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Gaia, Inc. (GAIA)

Q4 2012 Earnings Call· Mon, Mar 18, 2013

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Gaiam Incorporated Fourth Quarter Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] A quick reminder, this conference is being recorded, Monday, March 18, 2013. It is now my pleasure to turn the conference over to Norberto Aja, Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Norberto Aja

Analyst

Thank you, operator, and good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for participating in Gaiam's 2012 fourth quarter and full-year conference call. Joining me today on the call are Gaiam's Chairman, Jirka Rysavy; Gaiam's CEO, Lynn Powers; and Steve Thomas, Gaiam's CFO. Before we get started however, I would like to take a minute to read our Safe Harbor language. The following constitutes the Safe Harbor statement of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Except for historical information contained herein, the matters discussed on this call are forward-looking statements and involve risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, general business conditions, integration of acquisitions, the timely development of new business, the impact of competition, and other risk details from time to time as described in the SEC reports. The Company does not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements. With that, I would now like to take the turn to introduce Gaiam's Chairman, Jirka Rysavy. Please go ahead.

Jirka Rysavy

Analyst

Thank you, Norberto, and good afternoon, everyone. So revenue for the fiscal year ending December 31 increased 22% to $202.5 million from $165.5 million in 2011. Internal revenue growth was 10%. Gross profit increased $27.1 million to $116.1 million and gross margin improved 350 basis points to 57.3%. Operating income grew $7.2 million and net income improved $4.5 million to $0.6 million or $0.03 per share from a loss of $3.9 million or a loss of $0.17 per share in prior year. EBITDA for the year grew to $12.8 million from a breakeven in 2011. The cash flow from operation increased $14.9 million to $16.9 million and free cash flow improved $14.8 million to $12.9 million. Revenue for fourth quarter increased 20% to $66.7 million from $55.6 million in the same quarter of the last year. Gross profit for the quarter increased $10 million to $36.9 million and gross margin improved 700 basis points to 55.3%. Operating income improved $2.7 million to $4 million and net income increased to $2.1 million or $0.09 a share from $1.3 million or $0.06 per share in prior year. EBITDA for the quarter increased $4.2 million to $7.6 million. These numbers exclude all impacts from deconsolidated Real Goods Solar and also one time Vivendi acquisition cost of $1.7 million. Integration of Vivendi is now complete and we are pleased with its operating results. Gaiam Yoga Fitness brand has expanded to additional doors and improved its U.S. video market share to 42%. Our subscription business, a platform distributing media over the Internet and across mobile devices, is progressing very nicely with over 5,000 videos exclusively available for digital streaming. The conversion rate from the free-trial to subscription continues to go and be well [ph] in our expectation, running still at approximately 70%. The current revenue from the unit is about $350,000 per month. During in the last few weeks, we completed hiring of our marketing team, are now performing some marketing audits. We plan to start marketing campaign in late April. For the year, we expect to have about $5.7 million loss from the unit and then contribution into operating coming 2014. And I'd like to turn it over to Steve to give you some more color on financials. Steve?

Stephen Thomas

Analyst

Thank you, Jirka. I will spend a few minutes reviewing the financial results in greater detail and offering additional perspective on our performance for the quarter and for the full year beginning with the income statement. As a reminder, all the comparisons discussed are as if Real Goods Solar was deconsolidated from Gaiam as of the beginning of 2011. Starting with the fourth quarter of 2012, net revenue rose 19.9% to $66.7 million compared to $55.6 million for the fourth quarter of 2011. Net revenue from our business segment, which is comprised of sales to retailers, increased 40.7% to $48.8 million as we continue to grow our role across some of the largest U.S.-based retailers by offering the media content, fitness and wellness products consumers are looking for. And of course, the Gaiam-Vivendi Entertainment acquisition is playing a vital role in the success of this segment by providing us with a growing library of sought-after content and digital relationships that have helped us to grow the business in line with our expectations when we acquired Vivendi Entertainment at the end of the first quarter of 2012. While we're pleased with the contribution from Gaiam-Vivendi Entertainment, internal revenue growth for our business segment without the acquisition was over 14% for the quarter, showing the strength of our brand. As for our direct-to-consumer segment, revenue declined by 14.6% or $3.1 million to $17.9 million as our direct-response TV business experienced a $2.6 million or 22.9% decline in revenue due to our previously discussed strategic decision to optimize profitability by holding key programming and content in light of significantly higher costs associated with securing television time during the fall political campaign season. For the full year 2012, revenue rose to $202.5 million compared to $165.5 million in 2011, representing a 22.3% increase. Net…

