Banzai International, Inc. (BNZI) Q4 2024 Earnings Conference Call April 15, 2025 05:30 PM ET

Company Participants

Unknown - Conference Call Moderator
Unknown - Call Operator
Alvin Yip - Chief Financial Officer
Joe Davey - Chief Executive Officer

Unknown

Welcome to the Bonsai fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial results and business update conference call. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded.

Before we begin the formal presentation, I would like to remind everyone that statements made on this call and webcast may include predictions, estimates, or other information that might be considered forward-looking. While these forward-looking statements represent our current judgment on what the future holds, they are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. We are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which reflect our opinions only as of the date of this presentation. Please keep in mind that we are not obligated publicitating ourselves to revise or publicly release the results of any revision to these forward-looking statements in light of new information or future events.

Throughout today's discussion, we will attempt to present some important factors relating to our business that may affect our predictions. You should also review our most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q for more complete discussion of these factors and other risks. particularly under the heading risk factors.

A press release detailing these results was issued this afternoon and is available in the investor relations section of our company's website, bonsai. io. Your host today, Joe Davey, Chief Executive Officer, and Alvin Yip, Chief Financial Officer, will present unaudited results of operations for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31st, 2024.

At this time, I will turn the call over to Bonsai Chief Executive Officer Joe Davey.

Joe Davey

Thank you, and good afternoon, everyone. I am pleased to welcome you to Bonsai's fourth quarter and full year 2024 financial results conference call. Just go ahead and flip to the next slide here.

Sorry. We are seeing an acceleration of growth at Bonsai with the fourth quarter showing significant pro forma revenue growth. This is driven by the recently closed acquisitions of Vadello and Open Real, as well as continued strong performance for our products.

For the full year 2024, total revenue on a consolidated pro forma basis was $16.7% million, which represents a 267% annual growth compared to Bonsai's standalone revenue in 2023. Videlo's next-generation video creation, editing, and marketing suite and OpenReel's digital video creation platform combined to add approximately $13 million in revenue that enabled us to greatly exceed our previously announced 2024 guidance of $10 million. We are also making continued progress towards the closing of the acquisition of Acton Software, which is projected to increase revenue by $27 million for the full year 2025 on a pro forma basis.

Importantly, we recently paid off $20.3% million of debt, which fully satisfies outstanding debt obligations to key vendors and will deliver a material benefit to net income and shareholders' equity for 2025. We have continued to drive growth with the addition of 1,300 customers through December 2024, Bonsai now serves a customer base of nearly 90,000 customers, many of which are top tier enterprises that rely on our technology to succeed. I will begin with a brief overview of Bonsai for those of you that are newer to the story and touch on the market opportunity and the long-term vision.

I will then cover some highlights from 2024, including updates on each of our products and our go-forward strategies. And I'll just point out that this presentation is being run on Demio, which is a Bonsai product. And the of myself and Alvin were created using Create Studio, which is another Bonsai product.

So I hope everybody enjoys using a couple of Bonsai products today. At Banzai, we're building a platform of AI-powered marketing solutions that make our customers' lives 10 times faster and easier. Our products enable our customers from small businesses to large global enterprises to target, engage, and measure both new and existing customers more effectively.

We're focused on the rapidly growing global MarTech market driven by digital transformation, heightened demand for personalized experiences, and the proliferation of automation and AI. Marketers in the modern age must grapple with a vast and complex network of vendors. Our core product suite addresses the issue of disjointed customer experiences and messy data by centralizing essential tools in one place, Bonsai.

We're continuing to bolster our family of products by acquisitions, positioning us strongly for capitalizing on industry consolidation. Before we delve deeper into updates for each of our individual products, I'd like to cover some key highlights for 2024 and subsequent period. First off, our 2024 pro forma revenue in total was $16.7% million, exceeding our previous guidance of $10 million by 67% and representing 267% annual growth.

In the first quarter of 2025, we completed a $20.3% million debt repayment ahead of schedule, which fully satisfied our outstanding debt obligations to several key vendors. We're extremely pleased to deliver this improvement on the balance sheet, which will also create a material benefit to net income for 2025. We achieved annual recurring revenue of $6.8% million in the fourth quarter.

