QYOU Media Inc. (QYOU) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, or good evening if you're watching from Europe. Welcome to another live version of First Thursday. As we've spoken about in the past, the purpose of these calls is to continue with sort of clear communication with shareholders. We've had a lot of comments that people have wanted to hear more from us. And so the purpose of these calls was to have a regular ongoing monthly time when we could do that, answer questions that were submitted by shareholders, et cetera. The reason we're going live today is because, as I said, last First Thursday of November and as we've been talking about in the number of our press releases, et cetera, is there's been a lot going on in the company over the course of the last really 6 months in terms of making a major pivot in relationship to what we're doing as a business. One of the questions the shareholder sent in over the last month was what inning are we in? And that was making reference to calls that happened over the years where we would talk about what inning we were in as in American baseball in terms of the growth of the business and what was happening. And in many ways, over the course of really the last 12 to 18 months, I would say, we've been in the dugout with a rain delay, trying to figure out what the best path forward was for the business that could return shareholder value to all of us. And as I've said repeatedly on these calls over the years, no one's been more disappointed in the share price of the company and the value of the company than myself and all management who all of us are highly motivated and driven by increasing the value of the overall business. So what does that translate into? The reason I'm doing this live this morning is that -- and the reason Raj is not able to appear, he's actually on a plane right now is because there have been ongoing meetings that have been taking place for months now to create an opportunity around more strategic investment into our business going forward, along with some repositioning, along with some strategic repositioning for the business overall, which is going to manifest itself ultimately in better growth and better profitability going forward. As we've spoken about of late, the 2 business units, which have been the most profitable and having sort of sustained and regular growth in our company have been our influencer marketing business units. That's both what we call QYOU USA here in Los Angeles, where I am, along with Chatterbox, our India influencer marketing agency. And both of these business has been operating with increased revenue, 30% to 40% revenue growth year-over-year and with profitability in both of those businesses. In addition to that, many of you are probably aware that the India market has been very, very sort of hot and robust over the last 12 to 18 months in terms of both public market opportunities that exist there, along with just the investment that's going into businesses there. I was just reading recently an article about the fact that I don't remember which company it was, it's one of the larger Indian companies where their entire investment came from Indian investors, which they were trumpeting as sort of a sign of what's changed over the last 1 year, 1.5 years in India where the investment capital that's coming directly from Indians into India-based business has been building in an extraordinary way. In addition to that, the stock market itself in India has been extremely growing -- has been growing in an extremely quick way and valuations and opportunities that exist in that area have continued. And so in the process of us reevaluating what we're going to do to create a business that's continuing to grow in a steady fashion and be profitable going forward, we have focused in on those 2 business units, both in the influencer marketing space in India and the U.S. In India, specifically, if you looked at our earnings report that came out last week, which we're proud again, well, it's a small number, the fact that we were adjusted EBITDA positive for the second consecutive quarter is great news for all of us. And it's indicative of the fact that what we've done is we backed off on some of the investments that we've been making in the various parts of our business around the television business and the gaming business, and we've driven forward more focus on the businesses that are profitable and growing. That continues to be what we're doing as a company. And we're pretty confident as I get on to this phone call, which -- or this shareholder call, that Christmas hopefully is going to come a little early for all of us. And certainly, New Year is going to come early for all of us in terms of what we've been working on diligently to make happen specifically in India. As some of you may have noticed, we made note of a small minority investment into the Chatterbox business in India. We've got a secondary project, which is attached to that. So we'll be making more announcements about that in terms of the overall status of where that sits going forward. Unfortunately, for all the reasons that I've outlined previously, we can't give full detail on that. But you can assume that we're working very, very hard to get a significant amount of investment and go-forward capital that can be very advantageous to all shareholders in the Chatterbox business. I expect to have more news again about that before Christmas. If things go slower than we would like them to, which is often the case because of a lot of different legal and other things that have boxes that have to be checked, I would expect that we'll be reporting