Speaker 2 0:02

Welcome to this week's edition of the Dan Rayburn Podcast, the show that curates the streaming media industry news that matters most, unvarnished, unscripted and providing you with the factual data you need to know, without any of the hype, the pulse of the streaming media industry.

Speaker 3 0:24

Welcome to the Dan Rayburn Podcast. I'm Dan Rayburn rayburn, back with mark donnegan, co-host, a little bit of a break. Some, uh, some travels there. Mark, I am back. I was offline pretty much all last week so I'm only just now catching up on all the news, and there's quite a bit a lot earnings acquisitions.

Speaker 3 0:45

There's some companies that raise some money here, including netflix it's looking to. So let's jump right in first with content news. Let's just call it mostly tied to sports. But content news first is venue sports announced their monthly price of 42.99 for the service. We have no dates or ETA and when it's going to launch. They are going to offer a seven-day free trial upon launch. They also said users who sign up for the launch price will receive the service for that same period, for 12 months from the time of sign-up. You can cancel at any time. But notice, they said launch launch price. So yeah, launch price. So is it going up to?

Speaker 1 1:31

49.99, 54.99. What's it gonna be, yeah?

Speaker 3 1:36

it'll be interesting to watch, especially being that we've seen price raises from disney today, which we're going to talk about. So that's that's the latest we have in venue, nothing else there. Nba deal that's well. We'll see what happens with the NBA deal with WBD, but one interesting point I wanted to bring up here. Mark is, espn's chief, did an interview the other day and I thought it was very interesting that he confirmed that the new deal with Disney and the NBA includes expanded rights so it can simulcast games on multiple platforms and offer alternate broadcasts. Previous NBA licensing deals didn't allow that, so I thought that was very interesting because he specifically called out it'll allow them to do alternate broadcasts, similar to what the NFL does with Manningcast. So it'll be interesting to see whatney does there in terms of taking advantage of that next piece of content news. Uh, the los angeles federal judge did overturn the 4.7 billion antitrust verdict against the nfl, so he ruled that a misguided jury followed improper methodologies and terminating the huge reward.

Speaker 1 2:46

Misguided jury? I don't, I guess obviously that's a thing, but I didn't know. That's a thing. Yeah, it's a legal thing, sure?

Speaker 3 2:55

So what happens next? I have no idea. Yeah, waiting to hear back, just in terms of who's doing what I don't know. So that's just the latest there. Yeah, diamond Sports reached a deal to see its its rsn's return to comcast customers. That came back about five days ago, on august 1st. So this is good for diamond sport because it paves a way for them to present a reorganization plan and potentially exit their bankruptcy protection. Also, while this was announced in the release, the deal allows comcast to offer diamond sports networks on tiers outside of the broader cable package. So what are they going to do with that? To be seen, another potential uh bundling.

Speaker 3 3:41

Let's see what happens there yeah next piece of content news warner bros discovery is closing down boomerang, that's. That news is about a week old. People haven't heard of that already. But they're going to close it down. They're going to migrate all the subscribers to max. This will be on september 30th. Uh, the website, the app, will stop working after seven years. All the content portfolio moved to max.

Speaker 3 4:08

Let's go into Netflix. So Netflix is seeking to raise 1.8 billion in a new debt offering. They say they're going to use the cash to refinance existing debt that is coming due in the next year and also for quote general corporate purposes. Netflix had already, months ago, said that they were going to refinance a $1.8 billion in debt maturity, separate from their new debt offering. So break down your mark in the numbers. This is important for listeners to know these. The new offering includes $1 billion at 4.9%, which would come due in 2034, and $800 million at 5.4%, which would come due in 2034. And $800 million at 5.4%, which would come due in 2054. Netflix last raised their cash via debt offering in Q2 of 2020. And they currently have about $14 billion in debt outstanding. So why is this important for listeners? Well, this is important because of the rate that Netflix is paying 4.9% and 5. Well, hold on 4.9% and 5.4%. Now put this in perspective In April 2024, amc Networks 24 AMC networks completed a cash tender offer to purchase 4.7% senior due notes.

