Mirriad Advertising (LSE:MIRI) — Interim Results

0:01 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the MIRRIAD ADVERTISING PLC Interim Results Investor Presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time using the Q and A tab just situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply type in your questions at any time 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 your questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we would like to submit the following poll, and I'm sure the company will be most grateful for

0:32 your participation. I'd now like to hand over to the management team, Nick, Stefan. Good morning to you both. Thank you very much, and good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us today for this presentation for the H1 results of MIRRIAD. So with me, I'm Stephane Lorenzo. I'm the CEO of the company. And with me, Nick Hellyer, which I'm not quite sure everybody knows. Nick Hellyer is our new CFO. Nick has joined last November. Time flies, so hopefully, I'm remembering this well. And so we have a presentation, and we'll obviously have also time for Q and A. So as an agenda, we thought we'd talk about the highlights of the first half and a little bit beyond that, talk about the challenges we encounter and then really focus on the key strategies that we've embarked on in terms of continuation, but also on as a reaction, if you will, in terms of adjusting a few strategic things, then the outlook, and then we'll have time for Q and A. So let me just start with the highlights of the first half. And some or many of you will remember, we embarked with

1:57 all guns blazing, so to say, in terms of first half, and we announced a programmatic partnership with a major US based SSP. You will remember who that is. Then, you know, the award of the gold status by the trusted partner network was an extremely important achievement and milestone because it gives us the permission to ultimately work for the majors in the industry and and just, you know, as we look at competition or potential competition because currently, we're still not seeing anyone fighting for the same piece. That is a huge advantage because, you know, big companies like Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, etcetera, require us to have the the the safety, and that took us a year to get in place.

2:46 Because, obviously, IP of the content, if that gets leaked for a company like Disney, that's a total disaster, and that's why the security requirements are very, very high. We signed this second master services agreement with a U. S. Major. You know that there are basically five companies that can be regarded as majors next to, you know, major streaming companies, or pure streamers like Amazon and Netflix. And so we signed the second one, in March. And then, we integrated or we were integrated, in the so called TV upfronts, by basically all our partners, which was a novelty for us because this was the first time that MIRRIAD ADVERTISING PLAYER had become part of the negotiations and discussions between the major networks and the agency buyers who set, if you will, the parameters for for, you know, the next twelve months in terms of commitments.

3:54 And that's all driven by the agencies who put hundreds of millions on the table. So but and and that's what we spoke about. There are a few other things we we basically did. So, you know, we entered new partnership discussions or partnership discussions with additional entertainment and ad tech giants, one in particular. So this is literally after our fundraise. I flew to New York and and started the conversation with one of the super, super majors. And then very importantly, we also embarked in a discussion with some major agency groups, one in particular, talking about big upfront investment buys.

4:39 And when I say big upfront investment buys, this is literally the agency and us talking about, well, how much money could be allocated over the next twelve months. And as a result of that, we're not talking about 5,000,000, not 10. The discussion was arranged between 20 and '40. And then the other thing we did, we engaged with some of our partners to launch co marketing activities. And those who follow us on LinkedIn might have seen some of them, so Hallmark, A and E, AMC. So that that's something quite new that we did. We've never done it before, literally going into the market with joint advertising. Just to be very clear, the advertising is not expensive as if we ran TV ads.

5:28 It's actually a couple of $100, but very impactful. And then we developed the we started developing, the Diverse Media Alliance, which is an important, asset for us to have and to lead in that space because, especially in The US, after the Floyd, let's call it, disaster a few years ago, all advertisers and agencies basically made commitments to spend more for black and Hispanic and Asian owned media companies. And so we've put together basically a big group of these companies and promoting, you know, the innovation that we have and bringing that to market because we have good content and there's strong relevance from the agency and advertiser side in terms of buying into that proposition.

6:19 So these were the things we embarked on in H1, and we ran into some significant challenges at the same time. One, and let's start with the market dynamics. Those of you who are reading, you know, the industry news, etcetera, etcetera, and and analytic analysis would see that the share of retail media and performance media is is growing. And and let me just ex expand a little bit on that. Retail media is literally that's, especially Amazon and companies just booking ads on the Amazon platform so that they are listed very high when, you know, people are looking for certain products. And obviously, that is something that helps convert in terms of sales, etcetera.

