PodcastOne - Q2 2025

Transcript

Operator (participant)

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. This is PodcastOne's fiscal second quarter 2025 earnings call. 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. And if you would like to withdraw your question, press the star one again. Thank you. And now I will turn the call over to PodcastOne's Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Aaron Sullivan. The floor is yours.

Aaron Sullivan (CFO)

Thank you and welcome to PodcastOne's Fiscal Second Quarter 2025 Business Update and Financial Results Conference Call and Webcast. During today's presentation, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, the conference will be open for questions. On our call today is Kit Gray, President and Founder of PodcastOne, myself, Aaron Sullivan, Chief Financial Officer, and Rob Ellin, Executive Chairman of the Board. 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 PodcastOne'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 PodcastOne's Form 10-K for the year ended March 31, 2024, filed by the company with the SEC on July 1, 2024, and subsequent SEC filings made by the company. You will 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 its investor relations website for important content. The following discussion, including responses to your questions, contains time-sensitive information and reflects management's views as of the date of this call, November 7, 2024.

Except as required by law, the company does not undertake any obligation to update or revise this information after the date of this call. I'd like to highlight to investors that this call is being recorded. PodcastOne is making it available to investors and media via webcast, and a replay will be available on our IR website in the events section shortly following the conclusion of the call. Additionally, it is the property of the company, and any redistribution, retransmission, or rebroadcast of the 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 PodcastOne's President, Kit Gray.

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

Good morning. Thank you, Aaron. We are very excited to have you all here today. The podcasting world is exploding, and we are a huge part of it. I'm excited to talk to you about it all today. Thank you, and welcome to our fiscal second quarter 2025 earnings call. As a reminder, we are not on a calendar reporting year, and our fiscal year ends March 31, 2025. Today, I'm joined by our CFO, Aaron Sullivan, who just spoke, and our Executive Chairman, Rob Ellin. Today, we will provide a brief recap and overview of PodcastOne in a continuously growing podcast market and highlight our recent successes before passing it on to Aaron for the financial results. After his comments, I will close with an update on our strategic initiatives and what we are looking forward to in the quarters to come.

Lastly, we will open it up to Q&A. To start, I'd like to first provide an overview on PodcastOne for those who may be new to our story. Podcasts have transitioned from a niche interest to a mainstream medium with millions of engaged listeners. Since founding the company in 2012, we have been there from the beginning, which has provided a first-mover advantage and allowed us to scale our platform significantly. Today, PodcastOne is the only pure-play publicly traded podcast company in the United States. Put simply, PodcastOne is a leading podcast platform that hosts 189 shows that reaches a U.S. audience of over 16.2 million global downloads and streams as of September 2024. Leveraging our platform, we help podcasts recognize their full potential by providing world-class support via 360 marketing capabilities to accelerate growth and exposure, allowing talent to do what they do best.

This support includes full capabilities related to studio space, marketing, production, editing, distribution, talent booking, public relations, and leveraging our seasoned direct sales teams who have long-term relationships with advertisers and brands that want exposure and sought-after audience of listeners on the podcast platform. A majority of our revenue is generated from advertisers sold by our direct sales team, who brings these brands access to the unique audiences on our platform. We also recently introduced two new revenue streams, which are already showing significant traction, and should diversify our revenue streams while providing new avenues of growth for PodcastOne. First, PodcastOne Pro, which features everything from full 360-degree marketing, which I touched on, or à la carte offerings for every price point and specific needs to our talent on our platform.

Second, we've launched paywalls with Apple Plus, Substack, Supporting Cast, and where we have an agreement with some of our most popular podcasts and package that ad that offer ad-free listening, early access, notes from podcasters, bonus episodes, merchandise, and more. This avenue also provides us with feature spots and premium placements within each paywall ecosystem. More on those verticals later. Nextly, our full end-to-end capabilities not only partner with podcasts, but in some instances, our own intellectual property for the actual show. This year alone, we have already sold two shows to two major streaming networks, which can provide high return on investment to PodcastOne with even larger upside based on future performance. According to Podtrac, our platform is currently ranked number 12 of all U.S. podcast publishers, ahead of such names as CNN, Fox Audio Network, and other major media conglomerates. The U.S.

