Blackbird plc (BIRD) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Blackbird plc Interim Results Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions]. Before we begin, we would like to submit the following poll. I would now like to hand you over to the team from Blackbird plc, Ian McDonough. Good morning, sir.

Good morning, Jake, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Blackbird's Interim Results 2026. Before I kick off, I would just like to introduce my fellow team members. We have [ Nest], who I think you all met at the AGM. Nest is from [ Scale-up ] and is our fractional Chief Marketing Officer. Stephen Streater, our company founder and inventor of Blackbird. And here, we have Sumit Rai, who is our Chief Product Officer; and as of today, our new Board member. Congrats, Sumit. Right. Let's kick off. So before I start, I'd just like to address a few things. Firstly, last time, we had some sound issues. And I want to make sure that we don't have that again. We've actually got a volunteer developer/sound engineer here in the office with us to make sure that, that doesn't happen. And we are monitoring this as we go through the presentation. So if you are experiencing any sound problems, please let us know. The second element I will address is the cash situation. So I know that a lot of you are concerned about that. Of course, we are monitoring the situation very carefully ourselves. But let me just remind you of our strategy around our revenue. We're building a revenue engine. And with that, we want to make sure that our revenue engine is starting to make economic sense. That is that we are putting -- that every user that we acquire, every subscriber we acquire has a lifetime value that starts to be equal or greater, much greater than that acquisition cost. And our focus really still is on marketing teams, and [ Vanessa ] will talk you through why marketing teams aren't incredibly valued to us. But also product-led growth and variety often is kickstarted by the masses, and therefore, we will continue to fill the funnel with those early creators and students, et cetera, at the top of the funnel. So that's really important to note. So as we go to the first slide here, I think that we put some numbers out in August that are now have been improved further on as we get to the end of September. And this really tells you the story of how our conversion metric is improving. So our subscription growth in Q3 is around -- it's going to be estimated around 235%. And the key numbers here are the fact that this has improved from back in March where we were converting at around 1% for every new user coming in -- 10 users coming in to 2.4% at the end of June. And now as we go to the end of September at around 3.4%. Together with that, we've also reduced churn down to 11%. Of course, things are always moving around, but that's a really good number to look at. And that's actually led to our ARR improving from June at around 30,000 to end of September at around 90,000. Again, these are really small numbers. We're very well aware of that. But it can be -- you can see that we're starting to get that exponential growth and that revenue engine is starting to take shape. We're also seeing that in the sector that we're really focused on as in the marketing teams. But although virality and product growth is yet to be proven, we're seeing growth in the rate that people do share and therefore, the superior ARPU and retention in the group that we're focusing on. So I'll come back at the end of this presentation, but I'm going to pass over to Sumit now to talk you through our product improvements.

