Blackbird plc ($BIRD)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Blackbird plc Full Year Results Investor Presentation. reviews. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, we would like to submit the following poll. And if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to the executive management team from Blackbird plc, Ian. Good morning, sir.

Good morning, Jake. Thank you very much, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to our Blackbird presentation Full Year results for 2025. So before we start and get into our presentation, I just want to cover 3 topics. The first one being Elevate, which is that Elevate is still in our product market fit stage. We are, therefore, not spending huge amounts on direct marketing. We are spending money on some marketing, those long-term strategies, and we'll talk about those through the presentation. But until we're through the current market fit stage and we have growth and we have retention, et cetera, then we won't be spending lots of money on direct marketing because that will be capital destructive. Secondly, on the Blackbird said, because this presentation is really about Elevate, I just want to cover off Blackbird at the beginning. So very happily, we were reporting a GBP 380,000 profit on Blackbird this year. We still retain some of our very high-value customers working at the very pinnacle of sports and news, including executing very recently the winter games in [ Cortina ]. And thirdly, I just want to address the cash situation. So on current run rate, Blackbird plc has about 12 months' worth of cash left. We are a very disciplined company when it comes to our cost base, and we'll continue to be so. So thank you very much. Before we start, do you want to cover those off I'm now going to show a video which really explains and contextualizes the problem in the media supply chain and the video production process that Elevate is there to address. It's a video that we took very recently at a creative Fest event in London. So this is a very relevant and up-to-date problem. [Presentation]

So I hope that helps to explain the [indiscernible] inefficiencies that exist the Elevate is their to really to do away with to make sure that we can collapse those workflows and serve creators and teams and brands up to 70% of their time in the video production process. Now I'm going to take you through some stats now really to show the consistency that we update you on these stats every time. They're still clearly indicating that we're in the product market fit stage. They're still clearly indicating that we're in the product market fit stage. We now have 138,000 people signed up for the product with over 1,000 people that have paid for the product. We've retained around 388, a little bit more than that now of those customers. But this really indicates that there's still a product market fit stage to be reached. When we look at that 1,000 versus the 388, it's often that there's features missing in the product that we're addressing and Sumit is very well aware of that we're addressing in order and a logical approach so that we can make sure that those people are retained in the future. The 2 that we're really proud of in terms of these or more proud and encouraged by in this page is that since we introduced the new plans at the end of January, over 10% of new subscribers are annual taking annual plans. So obviously shows that they have faith and commitment to the product. And also, the customer lifetime has gone from 5.5 months up to 8.4 months. So for a product that was only started to be paid for in February '25, this is a very encouraging sign. Still quite a way to go, but very encouraging numbers. Also, the collaboration. So the fact that you just saw in the video earlier, the collaboration is a real differentiator for us. It's a new behavior. So to get people to use this, it's a completely different way to use a video editor than ever before. But you can see that since we introduced the review process at the end of August that we've had a nice steady increase in growth of collaboration through the end of February. So that's a really encouraging sign. Sumit is now going to take you through the product progress and what's coming next. Over to you, Sumit.

