Ion Video Ltd (IOV) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

We'll give all the other participants time to join. As always, this takes a minute or so, so I'll give them a minute. So we don't have any hold music to play, so we'll just wait for a moment. Thanks very much. All right. With that, I can see a lot of people have joined now. We'll start the webinar. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Investor Update. It's with great pleasure on behalf of the Board that I introduce you to our new CEO, Ben Taverner. Ben is an experienced commercial executive who will bring to Linius the commercial focus needed to deliver on the commercial success that our technology can deliver. Ben had a running start to his time at Linius, heavily engaged with the team during his runoff period so that he could hit the ground running when he started on the 1st of February. He clearly displays the sense of urgency that the business needs at this point and we will work to close the existing pipeline as well as expand the pipeline to our target markets of U.K., Europe and the U.S.A. With that, I'll hand over to Ben. Welcome, Ben.

Thank you, Gerard, and good morning, afternoon and evening to everyone, and welcome to today's Linius webinar. I'm Ben Taverner. I've been the CEO of Linius for just over a month now, and it's a great honor to be here today speaking directly with our shareholders. I'll begin with a brief introduction to my background and career, and then I'll walk you through a number of slides, why I joined Linius, our -- the revenue goals and key objectives. And then most importantly, how we're driving revenue at Linius and also talk you through some examples of our near-term pipeline. So again, thank you all for being here, and I appreciate your time and engagement. So on to the next slide. To kick things off, I'd like to share a bit about my background and how I arrived at Linius. For the last 20 years, I've worked my way through the commercial ranks, if you like, of the Sports industry, starting as a Sales Executive, then progressing through the roles of Sales Manager, Head of Sales, Sales Director, Commercial Director and then more recently, the role of Chief Commercial Officer on the leadership level. And then equally before stepping into the Sports industry, I began my career on the London money markets trading sterling, and I was working on a trading floor of 400 brokers. So I think this experience gave me a really strong foundation in the competitive world of Sports and Commercial environment. So I think this was a really good setup for a career in the Sports industry. And I'd like to share some of my key milestones in my career as I started at IMG in the early 2000s, where I managed sales and territories for various projects, including our National Stadium, Wembley Stadium and also working on the European-wide UEFA Euro 2008, which was based in Switzerland and Austria. And I then moved from London to New York to IMG's USA HQ, and I was selling sponsorship nationally, hospitality and media for IMG out of New York. I was then actually headhunted by Juventus to be a Club Director and Head of Commercial. Juventus is, in fact, Italy's biggest football club if you like, Manchester United of Italy, where I led commercial expansion across a number of verticals, including the new stadium. I did 4.5 seasons at Juventus and moved over to SPORTFIVE in Paris, who actually own quite a lot of the Juventus rights. And in Paris, I led sales team across France, Italy and Holland managing rights for major European clubs, including Olympique Lyonnais, Saint-Etienne, Nice again, still with Juventus, and Utrecht in Holland. So returning to the U.K., I then worked for Usain Bolt, who I believe still retains all his records as the fastest man in the world. And that was working on endorsements approaching the Rio Olympics for 2016, a very exciting project. And then oversaw commercial sponsorship deals for the world's leading Live Touring Entertainment company, Belvedere Entertainment, that was working directly with Disney and Marvel Universe. And then since that experience, I then pivoted into sports technology in around 2017. And since then, I've held senior commercial leadership roles, representing mainly American technology vendors, focusing on business management systems for rights holders across the U.K. and Europe in sports. So that's really the solving pain points for rights holders. This is where my network grew significantly. And more recently, I've worked in the player performance Data and Analytics space, and that was working with Champions League clubs, Premier League, English Premier League clubs and the entire Saudi Pro League and equally in U.S. franchises in basketball, baseball and ice hockey. So as you can see from the slide, I've had the privilege of working with some of the biggest brands at sport. And then I think where I want to take the company and our clear ambition at Linius is really simple, is