podcast market is projected to reach 160 million listeners in 2024, more than double the 2020 figure, and we are in prime position to capture market share, and advertisers are certainly taking notice, too. A recent study in Podnews found that podcasting advertising not only surpasses other mediums in brand building but is also highly effective in generating long-term sales. According to the study, podcast advertising delivers 4.9x the ROI, making it one of the most profitable media channels available. Clearly, podcasts continue to be preferred medium for entertainment, sharing content, education, and importantly, news. To showcase this, both 2024 presidential candidates appeared in long-form interviews on trending podcasts as proven platforms for messaging. During the quarter, PodcastOne also had notable guests including Barack Obama, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Whitney Cummings, and Stassi Schroeder, to name a few.

Now, before going further, I'd like to turn the call over to Aaron, our CFO, to walk through the financial results for the fiscal second quarter. Aaron?

Aaron Sullivan (CFO)

Thank you, Kit. As Kit mentioned at the beginning of the call, I want to again remind listeners that our fiscal year ends on March 31. Revenue in the fiscal second quarter of 2025 increased 16% to $12.2 million, compared to $10.5 million in the same year as the quarter. Operating loss in the fiscal second quarter of 2025 was $1.7 million, compared to an operating loss of $1.4 million in the same year as the quarter. The increase was primarily driven by higher non-cash stock compensation expense. Net loss in the fiscal second quarter of 2025 was $1.7 million, or $0.07 per basic undiluted share, compared to a net loss of $10.9 million, or $0.52 per basic undiluted share in the same year as the quarter.

As a reminder, the prior year quarter included a non-cash, non-operational $8.9 million charge related to a change in the fair value of embedded derivatives as our bridge notes were converted to equity. Adjusted EBITDA in the fiscal second quarter of 2025 improved to negative $0.4 million, compared to Adjusted EBITDA of $0.1 million in the same year as the quarter. The change in Adjusted EBITDA was primarily due to the timing of content acquisition costs. We ended the fiscal second quarter with no debt on our balance sheet and $1.4 million in cash and cash equivalents as of September 30, 2024. As we look ahead, I'd like to also briefly touch on guidance. We expect fiscal 2025 revenues for the full year to be at least $51 million, representing an increase of at least 17% when compared to revenues of $43.3 million in fiscal 2024.

Given the continued strong double-digit revenue growth, we also project positive Adjusted EBITDA for the full fiscal year 2025. We've recently entered into long-term deals with certain podcasters to make them equity partners, as we will compensate them for revenue share with stock grants. This will be a credit to Adjusted EBITDA and strengthens our relationship with talent, as they will literally be invested in our company and will have the opportunity to participate in the upside as the company continues to grow. Now, I'd like to turn the call back to Kit for some additional comments in the quarter before wrapping up with questions from the audience.

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

Thank you, Aaron. As highlighted, the momentum we're building continues to drive meaningful financial results, which is a direct result of our extremely scalable platform and the execution by our team at PodcastOne. During the quarter, we made several significant hires, including industry veteran Jim Lally, who joins us from Libsyn Ads, where he served as Director of Brand Partnerships. His experience spans podcasting, digital media, and advertising, with notable roles at WNYC Studios, SoundRise, which is part of PRX's media sales division, and The New York Times, having a direct impact on the sales strategies behind shows of some of their top trending properties. As Head of Business Development at PodcastOne, he will focus on expanding internal sales and publishing synergies, increasing talent revenues, and the company's prominence with both media buyers and content creators.

Alongside Sue McNamara, our CRO, this is a one-two punch combo that should help accelerate our growth for years to come. We've also added Steve Lehman as Vice Chairman of PodcastOne, who, among his many accolades, was founder, chairman, and CEO of Premiere Networks, the largest radio network in the U.S., which is now part of iHeartRadio. Steve brings extensive experience and will work alongside senior management to drive both organic and inorganic growth opportunities, specifically in M&A. Lastly, John Merriman joined the board of directors. He currently serves as Chief Business Officer for B. Riley Financial as a 35-year investment banking veteran. He has deep experience helping companies with their strategic growth initiatives and in achieving visibility in the public markets through debt and equity transactions.