Okay. So last time we spoke to you guys, we were at the point of quite a lot of key important new features that are coming to the platform. One of the first ones, which was just quite important for video in general is to fill things like the role is that we integrated the Pixels stock video library, which gives all our users immediate access to a very vast library of free content. So that went in, and that's one of our, obviously, partner integrations. We also did a lot of integrations on the AI space. So we included AI image generation and speech generation and probably the most impactful thing for our target market was the subtitles where we're using AI to transcribe and produce subtitles, and we'll show you a demo of that. But another few more important things were also added in this period. And as Ian mentioned, we did change the plans, so we added 3 different plans for the product. We included the annualized plan, plans aimed at more for the broad range of the market. And we introduced tokens, which is a mechanism for people to pay for AI usage. But above that, we also did a lot of foundational work in making the GPU on the computer, so the processing unit on the computer, capable of doing a lot more of the work within Elevate. Now this is particularly important for when we're using -- when Elevate used on lower-end computers like Chrome brooks because they do tend to have very good GPUs. And so it means that we just going to get better performance. So we're really happy. We stuck. We did everything that we said we would do in that period. Everything has been out there. It's being used by customers, and we're very happy with it. The next bit that we're working on and the things that's going to happen in the next quarter is we're on the cusp of releasing stock music with epidemic sounds. We've got a demo for that as well. We're going to also be -- based on feedback that we've had from our business users and our marketing teams, we're going to be adding fund management. So people will be able to upload their own custom fonts that brands use so that all of the -- all the text within their videos can be consistent with their brand. But also, we're going to leverage the work that we've done on the GPU previously with the transitions and actually apply that to things like effects and animations. So we're getting closer and closer to this being very, very capable of competing with the higher-end video. And something that is really important for our customers is more audio tools. At the moment, we have audio editing levels, but we haven't implemented things like noise reduction and dubbing and dynamics in EQ. And we're going to show some demos of that now as well actually. So if I jump straight into a demo, let's go with the transcription first. So here's a video of Caroline, one of our marketing team. And in this video -- and what we can do is actually go down here, turn on the transcriptions, enable the transcriptions. And what happens is I've already done it, so we didn't have to wait for it. But what it's done is it's gone away, it's transcribed the video very, very accurately, and you can see it follows along on the right as we sort through it. But not only are we able to get the transcriptions and put them directly on to the video, but we're also able to go into those subtitles, go into the stars and actually in real time, change the style with which the video or the transcriptions are playing back as subtitles. So this is really useful for where we've got users who are working in corporates and need a more formal look and then obviously, the social media, et cetera. And all of that's done with one of our partners, OpenAI, who is providing transcription services. Another key feature that you'll notice is, of course, we've increased the collaboration. So as I'm editing here on our time line, you can also see that Kell is also in the project. So both of us can be here simultaneously at the same time. Now what we did in the last quarter, and we were just heading into this, and if you remember the graph that Ian showed of the growth, a lot of that growth has come because of the review mode. And what that means is that users who are editing are able to actually go on to the invite and invite users, but rather than say that they can edit and could potentially get too involved in the project, but they could just be reviewers, so that can be clients or internal stakeholders. And then they can just go to any part of the video that they want, say, please give this a look like so that goes immediately on the time line, and it's immediately available here to the editor. So Kel could pick that up, for example. And as I'm not doing anything because I'm the one who's got the comment, he says he's on it. He can go to that particular video and he can say, okay, fine. Let me just apply a different look, and you've seen he's already out of that look in. So our collaboration is really, really improving. We've got more that will come into that space. But for now, we are seeing really good growth in that space. I think we noticed this video as well is our new transitions. These are our GPU accelerated transitions, which is the underpinning [indiscernible] so that covers those. But the really exciting things that are coming are epidemic sounds, as we mentioned. So if for example, I go into here and go into audio -- sorry, music alongside where we've had the audio -- the video from pixels and I type in something like sport, for example, and I say, okay, this could be interesting. We'll play back a track here. And I say, okay, that could be an interesting track that we could use. So I can just drag this directly onto the computers into the time line. I can temporarily disable the previous track that was there. And then you can see we can immediately very, very quickly all add to the project. So that will be releasing in the next couple of weeks, and we're really excited about that. Now looking further forward into different audio tools, here's an example of something that we've been working on with another partner, which is around doubling and revoicing. So let's do audio cleanup first. Here's a clip of someone that we interviewed at the trade show. And you can probably hear in the background, there's a lot of background loads, which is making it hard to hear. But if you run it through the voice isolation, you'll now be able to hear much clearer. I'll go right from the beginning. So that's going to really help especially testing [indiscernible] like mobile phones that have a proper microphone set up, et cetera. Another really exciting thing is to be able to do the dubbing side of things. So if I space here. If I play this video back. You can hear the presenter issue, but then I can change the language. And you could even have it payback in arabics as well. So these are just a few of the exciting things that we are going to be bringing to market. And of course, the product -- these are just the key features. These are the highlights. We are constantly adding lots of little improvements because we know that users come for the big features, but they always stay for the little ones and the convenient day-to-day productivity that little snippets that we have that other products in our space don't tend to do. We've never said that we're going to be pushing out to be as complicated as some of the higher-end tools, but the quality of life features that we're adding are really important.

Great. Huge exciting next 3 months ahead of us on the product side. So just a quick reminder of our addressable market. It really is a huge opportunity that we have globally. The creator economy is made up of 200 million creators worldwide. And as a reminder, the creator economy means people that are actually making money from creating their content, which means they're generally working with other people, whether it be other team members or brands are making that money. It's really key for those people to be able to have a review tool that does quick and easy to use. We're really honing our guns on the marketeers and those adjacent marketing roles, of which there are 6.5 million marketers worldwide. And the real reason for that is there are 3 reasons. One is that they make a lot of video and that video has to be of a certain quality. Secondly is that just by the general definition, they work in teams, either with themselves or with brands. And thirdly, they have [indiscernible] pay. Those guys want to pay for their tools. They're not going to put free tools into their workflow. So really important for us to hone to train our brands on to a workflow that works for the markets worldwide. I'm going to share a quick video of some professional content creators who are using Elevate or have come very close to using Elevate and see it in action. To give you a sense of favor of how they feel about the product that we've built. [Presentation]

So I hope that gives a flavor of how excited we are about it because we feel we're very close to achieving that point of market when you hear the guys talking their. So we're going to continue that seeding work with those lighthouse users. You saw [indiscernible] Los Angeles, also [ DCT U.K. ] out of the U.K. But we're also working with AI companies with India and kids networks, et cetera. So we're getting lots of feedback from different range of customers about lots and lot about Elevate, but also what we need to work on to make sure that we have that fit. We're going to be adding some of these people, these companies through further events next year or this year, of which we have a full program going through the spring in the summer. The partnership side of things is hugely important. So the fact that epidemic brings such a high-quality library to us is amazing. But what they also bring millions of users that use epidemic. And epidemic will make our will be with about us when we launch our product in the very near future. So we think the partnerships are really fantastic way for us to grow and accelerate out to market. We're also building our PR presence. So we've recently worked with [ Feature in Forbes ] with an [indiscernible] of our collaboration. Sumit and [indiscernible] have been on numerous podcasts, including recently [ TemelVideo ], [indiscernible] Australia, which the guy that runs has a media followers. So rebuilding our presence in that market. We just started exciting as well with influencers. So this is a real first [indiscernible]. We worked with [ Laura ] out of New York. Again, the U.S. is hugely important to us as a market, whatever half of the content greater economy is in the states. And those videos will be launching very soon. [ Laura ] is a TickTocker who has over 60,000 followers. Interestingly, when we started talking to Lara how she has 30,000. So she's very much a rising star and we're working [indiscernible]. She'll have a series of videos that she'll be talking about Elevate. And we're were looking for that point of that growth. When we achieve [indiscernible] growth then we'll start to do more direct spend on the product in such engine marketing, et cetera, but we have to work at that level. So in conclusion, we have a really sizable opportunity. to build Elevate, addressing archaic -- hugely archaic inefficiencies to be spying. We are working [indiscernible] fit. It's hopefully happening very soon. And I think there are a number of things that we can pick up on the questions around things that will accelerate us getting there. And thirdly, we're still seeding with very high-profile customers. We're really pressure testing this with some very demanding customers in the market. And I'm very happy to take your questions. We've actually had a record number of questions submitted. I think we have questions pre-submitted, which I'm going to answer a few of those upfront. But over to you, first of all, Jake, and then we'll get to that.

