Courtside Group, Inc. Common Stock (PODC) 7 Nov 242025 Q2 Earnings call transcript

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. This is PodcastOne's Fiscal Second Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Thank you. And now, I will turn the call over to PodcastOne's Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Aaron Sullivan. The floor is yours.

Thank you. Welcome to PodcastOne Fiscal Second Quarter 2025 Business Updates 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, Rob Ellin, Executive Chairman of the Board. I'd 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 view as of the date of this call, November 7, 2024. 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 investors that this call is being recorded. PodcastOne is making it available to investors in 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 expressed written consent is strictly prohibited.

Now I would like to turn the call over to PodcastOne's President, Kit Gray.

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 Robert 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 first -- I'd like to first provide an overview on PodcastOne for those who may be new to our story. Podcasts have transitioned from their 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, hosts 189 shows that reaches a U.S. audience, 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 advertisements sold by our direct sales team who brings these brands' access to the unique audiences on our platform.

We also recently introduced 2 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 a la carte offering for every price point and specific needs to our talent on our platform.

Second, we've launched paywalls with Apple+, Substack, Supporting Cast and where we have an agreement with some of our most popular podcasts and package that offer ad free listening, early access, notes from podcasters, bonus episodes, merchandise, and more. This avenue also provides us with future spots and premium placements within each paywall ecosystem. More on those verticals later. Uniquely, our full end-to-end capabilities not only partner with podcast, but in some instances our own intellectual property or the actual show. This year alone we have already sold 2 shows to 2 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 on 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 media -- 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?

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 ago 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 ago 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 and diluted share, compared to a net loss of $10.9 million or $0.52 per basic and diluted share in the same year 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 $1.4 million, compared to adjusted EBITDA of $0.1 million in the same year ago 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 equivalent 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 recently entered into long-term deals with certain podcasters, to make them equity partners, as we will compensate them for revenue share with stock brands. This will be accretive to adjusted EBITDA and strengthens our relationship with talent. They will literally be invested in our Company, 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.

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, the Soundrise, which is part of the 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 1-2 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. He brings extensive experience and will work alongside senior management, to drive both organic and inorganic growth opportunities, specifically in M&A.

Lastly, Jon 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 transition -- 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 much 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 5 deals with average expected revenues in the 6 figures with major brands such as Motortrend, Lovesac, and Invisible Scars.

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 6 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 the 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 2 year deal. And added a second show to their network called [ I have News ] that is under their umbrella and leverages their extremely loyal audience. PodcastOne was also able to support Kendall Toole, a Peloton fame, as she embarked on her next chapter with wholeheartedly podcast joining our former colleague and current Peloton instructor Cody Rigsby and his podcast Tactful Pettiness on PodcastOne. Full 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 accretive 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 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 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 2 popular shows. The unique model, team, and resources within PodcastOne is reshaping a budgeting 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 Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Sean McGowan of ROTH Capital Partners.

Two quickies for Aaron first. Aaron, when you were giving that guidance, did you say 61, 6-1; or 51, 5-1?

51, 5-1.

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

Yes, similar timing as we discussed earlier.

So early next week, day or 2 before the deadline.

Okay. Then a couple of questions for you, Kit.

So now that the election cycle, the most important election of our lifetime, et cetera, et cetera, 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?

Yes. Hello, Sean, good to hear from you. Thanks for joining, buddy. Yes.

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 podcast and even the Elon Musk of the world going on podcast, and just talking about that, and really the strength of podcasting. It really was a powerful tool in this campaigning strategies of both -- both candidates.

So really kind of cool to watch. But that 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 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.

Kind of along the same general area is 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?

I guess it can kind of go both ways. But we're really unique. I talked about the I've Had It properties 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 to -- 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 2 women, in particular, to not spend as much time in their core business, which is being a divorce attorney and a design specialist, running their 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 L.A. to go out to meet with certain political people and 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.

And my last question is, given that every business has an 80-20 rule, right, the podcasting 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? Like 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?

Yes. Good question, Sean, you always have some good ones.

I think it is harder for new shows to get discovered or be discovered and then continually download it and grow. It is -- I believe there's less new podcasts out there than there has been in the last couple of years, but the consumption of podcast is growing tremendously and the ways to access podcast is changing, right? We've talked about YouTube becoming a huge, huge platform of distribution for podcast 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 road shows or special events. I would tell my best friend if you wanted to grow a podcast that you'd have to join the right network, a network like ours or 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 20,000, 30,000, 40,000, 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 up, the episodes that go up, 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 at like what download number you have.

