Spotify Technology S.A. (NYSE:SPOT) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

You’re seeing a lot of Polish music being very impactful as well. So, I think the — there is a lot more artists that are mattering now than perhaps ever before. And obviously, the big sort of counter to that would be does it mean that you can sustain yourself or is it more one-hit wonders? And I think you’re seeing a little bit of both happening in the music industry at present moment. I think some of these trends are very powerful and very good, I think, for consumers with more choice and more artists making their way. And then you need to balance that, obviously, with having the ability to have sustainable artist careers on the back of that, too. And that’s a constant dialogue that we’re having with our label partners. But I would mostly say that most of what we’re seeing is quite encouraging because of all the response that we’re seeing from artists around the world and their ability to grow their audience.

Bryan Goldberg: All right. Next question is going to come from Doug Anmuth on gross margin. As you move beyond the 2022 investment year, do you still expect gross margin to expand in 2023? And can you talk about the key drivers?

Paul Vogel : So, the short answer is yes. We think Q1 will be the low point in terms of gross margin for the year, with gross margin improving throughout 2023. So that’s still the plan. When we look at Q1, in particular, sort of our core margin, when we look at sort of music and podcasting is improving. Some of the investments we made in the back half of the year are still slightly impacting Q1. We think those will sort of continue to moderate throughout the year, which will help — partly help gross margin. We’ve talked about the improvements in podcast gross margin as well as we expect that to get better throughout the year. So, we do expect that Q1 will be the low point for gross margin, and we do expect for it to improve throughout the year, with hopefully a nice trajectory heading out of 2023.

Bryan Goldberg: All right. Next question comes from Mario Lu on operating income. You mentioned in the deck an expectation for meaningful improvement in operating income in fiscal ’23 and beyond. That being said, is there a rough time line with regards to when we should expect overall operating income to reach breakeven?

Paul Vogel : Yes. We haven’t given a timeline on that. I would say, first thing is I think you can expect to see a meaningful improvement in the operating loss in ’23 relative to ’22. So, we expect that to be pretty significant. Again, as Daniel mentioned, we invested a lot in 2022. So, we’ll get some of the leverage on top of that investment in 2023, along with higher revenue growth and more gross profit dollars. So, we expect that to improve and improve throughout the year. Exactly when we break even, we haven’t said yet, but we feel like we’re on a good path, and we feel like we are in a good position right now to have that speed and efficiency that we want to have in 2023.

Bryan Goldberg: All right. Another question from Matt Thornton on margins. Do you still expect 2022 to have been the peak drag from podcasts? And podcast, do you still expect podcast to reach breakeven within several years? And three, do you still expect the consolidated gross margin to reach 30% within five years?