[Operator Instructions] Just like to remind you that recording of this recording of this presentation and [indiscernible] company slide and the published Q&A can all be accessed by your Investor dashboard. We have received a number of questions. So if I may just hand back to you to address those where appropriate to do so. And if I pick up from you at the end, that would be great. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Jake. Okay. So yes, there's a number of questions that I think I'll take upfront because they kind of do get repeated. The first is -- the first one is why do we have a low share price? And I think it's a good question. I think the key reason there is that the market doesn't like the revenue being so low. And the revenue is not high because we haven't spent a great deal on marketing because we don't have the product-led growth and we don't have the product market fit. So this is all part of the process, and we're working towards that fit, hopefully, in the very near future. However, I bought shares this morning, as you might have seen, and I did that on the reason that I believe hugely in the opportunity that we have. This is a massive opportunity that no one else owns in this market. So we -- why not us? We've had made a huge amount of progress in the product, as Sumit talked about. We've got in front of us a big partnership with epidemic that I'm hugely excited about and that we talked about. We've got the potential for AI to be a more friend for us. And I think that's important. It's a fun for us on both sides. It's a fun for us on the supply side, i.e., we can get our features to the product faster through AI. And it's a huge opportunity on the demand side because there is just much more video being created. And that video needs to be assembled and that video needs to be reviewed. And that's really where Elevate has some huge opportunities for a big market there. And thirdly, I bought because the price is very low. So I think it's a huge opportunity for anyone buying. Right. Okay. So I'm going to go into the questions now that I've got hearing. So the first question, and there's a number of these, by the way, so I'm going to answer it right up front, is about the world of [ Dole Roberts ]. So Bill joined us late last year. He's at Adobe, and he was very keen to come on board. Unfortunately, Bill has had some serious family health issues and has had to step back from us and other things. And so we're not really working too closely with Bill at the moment. So that answers a number of those questions, I think. The second question is on micro dramas. Over to you, Sumit. a micro dramas create on the budget. It sounds like Elevate would be a good fit.

Yes. We don't currently support some of the demand that will come out of the televisual space because of their heavy reliance on color grading and audio tools. So we do want to be able to operate in that space. But at the moment, it's such a small market that it's not worth it for us to push too much into that. But we will eventually -- I mean, Elevate will be usable by almost everyone other than maybe right at the high.

Okay. The third question is on fundraising. And obviously, you saw that we did -- obviously, you saw, but we did a small fundraise just before Christmas. It's important as Chair and obviously, with a very responsible Board that we have fiduciary duty to make sure that the company is fully capitalized and that we have ample reserves or some reserves to market the product when fit is achieved. The question that I'm looking at right now is asking about do you think funds will be raised privately? Well, there's certainly no plans for that. We're very happy with being -- with our position on [ AIM ] and the fact that our [ AIM ] shareholders have always supported us. So that's -- yes, that's the way that one would go. So yes, we're very happy to be on [ AIM ]. Third question is a share price question. I think I've addressed those. It's interesting to see how many small agencies start to use CapCut Pro desktop over the last few years for various tasks. Elevate IO once has market fit will be a far better product for them to use in my opinion. For many reasons, how do you plan to reach and educate those agencies using CapCut and any other inferior product with pro-sumer and pro creator plans to help them transition to Elevate and more productive. [indiscernible], do you want to talk?

Yes, sure. Yes. No. So agencies are definitely a really, really important target for us. Obviously, Elevate is such an amazing fit because of the collaboration and because they work so much with clients. We have -- I think I already hinted at it during the presentation, we have a pretty exciting events pipeline for Q2. And some of these events will be more targeting marketing teams, but there are also those events that target these types of agencies more. And from last year, from -- for those who followed along, we obviously attended quite a few events. The product was obviously at a much earlier stage, but what we did learn was that events are very effective in terms of seeding it amongst people. So at that time, we got a lot of really valuable feedback. And now where the product is, we feel a whole lot better about attending these events and getting Elevate into these types of agencies' hands.

Thank you so much, [indiscernible]. Next one is a product question. Figma offer a desktop wrap-up providing semi-offline model that targets the needs of professionals who travel. How those stable connections? Is this something you would consider? Sumit Rai?

Yes. The wrapper for Figma doesn't help you if you don't have an Internet connection, you still need to have a net connection. But we will be doing something very similar, and it does give us better ability to, for example, cash larger amounts of the video or process some of it into the Blackbird codec locally. So we've always wanted to do that for sure, and it is going to be just a wrap version of the product.

I understand the 5-year EVS license is due to expire in '26. Can you confirm renewals are being discussed? And would you expect improved terms? I can't go into details about the terms, but I would say that we have an excellent relationship with EVS, including having just executed the winter games as a partner with them. And of course, we were looking to renew that contract. Over the last 12 to 18 months, the core Blackbird business has lost a number of customers, for example, [ Aral, NRL ]. Is this a conscious decision to focus on higher-margin customers? Or have these customers moved on to other solutions? It is the latter. Why are people moving away from Blackbird Enterprise? What I would say is that it's a highly competitive market. We are very happy to have our sticky customers, some of the largest customers and discerning customers in the world. There is some natural movement away sometimes from products, but we're very happy with what we're doing there. As we've made a GBP 380,000 profit there this year. Have you seen any evidence of organic growth in usage of Elevate IO growth, not dependent on active marketing, but via word-of-mouth recommendations, et cetera? Yes, absolutely. [ kelly ], do you want to pick that one up?

