LiveOne - Earnings Call - Q4 2025

Executive Summary

• Fiscal Q4 2025 revenue was $19.29M and Adjusted EBITDA was $1.59M; FY25 consolidated revenue was $114.4M while the Audio division posted record revenue of $108.9M and Adjusted EBITDA of $18.2M, surpassing guidance by $2.4M on consolidated revenue and by $2.9M and 51% on Audio Adjusted EBITDA, respectively.
• Versus Wall Street consensus, Q4 revenue missed ($19.29M vs $22.26M*) while EPS loss appears smaller than expected (−$0.08 vs −$0.425*), reflecting a mixed headline setup; EBITDA missed consensus (−$1.72M actual vs −$0.67M*) as Street uses GAAP EBITDA, whereas the company focuses on non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA.
• Management emphasized cost reductions (~$40M annualized since Dec-2024) and financing flexibility (replaced a $7M line of credit with up to $27.5M facility post year-end), positioning for B2B growth and AI-driven efficiency.
• Key catalysts: announced momentum in B2B deals ($44M contracted; Amazon $16.5M; another Fortune 50 $25M) and an expected August launch of the largest B2B partner to date (10x Tesla’s subscriber base), plus PodcastOne guidance raised to $55–$60M revenue and $3.5–$5M EBITDA.

What Went Well and What Went Wrong

What Went Well

• “We’ve surpassed our guidance for revenues and adjusted EBITDA* for fiscal 2025” with Audio division record results: $108.9M revenue and $18.2M Adjusted EBITDA.
• Aggressive cost actions: “cutting $40M in annualized costs since December 2024,” contributing to Adjusted EBITDA outperformance.
• Strategic B2B traction: “over 5 B2B partnerships signed, over $50M of revenues,” including Amazon ($16.5M) and a Fortune 50 partner ($25M), validating enterprise demand.

What Went Wrong

• Q4 revenue fell YoY due to Slacker reductions ($19.3M vs $30.9M), driving operating loss to −$8.25M and Adjusted EBITDA down to $1.59M.
• GAAP EBITDA missed Street consensus (−$1.72M actual vs −$0.67M*), highlighting divergence between company’s non-GAAP “Adjusted EBITDA” focus and the Street’s GAAP frameworks.
• Gross margin pressure expected as ad-supported Tesla users ramp before advertising fully monetizes; 90–120 day ad cycle delays revenue recognition on newly added ad-supported users.

Transcript

Speaker 2

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for patiently waiting. We will be starting momentarily. Thank you for standing by. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the LiveOne NQ for fiscal 2025 financial results and Business Update webcast. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the Speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press STAR followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, press STAR one again. Thank you. I will now turn the call over to Ryan Carhart, CFO. Ryan, you may begin.

Speaker 3

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to LiveOne's Business Update and Financial Results Conference call for the company's fourth quarter and fiscal year ended March 31, 2025. 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 ended March 31, 2024 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 the 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, July 3, 2025, and 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 conclusions of this call. Additionally, it is the property of the Company and any redistribution, transmission or rebroadcast of this call or the webcast in any form without the Company's express written consent is strictly prohibited. Now I would like to turn the call over to the LiveOne CEO Rob Ellin.

Speaker 1

Good morning everyone.

Speaker 4

This is Rob Ellin, CEO and Chairman of LiveOne. I want to thank you everyone for joining. This has been a pivotal year for the company. The company has been transformed in some of their deals with Tesla and has come out stronger than we even expected. We have delivered 101st. I'm going to talk about today's numbers and I'm going to talk about the future and some of the really exciting moonshots that the company is now focused on. Our financial performance, we did over $112 million in revenues, $108 million on our audio business and delivered $18 million of EBITDA, $6 million above what we had gotten the street to almost only two months ago. Our podcast business did over $52 million from $38 million last year. This quarter alone was $14 million and an EBITDA of over $900,000.

