Gana Media Group (LSE:GANA) — Investor Presentation

0:01 Good afternoon, and welcome to the Mobile Streams PLC company update. Throughout this recorded meeting, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are included and can be submitted at any time by the Q and A tab situated in the right hand corner of your screen. Just simply type in your questions and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company will review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to note the following poll. And I'd now like to hand you over to Mark Epstein, CEO. Good afternoon, sir. Hi. How are you doing?

0:37 Hi. It's Nigel here. Can you hear me?

0:39 Yes, Nigel. Can hear you perfectly as well. Alright. Thanks. I'll put myself on mute until I've got something to say. Yeah. So, obviously, today, discussions around the fundraising that we just that just took place. Also on the call is Charles, who's who's here to answer any questions on behalf of Pizza House relating to the plate to the placing and price. And Nigel also, who's, you know, our main adviser and colleague who will get her amplify and answer any questions as well regarding strategy, placing the price, etcetera, along with me and then Tom, the chief product officer. So, broadly, we've done the placing today.

1:18 The main reason to be to be honest is we we we pretty much got ourselves into a position where we've got a number of contracts that we've been negotiating for a long time.

1:30 We've the announcement of Puma's have gone live on the white list, basically, bought a lot of those to the landing zone. It's like a a window where you can get them signed in reality. And we've had to make a decision to either let those go because we exist in a highly competitive environment or do displacing so that we can expand the company into different verticals. We've got opportunities in everything from golf to boxing, motor racing, La Liga, other territories, more opportunity in Mexico. And so we're in a position whereby we can either grow the company very quickly by signing multiple other contracts that we've been working on for a while, but I just can't negotiate any longer and it's sort of, you know, get them done or or lose them or not. And it's a very difficult decision because, you know, obviously, Charles and Roger could probably give more information on the price, but, you know, it's not that easy, certainly not at this price.

2:31 But we gotta look at, like, the midterm, the long term picture, and everywhere we discussed it was discussed in detail. It was, you know, not not taken at all lightly. It was painful to do. But these opportunities, they just won't come again. So we can't negotiate any longer. We can't wait. We have to commit to either getting these into what is like a it's called a landing zone or not. And, basically, the as as that Pumas launch got nearer nearer the announcements, that sort of uncooked, like, you know, the cock in the bottle. And now our ability to get deals done has been dramatically increased. The timing's far from perfect, but we've we've we've got to take it when it's available. If we negotiate them any further, we could lose them without showing that we can have the capital to do them.

3:19 And, also, we probably lose credibility with a lot of partners that help us get these deals. And the reality is, you know, they have other people wanting to work with them as well. So we've got to look at, like, the momentum we lose, the deals we lose, the opportunity we lose. And so whilst we'd have to have done it in a better climate, at a better price, and, you know, those were the choices we're faced with. Like, in the business, we can't do nothing. Doing nothing had a big risk in itself. So people say, you know, could you have waited a few weeks? We would have lost most of these deals. That's just a fact. So, you know, to get them to the final zone where you have, like, get the contracts ready for clean contracts and ready for signature except for a few little tweaks here and there, you have to show that you at least have the money to complete them. And you can't get into that position by sort of just fronting up to people. If if we then if they need to be closed and we don't have it or we have to raise it then, we'd be massively exposed, you know, that we'd lose all our credibility.

4:15 So that that's sort of where we're at. The good news is we've got a significant amount of deals now that I can go and close that will take us into a completely different stratosphere almost, you know, I think in terms of loads of different verticals, different leagues, different territories, amazing opportunity. So and we, you know, we've obviously done our first drop with Humus. That's the first of hundreds of Humus drops. We're doing Mexico very shortly. We're gonna you know, the demand for that is amazing. It's incredible. That's gonna exceed. You know, that's just gonna be incredible over the next few months during the World Cup alone. Obviously, we've a and then soon there'll be many more. So all of these also, we haven't got a question set, but I'll just say all of these deals are big.

5:00 You know, even the individual sports people, be it golf or boxing or whatever, you know, they're all in the millions of revenue. They're gonna drive significant revenue, so they're gonna massively eclipse any money we took in now. So I suppose with that sort of context, I understand there's plenty of people on the call. We'll try and answer because there's 85 attendees. So, you know, we will try and answer. I will try and answer. Everyone will try and answer as many questions as we can. Hopefully, we can answer them all. And we don't you know, we understand this. You know?

