Q3 2023 Dolphin Entertainment Inc Earnings Call
Participants
James Carbonara; IR; Hayden IR
Bill O'Dowd; Chairman & CEO; Dolphin Entertainment, Inc.
Mirta Negrini; CFO & COO; Dolphin Entertainment, Inc.
Allen Klee; Analyst; Maxim Group, LLC
Presentation
Operator
Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Dolphin Entertainment third quarter 2023 earnings call. (Operator Instructions) At this time, it is my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, James Carbonara, Investor Relations. Sir, the floor is yours.
James Carbonara
Thank you, operator. With me on the call are Bill O'Dowd, Chief Executive Officer, and Mirta Negrini, Chief Financial Officer. I'd like to begin the call by reading the Safe Harbor statement. This statement is made pursuant to the Safe Harbor statement for forward-looking statements described in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements made on this call with the exception of historical facts may be considered forward-looking statements within Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
Although, the company believes that expectations and assumptions reflected in these forward-looking statements are reasonable, it makes no assurances that such expectations will prove to have been correct. Actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements due to various risks and uncertainties.
For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those expressed or implied in the forward-looking statements, please see risk factors detailed in the company's annual report on Form 10-K, contained in subsequent filed reports on Form 10-Q, as well as in other reports that the company files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Any forward-looking statements included in this earnings call are made only as of the date of this call. We do not undertake any obligation to update or supplement any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent knowledge, events or circumstances.
Now I'd like to turn the call over to Bill O'Dowd, Chief Executive Officer of Dolphin Entertainment. Bill, please proceed.
Bill O'Dowd
Thanks, James, and hi, everyone. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today. As always, we'll start with a review of some financial and operating highlights, followed by a full financial review, and then open it up for Q&A.
So from a financial highlights perspective, revenue for Q3 was $10.2 million or an increase of 3% year-over-year. I'm very proud of the team at Dolphin, which achieved this increase in revenue despite enduring to prolonged industry-wide strikes and the distraction of an internal merger for essentially the entire quarter.
On the bottom line, our Q3 operating loss of $2.1 million includes approximately $1.2 million in non-cash charges. Thus, the cash operating loss was approximately $900,000. We believe if it were not for the impact of the two strikes and the one-time costs associated with the internal merger of our influencer marketing subsidiaries, Be Social and Socialyte to create The Digital Department, we would have achieved a cash operating profit in Q3, and that would have been without the benefit of Special Projects, which we acquired at the start of Q4.
Thus, going forward, once the industry resumes normal operations post strikes and with the addition of the revenues and profits of Special Projects, we expect to have consistent cash operating profits. The effects of the strikes will be felt into Q1 as many movies and TV series have already been pushed out of 2023 and into the spring and summer of next year. But make no mistake, the industry is excited to get back to work, and Dolphin has not been sitting idle. Quite contrary, as we have achieved the following highlights all since our last earnings call in the middle of August.
First, as I just mentioned, we created a market leading influencer marketing agency, The Digital Department by merging Be Social and Socialyte. Second, we hosted the grand opening of Midnight Theatre now open seven days a week and signed our multiyear partnership with blue-chip marketer MasterCard. And third, we completed our seven-year journey to build an entertainment marketing earned media super group with the acquisition of the best-in-class talent booking and celebrity live event firm, Special Projects.
We believe each of these as a catalyst for our company in its own right, and I'll spend a few words on each. And as an aside on a personal note, I can unequivocally say that this run post Labor Day has been the busiest period of my entire career, just one big ticket item after another.
Okay. So first, the merger of Be Social and Socialyte to create The Digital Department. I'll be brief on this topic since we alluded to it coming in September at length during our Q2 earnings call. The short-term pain of management distractions and both cash and intangible costs are all behind us now, and we've assembled a beautiful company that is a platform for us in the fastest growing area of marketing that we know.
