fuboTV Inc. (NYSE:FUBO) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

David Gandler: Yeah, Darren, this is David. Thank you for the question. Look, we have been very focused on this part of our business. I think, we’ve touched base with you throughout the year. We’ve made some significant changes in the back-end, meaning we’ve been really focused on developing our team, increasing the size of the team, and refocusing from programmatic to direct sales. I think we were one of the first to actually talk about the relevancy of direct ad sales versus programmatic to really drive revenue. And I think we’ve executed really well on that since we talked about it in March with you. And we’re very focused on continuing to talk to our third-party vendors, our programmatic partners and, in many cases, we have revised some of our agreements to ensure that when we do decide to go programmatic, that those rates will be reflective of where we are in our business and what our goals are with respect to driving CPMs and advertising ARPU.

So, I think execution has been very strong. In terms of a product roadmap on the advertising side, we’re looking to continue to develop our inventory. We’re starting to learn more about advertising in general in terms of what our partners are looking for and how they want to engage with our very premium audience. As you recall, we skew men 18 to 49. And so, that’s a very difficult demo to reach. And I think we’ll continue to develop opportunities with advertisers there. The last thing I’ll mention is that we have been adding FAST channels, as you know, throughout the first half of the year. And the advertising revenue coming in from those channels has been quite strong, which as you can imagine, we have greater share of inventory there, and therefore, it’s having a greater impact.

So again, we’re very focused on really developing the 100-plus hours of viewership on the platform to really drive monetization.

John Janedis: And Darren, maybe I could add a couple of more points to that. We added three sales resources during the second quarter. We’ve added sales also in the first quarter. And so, when you roll that together, we really improved market coverage and penetration of the [indiscernible]. And that, I’d say, came together, call it, mid-second quarter. And so, the team really hit the ground running as a group in the third quarter, and we saw that there. And so, I think that’s also positioned us differently in the market. And I think we’ve also been focused on, call it, our direct and programmatic guaranteed. And I’ll just give you some flavor there. In the third quarter of this year, we — that number was, call it, around 20% of the total, whereas it was somewhere around a third of that in the third quarter of last year, so pretty meaningful increase.

Darren Aftahi: That’s helpful. Two more for me. In terms of the operating leverage, it looks like you grew your sales and marketing about $5 million year-on-year, but sales were up $100 million. So, two questions there. One, like, is that sustainable from an operating leverage perspective? And then, two, with the whole Charter-Disney spat, like, has brand awareness for Fubo improved? Do you feel like that has legs beyond kind of current period?

David Gandler: Yeah, Darren, this is David. Of course, brand awareness has improved dramatically. I mean, if you think about just organic traffic to Fubo, it continues to grow. We have more advertising partnerships that John has already been talking about the different and expansive categories that we’re working with. And so, of course, the Charter-Disney dispute allowed us to get in front of more customers. And — but that’s something that’s been happening, and you can see that, I would say, just through our quarterly results. And you’re seeing Fubo over-index in market share of net adds. So, this is something that I think we’ll continue to progress. And that is largely related to the fact that we have, I would say, a very strong product.