Q2 2026 LiveOne Inc Earnings Call
Business update conference call online 7 days on YouTube, 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 the star followed by the number 1 on your telephone keypad. If you would like to invite your question, please, press the star 1 again, thank you. I would now like to turn the conference over to Ryan Carhartt. Chief Financial Officer. You may begin.
Thank you. Good morning and welcome to live 1's. Business update and financial results conference call for the company's fiscal, second quarter and the September 30th 2025.
Presenting on today's call, with me is Rob, Ellen, CEO and chairman of live 1. 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. 10K for the year ended, March 31st, 2025 and subsequent SEC filing.
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 its investor relations website for important content.
The following discussion including responses to your questions contains time-sensitive information and reflects management view, as of the date of this call November 12th 2025 and 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 investor 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 the webcast in any form. Without the companies expressed, written consent is strictly prohibited. Now, I would like to turn the call over to live 1 CEOs.
Thank you, Ryan, and welcome, everybody. And thank you for joining us. This has been a transformative 12 months for the company.
as we came out of the loss of over 50 million dollars of revenues with Tesla,
We not only survived.
But we thrived.
As you look at the numbers today, the highlights are going to be is how this team and how this company has utilized technology.
And being a calen first platform.
To again.
Proved that we can get back to EA dot positive numbers.
Okay. With that loss of 50 million dollars in revenues. We're excited to tell you that we finished the quarter.
With 36 million.
A little over 36 million, 36.6 million, in our audio division with 1.1 million dollars of adjusted Ava.
How do we do that?
The first thing we did, is we leveraged technology, we embraced AI, we embraced the ability to use AI to be able to cut our staff and cut it from 350 people to 95.
We've cut our costs down from 22 million down to 6 million.
And with that, we have aggressively moved on a B2B plan to move to partnerships.
That the history of this company has been built on like Tesla. And with that, I'm excited to say we closed our 7th deal.
We have now expanded our partnership with Amazon from 16 and a half half million dollars into 3 year deal Tober 20 million that's all based on traffic and audience continued to grow massively.
our Fortune 250 partner increase from 20, from 2 million, originally to 12 to Now, 26 million, plus a year run rate
going back to Tesla, we converted over 60% of the
total cars.
Those cars have now resigned back up. Okay, of where we finally now have data and information those consumers. And now the ability to try to convert those and now using an AI marketing strategy, we aggressively converting, those and generating real cash every day and continue to grow that number of subscribers and see.
A really exciting opportunity now to convert into those million, if we can convert 10% of them, we'll add another 100,000 paid subscribers. If we can convert 20%, the number is start to Skyrocket.
We have 72 additional B2B Partnerships and fully expect to announce multiple additional ones before year end.
Utilizing AI, we have increased our offers. By 60%. We were starting to see a 5 Dollar Plus rpu versus the 3 dollars that we had previously.
Our podcast business.
Our podcast business has grown, we bought the company doing twenty million dollars in revenues losing 5. We've just announced record-breaking revenues over 15 million dollars for the quarter. And announced that we expected to do 56 to 60 million dollars this year and 4 and a half to 6 million of Iva.
That's a 6 to 8 million swing from last year.
We have aggressively taking our podcast and now taking our true crime podcast, which we have a slate of over 12 and we've now brought that to Market to the streaming networks and we've sold 3 podcasts to television now.
What does that mean for the company?
It means hundreds of thousands of dollars in options, money day one, and could be millions to tens of millions of dollars in the very near future as those get green-lit. We've now sold the show to CBS, to Peacock, to Paramount, and we fully expect to sell additional shows.
We have our first giant upcoming live event. Our last major live event goes back to Days of Co, which was called social gloves that event did over 20 million dollars. And over 4 million dollars of ibitta on December 11th. We are going to launch reality Olympics, that we are reality Olympics will be at LFC Stadium.
The BMO stadium and be launched with YouTube committing over a billion impressions.
To the event.
We've just announced our launch of our subsidiary live 1 Africa.
With a commitment, from virtuoso music, to raise over twenty million dollars to a market, that will be bigger than the US market in the next couple of years.
Our buyback continues.
We continue to buy back, both stocks.
We've now bought back uh, over 6 million dollars of stock in live 1, we will continue to buy back stocks.
For everyone that remembers. We sold 10 million of stock at 7 and a half dollars, only 3 months ago, 2 and a half months ago.
We'll continue to buy that as well, as you will see, management and board members doing the same.
