LiveOne - Q3 2024
February 8, 2024
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Hello, everyone, and welcome to the LiveOne Inc. Q3 Fiscal 2024 Financial Results and Business Update Call. Thank you for standing by. My name is Daisy, and I'll be coordinating your call today. If you would like to register a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the call over to your host, Aaron Sullivan, CFO, to begin. Aaron, please go ahead.
Aaron Sullivan (CFO)
Thank you. Good morning, and welcome to LiveOne's Business Update and Financial Results conference call for the company's third quarter ended December 31, 2023. Presenting on today's call with me is Rob Ellin, CEO and Chairman of LiveOne. I would like to remind you that some of the statements made on today's call are forward-looking and are based on current expectations, forecasts, and assumptions that involve various risks and uncertainties. These statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the future performance of the company, including expected future financial results and expected future growth in the business. Actual results may differ materially from those discussed on this call for a variety of reasons.
Please refer to the company's filings with the SEC for information about factors which could cause the company's actual results to differ materially from these forward-looking statements, including those described in its annual report on Form 10-K for the year end of March 31, 2023, and subsequent SEC filings. You'll find reconciliations of non-GAAP financial measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures discussed today in the company's earnings release, which is posted on its investor relations website. The company encourages you to periodically visit investor relations website for important content. The following discussion, including responses to your questions, contains time-sensitive information and reflects management's view as of the date of this call, February 8, 2024. Except as required by law, the company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise this information after the date of the call.
I'd like to highlight to investors that this call is being recorded. The company is making it available to investors and media via webcast, and a replay will be available on its website in the Investor Relations section shortly following the conclusion of the call. Additionally, it is the property of the company, and any redistribution, transmission, or rebroadcast of this call or webcast in any form without the company's express written consent is strictly prohibited. Now, I would like to turn the call over to LiveOne CEO, Rob Ellin.
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Thank you, Aaron, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to thank you for joining us today. It's a really exciting time at LiveOne, and I'm extremely pleased at how all areas of our business are performing. It was truly a spectacular quarter and one that illustrates the power of our creator-first model, focused on super fans, which rewards the talent and enriches the shareholders. As we near the close of fiscal 2024, we conservatively guided consolidated revenues to $115 million-$120 million, and we raised our guidance for fiscal 2025 to $145 million-$155 million. Of note, our audio division, contributing revenues of $130 million-$140 million and $20 million-$25 million of EBITDA, with over $17 million of positive cash flow.
I'm so proud of our audio team, considering at the time of the acquisitions of Slacker Radio and PodcastOne, the combined pro forma revenue was around $40 million, with 40,000 members losing $15 million a year. Today, Slacker Radio has proudly passed 3.5 million members. In this past quarter, added over 300,000 members and close to 700,000 year-over-year. We are guiding this year over 1 million new members. This past quarter, we onboarded 24 new podcasts, signed some long-term contract, and re-signed almost every one of our current podcast shows. We have a pipeline of over 100 existing podcasts. That's 10 times the amount of any in, any in history. Shows us that we believe, and many will join our network.
We focus on great creators with amazing stories that can benefit and achieve increased engagement by joining our family. These shows are averaging about $350,000 annual in revenues, to over $7 million adding. This gives us a unique clarity and strong confidence in our ability to achieve our 2025 financial guidance. Also, as we expand our podcast roster and our sponsorship, we now have over 600 advertisers and partners, and growing, as well as over 10 podcast networks as potential acquisitions, very similar to what we did with Kast Media. Kit, Sue, Eli, and the rest of the podcast team have done an amazing job, and you'll have an opportunity to listen to Kit presenting at 11:30 call.
I'm excited to announce this past quarter, we closed our first ever $20+ million B2B deal with one of the largest streaming platforms in the world, a Fortune 500 company. This, combined with our extension of our 10-year partnership with Tesla, extending their contract for at least another 18 months, ensures increasing monthly revenues, which provides us with full confidence that our business plan will provide more and more of these B2B deals. We now have over 42 potential B2B partnerships in our pipeline across 8 verticals. In my 30+ year history of high-level involvement in media and technology companies, anytime our companies have passed, surpassed that $100 million in revenues, with most of this almost guaranteed recurring next year, it has always provided both myself and my management team, the confidence and the runway and ability to drive further revenues and sizable EBITDA for our shareholders.