7:09 And that is a trend in the industry that is kind of hurting us a lot. But not only us, it's hurting everybody in the industry who's not Amazon because eventually advertisers are spending or allocating more dollars in in that space. But I'll talk about in a few what our reaction is to that. But anyway, this is leading to a additional pressure, especially on our partners who are still in the linear business and not in the retail media business and just putting general pressure in terms of how, you know, linear advertising bookings are made. And we are part of that, of course, even if we are a new ad format. The other thing that happened, and you will have seen that too, or happened is wrong, it's a continuum, is that the industry is being shaken by a you know, lots of m and a activity, cost cutting almost on a daily basis, and that goes across ad tech and the media companies that we're working with. And and this is not to underestimate, and let me just give you, and it's not a happy anecdote.

8:16 Like, literally three weeks ago, I was sitting at a partner, I won't say who it is, and, basically, the person we're talking to did not know if the colleague who, you know, used to sit in the next office was still around. And and and the consequence for us is that our partners on the ad tech side and the media side

8:37 and media company side just have less bandwidth. And at times, we just lose the people that we're talking to. And especially with one of our partners, that has caused a pretty significant sort of gap and delay. And you will have read the press, it was a big m and a thing going on. The other challenge we ran into was the slow build of content clearances by the majors. And and that has led, unfortunately, to upfront misses. And you you all know and that we were very, very, how can I say, confident about, you know, us landing great deals in the upfronts? But and I spoke about a big number that was literally taken into the upfronts with one of our partners.

9:25 So this is was a double digit million dollar budget. Unfortunately, it could not get sort of brought to fruition because the partner wasn't able to get the complete content clearance, they didn't want to commit to these big million dollar numbers on the basis of, how can I say, you know, an in insert uncertainty regarding the content clearance? And that's so that has represented a a a challenge, of course, and that was very disappointing. Just to be also clear, because I've received many questions in terms of when do you know how the upfront is going, etcetera, etcetera. Just to be clear, the upfront negotiations are an industry phenomenon that is top, top secret.

10:12 So there's absolutely no leaking. There's no information, whatever. So the agency wouldn't keep us informed and updated, and the media partner wouldn't keep us informed either because, again, this is highly, highly confidential stuff. And at some point, then, you know, the results are there. It's like electing the pope and the white smoke columns. So this is also just, you know, to let you know and give you that information that it's not us not wanting to sort of disclose things, but it's actually that we don't even have the information on top of the factor that effectively the upfronts have taken much, much longer this year than in the past. And it seems that every year, they take me even more and more weeks to get close. So I think end of August, early September is when we started sort of when things started transpiring.

11:05 And as a consequence then, not only did we not lock in a big upfront deal, we have a couple of smaller upfront deals, but the big ones did not happen. And the partner sales was quite ineffective because without content clearance, then there's not much they can sell. So that has been slow. And as you all know, we have migrated or taken a strategic decision to migrate from sort of an emphasis on MIRRIAD driven sales, which was important to build the market to more partner driven sales. And that obviously, that transition has not quite worked yet the way we anticipated because of the reasons that I've just explained. So to make things totally complete, the other happy thing, sorry for the cynicism that happened, was that on the you will remember we signed the contract with the SSP partner, and unfortunately, there was a strategic change.

12:01 Maybe that was the reason for the departure of the CEO or maybe it was the consequence of the CEO's departure. Doesn't really matter. The result is that the launch plans in terms of the market programmatic marketplace got delayed with that partner. And we don't know exactly when, you know, we can resume these conversations even though they're reaching out to us now. But I'll touch on what how we have reacted in a few slides. So at that point then, Nick, I will hand over to you to just go take us through, please, a few, yes, numbers in terms of revenue, but also talk a lot about the cash and the cost management. Sure. Thanks, Stefan. So just recapping the numbers, which are already in the interims. The first half revenue was down on the previous period, which, as we've noted, was disappointing.

12:54 The operating costs fell substantially. That was a result of the exercise we went through at in May and June of last year. So you can see how that's already flowed through to the P and L in this period. There's more to come, which I'll get into some detail later on in the presentation. But we've raised the the money from the placing, 6,800,000, which has added to the balance sheet, of course. So we closed the period with net cash of 8,300,000. Just talking about those cost savings, there's a pro form a coming later on to show how those will affect the cash burn looking forward and also some additional cost savings, which we can implement. But we took out $250,000 administrative cost savings almost immediately after the placing. 450,000 net of property savings came through. That was from relinquishing the lease on the London office, which luckily came up for termination in June. So we let that go, and we're now almost entirely virtual and have a small service office, which net of all that saved us around £450,000.