This represents a 54% annualized ARR growth rate compared to Q3 2024. Full year 2024 adjusted EBITDA was negative $6.5% million, which represents a $5.4% million improvement from full year 2023 EBITDA of negative $11.9% million. We acquired Videlo, a technology provider of video hosting and marketing suite for businesses, and OpenReel, a leading digital video creation platform.

We signed a definitive agreement to acquire Acton Software, an enterprise marketing automation platform provider, which is projected to increase full year 2025 revenue by $27 million on a pro forma basis. We grew our customer base from 2,700 customers at the end of 2023 to over 90,000 as of March 31st, 2025. We launched Create Studio 4.0%, which is the latest version of Create Studio's award-winning video creation app.

developed by the recently acquired Videlo. Finally, we launched Curate, an AI-powered newsletter platform designed to streamline content creation and audience engagement for organizations of all sizes. As we look at our long-term vision, we are building an AI-powered platform that provides marketing teams with the data, analytics, and integrated applications they need to win.

We are consolidating mission-critical subscale MarTech products within the key themes which we'll call our four horsemen of marketing technology. Attracting leads, engaging them through content, gathering and enriching data to drive business intelligence, and measuring results to improve operations. All products that we have built, will build, or acquire will fit into this framework, which simply put, is focused on delivering more customer value over time.

Through March 31st, 2025, Bonsai achieved a milestone in debt repayment under our September 2024 restructuring plan. Now that we've repaid, we've now repaid $20.3% million of liabilities under that plan. This will impact both stockholders' equity and net income in 2025.

And this is a very meaningful milestone for the company and positions us for future financial strength. Moving on to our products. In 2024 and Q1 2025, we completed the acquisitions of OpenReel and Videlo.

These products will be operated under a consolidated video business unit within Bonsai that is focused on helping marketers leverage video to engage their leads and customers more effectively. This consolidated business had pro forma revenues of $16.7% million in 2024, which represents 267% growth compared to Bonsai standalone in 2023. I'll pause here and I'll point out that this slide, the scene that you're seeing here, are assets from Create Studio.

Our Videlo subsidiary makes Create Studio, a leading product for creating 3D Pixar-style videos quickly and easily. It includes over 1,000 prebuilt assets customers can leverage in their projects and has over 85,000 customers as of March 31st, 2025. Videlo also includes products for video marketing, live images, and royalty-free audio.

In February, we launched Create Studio 4.0%, the latest version of the award-winning video creation app developed by our Videlo subsidiary. The Videlo business delivered $6.1% million in revenue and $1.5% million in net income in 2024. Meet OpenReel.

Our open real product enables customers to capture create and edit brand compliant production ready videos. It enables remote capture from any device and AI powered editing to streamline customer workflows. The open real business has over 650 mid market and enterprise customers and delivered $6.3% million in revenue and point $1 million in net income in 2024.

And finally, Demio. We're continuing to see traction with Demio, our AI-powered webinar platform, which you're all joining us on today. We've made enhancements to the platform's integration with HubSpot, Salesforce, and Pardot to offer advanced contact management, UTM tracking, and seamless data synchronization at both the session and contact levels.

Demeo has an industry-first feature, event insights, pre-event analytics delivered to your inbox, tracking registrations, cancellations, room size alerts, peak days, and top channels. This empowers Demeo users to make data-driven decisions and maximize attendee engagement to better leverage everyone's time. Our AI moderator to Demeo, powered by our own LLM custom designed to this purpose, allows our customers to train in AI to join their webinars to assist their attendees.

Demeo is built to empower marketers to streamline their webinar management and marketing efforts, ultimately leading to better business decision making and higher ROI for our customers. In January 2025, we announced a definitive agreement to acquire Acton Software Inc. Acton is a leading marketing automation platform provider. It's expected to be accreted to Banzai's overall revenue and net income in 2025.

This acquisition is subject to the satisfaction or waiver of closing conditions and is still in progress. Curate, which we launched late last year, is a groundbreaking AI-powered newsletter platform that writes and grows itself. Leveraging OpenAI's GPT-4.0% to automate the newsletter creation process, Curate writes relevant branded articles that resonate with target audiences.