We just raised our guidance to $55 million-$60 million with $3.5 million to $5 million of EBITDA. Other highlights from our Podcast business, we have now had six straight months of being a top 10 podcaster in the world. We have over a billion impressions across our network. We have 46 new podcasts in the last 24 months and passed 200 plus total, with a robust pipeline of over 100 new podcasts in the pipeline today, and we're adding almost one a month. We also have 17 potential acquisitions in the podcast industry that we are looking at as we continue to roll up and consolidate the business. As you got to meet Ryan earlier, Ryan has done a brilliant job of stepping in as CFO and made some very transformative financial moves, including replacing EastWest Bank $7 million credit line with JGB.

A partner of ours for four years previously has come back in with a credit facility of up to $27.5 million giving us an opportunity of having on performance the biggest cash position we'll ever have. We've eliminated over $10 million in short term liabilities. We've cut one third of our staff at Slacker Radio and over 70% of our cash at CPS with over $40 million in total costs. This is the reason that our EBITDA was able to outperform even our own guidance. Now I'm going to talk about the future. The future is pretty remarkable. Added 2 million Tesla cars. We've now converted over 1.3 million. We now have over 1.5 million subscribers and ad supported users. We've launched two massive partnerships with Amazon over $16.5 million and with a Fortune 50 company for over $25 million.

We have 75 additional B2B deals in the pipeline. We're now at almost a $50 million run rate on those new partnerships across five new B2B deals. We are expecting to launch our biggest B2B partner potentially in the history of the company with almost 10x subscribers to Tesla and that first phase will be launched in August as we continue to look at the future of technology. As most of you know, my background is taking media companies and finding transformative technologies. I will be focusing almost all of my energy on AI and on Web3 crypto initiatives. On the AI side of it, we have been able to cut dramatic costs, including one third of our cost of Slacker Radio by adding AI and be able to utilize hosting and be able to utilize marketing.

With that marketing, we have just started our first campaign to start to advertise in conjunction with DAX, the largest programmatic advertiser in the world. Our fill rate on our Tesla users is over 50%. We are about to launch our second phase of that initiative to start converting utilizing AI to convert those users into subscribers. As we look at our Web3 crypto initiatives, the starting point was to build a renowned group of crypto experts with Steve McClurg joining our team, who started the first ETF in the history of Web3, Steve Lehman on the board of Coinbase, and Luke Kerner, one of the great analysts at Goldman Sachs who started Crypto Monday. We have just launched the first ever podcast network focused on Web3 and crypto.

We see a massive opportunity for us to acquire and start new initiatives in the podcast space. With over 75 potential podcasters in the crypto space right now in our pipeline as well as using AI initiatives, create our own original IP and initiatives in this space to show our confidence and our belief in how weak our stock has been and how undervalued it is. The company has just bought back over 350,000 shares of LiveOne and over 1 million shares of PODC. We will continue that buyback as we have over $6 million, just under $6 million of additional room in our buyback and show our confidence in the company and explore all options to add to our holdings in both of those companies.

As LiveOne continues to demonstrate our ability to be nimble, our ability to fight through difficult times, our ability to utilize technology to transform the industry. This is the most exciting time that we've seen in the history of the company and with a balance sheet to really be able to grow aggressively the business we see. This is extremely exciting year going forward and we look forward to talking to you at the end of next quarter. Thank you everyone for joining and we look forward to an update shortly. I'd like to hand it off to Ryan.

Ryan is our new CFO and as I stated has just done an absolutely brilliant job of maneuvering, replacing EastWest Bank under difficult circumstances and doubling our credit or more than doubling our credit facility literally within weeks of finding out that EastWest Bank was pulling their line. So Ryan, with that I'd like to hand it off to you and thank you for your help.

Speaker 3

Thanks Rob. I'll spend just a few minutes providing a very brief overview of our results for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025 and the fiscal year ended March 31, 2025, beginning with our quarterly results. Consolidated revenue for the three-month period ended March 31, 2025, was $19.3 million. Our audio division posted revenue for Q4 of $18.2 million and adjusted EBITDA of $4.1 million. Consolidated adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025 was $1.1 million on a U.S. GAAP basis. LiveOne posted a consolidated net loss of $10.9 million or $0.07 per diluted share in Q4 2025. Our full year fiscal 2025 results posted consolidated revenue of $114.4 million and adjusted EBITDA of $8.4 million. Our audio division posted full year revenue of $108.9 million and adjusted EBITDA of $18.2 million.

