Blackbird (LSE:BIRD) — Interim Results for the six months ended 30 June 2025

0:01 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the BLACKBIRD PLC Interim Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged. They can be submitted at any time via the Q and A tab that's just situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Please just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself. However, the company can review all questions submitted today and we'll publish those responses where it's appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet company platform. Before we begin, we would just like to submit the following poll. And if you could give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I would now like to hand you over to the team from BLACKBIRD PLC. Ian, good morning, sir. Good morning. And ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for joining this morning for BLACKBIRD PLC's interim results presentation.

0:50 Today, we're gonna take you through a lot of information. We're gonna take you through product strategy, marketing strategy, talk you through our early metrics, talk about what happens next, and, of course, as always, have an extensive q and a

1:02 session. Before we start, though, I wanted to talk about one particular thing, which is where we are in the journey. We are our product market fit stage, and we've talked about this when we came in June and also back earlier in March. In our product market fit stage, we are learning. We are delivering features. It's still very basic features, actually, and we're learning from that data. We are not in our scale up phase at present. Our product market fit stage is gonna run into 2026, and it's at that point that we will move into our scale up phase. What's interesting about the product market fit phase from our perspective and from your perspective is that it's generally done 99.99% of times in a private environment with with VC backed companies generally on the West Coast Of The USA. This is a very different scenario. This is a public company that is that is taking place in The UK.

1:56 And as such, it's a rarity. It's an outlier. It's it's a possibility for us all to invest in something that is that is really potentially very, very special. I I don't see Blackbird and Elevator as as part of Blackbird as being a 10 bagger or a 100 bagger. This this is potentially an enormous return. This could be a thousand plus bagger. And I think in in that respect, it does come with risk and it does come with patience. Nothing nothing is nailed on in this, and we are doing something that is that is ambitious and potentially industry defining, industry changing. So please make no mistake about what we are trying to achieve. But we are very close now in terms of our development, certainly in terms of the company's been around to reaching that that growth period, to reaching that ultimate growth period.

2:42 So I think that I would finish my introduction by saying, I've been meeting a lot of actual potential invest potential users recently. There are people that are working in teams. Are people that are making or responsible for video on a day to day basis. And I have never been more confident that we have the right vision for Elevate, that we have the right product to Elevate, we have the right timing for Elevate to deliver into a huge global addressable market. So with that, I'm gonna start off the presentation and and now move into the first slide. So I and I are gonna be presenting today. I think you all know him very well. He's our chief product officer and indeed responsible for a great deal of the vision that that you are experiencing with Elevate. Now we are starting a revolution.

3:27 We are starting a co creation revolution. This is this is something that that that we've identified with our ICP, is founders, entrepreneurs, and small businesses, that by their very definition, they are working in teams. They are cocreating. But right now, there is there is no workflow that is under anything other than a slightly archaic linear format where they're they're frustrated by this on a day to day basis. And just to give you an idea about the scale of that ICP, in the in the North America alone, they're well over 40,000,000 small or medium sized businesses, And that's without the the rest of the world being thrown in. So it's a it's a it's a huge potential market. Now let's hear a few more a few words from them for a recent event we attended in The UK.

4:16 We've just taken a look at Elevate, and everything I kind of wanted it to do as a video editor, it just intuitively does. I instantly knew how to use it, and that is really, really, really key. It looks and feels like a serious piece editing software, and I'm still in production for a major global media company. I instantly could see that this is big look for video. From what I've seen out of eight, there's a lot of features that I would benefit from the interaction of editing alongside one of my teams, and that could really put me in progress. I love the collaboration features, live collaboration, both with the team and with the client, the customer. I think I want me to say, yeah, the company, the other entity, they're really, I think, has a life changer. And I'm excited to see how it develops help bigger production companies like ourselves. It's a game changer.

5:08 Right. So, obviously, I've lost three day there out in Hertfordshire where we went a couple weeks ago, but really rewarding to hear the feedback on people's first impressions of Elevate. It's got better since then where we've gone to marketing events the last few weeks where people are, again, as I say, using using collaborative processes on a day to day basis, but have nothing that really satisfies their needs. So on this on this slide here, we've plotted our product road map on the on the lower axis there against the potential growth that we see, the the growth that we are that we're looking to deliver. This is really a guide to where we are today, which is pretty much halfway through our product market fit phase, where features are delivering at pace. And Summit has some exciting news on that to to talk to you about in a few minutes time to really take us to the to the next phase, which, of course, is scale up into 2026.

5:59 So some early leading indicators. Well, so I've got a few quite a few different range numbers here. The first one is on in terms of signed up users. We've got a 110,000 signed up users now to to to elevate. This really shows that there is a problem in the market that we're looking to that that we are there to solve. Right? It doesn't necessarily mean that we have to put the solution yet, but it certainly means there is a problem solution fit. In terms of conversions, we now convert almost 700 people into being paid subscribers. As you can see on the next number, terms of retaining those subscribers, then churn is certainly a focus for us. Churn is something that we are really making sure that we we address, and that is mainly through new features and and features that are being delivered on a on a on a rapid basis, but also through alignment to to our ACP and all almost also to to to engaging those users along the way. Now we could've we could've spent more money in the last few months on on making sure that when we came to you this time, that we had a high number of current paid subscribers, but it wouldn't have been money well spent.

7:01 We're we're we're really now focused as a business on making sure that we're delivering the right features at the right time to improve that that churn number to make sure that we are gonna be spending the money correct the correct way. We've got 1,450 returning users in in August, which gives us a really nice trickle of of of users to make sure that we have enough data to to to make sure our our feature is running well. And since since launch, we've had an 81% increase in engagement. So that means that people that have come into the product have ended up exporting a a a video at the end of it. So, again, it's a it it it is a really good good good idea that that we are we are improving all the time with our features. And what we've done now is really trying to align that more with our ICP. Again, the ICP, just sort of to remind us, is those founders, entrepreneurs, small businesses, and small marketing teams that are that are large in number, and engaging those guys to to to to use Elevate on day to day basis.

8:01 A few a brief look now at some financial metrics. We've had some quite good improvements here. We've had a 21% improvement in cash management over the year, so that that that is down to 1,500,000 over the half. We've had a £600,000 worth of revenue come in slightly down on the Blackbird side. This is mainly due to some small deal losses, but also the the nonrepeating transaction that happened in half one twenty twenty four. But the positive news is that that the Blackbird is now EBITDA positive at h one for the first time. We also did a small top up raise to take us through the product market fit stage over the summer of 2,100,000 gross proceeds. I'm now going to show you a short video, which is a rough cut of a of a YouTube video that will be released shortly, showing how how Elevate is a collaborative feature, a a collaborative platform for marketing teams and social media teams.

9:56 Excellent. So you also got a sneak preview there of our first partnership and collaboration, which is with the London Cavaliers. So more more news to come of that over the next few months. So why is Elevate needed? Why is Elevate Elevate required? Yes. It's very simple to use, and that's that's a that's a huge benefit to the to to the to to people.

10:16 And, yes, it allows complete freedom to operate from the browser, which is gives gives gives access and and and freedom of movement. But the most important thing is that it's it's it's collaborative features. Collaboration is not just a niche part of of the way teams work. Collaboration, by definition, is exactly how teams work. And it's not just the multiplayer aspect of our platform either, which is, of course, the jewel in the crown, the bit that separates us out from really everything else. But the fact is that we have this incredible access to to to assets as well. So we can manage assets. We give immediate access to to Teams assets. There was no upload and download. And, of course, there's instant review, which we just launched in the last couple of weeks. And, of course, the leaving of comments for asynchronous collaboration.