As we look at the future.
We see the highlight films of these B2B deals, providing a massive opportunity for the company.
Current Amazon Deal received discontinued to grow.
It's a highlight film, as the more podcasts we have, the more traffic we drive, and the bigger those revenues are going to be.
As we launch our next major project over, 30 million monthly paying subscribers.
We will talk about this in great detail over the next couple of weeks and expect to launch this year.
If you think about the Tesla numbers, we had 2 million subscribers, 2 million cars. Right? And we've now converted 60% of them.
If you have 30 million, if you just convert convert a couple of percentage, we're going to blow. We're going to start to really generate very serious, subscriber growth, our growth as well as Revenue growth.
With that, I'm proud of my team. They've survived
Tesla's loss of the revenues and come out of it stronger than ever.
For those of you that are there, if you remember, when Co hit we went from 38 million in revenues, we've lost all of our live business and somehow the following year, we did well over a hundred million dollars of revs.
To again, be well over a hundred million dollars.
And with that, we will continue to buy back stock and I want to thank everybody and appreciate everybody's support and open up the floor to Ryan to talk about the numbers.
Thanks Ryan.
Thanks Rob. I'll spend just a few minutes, providing a very brief overview of our results. For the fiscal, second quarter, and their September 30th 2025,
Consolidated revenue for the 3-month period and it's September 30th 2025 with 18.8 million. Our audio division posted revenue for Q2 fiscal 2026 of 18.2 million and adjusted Eva 0.7 million Consolidated adjusted ebita for the second quarter of fiscal year 2026 was -1 million on a US. Gaap basis. Live 1 Post a Consolidated net loss. A 5.7 million or 52 cents per diluted share in Q2 fiscal 2026.
At the operating level. Our podcast, 1 subsidiaries of 15.2 million and adjusted Eva of 1.1 million. Our slacker subsidiary reported Q2, fiscal 2026, revenue of 3.1 million and an adjusted Eva to loss of 0.4 million.
We are pleased to report continued record growth from our podcast. 1 subsidiaries will extend throughout the year in parallel. We are advancing several transformative Partnerships from our business development pipeline, creating significant opportunities for long-term growth, and value Creation in the near future.
Rob, turn it back to you.
Yeah just just to wrap it up. I think we've covered just about everything um but just to wrap it up you know can't be more excited about the B2B Partnerships. Um the history of live 1 um as well as the the 2 subsidiaries that generate the revenues from slack to podcast. 1 have had a history of B2B deals and these B2B deals, there's a cycle that comes in. As you're watching the cycle you're seeing in the industry. That is exploding. But the audio industry iHeart stock is up for 4 times Spotify. Stock is up 3x almost 175 billion in value. Warren Buffett has been buying up serious radio. There's so much math right now that shows that the Partnerships that are being created that are being announced in podcasting and audio right across Netflix announcing, they're going to the audio business, all right? And Spotify go into the video business. You're going to see more and more of this happening in the industry. And you know, my humble opinion is that you're going to see amazing strategic deals. You're
To see investments in the space and you're going to see Acquisitions in the space and the Acquisitions are happening at or happening at multiples of revenues, right? We're trading we're trading at 60% of revenues. The industry is trading at 3 and a half times revenues, um, and I think you're going to see just about every streaming partner. Anyone who's missing a, uh, a audio platform is going to need an audio platform. When you think about the cost of content and how expensive it is. For, all these streaming networks, they can increase their offer to dramatically overnight by acquiring a music platform or investing in a music platform or white labeling, your music platform. So with that, I'm going to open up the questions. And, you know, again, uh, thank you everyone for joining us, and thank our team for just doing an amazing job of. Not only, not only surviving but coming out of this and thriving. And again, you've seen those telltale signs where the revenues are going to start to ramp up dramatically in the very near future. Thank you.
Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, simply press star 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, press star 1 again. Please ensure that you are listening when you are called upon to ask your question. Also, for all speakers, please pick up your handset and ensure that your phone is not on mute when asking your questions.
And your first question comes from Brian. Kinsinger with Alliance Global Partners, please go ahead.
Great. Thanks so much. Um last quarter you discussed the soft launch at the beginning of August for a B2B partner with 30 million subscribers and said you'd share more information soon. Is there any details you can share about this?
Yeah. I mean, uh, the success of the beginning launch was spectacular. Uh, I would say it was in line with the launch, the relaunch with Tesla.
