CuriosityStream Inc (CURI) 2021 Q2 法說會逐字稿

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the CuriosityStream Q2 Earnings Call. (Operator Instructions) Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. (Operator Instructions)

I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Denise Garcia, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Matty. Hello. Welcome to CuriosityStream's discussion of its second quarter 2021 financial results. Leading the discussion today are Clint Stinchcomb, CuriosityStream's Chief Executive Officer; and Jason Eustace, CuriosityStream's Chief Financial Officer. Following management's prepared remarks, we will be happy to take your questions. But first, I'll review the safe harbor statement.

During this call, we may make statements related to our business that are forward-looking statements under the federal securities laws. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, but rather are subject to a variety of risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Our actual results could differ materially from expectations reflected in any forward-looking statements. Please be aware that any forward-looking statements reflect management's current views only, and the company undertakes no obligation to revise or update these statements, nor to make additional forward-looking statements in the future.

For a discussion of the material risks and other important factors that could affect our actual results, please refer to our SEC filings available on the SEC website and on our Investor Relations website as well as the risks and other important factors discussed in today's press release. Additional information will also be set forth in our quarterly report on Form 10-Q for the 3 months ended June 30, 2021 when filed. In addition, reference will be made to non-GAAP financial measures.

Now I'll turn the call over to Clint.

Thank you, Denise. I'd like to thank everyone for joining our second quarter 2021 earnings call. I'm delighted to have with us today our COO and General Counsel, Tia Cudahy; our CFO, Jason Eustace; and our Chief Product Officer and EVP of Content Strategy, Devin Emery. After my comments, I'll turn the call over to our CFO, Jason Eustace, to review the financials. At the close of Jason's remarks, we will open up the call for questions.

Curiosity is the global factual entertainment brand for people who want to know more. We are deeply rooted in our passion for enchanting and informative storytelling and our strong direct subscription service with approximately 20 million paying subscribers across our platforms and distributors. We are committed to producing, acquiring and distributing the best content across every genre of the factual category, and our original programming this year is resonating more than ever. Unlike many streaming services that rely on one line of revenue, we are delivering strong top line growth on a multifaceted revenue stack, anchored by recurring subscription revenues and industry-leading retention.

Let me talk about the second quarter. I'm pleased to report another quarter of robust growth in our direct subscription business, where we grew subscribers 56% year-over-year. New subscribers are joining our service at a rapid clip, and the annual anniversaries for subscribers who signed up during the most significant periods of the COVID lockdown have passed. We have successfully navigated retaining those users better than anyone else in the industry. There were some concerns about an uptick in churn affecting our business when COVID lockdowns in the U.S. lifted. But in fact, we retained, in Q2 2021, a higher percentage of users who signed up in Q2 2020 than any other streaming service, including Netflix. Our monthly churn remained in the low single digits during the quarter as we continued to lead the streaming industry in subscriber retention.

We're also pleased to announce a partnership with Spiegel TV, the iconic media brand and leading producer and distributor of high-quality factual content for German-speaking audiences. This distribution partnership bolsters our global reach by adding millions of subscribers in Europe. It accelerates our growth through the addition of hundreds of hours of German dev programming to our subscription video-on-demand service and extends our brand through the introduction of the Curiosity channel in German-speaking Europe. This deal demonstrates our commitment to prioritizing strong-performing international markets and expanding globally through strategic distribution partnerships. It substantially increases our profile in Europe, which we believe sets the stage for accelerated subscriber growth in the region.

Revenue in the second quarter grew 55% compared to Q1 of 2021 to $15.3 million. 55%, driven by continued strength in direct subscription revenue [with] content licensing also contributing to our success in the quarter. Paid subscribers increased 40% year-over-year to approximately 20 million, up from 16 million at the end of the first quarter and strong double-digit growth across our streaming businesses. We continue to expect a robust second half of 2021 and are confirming our full year revenue guidance of $71 million for 2021.