11:02 So it's a much larger part of the the workflow than just purely the multiplayer. But the multiplayer really does differentiate us from any other editing platform. But the integration with everything in the back end as well is hugely hugely important. And why why us? Why well, this is the investment case, really. Why would you invest in in Blackbird PLC because we have we have Elevate? Well, first of all, there's the technology, and you've heard about the technology many times. This allows for for for advanced manipulation of content in under low bandwidth conditions in a browser, and that is completely game changing from compared to any other platform out there. And it's given us a massive head start in terms of in terms of how we've managed to to develop Elevate and have it in the market. We've heard that many times before.

11:49 I just wanna focus on team for a second. Team, I I I I've never worked in a team that is as that is as talented or as proficient as the team I currently work in, and that goes from everyone from from Summit and his product team to the to the development team to our marketing teams. They are ex exceptional, and we are really we're very lucky to have selected such an amazing group of people. And we are very active in making sure that we that we keep those people at the very best levels. And the the other thing that is really important mention here is is TAM. As I mentioned at the very, start, we've got a huge global addressable market. And this global addressable market is not just video editors. This global addressable market is for all the people that work with video. I saw an interesting anecdote recently about about Uber. It's when Uber presented their their their initial investment debts. They estimated their TAM to be the entire taxi market of the world, but they got it wrong. They were they were out by a factor of eight. It was eight times as big as that. Because it before Uber, people didn't take taxis. It was too difficult. They they they took taxis once or twice a month, and now they take taxis two or three times a week. It's a huge huge different proposition because it made Uber made it so easily.

13:03 Figma had the same situation. Figma had had have a a time that was very small when they first launched because no one had design software unless that you were a designer. Now everyone in the company has the access to Figma because it's so easy to use. You can you can review and approve, and you can input on the design on as the process goes along. Elevate is very similar. So when people came to us over the last few weeks and said, yes. We have one or two Adobe licenses in the company, and then people send me the the the the the exports of products. I write back my feedback on email, and that's how it works. Elevate will be entirely different. Elevate will be they will have access to that video directly. They will be a customer of ours, and therefore, TAM is much many times larger, in fact, than than than the the global video video market, let's just say, video to the market today.

13:52 Gives you a bit of an idea about how about the investment case. Right. Pass it over to Summit. Hi, everybody. So when it comes to products, I think I wanna take you on as a little bit of a journey of where we started the product market phase, where we are today, and where we're going. If we cast our eyes back to February when we actually put in the, you know, the gateway and we sort of went out into the market, what we had put together was essentially an editing and collaboration capability.

14:22 It was so crucial for us to get the collaboration elements built into the product early on. There's no way they can be added later, and it's such a fundamental part of what we do. And this is something that people are only just beginning to understand is the importance of collaboration in the Elevate story. If we were just building a video editor that was just going to compete functionally with the desktop tools, we would have not much of a future because we'd be fighting against incumbent, and we'd just be able to do what they can do, but they can already do it. What was so important was for us to acknowledge that just like lots of other adjacent industries in design, in three d, in accounting, in CAD, and general general marketing, products have come about that actually enable teams to work together to achieve something. That doesn't mean that everyone becomes Ridley Scott overnight. Doesn't mean that everyone's going to become a colorist.

15:15 But what it does mean is that they can get involved in the process. So we put in place as we launched, but was not not hugely available to everybody was a lot of that collaboration infrastructure. What we were light on, and we were well aware of this, was the the general editing capabilities in the way effects. Our media management was very, very lightweight. Processing was you know, we're lucky that we've obviously got the infrastructure and the experience from, the original BLACKBIRD product to help us, but that was also limited to a bit of a broadcast world, whereas we operate obviously in a much broader world. So we went to market with what we knew was the was was the foundation of what we did. During that product market phase, section that we're in at the moment, we've learned an awful amount from our users. The telemetrics that we have in the product tells us how people are using it. They tell us when they're using it. They tell us to what extent they use it, and it shows up where there are problems or misunderstandings in how the product works.

16:14 For us right now, the value comes from having small clusters of of users in in in in these clusters, which gives us a really good indication of how it works in education or how it works in finance or how it works over here. What we don't need is 10,000 users in each one of those sections. We get more than enough from the users that we have that are free users and, of course, the paying users, which we get to learn a lot more from because when you're paying for something, your behavior tends to be slightly different towards it. So where we've arrived at today based on all the information we've understood, we've increased the collaboration capabilities. The recently released review mode has been incredibly

16:56 has gone down incredibly well with users. We've increased some of the editing. What we've made a big move forward is a media management. As we know, we're not just building an editing tool. We're building a collaboration tool, editing, and media management. And, you know, and and and we obviously have future plans for other things too. But the media management is something that is almost impossibly done today. In fact, just this earlier this week, we were with an analyst, and their exact story was the hard drives for the projects that we get made for us just sit in someone's bedroom stacking up

17:29 over time. That was their exact words. We know it's the exact experience that we had from people. So we know that media management is an opportunity. It's a whole business in its own right. We are in our infancy of it, but we now have team folders within the projects themselves. And as of today, team folders will be released so the entire team can have,

17:50 like, media management at the top level of the product, not just within each of the projects. Our effects and transitions, we we have a lot of interesting things coming, but there's a lot of work that's happened behind the scenes that people won't have noticed. We've quite severely improved the way that the video editing is composited within the products, and that's gonna give us a lot of opportunity to use gaming technology to actually produce a much more advanced effect using the GPU on the computers, which is now becoming prevalent. This is incredibly important, especially for the low end machines like Google Chrome.

18:24 Of course, our accounts and payments were increasing the ability for us to manage people. It's also super important that we ensure that our way of managing our customers is done really well. During this period and up to this period of time, we've had an unbelievably high, availability. The system has been there. We've had minimal disruption. We've been able to identify where problems are lurking, and we've been able to deal with them now before we have a much larger user base. So I'm incredibly happy with how this phase has gone. But, of course, we're

18:55 only halfway through the product market fit phase, and we've got a lot more to come. And this is where we see things moving when we get to the end of that phase. We will improve the collaboration furthermore, which we're really happy about. We will include more editing. You'll have noticed in the last week, we introduced fundamental editing tools like the preview in and out points. We've got a lot more of those to come. Our media management will be improved to in in in include things like search that you just don't get in in in other products, and our effects and transitions are really going to come to life. Another area that was released just today and is only available as of about an hour ago is the mobile upload capability. So anybody who now accesses from your phone, if you access your Elevate account, it will give you a web interface where you can upload content directly into a project or a team. We advise people share it and and and to their home page so they get the full experience of a progressive progressive web app, and it's a great experience. It's only the beginning.

19:54 We know that the mobile element will be playing a vital role in collaboration, and it will play a vital role going further forward in things like distribution. We're going to be improving our accounts and payments to to to incur different types of payment links as well as different types of accounts. And as I mentioned, our media processing will just improve further and further to cope with a much wider range of of, of file formats. From an AI perspective, we've already introduced a very lightweight version of AI, but we've got lots of really exciting AI integrations with third party companies coming. And that makes the beginning of our marketplace. It's only a small effort by the end of this, but it's the it's going to be the thing that will be useful during the scale up phase.

20:42 Over to you. Great. Thanks, Amit. So on the marketing side, our marketing, of course, will naturally trail product because it's really important that we are data driven, that we can see that the product is is delivering on the feature side, which as we can see is rapidly happening with such really exciting news happening with us few days and even this morning. So we our marketing story started with search, and we we we started with search last September. Search certainly did bring in a a a large number of users, but search doesn't lead to engaged users. And we wanted to make sure that we have engaged users as we go through this product market fix stage. Because the learning was always gonna be a little bit limited from that from those guys. So where we are now, we've broadened our our our marketing strategy out to include events.

21:31 So building awareness to our our our ACP directly through events and and and PR as well. So you might have seen some stories come out about Elevate over the last few weeks and indeed through organic social videos. So there's been a lot of work done on in in the background on that as well, where you've seen our team deliver our videos to Instagram, and our Instagram views have gone past a 100,000 now. We've got over 2,400 users on its followers on Instagram. So it really shows that there's a, you know, there's a there's a an effort there to make sure people come and understand Elevate, that they understand what Elevate can do, what it's for, and and and our and our message.