Additionally, I'm excited to announce, as Rob said, that we completed our financing after year end with our partners at JGB, which replaced our EastWest Bank line of credit. This will help facilitate the growth of our business and position us for the future. We are excited about the potential of the opportunities in our business development pipeline and are poised to see growth forward with these opportunities. Further, our growth in the PodcastOne subsidiary is expected to continue and we expect to see a tremendous year ahead for them. Rob, I'll turn it back to you.

Speaker 4

Just to wrap up and thank you, Ryan. Our B2B initiatives are really starting to move in place. As we said, over five B2B partnerships signed, over $50 million of revenues. Our largest potential opportunity to be launched in August. We will have partnerships this year with additional carriers, retailers, streaming networks, auto companies, and really just focused our energy around those B2B deals and really those initiatives that can move the needle. That will be tens of millions to hundreds of millions of dollars over a five-year period. With that, our initiative to move into the Web3 space is moving fast and aggressively. You'll continue to see additional names in Web3 joining our platform as well as podcasters in Web3 crypto joining our platform. Our AI initiatives have allowed us to make substantial cuts in the business. We have over 500 music channels.

We used to have over 120 hosts. We now have a handful of hosts that are able to host those. We also are very excited about our TV and film initiative. We sold our third television show, third podcast, moving to second windows to television. As you start to see the dynamics of where podcasting is going and how much is moving to video as we sell these to television. These are brand new revenue streams that could be tens of millions of dollars with zero additional cost to the business. We're going to continue to buy back stock, we're going to continue to strengthen our balance sheet. We're going to continue to strengthen our B2B deals and we look forward to a really exciting year. I want to thank everyone for joining and open up for any questions.

Speaker 2

At this time, I would like to remind everyone, in order to ask a question, press star then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, just press star one again. Thank you. Please hold for a short moment to compile the Q and A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Sean McGowan from Roth Capital Partners. Sean, please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Thank you. Hi, Ryan. Hi, Rob. A couple of questions on some of the con. Some of the details that you talked about. Rob, when you say fill rate of over 50%, can you just clarify what exactly that means from a financial standpoint?

Speaker 4

Yeah, I mean I can't give too much details yet on the financial, on what the revenues are going to be. You'll see that shortly because we haven't put out guidance but we will at the end of next quarter. What it really means is really simply, Sean, is that 50% of that inventory is being filled now and it's well over 50 but 50+% of the inventory that previously was zero. Now that does two things, right? Number one is it drives revenues. Number two is that is setting the stage, right? Spotify claims that 60% of their subscribers, of their free supporters—and the reason they have free, right—convert to paid eventually. One of those reasons is that some people don't like advertising.

Some people do, right so hopefully we'll start to convert through that, and that'll be the first phase of the next big AI initiative which is going to be launched imminently, is to really press to convert as many as possible, these to paid subscribers as well. I think that 50% inventory will go. Go to, you know, 75% very quickly. As you know, our partner in that is DAX, which is the largest programmatic advertiser in the world.

Speaker 1

Right, so the 50 refers to the inventory of available advertising column.

Speaker 4

Correct.

Speaker 1

I understand that.

Speaker 4

Okay.

Speaker 1

At the moment, right, you're still, you know, running the funnel and getting advertising driven, but at the moment there are no, you know, not a significant number of paid subscribers. Is that the right way to interpret it?

Speaker 4

No, I mean, I wouldn't say that at all. I mean, we have, you know, we have out of the 1.5 plus million, right, we have well over 250,000 paid subscribers. Right now is going to be the time we're really going to be pressing to convert, you know, a sizable amount. And hopefully we can convert anywhere from 25,000-30,000 of them over the next year. If we do, it'll. It'll very, very substantial revenues to kick back back in as you do that.

Speaker 1

Okay, thanks for clarifying that. Shifting gears for a second. When we talk about things like Web3 and crypto, are you talking primarily about podcast content or is there something else?