Yes, yes, sure. So obviously, we have organic growth. And then I think the other thing that you're referring to is more like product-led growth, so not active marketing, as you mentioned. We're seeing both on the organic marketing side, we're seeing a really good uptick. But also on the product-led growth side, I think we are -- like the 2 main mechanisms in the product right now are the team invites and the project invites. And since September, we have seen a very nice steady uptick in those being used and inviting people into the product. And also some of the subscribers that we acquire now because obviously, we have such good analytic systems and we can measure everything. They do come through these team and project invites.

Anything to add [indiscernible]?

No.

Yes, I think that's a good answer, [ Carl ]. I think we are looking for high standard there in terms of product growth. We want to see that growth really start to steepen. There's a general definition of what product market fit is and it's when 40% of your market can't do without you. And so we're aiming at that. We're not there yet, but that's really our target. Okay. Then will you be adding AI vidgen?

We've been looking at 2 types of video generation, one just freeform and the other one with avatars, both will be with partners. It was just one of the next things that will happen after we finish epidemic will be -- yes, we'll be reviewing it, but we will be adding it soon.

One for you, Steve. A few months back and a few other shareholders reported Blackbird was being -- that Elevate IO was being used by some promotional guy on LinkedIn. Is there anything you can add to that?

Yes. Well, thank you -- yes, thank you for contacting us. Yes, we were aware of it and it is causing a bit of a confusion. We've been in touch with this other brand and he's promised to rebrand. It takes a little bit of time, but I've been in touch with them recently, and it's in progress. So we'll be moving away from the [ Elevate.io ] brand shortly.

How close are you to providing forecast? We close a few years back? Can you give an indication in weeks or months? I think our indication would be when the revenue engine makes sense and we start to get a repeatable route to market through marketing, then we'll feel more confident to give a forecast, but we're not at that stage yet. At the interim presentation, you mentioned that 2 ads would soon air on YouTube and with these shown as part of your presentation. Did this ever happen?

Yes. The good news is, yes, both of these ads are currently live and running with obviously a conservative budget, but they are live and running. So yes, they are being used with very specific targeting. So even if you don't happen to come across them, then it just means our targeting is working essentially. We obviously want to make sure that the right people see the ads because that's what we're paying for.

The broker notes released on Monday included some analysis of collaboration, which we went through earlier in the presentation. Do you think this is an important driver of both usage and adoption in Elevate? It's really one of a number of different value propositions that we have in Elevate. It's a big differentiator for us. So we see it as a big driver, a big lever, yes.

Ian, It's worth stating actually that, that chart was all based around non-ad spend, so through organic means. So yes, we actually saw higher figures if we add in the ad spend.

It's a really good point. Yes, we cleaned out all the -- any Google ad spend because that has -- that could include the data. So what you saw in that chart is pure organic. Has Elevate entered scale up? If not, why not? I'll finish that question there because we haven't achieved product market fit yet. And when we do, we will certainly let you know. Given the presentation at the time of the 2 million placing last year and the talk of increasing subscriptions and early hockey sticks, were you surprised by the subsequent churn immediately thereafter. The presentation provided a very bullish view that almost immediately appeared to stop.

Yes, yes, sure. So I think at that time, for those that remember, we obviously had our 50% early bird discount, which made it very attractive for people to subscribe to a product that is obviously nowhere near where it is today. So obviously, as -- when we went full price, we saw that impact. And I think that's what you're referring to. And as was mentioned during the presentation, in response to that, we completely redesigned our plans. And yes, we were seeing some positive results from that.

Thank you very much. Will the product might never be finished, how do you see development costs once the features referred to in the notes have been realized? And do you see that a lot of the main features needed to scale up are there and development costs can be waned in? Or do you think it cost will remain the same? It's probably a Steve and Sumit question on that one.

Yes. Do you want to talk about the product road map. I can talk about the cost.

There's a couple of things that are happening. We are -- we're getting faster. We spend a lot of time, as everyone knows, building infrastructure for Elevate. And now we're actually able to develop things faster and faster. That's also been added as something that you mentioned earlier that AI is being used quite extensively within the product development phase now because it's at the stage where it is actually useful, but also because we've done a lot of that foundational work, it's very easy for us to now sort of add self-contained some work. So what we expect is the acceleration of the product to increase. It may feel like, oh, we're nearly there, we're nearly there. But what we are is we're very nearly there, and if not already there for many customers as a very usable product. What is now going to help is that we're just going to be able to escalate faster and faster and actually just widen the use -- how many people are usable to...

Yes. On the cost side of things, I'd say on the short term, you'll probably see a little bit of a dip due to some changes that we've made within the team over the last few months or so. But yes, going forward or whatever by that, as Sumit said, we've got a list as long as the arms that we want to achieve. So I'd imagine that the development costs will stabilize.

Thanks. There's a question quite a long question, so I'm not going to read it out fully. But it asks about the raise. So first of all, why the raise and why no [ TR1 ] came through? So I'll address why the raise. I mean it's really about fiduciary duty to the company. As I mentioned at the start of the presentation, we have a 12-month runway with Blackbird. And that is in large part because we did a raise before Christmas. So we want to make sure that we don't run out of money and we won't have enough capitalization to market the product too. In terms of [ TR1 ], Steve, do you want to?