22:04 And as features start to land, we will we will build out this this further, and we'll really start to unlock over the next few months as as as as we go through the point of market fit stage, access to much larger audiences, audiences that will be involved through partnerships and through influencers and through referrals. Referrals, of course, will be the start of that product led growth area as well. So this will all happen over the next few months and and through the back end of of product market at this stage.

22:32 So in conclusion, I'm gonna finish the same way that I finished my intro, which is over the last few weeks, we've met a lot of people who are directly interested in in elevate.io, and I've never been more confident in the fact that we have the correct vision for elevate.io, that we have the team that can that can deliver elevate.io, and we have that ability to execute over the next few months. So thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. We will now take questions. Thank you. Perfect, guys. That's great. If I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed.

23:00 Jake, sorry. We're finish with a video that shows the the portability and the accessibility of Elevate. Through another YouTube ad. So one one second.

23:12 You know what I mean?

23:53 Perfect, guys. If I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much indeed for your presentation this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions just by using the Q and A tab that's situated on the right hand corner of your screen. But just while the team take a few moments to review those questions that have been submitted already, I'd just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A, can all be accessed via your investor dashboards.

24:16 Guys, you can see that we have received a number of questions that were both pre submitted ahead of today's event as well as those that have made their way through throughout your presentation this morning as well. So firstly, thank you to all of those on the call for taking the time to submit their questions. And guys, at this point, if I may just hand back to you to read out those questions and give your responses where appropriate. And if I pick up from you at the end, that would be great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay. I'll start and I'll read through the questions. First one is for Summit. Can you please tell us more about your plans for the marketplace and the kinds of companies and services you're hoping to participate in the early stages of

24:48 that? So the good news is is we've already begun work on the marketplace and that things like the AI services that we've implemented are essentially like the marketplace. They're using third party services. We don't have to have other companies building. We can build certain marketplace items ourselves that interact with other companies.

25:07 In this case, OpenAI has obviously been our first partner. However, we are working with some very well established video companies who make things like visual effects in terms of how do we actually bring the some of their technology into us and make that available to others. So it will be in the workspace of visual effects. It will be in this place of data providers, obviously, the AI providers, and, of course, distribution. So going out to other platforms that that you choose in the instance. And we can do that work ourselves. We don't have to have them do this. But, yeah, we'll obviously as soon as we get established, we do want to have more and more companies who want to take our SDK and build the things themselves. Excellent. Second question. I know BLACKBIRD can help almost any type of team or creator, but having worked in creative agencies, it seems particularly ideal for that market. Have you considered positioning Elevate as a video editor that's tailor made for creative agencies?

25:59 Is that what you want? Yeah. I I I wouldn't say that we want to tailor make it for any specific industry itself, but it is a great use case. And we do believe that the creativity we're already beginning to see creative industries that we're or companies that we're working with ourselves as a company, seeing the value of Elevate, even the people who worked with us to put together some of the marketing assets, the videos that you've just seen, are instantly seeing the value of the product themselves as we've been using, obviously, to build out the content.

26:27 So, definitely, the creative industries are going to be a market that we're absolutely going to want to go for, and we believe that the way we're setting up the product means that creative agencies can much easier help organizations that have elevate themselves with some of the higher end work and and things like that. So it's a definite industry that we want to be working with. It's a great observation. And, again, it comes back to the collaboration point as well, which is creative agencies, by definition, work in a in a in a team environment, whether it's just within their own team or whether it's with with the client. You know, some of the feedback that we've had over the last few weeks is that, you know, we've always talked about how Elevate helps with speed and ease. It's it's more than that. It's it it helps it make it bearable. I mean, it's it's it's it's almost unbearable the way that that the teams have to operate now today, where they have to upload and download stuff and send stuff by email backwards or forwards.

27:18 You know, we've we've we've really thought about this process. Summit seem and and and and the the product team have really thought about how this process should be should should happen. What's the logical way this process these workflows should happen? So, yeah, absolutely. Creative teams are are very much a part of our our plans.

27:32 We are delivering two ICPs where the feature set that we have today really resonates, and and we will move towards greater agencies as we get further further down the line. Question for Ian. During the IFC presentation after the AGM in 2024, you stated, we wanna build a company worth in the tens of billions. Today, are you more or less confident about our ambition and why? I mean, I said it I said it a couple of times in the presentation. I'll say it again. I'm I'm very, very confident. And the main reason that I am so confident is that on the product side and and on the dev side, we've solved so many problems already. We've we've we've created this product. It works beautifully. We are layering on features at pace, and we are now in direct direct conversations with our ICP that are the people that will buy this product, the people that will use this product on a data basis, and they will talk about how this product works for them and grow the product app.

28:25 So I've never been more confident about how how this product and this company will grow. It is an excellent time, I have to say. A very exciting time.

28:36 Question four. My concern here is that other tech companies are moving faster than us. We do not seem to be selling our product, and the sales side is failing because the product of the product developers failing the product developers. We are too slow. We have promised further news in September, which is not materialized. We need to update our promotion of the sales side to be more effective. I will revert back to the very first thing I said, which is we are in a product market fit phase. The product market fit phase

29:03 allows us to be data driven to make sure that we're we're we're developing the correct product at the right time for the market. We will scale up in time, but we need to, at this point, get that product absolutely right. There is literally no point in spending vast amounts of cash on a product that isn't ready for the market to be scaled. That's it. If can add to that, sorry. The for a SaaS company to accelerate in the wrong direction is guaranteed failure. If you put if you don't have those clusters formed and understand where the the earlier success is and then accelerate into them and you just go into the whole market, you can't boil the ocean. It won't work. There there's a catalog of companies that tried that and have and have just burned through cash and failed miserably at the tail end of that. And a great number of successes of companies that have gone about it in the right way and therefore found their their area to then, you know, lead into when they go to the scale up phase.

29:58 Excellent. Question five, could you give the current cash and short term investment balance at the end of September?

30:05 Whilst we can't give you an exact cash balance because we're in a closed forum, and that would require an RNS, what I can do is give you an indication. We had 2,300,000 of cash and short term investments at the end of June. We brought in proceeds of just under 2,000,000 from the fundraise subsequent to that period. And in the last quarter as well, our cash burn was a 6 figure number. I'll let you do the math. Thanks, Steve. Question six, what is your goal for the product market fit stage in terms of users, MAUs, and paying subscribers?

30:37 The conversion of MAUs to pay is as good as 24%. Why is the conversion sign ups 110,000 to MAUs so low? What precisely are you doing to address this metric? Well, our metrics really are gonna be around around engagement, around retention, and around conversion. They're the key things that are gonna be leading indicators to whether we'll make Elevate a success. We yeah. We we we agree that certain areas of the conversion are currently pretty healthy and and some need need focus. To answer the question about the 110,000 to conversions, though, I'll I will just pick up on that point, is that we started this in in September 2024. We originally we we were using our search budgets for a wide variety of markets again to learn, including India, including Philippines, and including other markets where there wasn't a very high propensity to pay, but it was good for data.

31:30 And therefore, we wouldn't always expect those those those subs or those those users to go back directly into pay pay subscribers. So there's a there's a variety of of reasons for different levels of conversion. I think where the the the point I would really have to leave you with those, it's really about those leading indicators of of of retention, of of engagement, and then of conversion. Anything you'd like to add there, the team? I think I've reiterated the point that, as you pointed out, the conversion of the

32:00 regular free users that we get is low, that would be madness for us to do more of that at this stage. And, again, finding those clusters and finding those early adopters is the goal of the product market fit phase. And at the back of that, we'll not only have the product that is relevant to them and more, but we will have a deep understanding of those users, and that's what we lean into.

