New York, New York--(Newsfile Corp. - May 20, 2021) - PCG Digital -- With LiveXLive (NASDAQ: LIVX) presenting at premier investor conferences on May 19th and the 26th that will be attended by some of the biggest institutional investors, it will be very interesting to hear more about what is driving the company's growth. Last month, LIVX announced it was increasing its revenue guidance for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2022, to $100 million to $110 million with Adjusted Operating Income of $1.5 million to $3.0 million, which would be up from updated revenue guidance for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2021, of $64.5 million to $65.5 million. Intriguingly, this increased guidance does not even include any revenue from its live events business due to COVID-19. As vaccination rates climb and COVID cases decline, this could set LIVX up to raise guidance even further. Its upcoming Social Gloves live event in Miami has the potential to be a huge revenue driver for the company as its flywheel business model kicks into high gear.
Growth Metrics Rising
The company also provided an update on its impressive growth metrics. It ended FY 2021 with over 1.075 million paid subscribers showing excellent overall growth. During FY 2021, LiveXLive livestreamed over 140 live music events and 1,781 artists across the LiveXLive platform, generating over 150 million livestream views, as compared to 42 events, 256 artists, and over 69 million livestream views in the same period a year ago. In Q4 FY 2021 alone, livestream views grew 533% to 38 million compared to 6 million livestream views in Q4 FY 2020. Additionally, during FY 2021, LiveXLive livestreamed 27 Pay-Per-View (PPV) events, sold over 68,000 PPV tickets with an average ticket price of $26.73, and generated total PPV revenue of $2.4 million, including ticket sales, merchandising, vodcasting/podcasting, advertising, and sponsorships. LiveXLive's 24-hour linear OTT streaming channel now reaches over 300 million people. Likewise, PodcastOne now generates more than 2.25 billion downloads per year, has over 235 exclusive podcast shows, and produces more than 400 podcast episodes per week. Total social media reach across the exclusive PodcastOne talent roster now exceeds 240 million.
LiveXLive's balance sheet remains strong as the company expects to close fiscal year 2021 with approximately $18.4 million in cash and cash equivalents, as compared to $17.4 million on December 31, 2020.
Live Events Rebounding
More live events are returning to stages across the United States, with one of the most unique events of the year, if not the decade to come. In early April, LiveXLive and Hard Rock International & Seminole Hard Rock announced a multi-year & multi-million dollar strategic partnership to host and sponsor LiveXLive events, kicking-off with Social Gloves: Battle Of The Platforms Franchise beginning on June 12 at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens. The live event will accommodate close to 30,000 attendees in a socially distanced configuration to ensure the health and safety of all guests. The PPV live broadcast will air on the LiveXLive platform, Facebook, and will be available on all devices for livestreaming.
The upcoming PPV event, Social Gloves, a boxing competition, which pits the world's largest social media stars from YouTube against the new icons from the explosive TikTok platform and a new partnership with Facebook, allows LIVX to capitalize across its flywheel business model, including subscription, advertising, sponsorship, pay-per-view tickets, merchandise, and a new NFT content division.
This past Friday, LIVX announced the Midwest's largest all-electronic music festival, Spring Awakening Music Festival (SAMF), will return to Chicago's Addams/Medill Park on October 2nd and 3rd, 2021, for the first "Autumn Equinox" edition of the festival. Last year's first-ever virtual SAMF, which featured 22 artists performing across the country, garnered over 3 million livestreams, 2.5 million impressions, and 69,000 live engagements over the LiveXLive platform. Pre-Covid, the React business generated $15-$20 million in revenue with its flagship SAMF drawing around 30,000 people each day in attendance. With Spring Awakening being the first of many live events its React Presents division will announce in addition to Social Gloves, clearly this is a positive trend and one that can generate meaningful revenue this quarter and next as the live events business continues to ramp back up.
Another positive industry trend is a close peer in the live events space, Live Nation, which recently reported that its concert pipeline for 2022 is up double digits, and Ticketmaster continues to sign new clients.
Large Partnerships and a Budding NFT Business
Tesla remains a large and impressive customer, which continues to report strong growth and should bode well for LIVX. The partner list continues to grow with Samsung and PodcastOne news. And if that wasn't enough, LIVX's business is ideally suited to capitalize on the NFT industry, and it has only just begun with the recent upfront fee and royalties in a multi-year, multi-million dollar announcement with Cybertino for licensing LIVX assets including Social Gloves. iHeartMedia, another multi-billion market-cap peer, has been performing well and recently surpassed previously reported company guidance. Investors actively looking for undiscovered growth opportunities in this space may soon wake up to the LIVX value proposition especially as customers from each division convert into long lasting monthly subscribers.
Continued Consolidation, M&A and Hiring JP Morgan
Consolidation continues in the industry, with the recent acquisition of Tidal highlighting the strong interest in this high-growth sector. Financial services company Square announced on March 4th that it had acquired a majority stake in Tidal, the music streaming service founded by music mogul Jay-Z and other artists for $297 million. As LIVX continues to grow its subscriber base with its unique and differentiated content platform, other major industry players such as music streaming service leaders Spotify Technology, Apple, and Amazon may start to take notice. Could this be part of the reason LIVX engaged JP Morgan to explore M&A and strategic alternatives?
Insider Buying
Last but not least, management and insiders have been buying stock actively in the open market over the last six months, filing multiple Form 4s, and its CEO remains its largest investor with now over 16 million shares on top of multi-millions invested directly. Clearly, this displays their strong belief in the value of the business.
Influential Investor Conference
All of this makes the (NASDAQ: LIVX) fire-side chat hosted by well-known and influential Needham analyst Laura Martin on Wednesday, May 19, 2021, at 11:00 am EDT, extremely intriguing. Click here for the Needham virtual event: https://wsw.com/webcast/needham108/livx/2286785. And just this week, LIVX announced that they will be presenting at J.P. Morgan's 49th Annual Global Technology, Media and Communications Conference on May 26th at 1:25 pm EDT; login here to listen live: https://jpmorgan.metameetings.net/events/tmc21/sessions/37814-livexlive-media-inc/webcast?gpu_only=true&kiosk=true.
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