Yes. In terms of the Tier 1, we haven't received anything. The company can only issue a Tier 1 to the market when it receives that information itself. We haven't received anything. I'm told from breaker AV that they contacted the individual. We're not going to speculate as to why they haven't issued the Tier 1, but nothing has been forthcoming.

Okay. So there's a long question about product market fit here. I'll try and put you in. Product market fit and customer profile stages, I understand the product market fit is important to ensure the product matches the market. And that's all great, but drawing out this process could also be used to delay accountability and justify a lack of growth in WAU and MAU and paid subscribers. Those metrics are the ultimate test of whether an Elevate is growing, succeeding, gaining traction, adoption and acceptance. Okay. You're absolutely right. So there's a lot of data you put into this question, and you're absolutely right. So we want to make sure that we do have those WAUs and MAUs growing as in weekly active users, monthly active users growing. We want to make sure that retention is there. We want to make sure that organic growth is there and turning into an exponential curve. Absolutely right. Anything that is going to cloud those numbers, which means massive spend in search engine marketing, we're not willing to do at this stage because that is a clouds the data, but also we have limited resources. We have limited reserves, and therefore, we don't want to destroy that, and we want to make sure that we wait until the appropriate time when the metrics are coming through that really show that we've got that momentum and that the revenue engine is really starting to make sense from a math point of view, then we will spend the money. I hope that answers the question. But yes, I've said several times that we haven't reached that stage yet and that we are working towards that stage as soon as we can. Blackbird division. Given the successful repeated renewals with global leaders in sports and entertainment, Blackbird is clearly the leader in this field. To what extent is our technology indispensable to these customers? If it is indispensable, is there any reason why our pricing is not significantly higher? Hypothetically, if we double our pricing, where will these global names go to? Do they have alternatives? As I mentioned before, it's a competitive market. There's a lot of people in that market, and actually, it's ever shrinking -- not growing very fast. So the competition is ever intensified. So there are alternatives to using Blackbird clearly because we're only a very small part of the market, the market share. So we have to work hard from every perspective, from a communication perspective and sales perspective to make sure those contracts are always renewed. The research report suggests sign-ups have increased from 111,000 to 138,000 since September despite what appears to be much lower paid search. Have you therefore seen any improvements to sign-up and acquisition costs? Well, we're not going to go into lots of detail about lots of different metrics. We've given you the metrics that we said we would every time. This is prior market fit stage. It's a period of experimentation and therefore, metrics are moving around. So therefore, it doesn't make a great deal of sense to kind of keep talking about them. Sometimes we'll do something that really works really well and maybe we do something that works as well. So at this stage, we really want to hone that route to market so that we can -- when we start to spend the money in larger sums, it really works for us. Okay. Why has it taken 2.5 years since unveiling Elevate IO concept to add features like [ Pro-Audio ] given that Blackbird already has a professional grade editing feature features.

Yes. I can't reply that audio is at the moment a bit of a weakness for us, and it is something that is crucial. We do just have to build -- we can't build everything at once. In some ways, we're going to -- by not doing the audio, we're in a better position because of the way in which audio is now being done with AI. So actually, we've invested a huge amount of money in traditional audio editing capabilities, we would probably have wasted a lot of that because a lot of it is easy to replace now. So it's really important to us. We care about it. It's crucial to video production, especially as you move into the higher-end users. And so you will be seeing some movement in the space. We did it in the demo today, we showed some examples of that, but also just traditional audio filtering will be the product.

Thank you very much. Competition question here. So good quality cloud-based video editing with collaboration is becoming widely available even on low-end Chromebooks, we have platforms like [ Flexia ], how does management respond to the concern that we might have lost our first-mover advantage and our core USP? I don't think it's that common I to say, but certainly that people want to own is it currently. Anything you want to pick up on this?

Yes. I do think we are much further ahead in the collaboration space than anybody, not that others aren't catching or the market isn't widening. And of course, evidence of more players in the market is a good thing. That's a good thing for us in general because it helps spread the size of the market. The market is infinitely big enough for multiple players. So yes, of course, it would be great if we were able to push ahead and get in front of more people, and then we would be able to have more awareness and then use our first-mover advantage.

So a related question here. So while our primary USP is collaborative creation, the wider market seems to place a higher value on collaborative review, which is now ubiquitous. How will the commercial model be adapted if we discover that our main USP climate integration is viewed by the market as a nice to have rather than a key differentiator?

Yes, we do both. I mean review is very strong for us as well. And the reason why review is a big part of the market is because review is the only thing that really exists. Co-creation isn't something that's ever existed and it is a new part of the market. The both actually go perfectly hand-in-hand together. So we feel like we're in a great position. Our review tools are strong, but we're in a really good position in the co-creation space because it's an almost impossibility for the higher-end products to add it and the lower-end products just haven't done it well. So both can exist simultaneously, and is part of our strategy. I can work with [ Kell ] on it, but then we can share it within for review. So it just makes real good sense for the -- in fact, that's exactly how it works. If you think about how it works within our organization. [ Kelly and Kiara ] make the bulk of our content and a few external providers. And all that content is created in Elevate and they'll work within a group and they'll share things and will occasionally jump in as some of the end users around something, but then the final reviews go out to Ian and others and so on and so forth, and that's in the review mode. So it's exactly how we use it and both sides of that are very, very useful.