32:25 Question seven. Why have we not released the player? Was it was advised as it was part of the overall project? Surely, if we'd release the player by itself

32:35 in the past as many shareholders wanted, maybe that would have increased the share value. As I understand the player would have been successful tool and substantially increased revenues and share value. It's a double header for you two guys. Yeah. I'll start. The player we've been we've been using it and the technology in the player, we pushed straight out into Elevate once it's been tested. And we've been using the player as a testing tool for the technology Because what we want to do is to get Elevate to be really, you know, really finished and beautiful before we start diversifying too much. But what we have decided is that we will make the beta player available to all users so that people can try it. And there's quite a lot of technology coming down the pipeline that we will be able to test in the player.

33:23 So I think you can expect that for the users who want to do it, which is quite a few, they will have access to it. But the key focus has to be to get the editing function

33:33 working, and then we will learn almost like a product solution fit stage with the player, what sorts of things people are looking for there. Yeah. You've also got to look at the order and the relevance buying order. The distribution capabilities of Elevate are cream on the top of when we're into the established market. They're not it it but we have to have that bit first. Otherwise, we're not gonna have enough users to warrant the use of the player. So right now, it's more important that the player is being used to build out the playback technology. In fact, the player division has pioneered the new way of compositing and the way that we're handling and working with things like the GPU, which will not only just help the editing process, but will actually help the output the ultimate output. So it's a joint effort.

34:19 And, of course, the player is the testing bed for the new codec and the way that things work in Elevate. So we're we are that it is happening. You just can't see it. But anytime you see a video playing back within Elevate, you are looking at the player.

34:32 Thanks, Amit. Question eight. Can the company explain why it has failed shareholders so badly to allow the price to have dropped so far?

34:40 And what are the remedies to restore shareholder value? Can we please, from now on, have target dates that the company agrees with shareholders to meet? Summit, can we have asset the outstanding features which the shareholders want so that we can go to the next stage? When will we meet the prosumer stage? Okay. So I'll take that. There's quite a few different points in there. Why have we failed shareholders so badly? Well, I mentioned before, we're in the product market fit phase. Right? We we we're putting out information fairly regularly and and numbers too to explain where we are with that stage and and and what that stage really means to to to to you guys as investors, but also to the to the customers which are also important to us.

35:19 And it really is about delivering delivering features on a rapid basis and learning from those and learning from those. Now in terms of in terms of when we are going to start delivering those features, Summit, I I know that they're coming thick and fast. Do want to take that part of the question? We the the development process that we run through is a agile process where we make a release. It's a couple of times a week. It just you don't always know about it because it's often things that are happening behind the scenes. And when there's obviously something notable, we do tell everybody, and we we you know, the last couple of weeks, we've had a good cadence about one a week. Over the summer, things were slightly slower, but even before the summer, we were in the same process. It's it's really important that we don't rush junk out the door. The easiest way to kill our effort going forward is if we put product out that is in stable, not thought through, and not good for users to use. We will get absolutely no VAT. So whilst that might be frustrating from a shareholder point of view, it will only guarantee a further erosion of shareholder value if

36:17 we actually are halfway you know, 90% of the way through a bridge, then it's the last 10%. Well, it's just making out of polystyrene. You can imagine what the outcome would be. So we're gonna we're gonna stick to doing things the correct way because it's so important that we do it the correct way for the users and that we do it the correct way for how our product will grow and have a future. Putting something in the market now that's unfinished or not complete or incorrect would be catastrophic. I think I think to to finish this question as well, this is where it takes a visionary invest investor, is that we've derisked this product enormously. So we started off with a PowerPoint document back in 2022, and and and have now come to a a a functioning product that has audiences that has customers all around the world and and works better than any other product that's even comes you know, close to trying to do what we're doing. It's it it has been a a fantastic achievement on behalf of the the teams that work for us. I mean, I'm really proud of where where where we've got to.

37:14 Unfortunately, the institutions, at least a couple of the institutions, haven't haven't recognized that, haven't seen that that is that is something of an achievement and and haven't seen that derisk. A number of them have sold out, and that has been damaging to the share price. But I think this is where the visionary investors, and I hope we've got quite a few of these on the call, is that look at the share price now. Look where we've got to. Right? This is this is an absolutely it's it's it's it's a it's a huge opportunity for people to to get into involved with the stock right now, I have to say. Because yeah. Because we've we've we've come so far, and we've we've we've we are so much closer to be able to show that that that that growth. And, you know, if you're understanding that what we're saying or some are saying about where the products got to, then, you know, then then I'm sure that you'll you'll you'll understand that that investment case. But, yeah, it's a shame that the rest of the market, certainly some the institutions haven't haven't seen that.

38:06 They haven't seen it yet, let's say. Correct. What is our relationship with Abbott? Woman was that we are doing a deal with them. No. Well, I would say that's the we're we're we're not in a we're not in the Abbott area at this stage. We're very much in the greater economy, and Abbott's Abbott's not up there.

38:27 For BLACKBIRD x Elevate, the second half of twenty twenty four EBITDA was $6.72. Do wanna get this? Yeah. Yeah. So for BLACKBIRD, elevate the second half twenty twenty four, adjusted EBITDA was $6.72, giving a full year of $4.90. Is 600 k plus the expectations for second half adjusted EBITDA for BLACKBIRD excluding it, elevate, bring it to 700,000 plus the plus for the full year after first half one of 127 k. What I would say on that one is that, yeah, revenues year on year are not gonna be the same, neither is our cost base. We're not gonna give out, you know,

39:05 we're not gonna give out forecast by division at this stage. But, you know, as per the guidance that we gave in the r and s, we're expecting flatbread to be profitable for the second half of the year and the full year too. Okay. Next question is Frank's question as well. We will do a second, Darwin. Yeah. The the first half twenty five, corporate over hasn't moved much at 500 k for six months. Can you break this down? Is this all salaries of how many people?

39:30 It's principally the board plus one other member. 80% of those costs are salaries and associated costs such as, you know, employees, national insurance. The other items in there are are costs that are being listed, such as London Stock Exchange costs or Nomad costs or audit costs, etcetera. Exclude. One more finance question, please. Can you break it down, first half, operating costs, BLACKBIRD, EXPED, ELEVATE, and ELEVATE, no BLACKBIRD have been halved. This is all employee reduction. Yeah. The vast majority is employee reduction on the Blackbird side, but, also, we have repurposed some of the team as our focus for investment is on the elevate area.

40:17 Thanks. Okay. So longer questions here. So we could keep the questions on a bit longer, please, just so we'll get through these questions. So first of my question on the definition of product market fit and capital efficiency. The company is investing heavily to build features for the highly competitive professional creator market. Yet there appears to be a clear product market fit today with existing product in the enterprise sector. For instance, large finance institutions like Lloyd's or Barclays could immediately deploy this for internal trading, using it to rapidly create and share videos on everything from new software rollouts to critical compliance updates. This market represents immediate multi seat license revenue. So could the board explain the strategic decision to process a cash intensive development race over pursuing these large scale enterprise contracts that could be landed now? And what is the sales team actively doing to penetrate this corporate market?

41:08 Yeah. Can I so great question? Really thought through, and let me give you some a little bit more clarity on something. Where you've said that we're, you know, targeting, you know, the higher end creator market or threshold creator market, we're not. We've been quite clear that one of our big ICPs is the enterprise sector. There is a slight difference in that you're quoting Barclays and Lloyds, and we're more looking at the SMEs. And there's a very good reason for that because it may seem like, oh, we could just very easily deploy it there. Barclays and Lloyds are two companies I know very well. I built their streaming infrastructure. I know exactly how you build video product within those organizations. And, unfortunately, the procurement process to do that and the amount of hoops we'd have to jump through with organizations like that would not give us a quick to market ability to build revenue. We are more interested at the organizations that we've been meeting in the last two weeks at the technology for marketing forum and ideas fest and organizations that can move very quickly.

