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This is Bloomberg BusinessWeek with Carol Messer and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.
Well, the world of entertainment and content back on our radar today. This as a bidding war for Paramount Global. Maybe in the making of Seagram air. Edgar Brofman Junior is said to be close to making an offer for Paramount Global, setting off that bidding war for the film and TV company that owns CBS and MTV. This is according to a Bloomberg exclusive. You can read all the deals just head to Bloomberg dot com or check it out on the Bloomberg terminal. Well, our next guest is
definitely in the content and entertainment space. Let's get to Bill Odoud. He is the CEO of the microcaps sixteen million dollar market cap company. It's an entertainment, marketing and content production company and it is known as Dauphin Entertainment. He joins us from Miami. Bill, good to be talking with you. How are you.
I'm very good, Thank you, Carol, thank you for having me on.
Well, great to have you here. Let's start with kind of the nuts and bolts. If we may just reported earnings this week. Your release said record second quarter revenue, remind our world, the Bloomberg world, the investing world about what your company does and the latest update and the outlook for your business.
Sure, well, thank you for that. Well, we do three things all in one. We started as a production company film and TV producers, and we still do that, having just released The Blue Angels with Imax this spring. Then we started assembling investing class PR and marketing, special events, influencer marketing companies around entertainment. And then we started investing in things that we could market, like consumer products. So we're very excited for that.
All right, So talk to us about the quarter and the business, look back, look forward in terms of we mentioned the headline in terms of second quarter revenue, specifically in terms of a record that's according to you guys. Talked to us about a little bit of the business and where the growth is coming from, because you mentioned like kind of these three areas. So where's the growth been, where's it going?
Sure? Yeah, Well we've been blessed with a lot of organic growth. The companies work together create synergy between you know, creating campaigns for motion pictures or consumer products that may want both PR and influencer marketing as an example, or event marketing with influencer, let's say. And in addition, we're growing going back into production. The Blue Angels was a big hit for us in partnership with Imax, and that was certainly part of the revenue increase as well.
Well, it's interesting, well and that Imax partnership, how much more can you leverage out of it? Right, Like, this is something that sounds like it's got some legs and I'm curious where you take it.
Sure, yeah, thank you. It's a multi year partnership. We're used to doing that with Dolphin. We were partners with Nickelodeon for years and years in making children's content and have had fifty to fifty partnerships in the past with Warners or others. So we hope to be doing documentaries
with Imax for years to come. It's certainly a great partner to do documentaries with because you can do these big spectacle documentaries, dockbusters as we call them, that really deserve to be seen on the big screen, like The Blue Angels.
Yeah, and we you know the press release that you guys put out it talked about you know, debuting as number one on Prime video. Over the Memorial Day holiday, it grossed what over two million at the box office IMAX, and that included a top ten debut with about one point four million in its opening weekend. That what did you call it? Dockbusters?
That's right?
Yeah, So where else do you go with like do you just continue to do more of that? And how expensive is it to do and build out that content?
Well, documentaries are less expensive than the bigger feature of course, so they typically range in the three to five million range, let's say for theatrical Obviously you can make them for less or more, and we do think there's an opening to do one or two of those a year. They certainly program well, there are gaps in the year where there wouldn't be studio content available or fresh studio content to put into IMAX. And also we think our partnership
is expanding into live streaming as well. You know, we could do music specials, Broadway specials, comedy specials, you know, one night only type things that would really juice, we hope the box office, especially midweek. When do you.
Start to do something like that or what's involved in getting into that area more aggressively?
We hope to launch that in the first quarter of next year, and IMAX has already been doing some of that themselves, and it's a natural extension of our partnership to go into that content together.
What's the challenge in all of this, because I do feel like, you know, Bill, I think it's safe to say we cover this a lot at Bloomberg that I mean, there's a lot of places to view content, there's a lot of content creators, but there's a lot of people vuying for that content. So what's the stuff that really you think moves the needle in terms of engaging with the consumer Because I know, I get to a point where I'm just overwhelmed and I'm done, and I pick
up a book and read. But I just wonder, right, you've got to kind of read through a lot of stuff.