Speaker 4

Yeah, I mean, I can't get into much more deep than that, as you know, Sean. Right. You know, but what I would say to you is, is as Steve McClurg just joined, and Steve's background is running on the, the first ETF and selling at Coinbase. Right. And Steve Lehman sits on the board of Coinbase. Right. We have, we have very aggressively moved in the space in that there's only three megaphones to the Web3 crypto industry, which is Twitter, YouTube and podcasting. The first phase of that is we've just announced our podcast network where we will start to both create our own host and our own IP. Right. Using AI to create those. Second is we'll be acquiring, just like we do with the rest of our podcasts, we were building a community of crypto podcasters in there.

You know, the opportunity, right, to do much more with Web3 is certainly there for us to expand. When you have a community of our size and you have a billion impressions, there is certainly tremendous opportunity to expand that opportunity financially.

Speaker 1

Okay, just to be clear, like just because I'm a novice at this. You're not talking about getting directly into the crypto business, mining or trading or exchanges. You're talking about around content.

Speaker 2

Right.

Speaker 1

Being a conduit for information.

Speaker 4

Yeah, again, I can't. I, yeah, I can't answer much more. You know, we're not going into the mining business for sure, but the tokenization business. Right. As you're watching the Robinhood announcement and what the stock did. Right. And tokenization. Tokenization of podcasters is really interesting. Right. You know, and there's just tremendous opportunities of where we can go with this and what we can leverage by being one of those megaphones when you have a billion impressions a month. Right. The kind of downloads we have, we just have. We have a huge influence over it. Our demographics audience certainly fits in with the Web3Crypto audience in a very unique way.

Speaker 1

Okay, last question, and I'll jump back in the queue. Ryan, when will the 10-K be filed?

Speaker 3

Yeah, it should be filed. We're hoping early next week. You know, everything is. Everything is there. We're just waiting. The auditors have to just do some documentation to wrap it up, so it's. It's in final form. We're just waiting for them to do that, and then we'll get it out to you early next week.

Speaker 1

Thank you very much.

Speaker 2

Again, if you would like to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. Our next question again from Sean McGowan from Roth Capital Partners. Sean, please go ahead.

Speaker 1

Yeah, quickly there. Rob, to the extensions. You can talk about any change in the types of deals, you know, some new deals that you're working on versus what you talked about before. You've done a great job laying the table for setting the table for what areas you might be looking at, anything new that you can ask about. Anything different someone was talking about before.

Speaker 4

Yeah, I'm sorry you're cutting out a little bit, Sean, but you're talking about the B2B deals. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1

In the past, about the kinds of verticals, you know, we're different from what we.

Speaker 4

Yeah, this is. This is the most exciting time maybe in the history of the company now, probably since the original Tesla deal, which when it first started was only a couple hundred thousand dollars. Right. You know, Tesla has 2 million subscribers. We'll be launching with a partner that has 10 times the amount of subscribers. And we're in deep conversations, as I've described before, where I fully expect the momentum is now building, where after you land a $25 million deal with $16.2 million deal with Amazon. The momentum is building in the direction very much like I built Digital Turbine and I built my other companies, right?

You're feeling that momentum that across carriers, across auto companies, across retailers, across streaming networks, cable, satellite, anyone with 10 million-3 billion eyeballs like Facebook who has a need for a subscription product, which we're just watching everybody going in, right? You watch, you watch Walmart going to Vizio, right? And you're watching, you know, Amazon go into music and film and television. Everybody's businesses are now infringing and crossing over them. We're one of 10 DSPs left on Earth, right? You just watch Napster sell for $200 million. They were, they were doing, you know, one fourth of our revenues, right? You watched Tidal sell a couple of years for $450 million. They had never made a dime.

We're really well positioned here that both on the B2B side as well as a potential partner or potential buyer of one or both of the businesses, as we publicly stated, is very much, very much timely right now that you're starting to see that momentum keep back up in the industry and huge interest around this.

Speaker 1

Okay, thanks. Then my last question is, is there anything new on the discussions with that relationship? No, no.

