Pandora listenership may be through the roof but the revenue stream does not seem to coincide with those numbers. After being with the popular internet brand more than nine years, Pandora CEO, President and Chairman Joe Kennedy has resigned, making the announcement during Pandora’s quarterly earnings call on Thursday. The company’s board of directors did’t hesitate to make it known that they were aggressively seeking new leadership.
They have formed a search committee to find a replacement and Kennedy will stay in his current role until the replacement is brought in. Although they are parting ways, Kennedy and Pandora chose to take the high road and they ended their relationship on a positive note, citing milestones like 67 million monthly active listeners and 70% market share. But most telling were the company’s revenue and income figures.
In fiscal 2013, Pandora totaled $427.1 million in revenue and $255.9 million in mobile revenue, with $125.1 million in revenue for the quarter that ended on January 31. While those numbers beat Wall Street expectations and represent record revenue for the company, it still wasn’t enough to push Pandora into profitability. On that $125 million in Q4 revenue, Pandora took a quarterly loss of $14.6 million (9 cents per share), which exceeds its year-ago quarterly loss of $8.5 million (5 cents per share) on revenue of $81 million.
Given the long string of losses, Pandora has been aggressively seeking ways to wring more cash from its subscribers, including limits on free listening and a fierce lobbying effort against royalty fees. Stay tuned because you never know where this is going to end up.
