Africa-focused music streaming service Mdundo has reported continued sturdy progress in month-to-month energetic customers and paid subscriptions, regardless of headwinds that resulted in an total income decline.
Mdundo counted 37.8 million month-to-month energetic customers (MAUs) as of September, up 29.5% YoY, the corporate mentioned in its fiscal Q1 (calendar Q3) report.
The corporate reiterated steering from earlier this yr that it expects to succeed in 40 million MAUs by the top of fiscal yr 2024/2025. Mdundo’s fiscal yr runs from July 1 to June 30.
It launched its Q1 numbers on Thursday (October 10), simply days after releasing its full-year report for 2023-2024, during which it recorded income of DKK 11.93 million (USD $1.74 million on the present trade charge), down 5.3% from DKK 12.59 million within the prior fiscal yr.
(Mdundo is headquartered in Kenya, however is listed on Denmark’s Nasdaq First North Progress Market trade, and studies its earnings in Danish krone.)
Nevertheless, the corporate famous that the income drop was because of weak point in African currencies in opposition to the krone.
“In native currencies, income truly grew by 10% in comparison with the earlier yr and income from paid subscriptions elevated 112% in native currencies,” Mdundo mentioned.
The corporate reported a narrowing of its fiscal yr EBITDA loss to DKK –6.4 million, down from DKK –7.7 million within the prior fiscal yr.
Its steering requires additional EBITDA enchancment within the 2024/25 fiscal yr to between DKK –4 million and DKK –5 million.
It’s additionally forecasting a big enhance in income for 2024/25, to DKK 15-17 million ($2.19-2.48 million).
In Danish krone phrases, paid subscription revenues jumped 62% YoY, the corporate mentioned, and now account for 68% of whole income, up from 35% within the prior fiscal yr.
This helped to offset a 45% decline in promoting income throughout the fiscal yr, which the corporate blamed on “delayed and usually unsatisfactory execution of our promoting gross sales technique.”
The corporate says it has “prioritized paid subscriptions,” and to that finish, has expanded its community of partnerships with African wi-fi corporations.
It lately signed a partnership with Globacom Nigeria, which has 61 million telecom clients, and has signed a cope with “one extra telecommunications firm” that has but to be formally introduced.
Mdundo forecasts two or three such agreements to be signed throughout the present fiscal yr. These agreements will add to current offers with telecoms corresponding to Vodacom, MTN, Airtel, and Safaricom.
Creating partnerships with telecoms is essential to rising Mdundo’s paid subscriber base, as a result of low penetration charge of cost playing cards in African markets. By means of these partnerships, Mdundo customers will pay through their cellphone payments.
In its Q1 report, Mdundo notified buyers of a possible headwind to its progress throughout the present fiscal yr.
“Mdundo.com acquires a giant proportion of its customers from Google Search, nonetheless, throughout the quarter a rightsholder group erroneously flagged 150,000 Mdundo.com URLs as copyright infringing pages. Consequently… Google delisted the URLs from the search engine and Google Adsense, impacting the natural person numbers and the promoting revenues all through July, August and September,” Mdundo mentioned.
“Mdundo filed a grievance to the rights group in early July, consequently all of the hyperlinks had been reinstated inside each Google Search and Google Adsense from the start of October… Administration expects the implications of this incident to normalize throughout Q2 and don’t count on that it’s going to have any long run influence.”Music Enterprise Worldwide