This is the LiveOne flywheel. It starts with creator first, focused on superfans, driving traffic and engagement, and producing multiple revenue streams from the same piece of content. This quarter, our only negative EBITDA division, our merchandise CPS, has cut over $5 million of costs and will continue to cut up to $7.5-$10 million in costs, and use that cost saving to accelerate our celebrity brands. We will launch between 8-12 celebrity brands, starting with Birthday Sex with Jeremih and Russell Bevan. We sold out in our first few weeks of the first round of product. This past year, proudly, our publishing division, Drumify and Splitmind, was nominated for 3 Grammys and took home 2 Grammy wins. The awards are just the beginning.
We created sounds production platform to compete with Splice, where producers upload their beats and sound to a storefront for other creators to purchase them. Like Splice, this is a subscription-based service, however, the big difference is our company and the creators own the IP and receive royalty payments. There is nothing better for our young artists than receiving mailbox money every month. This model motivates and attracts creative talent to our platform, driving traffic, audience, and engagement. Again, with very little cost to us and unlimited revenue potential, revenues increased over 300% in our first year. I'd also like to highlight, we created a subsidiary of PodcastOne called Studio One, focused on ownership of scripted IP, more specifically focused on second windows of selling to television and film.
This quarter, we proudly announced the acquisition and launch of 4 shows, Opportunist, Lost in Panama, Vigilante, and Varnamtown, of which is already partnered with a major streaming platform and is waiting to be greenlit as a scripted TV show. Another one of those has partnered with a different platform and is already sold as a documentary. Our supply is deep and our possibilities are endless. I really hope everyone had an opportunity to listen to our newest podcast, Varnamtown, hosted by Kyle MacLachlan. This is a great example of the type of podcast we are targeting, which have the traction to be major studio productions. We believe we currently have 8-12 current podcasts, have the potential to turn into scripted shows, and even more on the horizon, either creating our own or acquiring existing podcasts and then promoting them within our community.
Once again, owning more and more IP, licensing, merchandise in coming years, the division could become the most profitable division within the company. Given the current strength and future potential of our business, we believe our stock remains extremely undervalued. We increased our buyback from $4 million to $10 million, leaving approximately $6 million at capacity. Thank you, everyone, for your time and attention, and I'd like to hand it back to our CFO, Aaron Sullivan, for Q3 results.
Aaron Sullivan (CFO)
Thanks, Rob. I'll spend just a few minutes providing a very brief overview of our results for the third quarter of fiscal 2024, the quarter ending December 31, 2023. Consolidated revenue for the three-month period ended December 31, 2023, was $31.2 million. Slacker posted record revenue for Q3 of $16.8 million, adjusted EBITDA of $6.8 million. PodcastOne posted revenue of $10.4 million and adjusted EBITDA loss of $400,000. For the third quarter of fiscal 2024, revenue consists of 54% membership and 46% advertising, sponsorship, merchandise, and other, compared to 49% membership and 51% advertising, sponsorship, and merchandise, and other in the prior year period. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA for Q3 fiscal 2024 was $3.3 million.
On a U.S. GAAP basis, LiveOne posted a consolidated net loss of $2.6 million, or $0.03 per diluted share for Q3 fiscal 2024. Rob, I'll turn it back to you.
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Great. Thank you, Aaron. Again, a spectacular quarter for the company. Huge growth again. In conclusion, I just want to reiterate, as each of my prior companies has broken that $100 million mark in revenues, whether it was Digital Turbine, iWon, JAKKS, THQ, Forward Industries, Grand Toys, each have had substantial 5- to 100-times runs for their shareholders. I'm confident and excited because I believe this is the biggest opportunity in my career. I personally invested over $18 million in this company, and I increased our company stock buyback to $10 million because I see where we're headed and strongly believe our stock is undervalued. We've said we were going to achieve hitting 10 million subscribers is over a 5-year period. We're well on that way and super confident we're going to hit there.
