Reservoir Media, Inc. (NASDAQ:RSVR) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Dan Day: Yes. Good morning, guys. Appreciate you taking the questions. Just first for me on the admin expense line. You talked about that being elevated in the quarter, maybe just some more detail around that. It looks like it’s annualizing around $30 million a year or so for fiscal ’23. Just — is that the right number for that line moving forward? Obviously, there’s sort of wage inflation stuff that would drive it up. But just going forward, are there any hiring initiatives or anything along those lines that might cause that to have a step change up or down? Just curious on that.

Jim Heindlmeyer: Yes. I think that number is really a pretty decent number for you to use on an annualized basis. Obviously, for the quarter, one of the things that we called out that led to that 19% increase in total administrative expenses is on our expanding artist management business, where we were very happy with the results that we were able to achieve. In the quarter, you a saw a significant growth on the top line. And that led to some increases in the administrative expenses for that business. I would say, putting that aside, we have very modest increases in the rest of the business.

Dan Day: Got it. And maybe just along that vein, I mean, the other revenue, which I think is this artist management revenue that you’re referring to, like this was like $1 million a year or total in the past couple of years, and it was over $2 million in the quarter. Just wondering like how sustainable or sticky that is. Like is this $8 million, $10 million a year revenue line? And it was just depressed because of no live performances during the pandemic? Or was there something in the quarter that it was unusually high?

Jim Heindlmeyer: Well, I think that you should not look at the quarter and assume that, that is the run rate on a quarterly basis going forward. But certainly, we were — what we’re seeing in this quarter is the monetization of the return to touring that has been happening over the past six, nine months and especially relative to the period last year. It takes a little while for that to catch up and to flow through to us, but we are seeing very healthy touring and merch revenue for the artists that we represent. And we’re very happy to be seeing that in that segment of our business, which remains a fairly small part of our business, but it’s an area that we’re very happy to see that level of growth happening.

Dan Day: Great. And last one for me and I’ll turn it over. So it seems pretty likely based on some of the commentary coming out of the guys from Spotify that we’re probably going to get a U.S. rate hike at some point in 2023. Just wondering internally if you’ve done any work to quantify the potential impact on digital streaming revenue for you based on the magnitude of any rate hikes there? And if so, if there’s anything you can share, would be appreciated. Thanks.

Golnar Khosrowshahi: That is the work that we do. We can’t really comment obviously on what the future holds as far as a domestic rate hike. The way we think about this is that it’s essentially a and our share of that increases. But at this time, we don’t have numbers that we would disclose around any kind of assumptions around our domestic rate hike.

Dan Day: All right guys, thanks for answering the questions. And best of luck.

Golnar Khosrowshahi: Thank you.

Jim Heindlmeyer: Thanks Dan.