As I noted in my opening remarks, we've taken several steps to increase growth on the platform and diversify our revenue streams, which ultimately will make us much larger and more mature platform as we move forward. In August, we launched PodcastOne Pro, which utilizes our current resources, technology, and team to foster and accelerate growth for podcasts at any price point. By helping shows succeed, either via leveraging our studio resources, helping with production, or adding advertising opportunities into their show, it provides us with a stickier relationship and upside to both parties. During this quarter, we assigned five deals with average expected revenues in the six figures, with major brands such as MotorTrend, Lovesac, and Invisible Glass. We also saw success using paywalls to provide exclusive access to live events, pay-per-view merchandise, and bonus content.

A great example of a show that utilizes these offerings to expand its reach is Adam Carolla, which we recently launched on Substack. Our use of Substack allows PodcastOne and Adam Carolla to uniquely package exclusive content to the most passionate of podcast listeners that will have full access to Beat It Out, Jay Mohr's podcast return, as well as ad-free and video content for all new episodes of The Adam Carolla Show, The Adam and Drew, and Classic Carolla shows. Additionally, subscribers will receive an exclusive newsletter, access to archival content, and be the first to experience planned live recording sessions and live chats. These new revenue streams provide additional avenues for high-margin growth while diversifying our revenue mix and service offering to the entire PodcastOne ecosystem.

As of the quarter end, we have 189 shows on the platform, with 48 shows added year to date and six new shows added this quarter. In most instances, our platform helps shows expand their reach, increase revenue, and take them to the next level. I'll highlight that with the I've Had It Podcast. Two years ago, they signed with PodcastOne when they were under 20,000 downloads per episode, and now they are well over 100,000 audio and video downloads per episode, with multiple episodes a week and nearly 10 million downloads in total. The show recently extended its relationship with PodcastOne for a two-year deal and added a second show to their network called IHIP News that is under their umbrella and leverages their extremely loyal audience.

PodcastOne was also able to support Kendall Toole, a Peloton fan, as she embarked on her next chapter with Wholeheartedly Podcast, joining her former colleague and current Peloton instructor, Cody Rigsby, and his podcast, Tactical Pettiness, on PodcastOne. Fool Coverage is a runaway Gen Z hit whose hosts, Manny and Laura, have transitioned their notoriety as influencers to become top-notch and compelling podcast hosts. They are leaning into industry trends, producing superior video content, and averaging over 100,000 downloads per episode. PodcastOne's roster of talent is only expected to grow with debt-free balance sheet and multiple accelerated creative growth opportunities. We will continue to evaluate M&A prospects, not only for our attempts to acquire the best content, but other networks, producers, sales firms, and technology to bolster PodcastOne's offerings to hosts and their advertising partners.

PodcastOne offers investors a unique opportunity with a rapidly growing platform that not only has scale and talent, but its own intellectual property that can be sold for a significant return on investment. To that end, the fiscal second quarter of 2025, we sold our second company-owned podcast to a major television network, and as we move forward, we are excited to see the on-screen adaptations of these two popular shows. The unique model, team, and resources within PodcastOne is reshaping a budding podcast industry, resulting in sustainable double-digit revenue growth with significant margins as we scale. Looking ahead, we will continue focusing on our strategic growth initiatives as the only pure-play podcast company in the United States, which ultimately will help drive sustainable long-term shareholder value. Thank you for joining us, and at this time, I'd like to turn the call over to the operator for Q&A. Operator?

Operator (participant)

Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. And if you would like to withdraw your question, simply press the star one again. If you are called upon to ask your question and listening via loudspeaker on your device, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your question. Again, please press star one to join the queue. Your first question comes from the line of Sean McGowan of ROTH MKM. Your line is now open.

Sean McGowan (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Thank you. Two quickies for Aaron first. Aaron, when you were giving that guidance, did you say 6161 or 5151?

Aaron Sullivan (CFO)

5151.

Sean McGowan (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you. And I assume the 10-Q will be out early next week as well as LiveOne?