If we do, we'll be over $1 billion in revenues, and this will be, the stock will be substantially higher. I want to thank everyone for their support and look forward to any questions. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure you are unmuted locally. That's star followed by one on your telephone keypad to register a question. Our first question today comes from Brian Kinstlinger from Alliance Global Partners. Brian, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Brian Kinstlinger (Managing Director and Analyst)
Great, thank you. Congrats on your eight-figure sponsorship deal with PodcastOne. First, is this a new sponsor or a larger agreement from an existing sponsor? I guess I'm trying to understand if this is all incremental revenue to Podcast's current run rate.
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Yeah. So, this is a brand new partner. It started the end of last year, when we announced it. It will continue to grow, and it's way more than eight figures. It's well over $20 million, and you'll start to see that incremental growth in this quarter, and substantially higher as each quarter goes forward. This gives us a streaming partner, one of the biggest in the world, a Fortune 500 company, and gives us a massive audience to reach to showcase our content.
Brian Kinstlinger (Managing Director and Analyst)
Fantastic. Then more broadly, we've heard from the Googles and Facebooks of the world that the ad market is finally beginning to strengthen, and then we also have an election year ahead, which usually helps the ad market. First, are you seeing the same signs in the market where pricing might begin to strengthen? And then will podcast benefit from political ad trends?
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
The answer to both is yes. We're already seeing that, and we're seeing telltale signs that this is gonna be a fantastic year. As you can see by the numbers we announced this morning in PodcastOne, we almost matched last year, right? We did $32 million last year. We're at $31 million and change already with a quarter to go, and obviously our fourth quarter, right, especially with this new contract, is gonna be the biggest quarter ever in the history of the company. So we're seeing telltale signs it's strong. Politics does work in advertising, but I think the biggest thing, Brian, to look at is the trends in podcasting.
The usage, the number of people that are moving to podcast, the demographics that are moving, it's getting younger and younger as well, and also the number of sponsors that are moving in- into podcasting. It's, it's really a maturing business, and what I've told everyone is, is this business was gonna grow when we bought PodcastOne from $4 million to eventually $5 million-$7 million. What I would tell you now, it's gonna be way more like $7 million-$10 million by 2030. So there's a big market developing, and this is really a unique time for, for our Advertising and Podcast business.
Brian Kinstlinger (Managing Director and Analyst)
Right. Just the heart of the question, it's clear PodcastOne revenue is growing. Growth is a function of downloads versus price. I think you grew downloads 15%, if I read an article correctly, or unique visitors. So I guess I'm wondering, what are the pricing trends as I speak to the ad market? Is pricing generally been flat and you expect to increase? Has it been increasing? Just speak to pricing on the ad side, if you could.
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Yeah. I mean, I can talk from the overall market, right, is increasing somewhat, right? But really what's happening for us is because we've built this community, right, we're able to sell across the community, and part of the excitement, and you'll see... You know, when you see podcasts like Brendan Schaub move over, and Brendan moved over doing, you know – well, he's already doing two times what he was doing before. Because of our community, we're able to upsell and sell at very different CPA than CPMs, and some of the bigger guys are, who are mostly doing programmatic advertising. So as a trend, the trend is our friend. The industry itself is going up, but for us, we're going up even higher because our community continues to grow.
Brian Kinstlinger (Managing Director and Analyst)
Great. I have a couple more, if you don't mind. First, and I ask this every quarter, I may have missed it: Can you speak to the number of podcasts that are pending onboarding and speak to the expected timeframe? I could be wrong, but I think last quarter you had 6 of the 27 from Cast. I might be reading my notes wrong, so if I'm wrong, sorry. And then there's probably others pending. So just maybe take us through what's pending and the timeframe.
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Yeah. So we announced we added 24 this year. That's by far a record for the company, right? We're now up to close to 180 podcasts. We said as for the first time in history, we have over 100 podcasts in our pipeline. And the reason that that's happening is, if you read the announcement from Spotify, they hired a massive team with very talented team of creators, and they just got rid of all of them. And they woke up and realized they're the best at distribution, right? And we're a great partner for them, distribution, but they're really managing these small podcasts does not make sense for them. So a lot of these contracts, there was $28 billion of acquisitions in the industry.
