CuriousityStream: CURI
I recently stumbled across CuriosityStream. As I dug into it, I found a lot to like.
What it does: CuriosityStream is a “factual” video streaming service (think documentaries and college lectures).
Market Cap: Still tiny. About 750 million.
Annual revenue growth looks great:
2018: 9 million
2019: 18 million (93% growth)
2020: 39.6 million (120%)
2021 Estimate: 71 million (80%)
2022 Estimate: 123 million (74%)
Quarterly growth, however, is pretty ugly. The last four quarters look like this:
Q2 2020: 12 million
Q3 2020: 8.7 million
Q4 2020: 11.3 million
Q1 2021: 9.9 million
Ugh. I really don’t like that quarterly revenue. There is no strong trend, but what trend there is, is down. However, reading through the earnings transcripts helped a bit. The CEO said that the small size of their business and the way they structure deals will lead to a “lumpy quarter-to-quarter cadence. So, you’re going to have sequential potentially down quarters and some that can have big swings.”
Because of this lumpiness, the CEO and CFO focused on annual - not quarterly - guidance. And on annual guidance, they were very confident. Excerpts from the last two earnings calls:
CEO: “we’ll definitely hit our full year numbers of $71 million.”
CEO: “So, we’re focused on hitting our year-end target. And we’re obviously supremely confident in that.”
CEO: “We have good visibility on our revenue and over 80% of our 2021 revenue goal is committed at this point.” (March 23)
CFO: “We continue to expect a robust second half and now have 90% of our full-year revenue goals of $71 million committed, up from 80% at the end of last year.” (May 11)
CEO: “we’re expecting the next three quarters obviously be bigger than the one we just had, because we have to hit that 71. So they will be much bigger in order to hit that 71 for the full-year.” (May 11)
I’m going to keep an eye on this one.