Speaker 3 5:31

Now they issued 875 million in new senior notes due in 2029 instead of 2025. So what are they doing? They're pushing out debt five years, but their principal rate is 10.25%. Yeah, fubo, when they exchanged some of their convertible notes, the old notes were at a 3.25% interest rate. Yeah, the new notes are at 7.5% of paid in cash. 10% of paid in kind.

Speaker 1 6:04

Yeah, they more than doubled and then potentially more than doubled.

Speaker 3 6:10

So you have to look at what it's costing to raise money here.

Speaker 3 6:14

Very important Charter Communications in May of 2024. Let's see, they did a $3 billion in aggregate principal amount of notes and the price point on that, well, I should say the interest rate on that interest rate is 6.55 percent. Lionsgate, they did some as well. They were at six percent. Uh, you've got rogers communications 5.7, 5.8, 5.9, senior notes. So if you look at the numbers here in terms of what Netflix is doing 4.9%, 5.4% it's in line with what others are seeing, lower than some others like AMC Networks. But also Netflix is rated A in terms of the offerings, so it's not hard for them to get money. But just give listeners an idea because if listeners don't know, four years ago that was 1.5%.

Speaker 1 7:15

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 7:17

So interesting to see.

Speaker 1 7:20

Yeah, it shows the strength of Netflix to be able to get in quotes these interest rates, meaning that these are very competitive. They are, even though 5% Wow.

Speaker 3 7:36

Yeah, and also think 2034, so you've got 10 years to pay off the debt.

Speaker 1 7:42

Yeah, 10 years and then 2054, 30 years. It's a 30-year mortgage.

Speaker 3 7:48

Right, that's the way to look at it, yeah.

Speaker 1 7:51

Right, they're buying an $800 million house.

Speaker 3 7:53

Which you can pay off. Earlier I've heard some mortgages you actually can't. There's actually penalty if you pay it early. I don't know what the case here.

Speaker 1 8:00

Unlike a home mortgage where generally you can pay it off early so interesting numbers, something to keep an eye on.

Speaker 3 8:08

I'm going to be doing a postmark on just all of these finance numbers and percentages on the next few days. Let's jump into peacock here for nbc olympics. So they've put out six or seven press releases on viewership for streaming on Peacock and NBCU digital platforms combined. Combined, not individual, just a Peacock only. So thanks to NBCU for clarifying for me that even though their press releases just say million viewers is average minute audience, it's not simultaneous. So NBCU nicely replied very quickly, gave me the methodology. So it's AMA. So we've got 2.5 million AMA and the peak here is 6 million on July 28th. So they're averaging between four and 5 million AMA each day starting from the 26th. So not numbers that, I think, really surprise anybody. I know some people thought the Olympics, you know it's just going to be the size of the Super Bowl or whatnot. It's not Traditionally, isn't? You're going to see more viewership for on-demand, of course, but that's the numbers up to August 3rd. We're recording this.

Speaker 3 9:30

On August 6th let's go into some Comcast news, obviously tied to Peacock, because they did do earnings Mark while I was away, so some may already know this. For those that don't know, peacock lost 500,000 subscribers. They ended the quarter with 33 million subs. Revenue was just over a billion dollars and up 28%. The big key takeaway here is Peacock lost $348 million in the quarter, so still losing a lot of money. Now that's down from 651 million same year over year, but it's you know, it's almost 350 million dollars they lost in a quarter yeah, yeah uh.

Speaker 3 10:11

Comcast lost 120 000 high-speed internet users biggest quarterly loss of brand broadband subscribers ever and on the pay tv side they lost 419000 subs to end the quarter with 13.1 million subs for residential TV.

Speaker 1 10:30

I wonder what the contributor to the high-speed internet sub loss is or was I didn't read it.