Okay. So everyone knows that this year has been a huge year for product development. We know that at the end of last year, whilst we were available, obviously, as a product to the market, we still had a lot of important things to add and a huge factor as to why our conversion ratios have moved this year, and you can see that massive growth from the 1 to 3.4 is a lot to do with obviously product that is available. So people who come into the product, there's all of a sudden more reason for them to actually convert pay for the product because there are features which are often behind the paywall, but also features that are just generally available within the product. Some massive things that we've added already this year, obviously, with the academic sounds work that we did in bringing a really best-in-class sound library to the market. We also improved our font support, so not only adding thousands of fonts but also providing custom fonts available to users. We improved the AI side of the product with things like voice isolation, which is a really crucial tool for people producing any kind of content. We also introduced color grading, and this has become a really popular feature for the product, which was already on top of the existing looks and looks that we already have. We also began the beginning of our quick animation work. And this is a really important thing, which we'll come on to a little bit later because we have done a lot of work behind the scenes on the engine, and we'll discuss this. We also added some really important features, which you don't see very well or very often or done well even in NLEs, which is things like the project recovery. We think it's a best-in-class system. You've been able to go back and look at where our product was, especially in the multiplayer environment because one of the fears that people have about multiplayer is what happens if another user comes in and alter something which has already been done. Well, we have a great history in the products that you can roll back at any point. We also changed and tweaked the plans. We obviously learn as we're going along, and we're able to analyze what people are buying to what levels. And we've made little tweaks along the way, obviously, with pricing, but also what people can do. But we're in a good position. We are definitely at a point, as we said in the summer, where this is a very, very usable product. And so that's why we're now experiencing our growth. But obviously, it's only still the beginning of the longest story. And the things which are coming next are going to be really exciting. A major thing that we've done this year and all the work done for Stephen's team also with the elevators and the team is to really improve the way the engine is capable of handling more than just video. We're known for our ability to handle video, but we have added the ability to do graphics and text now at a much, much higher level. You saw a snippet of that earlier this year at the AGM, where we demoed some of our FX work, which is all going through our pipeline at the moment. By being GPU accelerated, we're able to bring desktop capability to our online experience. And that's a major, major advancement. We've always led the way with video, but now we're going to be able to actually also jump ahead and be on par with things like some of the bigger products in terms of how we can handle text and graphics. So I'm going to give you a little demo in a minute of some of that, but that's only just part of it. We're also doing a whole bunch of work on integration, so things like YouTube upgrade, some good quality of life features like view-only users because we want organizations who use our product to be able to share amongst their own company and have people who can come in and see the product. It's how we use other products. Not everyone is a creator, but a lot of people are stakeholders. So we want to introduce and make this a real team product. The other thing that we're doing is expanding the ability to get content into the system. At the moment, you can upload by file from the phone or from the desktop, but we do live in a wider ecosystem, and we're expanding that the same way that we're expanding how you can output like YouTube, but also how you can get content into the system. The eventual role for that goes down to cameras directly. But in the interim, there are other things that we will be able to support other platforms will be able to support to send video content directly to us. And then a really important feature, something which has been a growing market, something that I've spent a lot of time in the past working on things like web capture. So being able to allow people to create content directly from the desktop as well things like that are coming and audio effects, which we know that we have a need there that we haven't fulfilled yet. So coming on to some of that exciting stuff that we've done, I want to give a demo of the up-and-coming bit of product that we have within our system, which is the GPU accelerated graphics engine. So this is something that you'll be seeing come to the platform soon. It's work that we're doing where we're actually going to not just take text, which we've had historically and it's been capable, but it has been a simplified version, but we're actually bringing a very, let's just say, desktop level capability to that. So it doesn't just mean being able to do text in the way that you would expect to use text within sort of a desktop publishing product or something like that. But it also -- and this is the exciting bit, also means that we're able to take text and be able to create a whole bunch of presets that people could use to get started with their content. So for example, I take that company in, you'll see that it's a really nicely animated piece of text. But also, it means that you can go in there and you can change any of the things. So let's just call this nice and this one can change there, easy like that. So things can be changed very easily, but also the controls and the very, very fine control that we have for every bit of how that animation works, its positioning, the color schemes that go with it. All of these can be easily adapted. And where they're best used is things like [indiscernible]. So we're allowing users to directly drop on a little lower third. Maybe there's another one we can add that along. We can reposition that. Users will be able to go in, change things very simply, change things like backdrop colors and then save them out as presets so they can use them within all of their own productions very, very easily. The thing that you'll notice is that the whole experience is incredibly smooth. Everything that we're doing here has a very, very, very desktop-like feel. And all of that's been made possible. We've done it with video, but we're now doing it with graphics and text. And we believe that this is going to put us really not just on par with what happens with some of the bigger NOVs and desktop products. But actually text is traditionally done quite badly, and it means that a lot of the time, people have to rely on visual effects tools like After Effects to do this sort of more complex animations we're bringing that experience directly into the browser and obviously more available to people because our product is easier to use, more available product in the market. So that's our roundup of products. Marketing.