Newsletters are a key modern engagement tool for businesses to highlight their brand for their existing and prospective customers, but they currently require significant time and resources to create and maintain. Curate was made to take down the cost and effort for our customers to create high-quality newsletters by 90%. And this is a really cool product, by the way.

If you're interested in the demo, send me an email after the end of this and I'll make sure it happens. Driven by our acquisitions, we've substantially scaled our customer base to over 90,000 customers while retaining leaders from various industries. Some of our key customers and partners include Cisco, Adobe, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Microsoft, Dell, Capital One, RBC Global Asset Management, among thousands of others.

We serve a variety of industries, including healthcare, financial services, e-commerce, technology, and media in over 90 countries. We're continuing to focus on targeting the mid-market and enterprise segment while still supporting small businesses. We're taking a disciplined approach to focus on acquiring stickier, higher value customers.

Bonsai continues to be focused on our strategy of building and buying new products across four key areas, attracting leads, engaging content, tracking, and intelligence. We feel these areas are key to marketing success both now and in the future for our customers. Our growth strategy is centered around our secret sauce, our land and expands model.

The land phase is securing a customer for one Bonsai solution based on their needs at the time. With the variety of complimentary tools that are now in our product suite, we can then upsell that customer to increase NRR or the expansion phase. We're targeting a 10% cross sale rate per business unit in 2025.

Our vision is to build a moat in two key areas, integrations and AI enablement. By combining multiple products on a single platform, we can simplify customers workflows and deliver on our brand promise of 10 times faster and easier solutions. Long term, we believe AI enablement will be key to marketing success. We believe that adding more products with more data will enable us to deliver more powerful AI features over time.

Our business model is based on a flywheel where great products lead to growing customer usage, which then drives additional data and content on our products. This data and content enables us to create additional high value or create additional customer value through integrations, automations and AI features. Over time, we believe that this flywheel will be key to driving customer expansion and the continued organic growth of our business.

We see an enormous potential for long-term value creation by scaling via strategic acquisitions in addition to organic growth. We're taking a diligent approach to evaluating potential candidates that can align with the key themes of Bonsai's AI-driven platform. Again, attracting leads, engagement, data, and intelligence.

The opportunity for Bonsai is twofold. First, increase our product capabilities by acquiring strategically aligned products that serve our core customer base. And second, by accelerating our path to profitability and scale, and hopefully to benefit from multiple expansion along the way.

I will now turn the call over to Alvin Yip, Interim Chief Financial Officer, to discuss our financial results. Alvin. Thank you, Joe.

Alvin Yip

Hi, everyone. So I'm going to do a financial summary on the Q4 and the 12-month full-year financial. Total revenue for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $1.3% million compared to $1.1% million in the fourth quarter of 2023.

However, we believe the non-GAAP matrix annual recurring revenue, or ARR, is more meaningful in evaluating the company's performance ARR was $6.8% million for the fourth quarter of 2024 and represents a 46% increase from the fourth quarter of 2023. Gross profit for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $0.9% million. compared to 0.8% million in the fourth quarter of 2023. Gross margin was flat at 71% in the fourth quarter of 2024 compared to 71% in the fourth quarter of 2023. Total operating expense for the fourth quarter of 2024 were 4.8% million compared to 4 million in the fourth quarter of 2023.

Net loss for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $7.8% million, compared to a net loss of $6.4% million in the fourth quarter of 2023 year. Non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA for the fourth quarter of 2024 was $1.44% million, reflecting a net loss of $7.9% million before changing the value adjustment of common stocks warrant issued, Goodwill and other bivocated embedded derivative liabilities for a total of $4.2% million, loss on extinguishment of debt and other expenses for $2.3% million, and is a sequential improvement of $0.03% million compared to the adjusted net loss of 1.47% million for the third quarter of 2024. This represents an annualized improvement of approximately 0.12% million.