Lynn Powers

Analyst

Thanks, Steve. Echoing Jirka's and Steve's comments, I'm also pleased with both our fourth quarter and full-year results. We're continuing to build and broaden our brand, grow our media business, achieving double-digit organic revenue growth for the full year 2012 while also significantly improving our margin and adjusted EBITDA. We're successfully executing on our stated goals and that is demonstrated in our results and in our confidence going forward. Included within our significantly improved margin and adjusted EBITDA is our $5.9 million investment in Gaiam TV which we believe will be one of the key drivers of our future earnings growth as digital media channel moves to the living room. Without this investment, our adjusted EBITDA would have been $18.7 million for the year. We continue to improve our financial performance through increased revenue, better efficiencies from larger volumes and media sales, and expansion of our core retail partnerships, while continuing to invest in our future growth. We recently hired IDEO, a world-renowned design and innovation consulting firm, to complete a brand positioning study to review opportunities for category and channel expansion for the Gaiam brand. We look forward to a discussion of those opportunities on a future call. Looking at our business segment, the performance over the past year continues to be strong, with internal revenue growth of 14% and 25% compared to the fourth quarter and full year of 2011 respectively. And with total revenue growth including the Vivendi Entertainment acquisition of 41% and 48% compared to the fourth quarter and full year of 2011. Much of the success of this business segment stems from the quick integration we were able to achieve between Gaiam and Vivendi Entertainment and how our team has been able to leverage the additional sales volume of approximately 20 million units or $200…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] First question from the line of George Kelly.

George Kelly

Analyst

Couple of questions, just to start on the TV business. I was wondering, first of all, is breakeven still 90,000 subscribers there? And then I think you said that you expect for 2013, it will be a $5.9 million loss -- or a $5 million loss? I'm just wondering if you could go through the quarterly expectations, and if you still expect the fourth quarter to be breakeven or close to it?

Jirka Rysavy

Analyst

Yes, we still expect to breakeven in December, not the fourth quarter. The breakeven is probably on the run rate of where we ended up about 85,000 subscribers, and the $5.9 million was last year. We expect a little better, about $5.7 million. It's obviously a question of marketing, that includes about $6.3 million marketing budget.

George Kelly

Analyst

Okay, and just the comment that you gave, I think it was 350,000 per month, is that right now or was that in the fourth quarter?

Jirka Rysavy

Analyst

No, that's about what it's right now.

George Kelly

Analyst

Okay, and so then, just so far this year, when you put more marketing dollars behind that initiative, can you talk about just how that's -- what channels have been effective and how your -- just anymore sort of dialogue about what's happened since you've been spending more?

Jirka Rysavy

Analyst

Well, we didn't spend that much more, we didn't do marketing at all until like Thanksgiving, and so we kind of want to hold it pretty much till we finalize the product and test it. We hired our marketing team actually over last 3 weeks, so we have a new both VP and Director of Marketing to run the team. Before, it was kind of everybody from the team was pitching in. So, the campaign start pretty much in late April. So, most of the budget will be spent between April and end of the year.

George Kelly

Analyst

Okay. Then, on the e-commerce transition to the new platform in the quarter, you mentioned that it was weak initially. How is that trended now since the quarter ended?

Lynn Powers

Analyst

We've come back in the first quarter to having a much stronger first quarter. We have a slight comp going on, on our direct side, but we lost probably about 30 days where we weren't converting as we were implementing the new platform, but the new platform will give us so much more flexibility in the future, we'll make it interactive, we'll be able to add video, and we believe that that will have final implementation of all the things that we want to do with the platform by the third quarter of 2013.

George Kelly

Analyst

Okay. So then, I think you had also said that the direct business should be positive for the full year in 2013, and is that part that you have to work through the difficult part is the e-commerce side where comps are more harder?

Lynn Powers

Analyst

Yes, that's correct.

George Kelly

Analyst

Is there anything else impacting that?

Lynn Powers

Analyst

No, we do expect to have double-digit comps in our direct business for 2013.

George Kelly

Analyst

Then, your stake in Real Goods Solar, any news there? The stock has been up quite a bit here recently, any update there?

Jirka Rysavy

Analyst

Not really. I think -- we would say the stock move is because of activity of Sol [ph] City [ph], and so there's not really any update on that.

George Kelly

Analyst

Okay, and then just one last one, the transition with the Vivendi business into the aggregator model, can you talk through what kind of impact that will have in 2013, just as far as revenue growth and was it just a few -- is it going to be able to...?

Lynn Powers

Analyst

Yes, it's a few contracts that we still had where we were doing aggregator versus distribution and depending on when and how many of those contracts we converted, it could be somewhere around $5 million to $6 million in revenue. But again, it won't affect -- it will have a positive effect on the bottom line and cash flow.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Next question from the line of Mark Argento.

