Destiny Media Technologies Inc. (DSNY) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us on today's webinar. Before we begin, I'd like to announce that we'll be referring to today's earnings release, which was sent to newswires earlier this afternoon. I'd also like to remind you that this conference call could contain forward-looking statements about Destiny Media Technologies within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements are based upon current beliefs and expectations of management and are subject to risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements. Such risks are fully discussed in the company's filings with the SEC and SEDAR, and the company does not assume any obligation to update information contained in this call. During the webinar, we will discuss certain non-GAAP financial measures. The non-GAAP financial measures are presented in the supplemental disclosures and should not be considered in isolation of or as a substitute of or superior to the financial information prepared in accordance with GAAP, and should be read in conjunction with the company's financial statements filed with the SEC and SEDAR. The non-GAAP financial measures used in the company's presentation may differ from similarly-titled measures presented by other companies. A reconciliation of the non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in the earnings press release. Also, I'd like to mention that following the presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session, during which you can submit questions by selecting the raise hand icon at the bottom of your screen. Your questions will be pulled in the order that they are received, and at which point you will be prompted to unmute your microphone before speaking. With that, I'd like to turn the call over to your host, Fred Vandenberg, Chief Executive Officer.

Thanks, Rebecca, and welcome, everyone. Revenue for the year grew by 9.6%. Q4 was up about 7.5%, and this was seen across all major groupings. As many of you know, we completed a years-long project, building out international capabilities for our largest client. We moved them over to that platform during the year. But our product and engineering teams have been able to now focus on some things that are going to help us grow Play MPE and add new revenue streams. We're starting to see the results of that, and we're very excited about that. The revenue was its highest in Q4, highest annual revenue, highest growth rate since 2010, highest independent revenue, et cetera, et cetera. We also launched a new product in June, early Q4, called MTR. As expected, that revenue is small. It's less than 0.2% of our total revenue. It's early stage. As designed, MTR is only really able to convert sales to customers that are interested in monitoring a song or two. So we see sales are small, and that's expected, but they are growing. We have repeat customers. Customers from Play MPE are converting over to MTR. We think there will be an inflection point when we are able to add larger customers, and we expect to see some clarity on that over the next six months. EBITDA was $577,000, a little bit down from last year, but we're just investing in product growth. So I'll keep this reasonably high level. I know there's a lot of words here, but these are really more block and tackling type of business growth things. So the interest, I think, here for the investors is really that the things that we're working on are starting to have that effect on revenue. And we think that we will continue to work on these kinds of things, and they will have a positive reinforcement of that growth. So Play MPE is an ecosystem where songs get from record labels to promotional destinations. We often talk about radio because that's intuitively easy to understand. But it's not just radio, it's some media, bloggers, influencers, retail store programming, et cetera. And it also includes radio, of course, terrestrial and Internet radio. And Internet streaming radio is becoming a greater portion of the share of your -- share of ear as the years pass by. Boy, that's hard to say. But in very simple terms, the bigger that we build this network, the greater the value that we have. So we are starting to build a number of things that will help on each side of that platform. Caster is what we call the distribution side of the platform. We've started with some list selection improvements, adding international lists, making it easier to select those lists. And during the year, we started on an entirely new capability of a checkout. The first delivery of that was the self-sign up. So what we're working on is where customers can complete the sale all by themselves. So they can sign up, check -- select lists and then check out and pay in platform. And that's something we're working on. Self-sign-up, if you've been watching our press releases, that was actually delivered after the fiscal year. But it's really -- the completion of it is going to come over the course of the next year, like calendar year from now. And we think that will be a bit of a game changer for us. On the player side of things, there's a number of things we're working on here. We released commenting, which is something where the recipient side can engage actively with the owners of the content and request more content, that sort of thing. But the player side is where you really see the value. So we have an engaged audience, and we are working on things to expand that audience, so getting recipients to sign up to expand their audience. So we're really investing in recipient-driven aspects that will help grow that entire value and snowball in their importance. As I said, MTR is the airplay tracking. We launched that in June. Shortly after we launched, we started working on something called the Caster integration, which really is a way for MTR customers to buy very easily after they've sent through Caster. What we've seen initially is that while the two businesses were stand-alone, that we were very successful in selling from Caster users to MTR. So we made it a little bit easier so you can do it in one-stop shop kind of thing. From a marketing perspective, we did quite a lot during the year. The first thing we really did is a bit of a reorganization of staffing, but then we began prepping for global marketing. Improving our site score is allowing us to target regional marketing efforts. We consolidated the 3 brands, we rebranded and we started improving some lead tracking, so just to improve the effectiveness of marketing efforts, and we began some customer reengagement strategies. These are really just the block and tackling of marketing that we were starting to see the impact of on our revenue. And with that, I will turn it over to questions.