42:10 Barclays and Lloyd's are absolutely our target, you know, at the right time. I know the people there. They've got auditoriums. They have edit suites. I know the person who runs video. So we absolutely want to be used in those organizations, but getting in the as a cloud product, getting in and deployed within those organizations right now is actually something that would take longer. So we are going to be focused on enterprise. We definitely see and this is very much the Figma story. Figma is promoted and loved by designers who are freelancers and small agencies, but, really, they make their money out of Unilever. It's the thousand user sorry. The 100 the thousand customers they have that spend a £100,000 with them. That's our North Star. We definitely know that Elevate, more than any other video editing products, will be able to scale into larger organizations and provide them with their desktop editing capabilities.

43:06 It's a market I know very well, very passionate about, but not one you could just easily walk into. Excellent. Next question. My question is on the the definition of product market fit and capital efficiency. Oh, sorry. That was a it was. Yeah. That was previous. Yeah. Sorry. I have a process question based upon yesterday's Barclays Eagle Labs presentation. We had a marketing presentation and engineering presentation delivered by the same person with a clear barrier between the two. So much so, they called it out after finishing their marketing element. The presenter was obviously an expert in the engineering details, but seemed less comfortable delivering the marketing message, which is the first part. I I would agree. Thank you for the question. And I would say that that yesterday's presentation didn't meet our normal high standards of a product that we put to the market. I think we've all learned a little bit there.

43:56 And and it seems an excellent presenter when it comes down to the to the, as you call it, engineering, but on the on the, actually, the the editing side of it. But, yeah, we've learned that we should we certainly should have a a a two handed approach to that and make sure there's a a a presenter that can deliver the marketing messages proficiently as well. But thank you for the for the question. Ian, I was hoping you could elaborate on the evolution of your growth strategy. The aggressive exponential growth curve that you outlined back in May appears to have shifted back towards a phased focus on achieving product market fit. Was this a slowdown was this slowdown a deliberate strategic choice to prioritize product quality and user retention over share acquisition numbers? Was it more of a reaction to the market market headwinds? And crucially, what milestones must be reached before we can expand expect a return to the exponential growth?

44:45 Great question. And and, yeah, there was there was obviously early early signs of exponential growth, which is which is fantastic. What hit us was was the churn. And therefore, we've learned from that churn and made sure that the new subscribers coming on board and the new users and subscribers coming on board are engaged users that that align to our ICP. So I'll I'll reiterate the key things that we're looking for going forward in terms of metrics. Our retention of those those subscribers is is our engagement of those subscribers and conversion into pay. They're the key areas that we're looking at. They're the lead indicators of what we're doing. And, yeah, it's a learning phase. I I think it's worth adding that we could have continued the expenditure that we were making in search and continue driving through that, and we would have over a thousand paying customers by now. There's we could have easily bought users.

45:31 That doesn't help us. What helps us is we learn enough from the the the circa 350 that we have that are telling us and informing us about everything. We don't need three times as many. That would have been too costly to acquire. What matters more is that as soon as we work with those 350, will you use the money we've got to acquire 2,000 rather than the 1,000? So it's it's it really is about being disciplined and us pulling back where we needed to at the right moment rather than just for the sake of of of pushing in a a narrative that's still only in the hundreds. You know? It it would have been futile. It would have been yeah. So a late question there, Summit. With around 50% all paying users having churned, what level of retention uplift do you expect once the missing features like captions, mobile uploads, and graphics go live?

46:19 And when will those features be fully released? Yeah. So mobile upload obviously just went live. Captions has been very, very actively worked on, and we're hoping to see that by the end of the year. And we obviously are very well, there's a whole bunch of other features that are coming out, especially in the graphics and animation space and transition space. So and there are others, by the way. And and and then you you know, some of the graph don't show things. One of the biggest impactful things we've added recently was the boundary boxes. That was a very expected behavior that we wish we had sooner, and and we've now put out there. All of these features and we we talked about it quite a lot in the team recently. People come to us for the big features, but they stay for the little things. So just simple things like the folder management and relabeling things and and and some of those smaller features that we've neglected a little bit in favor of bringing in some of the bigger features. We now have a dedicated team that is going around ensuring that when people are in the product, they have everything they need. And churn is a is a is a result of them not being able to achieve what they need to do in in the most convenient way.

47:27 And so we now have to work on the okay. What is it we need to do to keep people on the product? We've learned a lot about bringing them in. What do we do to keep them in there, and what are the things that they absolutely need to get about doing their day to day, and how do we prioritize that? And like I said, we established a new team that is dedicated towards the smaller, more hygiene factor features that will help reduce that churn. And, of course, in time, as we just add some of the bigger features, that will also help reduce that. I think the other point as well about about the numbers of paying users is when we reported back in May, we were at half price. And we could have continued to go at half price and and and seen that conversion change, but we're we're in a learning phase. So when you go when you double the price of a product, you're judged by a new metric. You're judged by a new standard.

48:15 And and and, of course, we're judged now by a standard of of $15, £15, €50. And as as the exit survey tells us, some people that that churn tell us, is that for that price, we still don't have the right features. So so that that is that is indeed the learning that we are we we we we're taking on. We knew anyway, but we're doing we're taking on, and we're adding features all the time. So the next question is quite similar. You report six nine seven paying users, but only three four four active. Does that mean that roughly half of canceled? Could you break down gross ads, churn, and net growth? And do you see patterns? We're we're not gonna give any further numbers out. Most of it can be done through triangulation of of of numbers, I think. But, you know, we we are we are a company that has given quite a few numbers today.

49:01 I I know it's never enough, but the thing is we're giving far more information out than any other company that would do, you know, the similar stage of development, as I mentioned before, behind closed doors in in California. So remember, the numbers that we give out also go directly to our competitors. So it's always good to remember that when we're when when we're being asked for numbers. It's not just in a closed environment, unfortunately. But, yes, indeed, as as I said, the exit the exit survey always points generally to the same thing. Can we have more features, please? And we would stop. Use site missing features, captions, animated graphics, mobile uploads, additional cancellations. Which of these are the highest priority to deliver, and what is your timing for closing these gaps? How will you prioritize given limited resources? Okay. Yeah. Well, mobile updates available. Captions are you know, captions and animations will all be seen this year. So Okay. I think the next question is about products features as well, so let's move on.

49:58 Hi. You've emphasized collaboration as a key differentiator to Elevate. What is the average number of active users per paid account, and are most paid users solo or part of multiseet teams? Any information you can mean, it doesn't prove it. It's We we yeah. We're not publishing the number at all. What we have seen is that as we've increased the amount of seats that users or team is able to have, we're seeing further collaboration. The review user has brought in more collaboration as well. And, again, because there's a lot of misunderstanding about this, that video editing traditionally is not a very collaborative process. We know that. That's why we're building a collaboration version of it. So much like producing a print brochure twenty years ago was, you know, left to a designer and then an artworker, and then it went to the printer. It was a very linear process. The video has been the same. We're doing the same with what we're doing. So we expect collaboration to grow as the product grows and the market grows for this and it becomes more available.

50:56 Just to get the previous question, actually, was slightly different than than just product market fit phase. It was a little bit about the paid users. It's like it was yeah. Thanks for the update on this phase. You're telling us about potential paid users could do with knowing a little more about what it is that's coming in order for them to buy for future product, why you're not telling people more people about what's coming. Now that's a very fair comment. We actually been discussing this recently. We used to run a podcast at the beginning where we did discuss things like upcoming meetings. We're bringing that back in some format. We're exactly sure of the exact format of it, but we expect in the next few weeks to see a new format where it is more updates from me, Cal, the engineering team, and things that will be hinting at what is coming. And more importantly, not every one of you, especially as investors, uses the product.