The launch events we hosted for our talent and brand partners in New York and Los Angeles were nothing short of electric. The New York event was ideal or might add. The incoming calls to work with The Digital Department are exactly what we hoped for, and the excitement about its expansion prospects is palpable. There's just tremendous momentum both internally and externally around building what we think will be the flagship influencer marketing agency in the country out of the entertainment space.
Simply put, The Digital Department will be a strong growth catalyst amongst our core businesses as we add new verticals of expertise. Right now, we are market leaders in female-focused fashion, beauty, wellness, and lifestyle products, with Instagram as our major platform of choice. We have several well-known reality television personalities on our roster of more than 200 exclusive talents.
From this base, we plan to expand to include several new verticals such as sports, culinary, teens and young adults, reaching broader audiences on both TikTok and YouTube to complement Instagram. Just the sports vertical alone could in success, we believe, grow to be as big as our entire business today. Much more to come on this in the quarters ahead.
Next, I'll turn to the Midnight Theatre. As a reminder, Dolphin manages all aspects of publicity and marketing for Midnight Theatre and its restaurant, Hidden Leaf, while also facilitating talent and commercial relationships within the entertainment and culinary industries. Dolphin also holds a meaningful ownership stake in the venture. The headline here is our new multiyear partnership with Mastercard.
Obviously, this is the bluest of blue-chip partners for any performance venue. Guests will have the opportunity to partake in new immersive experiences, exclusive events, special discounts, all tailored exclusively for MasterCard cardholders. Moreover, the venue will now be known as MasterCard Midnight Theatre, with the financial industry powerhouses' name prominently featured.
We are confident that this long-term support from such a prominent player in the financial industry substantially elevates the intrinsic value of this cutting-edge destination. For anyone new to Dolphin, Midnight Theatre is located in Manhattan West in New York, between 9th and 10th avenues, the same streets between 31st and 33rd, like Penn Station or Madison Square Garden, just one avenue over. And it is inside Brookfield's $4.5 billion complex, the largest in Brookfield's history. We are the only entertainment venue there.
We have a theater and a restaurant on the same floor all under one roof, if you will. We went to seven days a week, four days after we merged the influencer agencies, and 11 days before we acquired Special Projects, with a full programming schedule and events throughout the fall. And we've already started booking 2024, which includes internationally renowned magician, Joshua Jay, who is bringing look closer, a new magic show to Midnight Theatre in February. He will be performing 16 shows, including 2 shows on Valentine's Day.
I'm going to highlight this particular show because of the quality of the performer who's looking to call Midnight Theatre home. So Joshua returns in New York City four years after its critically acclaimed show, Six Impossible Things, sold out its entire 18-month Off-Broadway run. As a magician, Joshua Jay has performed his original work on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show with James Corden, and even successfully fooled Penn & Teller on Fool Us.
I can hear James Carbonara multitasking and pulling up midnighttheatre.com to buy Valentine's Day tickets right now. Let's just say, I'm happy for Mira, his lovely wife, who doesn't have to plan it this year.
Okay. So now we're up to the acquisition of Special Project. This company is very special to all of us at Dolphin, since it represents the culmination of that seven-year journey to build our entertainment marketing super group. What began with the speech at LD Micro in December of 2016, and was followed by the acquisition of 42West on March 30, 2017, and the uplisting to Nasdaq in December of 2017, one year after the speech at LD Micro has now finished after buying one company a year since, with two in 2018, I should add. And it would be hard press to think of any company more strategic for our groups than Special Projects.
So first, on particulars. Special Projects was founded by Nicole Vecchiarelli and Andrea Oliveri, two former magazine editors who met working at Condé Nast. They have built the entertainment industries' go-to talent booking and celebrity curated live event company, period.
They have offices in both New York and Los Angeles, and simply handle a wide variety of signature events from the Wall Street Journal's innovator Awards held at the Met every year, with this year's honorees two weeks ago, including Martin Scorsese and Kylie Jenner among others, to the Motion Picture Academy Museum Gala at Los Angeles coming up in a few weeks and set to honor Meryl Streep, Oprah Winfrey, Sofia Coppola, Michael B Jordan, along with a few surprises. Too bad they couldn't get any big names, right?