Fundamentals of our streaming businesses were exceptionally strong during the second quarter, led by low direct-to-consumer subscriber churn, which was relatively flat on both the year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter basis. According to ANTENNA, a media analytics provider, CuriosityStream led the streaming industry in subscriber retention for the 13 months ended in May of this year. As of the end of May, we had retained 72% of subscribers who joined our service during the height of the pandemic in April 2020, ahead of Netflix at 71%; Disney at 55%; Hulu at 52%; HBO Max at 41%; and Apple TV+ at 17%.

We believe our industry low churn demonstrates the high value of our service as well as the success of our annual subscription strategy. While our competitors typically have 1 month to prove the value of their service, we have an entire year to train our algorithms and to learn and to serve our subscribers the content that best suits their preferences. We believe our industry-leading subscriber retention was especially impressive in the context of the second quarter of 2021 as annual subscribers who took advantage of promotional pricing last year renewed their subscriptions at this year's higher rack rates. Higher renewal pricing, combined with a higher proportion of premium subscriptions as we enhance the value of our premium tier offering, drove a quarter-over-quarter increase in direct-to-consumer average revenue per user, which we expect to continue. We are encouraged by these favorable trends and are as excited as ever about the long-term growth prospects of our subscription businesses.

We believe the long-term growth prospects of our subscription business will be further enhanced by our recently announced partnership with Spiegel TV. International expansion has always been a key pillar of our growth strategy with our success to date largely driven by distribution deals with pay-TV operators worldwide. Our partnership with Spiegel TV extends well beyond the typical distribution deal as it includes the introduction of a Curiosity-branded linear channel in German-speaking Europe, which will help raise our brand awareness to millions of people, in addition of hundreds of hours of German dev programming to our subscription video-on-demand service.

This channel will continue to be operated by the current management team, led by our good friend, business associate and talented leader, [Patrick Earl] from Authentic and Michael Kalff from Spiegel TV. Germany is currently one of CuriosityStream's top 3 non-English-speaking markets. We expect this partnership to accelerate our direct-to-consumer subscriber growth in German-speaking countries and beyond.

Our partnership with Spiegel TV more firmly establishes CuriosityStream in Europe. Over the longer term, as we expand our language customization, we believe Europe represents a vast direct-to-consumer opportunity with hundreds of millions of affluent broadband subscribers. Unlike many traditional media companies, our international expansion opportunity is less hampered by fractured rights issues and is greatly enhanced by how well our content travels.

We continue to deliver unique, relevant and insightful perspectives on our world through groundbreaking new content. During the quarter, we premiered the 6-part docuseries, DOUG TO THE RESCUE, featuring aerial cinematographer and drone pilot, Doug Theron. This series gives viewers an inside look at what happens to animals, both wild and domestic, on the ground in the aftermath of a natural disaster. From hurricanes to wildfires, Doug travels to the hardest-hit areas using next-gen drone technology to find animals who are stranded or left behind, and he gets them back safely to their owners or to their natural habitat. Doug really tapped the cultural zeitgeist. He was profiled on Good Morning America, Access Hollywood, Rachel Ray and in a beautiful layout in People Magazine last week.

Throughout the quarter, we also premiered 3 new episodes of our landmark original series, Engineering the Future, which explores the spectacular next-generation eco-machines that could revolutionize life as we know it. Now on the opposite end of the spectrum, 5 new episodes of our tentpole original, Ancient Engineering, which reveals how key technological innovations from our distant past continue to give rise to some of our greatest engineering achievements today. Both series delivered some of our strongest premieres to date and have already been greenlit for second seasons in 2022 as part of our strategy to better engage viewers with popular, brand-defining, returnable series.

Another returnable series we premiered was the most recent season of 4th AND FOREVER, which profiles iconic high school football programs in the U.S., where football is merely the prism from which to tell the stories of the people in their community. This season, we embedded with Alcoa High in East Tennessee, an extraordinary school that did not just embrace diversity integration but became a much stronger community and a football powerhouse because of it.