Non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA had a loss of $1.44% million for the fourth quarter of 2024, reflecting a sequential increase of approximately $7.8% million in earnings when compared to a loss of $9.2% million for the fourth quarter of 2023. This period-over-period increase in earnings is primarily attributed to The company overall cost cutting effort made in general and administrative marketing and technology expenses and represents an annualized improvement to adjusted EBITDA of approximately 31 million. Total performer revenue for the full year 2024 was $16.7% million compared to the $4.6% million in the prior year, reflecting a sequential increase of approximately $12.1% million in earnings. Gross profit for the full year 2024 was $13.6% million compared to $3.1% million in 2023. Growth margin was flat at 81% in the full year 2024, compared to 68% in 2023, reflecting a sequential increase of approximately 13%.

Cash and cash equivalents total $1.1% million on December 31, 2024, as compared to $4.3% million on September 30, 2024, and $2.1% million on December 31, 2023. I will turn the call back to Joe for some closing remarks. Thank you, everyone.

Joe Davey

Thank you, Alvin. Hopefully everybody can see why we were so excited to share this update with you all. Before I close, I'd like to review our 2025 forecast for our consolidated company to include OpenReal and Videlo I'll give the disclaimer that this is a forecast and, you know, we we like to be transparent here.

But as was said at the beginning of the call, you know, this this is a forward looking this is a forward looking projection and, you know, may may change. And we are you know, not required to disclose those changes if they occur. But as you all know, we have taken the approach of trying to be transparent to the market.

And so that's why we wanted to share this today. Our pro forma revenue for the full year of 2025 is projected to be just shy of $20 million, which would represent a 19% increase from full year 2024 actual revenue. Our pro forma net income is projected to be $1.4% million in 2025, reflecting our transition to be a profitable company on a gap basis, which is something that we're very excited about.

In summary, with a fortified balance sheet, a massive customer base and an expanding product suite, we're making steady progress towards profitability and long term growth. Something I would like to note is our minimal exposure to geopolitical and tariff risk that is impacting many global businesses at the moment. We have an asset light, scalable business model, and as such, we're projecting substantial revenue growth in 2025.

Unknown

Apologies for that.

Joe Davey

We are consistently evaluating potential value-added acquisition opportunities that can further accelerate our growth. We're well positioned for success as we execute on our strategic initiatives, and I look forward to providing additional updates in the months to come as we work on building long-term value for our shareholders. Thank you, everyone, for attending, and I would now like to answer your questions.

Operator.

Unknown

Currently do not see any in the chat. Okay, we've got one coming in.

Unknown

We've got a couple coming in. What are your top strategic priorities for 2025 to maximize the value of OpenRail, Fidelo, and ActOn, and how will these drive long-term shareholder value. How do you see Banzai's expanded portfolio positioning the company against competitors in the marketing technology space.

Joe Davey

OK. First of all, thank you for the question. Our number one strategic priority is to integrate these products so they work seamlessly together.

So a customer that uses one of those products can utilize any of the other ones. And we think that this is basically The way I think about this is really simple, right. Customer comes to us on one of these products, they typically have a very specific problem to solve.

And customers in the marketing world, they're not looking for tools, they're looking for marketing enablement. So they're looking to solve a problem within their business and they're looking for a specific solution to that problem. Over time though, those customers tend to have additional problems.

And so the analogy I love here is get a customer in one door, just like you're at a stadium, you know, get a customer in one of the entrances, but once they're in the stadium, you can sell them the same beer and hot dogs and pizza everywhere in the stadium. And that's basically our approach to integrating these products. We want the products to work together smoothly so that it's really easy for customers to go buy that extra hot dog or go buy that extra beer.

And so that's really what our focus is right now, technically. And then I would say from a business standpoint, this is really about operationally getting those teams to work together well. In other words, integrating the different product teams, integrating the different you know, customer success teams, sales teams, marketing teams, so that we can kind of go to market with a single voice so we can upsell customers in a cohesive way.

So we think that a lot of the growth and the value of this strategy really comes from customer expansion and upsell over time. And so I think the key is making the products work well together and then making our teams work well together to go take those products to our customer base. So that's a high level.

I hope that answers your question. Let's see, I'm just gonna go through these kind of one by one. So this question, when would 2025 Q1 results come out. Right now we're expecting Q1 results to be out on May 15th, 2025.

Alvin Yip

Correct.

