PANDORA TOPS 6M IN PAYING SUBSCRIBERS
Pandora added 351k subscribers in the second quarter of 2018, giving the internet radio company 6m paying users of its Pandora Plus and Pandora Premium services. The company also saw double-digit revenue growth in the quarter.
Total consolidated revenue was $384.8m, about 12% year-over-year increase minus the 2017 revenue from Australia and New Zealand, where service was discontinued in July 2017, and Ticketfly, which was sold in September.
Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $34.6m compared to a loss of $54.3m in the same quarter last year.
Pandora CEO Roger Lynch said subscription revenue was up 67% and ad hour trends had improved for the third straight quarter. “New partnerships with top brands like Snap and AT&T, as well as enhancements to our ad tech and programmatic offerings, position us to further accelerate growth and ownership of the expanding digital audio marketplace,” he said in announcing the results.
In the quarter, Pandora closed the acquisition of AdsWizz for $146.6m. AdsWizz will allow Pandora to access additional demand, optimize pricing and increase efficiency of the company’s ad operations on a global basis.
In a call with investors and analysts, Lynch touted recent integrations with AT&T, T-Mobile and Snap, which exposes Pandora to a larger universe and allows the company to optimize its own direct marketing. The Snap partnership, he said, gets Pandora in front of younger audience.
He said the company’s podcast genome will launch later this year. While he did not provide a timeline, he was also bullish on voice controls, which the company views as key to more usage in cars.
Active users were 71.4m at the end of the quarter. Total listener hours were down to 5.09b for the second quarter from 5.22b in the prior Q2. The company does not include trial uses in its subscription numbers.
In the third quarter, the company will be bumping up its investments in marketing efforts, spending at least $10m on highly targeted digital ads. The company predicts about a 10% growth of between $390m and $405m in the quarter with an EBITDA loss of $10m-$25m.