The industry—the trend was, it was a seller's market for podcasts, both podcast networks as well as podcasters. Right now, it's a buyer's market. You're gonna see from Amazon and Spotify and Apple and Sirius, a lot of these podcasts that do $250,000-$5 million in revenues, their contracts are coming up, and they really need a place that can handhold them and support them, right, in this market. And it's really not going to happen in these, these big companies. It's, it's not really the right place to be. So this is the biggest pipeline we've ever had, and I fully expect to beat that 24 number. We'll have still a lot more coming this fourth quarter, and I expect to beat that number of, you know, call it 27-30 this year.
I fully expect to beat that next year. And just looking at our pipeline and how close we are on many of these, I think you'll see some really exciting announcements. You'll see some major, major podcasters moving over to our platform, like Brendan did. It's rare that you see those kind of moves, but you're gonna see them in a unique way. And the big guys are gonna—they're gonna control distribution, which is wonderful that we have these partnerships with Spotify and Apple and Samsung and so on, right? But they're also going to be focused on the Joe Rogans of the world, who just signed a new $250 million contract, right? And the show just moved over from Amazon, $100 million a year for Smartless, right?
So there's more and more money pouring into the system, but the big guys are gonna focus on the Howard Sterns and the Joe Rogans, and we're gonna have an unbelievable opportunity to acquire existing podcasts with traffic and audience... as well as like we did with Kast Media. I fully expect. We said we have 10 acquisitions in the pipeline. I fully expect additional acquisitions in the podcast space as well this year that are hugely accretive to our bottom line.
Brian Kinstlinger (Managing Director and Analyst)
Great. Last question I have, I think, I don't think you discussed it, but I think it's a really important point that you and I have discussed in the past. So maybe you can share any stats for recently onboarded podcasts, how they perform compared to when they were on other platforms, not on the PodcastOne platform, in the first six months or so. I think that we've had a good discussion, and I think it would be helpful if you could share some stats.
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
I think this is a credit to Kit, Eli, and Sue, and they've got, you know, 65 years of history in doing $ billions of revenues in radio, right? Sue ran all the sales for Howard Stern and Mel Karmazin, and all three of them trained under Norm Pattiz, who was a pioneer in radio and, you know, created one of the great public companies in radio with his company previously, with Westwood One. Our team has been able to move over podcasts, and without giving names, we moved over one podcast that literally had 20,000 downloads. It was making a, you know, couple of dollars. Very talented, two women, very talented from a small town. We moved them onto our platform. We put them on with the Vanderpumps. We put them onto all the Housewives.
We put them on all of our female network, which we're, we're most powerful, and they've now grown to 150,000 downloads, and they're doing $ millions in revenues. So we're... And there's multiple stories like that, and very few companies are left that can do that, where they have a community, that they're really working on the sales, the marketing, the PR, the production, all of it in one, and working with that talent to deliver them way better CPAs, way more traffic, way more audience. We also put them on Good Morning America and put them on TV and, you know, did all, all the cross work of, of PR for them to really grow them, and, you know, couldn't be more proud of it. You know, Brendan, Brendan's show has exploded since he came on our network.It's up 2.5 times since from being over at Kast Media.
Brian Kinstlinger (Managing Director and Analyst)
Great. Thanks for all the details.
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Thanks, Brian. Appreciate you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question is from John Hickman from Ladenburg Thalmann. John, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Jon Hickman (Analyst)
Hey, Rob, could you walk through, like, how a podcast becomes a, you know, a streaming or television-type, asset? And what the revenues- what your portion of the revenues could be?
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Yeah. Yeah, great. Thank you. Thanks, John. I mean, you and I go back a long way. I think I met you when I owned Atmosphere Films, and I had a slate of television and film that I was very fortunate. You know, those films turned out to be one; one turned out to be the movie 300, another one turned out to be The Spiderwick Chronicles, and we did well over $1 billion in revenues. Here's the beauty of this model: you take a podcast like Varnamtown. My partner and board member, Patrick Wachsberger, one of the great creators of content maybe in history, just won an Academy Award for CODA, created Twilight, La La Land, came to us with a show called Varnamtown. Guys, an amazing story.
