Gaia reports higher income, continued loss

LOUISVILLE — Gaia Inc. (Nasdaq: GAIA), a conscious-media and community company, reported higher revenue, but with a continued loss, for the first quarter ended March 31.

The company recorded net revenue of $12.47 million, up 36 percent from $9.14 million in the same period a year ago. Gaia posted a loss of $6.73 million, compared with $6 million a year ago. Net loss from operations, however, declined to $6.4 million, down from $8 million in the first quarter of 2018.

“The first quarter of 2019 represented consistent execution on the plan to maintain revenue growth of 30 percent and reduce our operating expenses as a percentage of revenue to reach EBITDA profitability by the end of September 2019 as planned,” Paul Tarell, Gaia’s chief financial officer, said in a written statement.

Gaia’s paid-subscriber count increased to 562,000 on March 31, 2019, from 418,200 on March 31, 2018. Both numbers reflect the discontinuation of Gaia’s legacy Spiritual Cinema DVD club in the first quarter of 2019.

“We made meaningful progress on improving the ratio of our life time value to cost per acquisition over 3:1 during the quarter,” Jirka Rysavy, Gaia’s CEO, said in a written statement. “Last week we also announced the initial line-up of our live events to be held in our new event space on our campus.”

Among other highlights:

• Gross profit in the first quarter increased 36 percent to $10.9 million, compared with $8 million in the year-ago quarter.
• Total operating expenses in the first quarter increased to $17.3 million compared with $15.9 million in the year-ago quarter, primarily driven by increases in personnel-related costs over the past 12 months as Gaia scaled operations to support higher revenues.

As of March 31, 2019, Gaia reported that it had $22.3 million in cash. The company also refinanced its current line of credit on April 26, with the new financing increasing borrowing capacity by $17 million and extending the maturity from 2020 to 2022, with two one-year extension options.