Curiositystream Q4 and Full Year 2020 Prepared Remarks Introduction Denise Garcia, Investor Relations Welcome to Curiositystream
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CuriosityStream Q4 and Full Year 2020 Prepared Remarks Introduction Denise Garcia, Investor Relations Welcome to CuriosityStream’s discussion of its fourth quarter and full year 2020 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. 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 Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020 when filed. In addition, reference will be made to non-GAAP financial measures. Now I'll turn the call over to Clint. Clint Stinchcomb, CEO Thank you, Denise. I would like to thank everyone for joining our fourth quarter and full year 2020 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 will turn the call over to our CFO, Jason Eustace, to review the financials. At the close of Jason’s review we will open up the call for questions. CuriosityStream’s mission is to provide premium factual entertainment that informs, enchants, and inspires. As a pure-play streaming service, we are capitalizing on current and emerging worldwide trends favoring on-demand content. Our sturdy and robust business model with multiple avenues of content monetization and our differentiated content offering provides us with several key competitive advantages. And our focus on factual content which has longevity and engaging appeal across multiple demographics and geographies is key to our success. Let me talk about our success in 2020. I’m pleased to report that we had a record end to the year and fourth quarter. Our year End 2020 revenue was more than double our 2019 annual revenue and more than 4 times our 2018 revenue. Revenue in the fourth quarter grew 70% year-over-year to $11.4 million, driven by continued strength in Direct Subscription revenue with program sales and sponsorship also contributing to our success in the quarter. 1 Our team produced these results through a pandemic while also crossing several milestones during the year… and I couldn’t be prouder of what we’ve accomplished. I’ll start with the fourth quarter. On a year over year basis, paying subscribers grew 50% to approximately 15 million with continued strength in subscribers on annual plans and International subscribers. We continued to build up our content library and increase our distribution partnerships worldwide. I’ll share more details about each of these highlights, starting with growth in subscribers. A couple of factors contributed to these results: 1. Q4 is typically our most active time for new subscribers, which in turn can produce a high churn rate but this year we reduced our already low monthly churn by more than 25% year-over- year. We attribute this churn decrease to improvements in marketing, content, and product that we implemented throughout the year and that we continue to implement. 2. Our mix of targeted investments in awareness marketing tactics and Direct Response efforts aimed at keeping our customer acquisition costs efficient. We continue to optimize our business to our North Star metrics—revenue and paying subscribers. Compared to 2019, at the end of the fourth quarter 2020 we had increased our direct subscriber count by nearly 100% and increased our LTV by 48%, both while decreasing our total overall marketing budget year over year. This demonstrates the impact of the efficiency-focused and agile marketing strategy we continually employ. We continue to deliver unique, relevant, and current perspectives through groundbreaking new content. During the quarter we premiered original series like Engineering the Future, narrated by the renowned Patrick Stewart, which explores the new era of "green" mega-machines focused on wind, aviation, and fusion… and the landmark original franchise Beyond the Spotlight, Executive Produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, and his team at Appian Way, which reveals how celebrities like Shaquille O’Neal, Kristen Bell and Samuel L. Jackson are channeling their personal passions to help change the world. During the election cycle, we also premiered our special Fighting for Lincoln: The Wide Awakes -- which explores the powerful, but long-forgotten para-military movement that many believe delivered Abraham Lincoln the presidency... and the companion 3-part mid-form series Electing Lincoln, which reveals the key events in the run-up to the 1860 election that sparked America's bloody Civil War. We also greenlit our largest and most ambitious slate of original programming yet for 2021, including notable projects like the Rescued Chimpanzees of the Congo with Jane Goodall, The Royals in Color, The History of Wall Street, The CEO of Sinaloa, The Year That Rocked the World and many others ……. We will make more announcements about our new program franchises in the coming weeks and months. We continue to invest in the distinct content that defines us - nature, history, science, travel, and every category in the factual genre. We will see more new originals this year than any time in our history. Our acquisition strategy will continue 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. Also during the quarter, we entered an international distribution partnership with Tata Sky, one of India’s largest content distribution and Pay TV platforms and grew our distributed subscribers via partnerships with Russian operators. Not surprisingly an increasing number of brands have an interest in the premium factual SVOD space, especially as it relates to telling factual stories about the marketplace in which they operate. We began recognizing revenue from sponsorship and brand partnerships in the fourth quarter with brand partners 2 from the financial services and health and wellness categories. As an example One was interested in sponsoring content we developed about the perils and promise of Blockchain. Blockchain, Bitcoin and Crypto is a story they wanted to own, and they trusted CuriosityStream’s partnership team to get it right. Another brand we worked with is becoming a global leader in connected fitness. Their business, like many in their space, has experienced a boom in growth as a result of Covid-19. They were interested in creating content that explores the phenomenon in connected fitness. CuriosityStream created, “The World Interrupted: Evolution of Fitness” for our partner and promoted it across several platforms. It also has been very well received by our audience both behind and in front of the paywall. Moving on to the year, we crossed significant milestones in every area of the business: ● We generated approximately 15 million paying subscribers, with notable strength in direct-to- consumer and international; ● We grew revenue to a record $40M; ● We improved the features and functionality of our product during the year, by adding multi- language support for audio tracks and captions, launching our “On Now” linear in app experience, significantly improving search and discovery within our apps, and improving our quality-of-service infrastructure to allow us to better proactively improve customer experience; ● We significantly strengthened our management team with strong leadership hires in the areas of third-party US Distribution, International Distribution, Brand Partnerships, Audience Development and Finance; ● We increased the quantity and quality of our content library and continue to have one of the largest streaming factual content libraries in the world. A few highlights in this area for 2020 include the landmark, 90-minute special Pompeii: Disaster Street, featuring exclusive access to the first excavation of Pompeii in more than 70 years… the epic, 3-part series History of Home, narrated by renowned woodworker and Parks & Recreation’s Director of Parks Nick Offerman... and the 8-part series 4th & Forever: Muck City, a compelling portrait of an iconic south Florida community on the banks of Lake Okeechobee that has produced some of the NFL's biggest stars; and ● In October we became the first publicly traded media company focused on streaming factual content. More recently, in the first quarter of 2021, we completed a follow-on offering, raising approximately $100 million in proceeds, which we intend to invest in programming and marketing. This process also enabled us to strengthen our investor base with blue chip long term institutional holders. Put another way, we plugged a $125 million dollar redemption gap through this secondary initiative and through warrant exercises. I can't emphasize enough the importance of and value in being able to focus on running the business without the additional responsibility of raising money. We are entering 2021 in a position of strength with a strong balance sheet and a leading factual content library in streaming.