Right, I'll make it really brief, but 300 people, little town, for any of you old enough to know this, this band called REO Speedwagon. A plane lands in this little town of 300 people in North Carolina, and all of a sudden, everybody explodes and becomes rich. Money's coming out of, out of the... You know, literally, money's coming out of their pockets. It's so, so wild how many- how much money is created system. And of course, what happens? Murders and, and, and CIA, and FBI, and drug enforcement, and tax authorities, and so on, in this little town of 300 people. That show, I highly believe it's gonna become a bidding war for the streaming networks.
It's the story of Pablo Escobar infiltrating a little town in North Carolina, and, you know, and if anyone who has an opportunity to listen to it, I think you're gonna really enjoy it. If you've seen the show Ozark, or you've seen, you know, any of these true crime tribe-type shows, this is one of the best I've ever seen, and I think that's one of our four shows we've announced so far. You know, stay tuned because there's gonna be a lot more announced any minute now. These four are all in this quarter, right? Opportunist, Vigilante is already sold to a major studio. They just wired us $70,000 just to start with.
So John, when you look at these things, you're gonna start to get production money, you're gonna start to get, you know, back-end money, and as we grow it, we expect to do 10-12 of those shows a year, which we're doing anyway, right? They're on our platform. You know, make some money off the podcast, but then sell to that second window where there's no risk, and Netflix or Apple or Amazon or HBO buys the rights to it, and, you know, we sit there with the catcher's mitt and collect money for the rest of our lives. I'm very fortunate when I did 300, it's now almost 20 years, you know, those royalty checks come in for life, and so it's really exciting, you know, next generation of where podcast is going.
Jon Hickman (Analyst)
So is there any cost to you to do that?
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Zero.
Jon Hickman (Analyst)
I mean-
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Zero. In fact, not only is it-
Jon Hickman (Analyst)
Whatever you make on those is 100% margin?
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Correct. Once we-
Jon Hickman (Analyst)
Okay.
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Once we... Yeah, so as an example, right, on Vigilante, we just got a $70,000 check, right? We get that check, right?
Jon Hickman (Analyst)
Mm-hmm.
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
It's already handed off, right? They've already hired the writers, the producers on it, right? We're executive producers on it, and we'll continue to get paid as producers on it. We'll continue to get paid back in if it's successful. And, you know, literally, if it makes it, you know, you make it the first year, you're gonna get paid a lot of money. If it makes second and third year, yeah, this becomes mailbox money for life.
Jon Hickman (Analyst)
So who in your shop is shepherding that initiative?
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Yeah, so, I mean, there's a team of people. So remember, it starts as a podcast, right? So the podcast-team is starting it. Imagine, imagine that now you can go, instead of scripts and, and books sell for $1 million, $2 million, right? Then you gotta hire a writer. Well, here, you already have proof that the show's already up, the traffic's already there, the audience is already there, and now you're selling to Netflix, and you're going: "Okay, the show is already number 4 on Apple, right? It's already had 100,000 downloads in the first week." They've got proof of concept, they've got proof of customer base. It's a very unique model, and yeah, I, I'm, I'm really excited about this.
I think it's gonna be a real winner for us, and it'll take a little bit of time, but you know, just as the small bits of money coming in, come next year, could be very substantial money coming in and growing every year.
Jon Hickman (Analyst)
Okay, real quick, can you remind the four that you've already announced? Vigilante, Varnamtown, what are the other two?
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Yep. So Opportunist, which amazingly just the reruns, just the reruns are doing 100,000 downloads. We're making a lot of money just, just off the reruns already, right? So that first three years of it, we acquired that from Kast Media. Vigilante is already sold to a major network, Guy. Opportunist sold... Opportunist is partnered with a network to do a documentary off just one season of it. Guy, we're, we're out with two other seasons to the networks, and the other one is called Lost in Panama.