Speaker 3 10:37

There was some additional things there tied to I think also some of that was the low-income broadband. How some of that is government subsidies. Oh, that's right.

Speaker 3 10:49

I think that was a little part of it as well, because I did see a mention of that. But yeah, that's a lot of high speed internet losses for them On the Peacock side losing 500,000 subs we don't know, but one would think that some of those have turned off after the nfl wildcard game. So for everyone in the industry talking or not everyone a lot of analysts talking about just oh, peacocks push so many subs potentially did with the nfl wildcard game. But if you don't keep them, a lifetime value is more important than just what I get for a quarter or two exactly so now we have, we have to think about this all over again, mark, because we had an NFL wildcard game.

Speaker 3 11:29

Well, now you have Peacock. So how many more subs do I mean sorry Olympics? How many more subs do they get for Olympics? And then do you keep them?

Speaker 1 11:36

Yeah.

Speaker 3 11:36

Don't know. Also, it'll be interesting to see next quarter for Peacock and Comcast DTC revenue because the price increase hits in this quarter, q3. So how does that impact their, their profit and their loss? For Peacock, that'll be interesting to watch. Let's jump into charter real quick. They lost 408,000 pay TV subs, saying that the quarter with 12.7 million residential.

Speaker 1 12:07

Interesting Pretty close to Pretty close.

Speaker 3 12:10

Yeah, residential video revenue was down 7.7% year over year. I think it's very funny. They talked about the Disney bundle this Disney bundle they have, and they of course, claimed it was like you know, oh, it's going really great, but we're going to decline to give any penetration or usage numbers.

Speaker 1 12:31

Yeah.

Speaker 3 12:33

The usual.

Speaker 1 12:34

The usual.

Speaker 3 12:35

Let's jump into, but it's great, but it's great, we're very optimistic.

Speaker 1 12:39

It's wonderful yeah.

Speaker 3 12:41

Let's go into Fubo. They had earnings this morning, total revenue of $391 million with a net loss of $25.8 million. So, not surprisingly, they're still losing money. The good news here is their loss in Q1 of this year was $56.6 million, so they cut their loss in less than half quarter to quarter. Yeah, net loss, so that is good news. They lost 61,000 subscribers in North America from Q1 to end Q2 with 1.45 million subs. That's not too surprising. It's sort of hit or miss in Q2 with them and some others just because of the lack of some sports. So not surprising. And what they call ROW rest of the world. They added 2,000 subs, so almost flat to end with 399,000. Mark, let's do ARPU, which you and I love.

Speaker 1 13:36

That's right.

Speaker 3 13:38

ARPU, ARPU, where are you here?

Speaker 1 13:41

It was up.

Speaker 3 13:42

It was up 2% in the rest of the world.

Speaker 1 13:50

No, sorry, that was total revenue. North american arpu. Uh was up what uh five percent five percent if I'm reading this right yeah, there you go 85, 85 dollars yeah, I can't find it in here yeah.

Speaker 3 14:03

So that's certainly good $85.69. The rest of the world was up 2% at $7.02. Yeah, now they ended the quarter with $161.3 million in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash on hand. The other thing we're talking about debt and interest rates. They have no maturing debt 2024 2025. So their next maturing debt is 144.8 million in 2026 and 177.5 million in 2029. Yeah, some other numbers they gave out. They are increasing their full year 2024 guidance from north America. In terms of total subs, they're projecting 1.72 million to 1.74 million, so that represents a 7% year-over-year growth at the midpoint and 1.57, 1.59 billion total revenue, which represent 18% year-over-year growth at the midpoint as well.

Speaker 3 15:05

Last piece on Fubo. Well, two of them here. They launched their free tier in May. They talked a little bit more about it today in the earnings call. It's available only to previous subs who have paused or canceled their subscription and those on a free trial that haven't converted to paid users, and their aim is simple is to get consumers that have turned off the service to keep engaging in some way and obviously then also get some revenue on the ad side. Yeah, and they want to entice them to just re-subscribe to the service. For instance, maybe now when Q3 hits and you have NFL Interesting approach. I think it's very smart.

