1

Pandora Q3 earnings: Revenue and subscriber numbers up, net loss also rises

Pandora reached third-quarter revenue of $378.6 million, up 8% over the year prior. The audio company’s paid tiers generated 4.01 million subscribers in Q3 2016, rising about 29% to 5.19 million subscribers in Q3 2017. More than 1 million of those subscribers are part of the full on-demand Pandora Premium tier. The subscribers generated revenue of $84.4 million. Advertising revenue edged up 1% to $275.7 million, while ticketing revenue declined 16% to $18.5 million following Pandora’s divestiture of Ticketfly. Net loss for the period, reaching $66.2 million in Q3 2017 after a loss of $61.5 million in Q3 2016.

Total listener hours edged down to 5.15 billion from 5.4 billion in the year-ago period. Active listeners during the period were 73.7 million, which excludes the roughly 1.1 million listeners from Australia and New Zealand. Pandora closed its operations in those two markets in June.

It’s Pandora’s first quarterly report under the leadership of new president and CEO Roger Lynch, a change that was expected to lead to improvements for the streaming company’s financials. “After just a short time here at Pandora, it’s clear to me we have a tremendous opportunity to meet the full spectrum of our listeners’ and advertisers’ needs,” Lynch said. “We have significant scale, distribution and products that deliver a superior listening experience. We will leverage these strengths to become a more integral part of our listeners’ lives and reinforce our position as the definitive source for audio advertising.”

In the fourth quarter of 2017, Pandora is now expecting revenue in the range of $365 million to $380 million. The projected EBITDA net loss for the period is between $15 million and $5 million.

Anna Washenko

One Comment

Comments are closed.