hour. So thank you for all those questions. Hopefully, we got through a few more than we're usually able to. Thank you, everyone, for joining us today and for your support.

Sure. That's great. Brad as well, thank you for addressing all of those questions that you had from investors this afternoon. Of course, ladies and gentlemen, the company will have the opportunity to review all of the questions submitted today and we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet Company platform. Stuart, perhaps for directing investors to provide you their feedback, which knows particularly imports into yourself and the company. If I could please ask you just for a few closing comments, that would be great.

Yes. As you know, Brad and I are always here for feedback. So you can always reach out to us or ask for any kind of clarification or any points from today. Yes, I just want to really say thank you for joining us. Thank you for the support or for your interest in the business. We're in a great place. We're really excited about the year ahead of us. We're doing things that our competitors are not able to do. We play such a key role in podcasting with our Audioboom podcast, it does not have anywhere near the value otherwise does. The whole industry is moving quickly, but we are moving much faster. We do things smartly, we do things in a very lean and efficient way. The platform is super scalable. We have the best sales model in the business. And there's just more and more opportunity coming into Audioboom to scale our content business. So lots of exciting things happening, new shows from Audioboom Studios, new shows joining our Creator Network every single day. We're just in a great place to continue growing and making sure that 2022 is another successful year.

That's great. Stuart, Brad, thank you very much indeed for taking the time to update investors this afternoon. [Operator Instructions] On behalf of the management team of Audioboom Group plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good afternoon to you all.