13:55 That wasn't in these numbers. The the first half numbers, they come through in the the quarter the second half numbers. And, obviously, from now on, As as I say, we'll come on to that later on in detail. We also we have ambition at the time of placing that we thought we could save around £750,000 in total over time. It wasn't immediate. We managed to do 250,000 of that, and part of that is ongoing. Again, I'll I'll touch on that when it comes to the the pro form a cost savings. Looking forward in terms of revenue, we've put out our expectations. I appreciate it's a broad range that largely reflects, firstly, the normal second half or in the quarter four weighting that we expect plus the uncertainties that Stefan has talked about. So we recognize that's a broad range, but that's what we expect to see. EMEA, it's a smaller number than The US, but actually under underlying that is some quite substantial growth.

14:53 If you take out the effect of one Middle East customer, which we had in this time last year, but you didn't effectively renew, The underlying business is growing quite strongly. If you look at the German revenues, for example, they were up by about 30%, and we we see some quite serious engagement from our German partners, which is great, recognizing that's a small number looking forward, but that's that's really starting to contribute to the bottom line. So as I say, when we've talked through through some other more commercial issues, I'll just come back to the cost savings and analyze how that leaves us in terms of the the cash burn and the runway. So back to you, Stefan. Thank you, Nick.

15:33 Alright. So running into, you know, the challenges and and and, basically, you know, the the team, we we constantly it's actually you know, the strategic approach per se doesn't change, but we we are adjusting a few things. And as a reaction on the on the development at our partners, the SSP partner, we immediately, literally, in a matter of of an hour, we said, okay. We need to engage in a different axis, find another SSP and DSP partner, and just basically set up the launch of the programmatic marketplace differently. And that's what we've been working on since a couple of weeks.

16:22 There's there's meetings every week with these partners just one two days ago and basically working through, you know, the technicalities, etcetera. We have major advertiser who is helping us because they're interested in this launch to push this through. So so that's a very, very good thing. And I'm glad that that literally we're able to kind of, you know, pivot from what we had regarded as basically now the bedrock, of our endeavor in programmatic, or our foundation, core pillar, whatever you want to call it, into, you know, an alternative, which eventually then will become our new bedrock. So so that's number one. The other aspect that and and focus is actually a really strong term here in the sense of there are certain categories that and I will not disclose them, but there are certain industry categories and certain clients that are really, really and agencies that are really let's not say MIRRIAD fans because that sounds fluffy, but but that really are recurring buyers and are absolutely sort of determined to make see this happen and see this as a success.

17:37 And so what we're now doing in on on in multiple areas, I've I've I've mentioned that one of the agency groups really leaned in with a double digit million number into the upfronts, which unfortunately could not be converted. But that's just one example in terms of the direction of travel that we are on. And ultimately, you know, our game is now that we are transcending the phase of, you know, seeing agencies and clients and talking about campaigns and and basically asking them to to book a campaign for the next product release just as an example. But basically having more strategic conversations and talking about bigger budget allocations on an always on basis, etcetera.

18:24 And effectively, what we're doing is now to leverage the willingness of these companies in terms of the agencies and the advertisers to put pressure on the ad tech companies to basically accelerate the deployment of the programmatic capabilities so that we can create the marketplace and to put pressure on the media partners so that they open more inventory. So that is a a strategy. It's not really a shift, but we've put even more emphasis on this. We're further investing in sales support and co marketing, so that's proving to be actually really, really successful. Two days ago, we had a meeting with one of the majors to discuss how we can optimize sort of the support of the salespeople for when, you know, more and more content is opening. So that's all in the making.

19:15 In the for the short term, we're really emphasizing the holiday season, which, historically speaking, we have very good content to sell, so to say, and there's demand in the market. So that's a good thing. Plus on top of that, emphasizing the diverse media proposition where there's big relevance, and Maria Hernandez is on the road every day to basically promote the proposition and try to convert. Then something I'll touch on in two slides from here is a new deterministic measurement solution. And let me just expand on that again. As I said earlier, retail media and performance media, because they are in the so called lower funnels, so they're really sort of used to convert you know, interested people into buyers.

