22
Affiliate Monitor Company by company Q1 results analysis
He added that “ historically ” Catena has been positioned to take advantage of new state launches and while the company did enjoy the benefits of North Carolina getting across the line in the first quarter , it was still a smaller opportunity than Ohio and Massachusetts which both occurred in the prior year period .
But Cadena remained optimistic . “ Despite the activity of state launches in recent years , there is still an exciting opportunity ahead as it relates to future legislation ,” he told the analysts . But he did warn that with no further launches expected in the rest of this year , patience would be needed .
“ We cannot rely on state launches to be the only driver of our growth in the upcoming quarters ,” he added . “ We will be focusing our efforts to get more out of our existing products .”
CHANGING THE GUARD
Alongside the change at the top , Cadena , who will be taking on the role of chief operating officer once Stan takes over as CEO , said the company was continuing to strengthen the management team in “ key functional areas ”.
“ This focus must go beyond the executive leadership team ,” he added . “ We must have leaders and operators across our extended management team to help the passion , knowledge and capabilities to execute and thrive in our product-led operating models .”
Chart 13 : Catena Media NDCs QoQ variation Q222-Q124 (%)
40 30 20 10 0 -10 -20 -30 -40 -50 -60 -70
-21
-14
-28
Q222 Q322 Q422 Q123 Q223 Q323 Q423 Q124
Source : company reports
At its centre there would be an increased emphasis on “ best-inclass data reporting and business intelligence functions ” alongside a new in-house developed platform .
“ We ’ ll be able to efficiently
-34
serve ads and other monetisation
“ We cannot rely on state launches to be the only driver of our growth in the upcoming quarters ”
PIERRE CADENA , CATENA MEDIA
-56
-10
-29
features and deploy call to action
29
across our sites via a single platform . In subsequent quarters , the platform will continue to evolve as our product and engineering teams introduce additional features and functionality .”
This includes work on the AIassisted platform spoken about by departing CEO Michael Daly . Cadena said the company had successfully launched the MVP version of the AI platform in the first quarter , and at the time of the call , the company was in the eighth week of the “ go-to-market plan ”.
“ It ’ s still early , of course , but we are seeing healthy leading indicators for site sustainability , content creation efficiency and SEO metrics ,” he said .
Meanwhile he noted that Catena was in the process of rolling out a sub-affiliation platform which he said would help accelerate efforts to reach a “ new cohort of sports iGB Affiliate Monitor