Thanks, Fred. [Operator Instructions] And I do see one hand raised already. So Gerry, if you would like to go ahead.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Just quite simply, what catalysts should investors be looking to see from Destiny over the next calendar year to signal that revenue growth above the 10% range is coming to Destiny? What are the keys? What should we be looking for? What -- how you'd be telling us those catalysts? Just can you give us some insight on that?

Okay. Well, there's a few different things. I -- we continue to work on things that we think are going to be a catalyst to revenue growth when it comes to.

Is there anything you can point to in the current product groupings that would signal to investors that revenue growth is happening in your product offerings now, not to mention some of the future products that you're developing?

Yes. The checkout feature that we are building is going to come in a couple of different stages. We expect it'd be complete a year from now, and we think that that's going to be a game changer by itself. That is going to allow us to sell into markets where we really don't have sales. So for example -- I'll just take Portugal, for example. Portugal, we have an active recipient list. We have active recipients, engaged audience, but we really don't have any independent sales there. And that's because it's -- by itself, it's hard to sell profitably into a market like that. But with the improvements to marketing and when we have a fully start-to-finish sales process that's automated, we'll be able to, I think, grow and capture into new markets like that. With MTR, there's -- well, our revenue has started quite small. It's going well. It's improving month after month. But in terms of selling it, making improvements to MTR revenue, that's going to come in a number of inflection points, one being when we can sell to customers that want to buy monitoring for more than one song -- one or two songs. That's a lot of the addressable market and the sales will be higher. The other inflection point would when we launch globally. Right now, we're primarily in North America, U.S. and Canada really, only. And then there's -- later on, a little bit more distant in the future is when we can start leveraging the data that we gain from that and sell that as a package. So it's really going to be a number of different things.

Would you envision that the current revenue rates around 9%, 10%, looking forward, should we be modeling the same rates of revenue growth or higher rates?

I think it probably depends on what segment you're talking about with us.

Well, in total, I guess.

Yes. No, I understand what you're asking, Gerry. With the independent record labels, I would expect that growth, I think it was 9%, what the split is for -- or maybe it was 10% -- sorry, 10% for independents for the last year. We would expect and hope that, that grows. We think that combination of improved marketing, acquisition of new territories, more international list sales that we'll be able to move that higher. Major labels, that's a different thing. I think I would expect the revenue growth there to be a little bit smaller, but the more we can sell to the independents, that's going to be the area where our real growth is coming from. MTR is a new product where the growth rate will be higher, or it should be higher. But in terms of how it impacts our overall growth, that will come at, like I said, inflection points. So I don't have a good answer for that right now, but it will become clearer in the next 6 months.

Forgive me if this is in the MD&A, how much is your current revenues made up by independents?

It's about 50-50 right now. I don't -- it's about 50-50.

50-50 with the majors and independents?

That's it, yes.

And you feel largest growth will be coming from the independents over the next calendar year or so? With more modest growth with the majors?

That's right.

And the -- I guess the warrant is the growth of the MTR, right?

The what, sorry?

The warrant. Yes, the warrant. The MTR is like -- is the bonus that it's hard to peg down, but it could be attractive as we move forward.