20:07 And so it's very, very important for us that we can demonstrate that we can actually so MIRIAD, the format, can actually generate sales. And having a as an answer to, you know, the market dynamic and the market phenomenon regarding performance media, having something in place where we can actually prove that we are driving sales in in a utterly impressive manner is really important for us. And you will be hopefully delighted to see the results or first results from this kind of measurement. And then Nick and the entire team, Philip and so forth, we're all on driving additional cost savings. So I just wanted to go on two tangents before we speak about the outlook.

20:54 One is programmatic. And just to give you an insight in terms of what we're doing here from left to right. And I will not touch on all these logos, etcetera. But on the left side, have literally the supply partners that we work with, which could be studios. It could be linear partners or digital partners. Those are basically the companies that own the content, and we need that content, to be cleared so that we have inventory that can be sold to the right hand side where you see the advertisers and and their agencies who are ultimately putting, you know, the investments on the table. In between, when you look at, you know, the programmatic space is the entire sort of group of ad tech companies that all and this is partly illustrative.

21:42 I mean, these names are obviously all real, but there are many, many more companies playing a role here. And we need to just just we need to connect the pipes between these companies and the buyers and the sellers. And there's, in a way and and I think in the last round of presentations, Philip explained that very good, our CTO, Philip Mattimo, in the sense of, you know, we have our proprietary fusion technology, which enables, you know, a seamless insertion of the ad format into a stream or digital play out in a way that it basically, for the human eye, it cannot be recognized that we have done this and, in a way, sort of manipulated the content to that extent by inserting something that wasn't there before. And to do that and to have a transaction in the market, we need to basically deal with two things. One being the delivery, and that's there's an ad server involvement.

22:38 There's a so called service side ad insertion platforms involvement. And then the play out, where ultimately there needs to be an adjustment of the play out of the ads that we produce, which is nothing specific. These companies do that anyway for the content when we are all watching a stream. It comes in different sort of short, few second packages, and the same needs to happen with the content, ads. And so that's something that we need to ultimately facilitate and and enact, if you will, and we need to get these partners to play a game with us. And then on the transactional side, this is the s s so called SSP, supply side platforms, and the DSPs, demand side platforms. And we need to connect those dots so that, ultimately, a company like Procter and Gamble can send their agencies to go into one of these platforms and place a buy of in content ads at a million for four weeks' time or whatever. And that's basically the transactional side, which has a lower degree of complexity complexity than the play out. And so I just wanted to put this up because

23:46 the process of ultimately working through on the basis of our technology's readiness just relies or we need to rely on these partners to play a game. And again, this is where all these different aspects at times don't help us if a CEO leaves and the strategy of the partner is in the air, or generally speaking, if there are layoffs, or if priorities shift to something else. Then talking about the measurement solution, which is really something absolutely fantastic, what we are now able to do. And this is an example for a retailer. And if you look at the visual, you know who it is. But basically, the difference to the past is that we especially on sales and let's just say, store visits and things like that, they don't happen on the so called self reported manner in a self reported manner, but they're so called deterministic.

24:43 The difference is that the self reported, that's companies like Kantar and others, basically they

24:51 form groups of people and ask them, have you visited this retailer? And they would say, yes. And have you bought something? They would say, yes. And how much did you spend?

24:58 Yeah, I spent $50 And there's a level of I mean, these panels are quite big, so it's accurate, but at the same time there's a level of inaccuracy. Much better is the approach of deterministic measurement where, ultimately, when it comes to especially the sales, it's actually the the transactional data in terms of credit card or debit card that is being used to say, yes. This user who has been exposed to the MIRIAD AD has actually spent money and to understand how much money. And so so what you're seeing here, and I have to focus on the on the bottom number, which is the plus $26, is actually really sort of the reason why we are here and why we are all dedicated and investing is that the the format that we have in our hands is way superior than anything else, as you can see. And this is the benchmark is against TV spots. So as you can read, people who have been exposed to a TV spot only have increased average spend by $7 versus those who have been exposed to TV and MIRIAD have spent incremental $26 I don't need to emphasize how staggering this number is. And you will imagine that that now becomes sort of a core part of our narrative as we move forward and also a core part of our propositions because the measurement part now is being

26:29 integrated in all our client responses or RFPs, so called request for proposal responses, when we are working on campaign proposals. So just to close, before we come to the Q and A outlook, what we expect to happen. So we expect to happen in the next couple of months. And I know that we've said we've put timings in place, and they were really based on ultimately discussions and very clear and expectations that were discussed. But unfortunately, all these delays delayed happened. We are now working with multiple partners, supported by two, prominent partners already. I think we'll get even more on board just to put pressure on these ad tech companies to finally move the way we need them to move.