to bring these types of rights holders into our customer base as soon as possible. We have the technology to do that. So why did I join Linius? Well, as a commercial leader, my mission is clear at Linius and it has been in all of my previous roles, and that is to drive revenue and growth for the company. So this has been my expertise for more than 20 years, and it will remain my core focus at Linius. The company has successfully evolved, I believe, through an engineering phase, a productization phase and now it really is time for the commercial phase. That's why I've taken the job. That's why I'm here. And right now, our market, most importantly, in fan engagement and content, these are top priorities for major sports federations and teams worldwide. This space is experiencing rapid growth, and Linius has the right products to empower rights holders equally with our scalable solutions. So we have a game-changing advantage at Linius that is patented technology that delivers hyper-personalized video streams. That's our differentiator with the sometimes overwhelming amount of content available today. I think the demand for personal experience -- experiences has never been higher, and this represents a huge opportunity for us at Linius. So our platform makes it easy for sports organizations to connect with fans, and that's really what excites me. We have a powerful story to tell the market about Linius. Our platform isn't just innovative, it's proven. We're already trusted by industry giants such as IMG and Cricket Australia. This credibility will give us a springboard for commercial success, and reinforcing to the market that Linius work with the best brands globally in sports. So how do we grow and scale? We have a very strong pipeline today. We have real opportunities to close deals in both the short and medium term. And equally with our partnerships, we can use our network to consistently drive high-quality leads. With business acceleration, I'm here to drive new business. As you know, I'm a very commercial person. And hence, we want to expand our global reach and maximize the value for existing customers. Our vision is to make Linius a true SaaS company, that -- by that, I mean, a true Software-as-a-Service company, and that is with a low cost of entry and a high margin on all of our scalable deals. So that is the true nature of a SaaS business model, low cost of entry, high margin and scalable deals, and we can make this a reality at Linius in the next 12 months. That's what I'll be focusing on. The key focus areas to drive that short and mid-term revenue -- the team and I are really focused on 4 critical areas, that's: number one is maximizing value for existing customers, such as IMG and Cricket Australia and Hockey Tech Partners. Number two is converting our strong existing pipeline. And then number three is expanding that pipeline with new opportunities. That's where my network comes into play. And then finally, number four, we want to refine our product further. We have refined our go-to-market strategy. And equally, we're in the middle of refining our commercial systems. I'll go into more detail on all of these. But to start with how are we going to strengthen our existing customer relationships. Well, great news is that we've secured a 2-year renewal with Cricket Australia that extends out to 2027 and possibly 2028 with a plus 1 option. We're working closely with our partners at Racing.com and Hockey Tech Partners. That's to integrate existing products onto their platforms. And then equally, our collaboration with IMG will continue, and that's gearing towards new commercial potential. So everything across the board there, we have upsell opportunities. And then our focus is to drive growth by enhancing these services and increasing the value and deepening that engagement. We're in advanced discussions with sports leagues, broadcasters and also obviously Linius partners, and we'll expand the pipeline by leveraging my network in the U.K. and Europe and somewhat in the U.S. to create new opportunities. We'll be strengthening our partnership-driven sales, working hard with our partnerships -- with our partners to close those deals. We've refined our product and go-to-market strategy. We've amplified our value proposition, and we're still refining our messaging and positioning. However, we've also sharpened our differentiators in the market. And this is to drive commercial success, obviously, building a scalable and efficient sales process and focused on enhancing our account management with the intention of deepening the relationships with current clients. And we're also optimizing our customer relationship management system, CRM, and equally, the sales processes internally. This will ensure a structured, data-driven approach to our sales process. There's still further room to improve our marketing and website, therefore, strengthening our brand presence. But just as I've done before in previous roles, my