Crowd Media delivers financial and productivity improvements to artificial intelligence platform
Crowd Media has attributed its ongoing profitability to its mobile subscription division.
Artificial intelligence company Crowd Media (ASX: CM8) has delivered a 116% improvement in its profit figures to $109,530 for the six months to December 2021.
The company published the improvement as part of its half-yearly report released today, comparing the figures to the previous corresponding period and announcing a related net loss after tax of $280,550.
Crowd’s earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) and net loss includes non-cash impairment expenses of $335,453; non-cash, share-based payment charges of $61,983; and a non-cash fair value gain on investments of $479,648.
When adjusting for these effects, the underlying EBITDA for the financial year resulted in a profit of $36,099.
Operating cash flows for the six months to December were $5,517, reflecting a significant improvement from cash outflow of $1.21 million for the first six months of 2021.
At the reporting date, Crowd’s cash and cash equivalents were $1.69 million, while working capital was $1.95 million.
There was zero total debt, reflecting a decrease of $624,743 on the prior period.
Net assets were $5.75 million – up $504,741 from $5,251,448 on the same period.
Product development
Crowd Media has continued to develop its Talking Head artificial intelligence platform according to plan and “with great clarity”.
Clear objectives have been set for the next eight months and have resulted in the expansion of its development team as the company prepares for first deployment of the platform.
This will enable early commercial uptake with a focus on gathering user insights to improve the system.
Medical technology proof of concept has also been completed, securing South African company PangeaMed as the first paying customer for Talking Head and a commitment to collaborate with Crowd going forward.
Technical obstacles
Crowd said its research and development team had overcome a number of technical obstacles to Talking Head’s development with “inventiveness and ingenuity”.
The time taken to create a “digital twin” has been reduced from 28 days to four days and server efficiency improvements now allow for thousands of simultaneous communications on a single server (compared to the industry standard of two communications per server).
Refinement efforts also continue to bring a new level of human likeness to the video and audio side of the platform.
Crowd said it would recruit machine learning and artificial intelligence experts to help achieve the goal.
“Our vision to create a human-like video experience, at scale, is finally within reach,” the company said.
Mobile subscription division
Crowd’s mobile subscription division continued to deliver ongoing profits during the reporting period.
Optimisation measures implemented across personnel, sales and marketing functions resulted in the acquisition of 310,000 new subscribers, reflecting an improvement of 49% compared to the prior half year where 208,000 users were acquired.
An in-house media buying process was initiated to support revenue growth and encourage innovation within the division.
It is expected to result in better long-term prospects and reduce the company’s dependence on third parties.
Crowd said the media subscription division would participate in the commercialisation of the Talking Head platform in the gaming and entertainment space.
It aims to launch an entertainment-first Talking Head subscription product by the end of the quarter.
Strongly positioned
Following a corporate restructure, chairman Steven Schapera said Crowd was strongly positioned to pursue the commercialisation objectives of the Talking Head platform.
“The turnaround phase of Crowd Media is complete – we now have the right strategy, the right people and the right culture,” he said.
“Every aspect of the business has been strengthened from our board and management through to operations and research and development.
“Our half-yearly report is extremely encouraging and confirms my belief in this company and its future as a media tech challenger.”