Joe Davey

This question from Sandra Gale, are you closing on Act On soon. You know, I can tell you, Sandra, we're actively working on this. Obviously, can't give a specific date as to when that will be complete.

But I can tell you that we're making meaningful progress towards that. And we will keep you updated. Let's see.

I've got a question here about when do we expect the value of the stock will return to the old value. And I think that's a really great question. And I think that there have been a lot of factors impacting the stock price in the last few months. I would say probably the number one factor impacting the stock price in the last month and a half has been just the general kind of market chaos that has impacted everyone.

Hopefully what we'll see is, you know, as people start to realize, investors start to realize that, you know, our business is not really impacted by any of these potential tariffs, that we have really minimal exposure to that. And also that I think we potentially stand to do really well in an environment where customers are Trying to do more with less, trying to get more efficiency out of limited marketing dollars, trying to fight for every dollar of revenue. I think a lot of customers turn to better marketing technology to enable that.

And so our hope is that the market will kind of recognize the value that we've already created through these acquisitions. I think that we'll start to reflect the benefit of some of these acquisitions more in our gap financials, starting in Q1. We reflected it just in a very, very small way in Q4, but I think we'll have a more full recognition of that in Q1. And then probably an even more full recognition of it starting in Q2.

And so I think we'll start to see that phase in and hopefully that will be viewed positively by the market. So, you know, our view is that We're working really hard to get the stock price back up to the levels that it's been at. And, you know, we we certainly doing everything that we can to make that happen.

Thank you for the question. I always appreciate the tough ones. Let's see.

Here's a question. How has market traction been for Reach 2.0%. Can you share metrics around usage growth and new customers added for Reach 2.0% since launch.

Can you comment on the acquisition pipeline. Are there any plans to continue. I'll just go ahead and say this is about five questions in one, but I'll just try to run through them pretty quickly.

First of all, market traction for Reach 2.0% has been good. These customers tend to be larger customers than the average, you know, Demio or Create Studio customer. And so there's fewer of them, but they're bigger.

We've also seen some cross sales. We've seen existing customers utilizing Demio, for example, starting to utilize Reach 2.0%. So that's been really great.

I don't think we've shared any specific metrics around the breakout of customers or anything like that. But I can say we've been relatively pleased with the early results. I think the product is working really well for a number of the customers that are using it. And that's really the bellwether for any new product coming to the market is, can you get customers that really love the product.

In terms of the acquisition pipeline, look, what I'll say here is we're very focused on Acton right now, and that's our number one priority. Obviously, that's a huge transformative acquisition for the business. I can't comment on any specific companies that we're looking at or talking to, but I can say we're receiving new opportunities coming into the pipeline.

almost every day, at least every week. It's definitely a focus of ours. And we're seeing some really attractive assets on the market right now.

So I think there's going to be hopefully some interesting stuff that occurs there over the next over the rest of this year, 2025. Plan is to continue with the acquisition strategy in 2025. Obviously, we are focused on organic growth as well.

So we've got an operating business that we're growing organically, adding new customers, cross-selling. And then we're also looking at things that are value-added to our customer base. One of the key things that we're always looking at is basically, do we think this is gonna create shareholder value or not.

So, you know, I've heard comments from people about, you know, dilution and things like that. You know, we're always focused on anytime we buy an asset, we think we're getting more than we're paying for it. So we think that, you know, it's a one plus one equals three.

And, you know, and then our and then our job is to run it well. In terms of Q4 net revenue retention, I can say, I don't think we disclosed a specific number, but I can say that Q4 net revenue retention hit a historic high. So we saw very strong retention and expansion in Q4 compared to prior periods.

And in terms of traction and specific verticals, I would say the ones that stand out to me as being the interesting opportunities right now are things like healthcare, financial services, insurance, We're seeing a lot of customer inbound, a lot of traction in those areas. We're also seeing opportunities with things in the data center space, you know, the cloud space. So I don't think we're you know, we're not a business that's really built on going after any specific vertical.

We're very diversified business. But I think there's a lot of opportunities in those areas. And we are looking at, are there specific things that we can go after in a specific vertical, you know, specific use case for that vertical that we can build and we can own and be better than anybody else in that space.