Sure to. And I like reading too, so I understand completely. And I think a lot of people try, and you know, thread the needle by thinking about what would work best in which type of delivery. You know, when you talk something like an iMac system then and network, then you're talking you want that spectacle, something that warrants people coming out and spending the money, you know, on the smaller
screen and the steep streaming wars. You're seeing a lot of people look for different types of content, and if you think about the last ten years, the rise of documentaries are true crime, especially on the small screen, as really exploded.
What about you mentioned live sports, Broadway comedy other or you mentioned Broadway comedy. What about sports in terms of last streaming or is that just a too expensive, already crowded? The big boys, the big guys are in it.
I think the live the certainly sporting events, it's probably crowded, and those rights only seem to be going up and up right. But we do like sports content generally quite a bit, and you're seeing a lot of opportunity this year around women's sports, and that's an area that we
really like. We think female athletes have been underserved tremendously, and with our influencer marketing companies, we think we could expand and bring brand sponsorship deals and just generally income to female athletes from speaking engagements, etc.
You mentioned the influencers, and I thought that was really interesting. I know you've got a a relationship with Glow Lab. You are the about the younger audience. I mean, first of all, a couple things. What is your target audience or you don't care, you want to go all over the all over the kind of age spectrum.
I think with influencer you can you can broaden out. We started with the core, which you know, female twenty five to forty four, let's say beauty, wellness, fashion products. But the thing about influencer marketing, it's it's it's grown double digits year over year some years, I think triple digits simply because there is no one demo anymore. Yeah, And the marriage of influencer with sports is it was going to come anyway, but it's certainly accelerated three years
ago with the Supreme Court ruling. You know, name image likeness for college athletes and now this generation are influencers. This generation of athletes, right, you could just see Simone Biles taking selfies at the Olympics or get ready with new videos at the Olympics. And you know that if you if you're talking athletes fifteen to twenty five, they're digital natives for sure.
Well, when you think about the work with influencers, as you said, I mean you also want to be what creating the products that they're involved in or talk to us about how you kind of drill down into that relationship, which I would assume that opens up even another revenue stream for you guys, It shure.
Does, thank you. Yeah, it's really marrying a couple of different aspects of our business. You know, we financed and produced television film for twenty years prior to going public. We're used to project finance, and then when you marry that with the rise of social media and influencer marketing, then it's really just applying project finance to consumer product. I mean, we could develop and bring to market consumer products where our form of marketing, especially in entertainment, will
give us a better chance of success. So when you think about beauty cosmetics as an example, those are product where influencers and celebrities have long influence success and so there we think there are certain product categories like alcohol, where the marketing of the product is as important as the manufacturing and the distribution itself.
But it'd be great if you get a piece of both, right going forward.
That's right, that's right, hey, Bill.
One thing I did want to ask you when we were talking a little bit of nuts and bolts in terms of the quarter, you are a microcap company. We don't on Bloomberg talk a lot to companies that are below a buck. And I am curious what you get from investors. Stocks down about sixty percent year to date. What do you hear from your investors and what are your aspirations? Is there something about you know? I understand sometimes we start small, we get bigger. What are your
aspirations for this company? And what do you hear from your investors?
Sure? Yeah, I know. Well, the microcap environment as a whole, as I'm sure you know Carol has been had a tough year. Yep. We've posted record quarterly revenue three quarters in a row so and positive adjusted operating income. So we're hopeful and confident that the will be rewarded in the market, especially as a microcup doing real revenue with real business.
So is it just investors saying listen, we get it, it's the environment? Or what do they want to know about your business? In particular? What are the questions you get most from investors?
Yeah, I'd say it's mostly about the environment. You know, numbers don't lie in terms of what we're doing in revenue and adjusted operating income, and we're beating our own projections, including the analyst projections out there. So there's there's a sense of frustration with some that you know, they just wish that, you know, we weren't being lumped in with some of the others, But you know, we just have
to stay the course. I mean, a micro cap that's doing fifty million revenue and a sixteen million dollar market cup, you'd like to believe that you're about to pop.
Back when you look at the environment, and I think it's you know, Bill, it's an interesting one. We're very folkocused on, you know, what's going on in terms of FED policy, what's going on in terms of economic data. We talked a lot by the end of the week about a soft landing, and it looks like things are, you know, kind of working out fairly well. Not all Americans certainly feel that. We talk a lot about the differences between the top and the bottom in terms of
the economic strata. Having said that, when you look at the environment, you're doing deals, you're doing different things. How do you describe the US economy right now?