So there's different ways to make money now.

If you're 20,000, 25,000 downloaded podcast, 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 type of things that we can help people do and that's their chance to become podcast stars.

[Operator Instructions] And your next question comes from the line of Leo Carpio of Joseph Gunnar.

I've 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 podcast or listening? And just wondering if that has happened this Q?

Yes. Hello, Leo, good to see you last week and good to hear from you again. Yes.

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, YouTube diving into it deeply. But you've also have the iOS change with Apple where they changed how they download to subscribers of podcasts. And not only did that hurt many in our network, but it also hurt a lot of shows throughout the podcast medium. And that short term hurt, a long-term gain, because I think it helps clarity in terms of the audience and it helps the advertisers have some more confidence on people actually hearing their spots.

So I think that's -- it's a good thing.

So the numbers and the downloads have really evolved.

So 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, yes, there are a lot of people at the beach. But there could have been a lot of people at the beach listening to the podcast, too, right? So I think the medium is just exploding.

I think it continues to be a place where people consume information, laugh, and feel like a community. And again, the biggest and best personalities in the world are in the podcasting spaces either as hosts or guests or creators of these fantastic IP programs now that we've got going on as well.

And speaking in terms of the new media that you just mentioned there, given this whole presidential election cycle that I just went through, do you think podcasting is becoming a more reliable form of news source, like, 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 ad?

Yes. 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? Like when you go on a podcast, it's not like Instagram or 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 3-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 3-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 to these people unlike you ever have been able to do before, right? So that's the strength of podcasting.

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 like 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 health, robust or?

Yes.

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 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 Lehman joining the company.

Our 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 2 months ago.

So I think that they're both -- there are 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 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 greater than podcast.

So we have a much bigger ocean to pick from. We just have to pick the right ones.

And then last question, turning back to the guidance. Previously you had indicated the guidance was $51 million to $56 million for the year, and you're saying today, it's greater than $51 million.

Just trying to connect the 2 dots in terms of the guidance. Is it still the $51 million, $56 million?

What we're saying is we're going to be over $51 million. 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 I wouldn't -- they're not slam dunks, I would say that.

So we're confident on hitting that over that $51 million 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.

Your next question comes from the line of Barry Sine of Litchfield Research.

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 afterwards.

So just really great experience.

I'm glad you had fun and, yes, that's a unique one for sure.

Can you hear me okay?

Okay.

Yes. Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

Sorry, I'm actually in Hong Kong.

So it's a little bad connection.

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?

Sure. Those are -- most of our advertising deals, I would say, probably 80% ballparking it, are through agency that represents brands, and it's very much spot, weak spots, 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've 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? Like is the coffee mug chasing 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. I outlined his history.

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 of that stuff.

And I'm trying to just collect everything you've said.

You've given a lot of data points on, 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 you've monetized 2 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?

Yes. 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, 2 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 kick-start 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 2 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 to doing close to 2 million bucks, 3 million bucks, 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 should 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 podcast, 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.

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

Yes.

So the M&A side of things will be -- we already have a division that does the acquiring existing podcasts and starting new podcasts like our talent and content acquisition team that's led by Eli Dvorkin. They do a great job, right. Like, I guess, 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 2 or 3 of those strategically, it really, really gets exciting.

And what does the opportunity look like out there? Are there companies like that for sale? And why are they up for sale?

Yes. I mean, look, we acquired the assets of Kast Media a little over a year ago now, where that landed anywhere from 6 or 7 shows, maybe more -- I'm sorry, more than that, but because Brendan Schaub has 3 shows, right? But those -- we were able to land those shows that drove, it's anywhere between $5 million and $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 they ended, 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 2 plus 2, you can equal 5 or 6, 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. And travel safely, enjoy your time all across the world.

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

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, Florida -- Boca Raton, Florida, and the 13th Annual ROTH Tech 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 PODC@mzgroup.us to get connected.

We will look forward to seeing you on the road, and thank you again for your time. Have a great day.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's call. Thank you, everyone, for joining.

You may now disconnect.