Aaron Sullivan (CFO)

Yes. Similar timing as we discussed earlier. So early next week, day or two before the deadline.

Sean McGowan (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Then a couple of questions for you, Kit. So now that the election cycle, the most important election of our lifetime, etc., etc., is over, what does that do to the ad market in the period following an election? How does pricing trend kind of in the wake of that? I know you guys don't do a lot of political advertising, but it's got to affect the overall pricing, right? So what happens to pricing?

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

Yeah. Hey, Sean. Good to hear from you. Thanks for joining, buddy. Yeah. So the never-ending political world, hopefully, it is kind of over, and we can all move on. I think we are all exhausted with that. But I think really the cool thing is when you look at all the candidates and going on podcasts and even the Elon Musk of the world going on podcasts and just talking about that. And really, the strength of podcasting, it really was a powerful tool in this campaigning strategy of both candidates. So really kind of cool to watch.

But that's saying to answer your question on the advertising front, what I've heard mostly in talking to a lot of our competitors, talking to a lot of our brand partners and agencies is that they've really pulled back over the last couple of months in their total ad spending because they just didn't want to be a part of the clutter, right, and being a part of the constant barrage of Trump and Harris commercials and local ads going out there. So a lot of them pulled back. And I think that's going to poise us for a really strong November, December, and into the first quarter as some of these budgets that have been held back will be pumped in as it's business as usual.

And maybe even some people will be a little bit more robust, just like the market yesterday and today, that they should be spending more money to get their word out and sell product and so forth. So I think it's going to be a really good thing for our business and the world. So hopefully, that holds true.

Sean McGowan (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Thanks. Kind of along the same general areas of that discussion, with podcasting becoming a greater part of the general social dialogue, including politics, how does that enter into the negotiations that you have with talent, either for new shows or existing shows? Does it help you, or does it kind of make it more expensive to get some of these shows?

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

I guess it can kind of go both ways. But we're really unique. I talked about the I've Had It earlier in the presentation. They've been on the Today Show multiple times. We have leveraged that through our PR relationships and our talent booking relationships. And obviously, they're tremendously talented women and very funny. So it's been good for them to do what they do, but for us to complement them nicely with the services that we offer.

When you look at the ability to drive revenues and drive growth on that show, it's allowed those two women in particular to not spend as much time in their core business, which is being a divorce attorney and a design specialist running her own firm, and really concentrating on the podcasting business and launching the political show and being able to travel to Chicago for the DNC and LA to go out to meet with certain political people as Obama and so forth. So I think it's great in the sense that we're getting more audience, we're getting bigger guests, we're getting bigger recognition. It does get expensive, but we offer these services because it grows their pie and it grows the total revenues that we could bring to the ecosystem of that show, which is great, right?

So we're able to do exactly what we said we would do for them, which is take some of their heavy lifting off and allow them to do more content, and then we can all make more money together.

Sean McGowan (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Great. That's helpful. And my last question is, given that every business has an 80/20 rule, right, the podcast is probably more like the 95/5 in terms of audience size. Maybe not. Maybe you can correct me on that. But is it getting harder for newer shows to get discovered? And what does that do? In terms of the services that you offer talent, what kinds of things are you saying that you can do to help the shows get discovered?

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

Yeah. Good question, Sean. You always ask good ones. I think it is harder for new shows to get discovered or be discovered and then continually downloaded and grow. I believe there's less new podcasts out there than there has been in the last couple of years, but the consumption of podcasts is growing tremendously, and the ways to access podcasts is changing, right? We've talked about YouTube becoming a huge platform of distribution for podcasts in the podcast world. So there's new ways to discover podcasts. Not only do I run a network of podcasts where we can use open inventory and we can cross-promote with guests to grow shows or special events. I would tell my best friend, if he wanted to grow a podcast, that you'd have to join the right network, a network like ours, where you just don't have that opportunity to make your footprint.