Thank you. Good morning, everybody. So just to give you a bit of a snapshot overview. So the top left graph on the left is just looking at the subscriber growth over the last 3 months. So July kind of marks the period where we started to invest in acquisitions again after a period of kind of research and understanding exactly how we wanted to position elevate.io in the market. So mid-July when we started to invest and that also with some changes that were made to pricing and how we moved users from free into the paid plan. So that shift in growth over those kind of reflects that period. August is significantly higher and most likely as a result of the combination of those things changing the pricing as well as continue to invest in marketing channels through that period and in September is still coming up as we close out the month. But importantly, alongside that investment, when we look at the return on those efforts, when we compare our current levels of spend to earlier in the year, February when we were previously investing from a marketing perspective, we've reduced by almost 2/3 in that time through that work that's been done around really understanding the audience, aligning our proposition and messaging to align with that positioning in the market. And we continue to do regular qualitative research cycles to continue sharpening that messaging, positioning and understanding the types of users that we're acquiring, what they're looking for and how we provide value and how we can kind of double down on that to our efforts ongoing. And whilst [ PPC ] at the moment remains our primary acquisition channel, we have through this period also been testing other paid channels, which we will continue to look at Q4. But also on top of that, looking at how we actually really invest in our brand from an organic perspective. So moving into Q4, we're going to be focusing quite heavily on reestablishing YouTube as a demand gen channel. So owning a much more deliberate content strategy there that YouTube is becoming an increasingly important channel for AI and LLM discovery as well. We've improved the AI discovery over the last 3 months by quite some way, but it continues to be a really important aspect for us to focus on and we'll be continuing to do so through the likes of digital as I said, and looking for [indiscernible] platforms and then to make recommendations. And another big focus through all of the work that we're doing, as Ian has already alluded to, is making sure that we're continuously way that we can improve that conversion from free users to paid plans. So some of the work that we're doing at the moment and moving into Q4 is really focused on remarketing, so making sure that once we bring users into the platform free plans that we continue to invest in them as users and encourage them to experience the value of Elevate so they go on to a paid plan. And through all of the interviews and research that we're doing, we hear some really interesting stories of the types of users coming into elevate.io. And whilst quite a lot of our user base is still solo projects, a mix of copy and creators we see a lot of those people talking about the fact that the collaborative potential of A is for all of those different types of users, the fact that they can bring other people into the project, work with them, whether that be friends, colleagues, what have you. So we continue to look at those different mechanics of how we can get more people working together in the product and makes sense as well.

So we've kept this one very short, so we've got lots of time for questions. But just really to summarize that we have really seen the momentum accelerate following the marketing freeze that we imposed from March to kind of halfway through July. And now with the features and UI experience, it's really in sync with the marketing that's come in, we really expect to see similar growth going forward. So we're seeing the machine really finally tuned now, and we'll continue to fine-tune that further. So ladies and gentlemen, let me invite questions.

[Operator Instructions] I may just jump back in to remind you that recording of this presentation along with a copy of the slide and published Q&A can all be accessed via your dashboards. And guys, we have received a number of questions. So if I may now hand over to you to just read out those questions and give your responses where appropriate to do so. And if I pick up from you at the end, that would be great.

Thank you very much, Jake. I think most of the questions are quite short this time, which is a blessing for me, but I will try and get through the main ones now. So the first one is what happened with soundbites. At a crucial time, you just created a void. I'm glad it's back, but I got a poor response from a [indiscernible] on Investor Relations. Stephen is...

So we obviously needed a period when we actually had news and also when people are around and the sum has always been very quiet for investors as well. And there were big gaps when people were holidays. So although the development continued and the advances in the company, people weren't around every day to story. But we're back and there's a lot of things to not need to catch up on, but lots of new things happening. So I think you will enjoy if you follow it now.

Thank you, Stephen. Second question, will you consider taking on a small loan instead of a placing if the share price is too low? I understand you will need to show the wheels turning quicker on revenue from elevate.io. But if the metrics are good, you will become a mine, cash in one end and beautiful subscribers out of the other. Yes, well said. I think that we would not rule anything out with regards to a raise, but I don't think that taking on debt would be top of our list. So I think that would be a very unlikely. Third question, will AI turbocharge elevate.io or eat our lunch and why?

I'm going to say it's a perfect complement for what we're doing. It's something that we use in helping us produce the tool, but also we're perfectly placed to take advantage of all the disparate engines that are out there. So people who are using AI either for things like generation or for tidying stuff up we're able to add that into our product and make that available sort of from the platform itself. So there's no evidence at all that AI is replacing the way that tools like ours work. If anything, it's giving just more strength to tools like us. Of course, our competitors have the same advantage as well. So it doesn't mean that we have to do a great job implementing that. It's not for free. But we see it as a net advantage and a good -- another thing that will help bring more people to video editing because traditionally, a lot of the process of video editing can be quite time consuming. The good news is AI can remove a lot of that trouble. So it's a net advantage across the board for helping us build stuff and helping our customers get value from what we build.