I I think you're seeing telltale signs of that as well uh with our next partner, um and uh I think you're going to be able to uh you're going to be able to highlight that as we enter, you know, year end.
So is this deal part of the 50 million plus B2B revenue. And if so, when does it begin to ramp know
No, what we said is is that's that's not part of the 52 million. This will be an additional, right? We have not putting it, we have not put out guidance yet. Um, but fully expected somewhere, you know, around year end, we're going to start to put out guidance. As we said, these deals are ramping up, they've ramped up faster than we expected, right? Both at Amazon as well as the streaming partner and we see a Telltale sign that that new partner will be very similar. So we'll be talking about our guidance somewhere, you know, probably before your end but certainly certainly by year end, we'll start to talk about it.
I think the biggest question I think investors might have is when you provide the 52 million B2B Revenue over the next 12 months. I think you said last quarter and so I'm sure it's still the next 12 months. How much of that is incremental to the revenue. You've just reported in the September quarter which I assume includes Amazon and some of your other B2B partners.
Yeah, I mean we we can't give that obviously until we start to give give guidance right? Which will happen. Again, as I said before your end um our year end is March 31st and, you know, we're getting close to it fast, right. It's moving fast to do that, and we'll start talking about that guidance. You've already seen us raise the guidance of podcast 1. Um, and I fully expect, we'll start to talk about live ones as well. Um, that ramp up that ramp up, we'll start to happen. As I said, you know, towards the end of the fourth quarter, right? You know, third fourth third, a little bit fourth quarter. So, starting starting to ramp up. We're starting to feel the momentum coming. Um, but we'll have a lot more clarity on that as we enter the fourth quarter of this year.
Thanks 2. More questions. First. Can you share the premium versus paid subscribers for slacker? And maybe if you can, or can can you talk about the conversion that you're seeing for Tesla?
if at all,
Ryan. You you want to give a little bit of that?
If we can.
Yeah. I mean you Brian just real quick, give me Premium versus paid. I mean you you talking about Premium versus plus is that kind of what you're thinking? Yeah, Premium versus plus. I mean, I think you have you have subscribers um, that are premium uh, uh, especially in Tesla and then you have paid subscribers. And so I'm curious what the total is. Maybe the split and then I'm curious how conversions are going for those premium.
Yeah. So um, you know, if you if you think of the combination of all of our paying subscribers you, you're looking at a total of some somewhere between 25275000, in terms of the paid and then the, the free would be the rest that Rob talked about earlier on this call.
Um, so that's
Basically, the breakup between the 2. Uh, and then, you know, Rob talked a bit about arpu, uh, earlier as well. Um, is that Brian? Is that answer the question?
I'm just curious. How can conversions are going? It's been a few months, you know, we've, we've been hearing about, uh, you know, the, the focus on that so is, is it 1%? Is it 2%? Is it more or less?
Yeah, we put out. Um, I think it was a week or 2 ago, uh, an earnings release on um, you know what our new partnership with our our AI driven data partner that's going to help us uh really ramp up the conversions. So that was launched. It took a little longer than we thought to get that fully to Market. So right now we're out there testing and optimizing the algorithm. So I think you're going to really start seeing that come through second half of this quarter. Um, and then I, you know, we're we don't have a full results yet as we're still kind of optimizing right now, but it will ramp up, you know, we're expecting, you know, 5 10% increase it. It is definitely within the ballpark, it could be higher, um, we're we're still in that optimizing phase where the algorithm is doing its work.
And we're going to lose some free subscribers and that process as well. Alright, we'll lose some free. We'll gain some paid in 1 of the exciting things that you can be looking at just like last year, last year. Sorry, a large increase in cash right around the end of the year, right? As you start to see 1 year subscriptions a, you know, re off but also the new ones converting. So we're very aggressively out there. Trying to convert those those now to continue to strengthen our balance sheet buyback stock and put cash on our balance sheet.
Great last question. Brian, I didn't hear anything the the gross margin
For the first tax, about 13% last year.
Recovery, thank you so much.
Yeah. Anything for the difference, this year versus last year has been, you know, the change in the customer types of relationship with Tesla, right where um, the the volume there, uh, lifted the margin because we were able to, to pull that off at a slightly higher than what we do. Uh, normally now. So I think that that difference that you're seeing is really just the volume from slacker changing and driving the overall down, okay?
All right, thank you. Um, you know, that's offset by, you know, increased margin at Podcast One, so it's slightly offset that. But yeah, that's the cost.