Speaker 3 15:44

Yeah, it actually is but what's the conversion rate? Don't know. Yeah, and they only started offering it in may.

Speaker 3 15:53

You're not going to know in three months sure so it'll take some time to to really know on the lawsuit with warner Sorry, no, what was it? Dinner, disney, wbd and Fox regarding venue sports, they did talk about that in the earnings call, but there's nothing to cover there legally yet. There's no additional legal information. Let's go to Fox real quick. Mark Fox didn't break out anything on 2B in their earnings Worthwhile nothing, revenue, profit, nothing of that. All they said was 2B's viewing time in the fiscal year grew 57%. Don't know what that means, but their CEO, then Fox's CEO, then said with Total Minutes quote, easily surpassing 2B the growth of leading on-demand subscription services. So are you comparing that to Netflix Prime Video? I don't know, but here's the thing Even if you are, you can't compare a free service a.

Speaker 3 16:57

Tubi to an SVOD service. That just doesn't make sense to me.

Speaker 3 17:02

So, I don't think that's a great comparison. Also, costs rose at the company due to investments in Tubi. They called that out. They did give an update on MAU number. I don't remember what it was. Frankly, I don't care on MAU, but there was no base number to work off of anything. It gives us an insight into the business. Let's go into Vimeo. They had earnings yesterday, revenue of $104 million, up 2% year over year, but it's down from $111 million in the same quarter in 2022. Q3 revenue guidance will be below Q2. They said of $100 million or below. They did raise the high end of their full year guidance by $5 million to $405 million for the year with an operating loss of $1 million. So they hit $405, operating loss of $1 million. From a balance sheet standpoint, from a cash flow standpoint, they're in good shape.

Speaker 1 18:02

Yeah, I mean $311 million cash on hand, cash equivalents.

Speaker 3 18:10

So they got cash. Now the question is how do you really grow your business?

Speaker 1 18:15

Yeah, and you and I have talked about that pretty consistently. Is that that's the issue with Vimeo? I don't think either of us. Well, definitely, the evidence is in. I don't think either of us. Well, definitely, the evidence is in. You know, it's not that they're just suddenly going to fall off a cliff in terms of number of users or their revenue. You know customers, but where do they go from here? How do they build this With that type of money?

Speaker 3 18:43

though, you could make some interesting acquisitions that could really be transformative to your company, because, $300 million in cash is great, but you have to decide still who you want to be. They're still talking about OTT, which they want to grow again, and so there's still a lot of work to do there, but at least from a balance sheet standpoint they're in good shape they did lower their headcount by 6% in the quarter standpoint they're in good shape.

Speaker 3 19:09

They did lower their head count by six percent in the quarter. Yeah, so they've also just cut, if we think about all the head count over the last two years they have cut a lot 10, 20, 26, uh there was yeah, what's the?

Speaker 3 19:20

percentage. It's over 30 percent. Wow, from when they made the first official announcement Because, for instance, they didn't make an announcement in Q1. But if you look at the regulatory filing today, it said I think in Q1, it was somewhere around 3%. So 3% is not that big, but it all adds up 3%, 6%. They did two what 10% rounds? So that's 30% right there over a period of time. So that's part of the reason, naturally, that their balance sheet is doing better yeah that's not surprising.

Speaker 3 19:57

Um, they ended the quarter with just over a thousand employees 1054. So that's vimeo, nothing, nothing really else to cover there. Let's go to Harmonic. Real quickly. Harmonic had revenue of $138.7 million in the quarter, so up 14% from Q1. Gap net loss of $12.5 million. Broadband revenue was down a little bit. Video segment revenue was down $13 million year over year. Even with that, though, the company kept previous full-year total company guidance of $645 to $695 million, so stock was doing well.