5:31 It was very it was done diff you know, it wasn't an easy decision at all. So it's not something we took lightly whatsoever. So that's it. I was over to that. Yeah. Let's take some questions. Where are the questions? Are there any? For the questions on the right hand side, you should q and a. See chat, q and a, and polls, and the questions will be under the q and a tab. Where's the q where's the q and a tab? Is there a chat button in the bottom right hand corner that's blue? Here we go. Yeah. If you open that up, that should open up the Oh, no. Got it. Okay. And if you could just bring up the questions, that'd great. Okay. Shall I just start from the top? Is that the most recent or oldest one here? So I keep moving. So let me scroll up to the top.

6:21 Well, anything on the discount with the price, I'm gonna refer you to Charles, basically, Nigel, because I don't set the price. Do you think this is really the way to run mobile streams? Well, we're running it the best we can. I mean, I can speak on that. We're doing the absolute best job we can. We've taken a company that was nothing two years ago that was gonna be delisted. You know, I remember six months ago, people were moaning, saying we were signing deals with nobodies, with tiny companies that didn't have a big track record. We're now signing deals with the Mexican national team for long term deals that cover the World Cup, some of the biggest brands in the world. So I think we move forward massively. You know, the reality is we are we're not a deeply mature company. You know, we are a growth company. I've said that over and over again.

7:11 And, you know, we we have we you know, we're not in a position to turn down these opportunities. They're really difficult decisions. So we're running it the best way we can. If you look at any of our competitors, they're they're burning way more than us. They spend way more than us. We wish, you know, the market would have recognized the opportunity more than it did. If you look at private companies that are comparable, it is I could send I mean, there's loads of examples. We could give just recently forty, fifty million evaluations for companies that have not even a platform, let alone contracts, major platform and national teams.

7:43 We launched a marketplace. You know, we just saw a marketplace for Doodles. Just got raised about 60,000,000 on the 750,000,000 valuation, and it's not sold anything yet. So I think there was some market education to do. But, you know, I think we've actually I think it's not great to raise at this price, and Charles and I can talk more on that. But in terms of running it, I think if you just look back six months, people would have killed for us to be announcing the things we're announcing, know, deals in Mexico, Pumas, Lanti, signing with the owners of football clubs, doing NFT drops. We're building an NFT marketplace with amazing brands and things like that. So I think we've come a long way. We announced this was gonna be our main strategy months ago. We did a shares presentation with a video of it. We said that web three point o metaverse would be our main focus, and NFTs will be at the heart of that. So the simple fact is that's that's the reality with. So, you know, we're doing our best.

8:42 So I understand what you're saying about the shares and issue, and we wish the price would have gone up. We've done made a few really good announcements. We exist not as an island in the world with the economy as it is, with the stock market as it is. You know, trust me, we pushed for a higher price. I wanted to do it at a higher price, and no one this was not an easy decision. So with that, I'll sort of hand over to Charles and Nigel who might give a bit more flavor on the price and how that works. So alright. It's Nigel here. I mean, just I've just sort of read through as many questions as I can. And I I think, you know, this one theme is why did you do this in such a hurry? Now we we obviously can't share our board papers with you, but as Charles will be able to confirm, you know, we we produced a road map at least a month ago of what announcements we expected and what contracts we expected and the dates we expected them on and the amounts involved.

9:34 And so we've been talking about a potential raise for some time. I mean, in an ideal if the world is ideal, what we'd have done is an outsloaded contracts and then raised money at a much higher price. But I think as Mark's tried to tell you that there's a limit to how far back we can push some of these without actually losing the deals. And we've pushed them as far as we can, and we just have to take decisions with the market as it is at the time. So that, you know, it it may look like it's been done in a rush. The the discount, you know, the the harsh reality is in in this placing as in as in any others. And, you know, I've, over my life, done dozens of these things. We had a book at point two, and we had a much bigger book at point one eight.

10:27 And Lucy and Charles and others have tried incredibly hard to get the investor or investors who had that last block, which was about a third of the total placing, to move from 0.18. So in truth, the decision we had was do we take, you know, $600 less at point one at point two or raise this money at point one eight. So the question you then have as a board is, well, what actually are we going to do with that $600?