51:41 So you don't necessarily know some of the wonders that have happened, like the the the feeling of the the new boundary boxes or how the looks are working. You just maybe hear about them in brochureware, but it will be an opportunity for you to watch this and actually see them in action and, obviously, discussing maybe some up and coming things. We're definitely gonna keen to do that and look after our our user base. Excellent. Questions slash statements. Pricing strategy, keeping the early bird discount longer could have brought goodwill while the point matured. Yeah. Thank you. That's a very good point. And to the point I made just slightly earlier is that we are in a learning phase, and therefore, we thought it was valuable to learn about how we our product will be received at full price. But, again, yeah, I do I do think that's an interesting point. You featured you featured a meeting with Boris FX if he wants to go on LinkedIn.

52:31 Is there anything you can share on that? I think nothing to share other than we are but, you know, obviously, in constant conversations with Boris FX about And other products. How we utilize, yeah, and how we utilize some of that technology. Yeah. Absolutely. Well noticed. According to respected ADVFN members, adding mobile upload functionality to Elevate requires only a one day of work for one person. Do you concur? Well, we don't concur. It it didn't take one day, but the good news is today is the day, and it is available. So please take a look at it and then, yeah, kind of reimagine whether that was one day's work. Guys, I have to I have to say, yeah, I think I think I I would love to be able to click a finger on all this. These leads are just landing the product overnight. It would be amazing. You've gotta remember that no one else has built what we built, and we built it in a very rapid amount of time. So, yeah, it's it's there there is no global product like us. You know, it's it's it's it's not easy. It's really not easy, and the team are incredibly talented and incredibly working pretty quickly. Thank you very much for that question.

53:31 Ian, can you say a little more about the employee numbers and cutbacks that you mentioned in the interims? Are features being delayed due to lack of developers? Yes. So we've really we we are constantly being disciplined about cost. You know, cash is a concern for not just us, but every every every company in the world today, and we must be very disciplined about that. So we we are we're reviewing we review our teams all the time. I have to say that it's definitely not down to lack of lack of developers that we are the the the products are arriving when they're arriving. That's I wouldn't say they're delayed at all. They're arriving when they're arriving, and they're working at pace, and we have an exceptionally talented development team working on them. Great work from on the social videos. Give us off a round of applause. Everybody loves you. There you go, Helen.

54:20 Thank you. What do you consider to be your biggest threats to not realizing the amount of the TAM? I I I guess translating translating or Well, having enough marketing spend Yeah. Yeah. Is a a is a worry that in us not being able to communicate in into the market with the effectiveness that some organizations may have. I'd say that that's probably a Yeah. Threat to us. Not being yeah. Exactly. Not being able to explain the the the benefits of the product to a wide enough audience. And, yeah, that's that's that's true. As I said at the at the beginning, it's not a risk reimbursement. It's a it's a potentially huge return, but I think was free. Sorry. Can I another one, actually? Sorry. Another one is the the biggest threat sorry. The biggest threat to us not being able to realize large amount of time is if we go down a a two niche angle.

55:15 Yeah. So if we build a product like most of the online products that are available today in this space, Remember, we still see ourselves as the only professional grade product in this space. Most of the players in this space have gone down a very, very narrow, very limited market. That market, there's well, all of them are in it. So they've not only taken a very small slither or let's say it's a large part of the market, but a very unwilling to pay part of the market, and then they divide themselves amongst themselves. So what we mustn't do is say, right. Let's just focus on this one thing over here. That would be a threat to us if we're forced we've we force ourselves or we're forced into that space. All you're doing is limiting yourself for the asset. Just to check-in on the question number, question 36.

56:01 How will you fund the business over the next few years given the small new tool net new customer growth and the high cash burn without massively diluting your loyal and long term shareholders given the share price of 1.9 p and the market cap is sub 10,000,000? I think the the key thing there is that we're building a revenue engine, and and our revenue engine has to be profitable. It means you put one you put a pound in and you get more than a pound out. It's it's profitable. If we can show that revenue engine working or we can show massive improvement towards that revenue engine working, then we have an investment case that we think is sound. We think we have visionary investors here and and and other places that will that will back that given the So why is it taking so long, and could you develop Elevate from scratch in a few weeks?

57:01 So the answer is no. You couldn't have developed Elevate from scratch in a few weeks. BLACKBIRD is actually a different product in a different market, although the technology has been applied directly to Elevate. And there's quite a lot of technology that hasn't yet been applied in Elevate that we'll be rolling out over time. So the key difference, if you think of it from a practical point of view, is that often in in the Blackbird editor, you take three months to install it and wipe off treatment to train people up. Whereas Elevate, you can just come to the website and the feedback I've had for a lot of people is they can just sit down and use it. And so the it's like the different audience and a different market and different level of support. It's it is a new product.

57:47 But it has actually been accelerated a lot because all the Internet side of the technology has been ready ready made. And now we're moving on to GPUs. There's obviously synergy between the different parts, the different editors. In fact, lot of the work we've done is synergy between them for the new development. But the Elevate is actually a masterpiece in beautiful design and that reflects a different audience from focusing entirely on efficiency and people that get paid to do it or they don't get a job versus creators who actually have aesthetic sense and they want a beautiful product as well as beautiful functionality. It's fair to say the packaging that is also completely different. One is on premise installation and, like you said, a lengthy process.

58:34 The other is something that scales in the cloud in in in the cloud and is aimed at a different market. The heart and the core compositing is absolutely identical. In fact, innovation sometimes that elevate drives end up back in BLACKBIRD and vice versa. But, also, the truth is it's taking many years to develop the Blackbird product as well. So it's not something that wasn't built overnight, so there's no reason to Elevate. But the heart of both products is absolutely the same. The packaging of them is different. It's it's like, you know, a bit like Steven and I. Packaging is different, but the heart's absolutely the same. Exactly. Nice analogy. Alright. I have a question for Cal. Cal, you've made many short videos aimed at beginners. Are beginners the key parts of the marketing reach?

59:20 Yeah. I so beginner and by by the way, credit to Kiara as well who's who's making a lot of videos and doing an amazing job. It's not just me. Yeah. I think beginners are definitely a big part of it because Elevate is being built to be a super intuitive, super easily accessible video editor. So we want to introduce Elevate to beginners because it's so easy for them to get into it. And and it's kind of like linking back to the Uber time story that Ian mentioned earlier. People that would have otherwise never video edited because the current offerings are just way too complicated, require heavy machinery. They they are giving video editing a shot now because Elevate is making it so accessible and so easy for them to to get started.

1:00:07 So, yes, beginners are are definitely gonna be very important for us. Thanks, Carl. Do you see the instant review tool as a way to help the virality of elevate I? Yeah. 100%. Definitely. It's the way in which people will their first touch will probably be for the foreseeable future. The the the most likely way that you'll use Elevate for the first time will be as a reviewer. We definitely know that that will be part of our viral flywheel, and it's the great way to get it into people's hands. Frame.io had exactly that same experience. Most people's frame.io experience started with receiving a link and being able to review something. So, yeah, we it's a big part of our strategy. We need further funds to scale to the scale of the base. Our ambitions are are are are big. Our missions are are are industry changing. And, yes, we will need more funds in the scale up phase, but we were taking our revenue engine to the market for that for that revenue phase for that scale up phase.

1:01:05 How often will you be communicating the updates of your leading indicators to shareholders and investors? Monthly, question mark. I think we'll be we'll be taking our our leading indicators to to you guys when we have the the the the end of year results and, you know, other other moments that are set pieces like the AGM. As I said, every time we release numbers into the market, they go directly into the dynamic and exciting and further market that there is here and direct to our competitor. So we must be careful about how often we release all these numbers. Will any of you be adding to your share will any to your shareholders at current record bargain based share prices with you all clearly being very confident in the future. Also, great to see the adverts.