So that's a big focus of ours right now. Thank you for the questions. OK, this is a good one.

How's the integration with the new acquisitions going. I'll say I've already addressed the Acton question, so I won't touch that one again. But I'll say the integrations is going Really fabulously, in my opinion.

I think the teams are getting along really well. Been really impressed by how quickly everyone has started thinking of themselves as part of Team Bonsai. We've already got customer cross sales with every product, I think.

Maybe there's one that's pending right now on a kind of enterprise deal. So we've already got a big pipeline for cross-sales across all the products. Starting to see the first deals close.

Product integrations are in the works. Product management is starting to think about this as a single video business unit, and that's going really well. And I think with Acton, we're thinking about that as a kind of a separate business unit, a marketing automation business unit that will expand the capabilities beyond that when it closes.

So that's really exciting. Thanks for the question. Let's see.

Edward asked, I think we've kind of already touched on this, but I think one important question here is, will you need to focus on integrations of the three recent acquisitions first before you pursue new ones. I'll say, first of all, like I said, we're actively working on getting Acton closed, but I think the way that the integrations have gone, we've been really, really pleased with them. And we don't foresee integration being a major barrier to doing additional acquisitions.

I think we've got a great playbook for this. We've done a number of these now. We're starting to build a muscle around this.

And I think we could easily go do a couple more this year and continue to see some of that scale. And again, hopefully find some of these opportunities that are profitable growing, have great products, sticky customers. And the number one thing that we look at is, does this solve a new problem for our customer base.

So that's definitely still a focus for us. Thank you for the question. OK, this question, how's the launch of Curate and Reach 2.0% performed.

I mentioned a little bit about Reach 2.0%. I'll say this is asking about Curate as well. I'll say I believe we've got something like, I mean, Curate, first of all, launched I think just at the end of Q3, the beginning of Q4.

So this is a pretty new product for us. I think I want to say this launched in October, November. So this is pretty new for us.

But I think we've already got 12 or 13 workspaces live on this now. And so we're starting to see a lot of traction with Curate. We've made a lot of improvements to the product based on initial customer feedback and stuff like that.

starting to get customers live on it. So I think it's going really well. And I think our sales team is continuing to field interest around it.

One thing that's been really interesting is we've seen a lot of customers that want to buy several of these products together. So we've had a lot of opportunities come up for things like Demio, Reach, and Curate as a single bundle. And so I think that's going to be really interesting.

So thank you for the question. Patrick says, for the coming year, adding in the first quarter acquisition of Acton, I see revenues of $50 million in share count of. 50 million, can you please comment on this.

I would say, look, directionally, that's probably about right. I think that you can work backwards in terms of your math to figure out what an appropriate share price would be under that. but um you know i think it's it's probably north of where it is right now um you know we've seen companies like adobe that are trading for i want to say the last i looked at it was trading for about a 9.8% times revenue multiple so um there are definitely businesses in the space with very attractive revenue multiples and hopefully we'll start to realize a multiple more in that range um I think we shared earlier that we see gross margin definitely improving this year.

I would say gross margin will probably be north of 80% for the year, or at least in that range. And we are looking at positive net income for this year, hopefully. And I think Acton is accretive to all of those things.

So it will add to revenue, it will add to net income, and it will probably contribute positively to gross margin as well once that closes. So thank you for the question, Patrick. Do I think the stock price will go up with the 2024 earnings.

Well, I certainly hope so. It certainly looks like it has today. So that's positive.

Hopefully it continues to go up. Thank you for the question. I certainly think.

Pretty much everything in our Q4 in 2024, there's a lot of positive news here to digest for the market. But I think we've made huge progress on a number of different fronts. Cleaning up the balance sheet, improving the efficiency of the business, growing the top line, all of those things.

You know, at the end of the day, I don't control the stock price, unfortunately. I wish I did. But, you know, I can control.

Do we run a good business and do we build a good business over time. So, you know, myself and the rest of the team were really just focused on every day trying to get more efficiency, get the balance sheet stronger, you know, look at interesting businesses that we think strengthen our overall business. So that's that's that's, that's our goal.

So you know, I believe over time that will, that will, you know, build a stronger business. And hopefully that will be reflected in our stock price. Thank you for the question.

