Audioboom Announces H1 2019 Financial Results: Revenue Grows 171% to $9.8 Million
Today Audioboom releases its Half Year financial results — as we’re the only podcast company that’s publicly traded our reports are a great opportunity to see how a podcast business operates and how it’s growing within the sector.
As a quick reminder Audioboom’s business is focused on three areas — original content creation, advertising sales, and podcast technology services.
It’s all really encouraging news for Audioboom — Revenue is up, EBITDA loss is down and we’re getting closer to break-even. We’re growing much quicker than the rest of the industry, our UK business has accelerated, and we’re ready for even more growth.
Revenue
In the first 6 months of 2019, Audioboom’s revenue totaled $9.8 million — an incredible 171% increase on the same period last year (H1 2018: $3.6 million).
The chart below shows our H1 revenue growth since 2016. Our steady approach through 2018 allowed us to create strong internal structures, we refined the business model and we invested in both great content and key talent to really push the business forward.
The most exciting aspect of this is how we’re significantly outperforming the market. The most recent IAB Podcast Revenue Study projected 2018 to 2019 US podcast advertising industry revenue growth at just under 42% — Audioboom’s growth is more than 4X that of the wider industry, which means we’re increasing our market share and becoming an even bigger player in the space.
Profitability
Like many young, scalable companies in emerging markets we’re working hard at Audioboom to reach profitability. Over the past year we’ve taken measures to control costs, we’ve become more efficient in how we work, we’ve invested in key areas to improve our gross margins, and restructured our teams to focus on proven revenue generating initiatives. The result is a halving in our EBITDA loss to $1.4 million (H1 2018: $2.8m).
The chart below shows how we’re on the path to profitability:
A key part of the EBITDA improvement has been the maintenance of our gross margin. Audioboom’s cost of sale is generally the price of licensing, acquiring or producing content. As the industry has become more competitive we’ve had to create more compelling financial packages for our third party content partners. To offset that change we’ve increased our commitment to the Audioboom Originals Network, our shows that are fully developed and produced in house, as well as our co-production partnership — these both come with superior margins. Last week we opened two new production studios in our New York City office which more than doubles our production capacity, and we have 10 new shows in development. Audioboom Originals and our co-productions will continue to positively impact our growth.
Global Growth
Audioboom is the largest global podcast company with offices across the US, in the UK, and India, and with 3rd party sales teams in Canada, Australia, Ireland and LATAM. The US podcast market, which is several years more developed than any other market in the world, remains our most lucrative with more than 88% of our business coming out of that territory.
But, that should not hide the incredible position we’ve created for ourselves in the UK. We’re the only podcast business operating there which offers premium advertising sales in the form of host endorsements and live reads for its content partners. The UK podcast market has been more focused on lower-value, pre-produced audio spots which has offered more immediate monetization but a poorer listening experience. Audioboom has brought the advertising model that has worked so well in the US to the UK, and that model is now starting to prove itself to top tier content creators there. Our UK revenue jumped more than 100% over the past year to $1.1 million (H1 2018: $0.5m).
So it’s been an incredible start to the year. Audioboom’s growing fast, launching new partnerships each week, and developing some fantastic original content.
We’re really proud of everyone at Audioboom and thankful to our partners — together we’ve created a really strong story. We’re building something very special, and have set the company up for a strong second half of the year.
Stuart Last
Chief Operating Officer
Audioboom