Their client list is A-plus-plus from retainer clients like Apple and Chanel, the project-based clients like A24, Amazon, the Apollo Theater, Bumble, GQ, Louis Vuitton, Max Mara, Meta, Netflix, Stella McCartney, Versace, Yves Saint Laurent, and YouTube. Anyone who has heard our story before today knows that ideating and executing world-class events is a big part of Dolphin's future.
First, let's just take a look at our core business. Just with the business that our PR firms are already doing, we have so many opportunities for cross sell. Every movie or streaming series that 42West is promoting is a potential candidate for a premiere event handled by Special Projects. Every hotel or restaurant opening that the Door is promoting is a potential candidate for a launch event handled by Special Projects.
Every single or album drop that Shore Fire is promoting is an opportunity to create a release party handled by Special Project. Any consumer product being handled by any one of our PR firms is a potential beneficiary or sponsor of an event handled by Special Projects. So by the way, this is an immediately accretive acquisition for us.
Special projects is a very well-run profitable business with a great margin, and we think we can grow them very well in the next 12 -- 24 months with all the synergies I just mentioned. And when we look at Dolphin Ventures, we talk about receiving ownership stakes in exchange for our services and promoting three categories of assets: content, consumer products, and live events. Thus, ideating and executing world-class events is a big part of Dolphin's future, and adding Special Projects immediately catapults us into the industry leading position.
And needless to say, after hearing that client roster, the reputations and relationships of Andrea and Nicole in our industry are simply unmatched. So Andrea, Nicol, and Special Projects have finished our super group. I've talked about how to some, this may seem like it's a finish line. For us at Dolphin, we see it as the starting line. We now have our full team assembled. And by the way, eight acquisitions from only eight offers.
What does that tell you? We got our first choice of companies in every vertical of entertainment marketing We want to be in. We've assembled our dream team, now we're excited to show what we can do together. With these accomplishments, we believe Dolphin is in its strongest position in company history, with highly diversified revenue sources across seven operating subsidiaries and expectations of cash operating profits in 2024.
As we look ahead to next year, a landscape of promising opportunities with a Dolphin Entertainment and Dolphin Ventures awaits, beginning with the release of and the revenues from The Blue Angels, the first project in our multiyear agreement with IMAX. Also, we believe the aforementioned multiyear partnership with Mastercard at Midnight Theatre validates our investment by indicating the value placed on our venue by the market.
Both our IMAX partnership and our Midnight Theatre venue are just getting started. And each of them are ahead of other Dolphin Ventures that we are equally excited about and are working hard to realize in 2024. In short, we believe we've weathered the unique storm of this past summer and early fall.
Looking ahead, after successfully navigating these temporary headwinds and after our successful at-the-market raise, no discount, no warrants of two weeks ago, we find ourselves on stable footing and with the full amount of our targeted cash reserves. We are very confident in our sustainable path forward. We believe this sends a strong message to a current microcap market, which we expect will reward positive free cash flow, underlining our strategy for creating significant near-term shareholder value.
With that said, I'll turn it over to Mirta.
Mirta Negrini
Thank you, Bill, and good afternoon, everyone. I will now discuss results for the quarter ended September 30, 2023. Total revenue for the third quarter ended September 30, 2023, increased by 3% to $10.2 million compared to the third quarter ended September 30, 2022. Overall operating expenses for the three months ended September 30, 2023, were approximately $12.3 million compared to approximately $11 million for the three months ended September 30, 2022.
Operating expenses are composed of direct costs, payroll and benefits, selling general administrative expenses, acquisition costs, depreciation and amortization, impairment of intangible assets, and legal and professional fees. Direct costs for the quarter ended September 30, 2023, were $185,308 compared to $837,429 for the quarter ended September 30, 2022. Payroll costs were approximately $8.4 million in the third quarter of 2023, compared to $7 million in the third quarter of 2022. SG&A expenses were $2.1 million in Q3 of 2023, compared to $1.7 million in Q3 of last year. Legal and professional fees were $695,188 in Q3 of 2023, compared to $774,613 in Q3 of 2022.