Okay, here's a question. What have you seen in terms of web traffic and sales for Q1 2025. I can say, you know, first of all, we got a lot of websites because each of our products tends to sell through its own website.

So we have a website for Open Real, a website for Create Studio, a website for Demio. um so you know i don't know that i can comment specifically on web traffic but uh what i can comment on is i think we saw a really strong uh efficiency numbers in q1 we launched a new website uh for the open real business uh that's gone really well since launch uh we launched a new version of our create studio product create studio four that had a tremendous uh sales response And we continue to see just a steady increase in efficiency of ROAS and sales efficiency for that product. So I think Q1 was generally very positive.

We're looking forward to sharing the Q1 numbers in about a month. So thank you for the question. So the question is for Acton, would you expect that to be in Q1.

If it closes sooner, it would be on Q2. So for the way gap accounting works is the financials of the acquired company are only integrated in post-closing. So, you know, our Q4 only included just a sliver of open real because it was closed, I think, 13 days prior to the end of the quarter.

So we're expecting those results will be realized fully in Q1. And then in Q1, we closed on Videlo. So we're going to recognize two months of that in Q1.

If we close Acton, like let's say we close Acton tomorrow, I'm not saying that's going to happen, but I'm saying it, let's say we did, then it would only be from April 16th onward that we would include it. So that would be included in Q2. Just to clarify, that's more of a gap accounting issue, but.

But I think we're going to see the acquisition financials integrated more in Q1, probably more in Q2, and hopefully onward from there. Thank you for the question. Let's see.

This is a great question. Have you noticed any big change with lead times for sales cycles, signing new customers. Are CTOs and marketing departments more cautious about entering, acquiring, renewing new enterprise software.

I will say, I'll just give you a couple of anecdotes here. Our velocity right now is well, well, well below our target, which is a good thing, right. Velocity means how long does it take us to close a customer.

And so we're beating that velocity target on every product line, I think, right now. I'll also say, you know, We're not seeing, I don't think we're seeing customers being more cautious. I actually think we're seeing the opposite.

We're seeing customers that are locking in longer term contracts to secure larger discounts. So I can say, you know, we just signed a five year contract a couple of weeks ago. I don't think I can disclose what customer it was with right now, but we signed a five year contract with a customer that's a meaningful, you know, meaningful revenue to the company.

And they were able to lock in a discount over that period of time, which is good for them. And we were able to lock that customer in for five years, which is obviously good for us. So we've signed a number of these multi-year renewals in the last 90 days.

And I think we're looking to do more of that. And in a lot of cases, customers are looking to lock in longer term cost savings and use that as an opportunity. So I think when you've got a mission critical product, Um, you know, customers aren't, aren't, uh, you know, it's not as much of a question of the renewal or not. It's a lot, a lot of times it's a question of, you know, what's the, uh, what's the structure that's going to be most efficient for them in terms of the value.

And, uh, so we can do something where we get the customer a little more value, um, by offering them a multi-year contract. Look, I think that benefits both us and the customer. So, uh, we, we like those situations.

Thank you for the question. Why do all these acquisitions not translate into the share price increasing. I mean, that's a fantastic question.

Again, I wish I knew why the share price, the market has not responded better to a lot of the news that we've put out. I think the news we put out is phenomenal. You can go to PitchBook and you can look up what companies are transacting at.

But I think the last number that I saw was the average acquisition was something like 4.8% X next 12 month revenue. And, you know, so far next 12 month revenue is $20 million. You know, you could infer that, you know, that would put us somewhere in the 90 to a hundred million dollar range in terms of you know, what somebody would be willing to pay for the company today.

Now, you know, I'm not saying that's the case. I'm not saying that we're looking to sell the company. We're not because I think we have a lot more value that we can create here.

But I do think the share price right now is silly. So, you know, hopefully the market will. start to recognize and start to price in some of the, you know, some of the huge milestones that we've achieved in the last 90 days.

And you know, frankly, that's one reason that we're really excited to get this report out. Because I think putting out 2024 helps, I think putting out q1 will help. But you know, really, I think hopefully the market will will continue to respond.