goal at Linius is to build an efficient, methodical and high-performing sales engine, and this is entirely achievable and we're going to do it quickly. On to the next slide. So this is where I'm talking about the messaging and our new positioning. Linius is how -- I'm going to read it to you, Linius is bringing fans back to rights holders, broadcast platforms through personalization, automation, user creative content and analytics, and this is unlocking monetization, first-party data collection and enables increased revenues for rights holders. So I'd like to take a minute here to focus on this statement. And let me be 100% clear, only Linius can do this for the personalization especially. I've seen no other company around the world with this ability. And our patented technology makes us the only SaaS company who can deliver personalized streams and user-generated content enablement. This is hugely important, and I'm sure you're all aware of the changing dynamics of the video marketplace. Viewers are moving on mass to all the socials of TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, you name them, and younger viewers want to watch short-form content, i.e., shorts, can't get enough of them. So it seems hardly a day goes by without a broadcaster cutting more costs in the market. Broadcasters are bleeding and looking for innovative technologies such as ours to bring their customers back to their platforms. And equally, sports federations, they're doing okay, but they're wholly dependent on those broadcasters for the most significant income, and that's TV, media rights. Those are reducing. So they desperately want to attract and own their fans on their own websites and apps; fan first, fan first. So Linius is here to drive fan engagement for both rights holders in the sports environment and those broadcasters. We merge personalization with the very best engagement tools of the YouTuers of this world. So it's well proven that personalization drives that engagement in media. Now Linius can bring it to TV. and we deliver precisely the content each individual wants to watch. So millions of individually tailored streams are being delivered perfectly meeting each viewer's needs, only Linius can do this. So this is a new messaging, and it's designed to position us at Linius to clearly show our strength in the market as a differentiator and tell our target market exactly what we offer. I think overall, we're enabling sports leagues and teams to better engage with their fans, therefore, driving them. And then finally, on the last slide today in the webinar, I want to highlight some of -- just some examples of key near-term opportunities across our sports broadcast and partners segments. We're starting with the broadcasters, we're finalizing deployment scope with an Australian national broadcaster. Our next step will be to discuss the commercial agreement. And then we're also in advanced discussions with the European football governing body, one of the big 5 leagues on the continent, and that will potentially onboard 36 football clubs to the Linius platform. Equally in the NHL in America, that's the National Hockey League, we're also in advanced discussions with the team in the Eastern Conference. That would further cement our position in the U.S. ice hockey market. And then for our partnerships, I believe Linius has world-class partners, and that represents a huge revenue opportunity for us. I believe also that those partners in our relationships, they remain under leveraged. We really need to increase the engagement with our partners. And in the end, our technology attracted these partners in the first place, and now it's time to commercialize these partnerships effectively. So to give you some examples, for Fujitsu, we're finalizing the integration of our technology, and we have active commercial discussions in 3 territories, the U.S.A., the U.K. and equally in Australia. And then for Prime Focus, one particular partnership that I'm really, really excited about. We just responded as partners to a major tender from the second world's -- excuse me, the world's second largest sports rights holder. And then furthermore, with Magnifi, they are introducing us to all of their clients to personalize their auto highlights in various territories, including the U.S. and Europe. And with Brightcove, we just launched our partnership. So we're incentivizing their global sales force to drive Linius business to their existing customers. Finally, with Avid, we're at an early-stage integration and go-to-market planning. And with Stats Perform, we're actively pursuing new opportunities together. I think with a strong pipeline, we will have the ability to go to the market, we go aggressively and with commercial acumen, I'm confident that we will close considerable deals and drive Linius to profitability within the next 12 months. On to Q&A. So thank you for all listening. I understand there are some questions from shareholders, [ Joe. ]