Well, yes, I guess that's right. MTR is a really interesting product that does have a huge upside, I think, but it's going to take us some time to get there. But it's -- with a solid foundation for Play MPE, that lends itself to a business like MTR. And we -- as our capacity to be really smart about what we're adding, I think we'll be able to add new products and services as well. But we -- that's -- it's just coming to fruition, really. We were stalled for a few years there where we were focused entirely on building out the international capabilities for our largest client. And now we're starting to do the smart things that are actually going to -- that's what that did is solidified that core revenue base in that business. And I think now we're doing the smart things that are going to help grow revenue longer term.

Other than organic, are you looking at any M&A or any interesting options in M&A? Or is that something that's not in the current focus?

It's definitely something we're considering. It is -- we're open to different things, and we're spending a little bit more time now on what, I guess, what we could call the inorganic growth like M&A. I wouldn't say it's isolated to M&A activities, but the last year, I think -- well, the last couple of years there, we were focused in on improving our product development process, improving and then improving our marketing and business development processes. And I think we're not without some speed bumps there, but we can now start being a little bit more proactive about doing things that are going to strategically advance the company faster.

Any changes in the competitive landscape with your MPR product?

MTR?

You're just there with your [ plasha ] product, like the competitive landscape.

For MPE, you mean?

Yes, MPE, sorry.

Nothing like in terms of industry changes. The industry is always changing. Spotify's DSPs are starting to get some traction in terms of the share of ear. But that's more of a -- that doesn't -- I think there's a perception that, that hurts us in terms of marketing, but that's not really the case. Radio is still a dominant force with us, but -- and it's growing. It's just -- we just have to be smarter about expanding that recipient base, and we're doing that. We have a lot of different recipient types.

Final question. Is your buyback active? And are you planning any investor relation activities?

Buyback is not currently active. We're considering it, given the stock price, but we'll announce something if it gets -- if we decide to pursue that. Investor relations, we have been pretty quiet for a lot of years now, and I think we're going to start reconsidering that. I think it's a -- you're starting to see revenue toggle up a little bit. It's been on a little bit higher than typical for now 6 quarters. I think it would be really beneficial if -- to invest in IR activities when that rate maybe toggles up a little bit more, but we're looking at it.

Thanks, Gerry. We don't have any other raise hands, but we've got a couple of questions that have been asked. We've got one, Fred, from [ Jeff ], what portion of your business is now from labels distributing [ introductionally ]?

So international distribution happens in a few different ways. I'll just talk about the one that's maybe newer. Last year, we began creating and marketing international lists, international distribution lists. So if you had a country song, you could now send that to an international country list instead of picking individual countries. We don't know of anybody else that does this. We're -- I know we're a small company, but I believe we're the largest in the world at what we do, and nobody else really has the international capabilities that we have. So I think to the extent that we can capitalize on that, it will be a good source of revenue growth. So we started providing creating these international lists. That's -- those customers are dominated and probably exclusively independent labels. The majors tend to distribute locally, only locally. Those internationalists are, I think, just a little less than 5%. International distributions are less than 5% of our total revenue as opposed to like a U.S. label sending to a U.S. destination. But now we're starting to see some growth in the international. They realize that we have these international lists. And it's grown by probably about 2/3, like about 67% growth. So I think last year it was about 3% of our total revenue. And so I think this will be a good space to watch. As I mentioned when we're talking about the Player, we're looking at ways to have the Player side of our network grow organically. And so to the extent that we can do that, the value of those international distributions goes up. We're also looking at acquiring new markets, like I said earlier with Portugal. In Portugal, we have active recipients and an active recipient distribution list, but we have no independent clients. And so improvements in marketing that we made this year, and then when we have a full checkout system, there's going to be some capacity for those labels to profitably distribute in Portugal, but there's going to be some more appeal internationally as well. So international distribution is something that I think we're uniquely capable of doing and going to be a good source of revenue growth.

Next question is from [ Andy ], when will MTR affect revenue?