Speaker 3 20:41

After earnings Not checked in the last couple days the earnings were last week, not checked in the last couple days. Their earnings were last week. Mark, why don't you look up Harmonic in the last week? While I go into Alphabet here, alphabet Q2 earnings the only thing really to cover here is Alphabet has a time dust, as their Google Cloud revenue is $10.35 billion, so that's up 29% year over year, and it topped the $1 billion mark for operating profit for the first time. Youtube advertising revenue is 8.66 billion, which is up 13% year over year, but they did fall short of wall street analyst expectations.

Speaker 3 21:21

Talking about AI for a minute alphabet spent 2.2 billion building AI models across its deep mind and Google research organizations, which is up from 1.1 billion in Q2 of 2023. Then a final piece here, interesting for people to know this right, we're talking AI, ai, ai all day long. Something's got to support all this stuff. The company spent 8% more on CapEx than Wall Street was estimating because of their investment in AI. Ai is not cheap to deploy, so Wall Street was asking some good questions on the earnings call about their CapEx spend Like hey, scaling AI. How expensive is that going to be in the future? Interesting to ask.

Speaker 1 22:08

Yeah, what do you got on? Harmonic? Yeah, so Harmonic. In the last three months, so going back 90 days from today's date, August 6th, they're up 21%. Their current market cap is 1.545. A touch over 1.5 billion. That's their market cap, and year to date they're up slightly 1.8%.

Speaker 3 22:38

So Okay, so still seeing positive after the earnings.

Speaker 1 22:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in the last year total growth is 20%, almost bang on 20%, 20.07. So you know, going back 365 days. So you know, look, I mean Harmonic is performing on some level. I guess you know that's relative right for our market anyway.

Speaker 3 23:06

Well, it's all about the video segment revenue. People want to know how that'll, how that'll stabilize and move to the cloud over time. So definitely one to watch. Uh, let's go into the news today, mark disney. So pricing of disney plus, hulu and max bundles are out right. So this was this was announced a week ago. So Disney plus Hulu and max, which you can purchase through any three of the platforms, is 1699 a month with ads and 2990 a month without ads. So you're saving 38% by buying the bundle than if you bought them separately. So we have that pricing now at least. Today, tuesday August 6th, disney announced that, beginning October 17th, monthly and annual plans for Disney Plus, hulu and ESPN Plus will all increase, as will Hulu Plus Live TV. So I made a list of all the pricing that's changing on LinkedIn, mark, and one thing I realized was Disney has too many bundles.

Speaker 1 24:15

They have a lot.

Speaker 3 24:16

I didn't realize until I started looking at all the pricing changes. Disney has 10 bundles just by themselves with their own content, not including the Disney Hulu max, and then not including the bundles they're in by other companies like Verizon and whatnot. So you're over 15 different bundles. This is too complicated and I know we love options as consumers, but simplicity is what sells.

Speaker 1 24:46

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 24:47

So just looking at this list, it's like wow. So for listeners that are wondering the vast majority of the plans, well let's just put it this way um, most of the plans are going up by two dollars. Um, espn plus is going up by one dollar. Hulu plus live tv is going up by $1. Hulu Plus Live TV is going up by $6.

Speaker 1 25:10

Yeah, $6.

Speaker 3 25:11

So it's now $83 to get Hulu Plus Live TV with ads in SVOD $83. Yeah, this is getting expensive. They're going to see some losses on the live TV side.

Speaker 1 25:26

And remember the cable bundle. Was it settled right around a hundred dollars a household? You know that was the the kind of you know everybody was right around there yeah, I think that was without hardware, though uh, correct, correct, mine's about mine's about 90 bucks, and then everything included rsns Well but yours has come down. I mean, that's come down a touch from the. You know, let's call it 12, 15 years ago, 12, 15 years ago.

Speaker 2 25:57

Oh jeez, I can't remember it was $100.

Speaker 1 25:59

I don't know what it was back then it was $100 was the average monthly ARPU.