27:20 So that's number one. We are leveraging more and more large media investments. And at the moment, hopefully, it will turn out. We just have a big package for sorry. About to say the number. Big package of Christmas inventory in the market. And and, ultimately, you know, these conversations are now building up. We're targeting, you know, big advertisers, as I said earlier, and the major agencies just to level up the conversations and discussions and taking sort of the bigger numbers into our engagements with the partners and new partners as well. We are discussing two tier one content partnerships. In two weeks' time, we have actually the second follow-up conversations with really super major, which is fantastic.

28:11 Reached out to us. So that's good. And that includes one ad tech major. And, you know, unfortunately, we are not in the position that we can force people's hands and dictate timing. So this is really a very tough sales job on our end, but I think we're making good progress. And I'm confident that we'll get to some closing there. And then as mentioned earlier, we're looking into further cost efficiencies just to secure our runway as we progress and to make sure that we're driving the company to the success that we all expect it to have. At that point then, Nick, I'll hand over back to you because you will talk a little bit about the the cost and what we're doing there. Sure. Thanks, Stefan. So as as I mentioned, let's just unpick some of the evolution of the cost base over the last couple of years. So that this sets out the 2023 split into the first and second halves plus the the halfway now reporting. And you can see that the total overheads have come down hugely already. So we're looking at the first half of twenty three, which is when we implemented the significant cost savings, was around 7,500,000 total overheads, which went down to around five in the in the second half.

29:28 This half, we rose slightly reflecting one or two additional hires and the usual sort of inflationary increases in salaries, things like that. But if you look at the last twelve months, just as a pro form basis for a pro form a, you can see that the cash burn fell from around 1.3 1,200,000, round numbers, to just over 800,000. Now looking forward, some of the cost savings we talked about in in the placing, which haven't well, none of them took place in the first half. So I put them there in the in the first column, the realized cost savings, which in note, the raw data, the soft numbers, which is 250,000, the overheads, the property I've already talked about, and some other administrative cost savings, which was the other 250,000. And then we have some plans which we are seeking to implement very shortly in terms of cutting, unfortunately, more staff, which we which we have

30:21 to do. And just to answer one of the questions in the q and a, this is all aimed at avoiding having to come back and raise further further further funds. We want to cut the cost base down as far as possible such that we can see a path through to cash flow breakeven and and take the business from there. So those cost savings, I've put in around million pounds. That's part of that. A small part of that, it was part of the £750,000 we announced at the placing, but a large chunk of it is potential new cost savings, which we will be implementing. So if you take that into account and it could be larger, but that that's our our starting figure, which is a reasonable assumption at the moment. If you take those cost savings, that reduces the pro form a costs to around £8,300,000 per annum, which translates into a cost base of just under £700,000.

31:13 So that's a significant reduction from where we were in the first half of twenty three, which was around 1.3. So significant reduction on that. That's where we're going with this. And as I say, that picks up our our concerns about cash. Just to ask some more technical points, someone asked a question about the the going concern statement in the interims. Just to be clear, the specific going concern statement relates to twelve months from the dates of the interims as in the reporting date, not the announcement date, being the the June 30. So that's the specific going concern statement. Clearly, we look beyond that in terms of just being comfortable as a board that we have sufficient liquidity, and we are doing all we can, cost savings included, to achieve that. Although, of course, it does depend on the revenue coming through for which we have the the Stefan has talked you through how we see that evolving over the next six to twelve months. Just on one or two other matters, we have, in the past, incurred some quite sub substantial trade debtor balances, particularly with US media companies. They're notorious for it. We are now in serious conversations with with financers who can address those and effectively do invoice discounting of those debts. So in terms of vast liquidity, we are addressing that.

32:31 And we will, of course, continue to monitor this very closely as we go forward. Small technical point, which I'll also address now in the q and a. Sorry, Nick. Sorry. I have to interrupt you because you might be scaring everybody. So we're talking about a phenomenon that is very US and very US because the payment terms are times long. They still send checks via the post. True story. They put it into the post box, and then it gets sent. And and let's pray that the letter arrives with the check. And the companies that are partly paying late are not mom and pop shops. Okay? These are the biggest agencies who are paying once they get the money from, you know, from the major advertiser. And the major advertiser are multibillion companies with a credit score that is probably five star. I just wanna make sure, Nick, that you're not sort of putting something out there. It's just a matter of cash flow management that we are Exactly. Solving, and there's no issue in terms of ultimately getting the money through the door. Okay? It's just Absolutely correct. And and thanks for pointing that out.