10:58 And logically, if you're going to invest that for a net present value material in excess of $600, it'd be crazy not to invest it. So I appreciate in terms of short term share price, there'll be people who don't agree with that. And I'm the second largest shareholder. So, you know, I'm not exactly keen on discounted casings. My average price, I don't know what it is, but it's probably double the current share price. Nevertheless, I recognize that's the right commercial decision to make. As I said to one of our colleagues or investors, on a twenty four hour basis, this doesn't look great. I just kind of look forward to having this discussion with any of you in twenty four weeks.

11:46 I remember when we did the placing early this year, we had people saying, you're idiots. Why would anybody in their right minds do a placing in March just after Ukraine's been invaded? And the answer was, so we never ran out of money. And you I think you can look at a list of companies on AIM. I'm sure wish they'd made the same decision then that didn't. So, you know, we we've got to do what's right for all shareholders and, you know, on a slightly longer time scale than I know some. Mark may be able to tell you about the dates of some of these NFTs, but we're not Yeah. We're not We're not Sorry. Let me finish. Simplistically, Mark Mark has got a trip out to Mexico and nearby later this month. And our preference as a board is to put out an RNS saying we have signed these contracts as opposed to Mark's getting on the plane with a pen.

12:43 So simplistically, you you should see a whole bunch of things announced around about a month from there. Well, there may be some of that announced before that. I I can't promise you one way or the other. But that gives you an idea of the timescale. And as you've seen with the Puma's deal, you know, we signed that in July and we had revenues at the end September. And those revenues, as anybody who understands Solana and crypto knows, they actually drop into our bank account the day that we make the sale. It's possibly publicly possible to even look at our wallet and find out what went into it. Yeah, that's a pretty short time span. And the value of some of these contracts, as we've already announced, the revenue value is in the millions, not the tens of thousands.

13:33 I think in summary, we feel we've not taken this decision in a hurry. It may look it always looks like it on the day, but we haven't. We've sized this space. I mean, we have turned away quite a few deals that we don't feel with the resources available we can service. So we we kind of optimize that portfolio for what we think is the right amount to raise that we can physically manage, including with our team in Mexico. And that's where we've landed up at what we think maximizes value. And obviously, I'm as sorry as the rest of you that short term, it's not great for the share price, but this is a, you know, twenty four week run, not a twenty four hour run that we're looking at.

14:19 Now shut up now. Yeah. Thanks, Nigel. I think that was really good. I'll just go through some of the other ones and answer as best I can. So so there's a few that I want to so people are basically saying, you know, we'll be after raising it for other deals and things like that. Well, we're gonna start to see significant revenue come in now through the NFT deals we've already signed. So we've obviously seen the first Puma's 50,000 plus come in dollars. Mexico will start very shortly, and that's and then that will be Mexico will basically be blanketed. There'll be lots of drops between now and the end of the year, which should bring in a significant amount of cash. So, therefore, you know, with the amount of money these deals are now gonna start bringing in, unless there's something absolutely exceptional, we should have enough to do everything we wanna do. So I don't think it's the case that we'd have to raise at all whatever time there's more deals and things like that. Because now because our cash position is about to transform massively with the well, it's already begun with the cumbers drop.

15:20 But with all the drops that we're gonna be doing, just between now and the World Cup, you know, the demand's enormous. We're talking, you know, we're talking enormous amount of money. So our financial position will massively change for the better. It's just that we can't wait for that drop to start and those money to come in. It's just we're just even if we're just weeks away type thing from that, it's just normally just coming up on time. So so I think we're gonna see significant revenue coming in, and it will be transparent just on the blockchain very shortly that will, you know, in pretty much immediate, very quickly, overtake anything the company's ever brought in before. So our financial picture, I think, would see a drastic transformation for the better very quickly. So that's that. We I mean, some of the people are saying that last place, and we said this.