Speaker 3 26:06

Well, also, I'm on a triple play bundle. That also impacts it.

Speaker 1 26:11

But, but it's come down because because then there wasn't triple play, that was just video, that was. And there were, there were some companies where the equipment, like maybe the first set top box was included, but then everybody had two or three in their house.

Speaker 1 26:26

I mean so? Yeah, so to your point. You know we were all paying much more than $100 a month. You know $120, $140, $150. Every once in a while I'd run into somebody. It's like my cable bill is $200, which at the time I thought was just absolutely insane. Like you know. That's as much as my car payment Like well back then.

Speaker 3 26:47

Yeah, I wish my car payment Like well back then, yeah, I wish my car payment was that low. Now I was going to say what kind of car are you driving? Mark, a bike, electric, what are you?

Speaker 1 26:54

doing. You know my 12-year-old, you know Japanese Akano car.

Speaker 3 27:00

Okay, could be. It could be yeah, and also remember you were talking back back then they used to charge more for DVR storage.

Speaker 1 27:08

Oh, dvr, I mean, everything was a, was a plus, plus, plus, and before you knew it, you were, you know.

Speaker 3 27:16

Yeah, so let's go into a couple other streaming things. You're tied to devices. Google announced a new $99 streaming device. They're calling the Google TV streamer. I like it, straightforward streamer. I like it, straightforward streamer, extreme tv like cool okay, uh sort of like apple tv. It's simple, it's pretty easy now this has an improved processor. It's double the memory. It's 32 gigs of storage as an ethernet port.

Speaker 3 27:42

Thank you, google yeah support for 4k dolby vision, dolby atmos. It's available today for pre-order and stores september 24th. Now here's some other things that have come out since then. Mark um that some people, other news outlets was reporting. So, um, oh, before that, it plugs in via hdmi, so it's not like a chromecast where you're just casting, so plugs in via hdmi. It's powered over usbc. I think that's the only via HDMI. It's powered over USB-C. I think that's the only device I can think of powered over USB-C, because even though you can power a Fire TV Sticker, roku, it's not recommended and there's issues when you do that. So this is the only one I know of powered over USB-C. Also supports AV1, of course it's Google. Uh, also supports av1. Of course it's google. Now android authority says it uses a chip from media tech which is the exact same chip in the 2021 amazon fire tv stick max.

Speaker 3 28:37

It's interesting because chromecast for anyone who used it. You want to do 4k? Yeah, you had problem yeah, absolutely you, just you did. There was no way around it yeah, yeah, that's right.

Speaker 3 28:49

So the fact that this is going to have more power, you know, let's, let's see what this actually does. Interesting at 99. Clearly they're not targeting, you know, our moms. As a general rule, however, listeners should really just go google the thing, because it has way more functionality. It's also just. It allows you to do everything in a smart home right from there, like it does a lot more than just stream content. So it's it's.

Speaker 1 29:17

It's different. Check it out. Yeah, I haven't.

Speaker 3 29:19

I haven't had a chance to study it, but I pre-ordered so I can get one that comes out. Get hands on with it. See what uh dolby has sued roku in uh california federal court, california, california federal court, and they're accusing roku breaking a licensing and infringing of its patents and copyrights, which is interesting. So what they're saying is dolby is saying in the lawsuit that roku has secretly distributed millions of copies of dolby's audio and imaging software without complying with the terms of the company's agreement. It's an odd one. We have no reply from Roku yet that I've seen anywhere. So that's all we've got as of now. So that's interesting.

Speaker 1 30:12

So you think about okay, what does Roku do? They only distribute software in their set-top boxes or their TVs.

Speaker 3 30:21

TVs because it's in their operating system Roku OS.

Speaker 1 30:26

That's probably where this because the Dolby licenses the Dolby IP, those royalties would be paid by the chip. They're paid by the SOC vendor. So unless the SOC vendor is cheating and not paying, which obviously Dolby would find out Right? So then it must be, it's their connected television stack.