I think it's worth also referencing the video that we showed first today as well. No products were mentioned there on that video, we transfer as mentioned. But the main competitor here, the company that owns the market for review is Frame io. And so use Frame io together with an NLE, you have to download your video from the NLE and upload it again to Frame. That has a slow process. Second thing about that process is that the reviewer is only ever working on a render of the video. So they're working on either an out-of-day video or they've stopped the editor from working. So one of the 2 things that happened. So again, it's a big time sing a big waste of time. So they might -- it might be a common product to use and pretty much everyone we talk to says they use it, but it's not a perfect product by any means, and Elevate is a huge improvement on that. Okay. So there's a couple of questions here on stats. What is your CAC, what is your annual contract value, annual churn rate. As I mentioned before, we're not giving that out at this stage. They are actually able to be worked out from the numbers we've given you, I think. But again, while we're in this product market fit stage, it seems fairly meaningless to give out detailed numbers on that because we are in experimentation mode, and we will continue to be until we finish that phase. According to the curve visuals at the previous meetings, you have said you have been scale up for a while. Sorry, I'm going stop that one there because haven't been scale for a while we're definitely [indiscernible] market. Okay. Ian this week, you've defined the target market as professional creators working within brands and in-house brand and marketing teams. What is the TAM value of the target market? Well, I've given you the numbers of people that are working in there, and we've previously given you a TAM of around $6.9 billion as the market opportunity. We think it's -- that's not an inaccurate number. It was a 2022 number, so we think that's only grown. So it's a huge number. Shareholders have taken continuous pain in the share price and dilution. What is the tangible hope for them? Well, yes, as also a shareholder that's had tangible pain. And as you know, my family and I have invested a lot of money into this company, over GBP [ 2 million ] into this company. I completely understand your pain. As you've also seen, I've invested again this morning, and I've given you the reasons for that. I think it's a great investment, a great time to invest in this company. But we think we're getting toward the end of that product market fit stage. I've got huge amounts of faith in Sumit and the team in delivering that product market fit. And so we're excited about what happens next. Okay. How is EVS getting on with the codec? So any question, any updates there, Steve, do you want to?

No, really. Yes, but they're using it. They've been selling it more widely, but we can't go into any details in terms of customers, et cetera, because they're not our customers. But yes, we have a great relationship with them. And yes, the dev teams as well have a really, really good relationship and enjoying working together.

Do you anticipate expanding Elevate to work on mobile devices, iPads [indiscernible] on the question.

We will continue to expand the mobile coverage for things like upload, et cetera. And it's always on the cards that we will be able to become more mobile focused down the line.

We have a Safari version as well now for Elevate. And obviously, all the iPads run Safari. So it's getting a lot simpler to make that jump when we need to.

Question for you, Stephen, coming up here. How does cutting manage frame accurate multiplayer, high-definition video editing without our codec? From a technical perspective, what's to stop them producing a prosumer product like Elevate?

So you can run -- if you have more processor and more bandwidth, you can do whatever you want on a modern system. It's to do with the efficiency and the flexibility of it and the responsiveness, and ultimately, the cost. So we haven't emphasized cost yet because we're product market fit stage. But over time, as these products get to be used very widely, the profit margin is going to be one of the major factors. And you've seen from our original Blackbird cloud, we have 90% gross margin up to 95% some years. And that is way higher than any other web-based video product. So that technology, some of that's used in Elevate, but we will be adding more of that to Elevate. And that will give us a really big advantage in the market, just the margins that we have.

Yes, I think it's the infrastructure cost behind that, that's really important. Okay. A question about conversion. With a 0.28% conversion rate from registered to paying users, you've stated you're nearing end of product market fit. Given the GBP 0.5 million raise for marketing, what specific feature gaps or friction points have you identified as the primary barriers to conversion and retention? And what specific percentage will you consider the product truly scale up ready? So the 0.28%, I don't -- exactly how that's being calculated, but I presume that's over the entire base of people that we have. Obviously, we're in a curve where things are improving all the time and conversion is improving all the time. It's definitely not 0.28% at the current stage. But where -- first of all, the friction points and the...

Yes, its features, its features. I mean we -- every time we add a new feature, we satisfy a slightly larger market, and we've got a number coming up. And it will never end because there'll always be -- we'll always have to keep adding features to satisfy everybody and they evolve even the same users over time. But it has been historically the main reason, the main feedback we get is listing features.

Yes. I think it's absolutely missing features and having those features presented in such a way as to delight the user that they used as well. So that's really key. For us, it's also -- the second part of the question is when do you think your scale up ready? It's when we've moved the revenue engine to a place where the maths make a lot more sense. It's not necessarily going to be a multiple of the CAC, but we wanted to see the momentum, sustained momentum to that point, and then we feel that we're in a place to apply more financing to the marketing. Did you not consider the damage that would occur to your credibility when you underline the share price by doing a secret deal and a credit to the buyer for the last tranche of shares and never disclosing who the buyer was. As Steve said, we can only follow the rules that are given to us in terms of disclosure. Anything else you want to pick up that one?

There's nothing else to add really.

We have a fiduciary duty to the company to make sure that we're capitalized.

And also under GDPR as well, we're not allowed to give names of users if they don't want it.

Yes. And great to see we signed a brand deal with [ Lara ], the New York influencer specializing in video editing, endorse Elevate for those who like desktop. Although it seems odd that she says she edits all our videos on the phone, not desktop, but maybe this means we have a mobile editor launch lined up for the launch in 2026. But I think she's maybe changing the way that she edits. But Sumit anything on the mobile side?

Yes. No, we won't have 2026.

You did a marketing push for [ Google AdWords ] last month with the new landing page and several new features since the last push. How were conversion metrics compared to the 2025 [ AdWords ] push? We're not going to give out detailed stats as I mentioned earlier, but we were dipping our toe into certain areas during the experimentation phase of market fit, and we will continue to experiment. Do you have any feedback on why 99% plus of users who do not convert to subscribers decide not to pay for Elevate? -- feature question, I guess, is...