Operating loss for Q3 of 2023 of $2.1 million includes the non-cash items of over $1.2 million. Net loss for Q3 of 2023 of $3.9 million includes non-cash items of approximately $2.4 million. The non-cash items included in operating losses consist of non-recurring $341,417 impairment of the trade names of the social and social light, upon combining to become The Digital Department.
$535,740 of depreciation and amortization and $311,578 of bad debt expense related to the write-up of our investment in Crafthouse Cocktails. Net loss for Q3 of 2023 also includes a non-recurring write-off of our investment in Crafthouse Cocktails of approximately $1.2 million reported under the caption, equity in losses of unconsolidated affiliates. This compares to an operating loss and net loss for the quarter ended September 30, 2022, of $1.1 million and $1.3 million, respectively, which include non-cash items from depreciation and amortization of $415,836.
Loss per share was $0.27 per share based on 14,121,275 weighted average shares outstanding for both basic loss per share and fully diluted loss per share for the three months ended September 30, 2023. Loss per share was $0.14 per share based on 9,664,681 weighted average shares outstanding for basic, and 9,793,715 weighted average shares outstanding on a fully diluted loss per share basis for the three months ended September 30, 2022.
Cash and cash equivalents of $6.4 million as of September 30, 2023, as compared to $6.1 million as of December 31, 2022, does not include an October 31, 2023, underwritten public offering of 1.4 million shares of our common stock at a price of $1.65 per share.
That concludes my financial remarks. I will now ask the operator to open the phone lines for Q&A. Operator, would you please poll for questions?
Question and Answer Session
Operator
(Operator Instructions)
Allen Klee, Maxim Group.
Allen Klee
Yes, hi, congratulations on all the positive events. I'd like to start with Blue Angels and the IMAX partnership. What's your best guess on when this goes into theaters? And how do you think about when you get paid for that and for Amazon, and then when you might consider the second movie that you do in partnership with them? Thank you.
Bill O'Dowd
Sure. Yeah, this is obviously a hot topic with folks that are following our story, because it's a great success story for us, The Blue Angels. We expect to have that in theaters, probably Q2, Allen. We expect to deliver the movie maybe even close to year end here, by probably Q1, early Q1. We recognize the revenue in Q1 then and would expect to receive the cash almost entirely by the end of Q1 or into Q2, if delivery occurs in January.
As I mentioned, the revenue is recognized upon delivery of the film or 90% of it is. So I think then as people knew the story might find of interest, we sold the film in what's called the second window, meaning after it's in theaters with IMAX, it will go on Amazon Prime. And we expect it to generate more than a 75% return on investment for us just from sales we've already made. So that doesn't count any revenue share from the ticket sales in IMAX theaters or any theaters. So it was a home run first project in our slate with multi-year slate with IMAX.
In terms of the second project in that slate, actively being discussed right now, I think I may have mentioned on our last earnings call, we hoped to have an announcement to make before the end of this year, but it may trickle into the first quarter, just because it's hard to follow up a mega hit like that. We're actively looking for one that we can be in production on next year.
Allen Klee
Okay. Thank you. So here's a question that somebody asked me to ask you, so I ask it out before I forget. You make a bunch of announcements of your various firms, their clients winning awards, and the question is do you get paid more when one of your clients wins an award?
Bill O'Dowd
Yes, and that's one of the reasons why we do it. We frame it as we are congratulating our subsidiary or are congratulating the clients as they deserve to be congratulated, when you handle 25 Grammy nominations or 99 Emmy nominations, whatever, but or however, many Oscar nominations we'll have. But the benefit of that also is that typically how awards campaigns work is that you get paid a retainer each month while you're running the campaign.