Mark Argento

Analyst

Couple of questions. First off, interesting hire with Andrew Davison in terms of some of the branding. Can you talk a little bit about more specifically what his responsibilities will be in terms of the brand? Will it be the brand across all kind of different divisions or how do you think about some of the things he'll be doing?

Lynn Powers

Analyst

First of all, Andrew will be responsible for the direct-to-consumer business for making sure that our web presence and every place where we touch the consumer directly has one brand positioning, and also will be looking at opportunities for licensing on the brand and for additional categories where we see -- which we can see the Gaiam brand on, such as apparel.

Mark Argento

Analyst

And will he have direct oversight over, you said all the direct-to-consumer, so will that be the catalog and the web, versus the retail part of the business?

Lynn Powers

Analyst

Catalog, web, and our single retail store, but not on the retailer DRTV side.

Mark Argento

Analyst

Got you, that's helpful. Then, when does he start, is he there now?

Lynn Powers

Analyst

Yes, he is. He started beginning of January.

Mark Argento

Analyst

Great. Shifting over to the retail channel a little bit, could you talk about unit trends? I know you mentioned the overall shift in activity in the media segment has really seen a big pickup in digital distribution. What are you seeing with activity when it comes to fitness DVDs and some of the areas that you focus on? You're seeing as pronounced a move to digital or is it lagging some of the overall trends?

Lynn Powers

Analyst

Fitness is lagging the overall trends right now because once again on fitness, you watch it over and over again, versus a single viewing which you might use for a theatrical release, where people only want it -- it's not ownable, whereas fitness is ownable, so our DVD sales still continue strong and at our largest retailer we're actually up in DVD sales for the year.

Mark Argento

Analyst

On a unit basis?

Lynn Powers

Analyst

Yes, and the Gaiam brand.

Mark Argento

Analyst

Got you. Alright. Then, thinking through the Gaiam TV business, how do you see that? Do you see that more as a kind of unifying property where you can ultimately have a lot of your ecommerce functionality built into Gaiam TV as well, or do you see Gaiam TV as almost more of a standalone, almost like a Netflix for the LOHAS marketplace, how do you see that property playing out over time within all the other brands and all the other kind of products that you have under the umbrella?

Jirka Rysavy

Analyst

We don't really see the Gaiam TV as the Netflix model. Gaiam TV is more like curated, exclusive viewing. So, it means none of the titles are on Netflix or anywhere else, and then consumers, they pick, they have more kind of the selective choice than currently exists in existing media channels. As far as -- the first goal is obviously to make the business breakeven. Services like Amazon, they successfully combined a subscription business with a e-commerce business in form of Amazon Prime. So, there is definitely potential for something like that. But I think the first focus is to get the business to start contributing.

Lynn Powers

Analyst

And Mark [ph], there is also opportunity for consumers to see the Gaiam products in action on the fitness and wellness portion of Gaiam TV, and I think that will give a brand halo over those products and certainly the ability to then go to our ecommerce site and buy those products.

Mark Argento

Analyst

Earlier in your comments, you had talked about some of the other opportunities on the product side of the business, apparel was one, and then you mentioned something about physical location. So, does physical locations mean more retail outlets or store-in-a-stores or what were you alluding to there?

Lynn Powers

Analyst

We're, all of the above. Certainly with the expansion into Sports Authority, with the Gaiam store-within-store, and 460 doors, that was pretty exciting. And we believe there's lots of opportunity to expand into its own 2-to-4 foot section for the Restore brand with the pretty dramatic sales results we've had there. So we think on the retail side, more door expansion. We also believe in, whether it's in a studio environment or a retail environment, there is an opportunity for standalone Gaiam presence.

Mark Argento

Analyst

And any thoughts in terms of trying to get apparel into retail stores or physical stores versus just online or the catalog?

Lynn Powers

Analyst

I think, if anything, we'd start first with some of the online partners like an Amazon, versus trying to go into a retail environment at this time. But I think we have plans and Andrew is working on additional apparel line extensions that then we could take out to retail.

Mark Argento

Analyst

Great, it looks like recently you pushed into almost kind of a higher-end line of yoga, probably a little more of lifestyle clothing, yoga clothing, is that an area you tend to focus a little bit more on as the upscale part of the market or where should we see you position yourself?

Lynn Powers

Analyst

No, we see ourselves in a good, better, best strategy as the better line. We think there's lots of opportunity of price level or so below where lululemon is.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions registered. I would like to turn the call back to you for any closing remarks.

Jirka Rysavy

Analyst

I'd like to thank everybody and our first quarter call is going to be somewhere in early May. Thank you very much.

Operator

Operator

So, ladies and gentlemen, that will conclude our conference call for today. We thank you for your participation and you may now disconnect your lines.