MicrostockGroup

Agency Based Discussion => Shutterstock.com => Topic started by: Jo Ann Snover on May 04, 2017, 10:31

Title: Q1 2017 Earnings Call Transcript
Post by: Jo Ann Snover on May 04, 2017, 10:31
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4068496-shutterstock-sstk-q1-2017-results-earnings-call-transcript (https://seekingalpha.com/article/4068496-shutterstock-sstk-q1-2017-results-earnings-call-transcript)

Couple of commentaries

https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/05/03/tepid-results-reveal-shutterstocks-vulnerabilities.aspx (https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/05/03/tepid-results-reveal-shutterstocks-vulnerabilities.aspx)

http://www.markets.co/jefferies-sticks-to-its-hold-rating-for-shutterstock/72175/ (http://www.markets.co/jefferies-sticks-to-its-hold-rating-for-shutterstock/72175/)

http://www.capitalcube.com/blog/index.php/shutterstock-inc-breached-its-50-day-moving-average-in-a-bearish-manner-sstk-us-may-4-2017/ (http://www.capitalcube.com/blog/index.php/shutterstock-inc-breached-its-50-day-moving-average-in-a-bearish-manner-sstk-us-may-4-2017/)

Couple of things caught my eye - in spite of the brain numbing sea of corporate-speak.

Enterprise business is now 32% of revenue (up from 29%).

Revenue per download increased 5%, but it was "...primarily driven by continued growth in our enterprise and motion businesses which operate at higher price points than our traditional e-commerce images offering" Download growth was 6%. I wonder if you were to look at the revenue per download in the e-commerce section if it's falling as a result of the new lower price packages. They don't break that information out.

Customer base expanded 13% but the download growth was 6%? They said "We saw a 6% increase in paid downloads driven by growth in new customers as well as increased activity across our existing user base." Something must have been going down - customers leaving? large customers leaving and being replaced by smaller ones? - to make those numbers make sense, no? Am I missing something?

64% of revenue is from outside the United States, of which half is Europe.

In response to a question about whether they can return to higher growth in the e-commerce business, Jon had this rather rambling almost-answer:

"I think that the core part of our business can grow again. And we're focused every day on coming into this office and working together to do that. Part of the reorganization we went through where we organized the company into GM verticals is really going to help us do this. We were on a new tech stack. We have a lot of great ideas. We know the market is really large, that we sell to businesses. Businesses use our images every day to sell their product or service. We have 1.7 million of those customers today and we know there's tens of millions of more customers out there that need these assets to sell their products, sell their services, so."

Glad they have great ideas. Hope some of them are greater than spiffying up the payment history page...

In answering a question about the makeup of the growth in the enterprise business, they appeared to indicate that to date most of that business was images:

"So the split between expansion within existing customers and new is about 50/50 and so we're seeing continued retention and spend from our existing customers as well as the attraction and spend from new enterprise customers. That's primarily in the image business. We see opportunities in video, editorial and music both domestically as well as outside the U.S."

Answering a question about whether the new tech platform was helping accelerate growth, I think this word salad is a "yes", although timing isn't clear. I love reaccelerating growth :)

"That will enable us to move faster, cross-sell between products, understand who customers are between all of our products, and our customers – and allow us to do things like focus on reaccelerating growth in the core, for instance."

Later in the transcript, Deutsche Bank had a crack at the same topic, but didn't get a clear answer; just lots of stuff about all the different types of customers SS serves.

There was a question about whether they'd seen some of the higher priced packages getting "traction" - as they'd blamed lower priced packages for lower growth previously. The long answer seems to say that they don't want to be the low price answer, but the fair value one, and they have lots of sizes of customers. Why the questioner just said "thanks" as opposed to following up, who knows:

"Yes. So I'll just refer back to the last answer I gave in terms of what we're seeing is that we recognize that there are everything from project oriented users, there are small and medium sized businesses that utilize images and other assets, music video and so on, on a more regular basis. There are freelancers and then there are, if you would, large enterprises that are utilizing huge numbers of assets over -- on a daily basis.

And what we're doing is we're making sure that from our small and medium sized business products, our enterprise products, our team subscriptions as well as our individual users that we are providing them with the pricing and packaging that meets their needs on a fair value basis. And so we're not ever trying to be the lowest priced. We're trying to be the best value for the work and the projects that they're doing. And when we do that, we see high long-term values consistent with our return on investments that we've had history."

Asked about things that were working - or being tried - other than changing pricing, Jon had this to say:

"I mean if you look at our pages they change all the time. We're constantly updating them. If you look at the – even the responsiveness of our core site, speed is way up. The site will feel snappier from page to page. That is our new platform at work. And we plan to get better and better, add things like site speed globally as we start to move that code to the edge in a more cloud based environment.'

Moving code to the edge in a more cloud based environment??? Is that what passes for technical conversation in the Empire State building? Perhaps someone is seeing a snappier site, but it certainly doesn't feel that way from the contributor side.
Title: Re: Q1 2017 Earnings Call Transcript
Post by: Pauws99 on May 04, 2017, 10:37
I used to find these calls quite interesting and comprehensible. As you say this one is so awash with on-trend corporate speak its untranslatable to me. I cannot help suspect this is deliberate.
Title: Re: Q1 2017 Earnings Call Transcript
Post by: Noedelhap on May 04, 2017, 11:52
How I loathe corporate speak. It's so fluffy and meaningless. Throw in some 'reaccelerated growth' and 'huge number of assets', top it off with 'snappier, better and cloud-based' and stakeholders are happy again for another quarter.
Title: Re: Q1 2017 Earnings Call Transcript
Post by: PixelBytes on May 04, 2017, 11:56
Thanks for the analysis,  JoAnn.  It just sounded like a lot of horsecr@p to me.
Title: Re: Q1 2017 Earnings Call Transcript
Post by: Pauws99 on May 04, 2017, 12:05
Thanks for the analysis,  JoAnn.  It just sounded like a lot of horsecr@p to me.
But finely honed corporate horsecr@p no good for the roses though.
Title: Re: Q1 2017 Earnings Call Transcript
Post by: BigBubba on May 04, 2017, 12:05
Thank you JoAnn.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Title: Re: Q1 2017 Earnings Call Transcript
Post by: PixelBytes on May 04, 2017, 12:10
Thanks for the analysis,  JoAnn.  It just sounded like a lot of horsecr@p to me.
But finely honed corporate horsecr@p no good for the roses though.

At SS they got the quote wrong.  "A rose, by any other name, would smell like horsecr@p ".  ;D
Title: Re: Q1 2017 Earnings Call Transcript
Post by: dpimborough on May 07, 2017, 00:15
Thanks for the analysis,  JoAnn.  It just sounded like a lot of horsecr@p to me.

Reminds me of the "bull-chit" bingo we used to play during corporate meetings back in the last 30 years way back in another life

Pushing the envelope, blue sky thinking, thought showers, and other meaningless drivel to cover up the stupidity and dull thinking that passed for policy by people who had been promoted well above their pay grade