All right, thank you. And the next question comes from the line of Shun McAllen with What Capital. Please go ahead.
Hi Rob. Hi Ryan. Um, following up on Brian's question on the cost to sales. So, what portion of that increase as a percentage of revenue is stock-based comp? Is that a factor?
um,
Yeah, stock comp is definitely higher in cost of sales, um, than it versus year-over-year. If you, if you just do the comparison. Um, so you'll you'll see it's it's not out yet in the cube. We we'll fully disclosed that so you can see it. Um, but um, you know, it kind of shifted categories. You can see more stock up on the cost of sales line, um, that this quarter versus last quarter, um, you
You know, a little bit lower, just on the lower GNA that you're seeing year-over-year. Uh, and then, uh, last year we had a little bit more, uh, in GNA. So you're going to see a decrease in stock comp and GNA this quarter, uh, year-over-year. Um, for that, definitely notice a difference there. So last year of a year, but still a chunk there, okay? And, and when will the QB outline,
Um, you know, filing dates Friday. We're hoping to get it out sooner, so we're hoping to file tomorrow.
Okay. Uh thanks so on, um GNA. I might as well stock based comp plays a role in that too, but is this level of GNA you know, likely to be what we should expect to see or whether um extraordinary factors driving that up.
Yep, uh, good question. So um, you know, we year-over-year obviously you're, I know I got you, you know, we're seeing definitely the lot of strong increases uh, or it decreases in the GNA. Uh, if you look at this quarter of our last quarter, there was a couple 1-time things that flowed through. So uh we expect it to be lower next quarter than it was this quarter. Um so what you're seeing uh this quarter um you know you'll you'll see the Improvement next quarter uh we're and and in Q4 and going forward, so um even less than q1.
Perfect. Thank you. Um, you know Ryan, if I can ask you to repeat something right at the end of your prepared remarks, I think you made some comment about podcast 1, you know, over the next 6 months or something like that. Would you mind repeating that? I just, I, I couldn't quite track what you said.
Yeah. All I'm saying is, you know, we we expect continued growth with the podcast 1 uh subsidiary that that that's it. Okay, you know, we we off our guidance. You know, like Rob talked about. So yeah, we just we expected to continue to grow as in.
Right. Got it. I was that word "growth" that I couldn't quite get the, um, yeah. I think I think what, you know, Sean, just to add to that, you know, you've seen our 17th additional podcast announced. Um, just announced, you know, and we're basically signing, you know, almost, you know, you signed 24 a year as we said before. You know, you're picking up two things. Number one is you're picking up revenues. Most of these are existing podcasts.
So the Space is really moved to you've watched Spotify and Amazon basically fired their entire teams. They keep their super big podcasts, but they're all waking up to realize. They're really Distributors. They're not curators of content, and because we're a full 360 play, these podcasts need handholding, so we continue to add those as we add them. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy 1 is you're going to add immediate revenues. But 2 is you're going to add that immediate traffic. And the more traffic, we drive the bigger the Amazon partnership going to grow. I couldn't be more excited.
Okay. Yeah. If if Adam Cole is looking he's probably like what the hell man? I'm right here. So, just kidding. This is the best Adam's the best. I spoke to him yesterday. You know. It was a great partner and we just continue to grow with them.
Okay. Uh, last question for me, um, Kip did a great job yesterday of outlining the ways in which, um, podcast 1 is used AI kind of across the the platform. I mean, of course, the whole Enterprise Drive Revenue Drive costs, Drive efficiency, Etc. In addition to what kit talked about yesterday, could you describe some of the AI tools that are being deployed in the rest of your company? You know, just so we have a fuller idea of that.
Yeah, you know, as you know Sean, you know me a long time, you know, all of my companies, you know, our media companies from a revenue standpoint but are always focused on Next Generation technology and we're right in the heart, in the center of it, you're going to see more and more Partnerships coming out of us in the AI space but um the team Brad and the team over at slacker, you know, Under Siege right, you lose 50 million dollars in revenues, you got to take costs down, they've just done an amazing job of embracing technology. Both from a marketing standpoint, right to convert subscribers to lock down, to think that we lock down, you know, you know, 60% of every Tesla car, you know, and got him even though a lot of them are afraid. Is is just it's just an an amazing thing and that was utilizing AI. They've also utilized Ai, and that we used to need way more hosts, right? You can now create a music channel, you know, way quicker.
