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PANDORA'S JAR
FLOWS OVER IN Q1

Pandora grew its subscription revenue by 63% in the first three months of 2018, pulling $104.7m, and grew their subscription count to 5.63m, a 19% spike.

The better than expected results pushed Pandora stock up more than 19% in early morning trading Friday to nearly $7 a share.

“Music streaming and digital audio continue to see massive growth, and this quarter we took key steps to position Pandora to capture this significant opportunity,” said Roger Lynch, CEO of Pandora, which now has 72.3m active listeners. “We improved audience metrics—in part by increasing usage of Premium Access, which gives ad-supported listeners the ability to enjoy Pandora Premium after viewing a 15-second ad.

“We also accelerated our ad-tech roadmap with the acquisition of AdsWizz, and launched exciting new product features like personalized playlists. Looking ahead, Pandora is exactly where we want to be: at the center of a growing market with huge potential.”

The AdsWizz purchase is expected to close this month but its integration will require some time.

“We've seen increased daily engagement, a higher propensity to upgrade to Premium and a skew towards under-25 listeners,” Lynch said in a conference call with investors. “Also, Premium Access was an element of the improved Q1 trajectory. All of this was driven without marketing, and we expect focused marketing support will only increase its success.”

The company is developing new products for launch later this year, among them is in-app voice capability, and an increase in podcasts and other non-music audio content.

Lynch said Pandora will acquire more content, “but the real effort is happening beneath the surface with the development of what we call the Podcast Genome.”

Total consolidated revenue was $319.2m, about 12% over Q1 2017. Advertising revenue accounted for $214.6m and subscription revenue was $104.7m. The company subtracted Ticketfly revenue from the 2017 results to create an apples to apples comparison.

Net loss was $131.7m compared to a net loss of $132.3m in the same quarter last year. Adjusted EBITDA was a loss of $73.3m, compared to a loss of $71.3 million in the same quarter last year. The company had $544.4m in cash and investments at the end of the quarter.

The company, with a new CMO, will be investing marketing dollars to drive subscriptions or expand listening time. “Each one of those actions that we take, we want to be able to measure on a return on investment basis,” he said, without supplying any details. “And the things that show the highest return on investment, we're going to do more of them.”

In other news, Rudy Giuliani has taken to Fox News to say that the pee tape is really pretty boring.

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