But that, in turn, I think you're seeing smaller shows. And when I say smaller, that's like 20, 30, 40 thousand, right where I've Had It used to be, right, when we first picked them up, that are able to make money. And not only make money on the immediate shows that go out, the episodes that go out, but their backlog of content, right? And that's coming through programmatic revenues and selling as run-of-network type deals, not just show by show where you're really capped out on what download number you have. So there's different ways to make money now. If you're 20, 25 thousand downloaded podcasts, you've got the advertising side of it, but now you've got the merch, you've got the paywall, you've got the live shows, you've got all these types of things that we can help people do, and that's their chance to become podcast stars.

Sean McGowan (Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst)

Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

Sure.

Operator (participant)

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one to join the queue. And your next question comes from the line of Leo Carpio of Joseph Gunnar. Please go ahead.

Leo Carpio (Equity Research Analyst)

Good morning, gentlemen. Got a couple of quick questions. The first question, regarding the quarter, did you experience a summer seasonality effect on the revenues? Being summertime, people tend to go to the beach, and thus they don't spend as much time on podcasts or listening. Just wondering if that's happened this Q.

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

Yeah. Hey, Leo. Good to see you last week and good to hear from you again. Yeah. So you always do see seasonality in the summer months, just like you would around the week of Thanksgiving and Christmas New Year. You do see a little bit of that. It's been a wild year for podcasting in the sense that you've got this new distribution channel, really, of YouTube diving into it deeply. But you've also had the iOS change with Apple, where they changed how they download to subscribers of podcasts. And not only did that hurt many shows in our network, but it also hurt a lot of shows throughout the podcast medium. And that's short-term hurt, long-term gain, because I think it helps clarity and in terms of the audience, and it helps the advertisers have some more confidence on people actually hearing their spot.

So I think it's a good thing. So the numbers and the downloads have really evolved. It hasn't been just kind of a consistent thing. Last year in Q2, that's when that change occurred. And so we're still kind of living through that world a little bit. So it's hard to just say, "Oh, yeah, there are a lot of people at the beach." But there could have been a lot of people at the beach listening to podcasts too, right? So I think the medium is just exploding. I think it continues to be a place where people consume information, laughs, and feel like a community. And again, the biggest and best personalities in the world are in the podcasting space, either as hosts or guests or creators of these fantastic IP programs now that we've got going on as well.

Leo Carpio (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. And speaking in terms of the new media that you just mentioned there, given this whole presidential election cycle that just went through, do you think podcasting is becoming a more reliable form of news source? For example, this cycle, we saw people going to TikTok and other social media versus traditional news. Do you think this is kind of like the dawn for podcasting being viewed as a better, a more reliable media, and hence, dollars will follow in terms of ads?

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

Yeah. I actually watched a clip that Rob Ellin had sent me this morning from Tucker Carlson's interview with Elon Musk. And he talked about podcasting and really the benefits of these candidates going on podcasting. And really, anybody, right? When you go on a podcast, it's not like Instagram or a Twitter post. Those are short-form, fast content. You see what you see, and you make your own judgments. But when you listen to an hour to three-hour interview with a candidate or an actor or a writer or whatever it is you're listening to, you really get an opportunity to learn who that person is and beyond what they're just doing. But you either like that person or you don't. But it really gives you a unique time to sit with someone and listen. And it's a very intimate experience.

And when you do something like Joe Rogan and it's a three-hour interview, you're getting way deeper than you'd see in any other medium form, and people really like it. It's extremely powerful, and it allows you to kind of connect with these people unlike you ever have been able to do before, right? So that's the strength of podcasting.

Leo Carpio (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. And then can you remind us, what's the status of your talent pipeline and also in acquisitions in terms of podcast networks that you looked at? If I recall, in past quarters, you mentioned about 100-plus podcast talent at any given time being evaluated as potential adds to your platform. How is that pipeline shaping up now? Is it still the same healthy, robust, or?

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

Yeah. On the show-by-show side of things, still in that 100-plus, continually falling in and out, right? Certainly, you win some, you lose some. New ones are coming in. There are ones that just we wouldn't consider for multiple reasons, but that remains strong. Where I think it's changing is you're going to see on the M&A side of things, especially with Steve, they're even joining the company or a focus of getting out to those podcasting companies similar to the ones we are that represent or produce podcasts, have shows, have a network of shows. There's companies out there that are involved in the tech, the production of things. So we're looking at all of those, and that's definitely a much more robust funnel than it was a month or even two months ago. So I think that there's so many opportunities out there.