And often times, in certain industries, you get bonused upon receiving a nomination at all and by the way, then it extends your run, right, because if you're nominated, you keep the monthly retainer through the award ceremony. So you might have gone from a three-month campaign to see if you get a nomination to another three months after until the award ceremony, for example, or whatever it might be.
You also get a -- especially, in the case of the Oscars, you typically get a nice reward bonus, if you're nominee wins in its category. And those bonuses are typically from -- can range from mid to high five figures each. And in rare cases, maybe you get a six-figure bonus for a win. So those are nice to have in our industry for sure, and it could add up quite a bit.
Allen Klee
That's very informative, thank you. So you said that you expect to get when the industry resumes to normal operations post-strike, you expect to be cash flow positive. Is a reasonable time to think about that being best guess today is second quarter '24?
Bill O'Dowd
I think so, that seems conservative and nice for us. I mean, with the strike ending in -- the actor strike, which is one that impacted us the most, right, and you say how well, of course -- the two ways that it impacts us the most would be certain talent don't -- they're not allowed to promote strikes. Personal publicity takes -- if you don't have something other than filmed entertainment to promote, you would go on what's called hiatus, pause, your publicity work.
But then secondly, many movies just pushed out of the quarter. Now we've got arguably the biggest movie in theaters, right, traditional movie, Killers of the Flower Moon, Martin Scorsese movie with the DiCaprio and De Niro. And that studio decided to push forward with the release, despite not having to DiCaprio and De Niro be able to promote it. But many movies, the majority of movies chose to push into next year. So after the Marvels, and I think Disney might have one more, yeah, they have Wish coming out in a couple of weeks.
Disney, for example, is pausing or it has a gap, I should say, in the release slate of seven months, I think. So their next movie will hit theaters next summer. So of course, we don't need the movie to be in theaters, we start promoting beforehand. But I would think that with strikes over now, they'll impact us here obviously in the fourth quarter and into the first quarter. But we will be resume -- we will resume the normal operations at some point before the end of first quarter, we were hoping that Q2 will be a normal quarter for us.
I think the cash profit -- cash operating profit, we were very proud of the fact that we built the team that would have done it anyway. But then with Special Projects, that certainly helps. I think the hesitation you're hearing in my voice is what will Q1 looks like. It's always our weakest quarter and Q4 is always our strongest quarter. So it's hard to gauge today, because it is a riddle that would only best be answered if we knew how the strikes will linger into Q1.
Right now, before the strike settle, there were only three theatrical releases on a wide basis, the entire month of January. Everybody was pushing out of it because they didn't know if they would have actors to promote. Now some of those movies are going to come back in. But it's a -- it could be a ramp up period in Q1 that I just don't know the answer to, if we can be cash positive in Q1, but we would expect to be by Q2 and going forward.
Allen Klee
That's great, thank you. So for your social influencing businesses that you combined, you've said in the past, that's around a quarter of your revenue. But then there's opportunities to grow that very significantly you said, as you add new verticals. How do you think about the timing of building out these new verticals?
Bill O'Dowd
That's very near term, Allen. We put -- just like we acquired Socialyte, and we announced it on this call last year, right, the Q3 earnings call date, November 14, I think, it was also last year. And we, with the eye towards the merger, right, that we were going to combine New York and LA to create a -- we didn't know the name at the time, but The Digital Department.
We handled that merger with the eye towards having the scale and size of a company to build these other verticals. That was a big factor in the merger. And so we've been, just like we've been working last few months towards a merger before, it came about we have got -- we feel very strongly about the work we've put in the last few weeks and months to have these other verticals in -- that we'd be announcing a new year for The Digital Department. And we're particularly excited -- we're excited about them all, but obviously, sports represent such a huge area for us and growth area for Digital Department for sure.
Allen Klee
Thank you. For Midnight Theatre, how should we think about the impact of the MasterCard partnerships?