You can combine the use of AI with the human with a human, right as a DJ Vijay host. So we're able to cut those costs down. I think you're going to see a lot more of those initiatives happening as the revenues ramp back up right on the other side of the business. As those ramp back up, will continue to grow those and, you know, and uh, um, we're we're looking at, you know, consistently looking at, you know,
More and more ways to do it. And we've been able to cut our staff from 350 people to 95. Um, Ryan's just done a great job of restructuring, fighting through this, literally surviving a loss of $50 million in revenues. Most companies can't survive that. We've come out and now we're thriving.
Yeah, great. Thanks for that additional detail on circling back for 1. Second, I just got something else. I want to ask, um, about the number of subscribers that you've converted. It is amazing. I never would have thought, you know, you get to that 60%, you kind of feel like you're at that limit now. I mean, it was never going to be 100; you know it was probably never going to be even 60, and you managed that. But I noticed that the number is about the same as it was at the end of August. So, have we converted pretty much everybody we're going to convert?
From a free standpoint. Yes. Yeah. Right. From from a post standpoint. Now, now, we just started to put advertising in right. So we partnered with Dax the biggest, you know, you know, Ad Agency to do that doing programmatic advertising. And it does 3 things. Sean, you know, number 1 is number 1, is it a noise the hell out of people, right? All of a sudden, you're all of a sudden you go from from no ads to a ton of ads, right. My son, my son was giving me a hard time because I had in my car because I want to hear actually what's happening in it. I want to make sure those ads are relevant, right. Ah, so the people that are going to stay for free are actually going to use it, right? That's a and then B is I want to convert them, right? So we're now using in 2z right? Which is a amazing AI marketing technology platform, right? That really is able to find in multiple different space, But first in the automotive space, now the goal is to convert those people.
And just think about, if we converted a 100,000 of the million, right at an average, our proof of $60 a year, most of that's going to be paid up front. We could generate a lot of cash right now.
All right, and that's the that's that initiative is just started. We went from zero advertising.
I think it was 3 months ago, Ryan to today, we're like 90% advertising, you know, that 90% fulfillment, which it generates some revenues as well, right? It's a new Revenue stream, they'll start to kick in the advertising side of it, but our real goal is and Spotify, says they convert 60% of every, the reason they have a free tier, there's a 60% convert. I don't know what the time frame, they convert. But if we can convert 10% of this, 20% of it, if somehow we converted 60, obviously, the numbers will be off the charts, but if we can convert 10 to 20% we're going to generate a ton of cash up front and we're going to generate, you know, long-term revenues with those subscribers that are going to be beyond the advertising side.
All right. Thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
Any other questions?
and uh once again, if you would like to ask a question seemed to press the star 1 on your telephone keypad,
I'm showing no further questions at this time. I would like to turn it back to Robert Ellen for closing remarks.
I think we I think we covered everything. I'm looking forward to um our next call, I'm looking forward to the next major announcements of this company. As I said, there are 72 B2B deals in the works. Uh, this is what I I've done my career. I always been, you know, sort of the, the smaller company that's been able to partner with these massive Distributors. There's so many of them now that are out there, that is the cycle has changed, right? And you look at the cycle, everyone from Facebook to Microsoft to every streaming partner to auto companies. Everybody's fighting for data again and I think we're right in The Sweet Spot that live 1 has the opportunity to be that strategic partner that we're Nimble with the lowest with the lowest price. Um and we're willing to White Label, I think you can see more and more of those B2B deals and you see a couple more Amazon, you see a couple more streaming Partners, you see a couple more Retail Partners, you can easily see this company in the next 5 years, doing a billion dollars in revenues using
With zero cost to marketing, right? We're not chasing an individual subscriber, we're chasing a pool of subscribers. So we're looking at leveraging, this great content. We have this original programming, we have and really leveraging it and positioning ourselves that we partner with anyone who has 10 million to 3 billion eyeballs like Facebook. And we partner with a lot of them. Right. You know, both before I own this company and, you know, since we've owned it, we partnered with the likes of everyone from Tik Tok to Facebook folks, right to Amazon, to Paramount, all right, we continue to do that, and we continue to grow with it and I see telltale signs that, you know, we're starting to build real momentum on those B2B deals. We land a couple more of these and we're going to have another exciting run and you know, like I said I'm proud of our team. I'm proud. We we fought through this battle and uh I see the future. Extraordinarily bright right now for where the company is going.
With that. Thank you everyone. I appreciate your time.
thank you and this now concludes