1:01:50 They look really sharp and and really demonstrate elevate and its use. Well, as you know, we are big supporters of the of of this company where all of us around the table here investing almost to our max in terms of how we can support the company. It is a bargain basement. And, you know, if we have funds available, then I'm sure we'll be investing in this exciting time. Yeah. Thank you very much for that. Don't even mind saying that. I obviously don't have to declare mine. I'm not a board member, but I believe I was the largest trade buying trade on Monday. There you go. And under two p, it's when we talk about shareholder value, we'll we'll judge whether two p was good shareholder value in the future. Mhmm. And to be clear, sorry. Well, we only get the opportunity to buy stock at, like, ten days a year. Yeah. So we get limited opportunities. So the opportunity, you know, is is there for us at the moment, and that's great. It's there for you. So Question from Jimmy. Louis, I searched the Internet to ascertain the opinions. From what I have seen, the opinions are good. I'm personally in support of your aims. Thank you very much, Jimmy.

1:02:57 When will Elevate be finally ready, finished, and beautiful? I love the finish. When was the finish line? It will never be finished. That's the point behind it. It's an ongoing product. Already, it feels a lot more finished than it did six months ago. Those of you who use the product will know how much the last two months have meant in terms of its development, in terms of maturity. So expect that certainly by the by the end of the product market fit phase, we're gonna be in a great position. But even by the end of this year, I think we'll people will be pleasantly surprised at how good it's getting. And and that's the feedback we get from a lot of users and a lot of the different focus groups that we've remained constant from the beginning of this project. The feedback has has has been phenomenal in terms of progress. Thank you. Please describe the player and what to do or or fast publish, I think, is is gonna be Yes.

1:03:45 Quick quick publish. Beta is how it's gonna be built on the menu. What that allows you to do is to publish video of any length in almost no time in seconds. And it creates a web page with a link and you can share the web page and it also gives you feedback on how many views you have and allows you to clip out the best bits and reshare those. So it's a very easy way to distribute your content externally without having to do a render and people download and upload stuff. And, obviously, it's very useful for development because we can put the new technology in and can roll it out to thousands of people and see what, you know, what works or what doesn't work. Yeah. Learning phase. Right? Yeah. So that's why we've limited it so far.

1:04:32 And it will be hard to find, but it will be available to everyone in a few weeks. You spoke for some time about the uniqueness and strength of Blackbird's technology and now now elevate.io. Given that, there has been no major strategic partner or keystone customer who's really wanted to lean in commit to being part of this journey. Do you want to look for this type of strategic involvement? Certainly certainly in terms of the the partner, we are doing the developments and rollout ourselves. In terms of the customer, I think that's absolutely something that we've talked about. The collaborations. We're working with organizations in collaboration with them to not only learn deeply about them, but to co share in marketing activities, which is great exposure for both organizations. Question 51.

1:05:19 Elevate is amazing. Thank you all. SBS. I imagine if you wanted to, you could put your feet up and do whatever he wants in life. This is what he wants to do. What motivates you to develop Elevate, and what are your ambitions for it? Well, it's very rare you get a chance to change the whole world. And right back at the beginning, I invented the cloud video editing, but the market was very small. In fact, everyone's always been saying we were too early. But now we've actually got a massive market. I mean, billions and billions. And with some inherent products, we're actually making the tool that meets that need. So I'm very happy to supply the technology for that product. Thank you, Steven, and and we thank you.

1:06:04 How close are you to releasing AI captions capability? By the end of the year. There's and it could be sooner. We we're absolutely absolutely keen, and I've released tech text to speech to speech to text when I was a Vegas program, we're the first to market. And sometimes it's not just a race to be first. You've got to do it well because no one implementation of captioning, we feel, is good enough for the kind of edits that we're building. So we are doing quite a we're doing we're doing a good implementation of it. We want to make it so that it really does work to scale, not only for people who just wanna capture this a small Instagram post, but also somebody who would use it to caption a two hour documentary.

1:06:50 And we are going to you know, the the plans for it are going to be very it's going to mean that it's gonna be a very good implementation. Thanks. Thanks for that. And, yes, we absolutely know that's fundamental. It's fundamental to to to expected running of this product. And so, yeah, we're we're really focused on it. Statement here, well done on your amazing innovation and total determination. Thank you very much, Philip. Mhmm. Given that next the next results are six months down the road, are you gonna give Sheryl's update on numbers before then? I'll refer back to my answer, I a, a few minutes ago, which is these numbers go direct to to the to the to the competition, and we give out far more numbers than any of our competition do. So I would like to say that probably not. We are we're gonna be doing it with some pieces.

1:07:36 I'm a professional tax in and business adviser. As a consequence, I come across different trades and professions. I'm in favor of initial face to face workshops. However, once there's been a minimal level of learning in future, I will consider online updates. How would elevate.io fit in with a live online meeting? Do you want to sort of Sure. Yeah. So yeah. We we also really, really understand and see the value of of face to face, especially at this stage that we're at now where we're, you know, building our initial customer base. So the you know, a few of our initiatives in the last couple weeks and months have have really demonstrated that. So for instance, the events play a big part in this.

1:08:22 We we've gone to events and we've been demoing Elevate to so many different people and so many different teams, showing them exactly, you know, what's so special about it, how to use it, and that's been really, really effective. It it's our first real play at at, like, really just face to face, almost white glove type of initiative. And the reception has just been absolutely incredible. It's been so validating talking to people. And what we've seen coming out of those is that it it's very effective in generating leads and actually onboarding people onto the platform. So a 100%, we're gonna we're we're doing a lot of education. We're we're we had our first play at the webinar yesterday as as you know. That's gonna improve and develop, and we're gonna teach people how to use Elevate at this point in time. We're we're we're a lean marketing team, but at this point in time, we can really do that. And it's all about educating people, showing them how to get on board, and showing them how to make videos.

1:09:25 Thanks, Kyle. Question on EBS. Steve, I'm sure that's Yeah. There's any update on EBS? Well, there's two sides actually to EBS. We did announce in the r and s as well that we have have actually been included as part of their offering for the winter games in 2026. So that will happen in Italy early next year. The second side to it is the technology licensing deal. And all I can say at this stage is, yes, ABS have been probably our IPT via create to other customers. But at the moment, we are not in excess of our annual minimum guarantee. But when when we are, then we'll let you know. Thanks, Steve. Ian, you're targeting The US East Coast. Do you have enough people out there to achieve your ambitions?

1:10:12 Will you go there yourself to push the product? I mean, I would say at this stage that we are we are targeting the East Coast in terms of clusters, in terms of seeding, and, yes, we have enough people there to to to do that. Will I go out there personally? Well, I don't think I need to at this stage, but I but I will certainly be visiting The US, I would think, in the next few months for for different reasons, and I would think, you know, very possibly go to the East Coast. But we have a we have someone on the ground in New York already, and and we succumb people when necessary when we're doing events. So, yeah, we have we're we're happy with our with our team presence over there currently. What is your target for paying users at end of the product market fit stage? I think this this is more about momentum. This is more about engagement and about retention and and and about conversion to paying into paying users as opposed as opposed to absolute numbers.

1:11:03 Yeah. We we we will know when when that when that stage is reached. It will be very much a case of selling that revenue engine at that particular point in time. Hi. In which month month will product market fit phase actually be complete? Sam, I think you wanna Yeah. I think we end up on the scale that shows towards the end of February Yeah. 2026. But, again, we we it's not you guys said the date of the diary, and it's just that's exactly what happens. We will produce a bit more guidance, obviously, around the time and be clear about it. And it it also doesn't mean that there is physically a day. I mean, it will be it'll it'll it'll it it'll be a period where we say, okay. This is complete, and we're moving forward. Excellent.

1:11:48 Thank you. When you take on users, do you request data such as student filmmaker, charts, etcetera? Maybe you wanna Yeah. Build out on this one, Carol. Absolutely. Yeah. So we have an onboarding survey, and we've had that since the beginning of this year. So we've had that for quite a while, and we have a lot of data about our about our users, what kind of profile they have, what kind of skill level, what kind of videos they're making, and that data, you know, has been very valuable, and we we use it all the time when we do our analysis. And in addition to that, we also have our access survey. So, also, when people, decides to leave, we also collect data and ask them why. So it's it's all about learning.