Thanks, Sumit. You covered every base there. Marketing seems to have gone quiet. E-mails, videos, PR, podcasts, conferences have all dried up in recent months. I'm hardly seeing the company anywhere. Is the business now relying entirely on paid advertising?

So we still do all of those things. I think the reality is we're a lot more deliberate now and purposeful with each of them where we use them and specifically kind of what opportunities we do as we say yes to. So we still do a lot of e-mail campaigns, which is much more highly segmented in the way that we do that now. So we're delivering the right message to the right people at the right time rather than broadcast continuously. Digital PR is definitely something that we've pulled back on over the recent months, but we'll be investing in as we move forward, particularly now as we double down on kind of product updates moving into Q4, we've got big announcement [ techmations ] coming through. And in terms of events and conferences, again, we are doing those things on a much kind of more -- a smaller more deliberate than level at this point. And over the last few months, a lot of experimentation all the different channels, smaller experiments, scale budgets to test our way into different opportunities. So it may not appear as broadcast in the past because we're following much more of a test and learn approach into where we put our investments.

Thank you. A question from Nick. Sumit, not a question, just congratulations on your appointment to the Board. It gives investors exactly the confidence they need. And I would offer my congratulations too. I'm sure everyone does. I think the other thing to note is that we also will be looking for an independent nonexecutive Chair to join the Board as well. We're actively recruiting that position now. So I think there are some questions around my role as Executive Chair, and I think that's -- absolutely, I would agree with them. I think that it is good that we have an independent nonexec Chair to actively recruit. 120,000 users, 3.4% conversion rate. That will be just over 4,000 to converted paid numbers, yet subscriber numbers are in the 900s. You mentioned a churn of approximately 11%. Can you please explain the mismatch? Yes. The 3.4% is -- that's the snapshot of where we are now. It's not where we've been since February 2025 when we launched the payment gateway. We've been increasing that conversion rate all the way up, and it's really started to gain some recent momentum now. So yes, that explains the calculation the mismatch that we've got. Please let me know if there are any more questions on that. Does the company generate any margin on third-party tokenized sales such as music? Or is the cost simply actual cost we pay to the provider?

No, there's margin on -- it depends on what it is, but -- and remember, we're adding a lot more tools in the future. So -- some can be high profit, some obviously, which are slightly more commoditized. There's no point us being able to offer a service if they can buy elsewhere a lot cheaper. So we make money where we can and it's value to the end user.

Please break down the operating costs in corporate at Elevate, highlight any noncash amounts in both. What is the 525,000 trade payables payment? I'll take this line -- this question off and we can reply to you in writing where we are able to. As you can tell, we don't have a CFO sitting at the table right now. So we'll get back to you on that one, [ Jared]. Question from [ John]. Ian, the share price has fallen sharply for years, yet you've been Chairman since and left 18 months ago. Do you think this is appropriate? Well, I've just addressed that just before. So we're actually looking for an independent nonexec Chair as we speak, John. So yes, I agree that there's a requirement for that. Will the new Google book be supported? Yes, it will.

Yes. We've done another important part actually of the work that we've done on the engine is to ensure that the product works well on low-powered machines because we know it's a great opportunity for us. And as the higher-end [indiscernible] work more and more demanding, they require more and more memory, more and more GPU support. We're at the point where we're actually being able to fulfill people who have lower spec machines. So we very closely work with on things any of the Google chromebooks or any of the lower end, including reading the questions of Apple Neo. We're constantly testing, for example, the performance on that as well.

Good. There's a few more Board questions about me doubling as Chairman, which I think we've answered now. That's we will move on from that one. Blackbird EBITDA positive and forecast -- sorry, as Blackbird is EBITDA positive and forecast to be for the rest of 2026, is it possible to sell a share in this entity to fund Elevate? Because we share such common DNA at the back end, I think that's always going to be a challenge. So Stephen, would you want to comment on?