something certainly before we all pop Champagne on New Year's Eve. And so the timeline is imminent. As I said on the last call, I was hoping maybe by this time, I would be able to announce something specifically around all of that. But I think all shareholders can have reserved excitement about what's happening going forward. So what does that really mean for us in 2025? And how does that reflect upon the financial reports that we've been making. Part of what we've done is we've made revenue growth and sort of a rise in the overall growth of the combined company less of a priority, and we've made profitability a much bigger priority. And we continue to do that in this quarter, Q4, and we'll continue to do that in 2025 and beyond. We believe that the marketplace, both in terms of the investment market and the overall marketplace around capital, will be much more favorable when our company is producing positive EBITDA results. I think we've all talked about that collectively as shareholders for some time. And so management is embracing that. And I think the financials that we put out the last 2 quarters reflect that. And so we're going to continue down that path. There may be some short-term revenue growth that is, I will say, less than what it might have been in the past, but the cash burn that's associated with that will be dramatically lower as it was in the quarter that was just reported. We think this is the path forward for us as a business. And when we get some of the other strategic business done that we're working on right now and that we expect to announce in the month of December, I think all shareholders will see why this is so important and so vital to what we anticipate will be very, very strong growth for the business in 2025. And so unfortunately, I'm unable to get into specifics other than to continue to suggest that there is light at the end of the tunnel and brighter times ahead for all of us. We may have a shareholder call that takes place before the next First Thursday around all of this. We've obviously got the holidays creeping up very, very quickly for all of us, both here and in India. And so we are working around the clock feverishly to get this delivered to everyone as an early Christmas gift. And that continues to be what we're doing. There are not any real changes in that game plan in any way, shape or form other than it's taking just a little bit longer than what we would have originally anticipated, but nothing about a change of direction or heart in terms of what we've been talking about over the course of the last couple of calls.

So with that, I did have one question that I saw that came in that was talking about what is Chatterbox Technologies Private Limited? Chatterbox is the company that we acquired now about 3.5 years ago, that's an influencer marketing agency that's been around for 7 or 8 years in India. It has a robust client list. It has a very strong base. As many of you are well aware, Raj Mishra, our Group CEO in India, comes from an app called Musical.ly and ultimately, which turned into TikTok and was part of the team that built TikTok into the success that it was in India until there was a government shutdown of the app. We don't anticipate that happening in the U.S., and we think there's even an opportunity where TikTok may resurface over time back in India. There's certainly rumors about that right now. So with Raj at the helm and with his experience in the influencer space, we have leadership on the India side as well that's attracted a tremendous amount of interest from the investment community in terms of what we've built and what we continue to build with Chatterbox. We also, as I've mentioned before, have an increasing number of international campaigns where the U.S. and India business units in the influencer marketing space are working hand-in-hand more and more as we go forward. We continue to believe that's going to happen increasingly in 2025. And in addition to that, we've been building some technology for our use for both of those companies that we'll be talking about more as we head into 2025 as well. So the truth is, is that I sit here right now on, I believe it's December 5, I'm not even sure, the days are flying by, but whatever day it is today, Thursday, I believe, December 5, maybe it's the 6th, I'm not sure anyway. Regardless of that, as we head into the month of December, what I can express to all shareholders is that the entire management team and senior management group, the Board of Directors of the various business units, et cetera, there's a higher level of energy and excitement around our business than there's probably been in quite some time. And so as we unveil what's happening beyond just the financial results and the ability to sustain profitable growth, you'll see some things that we'll be discussing and revealing here in a very, very short time period, which I'm sure everybody is going to be excited about and have a lot of questions about. So until then, I will promise that we'll be talking about all this in detail in the January First Thursday, and there is a chance that we'll be having another one of these calls live before then probably over the holiday season, possibly even between Christmas and New Year's. So with that, that's the live version. I feel like a reporter on the ground right now at the local news station, but that's the report from central headquarters for shareholders today, and I very, very much look forward to sharing even more exciting news and very specific exciting news with all of you in the very, very near term. So thanks so much for watching and look forward to speaking with you all soon.