I mean not everybody has an immediate need. The whole point behind the freemium platform is that these are users who may come, may use it within the realms of the free offer and then may convert down the line. So we have seen people who have converted after quite a long time of being in the free zone. So it's not that we expect that everybody will convert immediately. And it's also acceptable that people come along, maybe sit in free, then pay and then go back into the free zone and come back later. Everybody has an immediate project that they need to work on or that they need all our tools for. So we don't see it -- the whole point behind freemium is that we have this vast quantity of users that we can talk to. And over time, as we add things, it may come right for them.

Question on when will you ramp up marketing spend? I refer to the revenue engine answer I just gave, which is we will know when we are further along to making those maths work for us in terms of additional spend. Despite being a shareholder for over a dozen years and a YouTube for over 8, I have only just started using Elevate. I'm pleased to say that it is brilliant. And I wish I said using earlier. However, where I'm not a shareholder, I can't think of anything that would have persuaded me to try it. I was using iMovie, which worked perfectly fine, and I would have thought there's not broke, don't fix it. Adding this problem of inertia would unlock enormous amount of small collaborative YouTube market. How can it be done? [ Karl ], I guess that's got a question for you.

Yes, yes, sure. So I think there's 2 things, right, in terms of why you are using iMovie there's 2 things that set us apart, and that's the browser-based aspect of Elevate and there's the collaboration. So if either one of those things is a good reason for somebody to come to Elevate, that probably makes sense to switch from iMovie. But also, we're also acquiring a lot of people that haven't been using iMovie. In fact, they're just starting their video editing journey, and they are looking for something and then they find Elevate, and it just makes sense to them that it is online and in the browser, just like so many things are online and in the browser nowadays. So yes, I think that kind of -- that answers that question. We're acquiring a lot of new people that don't have prior kind of notions. And in terms of the marketing teams and agencies, the collaboration is obviously such a unique USP that it just makes sense to move, especially if you're going to be saving so much time when you're collaborating and getting review done.

Yes. I think for us, it's really a case of analyzing, identifying what the jobs to be done. And as we said, we really see that the jobs to be done for marketing teams, they're similar to the creators. But there's still work to be done there to make sure that we're really answering those needs and really have a workflow that's suitable for those needs, and that is part of the product market fit stage. I think then we can address the inertia that exists. Regarding the use of Elevate io, are there plans to be able to use 2 monitors? Obviously, you can already have a browser window on each monitor but you can't spread the interface between the 2.

We've talked about it a lot. It's not as easily done in a browser, as you might imagine, because it's not really -- it's not easy for browsers to communicate -- browser window to communicate independently. But there is talk of plumming off some of the aspects of -- onto a second browser and then essentially be able to use things like video management that way. But it's not easy. We definitely will or are looking at how do we support multiple video windows within the same interface. And yes, more to come on that.

It's worth mentioning because it's collaborative, you can actually run Elevate twice, one in each window, and you could have one with your media page and one with your time line. And you can have one for reviewing publishing published videos as well. So it is possible to use it with multiple windows. But as Sumit's a bit of a perfectionist as you probably noticed, is looking for the perfect interface for it. So I'm sure that will arrive at some point.

And your product, and this is a question for you, [ Karl ]. I'm sure in the next 5 years, it will take off. What other acquisitions do you want to attend this year?

Yes. So we have our event pipeline prepared, as I mentioned earlier. I think the best way for you to kind of follow along is to follow our socials. And we're always posting pictures and announcements of where we're going to be. So yes, follow us, and you'll be the first to know.

A question for you, Sumit on epidemic. And can you tell us anything about the pricing of epidemic sounds integration? Will free users get some access? Will tokens be involved?

Free users will get access to some tracks through tokens. Everything will be token-based. We haven't set the price yet for the different -- there'll be 2 types of license. There will be personal licenses and commercial. they will be very affordable for people and set them at the price which is appropriate for the production that they're making.

Yes, it's a big opportunity for us. Stephen, a question for you. Can you summarize where we are with the codec development in terms of versions and capabilities?

Yes. So we're quite well advanced on [ Blackbird 10 ], which is the new one. The existing version, we did improve a bit last year for Blackbird 9. Blackbird 10 is full 1080p. The research we've had is that most people's video windows are not actually 1080p yet, but that will improve and particularly as we get more of the higher end users as we add these extra features. So we've had a lot of progress moving to the GPU, which was one of the big steps we made and also integrating the features of Elevate and the GPU. So we have a version that seems to work completely reliably as of a couple of weeks ago. So that's good. And now it's a question of going through optimizing the compression and improving the quality on the videos. So we're broadening the range of videos. I've done my first demonstration actually to Mike had a meeting, and I showed him running Blackbird 10. And he was -- he just didn't notice -- I didn't tell him it was Blackbird 10, but he can see the big pictures and he didn't criticize it, which is a good step that someone just coming to it just accept that it's HD. So that's -- we're starting to get to that point. So yes, it's just a question of more and more testing. We're very near the point where we'll bring in outside users, people not in the company to help put their content through and test it. So obviously, we welcome anyone for that. And there will be a bit of publicity surrounding that just to get the people in.

There's 3 or 4 questions actually to you answer on the player and capabilities around that. And I don't know who wants to answer those questions, but...

I can start and...

Yes. So any updates on the player?