So thank you for the question. Here's a question from Van. Is Bonsai open to the possibility of being acquired by some large cap MarTech company.

And what's your opinion on the likelihood of that happening. You also mentioned hard work on showing profitability. Is it realistic for investors to expect that.

And if so, when do you think that you can deliver on that promise. Thanks. This is a great question, Van.

Thank you. So let me start with the first one. I kind of just addressed this, but I frankly, you know, I would say we have been approached by a couple of folks.

Um, I'm not saying whether, you know, anything has come of that. We very casual conversations. Um, but, um, I would say, uh, it definitely, we are, um, definitely our view is that there's more value still for us to create in this business.

And so I think we're very, very focused on continuing to scale the business up, continuing to execute. I think this business is even more valuable when we get to 100 or 200 or 500 million in revenue. And so right now our heads are down.

We're very focused on trying to get to those milestones, very focused on trying to close Acton, very focused on trying to look at the know the opportunities beyond that, continue to manage the business well, continue to grow organically, all of that. So, you know, right now we're just very focused on on on on our knitting. And I think, you know, There may be opportunistic things that happen in the future, but can't really comment on that very specifically right now.

But definitely appreciate the question. And I think we'll see what happens. If we create a really valuable business, I think as a general heuristic I've always had in my life, I think you create a valuable business, there's people that want to own that business.

So I'll just kind of leave that at that. Your second question here is about profitability. I think, as we said earlier, we are forecasting to show profitability in 2025.

So I think I can't comment on exactly when that's going to happen, but I think I'll just say we think that we're going to reflect a lot of the benefit of the acquisitions and other things that we've done strategically, the debt repayments, things like that. A lot of that will be reflected in Q1. I think it'll be more fully reflected in Q2.

Hopefully, as those things start to more fully reflect, the business will get more profitable. I think that people will hopefully be pleased with the financial results we deliver this year. But I think at the at the end of the day, you know, profitability is the result of having a great business that's operated efficiently.

So having great products, great customer relationships, you know, great processes, great, you know, discipline. And so that's that's really where our heads at right now is working on that. And I believe that that will show up in terms of profitability over time in the business.

So thanks for the question. Finally, question here from Muhammad. How do you react on tariffs.

Well, look, I'll say just objectively, I personally, I'm a fan of free trade. I don't think that tariffs are good for free trade. I'm a fan of entrepreneurship. I'm a fan of I'm a fan of people being able to sell their products to customers that find them most valuable. So I'm a fan of open markets.

So in general, I'm not a huge fan of tariffs. I also studied economics in college. So I think you're hard pressed to find a lot of economists who are big fans of tariffs.

All that being said, I don't think the tariffs really impact our business. And as I said earlier, I think they actually there's a potential that they could create a positive tailwind for us. If customers decide that they need to get more efficiency in their marketing, if they decide that they need to leverage more AI, that they need to leverage more automation to gain that efficiency, look, I think that could benefit us potentially.

Our products are not really the kind of products that are subject to tariffs. And most of our customers are in the US anyways. So I think it's not really probably a huge concern for us.

I don't think. Right now, the tariffs seem like they're mainly going to end up being between the U.S. and China as things stand today, although things have been changing fast, so it's a dynamic environment. But the Chinese market is not an important market for us as a business as it stands today.

And so I don't really see the tariffs impacting our business adversely at all. But I appreciate the question, and definitely it's something that we're getting asked about um from time to time because definitely people are curious about it and they're wondering what's going on so thank you for asking okay um i hope that was helpful um I believe that's all the questions, so I will just say thank you all for joining the conference call today. Look forward to updating you on our ongoing achievements, innovations, and growth.

If we were unable to answer any of your questions, please reach out to our IR firm MZ group. uh who would be more than happy to assist um and with that and you can see their contact information uh on the slide that's uh on the screen here and by the way this uh this scene is a scene that's available in create studio so if you want to go build 3d videos for your own business go check out create studio create studio. com okay that's my last shameless plug um wouldn't be a good ceo if i wasn't uh selling you guys a little bit uh taking every opportunity i can to sell software so uh thanks so much for joining uh we appreciate it and uh we will uh we will look forward to the next call thank you joe thanks everyone.