Well, we're hopeful for the for the rate coaches. I think like a lot of people will free up cash and discretionary investment. Into the microcap world, small cap world generally, right. I think you hear a lot of people talk about that. We're not as susceptible to some other companies in terms of the interest rates. We've fixed ours in commercial paper already,
so we feel good about our position. But certainly lower interest rates or lower rakes use made would certainly benefit the microcap world for sure.
All right, Yeah, No, we talked about that actually earlier in terms of small caps and the importance of economic growth as well as in terms of the interest rate environment, bigger, broader picture. We've spent a lot of time talking about kind of what happens to some of the big media players. We talk about streaming so much. You are in the content business. What do you make of all of what's
going on in the streaming world. It's a lot of competition for all of our eyeballs, and there are obviously some very clear winners and some that are having a tougher time.
Yeah, And we're blessed where our film and television PR firm forty two West, works with almost every major streamer out there, and we promote shows on so many different platforms, from Netflix to Amazon to Hulu and paramount plus, etc. So we see a lot of them contracting some in terms of investment, as I'm sure you've talked about quite a bit. But the sheer volume of programming the last few years has been overwhelming to a lot of consumers, I think, And probably this is for the best.
And so you don't care kind of who wins because you get to work with them, all right, that's fair to say. But I wonder do you think that there will be because you do see some that might be struggling or slowing down a little bit, that there'll be some kind of shakeout.
There has to be, one would think, you know, And certainly the conversations out there about M and A among some of you in the bigger studios, right is an idle speculation. So there'll be a right sizing in the ship, I think, and the industry hopefully will be stronger for it.
So what's kind of interesting when you look at the content and media world and you look out. You know, we talked a little bit earlier about influencers and your work with Glow Lab, and it is interesting in a week where again, you know, Warren Buffett, you know, we
saw his stake in Olda beauty. We talked about it through the pandemic and out of the pandemic that whether it was Sepphor or some of the other names that you know, people spend It's not just cosmetics, it's all kinds of beauty and you know, skincare and so on and so forth, that that spending kind of continues. You guys also work with Rachel Ray. So chefs are something that's certainly on your radar when you think about growth areas for content. If you had to whittle it down
to one thing, what would it be. There's also AI, right, so the creation of whatever that content will be.
Yeah, an AI is unstoppable, right, We take a positive spin on it, certainly. But well, I think when you take a step back and you think the world before and after the rise of social media, you can make a case that what it's done through the explosion of what used to be. Remember when it was mommy bloggers, and then it became influencers and now it's creators. You could make an argument that's democratized the ability to launch
certain types of consumer products. Early in my career, you would need you know, ten and millions of dollars of paid media to just get awareness of the US consumer. Today, you've got influencers launching their own skincare products and selling the companies three years later for over three hundred million dollars, as Susan Yara and Glow Lab did with Notarium to Helf Beauty. So you know that that's unfathomable fifteen years ago,
ten years ago. So we see a lot of potential using influencer marketing and pr earned media generally to launch and content on those channels to to be able to drive traffic. That's on the consumer products side, of course. On on the pure content side, I think it raised a lot of eyebrows in the last week or two.
You know that on television sets, YouTube gets more viewing than Netflix, and and I think that that raised a lot of awareness, you know, outside of our world just how big social media is to to all demographics and not.
Just the Ya listen, right now you are on YouTube. We don't get to see your face right now you're on the phone, but if you were on Zoom and so on and so forth. I mean, right now, smilcast on radio, we're on YouTube, and we're on our streaming service, and then earlier we're also on television, So it's just interesting, like the different venues. I watch a lot of YouTube channels.
There's some interesting stuff, very niche programming. If you had to pick one with our YouTube TikTok or some kind of delivery service that you think is really going to be or continue to be the most influential, and just got about twenty seconds, what would it be YouTube? Hands down, hands out, hands down.
It could do both short and long form and it's already got the mass.
All right, great stuff as always, listen, Thank you so much. Jillo doubt He's founder and chief executive officer of Dolphin Entertainment, joining us on this Friday in Miami