Jon Hickman (Analyst)
Okay.
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
I think-
Jon Hickman (Analyst)
Thank you.
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
We'll add another one almost... We'll probably add another one every couple of weeks, John, right now.
Jon Hickman (Analyst)
Okay. Okay, go, go and do.
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Thank you. Appreciate you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question is from Sam Lee. Sam, please go ahead. Your line is open. Sam, please unmute yourself lightly. It appears that Sam has disconnected, so I'll move on to our next question. Our next question is from Sean McGowan from Roth MKM. Sean, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Sean McGowan (Managing Director and Analyst)
Thank you. Are you able to hear me?
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Yeah. Hey, Sean. How you doing, buddy?
Sean McGowan (Managing Director and Analyst)
Yes, pretty good. How are you? Let me start with Aaron. First of all, congratulations, Aaron, on the recent promotions. But second, can you give us an idea of exactly when the 10-Q will be out?
Aaron Sullivan (CFO)
Thanks, Sean. Appreciate it. So we are looking at. So, so it'll be early next week. You know, deadline is Wednesday the fourteenth. We're hoping to get it out maybe a day or two sooner.
Sean McGowan (Managing Director and Analyst)
Okay. Would you mind repeating those percentage breakdowns on the revenue, you know, between subscription and ad and, you know, any kind of color you could provide on revenue outside of those two categories?
Aaron Sullivan (CFO)
Yeah, sure. So let's see. I think we mentioned that Slacker revenue was $16.8 million for the quarter, and PodcastOne was $10.4 million. So that's two big buckets there. And then in terms of the percentages, it's 54% membership, and then 46% advertising, sponsorship, merchandise, and other, for the current quarter, and then the prior year quarter was 49% membership and 51% advertising, sponsorship, merchandising, and other.
Sean McGowan (Managing Director and Analyst)
Got it. But that, that's just within audio. But can you just give me any color on, you know, revenue outside of that, just any meaningful trends going on there?
Aaron Sullivan (CFO)
Outside of that, you've got, basically, merchandise revenue makes up the remainder.
Sean McGowan (Managing Director and Analyst)
Okay. And then on the $20 million deal, if you could provide any, a little bit more color on that. For example, what time frame does that cover? And is all of that revenue going to be booked in, kind of in one bucket, or will it be spread around?
Aaron Sullivan (CFO)
So that, that'll be... That's over the course of calendar 2024. So you should see it in a, you know, a relatively straight line manner over that period. And that, that will be in the advertising category.
Sean McGowan (Managing Director and Analyst)
Okay. So it's all podcast?
Aaron Sullivan (CFO)
Correct.
Sean McGowan (Managing Director and Analyst)
I see. Then back to Slacker for a second. Any updates or, you know, color on expanded relationship with Tesla or with any other equipment manufacturers? I think you've hinted in the past that there could be, you know, some additional partners for, you know, audio streaming. Anything new there?
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Yeah. So let me, let me jump in on that, Sean. So what we just announced is we expanded our pipeline from 35 to 42 partners, right? Our streaming partner is the first of many of these B2B deals. And we fully expect that out of those 42, you know, somewhere, somewhere in the 5%-10% of those, those will close this year. So anywhere from 2-4 of those, and each of those are with billion- to multi-trillion-dollar companies, very similar to this, this type of deal, and so we couldn't be more excited about the pipeline. We brought a great team out of Microsoft, who's done billions of dollars of B2B deals, and as you know, John, my, my entire business in Digital Turbine was built off the backs of B2B deals.
That was just with carriers and hardware companies. We have eight verticals here, so we fully expect to expand our Auto business. We fully expect to expand our Carrier business. And historically, Slacker has had partnerships with everybody from Samsung to Verizon to T-Mobile. And as interest rates rise, and you're going to hear this theme exactly as I described it in Digital Turbine for almost seven years, the same trend is here. As interest rates are going up, those commodity businesses must have a closer relationship and must own the data of their customers, and you're seeing more and more, you know, of those partners now, signing up with content and owning their own content and having their own content deals versus giving it to Apple and Android and just allowing them to own all that data.