Yes. Thanks, Ben. So we've got one here. Ben, firstly, welcome. I appreciate your presentation and happy with your appointment. When do you think we're going to see new revenues at the company?

Well, thank you for the question, firstly. I appreciate that's a pretty obvious question for any new CEO. I think revenue growth at Linius has clearly been stagnant even for quite a while. I'm here to fix this problem. That's my job. And we have a number of, as I've said in my previous slides, we've got a number of near-term opportunities. broadcasters, sports valuations and equally through our partners, as just mentioned. And I think it's realistic to think of these opportunities as creating ARR, annual recurring revenue ranging from $100,000 to hundreds of thousands of dollars each. So some of these deals are in final negotiation and some were at a point of delivering pricing, but all of them are at an advanced stage in my mind. And then these prospects, they've clearly seen the value of our technology. So I think my first job is to close these deals in the pipeline.

Next one is, does the company have your cash reserves to execute your plans?

Yes. Okay. My primary objective is to bring the company to a position where we are generating our own cash. We need to close the deals that are in front of us. And then we also need to keep introducing those new deals and prospects into the pipeline to increase it. So that's what I'm focused on. Over the last couple of weeks, I've had the pleasure of meeting supportive shareholder groups who share our belief in the company. And I've been very pleased to hear and see the support from our shareholders. In addition to support of shareholders, we have obviously the $1.5 million undrawn at-the-market facility that we can draw down on if required. But we are working hard at Linius to bring in new revenue. And as a result of new business, we would be in a position to re-rate shares. And as the incoming CEO, this is the job I've taken on.

Okay. Next one is, you mentioned deals earlier in your presentation. Why hasn't the company been closing them?

Again, another fair question for a new CEO. I think in the short term, I've been at the company, the team and I have been focused on 2 vital areas, which I talked about, that's commercial and product. I think in the last period, the company has simply lacked commercial capability and acumen. The opportunity is all there for Linius. We've got everything we need at Linius to go to market effectively. We just need more focus commercially. We've got to ensure we are selling at every opportunity; and most importantly, delivering value to our clients and prospects. I think our value add in the market will enable us to close those deals. It's really that simple. And for the product, we've repackaged the value proposition slightly in both positioning and that messaging that I've spoken about. And this is to ensure we really do meet client objectives and needs. As a technology vendor, we must provide solutions to pain points and value add to our customers. It's that simple. We have fantastic clients such as IMG and Cricket Australia, along with some great case studies. So with the right positioning of the product and with a more refined aggressive for want of a better word, sales process, I'm really confident that we can close new deals moving forward.

Okay. Can you tell us more about your personal networks and how this will generate revenue for the business?

Yes, absolutely. I would say my network ranges from very large to fairly small rights holders and everything in between. My target market will continue to be sports rights holders and broadcasters as it has been for 7 or 8 years. And this is where our product will really clearly fit into the market. We know it fits into the market. And this is where we add value. So as you saw in the slides, I've been working for technology vendors for a fairly long time, mainly American vendors selling into the U.K. and European rights holder market. Clients would range from Manchester United to European Tour, Ryder Cup to Saudi Pro League more recently. So these types of organizations and size are key targets for Linius as we move forward into new territories. So early conversations with those rights holders are going well. Meetings have started. And equally, we have an upcoming national roadshow in London later this month, and we are hoping that, that will accelerate the business -- so overall, I'm very confident that we will generate sales [ under my ] personal network.

Okay. The next one is, is Linius using AI?

Yes, we are using AI. We're planning to use it more and more as everyone is. We're experts in the use of metadata to create all of our streams, whether the streams are personalized, popular, recommended trending, favourite player, et cetera. So as we ingest this data from AI engines and also from industry providers such as global leaders that we work with already Stats Perform, Magnifi -- we have global partnerships with these guys. So we will continue to work with them through AI. And equally, we have a key advantage in the market anyhow that we're totally agnostic to the AI engine that we use. We can pick the best fit from each of those partners. We can even lay on multiple providers for optimal results. So it's a dynamic market in AI. Everyone knows that, and we want to ensure that we're at the front of it. We use AI in 2 ways. One is for video analytics, and we're using a lot of platforms to generate the metadata around the video files. That enables us to identify the actions within the events, within the matches. So we can identify everything from goals to drop catches to whatever it might be, missed penalties or through the AI. And then with the personalization piece, secondly, we use AI to create the content and then deliver it to the right fan. So we're using AI to automatically tag the video files and create the content that we sell through our products. So it's truly world-leading. Our road map has us focused in this area, and we will continue to use AI.

Thanks, Ben. That's the end of the time we have for questions. I'll set -- hand it back to you to close out.

Okay. Well, thank you, Joe. And obviously, a big thank you to all of our shareholders who've attended today it's been a good webinar for me I'm really, really excited to be here and I look forward to talking to more shareholders in the coming months ahead. And also as we release news on deals that we'll win in the next period of Linius growth. So thank you again, everyone.