1:12:37 It's learning through quantitative data, but also very much through qualitative data. So, yes, we're absolutely doing that. Thanks, Kyle. Question for Summit. Will we be able to store our projects in a folder in the near future, and will we be able to duplicate our products our projects soon? Are you making copy? Yes. So team folders comes out today. Project, being able to access the the team media from a project within the media interface is going to trail slightly later, and duplicate project is almost ready to go and is obviously a key part of a few things, one of which will be multiple sequences and then being able to have demo projects, which is also tied in duplicate projects. So lots of things in that space coming.

1:13:22 I love the next question. When the marketplace is up and running, will there be a merch store so we could purchase those cool t shirts? Great presentation update. Confidence restored. Thank you very much. It's very hot. Hi. Nice to hear that. And, yeah, I think we should. I think they are it's all our top priority, obviously, but why not? Cal, any chance you can make a video of a gorgeous setting just prior to a volcano eruption, then post it on your YouTube channel, plus it would elevate advertising, of course. That is a really good idea. I I should have come up with that. Yeah. No. No. We we need to do that. We need to do that. We'll scout out locations starting tomorrow. Nice, Scott. I sometimes think investors don't realize how complex a development this can be. Perhaps you communicate to investors this is very hard. Well, I think the podcast is gonna go a long way to explaining the problems that we're solving. Right? Yeah. I mean, the good news is is that the development team who have obviously the core team from BLACKBIRD who've been working on the core engine for a long, long time. But a lot of these people who worked on Elevate, you know, have only be only be working here for three years, including myself.

1:14:27 And the one thing that we're very confident about and that we have achieved within the product market phase fit stage is that we now know how to do everything that we need to know for this at least for the foreseeable future. There will, of course, be challenges that come down the road when we our ambitions widen, but we're very, very confident. But you have to remember at the beginning of this, we had an idea of how, for example, multiplayer and the multiple curses and conflict resolution would work. We were sure of it that it could we know it could be done because of adjacent industries that could be done on a video timeline. All of the really important things that we didn't we we may have had confidence in, but we didn't have the full answer to, we have achieved as part of the this phase that we're in at the moment. We everything we have been scared about has been solved and is working.

1:15:18 So now we just have a lot of execution work and tidy up work to get to there and then need to scale up. And then the process will begin again, and then we'll set our ambitions higher and have to go and solve more problems. But the efficiency of the team is absolutely true. And, also, that they're understanding. You know, three years is and some of them less than three years, and some of them are is one of our development developers only been with us a few weeks and already been responsible for the in and out points. And the preview player, that's been his first piece of work all achieved within certainly within the last month. And what's important is that the knowledge within the organization, within the development team of what is the right thing to do is now becoming second nature. And that's really important because this is not a trivial subject.

1:16:03 It is a very detailed subject. It's stoked with legacy. It's nuances that you wouldn't believe. And that's just very obvious, by the way, when you look at the other online video providers, you know, some of the other online competitors. You can tell that they have not understood the video production process because of the way that they've done certain things. And for us, you know, that team is is really gelling. Thanks a lot. Hi. When will you need your next cash injection, especially as you realize marketing is critical to realizing a large amount of TAM? Again, we've answered this a little bit earlier where we will be needing cash to scale up, of course, and we will be taking a revenue engine investment case to investors to to do that. I think when we can show that that vast improvements of the put a pound in and get, you know, a profit out, then then we have a sound investment case to to to to get to get new investment.

1:16:55 Do you have any IP that protects your product from replication? Steven, maybe you wanna take a one? Yes. We have quite a few patents for the technology, mostly the compression technology that also makes the system very efficient on data rate as well as responsive and smooth. So, yes, we have quite a few patents there. Okay. Question 69. If your new customer growth continues to underwhelm, how will you fund the business? It's easy to detail how you'll fund the business as we go to plan, but with the share price of 1.9 p, what's the options if slower than growth happens? To to answer your question, quite frankly, is that we are in a an area where we have a huge potential opportunity to to to provide a return. It is not a risk for investment, and, you know, it might not work. But at this point in time, we've derisked this product to an enormous amount versus where we were six months ago when we last spoke to you and and and certainly two years ago when we put this this plan to you. So I would say that we're in a a fantastic opportunity to deliver versus where we were.

1:17:59 But as I said, it's still not risk free. Statements. Summit, we love you. And four kisses. Next one, how are we getting this the the message out that one of the things that sets Elevate apart from the seeming competitors is that so much more robust and able to do more short videos. Haven't seen this in the marketing messages. Over to you, Cal. Yeah. So how do we get that message across? We get that message across through several different channels. Right? You can't just use one channel to say something one time and then expect, you know, everybody to to learn about that. I do think we we speak about that. We talk about that on the website. We talk about that on our blogs. We make YouTube videos where where we show how you can create a longer form content, not just vertical shorts on on TikTok or anything like that.

1:18:52 So if if you're if you're just following our Instagram, then that might give that impression that we're focusing on the shorts, but that's just because we're we're targeting the users on Instagram. If you're looking at our YouTube videos, it's it's quite a different story. We are showing landscape videos, longer type longer types of formats. So, yeah, we will we will continue doing that. We always talk about how incredibly responsive Elevate is versus other offerings, and and that's really what sets us apart. We're we're a serious tool that works in the browser. Fantastic. Thanks, Kyle. Another statement. Looks like the presentation's gone down well. The stock price is up. Well, thank you very much. And so it should be. That's massively understood by the market. So I'm really pleased that we managed to explain it a little bit.

1:19:37 I can't emphasize enough how important the q and a is to us. Thank you so much for taking the time to to to speak with us. You're very welcome. And, yeah, I think it's really important because it's not an easy thing to understand sometimes as some have said from brochureware and other announcements. So it's really good to be able to talk to you directly. How many paid users are now needed to break even at the current cash burn? And do you have enough for for paid users by mid to end of next year? I love the fact you keep asking for numbers. I'm not gonna give any more numbers out than we have done. We give a lot more out than than other companies at our our stage of development. So I hope you bear with us, and we'll release them when we think it's the appropriate time. Share price up. 0.25 piece since your presentation started. Maybe a daily presentation could work wonders.

1:20:22 Yeah. Thank you, Philip. May may well be. Okay. I'm now gonna go into question 76, which I think might be the last question. Hi. Is the plan to scale and then sell Elevate or not? No plans to sell at this stage. We're we're a listed business, and therefore, we would love to enjoy the the the the growth and rewards that come with being on the on the markets as we grow. But no plans at all to to to sell the business. Thank you very much. Anything else that anyone would like to add? Oh, okay. Jake? Guys, absolutely, if I may just jump back in there. Thank you very much, guys, for being so generous of your time and addressing all of those questions that came in from investors this morning. And of course, if there are any further questions that do come through, we'll make these available to you afterwards. But Ian, perhaps before, as usual, just really now looking to redirect those on the call to provide you with their feedback, which I know is particularly important to yourself and the company. If I could please just ask you for some closing comments, that'd be great.

1:21:18 Yeah. Thank you very much, Jake. I mean, I I would say that's a very a very engaged session, and thank you very much for all your questions. We don't take this we don't underestimate how engaged you are. We know you we know how important you are to our our development. So it's a huge pleasure to be able to talk to on these on these on these occasions. I would just finish by saying that I've never been more confident. Never been more confident in the fact we've got the right vision, we've got the right product, we've got the right timing, and we've got a huge global opportunity. So I hope you enjoy the ride with us. Thank you very much. Perfect, Ian. That's great. And thank you all once again for updating investors this morning. Could I please ask investors not to close this session? She will now be automatically redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the management team can really better understand your views and expectations. This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company.

1:22:05 On behalf of the management team of BLACKBIRD PLC, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That now concludes today's session. So good afternoon to you all.