Personal radio service Pandora announced its latest financials yesterday, and they showed the company’s revenues growing well and losses halving year-on-year, with some growth in active listeners too.
The company posted revenues of $239.6m for the third quarter of this year, up 41.5% year-on-year. Meanwhile, its net losses of $2.03m were down from $4.09m in the corresponding quarter last year.
More stats? Active listeners were up 5.2% year-on-year to 76.5m, while listener hours rose by 25% to 4.99bn, with Pandora claiming a 9.06% share of total US radio listening during the quarter.
Note, the listener hours was down slightly quarter-on-quarter, while active users was up slightly. Advertising accounted for 81.1% of Pandora’s quarterly revenues, while mobile accounted for 78.5% of its revenues – the latter figure including in-app subscriptions as well as ads.
The slowing user growth is one concern for Pandora. “In an increasingly competitive environment, driving monthly active user growth will be more challenging, particularly given our already significant market position,” admitted Pandora boss Brian McAndrews in the company’s earnings call.
“As a result, looking ahead, expecting monthly active user growth at historic levels is not realistic. That said, we continue to believe in the long-term opportunity to grow our audience in excess of 100 million monthly active users in the US.”
McAndrew talked up Pandora’s recent flurry of hires from the music industry and the launch of its AMP platform providing artist analytics, as well as its direct licensing deals with indie agency Merlin and publisher BMG.
But the company is also girding its loins for another bruising lobbying battle over royalty rates in the US, with a settlement hoped for by 7 January, and a Copyright Royalty Board process in store if not.
This is the ongoing dilemma around Pandora’s business: whatever progress it’s making under the current royalty rates will be disrupted (from the company’s view, for better or worse) depending on what settlement is reached next time round.
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