Okay. Well, I'll just make some general points. So you can actually access the player. It's very well hidden in Elevate because it's Elevate is not yet at the point where we're getting into distribution. Elevate is focusing on the postproduction editing side of things. But we use it for testing and we use it for development still as we have done. There have been from Elevate about 900 videos published and about 15,000 to 15,500 views, I think. So it is there. It works. You can publish on X and Facebook and comments on YouTube and things like that. But it's not the main thrust while we're busy finishing off Elevate, competing Elevate because the customers we have are using Elevate for editing and creation rather than for distribution at the moment. It is very convenient if you want to share things because it publishes almost instantly and you don't need a password to look at the videos, whereas obviously Elevate is very secure. So you'd need a password for that. So I think it's there. We keep it working, and it's very useful for development and its time will come.

Thanks, Stephen. There's a real last question here on annual sign-ups. Annual sign-ups are a huge endorsement. I've seen this another company where most of the subs will drop in out, but would which would have friction in admin costs as well as fluctuation in revenues. So for how long with annual subs been available, that's since the end of January. So it's still very, very early in terms of that. And of the 388, roughly how many are now annual subs? Again, we're looking at all these detailed numbers at this stage. What we would say is over 10% of them have been annual subs, and that's a really good sign. So we are -- yes, we're really happy with the 2. No in the credit market at this stage, and you must have an idea. We will know. I'd say yes, we feel that the metrics are starting to pick up and the green shoots, but it's too early to say that there's going to be a particular day, week or month at this stage. You've created an amazing video editing technology and totally understand how complex it is to find an affordable successful route to a rapid market growth within a shortage route. Well done for the efforts and determination. Thank you. Thank you, Philip. A question, have you done any work on what a sale or partnership with a large strategic might look like at this stage as a fiduciary exercise of organic solar rollout in the product is challenged? Well, at this stage, we're capitalized. We're working on a partnership strategy. We have a road map. And at this stage, no, we're not looking at any buyout at this stage. I think you have a brilliant team in product and a paid subscriber to Elevate and as a shareholder, I'm a bit surprised by the low regularity of mail blasts to 138,000 subscribers. It sounds like one of your questions, [ Karl ]. I see one of the roles of Elevate is to inspire its users to generate more and better video rather than just announce new features. Can you be more -- can more be done in this regard?

Yes, yes, sure. No, it's a good question. So we want to make sure that whenever we e-mail our user base that we have a valuable message to give them because from experience, if you're expanding people, you're going to lead to a lot of unsubscribed, we don't want that. And the other thing is that we also have targeted e-mail glass. So we also use our internal usage metrics to target specific groups of people. So you might not be receiving all of them depending on how you use the product. But yes, I mean, there's always more that can be done. Obviously, we're a marketing team of 3 people. We're doing a lot of things. and e-mail is definitely part of that. And we think that consistency is really important, and we do believe that we have that consistency going as the product launches new features and functionality.

Thanks. Question, another ask on stats, which I'm not going to answer. But Ian, you mentioned the sure has a 30% threshold needed for product market fit. How are you scoring on that? We're improving. We're improving every day. I think it is the way we're there, but we're not at it. I think also that might be slightly -- maybe not the right metric for us. And I think 40% is not being able to do with Elevate before we press the button on marketing is probably a bit too high. But yes, we're progressing well. Question -- the problem you have is the market is focused on paying customers. Until there is a significant increase, share price will go nowhere and a need to raise more funds, you're in a difficult situation. Would it be wise to have more frequent updates to take up numbers, which are hopefully good to encourage you -- take up numbers to encourage new investors? Yes, it's a good point, and maybe some good advice that we should have more regular updates. As I said, we're in an experimentation phase right now. And so those metrics do move about. And I would not want to say commit to giving a number every week or every month, but may well change the following month. We feel that with the revenue engine moves to a point where it's the math really makes sense that, that will be a point where the money should follow. I mean money should follow. So that's -- yes, that. Would Sumit answer as he any shares he purchased?

No, not since last time we spoke.

[ T1 ] undisclosure is clearly a pain point and could be seen as market abuse as the market does not know if the individual is still a holder. So I pass...

Yes. I mean I don't think I can say any more on that. We can only release information that we receive ourselves, and we're abiding by all the rules.

For the player performance, the video -- our video export took 12 seconds compared to 16 minutes of conventional export. That's a big deal. Thank you very much for that comment. Excellent. I'm on question #65, by the way. I think we're nearing the end, but it's near the end. So you got any more questions now is the chance. Is the market case still on for a Q2 launch. Question, Sumit?

Is it for Q2 launch?

I guess it must have been in a previous product road map.

For...

Marketplace.

Sorry, for marketplace, no, no. We've never said it will be Q2 the marketplace that's never been stated.

We do have the tokens there, which allows you to spend your token on.

Third parties, not for third party.

Third-party integrations that are coming in now. We've already got obviously, the OpenAI integrations. Now we've got Epidemic [indiscernible] integrations and Sumit Rai has talked you through the integrations that are going to happen in the next 3 months. So yes, that's the start of it. Great. Jake, we reached the end of the questions, I think.

If I may just jump back in there. Thank you for addressing all of those questions that came in from investors this afternoon. And of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll make these available to you afterwards. But Ian, perhaps before really just looking to redirect those on the call to provide you their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company. If I could please just ask you for a few closing comments just to wrap up with, that would be great.

Yes, absolutely, Jake. I mean I would say this is a very exciting time, as I've shown this morning, with further faith in the product and the team to deliver product market fit. We've been very straightforward with you guys, very transparent. And I hope that's appreciated. We will continue to be, and we're really very excited about the opportunities ahead of us. Thank you very much.

Perfect. That's great. And thank you once again for updating investors this morning. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback. On behalf of the management team of Blackbird plc, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good afternoon.