Bill O'Dowd
Well, it's certainly, from a financial standpoint, it buffers the investment, right? I mean, so multiyear deal with increases every year, and it is -- we're very pleased with the outcome. And then on an operational level, you've got a partner that both brings events to the space, brings awareness -- their own events, I mean, brings awareness to the space, and has a marketing engine behind it. So the theatre is off to a strong start after the grand opening.
Q4 is always good too, because a lot of the private events business with the holiday season. But it's nice as you go into the slow business of Q1. So it kind of mirrors some of our companies in that way, when you have a partner like that that can bring events during the dead of winter. It's just very strong for our business.
And as I mentioned on the earnings call, I mean, these types of things may somewhat get taken for granted, because of some of the blue-chip clients we have with our entertainment marketing companies. But in a venue like this and in a investment like this, this is as far from normal. This is 150 seat, granted, state-of-the-art Bridie theater in a beautiful $4.5 billion complex. But at the end of the day, everyone, just think of your own hometown. If you are from New York, think of all the entertainment venues of that size you've been to. Joe's Pub to 54 Below to wherever you may be thinking of, right?
Now ask you to take five seconds and just think of which of those venues have a sponsor. Now if you can name one has the same size with any sponsor, and that could be like Joe's oil change, all right, and then you think about MasterCard, and the deal done with the global CMO of MasterCard. I think it validates our venue, it validates its presence in New York City, and I think you can imagine that there's excitement about what we will be doing in the future with that space and that brand.
Allen Klee
Is there a kind of a goal for how many private events you would like to do a month?
Bill O'Dowd
Yeah, we have a goal. In terms of full venue buyouts, in a perfect world, you're doing -- you could do one a week and not disrupt your programming enough, right? And when I say, full venue, that means a client is taking over both the theater and the restaurant. Now in terms of just either the lounge buyout or private dining room buyout or even a restaurant buyout, you could do those maybe -- you don't want to do it more frequently than a couple of times a week for a restaurant buyout.
But I think that one to two times a week for the larger buyouts in terms of the lounge or the happy hours or the private dining room, we can do that every day. And sometimes, it feels like we do. And of course, you only do buyouts if the money you're receiving is significantly above what you could just do if you operated it, right? So they're lucrative for us, and we'd like to do as many as we can responsibly.
Allen Klee
That's great. Okay. And then on Special Projects. It sounded like this could be -- you haven't provided the financial breakout of it, in terms of what its revenues is. I don't think -- you did discuss how much you paid for it. But it sounds like, with the synergies, this could be -- that the revenues could be maybe significantly more than what it has been historically? Is that kind of a way to think about it?
Bill O'Dowd
Yeah, and the profit. This is a -- I don't want to give a wrong connotation here. This is a well-run, very profitable, high margin business as it is, period. And like I said, it's immediately accretive for us, and we'll announce those financials in about 74 days after the acquisition, we'll file the 8-K. So it's not me dodging and I can't get ahead of our filing, right?
But with that said, it's already well-run, like I mentioned. But I was trying to make the point in my prepared remarks, you can see how seamless this type of company and this particular company is within the group we've already built. In a perfect world, we wanted to buy those PR firms first, which we largely accomplished and then add influencer marketing. I think I called that the peanut butter and jelly of earned media on past calls.
Those are the twin pillars, if you will, PR and influencer marketing to create awareness and reach. And then the live event company, we always did want to bring in the last, because the PR firms and quite frankly, the influencer marketing, can refer so much business to them. And so it would be a shame to have the live event company first, and you're waiting to buy the PR firms, right? But then in terms of Dolphin Ventures, the live events company, Special Projects is highly strategic.
We bought three PR firms, we bought two influencer marketing agencies, and we have one live event company, and we don't need another, because there are on both coasts. They are already the market leader, they are already the most established brand in talent booking and celebrity live events, which is our wheelhouse, of course. And with them, we instantly in ideate anything involving celebrities or influencers and with a curated editorial sensibility.