So really exciting pipeline, the biggest by far in the history of the company. It's the one area that we're adding people. We're now up to four people in our B2B. We'll continue to add to that group, and you'll probably see some announcements around that and expanding that B2B as we announce the next deal.
Sean McGowan (Managing Director and Analyst)
Okay. And when you talk about those 35-42 partners, is that all within Slacker, or does that include partnerships that would be in podcast?
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
You know, audio-auto partnerships, right? So even though this first deal is for podcast, that doesn't mean it can't expand to radio, right? So and it doesn't mean it can't expand to our live streaming or our pay-per-view. We have these massive libraries of video, so don't be surprised if you start to see, you know, announcements that cross over both of them.
Sean McGowan (Managing Director and Analyst)
Okay. Thank you. And then, last thing, Rob, could you give us a little bit more color on what we should expect to see in other products, you know, coming soon in, in celebrity? Is there any—can you give us a little peek there? I mean, the, the wine is off to a great start, but what other things should we expect to see in the, in the coming quarters?
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, and, you know, be patient because it's coming any minute now, right? You know what I said is you're going to see another 2 or 3 products launch. So we have 2 wines already that are being launched. You're going to see us across big spaces, things like coffee, right, cosmetics. So when you think about what's happened in the industry, these social media stars, which we live with every day, whether they're podcasters, whether they're musicians, whether social media stars, we worked with all of them, right? You think of Logan Paul and Prime and how it's now doing $1.5 billion revenues, right? You think, you think of Kim Kardashian, $700 million of revenues in 2 years, and what she's done to the cosmetic industry.
You think of, you know, go back, go back to, you know, you know, to Avión, right inside of Entourage, and, you know, tequila being created inside of it. We see this great opportunity with very little to no cost to us to be able to partner with our creators, with already having the rev shares built, and be able to launch products and find out if their social media drives it. If their social media drives it, you're going to have a great brand. If it doesn't drive it, there's a pretty good chance that's going to be one you're going to pass on. So we expect to launch 10-12, I'm sorry, 8-12 this year, and we'll expand to 10-12 the year after and, and further the year after. These will all be with very little cost to us.
It's really just an extension of our content and new revenue streams that come out of it. I can't wait to do the ones with podcasters, because with podcasters, just think about it, right? You know, 50% of the business is direct response, so they have proven records that you're selling products, right, directly off that podcast, because these podcasts have super fans. So they don't have to be massive businesses, but they can be hugely accretive and hugely grow our business overnight.
Sean McGowan (Managing Director and Analyst)
Great. Thank you very much, both of you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Our next question is a follow-up from Brian Kinstlinger. Brian, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Brian Kinstlinger (Managing Director and Analyst)
Thank you. I have two. The first one, I just want- I'm sure lots of people are thinking this about this $20 million deal, so I'm going to ask it to make sure we're all thinking about it the, the right way. If I look at PodcastOne's revenues, you've been at about $10.5 million for each of the first three quarters, ±. Is the way to think about it, that you're going to do $42 million-ish this year, whatever it is, ±, and next year is, you're already off to $20 million higher, so 50% growth based on that $20 million deal, or is there something I'm not thinking about the right way there?
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Yeah, we'll come out, Brian. We can't go any deeper than we publicly announced. What we said is we expect to be on a run rate of $45 million-$50 million, with 4-5... We're going to have to update that shortly, and give us a minute to do that, but we haven't publicly announced anything deeper there. But, you know, you're certainly thinking the right way, right? And one of the exciting things here is you now have your Advertising business growing almost as fast as your Audio business, right? So this is the first time we have two moon shots, you know, happening at the same time.
Brian Kinstlinger (Managing Director and Analyst)
Okay, that's good to hear. The second one, I just maybe for Aaron on the cost side, the pros and cons, if you could just walk me through it. The first, on the OpEx side, it's substantially down the December quarter to the September quarter. I assume that's your cost-cutting efforts. I want to make sure there's nothing one time, and this is kind of indicative of the near term, or lower, as you've talked about in the past. And then on the gross margin side, I'm not sure what impacted the mix. It was a little bit lower than it's been for the last many quarters. So just if you could just take me through the dynamics on the cost side and how we should think about them going forward. And that's all the questions I have. Thank you.