Speaker 4

I mean it's a beautiful, no, I mean it's kind of a beautiful thing. I mean, you know, if you go in almost any Tesla car now, you know, a lot of people have called me and it's really, we're really proud of this, Sean. You know, it's like we used to have a little red button, right? And we had a great subscriber number, right? We got paid $3 a month when the industry was moving up to $12 a month, right? And it was beautiful. You made some money out of it. We really got no branding, we got no database. Now today if you go into almost any Tesla car, you're going to see the LiveOne logo. They're building brand value there.

You know, think about your phone and seeing on your phone and if you saw LiveOne on the front of your phone every single time, what that means to you, right?

Speaker 3

I'm really proud.

Speaker 4

The fact that somehow we converted. 1.3 million out of 2 million cars have converted, right? It's a staggering number. It's almost unheard of, especially when you got competition from Apple and Cirrus and so on. It shows the appreciation, respect for the product, right, and the brand. Then they're using it for an average of like 40 minutes multiple times a day. You can, you can see that, you know, how much people really enjoyed, how much respect they have for the brand and why it fits with their needs. I think the next component of that is, is that we now have advertising. Now we've never been able to talk to those consumers, now we're talking to them. Last but not least, and maybe the most important part is we never control the database. Right. Sean, you would be Vin number 1.25 million.

Right now it's Sean McGowan who lives in Orange County or now in New York, right? Your age, your credit card. So we're actually building a real relationship and real foundation for a database that can be worth a fortune. Like think about what that database batch actually having a million three wealthy Tesla owners as subscribers and knowing the demographics and knowing they're from. It's really exciting. It's really exciting. It's obviously it takes time to bring those revenues back up, right, and bring some of those profits back up. From our standpoint of it is this is what we've always hoped for. We hope for the opportunity to be able to take those ARPU's up from $3, right, which are 12 years old. It'd be like owning a piece of real estate on the ocean and, and you're renting it for $3 a month.

You can never, never raise your rents. Right now we own the real estate, we can raise the rent. So our ARPUs are up from $3 to $5. Now we gotta really aggressively market. You're gonna see it coming very, very aggressively. You're gonna see us marketing to convert those people and then literally starting in the next couple of weeks. Great, thanks.

Speaker 2

Your next question comes from the line of Brian Kinstlinger from Alliance Global Partners. Brian, please go ahead.

Speaker 0

Hi, Rob, thanks for taking my question. Just one, I wanted to understand if I heard you right, in August you.

Speaker 4

Hope to launch your largest B2B deal.

Speaker 3

With a bigger.

Speaker 4

Subscriber base or bigger.

Speaker 0

Base of consumers than Tesla. Is that a signed deal already, something you're hoping to announce? And when does revenue generate, and how does that ramp?

Speaker 4

Yes, as we've said before, Brian, we've already signed other deals. Right. This is an actual launch. Right. Does that mean it'll work? You never know. Right. We're highly confident and I think Tesla is, you know, is profitable, is literally showing how magnetic this technology is and what our platform does. We'll be launching with a partner that has over 10 times the amount of subscribers. You can start to guess numbers and figure it out, but we're not going to do that today. What we're going to do is we're going to very confidently do that just like we did with Tesla years ago.

We have a high level of confidence that this will potentially be our biggest partner in history and that we have an opportunity that, proving that Tesla, that this number of people converted again shows the affection for our product. I think that's why these B2B deals are starting to fall and get signed. Stay tuned, you're going to read.

Speaker 0

A lot more about it. Signed and you hope to launch, is that right?

Speaker 4

Correct.

Speaker 0

Have you announced who that is, or can you not announce who that is?

Speaker 4

We cannot announce yet who it is, but you will see shortly. Okay, thank you.

Speaker 2

Again. If you would like to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. There are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call over to Rob Ellin for closing remarks.

Speaker 3

Robert?

Speaker 4

Yeah. Thank you, everyone. Appreciate the time and appreciate your support and we look forward to a terrific year and we look forward to talking to you again shortly about the next quarter.

Speaker 2

This concludes today's call. You may now disconnect.