I think when I was talking to, well, I know when I was talking to Steve about the differences between running a Premiere, which is a radio station kind of group, and then running a podcasting group, is in the radio side, you're still limited on a market-by-market signal count, right? There's only a certain amount of AMs or FMs in that market. But in our world, there's literally millions of podcasts, right? And there's great ideas and great people in the social media world that have communities that could be great at doing podcasts. So we have a much bigger ocean to pick from. We just have to pick the right ones.

Leo Carpio (Equity Research Analyst)

Okay. And then last question, turning back to the guidance. Previously, you had indicated the guidance was $51 million-$56 million for the year, and you're saying today it's greater than $51 million. Just trying to connect the two dots in terms of the guidance. Is it still the $51 million-$56 million?

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

What we're saying is we're going to be over 51. Where that's going to land is definitely going to depend on a couple of big deals that we feel very strongly on. I think that we're really, really excited about, but they're not slam dunks. I would say that, so we're confident on hitting over that 51 number. How big that'll be, well, we'll see. We feel really good about them. We've got great relationships with those brands that we're really close to signing to get us to that number. A couple of acquisitions go our way a little quicker than we'd like, then we'll get higher than that number, but that's kind of where we're leaning right now.

Leo Carpio (Equity Research Analyst)

All right. Thank you.

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

Thanks, Leo.

Operator (participant)

Your next question comes from the line of Barry Sine of Litchfield Hills Research. Please go ahead.

Barry Sine (Senior Equity Analyst)

Hey, thanks for taking the call. Just a comment, Kit. I saw LadyGang when they were in New York live last month, with a really passionate audience, although I think I was the only straight guy there, but the audience just loves that group, and I was able to meet the talent afterward, so just really great experience.

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

I'm glad you had fun. And yeah, that's a unique one. That's a unique one, for sure.

Barry Sine (Senior Equity Analyst)

Can you hear me okay?

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

Okay.

Barry Sine (Senior Equity Analyst)

Yeah. Can you hear me okay? Sorry about that. I'm actually in Hong Kong, so it's a little bad connection. So you mentioned that you've hired somebody for brand partnerships. What are brand partnerships? Can you give us an example of what one might be?

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

Sure. Most of our advertising deals, I would say probably 80%, ballparking it, are through agencies that represent brands. And it's very much spot, weak spot, spot, spot, spot kind of business. Brand partnerships are taking something like The Adam Carolla Show and going to a brand directly, whether that's like a Home Depot or a Lowe's or something like that, or even an alcohol brand, and doing really more of those 360 sales that we talked about. So you're getting more money for the content that you're providing. So signage in the studio, brands on the video, giveaway segments, having people on the episode. So really going deeper into that and using brand relationships to go above and beyond. We work with the State Farms of the world, and it's just much more in-depth, right? Is the coffee mug facing the right way on the video?

All that kind of stuff, so a guy that can bring big bucks and big deals on that front, he's done it before, so he's going to be involved in that, and he has a ton of relationships with shows, individual shows that we're already talking to with him, and he's run similar groups to our sales teams where those networks are accustomed to him and his strategies and his success in sales to bring them over to our team and do a great job, so he's going to be doing all that stuff.

Barry Sine (Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay. And I'm trying to just collect everything you've said. You've given a lot of data points as I start to think about what you could do in 2025. And I know you're not giving guidance for the year. On the LiveOne call, Rob seemed to indicate that your activity in the last couple of weeks has really accelerated with a lot of bids out there. You continue to add new podcasts. You're continuing now that you've monetized two of your podcasts for movie or TV. And then there's other opportunities, I guess, live events and so on. Could you prioritize? What do you think is the most exciting of everything that you're doing and we're going to see really drive 2025 numbers?