I mean I think both sides benefit from sharing the technology, but it will be very hard to split off one. And also with Elevate now starting to grow quite strongly, I think that's where the focus of investment will be from our external...

Lots of us are worried about the runway, which is nearly used up. The share price has fallen as low as 1p under [indiscernible], investors back people. Why we only want to invest now given the company's performance? Thank you very much, [ Paul]. Well, as you just pointed out that the revenue engine is improving dramatically, and we're working hard to improve that further and continue our strategy. At this point in time, we're monitoring the cash position. We've talked about changes at the Board level. So yes, I think we answer that question. Since bringing on board the Chief Marketing Officer, what data information have you observed about the awareness of Elevate as a product in the marketplace, the competition and the slowness of trial to conversion rate users. Is there any way to improve the awareness and conversion rates?

Well, the conversion rates as we already spoken about improving month to month over the last few months as we've been kind of implementing some of the insights from the research we did at the beginning and continue to do ongoing. So from that perspective, that's a constant work in progress and something that we are always looking at and looking for ways to improve. From an awareness perspective, again, I think when you look at the rate of growth month-to-month, we can see that, that is also developing as well and will continue to do so as we start to expand into more channels and kind of broader awareness channels. We've certainly been focused over the last couple of months on making sure that we're capturing as much of the active intent in the market as possible. And we'll continue to be broadening that out to new pockets of the market. but being very kind of selective about where we place ourselves that we can be focused on fewer opportunities to create more awareness within communities or target groups spreading ourselves too thin, which will ultimately damage our conversion rates.

Thanks, Ian, could you tell us how instrumental the scale of collective have been? Is the recent growth largely down to their marketing work? Well, I'll refer back to the slide I did at the beginning, which is it's really about the improvement of the entire machine. We've got huge improvements, very impressive improvements to the product, a change and a step-up, I think, in terms of marketing. So that's definitely had an impact. We've also made some changes to how the trigger points happen. So we reduced the number of exports you could have from 3 down to 2, which definitely had an impact as well. So I think it's really about improving the machine, fine-tuning the machine, and we will continue to look at how we can do that. Question from Paul. How out of the paid new users, are these mainly marketing customers being targeted or creators?

It's a combination. We -- certainly from -- where the majority of our spend at the moment goes on PPC, we see kind of a broad spectrum of different segments coming through those channels. That's based on intent in the market, and we see that spread across obvious creators and teams. What we can see is that teams convert to paid plans at a higher rate than other segments, which is really interesting and something for us to kind of continue monitoring. And we're actively targeting marketing teams through some of the other activities that we do. So we have a partnership series at the moment, which is a combination of events, podcasts, panels and that we're running that actively target those groups that started last quarter and will continue into ...

A question from one on the Exec Chair role again, which you answered. Have you considered alternatives to shareholder dilution? If so, what? At this stage, we are looking to fund raise with equity, and we have considered some options, but we haven't proceeded with those. Question from David. Could you talk about how your interviews and market analysis dictate your product road map? Maybe that's a question for both of you.

Yes. I mean always the interviews that we do, we've rotated some of the product so we can kind of take a little bit of a different kind of [ thin ] on that each time. But also we always said ultimately, the learnings we implications for both sides in terms of understanding why people come to what they're looking for problem trying to solve and they were searching for it and ultimately what value they're getting out of the product. And...

Yes. I think it's also important to remember that the idea for Elevate wasn't up within the 4 walls of flatbed. The idea came from extensive research that was -- and conversations and the market in general as well. We've always we're not the only people with this idea. Other people also support the idea of an online video editor. And so we've always throughout the process from before we wrote the first line of code. We already did a round of interviews with different groups, and we continue to check in often with those same people as the product developed. Some people have been on this journey with us for 4 years from before we began. So we've always had a healthy amount of feedback coming from the market in general. And what's encouraging is how we're seeing people who saw it at the beginning and how they're reacting to the different changes that we've made. I mean it's wildly different product than it was a year ago. It's hard to see that often when we're sort of all involved in it day-to-day and even with the quarterly updates that you guys get. But if you actually look back at where it was a year ago, it's just a wildly different -- its capabilities are completely different. So we keep that loop going and we'll continue to do that.

