Earnings Sentiment

Sentiment Analysis of the earnings transcript to help figure out if there are any bullish or bearish sentiments that could be gathered from it. We're doing ML and AI based analysis on the earnings call to get some more insights.

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Sentiment Distribution

   

Earnings Call Transcript Word Cloud

     

Bullish Statements during Earnings call

Statement
I'm confident in our ability to continue to drive growth across all of our major properties, despite any softness in the ad market
None of this would have been possible without our core investor group, whose confidence, support, and capital has enabled us to stabilize, sustain and grow
While we have been focused on this transaction, we have also delivered strong Q3 results from our existing businesses, all against an industry dealing with severe headwinds in both the advertising market and shifting audience migrations
We are already seeing an uptick in RFPs from advertising clients and agencies and believe we have positioned this company well for the future
So, '24, assuming the environment -- the economic environment is somewhat stable or perhaps getting better, we expect it to be a good year for us
Mark Argento Really impressive growth in the revenue per page, just overall productivity
I'm incredibly proud of our team for their tireless work delivering these results during a difficult quarter and a difficult year for our industry
It does come down in a lot of cases to the talent that you have in the company, and we feel really, really good about the quality of the people that work here and in particular, work at TheStreet
So, that's a positive, and I'm really optimistic about next year, it probably will be the largest amount of money ever spent in a political campaign
Our adjusted EBITDA was $6.4 million, representing an improvement of $2.9 million or 86% better as compared to the third quarter of last year, reflecting our focus on cost control and efficiencies while continuing to diversify and grow our revenue
These results underscore the strength of our business and our ability to operate efficiently during less than optimal circumstances
Gross profit increased by nearly 15% to $28.2 million, representing a gross margin of 44%, a 1.4 percentage point increase as compared to the prior year quarter, which reflects our tight focus on cost control while growing revenue
Our sales team has remained nimble during this -- in this environment, working with our advertising partners to drive innovative solutions, and I'm bullish on our ability to succeed despite these headwinds, particularly under the new leadership of our Chief Revenue Officer, Katie Kulik, who joined us just a few weeks ago
And so she's bringing relationships there that I think will benefit us, in particular on the direct side, where obviously, you get higher yield, higher CPM
Our brands have maintained their relevance in search with Sports Illustrated and TheStreet, in particular, seeing their best-performing quarters to date in total SEO clicks, according to Google Search console
Both have begun to contribute to our success, and as the industry shifts, we believe we have positioned the company for growth
And we, I think, have really positioned this company well to take advantage of that
Seeing such a successful campaign come to fruition in such a short period of time, really underscores the power of combining strong brands with content creators, and we're just getting started
We are also continuing to diversify our revenue streams through initiatives such as e-commerce, which saw a 637% increase in revenue year-over-year, after a strong performance on Amazon Prime Day
Our lifestyle vertical anchored by Parade and our men's lifestyle vertical anchored by Men's Journal have also had a strong third quarter
With the addition of linear and over-the-top video solutions, we have dramatically improved our offerings for both
Our finance vertical anchored by TheStreet had its best quarter in history for page views, with a 40% year-over-year growth as compared to the third quarter last year, according to Google Analytics
We've seen incredible growth this quarter, particularly in our FanNation and Athlon Sports businesses which increased quarterly page views by 48% and 116% year-over-year, respectively, according to Google Analytics
So as we head into a year where there are a couple of really big events coming up, as I mentioned earlier, having those relationships should bode well for us
For the 9-month period, this gross profit increased 18% over the prior year, and we saw increases year-over-year in every quarter
Look, we've worked really hard over the last couple of years in getting our platform to be highly efficient, to be able to use the data that we're gathering from -- across our 300-plus sites, which enables us to target better
And then you did talk about a couple of the properties like TheStreet seen really solid page-view growth
Parade is doing fantastic
In the third quarter, revenue increased to approximately $63.4 million, up 11% from $57.3 million for the third quarter of last year, reflecting continued growth in our digital advertising and our e-commerce businesses
And I think it's a combination of all those things, plus, frankly, we've got good content and we're doing it in a way that consumers are recognizing it, seeing it, engaging with it
       

Bearish Statements during earnings call

Statement
The ad market across our industry remained challenging during Q3, with headwinds particularly pronounced in direct sales
And over the last year, that and one of our other brands HubPages took a little bit of a hit, which has really been the only area across all our brands that we saw declines, but they were pronounced
Total print revenue decreased by 9% to $17.6 million from $19.3 million in the prior year quarter, which is in line with historical print advertising trends, in general
I mean, all the main players who you would comp us to have had really tough -- a really tough quarter digitally and digital revenue overall, digital advertising
And that's really the key issue that Google is challenging in its deprecation of third-party cookies
Daniel Day So, you talked about the decline in page views in the quarter, overall page views and what you talked about it's an audience migration
The most pronounced decline, which has had the most impact to our business has been at The Spun, which last year really the last 1.5 years has just been an absolute rocket ship
When you look across our competitors, everybody is down
It represented a decrease of 31% as we continue to focus most of our resources on free or our partner's free ad or partner supported content
So I'm less worried about that
If you look around at our competitors and the industry struggles, you will see just how far we've come, how complete our opportunity is and how real our growth is
For sure, the markets and the [VIX] in particular have been pretty volatile
As a result, the company's actual future results can be expected to differ from its expectations and those differences may be material
   

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