33:38 No. Absolutely. These are not bad debts we're talking about. It is just a cash flow management liquidity delay, and that's why the there are plenty of people out there who are very keen to enable us to get through that because on the other side of the debt, they see these people who are huge agencies, which are not not gonna pay the the amounts. They just take a long time to do it, and and the the terms are ninety days plus. So that's that. I was just briefly gonna reference one small question that someone had about a share consolidation. You know, clearly, where the shares are trading at at at the moment, that would be potentially attractive. It's something on on our agenda. It's not top of the agenda. It's it would help, but we've got some other things to work through before we look seriously at that. But, yes, that's a good point, and we will address that in due course.

34:28 All right. Okay. Thanks, Nick. And before we go to q and a, just just, you know, one one remark for me. I mean, at the end of the day, and and we we have been going through some some challenging periods, and you have been going through with with us. And it is it is not good. It is frustrating.

34:51 I think we acknowledge this. Be assured that we are fighting, like, in an incredible manner to get this job done. Be assured about that. We have been going through, you know, cost cuttings. It has impacted staff, etcetera, etcetera, but we have maintained a very strong and very combative staff morale. And again, everybody in the company believes that this format will come and it will come at scale, And we are the ones who are leading in this market. Let's not forget that. And we are getting this job done, period. And and, you know, more more challenges will come, and we will always stand up and and fight. It it at times, I say, it's like being Mohammed Ali, the SSP CEO stuff happens. Okay. Let's stand up and find the alternative on how to get the job done. That's the that's the attitude.

35:46 That's the belief at MIRRIAD, and we will be getting this job done. I just wanted to emphasize that point. And, again, just looking at the half full glass, even if, you know, you could there are many arguments to say, no. It's actually half empty. We are leading this market. We are in in the tops in terms of working with these major companies. We are talking with the major ad ad tech companies and not talking in terms of blah blah, how are you. We are working through how to make this work. We have the largest advertisers in The United States Of America who are backing us not because they've signed a check, but they are saying we're supporting you. Do you need us in a call, in a meeting? We're joining to put pressure on these on these people. And so this is a situation that we have built over the last couple of years, and it has taken a tremendous long time.

36:38 And it has been very, very tiring at times, but not tiring enough to us to fall apart. And contrary, we're there and and just pushing through our agenda and our vision. So I just wanted to reemphasize, you know, the view that we have because the achievement, even if it's it's not yet reflected in the numbers, is very, very substantial. I mean, just think of it, you know, these major companies working with a small company from The UK for the purpose of a new ad format, and they will be clearing the content. So which takes me to some of the q and a here. And I don't know, Nick, if you have any left. But if you have, take them and then I'll take mine. Stefan, let me just jump in, just give you guys a couple of seconds to review those questions and but thank you firstly for your presentation this afternoon. Ladies and gentlemen, please continue to submit your questions just using the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of screen, which is why Stephane and Nick take a few moments to review those questions. I just like to remind you that recording this presentation a and copy of the slides will be available to you post today's meeting. Stefan, Nick, there have been a number of questions. If I may hand back to you, Nick, maybe just to moderate us through those questions, and then I'll pick up from you at the end.

37:55 I think I've, answered all of the the cash ones in financial ones in in passing, so I'll hand back to Stefan. Thank you. Okay. So there's one question which is very interesting in terms of well, I'm combining a few questions. In terms of pivoting oh, not pivoting. That's not the question. But how about other sort of content territories such as music, such as influencer, and and sports? So let me start with sports. Sports, we have tested sports. There's a capability that we've we've built in the past. Sports is a very tricky beast in the sense of for in content advertising because in sports, every let's just take a league or a a, you know, a platform that airs sports content.

38:47 But especially the leagues have and the teams have contracts with advertisers. So in other words, you know, if you take the Champions League as an example, I don't know who the current sponsors are. It doesn't really matter for the discussion. But these sponsors are, you know, basically the ones for the Champions League, and there's no way that, you know, virtual card placement or there could be a a sort of a super imposing of of, you know, different advertisers into that space. So effectively, the business opportunity is quite limited in the sense of, yeah, okay, we could offer, I'm making up a name now, Ford, an an additional exposure in in, you know, these champion league Champions League, matches, which is not really, you know, sort of a a super compelling thing. Secondly, sports, that would require to build us to build a huge unit because dealing, you know, with the NFL, the NBA, and all these major players requires, again, a a pretty long sales process and and a massive sort of massive troops to get that done. So so that is really a different beast and which at the moment we're not touching, period.