Good. Thank you. A question from [indiscernible]. The [ EBS ] contract is up for renewal. Can we expect a significant increase in the minimum guarantee contract of GBP 2 million or EUR 2 million it was this time around. Has talks for renewal begun yet? Early talks have begun. Can we expect a significant increase? I don't think so. I think if we get the same deal again, that will be amazing. I did talk to them at IDC recently, and they have had quite a lot of new interest in the products that Blackbird is a part of, which is encouraging. So yes, discussions will continue. How far behind your closest competitors is Elevate in terms of subscribers and revenue base? How far behind...

I mean financially or...

How far behind your closest competitors of Elevate in terms of subscribers and revenue base?

I think how far are you behind your competitors?

Well ...

I mean there's a huge -- I mean, obviously, there is a very large player in the market indeed and they have some more slightly more public numbers. They started for us and obviously have been around a little bit longer. I don't think we know the answer to how many competitors others have -- sorry, how many subscribers others have, but it is still such a big of a new market that off the races, but it's still all to play for.

Curious on the next question. So Street and the Board, it appears that Ian's daughter did an internship at [indiscernible] recently. Ethically, that leaves a bad taste. And from the outside, it looks like a conflict of interest in what is supposed to be an independent advisory role. Is the Board aware? So yes, my 17-year-old daughter did 2 days work experience at [ A&D ]. I don't think that -- unpaid, obviously. I don't think that contravenes anything other than the fact that she was getting some experience that she had experience in cafes and elsewhere. I don't know whether you want to comment on that.

It's not material when you look at ...

I hate to say these questions are [ stooping ] to a new low, but perhaps that's at the moment. Okay. Question from David. Does your animated text development work across voice to text?

Work across voice -- yes, it will. Sorry, yes. Yes. So it's to do with, yes, how it will work within subtitles and subtitles will also be improved to support the capabilities -- animation...

Your salary of GBP 0.25 million looks out of step with the company performance. Follow-up from a question at the AGM. Could you please tell us on your day-to-day to justify it? Guys, I'm not going to continue to justify my position here. If you really feel that that's what you need, then look, I got both in 93% renewed in June. I'll refer back to that. [ Grant], congratulations on his appointment to the Board.

Yes, congratulations.

[ John], the AGM put a lot of weight on the move from Google to Meta. How many paying subscribers is Meta bringing in compared to Google? And what's the difference in cost per acquired paying customer?

So we're still doing -- we're still testing with Meta at the moment. We do comparisons when we have Meta running alongside Google. What we're seeing is that Meta is purchase journeys tend to go, people have multiple touch points before they make a purchase, Meta does play an active role in that journey as we're seeing. It's kind of one step in the journey. It allows us to reach new audiences in different environments. What we're going to be focusing in the short term is kind of remarketing. So focusing on using Meta to target users that have signed up to use but not yet subscribe alongside a slightly broader audience as well that we'll then be able to use to kind of combine to appeal to the right audience. In terms of the difference in cost per acquisition, it's complicated because they often contribute to the same purchase journey. So we look at Meta as a contributed attribution in terms of the role that plays in acquiring customers. So generally speaking, we look at blended customer acquisition cost to give us an overall view of how all of the channels we're running work together and to make sure they're working efficiently as a system and not cannibalizing each other.

AI question. There seems to be a trend of connecting Claude/ChatGPT to video editors with FCP. What are your thoughts on this?

So we do have some developments that are happening in that space that we're working through in terms of how we use agents to actually operate and influence the edit for things like removal of and cutting things. So we've got some good experimentation going on in that space. Of course, it's going to be very, very useful, as I mentioned earlier, for helping to speed up the production process. We definitely will embrace that, no question.

You've recently written some Elevate [indiscernible] posts about script. Why have we chosen that moment?

A couple of reasons, one that we have a big focus on increasing and driving our organic share of traffic volume to the site. And that kind of lower down funnel conversion type content helps us support that. We can also see that people are looking for comparison content. That block content is also useful for feeding AI and LLM discovery, again, where there are often comparisons or we are providing those systems with usual comparisons for them to draw in the expectations ...