We also premiered the first 4 episodes of our landmark series, FASTER! Humanity's Quest to Save Time, a quirky, smart and engaging series, I encourage you to watch along with all of the other premiers I mentioned.

We continue to invest in the distinct content that we believe defines us. Nature, history, science, travel and every category in the factual genre. We will offer more new originals this year than any time in our history. We are exploring all options to expand a library that is already unrivaled and goes deeper than anyone into the topics our viewers already care about or have yet to discover.

I'm excited to announce that more recently we were nominated for an Emmy Award in the category of Outstanding Science and Technology documentary for the MARS episode of our epic 8-part series, Secrets of the Solar System. It's an honor to be among the nominees and to be recognized for creating such high-quality science programming.

With our strong balance sheet, robust subscriber momentum, a sturdy beachhead in German-speaking Europe, a strong team and the leading factual content library and streaming, we are executing in a manner that makes us enthusiastic about the remainder of 2021 and beyond.

I'd now like to turn the presentation over to our CFO, Jason Eustace, for some financial highlights.

Thanks, Clint. I'm also excited about the strong momentum in our subscription businesses and the landmark business development activities we announced this quarter. As the world reopens and entertainment options increase, our subscriber growth continues unabated. We look forward to building our record 20 million subscribers and remain on track to achieve our $71 million revenue goal for the year.

Now let's review second quarter financials. CuriosityStream's Q2 2021 revenues grew 27% to $15.3 million, up from $12 million in Q2 2020. The revenue increase was led by direct-to-consumer subscription sales and program sales. Cost of revenue was $5.7 million or 37% of revenue compared to 39% of revenue in Q2 of 2020, a decrease of 2 percentage points on a year-over-year basis. As a result, our Q2 gross margin was 63% compared to 61% in Q2 of 2020. Advertising and marketing expenses were $11.5 million compared to $8.3 million in Q2 of 2020 as we continue to be opportunistic with our marketing spend and invest when the right market conditions exist.

CuriosityStream's overall operating expenses were $26.4 million compared to $16.4 million in Q2 of 2020. Second quarter EBITDA loss of $10.9 million compared to an EBITDA loss of $4.3 million last year due to higher G&A costs associated with being a public company, higher personnel costs and increased marketing investment. We are on track with our plans for 2021 to deliver $71 million in revenue. We expect our revenue mix to shift in the third and fourth quarters as presale agreements comprise of a higher percentage of revenues than in prior quarters. Again, accounting for presales under GAAP requires us to amortize content costs through cost of revenue on an accelerated basis upon revenue recognition instead of on a straight-line basis over the estimated period of use as we would with other original content. As a result, presale revenues are passed through on a GAAP basis for the quarter when they are booked and do not contribute to the GAAP gross profit.

Due to the significant ramp in presales deals we anticipate in the third and fourth quarter, we expect GAAP gross margins to be in the low to mid-40s on the second half of the year. Gross margins in our core subscription business are expected to remain strong on a lower cost per hour of programming relative to the broader streaming industry.

While we expect GAAP gross margins to remain volatile over the next several quarters based on the size and the timing of presales, we anticipate that the growth in our subscription business will mute the negative [impact on] presale deals on GAAP gross margins over the longer term.

And now I'll turn it back over to Clint and open the line up for questions.

Thank you, Jason. Let's please open up for questions.

(Operator Instructions) And your first question comes from the line of Devin Brisco with Bank of America.

So you had some promotional -- you had some subscribers lacking some promotional pricing in the quarter and still retain subs better than the rest of the industry. Have you gained any additional insights into what content is doing well in terms of retaining subs? And then as you solve the other side of that equation, again you have such low churn, is acquisition content going to become a bigger focus going forward? It sounds like you might be ramping up content spend in the second half. Is $50 million in cash spend still a good number for the full year?

So I can answer the second part of that question. Yes. Sorry, go ahead, Clint.

Go ahead and take the second part, and then I'll take the first part.