Speaker 3 30:52

It's the software. Yeah, it's the audio and imaging software Interesting. So they have an agreement, clearly, but they're saying they're violating the terms of the agreement.

Speaker 1 30:59

Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they would have to.

Speaker 3 31:01

So it's an odd one when they're saying they're secretly. The term they used here was secretly, distributing Secretly. That's odd. I don't know how you secretly do that. But so that's going to be an interesting one to watch, unless they just come to an agreement and just like yeah, we'll solve this Probably. My prediction is that's what will happen these days, the way these companies want to go back and forth, I don't know.

Speaker 1 31:27

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 31:28

Let's go to another one, though. Amazon sued Nokia, so this is just out. Recently I think it was last week when we were away Amazon sued Nokia in Delaware federal court and says the company is infringing on a dozen Amazon patents related to cloud computing. Now here Nokia. Amazon is saying in the lawsuit that Nokia misused AWS technology related to cloud computing, infrastructure, security and performance to bolster its own cloud offerings. So not a lot of details there. I did not get to look at the suit. I thought it was interesting. Nokia, the only comment they've made publicly so far is quote we're reviewing these matters and we'll defend ourselves vigorously in court. Okay, well, what if you review them and realize you're wrong.

Speaker 3 32:26

Why don't you just say you're going to review them and we'll get back to you later? Yeah, pretty funny. So two things to keep on there in terms of just two different suits taking place. Two final pieces here. Mark Dolby has acquired Theo technologies. Terms of the deal were not discussed. I was not around last week or online. I've not been able to call around to sources and ask and hear. Hear what's going on with the deal.

Speaker 3 32:53

Theo was small. Where it's not like this is hundreds of millions of dollars. If it is, I'd be shocked. Hopefully a good valuation. The average valuation in the market today is around 3%. A 3%, three times Sales, providing your balance sheet is clean. I don't know what Theo's was. For those that don't know Theo, it's the easiest way to really explain it is they're a cross-platform playback and live streaming platform, so it's really more a player than anything else. They have a lot of interesting ultra-low latency tech you can play back on all devices. Smart TVs They've got a rich SDK NFL, nascar, bbc, peacock. I know these companies were all using them at one point or still are.

Speaker 3 33:38

I didn't look Smart team been around a long time.

Speaker 1 33:43

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 3 33:45

Very focused.

Speaker 1 33:47

When I saw the news, my first thought was absolutely makes sense. And it also sends at least in my mind and I haven't talked to anybody at Dolby you know, or Theo for that matter, so you know. No, just my own conjecture here, but this makes Dolby IO you know, one step closer to a, you know, to an end-to-end platform and solution. End-to-end platform and solution. The player is so critical today in these platforms. So having Theo, it's a good thing. I see the tie-in for sure and Theo's focused on low latency as well.

Speaker 3 34:25

Yes, and we tie it into Dolby Milcast, millicast, millicast yeah. Which is their ultra-low latency streaming.

Speaker 1 34:34

That's their WebRTC-based solution.

Speaker 3 34:36

Yeah, that's a big thing that they're pushing for engagement, as they're calling it. There's not a huge demand for that, but now if you're also getting the player side and SDK?

Speaker 1 34:46

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 34:48

I get it and the Theo folks are really smart. They understand the space. Small but smart focus which I like you know that's. That's something I think is important when you're doing acquisitions. They're based in Belgium. I believe they're headquartered in Belgium. Yeah, belgium.

Speaker 1 35:09

I think so.

Speaker 3 35:10

So we'll we'll see what Dolby is going to do more with that. I got to talk Dolby and the team so I might be able to provide some more information down the line, but I haven't talked to anybody yet in terms of just deal size. Also, dolby is public so, depending on what they paid, they might have to do regulatory filing. I would imagine they would not have to because I don't think it had a material impact on what they paid, but sometimes it doesn't and we get it anyway. When Amazon acquired Elemental Technologies they didn't have to release it, but they did what a year later in a regulatory filing and they saw it was just under 300 million. So we might get a number there. We'll keep an eye on that. And then finally, mark G-Corps. Luxembourg-based G-Core has raised $60 million in a Series A funding. I saw that number and I was like is?