Aaron Sullivan (CFO)
... Yeah, thanks, Brian. So of the OpEx question, I think we're, you know, this, there's not overall, there's not any one time, significant one-time matters in here. It came down a little bit from last quarter simply because we had substantial costs related to spinning off PodcastOne, so you had accounting and legal costs, et cetera, public filing costs in previous quarters. So you don't have that noise kind of going forward. So that's that. And then on the margin side, there's about three percentage points of additional spend in the current quarter, where we're out acquiring content. You know, we expect that to kind of normalize in the coming quarters. So you should see an increase of about, you know, 2-3% there.
And I think that's kind of the runway we've been on previously. So should drop- Or sorry, it dropped down this quarter. It should pick back up in coming quarters.
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Great. Thanks for the explanation.
Aaron Sullivan (CFO)
Thanks, Brian.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. Before we take our next question, I'd just like to remind everyone: to register a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Our next question is from Thierry Wuilloud from Water Tower Research. Thierry, please go ahead. Your line is open.
Thierry Wuilloud (Managing Director and Analyst)
Yes, thank you very much. Good quarter, guys, and you've already covered a lot of ground, so I just have one question. You're guiding to a very substantial jump in EBITDA for the fourth quarter, and I was wondering if you could give us some color, how much of that is seasonal, if it's driven by a one-time deal, or if... And what part of it is maybe leveraged in the model?
Aaron Sullivan (CFO)
So I'll take this, Rob, and then you can jump in. So for Q4, as I mentioned earlier, we had a lot of kind of one-time noise in kind of Q1, Q2, with a little bit bleeding into the current quarter on our efforts to spin out PodcastOne. So that's, you know, behind us, so we're expecting to see some cost savings there. You know, as the Audio business continues to grow into Q4, we're just seeing additional contribution down to the bottom line there. And that's really kind of the two driving trends there in the EBITDA for our expected EBITDA for Q4. I don't know, Rob, if you have anything else to add.
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Yeah, I mean, I would just say, you know, not just PodcastOne, we had also filed a public offering for Slacker Radio to merge into a SPAC, which we subsequently pulled because the, the market was so terrible, but also because the company is growing so fast, right? Revenues and EBITDA. So we had the cost of, of 3, you know, 3 audits, legal fees, so on, was very expensive. And Aaron, who was just made CFO, has just done a great job of that and, you know, great job of managing it, and you'll see, I think you'll see those margins come back throughout this coming quarter.
Thierry Wuilloud (Managing Director and Analyst)
Great. So I mean, if I summarize that, the EBITDA level you're forecasting for the fourth quarter is maybe a sustainable level going forward and kind of a new quarterly basis?
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Yeah, I mean, our EBITDA, as you can see, and, you know, we don't break down by quarter, but we did put out guidance for next year, where we said our Audio business-
Thierry Wuilloud (Managing Director and Analyst)
Yeah
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
... Right, is gonna do 130-140 million, right, with $20-$25 million of EBITDA, right? So you're starting to see some real traction-
Thierry Wuilloud (Managing Director and Analyst)
Yeah.
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
You know, and real, real move towards cash, cash flow and bottom line.
Thierry Wuilloud (Managing Director and Analyst)
Great. That's it for me, guys. Thank you very much.
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We have no further questions, so I'd like to hand back to Robert Ellin for any closing or further remarks.
Rob Ellin (CEO and Chairman)
I just want to thank everyone, and appreciate your time. And in a difficult market like this, you know, this is, this is a great time for our company and growth. We're gonna continue to buy stock, and, you know, we'll be able to buy stock in the next couple of days now that the earnings are off, and we'll continue to buy stock. And if we'll get a trade down at these low levels, we'll expand that buyback again, if we need to. So I wanna thank everyone. Thank you for spending the time, and we appreciate your support in, in a tough market.
Operator (participant)
Thank you everyone for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines, and have a lovely day.