REG - Blackbird PLC - AGM Statement

BlackbirdAnnouncement

18/06/2024 07:00

For best results when printing this announcement, please click on link below:
http://newsfile.refinitiv.com/getnewsfile/v1/story?guid=urn:newsml:reuters.com:20240618:nRSR7749Sa&default-theme=true

RNS Number : 7749S  Blackbird PLC  18 June 2024

18 June 2024

Blackbird plc

(the "Company")

Chairman's Annual General Meeting statement

Blackbird plc (AIM:BIRD), the technology licensor, developer and seller of
market-leading cloud native video editing platform, Blackbird, and developer
of the multiplayer editor in a browser, elevate.io, is holding its 2024 Annual
General Meeting (the "AGM") today at 10.30 a.m. at the offices of Blake
Morgan, 6 New Street Square, London, EC4A 3DJ.

Ahead of the formal business of the AGM, Andrew Bentley, Chair of Blackbird
plc, will make the following statement:

"Before proceeding with the formal part of the AGM, I would like to take the
opportunity of commenting on the Company's progress since we last met.

"The past year was one of significant investment and transformation for the
Company with the Company's collaborative video content creation platform,
elevate.io, designed for the Creator SaaS and corporate AV markets, launched
into early access in November 2023 and subsequently into general release at
the end of March 2024.

"elevate.io is built using the Company's core patented technology which
leverages our key technological advantages around smoothness of playback,
navigation and speed, on top of proven reliability.  Additionally, as
elevate.io is built on the AWS public cloud, it can be easily scaled and
integrated with third party features and functionality helping to build out
the elevate.io marketplace.

"Early users have been positive about the simple, easy to use interface and
are buying into the vision, recognising that this will solve many of their
current content creation issues. They can also see how collaboration will
reduce friction, increase speed and improve output whilst making the
production process more enjoyable.

"In advance of marketing, elevate.io is in the planned general release phase
and, although not yet at a chargeable grade, we currently have early adopters
in the high hundreds. They are engaged in uploading, creating and publishing
video.  As a new platform with different ways to create video, our teams are
gaining an enormous amount of insight from this early adopter activity,
especially around collaboration, supporting our assumptions.  I am also
pleased to report that we have had 100% uptime since early access began.

"As is the expectation of today's SaaS market, elevate.io is being continually
enhanced using a rapid deployment method and already multiple features have
been added. These include more editing controls, general performance
improvements and the addition of markers, with many more to come.
Functionality and features will continue to be added and rolled out which will
open up our user base and lead to a step change in our marketing and
partnership activity.

"There is a growing number of companies who have successfully executed product
led growth ("PLG") in parallel SaaS markets, in particular Figma and Canva,
who we look to emulate. The growth curve they followed was an initial period
of investment, where the focus is high quality product development, followed
by a steep growth phase once the product reaches an appropriate level of
maturity and the users reach a critical mass.

"Due to its complexity, the video medium has been the last to convert to a
collaborative web platform. Our inherent technological advantage at Blackbird
has allowed us to finally solve the problems of collaborative web video and
launch a working multiplayer video creation experience on the web, which is
tremendously exciting.

"The Total Addressable Market ("TAM") for elevate.io is huge, growing fast and
ripe for disruption. Our initial Serviceable Addressable Market ("SAM"), where
we are targeting professional teams and content creators, is calculated at
$6.9 billion 1 .  As we have seen in parallel SaaS industries there are huge
rewards for companies who succeed.

"Our overarching goals for the elevate.io platform are to be able to create,
manage and distribute content. As a first step on the latter, I am pleased to
announce that a prototype of our experimental player will be demonstrated
after the AGM today, ahead of its release as a publishing destination from
elevate.io. This will enable elevate.io users to be able to share their
content with other people quickly without the need to render. Viewers of the
content will then be able to reshare this content with other people or clip
and share it.

"Long term followers of Blackbird are aware that our award-winning technology
is well recognised within the professional broadcast market for media and
entertainment ("M&E").  It was used on the pinnacle of content and within
the sports sector on the majority of major sporting events during 2023. This
year, through an OEM partner, it will be used at this year's summer games
where the platform will be used on up to 70 concurrent feeds granting access
to our full suite of tools to global broadcasters.