And we have immediate credibility with any media partner. I mean, they're already ideating and executing for Wall Street Journal, for Condé Nast, for W Magazine, for Bustle Digital Group, right? They come from that world. So now all of a sudden, you've got PR firms, influencer marketing, publishing to promote an event that we could either ideate or take an ownership stake in for all that superpower, and you can bring the celebrities there.
So, it's all great to give award ceremonies, but if you can't get somebody to show up to receive the award, it is not much of a very sponsorable event, right? So they do it at the very highest level. And obviously, these are major brand name type events, with major celebrities attending. And they put all of that together.
So last year's Academy Museum Gala that has George Clooney and Julia Roberts up there, and that had Hailey Bieber and Selena Gomez and all sharing table in the photo that broke the Internet, that's all of them. They bring the celebrities, they do the seating charts, they organize the panels, they put everybody up there. So they're very well regarded as the industry, and we're blessed to have them, and they complete super group.
Allen Klee
Thank you. In your business, where you take positions in content or consumer products, part of the longer-term strategy is -- for some of them, you're basically getting the equity for free. And then over time, you can get payouts on that. Do you think it's reasonable to think that maybe some of them might payout in '24?
Bill O'Dowd
Well, yeah, you're referencing are we get or we take or receive ownership stakes in products or companies in exchange -- for impartial exchange for our services. We love that model where we get cash. We had some cash every month as a retainer, but we also get equity 5%, 7%, out of 10% of the product or service in exchange for the firepower, the super group. It works especially well when the marketing is as valuables as the quality of the product itself. So think industries like liquor, beauty, cosmetics, wellness products, getting people aware of the product and maybe even endorsed from an entertainment figure, either celebrity or influencers, is gold in these days of promotion.
So yeah, we love that model and we put up no capital, as you said, Allen. Will we have some exits in 2024? That may happen near the second half of the year, depending on where a couple of land. But I think what we see, now that we have the group finished as using a year or so, to build a slate of those. We've already got a couple, as you mentioned, and then start rolling exits out as we add new into the slate every year, we will hopefully roll out a successful exit. And there are some very successful exits we can all think of using either celebrity front a product or influencer front of product in the marketplace, and we expect to have one or two of those ourselves in the next few years, we hope.
Allen Klee
Okay, fantastic, that's my questions. Thank you so much.
Bill O'Dowd
Yeah, thank you, Allen.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) There appear to be no further questions at this time. I'll turn the floor back to Bill O'Dowd for closing remarks.
Bill O'Dowd
Okay, great. Well, thank you very much, and that was getting slipped in the notes. It was or one question from Tim Regan or is that polled?
Operator
Okay, he had been in the queue, but then he must have removed himself.
Bill O'Dowd
Okay. Maybe I answered this other questions too. Thank you very much.
Operator
You are welcome.
Bill O'Dowd
Well, of course, Karen.
Thank you, everybody, for listening today. I know this is the entry into the longest stretch of the earnings call seasons, where we go from November 14 all the way to March 31, without having scheduled earnings call or the end of March, whatever filing date. We will try and continue with almost weekly press releases to let you know how each of the subsidiaries are operating.
We would hope to have some of the bigger announcements like a MasterCard sponsorship or something equally exciting, the merger of our companies between now and then, of course, and have a couple of those, and we'll trying to call those out to pay particular attention to, especially if it involves any of the ventures or receiving ownership stakes in some of those. We have a couple on cusp.
And I thank everyone who's been a part of the journey, especially, for those ones who were in the room in December of 2016 at LD Micro, when the idea of the group was presented before we bought the first one, 42West, three months later. So thank you for those who've been with us since the beginning. And thank you for those who have just heard about us and joined in the last month or so. It's been a fun ride. And as I said, we think we're now firmly at the starting line with the full group intact, so we're excited to see what's going to happen next.
Thank you, guys, for the time today, and we'll look forward to speaking again in March.
Operator
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude today's Dolphin Entertainment earnings call. We thank you for your participation. You may disconnect at this and have a great day.