16:12 Well, now we we've discussed quite openly unless there were new contracts we needed. We did say we've said before, if new contracts came up after the last placing, we didn't say we'd never done another placing or anything like that. So the the the fact is the opportunity is just there. So we could not have we could have said no and let it pass. That definitely wouldn't be in the best interest of the business. Just reality, we're just faced with that choice. So, you know, that there's no getting away from that. So there's no ideal scenario. There's no risk free scenario. So if we lose the the momentum in the markets we're in, lose our partners, that can have a big negative effect on us as well. So there's no simple answer to that. In terms of the types of teams we're looking at, you know, national teams, yeah, we are looking at other national teams, but we're looking at some amazing clubs with a global brands in, you know, Spanish leagues, Mexican leagues, Brazilian leagues, other leagues. We're looking at high profile athletes that are not only good now, but superstars in the future as well. We're looking at different verticals that we wanna move into, to say golf, boxing, motorsport,

17:24 tennis, lots of different areas. So we wanna have different verticals. Our goal is to be the number one licensed NFT marketplace of sport in the world. It's as simple as that. We're certainly one of the top ones, and that will create enormous value for the business. We can take it now. We have a number of big advantages. We're listed. We've got the government. We have a stock exchange. That helps us with deals at really small cost compared to other companies. But we exist in a highly competitive marketplace against companies that are worth billions.

17:52 So we can now we we can get deals at prices they can never get at so low that they thought they thought compete at that level. That's our opportunity, but that window closes rapidly. So hope that sort of answers those.

18:07 But we're looking to do deals not just for World Cup teams. And if we did just deals for World Cup teams, you know, after the World Cup, we want Mexico to the entire tour of America every year, and there's gonna be a big build up to the next World Cup because it's in Mexico and America and Canada. So there's a good reason. So if we pick a national team, it has to have good value after the World Cup as well. It can't be a Sofia. Let

18:32 me go through these questions. Are we looking at other sport? We've we've already had discussions with an NBA club at the moment. Commercially, it's not where we wanted to be. So we have our discussions with an NBA team. Commercially, it's too strong for us, so we don't take every deal. We could have taken that. You know? I could take that now and not do other things, but it would you know, it's I think it's too much money, basically. Cricket, no. I haven't done anything in cricket yet.

19:06 We'll update on the other side of business shortly, but that's all going fine as I before. All of that's proceeding in line with our expectations. We are looking at doing stuff in The UK. We're waiting to hear on that, but that's not that's that's, you know, that's interesting as well. We're we're definitely looking at The UK.

19:28 Some of these I can't answer because, you know, people say don't say it's market sensitive, but some of them just are would be, like, illegal to answer. So let's have a look. You know, I don't know. I'm repeating what I said in March. You know, we've always said if opportunity comes up, we've never pretended, and people know we're not a company with millions and millions in the bank. And, it's it's the question of those are some they're just assuming there's no risk in doing nothing. So, okay, I don't take these contracts. We don't do the rates. We don't announce more deals, and I announce the revenue coming in from the NFTs. The share price will go up. Great. But we would have lost any deals that we could we could do now.

20:14 And I suppose if you wanna you know, any in the short term, anyone wanted to trade in the next few weeks, you know, would have got a bet would it would have been better for them. But the but there's it wouldn't have been as good in the mid certainly the mid and long term. So I don't think I'm repeating what I said in March, and I've we've been very clear our direction in in the NFT space. I think we've done literally exactly what we said we do. And as Nigel said, if you look back at our board meetings, we had dates and targets for clubs, the dates we go live, and dates we did the pre marketing and the pre launch. And I think we've literally hit every single day in our plan to the letter. I don't think we've we've missed a slot, actually. So we haven't run out of money. We just don't wanna let our cash flow go too low because then then we'd have real problem then then we'd have an actual problem.

21:04 So, you know, this is something to expand. An this is a a fundraise to to expand. It's not it's not, you know, it's not to sort of it's not to sort of keep the lights. So I think this money will go this this I mean, because you've got this money plus we're about to get a lot of revenue in again. So I just think this this will make a real difference. So this is really like, this money could you know, this this I think will get us in a completely different zone. Well, it's easy to say. There's one here. I mean, I'll take the hard ones as well because I don't want take easy questions. Did you not learn lessons from any of the last fundraise? Why have you not learned from our competitors?

21:54 Well, our competitors, I think Dappa Labs are worth 13,500,000,000. Socios are worth about 7,000,000,000. Swara, 3,000,000,000. If we wanna get near that, we have to grow into other verticals and take opportunities when they're there. So if you mean other cut shares on the stock market, I can't speak for them. You know, Charles and Lucy and Peter House have done have done the best they could do. We've done the best we could do. We didn't pick the timing. We didn't pick Liz Truss's speech timing. We didn't pick what's going on in Ukraine. We didn't pick the global markets. We just offered opportunity when it comes to us, and we can make we have to make a decision. So we do try and, you know, learn our lessons. We're not perfect, but the reality is we have to make decisions when they're presented to us. You know, hindsight's a wonderful thing, but there's no easy way we've been negotiating these deals. I think we announced an RNS that we have 30 deals we've been negotiating some time ago.