This M&E market has previously been the main focus and drive of our go to
market strategy. However, each of our major accounts have often required
bespoke integrations which are both time consuming and costly. Combined with
the pressures that major broadcasters face with diminishing audience share and
reduced advertising or subscription revenues, it has proved a challenging task
to grow our share of the M&E services market. This is reflected in the
2023 revenue which decreased for the first time in five years to £1.94
million due to a number of deal losses and some non-recurring revenues in
2022. The Board recognised the challenges of the M&E market back in 2022
leading to a refocus of our investment and resources into the creator space
and elevate.io. We have taken decisive action against our M&E cost base
last year and this year and, as previously stated, are targeting an EBITDA
break even for the Blackbird division in 2024.

"There have been a number of changes to the Board over recent months with John
Honeycutt and Dawn Airey leaving and Anne de Kerckhove joining. As previously
announced, I will also be leaving the Company on 31 August 2024 and stepping
down from the Chair at the conclusion of this meeting.  Anne de Kerckhove
will assume the role of Chair and the Company is actively recruiting a further
Non-Executive Director.

"The Board believes strongly that our strategy is the right one. We have
developed a platform in elevate.io that has a potential market far in excess
of that available to us in traditional M&E and where we are early to
market, and currently with far fewer direct competitors. We, the board and
senior management, are shareholders in Blackbird and are very mindful of the
investment journey that each of us have experienced. On behalf of the Board, I
would simply like to thank you for your belief and on-going support,
particularly as we transition the business in order to realise the full
economic potential of our technology."

Contacts:

 Blackbird plc
 
                Tel: +44 (0)20 8879 7245

Ian McDonough, Chief Executive Officer

Stephen White, Chief Operating and Financial Officer

Allenby Capital Limited (Nominated Adviser and Broker)
                Tel: +44 (0)20 3328 5656

Nick Naylor / Piers Shimwell (Corporate Finance)

Amrit Nahal / Guy McDougall (Equity Sales and Corporate Broking)

 

About Blackbird plc

Blackbird plc operates in the fast-growing SaaS, Media and Entertainment and
content creation markets.  Blackbird plc's patented technology allows for
frame accurate navigation, playback, viewing and editing in the cloud and it
has two products.

Blackbird(Ⓡ) a market leading suite of cloud-native computing applications,
is used by rights holders, broadcasters, sports and news video specialists,
live events and content owners, post production houses, other mass market
digital video channels and corporations.

elevate.io, currently in general release, is the company's new collaborative
content creation tool in a web browser aimed at professional teams and the
Creator Economy.

Blackbird plc also licences its core video technology under its 'Powered by
Blackbird' licensing model. Enabling video companies to accelerate their path
to true cloud business models, licensees benefit from power and carbon
reductions, cost and time savings, less hardware and bandwidth requirements
and easy scalability.

www.blackbird.video (http://www.blackbird.video/)
(http://www.linkedin.com/company/blackbird-cloud)
www.linkedin.com/company/blackbird-cloud
(http://www.linkedin.com/company/blackbird-cloud)
(http://www.twitter.com/blackbirdcloud) www.twitter.com/blackbirdcloud
(http://www.twitter.com/blackbirdcloud) (http://www.facebook.com/blackbirdplc)
www.facebook.com/blackbirdplc (http://www.facebook.com/blackbirdplc)
(http://www.youtube.com/c/blackbirdcloud) www.youtube.com/c/blackbirdcloud
(http://www.youtube.com/c/blackbirdcloud)

www.elevate.io

 

 1  Source Wainhouse research August 2022

This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution of this information may apply. For further information, please contact
rns@lseg.com (mailto:rns@lseg.com)
 or visit
www.rns.com (http://www.rns.com/)
.

RNS may use your IP address to confirm compliance with the terms and conditions, to analyse how you engage with the information contained in this communication, and to share such analysis on an anonymised basis with others as part of our commercial services. For further information about how RNS and the London Stock Exchange use the personal data you provide us, please see our
Privacy Policy (https://www.lseg.com/privacy-and-cookie-policy)
.   END  AGMBRGDLXBBDGSR