Yes. So the second part there, Devin, program investment is still on track as we mentioned earlier this year. We're still on track for the high 40s, low 50s as far as our content spend. So that's in line with everything as we expected earlier this year. We're still going to be over 4,000 titles by the end of the year.

Thank you, Jason. And Devin, if I may add, yes, the reasons for the high retention are many. Certainly, programming. And yes, we do have an idea as to what people like. But I will tell you that it is quality, but it is also quantity. There is also a particular cadence of providing new content to the platform. And we certainly have a greater cadence there than we've had in years past just because we're deeper into the cycle of adding significant programming. I think we've also done a lot to minimize the friction associated with subscribing to CuriosityStream. And we've also, I think, significantly enhanced the user experience and continue to do that. Devin, would you like to add anything?

Yes. I would just reiterate that the velocity of new content coming to the platform across our tentpole originals and exclusives, our acquisitions and even our curation of content available elsewhere is higher than it ever has been, and all of those are incredibly important. So all of those contribute different values to the platform and are all critical for making the best user experience. So you'll see that continue across all the different types of content that we have. There'll be more of it and it will be coming to our platform more quickly than it ever has before.

And also, as Clint was saying, on the product and technology side, we've been investing into data engineering, CRM and engagement, UX and UI. All of these have been things that we've been working on for quite a while but, as Clint was saying, are critical so that people when they're coming into the platform have the best possible experience finding whichever pieces of content that they really want to watch and engage with. So all of that combined with our continued strength and able to activate our audience has been what we have seen is leading to that retention. There's no silver bullet. It's obsession over all of the right details.

That's helpful. And you just announced a deal with Spiegel TV in the quarter. And in the past, you've talked about there being sort of an outsized opportunity internationally for growth. Are you starting to see a revenue mix shift yet in that direction? And I'm curious how you plan to prioritize bundled distribution versus more pure-play DTC product internationally and what that mix will look like going forward?

Excellent question, Devin. I would say that if you -- we have more bundled subscribers outside of the U.S. today. We have more direct subscribers in the U.S. today. That said, we do have direct subscribers in 176 countries today, which I think underscores the attraction of factual content, and it also underscores the fact that with factual content, you can -- it's a little bit easier to control the distribution of a broader scope of rights than, say, in the scripted space, for example. We will continue to kind of prioritize the international markets where we are performing best. As I said, Germany was a top 3 market for us. So we think that, that Germany and German-speaking Europe represents a lot of opportunity. I also believe that, look, almost every third-party agreement that we enter into, provided it's a proper value exchange, is additive to CuriosityStream because at this stage, we still have a lot of headroom as it relates to general awareness. So Spiegel, for example, we think there will be a lot of value in having a linear network that is able to promote to our subscription service in a meaningful way, which we don't really have in Europe today. Is that helpful?

Your next question comes from the line of Darren Aftahi from ROTH.

First on the renewals kind of on the, let's call it, the COVID quarter, that obviously was a high number that you guys kind of mentioned from ANTENNA. I'm curious, did all those subs on the annual plan renew at a higher rate card? Or were there any kind of discounts offered?

All of the renewals came at the higher rack rate.

Okay. So I guess it kind of begs the question in terms of pricing power. Like what are your general thoughts about pricing power on annual plans and month-to-month as you kind of go? Or are we still in kind of a subaggregation story at this point?

Yes. We think we have considerable pricing power. We think that last year has demonstrated that. We are committed to growing subs in the aggregate, certainly. At the same time, we continue to do a lot of engineering work, a lot of foundational work, a lot of technical work so that when we do take advantage of that pricing power, we can maximize the transition from existing to whatever higher price we implement.

Got it. Great. And then on the 4 million sequential subs added, can you just kind of talk about the mix of DTC and partner direct versus bundled? And maybe with bundled, any kind of geographies that are overindexing?

Yes. So the majority of those subscribers obviously came from bundled subscribers. We grew our direct subscribers 56% over the year year-over-year. So that was strong and meaningful. And then while they were -- they were certainly sprinkled around. The majority are from the Spiegel agreement that we entered into.