Thanks. Why did [ Steve Whiteley ] so suddenly a CFO and Director departing now with the runway running out signals a lack of confidence. Steve has been here 7 years, been here a long time. It wasn't actually that suddenly, and he decided he wants to do new things. So we are actively recruiting a new interim CFO who actually -- we are not actively, who actually confirm one who will be starting on Thursday. We'll put the news out about that when it's in is drive, but we will be, yes, getting a new person very soon. The share price is down 90% over the last 5 years. Where is the accountability for this happening? We're building a -- thank you very much. We're building a brand-new product from a more or less greenfield site out in the open market. It's an unusual thing to do. It's a difficult thing to do. These products are generally built behind closed doors in Silicon Valley, in a VC fund as I have actually said this before, I think it's still very much true. So the market doesn't often give a lot of patience for those kind of things. But the happy news is that we've got ourselves to a point now where we are growing quickly, where the revenue engine is starting to take shape, where growth is starting to be exponential. And I think that's a happy thing to be that we should be happy -- be celebrating. We've got to get to the point now where that's a positive increment rather than just getting closer to being parity, but we're in good shape. What is the current average income per subscriber? Are you getting increased numbers of teams at $100 a month?

I think the majority of subscribers at the moment are on the creative plan with more and more leading up to the creative plan. I think at the moment, the top end 100 a month, we see quite a lot of people who are particularly working in teams using the creative plan and the limits within that at the moment as they're kind of experimenting with products and deciding whether it's going to come into the tool. And really that's which we see those commitments at the higher monthly cost that's still very much work in progress.

EVS is now also using AI to further enhance its product offering to customers. Is enterprise adding AI capability to the [ Create ] app in order for it to be competitive with customers' changing needs? Yes. Well, we talked about this when I met them recently. They are using some AI capabilities to do highlights editing. But for the fine editing within Create, they're using Blackbird-based codec tools. So that's -- we're kind of a blend with them. We don't have any plans at this stage.

Indirectly, but remember that EVS have written their own editor -- so they will control how they implement that and the external integration, and we provide the platform, the base platform that they build on.

Thank you very much. Is AI a threat to Elevate now or in the near future?

No. As I answered before, it's a great complement.

And [ Adrian Welding ] appears to have left the interim CFO role after only 3 weeks, yet the said he moved to a permanent position. Why wouldn't interim leave one interim role for another? Can we please be honest with investors? [ Adrian ] has got a great offer from another company. Without divulging too much about the other company situation, something very unfortunate happened over there. I don't want to be the ones to talk about that, but we will be as honest as we can. If we said that it was a permanent position, and it's an interim one. My bad, I didn't realize that was the case, but I'm glad that he's got a great role. How many marketing teams have we signed based on the current increase of subscribers apart from shows how we are directly infiltrating this TAM?

So I'll have to look at the -- figure out the exact numbers. I believe for August, about 10% of subscribers fell into that category. And we've been doing quite a lot of work or we are working closely with a small number of outlets within that space. For example, marketing meet, we did an event with them last week. We've got kind of partnership series with them, a couple of other [ outfit ] like those where we have syndicated partnerships with them that involve podcasts and panels opportunities where we actually get an opportunity to industry topics and how Elevate fits into those doing in-person events products and in hands of users as well as doing kind of more long evergreen pieces of content around new and things over time. So there's a wave of activity aligned to that, but these things take time to build.

Great. This gentleman says, I've searched for browser-based video editor and all the major AI and everyone has mentioned except that never volunteers elevate.io, even when I ask specifically about frame accurate video editors, this lack of visibility is probably not going to help users numbers. Are you aware of this? Do you know the reason why?

It's again, something we're working on all the time. I think we're seeing about 3x the number of sign-ups coming through AI discovery now since June. So it's building month-on-month. I think we ran about 4 keywords in AI search at the moment. It's never going to show up in every single search. Need a huge amount of coverage for that to be the case, but it's something that we're constantly working on and building. The thing that's important for us is to focus on kind of trusted citation sources. So that's why a big part of our Q4 investment is going to be going into YouTube, which is increasingly -- YouTube video is increasingly important for AI kind of discovery as well as things like digital PR, other kind of areas where we can be cited and resource from. So that continues to be a focus point.