22:47 And that was a nonsense. We're really up in negotiating a lot of deals, and there's a limit to how we're negotiate them. And at some point, we have to decide to get them into the landing zone for final signature negotiation. And for that, you need the money in the bank to do it. And if you then say we take it from cash and all this stuff, there's enormous risk in that, which is far greater than doing this, what we're doing there. So so, you know, we which we're generally trying our best.

23:14 How much of deals will be concluded prior to the World Cup? I think all the all the deals that we're looking at should be concluded prior to the World Cup. The deal amounts I suppose the revenue amount, the smallest one, is about 5,000,000 over five years. The biggest one probably in the region, which could be 25,000,000 over five years. We'll bring in also, we can bring in the revenue much quicker now because, of course, we've got the platform, the marketplace up and running. Got the we've got all the templates. We've got all the we're sort of plug and play now. So our main development on the platform and actually get bringing that platform live is done. So now we can bring we can bring in revenue from our deals much quicker. So that's that's an important thing to note as well.

24:00 And, Mark, having looked through them, and I think, materially, we've answered all the questions. I mean, there are there are a couple of questions about things like Gfinity and so on, which I think you've, you know, answered briefly, but we'll we will update people on that. Don't forget we're not that far from producing our full year results accounts when we produce those. I think that would the appropriate time to have an update on all those things. But, yeah, what I think what we felt we should do today, which is why we've done this at short notice, is to update you on what the placing was for, what it's gonna deliver, why we did it. And, yeah, we will we will come back and answer the the remainder of those questions when we get the annual report and results out. So I I'm I'm just gonna answer the last one that's come up. You know, somebody talked about traditional finance. Well, you know, the reality is we don't have physical assets to lend money against. If we went to a bank now and tried to borrow money, it's just not happening.

25:01 And we're certainly not going to borrow from, well, won't name them, but the sort of death spiral type lenders that that's just hiding to nothing. So this is the right way to finance it. And I'm confident that I'm the second largest shareholder. The management between us, we own about just under 13%. I I don't take any money out nor do most of the management team. We actually get paid in shares. And so, you know, you just have to believe because it's true that we're completely aligned with you. I'm sorry. In the short term, we're diluted, but long term, we're going That's great. I just wanna add, you know, the opportunities that this delivers for us to get into these different verticals, to get into these different sectors, These are these are made these are opportunities these are brilliant opportunities for us to drive revenue very, very quickly, partner with great brands, we're signing long term contracts.

25:57 These are sort of three to five year contracts. This is these are these are these are things that transform the business. These are form that get us into the position where we then we generally can get to things like a 100,000,000 plus valuation. We can then start to be in the in the on the radar of the data labs, on the associates if you want them to, you know, acquire the company for a significant amount of money. And we can then bring in lot more revenue very quickly as well. So this NFT revenue comes in instantly. We've got we're plug and play now. We can now move into different verticals, different leagues. Pretty much, as say, Nigel said, you know, the updates will be coming through thick and fast. Let's talk this time next month type of thing. And I wonder what people will think. So it got Mark Mark and I have got another call to go on to, I'm afraid, where we're actually, you know, talking to one of our the companies that we're doing deals with. So if you don't mind, I'm gonna draw this to a close. If there are any unanswered questions that we're able to answer, you just contact us through the our website. I answer every single investor question that comes to me.

27:04 So as long as I'm able to answer it within the confines of the disclosure rules, I will you'll get a reply from me regardless. That's all I can tell you. So if you feel your question's not been answered, go to the website, send an email. I will personally respond to it. And, yeah, we're not dodging the difficult questions. We we will answer them. But Yeah. You know, we've actually gotta go now after a call with with a client. Well So that's it. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you very much for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order that the management team can better understand your views and expectations? This will only take a few moments to complete, but I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Mobile Streams PLC, we'd like to thank you for attending today's meeting, and good afternoon to you all. Right. Thanks, everyone. Bye bye.