Speaker 3 36:01

that a typo $60 million in Series A $60 million Damn.

Speaker 3 36:06

So if you don't know G-Core, these guys have been around a long time and they offer cloud network security solutions and they do CDN as well more of what I call regional cdn smaller smb customers and they plan to use the new funding to really invest in ai, deploy I servers, nvidia, gpus they're really talking about ai edge compute. That's really where they're pushing their business to. So when I saw that and I was like, okay, now, now I get why 60 million? Because that stuff's not cheap.

Speaker 1 36:36

Yeah.

Speaker 3 36:37

It's expensive.

Speaker 1 36:38

That's right.

Speaker 3 36:41

But good to see they were able to raise that money. I didn't see terms terms of just what they had to give away for that, so I do have to try and follow up on that one as well. So that's what we got, mark. Now today's Tuesday, august 6th. Now tomorrow, on the 7th, we've got earnings from Brightcove, disney, fastly, vizio, wbd, and on Thursday we've got earnings from Akamai, amc, kaltura, lionsgate and Paramount, and I think one other are missing there. So we've got 11, maybe 12 earnings in the next 48 hours. So what we'll do is we'll turn this podcast around pretty quickly, you know we'll. We'll record another one in three days, get through all the numbers from those additional learning come up and then we'll pretty much be caught up in terms of most of the news that has come out.

Speaker 3 37:27

I was hoping for just a quiet week of news while I was gone and, yeah, I didn't have access to internet during the day in the military base, so I'm like, okay, I can only check email at night. And then it's like, why is there so much news coming out? That's right, there's just something every week. So I'm still trying to catch up. You'll see a lot of posts on LinkedIn starting to hit for me with numbers. I've already gotten a couple up in the last 24 hours. There's more to come.

Speaker 3 37:56

Everything we're talking about today is already up on LinkedIn. I already pushed up a lot today, five or six posts already. So that's what we've got. We'll be back in just a couple days, depending on when you're listening to this, with a recap of all the rest of the earnings for the industry, and then we'll be back to a regular schedule in about another week. August looks good for Mark and I. We're going to be recording every Friday, like we normally do in August, trying to push the podcast up every Monday. Some people have been asking Mark like hey, can you publish same time? You know, every day, every week, I try and always push up on Monday yeah.

Speaker 3 38:34

But the issue is then, if we don't record same day but there's a holiday sometimes I also don't push on Monday when something breaks in the industry.

Speaker 1 38:45

Yeah.

Speaker 3 38:45

Like an acquisition Sunday night of Skydance All of a sudden Paramount, because then that's all sucking all the oxygen out of the room Monday. So I do try and, for listeners asking, I do try and push podcasts live on Monday, but it doesn't happen every week. Yeah, yeah, got it. Uh, any questions, please reach out to Mark and I appreciate everyone listening. Uh, we're still getting a lot of feedback just in terms of what you want to hear more about. Biggest thing I've been hearing Mark is just continue to give out numbers, continue to separate facts from opinions, which is really our goal. I also have a couple of podcasts coming up on the executive interview series. I've got some executives lined up. One of them this month is going to be talking about a podcast talking to investments what's being bought, what's it being bought at, how's it being valued, how do balance sheets look like, what is PE thinking? So that'll be super interesting. That'll be before the end of the month.

Speaker 1 39:42

Yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 3 39:44

Yeah, we need more feedback on that. So that's what we got this week. Thanks everyone for listening. We'll talk to you again soon. Have a good week. Any questions reach out. Thanks very much.

Speaker 2 39:53

If you enjoyed the show, send it to a friend, have questions for Dan or Mark, connect with them on LinkedIn at any time, and be sure to check out Dan's blog at streamingmediablogcom.