Photo Credit: Anghami
MENA streaming service Anghami (NASDAQ: ANGH) has highlighted its Q1 2024 performance and released its complete financials for 2023, when revenue came in at $41.38 million and subscribers approached 1.73 million despite a sizable usership decline.
OSN+-partnered Anghami just recently shed light on its Q1 2024 and 2023 showings, with the latter including a 14.7% revenue slip to the mentioned $41.38 million. Behind that decrease, the Abu Dhabi-based business specifically pointed to $24.56 million in subscription revenue (down 9.3% year over year), $9.90 million from ads (down 17.9% YoY), and $6.92 million from live events (down 26.1% YoY).
Anghami chalked up the subscription dip in particular to “significant currency devaluation in Egypt and Lebanon” – the former is its largest market – and the “introduction of new low-cost, high-margin plans with limited content aimed at mitigating the impact on low” ARPU nations. Nevertheless, revenue jumped 8% in Q1 2024, the company relayed.
Returning to the entirety of 2023, premium ARPU fell nearly 27% YoY (to an average of $1.53 across the year) due to the currency devaluations and the introduction of the noted plans, including an Arabic-only offering, according to the earnings analysis. Meanwhile, last year brought a $14.56 million operating loss, better than 2022’s $17.38 million; Q1 2024’s operating loss improved again, this time to $2.7 million.
Furthermore, Anghami stressed the substantial portion (45%) of 2023 subscription revenue it received through app stores, with another 46% having derived from carrier-billing pacts.
Both categories faced substantial fees, drove home Anghami, which in January of 2024 “made the strategic decision to initiate the liquidation of its investment in Vibe Music Arabia,” a JV with Sony Music. Additionally, 46% of non-live-events revenue was forwarded to rightsholders during 2023, per Anghami.
Interestingly, on the rightsholder-licensing front, Anghami also indicated that “Arabic songs streaming time on our platform stabled at approximately 65% of total streams” in 2023, up from 58% in 2022 and despite the fact that Arabic works represented just 1% of the library. And in 2022, the “top 20 labels” accounted for 88% of the service’s total streams.
Shifting to the usership side, Anghami acknowledged that active users had fallen materially during 2023, to 12.55 million from 18.76 million in 2022. That point “can be mainly attributed to our strategic emphasis on acquiring users with the greatest likelihood of conversion into paying subscribers,” according to the text.
Regarding subscribers, Anghami identified a slowing churn rate for December of 2023, when it had 1.73 million paid users (up 13.4% YoY). At March of 2024’s conclusion, that total had climbed to 1.87 million, up 18% YoY.
“2023 was a transformative year for Anghami,” co-founder and CEO Elie Habib communicated of the results. “We repositioned our business to boost margins and profitability and expanded our services in the region. We anticipate significant potential revenue growth following the OSN+ transaction.”
When trading ended today, ANGH was worth $1.10, up about 2% from 2024’s start but down roughly 25% from early May of 2023.