Okay. So what did I say earlier? I touched on it a little bit, I think, already. I mean MTR is already impacting revenue. It's very small. There will be an inflection point when we can sell to larger clients. That's going to -- there won't be an event, that will be a process, but we'll become able to do that within the next six months and we'll grow in that capability. That will be an inflection point. I sure hope that it will be an inflection point. Then when we move internationally and then when we capture the data from it, that's going to be a real -- that's the bigger long-term carrot for that.

There is one other question from [ Andy ], but you may have kind of already touched on it, but I'll ask anyway. Is the company planning on doing more share buybacks?

Yes. Gerry asked that as well. I think that's the -- we'll make a decision on that and we'll announce anything that's approved to do that.

The next question, can we have an update on the Universal contract?

Universal, we're working on. Universal, like I said, we built out their international platform and they moved over in March of 2024. We're working on a longer-term deal right now with them. Right now, we're month-to-month, but we're in talks with them for a longer-term deal.

And the next question is, what was the goal of building MTR and Play MPE? What benefits do you foresee?

What's the goal of building Play MPE? Play MPE was...

Sorry, a bundling MTR and Play MPE, that's my bad.

Sorry. Okay. Well, bundling them, what we saw when we first launched -- we launched MTR initially as a stand-alone business because it was going to be easier to bring it to market as a stand-alone product. And quite frankly, MTR, we have MTR customers that are not Play MPE customers. The -- what we saw, though, when we initially started MTR was that people didn't know that this kind of service even existed. So advertising and that sort of thing wasn't particularly successful because people aren't going to find something that they're not looking for. And so what we did is we started advertising that to Plan B customers. And that was successful. So what we did is we changed our strategy a little bit. And during the year, we rebranded and made them consistent and made them all under one website, made some -- a lot of improvements to our website. And we started working on the integration. So essentially, when you distribute through Play MPE now, you can automatically sign up for MTR. So it was really just a way of selling MTR to Plan B customers in a way that was efficient. Now they don't have to upload songs twice and that sort of thing. That was launched after year-end. We just press released that recently.

The next question, please qualify how happy you are after the MTR rollout in Canada after one year.

Well, the MTR was launched in the U.S. this -- in June. So last year was only in Canada and was really a nascent product that had a lot of things that we needed to work on. It was productive in Canada in the sense that it provided us some clarity on what precisely needed to be built, some technical challenges that we overcame. The revenue is quite low right now, but that's kind of expected and -- well, it is expected. And I'm really quite -- we're all very excited about the possibilities of it. It's not only new product that is being successful, it shows signs that customers want it that are larger that we just can't service right now. And it really gives us a lot of optimism of when we do address this, that it will be successful. And I think also the insights that you get from a collaboration between distribution and ultimate success is really going to be a very valuable combination of services.

And then I think this could be our final question. Allocation of capital, how should we model next year, R&D mostly?

So we capitalize software development costs when we are building out something that's new capabilities. That's not always easy to differentiate what is -- what's a new roof or what's new shingling or whatever. It's -- that's a poor example, I guess. But what's an improvement versus a wholly new thing is sometimes a little bit challenging to predict. But our -- we're continually making improvements to the platform, new capabilities, and we have to capitalize those costs because they're new. I know it adds some complexity to understanding the financial statements, but it's really just -- we're investing for growth and we're trying to pursue a much faster revenue growth. So that's what the capital expenditures are for. You're starting to see depreciation catch up to our capital investments. So the net income is sort of what you would expect, but that still includes a lot of investment for revenue growth.

I think that is our -- sorry, we actually just got one more question, from [ Spencer Tom ]. What is the trend in quarterly capitalized investments?

What is the trend in quarterly capitalized investments? Spencer, you've kind of stumped me there. I mean we capitalize software development costs, and I don't know if I know what they would be quarterly. It's probably reasonably consistent. What happens is we have staff that work on software. When it's a new thing, we capitalize that amount. So it lowers our salary and wages expense, but ultimately, that is expensed as amortization when we start to depreciate it. Those are -- we do a reconciliation each quarter on that. So I'd probably need to sit down and I'd have to figure that out.

Okay. I think that is all of our questions for today.

Okay. Thanks very much, everyone. And I'll speak to you very shortly in mid-January.