But we continue to add direct subscribers almost everywhere. And I would say that if -- we didn't break it out this way, but more direct subscribers came from outside the U.S. this quarter than from a year ago.

That's good to hear. Just last one for me. I think last quarter, you gave visibility on that $71 million bogey for guidance at 90%. Like any kind of update there as we kind of sit past the halfway point?

Yes. We're definitely still guiding to the full $71 million for the year, and we're definitely less than 10% left to go at this point. So we still feel fairly confident to hit that $71 million in the next 2 quarters.

I'll just say, all I would add, Darren, it's our first full year as a public company, and we want to demonstrate that we can hit our annual targets and not be super heroes.

Next question comes from the line of Dan Kurnos with Benchmark.

Maybe a couple. I thought the peak retention COVID number was very interesting. Can you just talk about, obviously, with Delta rearing its head, what you're seeing in terms of trends as we head into the back half of the year, if there's any play there? And maybe if you want to also tangentially speak about the development of One DayU and whether or not that may play a role in how you develop that asset?

And then just on the international side, just following up on an earlier question. I actually thought it was interesting that you went to sort of non -- I mean, obviously, Germany, Western Europe, speaks a lot of English, but it was in German doing a lot of localized language stuff.

Can you help us think about how we think about kind of next geography? Or whether we expect you to get, say -- is India on the table versus maybe more like in Australia? Just how do we think about kind of that balance on the international forum because there's still a ton of large MVPDs and partners out that you guys can kind of go after with your sort of unique product set?

Yes. I think that's a great question and something we're thinking a lot about. And what I will say today is we are prioritizing additional international markets. We're not going to announce those today, but it is something that we're thinking about, obviously, on a daily basis and then lots of conversations around. As it relates to One Day University, I think it's a good question. I think what we've said about that is that tuck-in acquisitions like that have always been an element of our growth strategy. The talks and lectures that they offer up on One Day University right now are awesome. Best professors in the world, most engaging, most entertaining. Right now, we're focused, in the near term, on technical work and integration work. They only recently launched a digital subscription platform before we acquired it. It needs some work, but we will improve it. As far as the live events are concerned, we do plan to launch live events in the fourth quarter. Obviously, there's seemingly a new concern every day, whether it's the Delta variant or some other form of the virus. But all I can say there is we will see.

(Operator Instructions) Your next question comes from the line of Alexia Tsimikas with D.A. Davidson.

I have 2. The first is, have you experienced or noticed any impacts from pandemic-related restrictions being lifted? And the second is, in the past you discussed advancing your sponsorship efforts when restrictions ease and you are able to meet with companies again. So how are you thinking about your sponsorship efforts today?

Great. So yes in certain parts of the U.S., we've been able to finally get back out and have more in-person meetings. Internationally, as you're probably aware, it's really not opened up, like we had hoped it would, like we think it will in the future. And then as it relates to the sponsorship business, we have strong interest and some strong commitments for the back half of the year, and we're working on pulling as many of those as possible across the finish line and fulfilling those commitments where they exist. So as the world opens up and we can meet with more people, that is a tailwind for us. And we are doing that wherever we can. Obviously, it's not quite as easy as we had hoped it would be at this point in time.

Your next question comes from the line of Dan Medina with Needham & Company.

Jason, I was wondering if you could help us think a little bit about second half advertising and marketing spend for the rest -- yes, the rest of the year?

Sure. So second half of the year, we're expected to be very similar to the first half right around high 11s, kind of low 12s as far as our marketing investment for Q3 and Q4. Again, we'd love to be -- that's just a target. So we love to be opportunistic with given the market conditions. So when Devin has the opportunity, he'll take advantage of that. And fourth quarter might be always a little bit higher because we take advantage of some of the stuff during the holidays. But generally, the takeaway should be high 11s, low 12s as far as Q3 and Q4 marketing investment.

And there are no more questions at this time. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.