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

Oh, yeah. I'm really excited about the M&A side of things. Personally, I've gotten a chance to know Steve quite well over the last month, two months that we've been working together. And he is a really smart guy, a guy that has been through doing exactly what we're trying to do for Premiere and growing that business. And honestly, I get excited every time I talk to the guy on the phone. And we've got 20-30 companies that we're talking to in the space that can bring us a bunch of different things. So me personally, working with Steve has just been tremendous. I've learned a lot from him, and I think that's where it's going to kickstart our growth really fast. And I think that's what the industry needs.

I think we're well-positioned being the only real publicly traded company in the United States focused on podcasting that if we can make some of these partnerships work, we start to scoop some of them up. This becomes a really, really exciting company in the next year or two in that side of things, right? I'm still extremely excited about our core business. That's acquiring shows, launching shows, and working with advertisers and taking a show like I've Had It where we do 20,000 downloads, and maybe they make $100,000 a year or two to doing close to $2 million, $3 million if we're lucky, right, on new programming. That's also super fun, right? But I'm excited about all of those things. I'm excited about the IP. We've proven that model.

We've learned a lot from that process, being able to really equate what the value of these scripted shows are in terms of going out and producing them, how much does it cost, what can we charge advertisers to supplement some of those costs. And then the process of taking those to streaming television movie companies has been fascinating. And I think people are really excited about what that could be. And as Rob likes to say, those are home-run swings. So we're going to have a bunch of things in that space too. So again, I'm really excited about the business. I couldn't be more excited about the medium. You guys listen to podcasts. You guys see the news. You guys see what's going on in the world. Podcasting is right square in front of your face. And I think it's really exciting for all of us.

Barry Sine (Senior Equity Analyst)

You mentioned M&A. Would that just be acquiring individual podcasts? Or have you looked at acquiring other podcast companies?

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

Yeah. So the M&A side of things won't be, we already have a division that does the acquiring existing podcasts and starting new podcasts like in our talent content acquisition team that's led by Eli DeVorkin. They do a great job. I think we signed 48 this year or year to date. So that is going to be and is a huge part of our business. But the M&A side of things is really looking at clusters of podcast groups and technology and hosting platforms and ad servicing businesses, things like that, that if we can land two or three of those strategically, it really, really gets exciting.

Barry Sine (Senior Equity Analyst)

What does the opportunity look like out there? Are there companies like that for sale, and why are they up for sale?

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

Yeah. I mean, look, we acquired the assets of Kast Media a little over a year ago now, where that landed anywhere from six or seven shows, maybe more. I'm sorry, more than that, but because Brendan Schaub has three shows, right? But we were able to land those shows that drove anywhere between $5 million-$7 million, right? So the reason that company was in trouble was they had to just kind of run out of money and used a lot of the money that was supposed to go to talent that went to just keeping the lights on and keeping things moving. And we all know the economy changed and raising money changed, and they got kind of on the squeeze.

When you're looking at some of the companies out there right now that we're talking to, they're doing nice revenues, but they're at that business-building, infrastructure-building stage, right, where we've already done that. We have our HR. We have our finance team. We have our sales team. We have our tech. We have everything in place that we can go to a group like that and say, "Well, don't do that part of it. We've already got that. But you've got some great properties, some great salespeople, some great leaders, some great talent, some great writers, some great tech. Well, we can bring that over, and you can be a part of this." And two plus two equals five or six, right? So that's the idea. There's plenty of those out there.

There's companies that are just losing money that need a company like ours to take on some of that, and we can grow and use the good parts of it to just make great business decisions, and we can all win.

Barry Sine (Senior Equity Analyst)

Okay. Great. Thank you very much, Kit.

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

Hey, thanks. And travel safely. Enjoy your time all across the world.

Barry Sine (Senior Equity Analyst)

All right. Thank you.

Operator (participant)

That concludes our Q&A session. I will now turn the conference back over to Kit Gray for closing remarks.

Kit Gray (President and Founder)

Okay. Thank you very much. I appreciate your interest in PodcastOne. We look forward to connecting with the investor community this month at the Wall Street Conference in Boca Raton, Florida, and the 13th annual ROTH Technology Conference in New York City later this month. For more information or to schedule a meeting with management, please reach out to the MZ Group at POD.