40:08 Secondly, talking about music video influencer content and eventually UGC. So we are doing music video, not at at a massive scale yet, but we are in that field, especially in the territory of of diverse or, you know, hip hop and other music genres. And it's a very how can I say? It's a very good vehicle to get the interest of advertisers, and we do sales there too. So that's an area that I can see we will be eventually expanding on once we've done the job with the major entertainment companies. Then when it comes to influencer content and UGC, which I always regard sort of as a little bit fluent, there has been an issue coming up now quite recently, which has to do with with the rights in the sense of when an entertainment company let's just pick an example, Paramount Films on location something, they have the permission from, you know, the local county, etcetera, etcetera, to actually film there. People who own the buildings, they have given their permissions, etcetera, which is not necessarily the case in the influencer and and user generated space. And that creates a massive liability problem for the advertiser because in the worst case, advertiser x who has been running these influencer

41:38 campaigns and we, you know, manipulate something and we put a billboard on a building or but it doesn't even have to be us. It could be the influencer herself or himself, you know, promoting something actively in the hand of stuff. And the advertiser gets sued by the owner of the building because there's not been a permission to actually film it. And that is something where literally we know from one of our biggest advertiser clients that they have sort of put in place massive, massive sort of control rules and literally exiting the area of influencer because the liability risk is just much too high. I'm not excluding that at some point, if the parameters are set well, we will be entering the influencer space in contrary. But, again, it's not as easy as just flipping it around.

42:33 And and also, just from a, how can I say, business build standpoint, we are just very focused at the moment on getting the job done with these major entertainment companies? Let me just scroll through the questions here. Any big issues in terms of rights post production regarding to the upfronts? So yeah, I mean, that's what I alluded to. Sorry, the question is really around the content clearance and to which extent this is an issue in the upfront. I think what happens now is just we've gone through this phase. The suppliers or our media partners know that there are many big, big dollars that can be achieved. We're working with them to help them also get the clearance internally.

43:27 So I'm feeling quite good that this not good experience is now turning into the opposite, where there's a path to getting the clearance for the future, which then ultimately will allow for the conversion of the of the big budgets into, you know, into revenue for us and the partners. Just scrolling through. I think that's it. Perfect, Stefan. Thank you very much indeed. And of course, we can make any further questions available post today's meeting should you wish to add any responses. Stefan, Nick, thank you very much indeed for your time. Thank you for updating investors. I know that investor feedback will be important to you. I'll shortly redirect those on the call to give you their thoughts and expectations. But Stefan, before doing so, may I just ask you for a few closing comments? Yes. Thank you, and thank you all for having taken the time this morning.

44:22 I think my closing comments I've made five minutes ago. This is we are talking about a multibillion opportunity. You all know this. Working through the industry to get this thing done is not an easy job. And there are dependencies that we cannot control. I dare to say that we're doing very well. All the things that we can control, we've done. And these dependencies where we just again, we cannot dictate a signature. We cannot dictate the timing of a meeting. All we can do is to push for it, to convince people, etcetera, etcetera. I've put up this slide that shows the complexity. And I think if we consider all that despite the fact that the numbers are not there yet and we look at the progress we're making and looking at the imminent flip, I think we have done, despite a lot of comments, we've done a good job.

45:22 And the the team, as I said earlier, is just utterly determined to make this happen. Everybody in the company is an absolute believer that this is the format of the future. There can be no doubt. I'm not saying that traditional advertising is dead, but the new format and you've seen the research. It just proves how extremely powerful it is. And actually, you wonder, why isn't every advertiser spending millions in there to drive more sales? And that's a fair question. That's a question I'm asking myself every night when I don't sleep. But the truth is that it just takes time to change an industry that has been operating in a certain way since the last fifty, sixty years when it comes to television advertising and in the last fifteen years in app tech. And these are just things that are very these are tankers that are very, very tough to move. And we're doing the best we can to get the job done.

46:21 That's great. Thank you again. Thank you, Stefan, Nick, for updating investors. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as we will now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the company can better understand your views and expectations? This may take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team at MIRRIAD ADVERTISING PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and please enjoy the rest of your day.