This is such an absurd situation at this point lol. With every quarter that this promised growth from those mythical new contracts does not come through, and that they keep promising 15% YoY growth, it implies that those contracts are larger and larger, and should in effect make this stock that much cheaper. Q4 revenue would have to be $2.75m , which implies growth of almost 40%, which implies at least $11m of revenue in 2020 (since it is largely recurring), which implies this stock woudl trade at 2-3x forward earnings.
Yet the market is shrugging it off like it will not happen at all. Normally managers are really careful to not explicitly promise growth like this. This guy is promising a cold hard figure. Can't we sue the living hell out of the CEO if this growth fails to materialize?
This is what was said this quarter:
“We continue to reiterate our 15% exit annual run rate growth for 2019 in advertising revenue and are happy to announce that we have signed significant new advertising customers. We expect sales from these new customers will commence late in the fourth quarter of 2019 and continue to ramp up into 2020”.
This is what was said in Q3 last year (so almost exactly a year ago):
“I am pleased to report that the Company expects that new customers signed in the second half of this year and who are coming on-line in the fourth quarter, will contribute annual run-rate revenue growth in the Advertising division, of at least 15% in 2019. The Company also expects Advertising division revenue to increase sequentially in Q4 from Q3 due to the seasonal strengthening of order flow and business from new customers. Business development efforts continue aggressively and we anticipate adding to this new business over the coming months
Yet ad revenue is basically flat over that whole period.
So either it takes a year to ramp up those signed customers, and this would imply massive future earnings growth (since those contracts that were signed this quarter would show up in Q4 2020), and would make this stock absurdly cheap, or CEO is just a stonecold liar?
Maybe he wants to extend his tenure with the company for another year by making false promises, and he does not think he will be sued successfully if there is no growth?
Does anyone have other examples where managers outright promised large revenue growth, and it did not show up? I can recall Elon Musk doing it, and he kind of got away with it I guess.
At least there is some growth in music and awards.
I hope large shareholders wake up here and at least change the incentives in management compensation. Top 2 guys took close to $2m out of this company in the past almost 3 years at this point with no revenue growth to show for it. Which is almost 33% of the market cap.