B2B publisher Aspermont has said that the lifetime value of its brand’s subscriptions are now $45.5 million.
Headquartered in the UK, Aspermont publishes for the mining, agriculture, energy and technology sectors, and has offices in Australia, UK, Brazil, North America and the Philippines. In recent years, the company, which has a market capitalisation of $23 million, transitioned away from traditional print publications to focus on premium subscription-based print and digital content, and events.
The publicly listed company posted its 2019 Q3 year-to-date results yesterday, outlining a 15 per cent growth in revenue, and 20 per cent growth in gross profit compared to the 2018 Q3 YTD figures.
Breaking this down:
- Subscription revenue has increased by 9 per cent
- Event revenue increased by 85 per cent
- Digital ad revenue increased by 6 per cent
- Print ad revenue decreased by 2 per cent.
How is the $45.5 million subscriber lifetime value calculated?
The investor report states that as at June 2019, the number of subscriptions across Aspermont’s brands totalled 8,218 at an average value per unit of $908, providing Aspermont an annual contracted subscription value of $7.4 million.
Subscribers are listed as retaining their subscriptions for 6.1 years (calculated by 1/churn rate). Aspermont has multiplied the years of retention by $7.4 million to achieve the $45.5 million subscriber lifetime value.
However, Aspermont also states that the renewal rate of subscriptions is 84 per cent. Taking this into account, the lifetime value of Aspermont’s subscriptions is reduced to $37.9 million. Still an amazing result.
Subscription usage stats
Aspermont’s investor report states that digital users across its subscription products now exceeds 2.2 million (defined as users who initiated at least one web session over the 12 months to end June 2019), and over 5.2 million sessions.
How has Aspermont’s revenue diversified over time?
For the FY17, Aspermont reported that its $11.5 million revenue was achieved largely from traditional revenue sources:
- 47 per cent in traditional advertising
- 41 per cent from subscription revenue
- 8 per cent from its content marketing arm
- 1 per cent from job listings
- 1 per cent from research business.
In FY19, the company is predicting that it will achieve $16.6 million revenue from increasingly diversified sources:
- 22 per cent in traditional advertising
- 38 per cent from subscription revenue
- 19 per cent from content marketing (driven by the recent launch of its content agency, Content Works)
- 17 per cent from events
- 3 per cent from its research business
- 1 per cent from jobs.
Aspermont will also look into developing lead generation sponsored content, and training and education opportunities over this time.
What’s next?
Over the next five years, it expects high revenue growth in events, research business, lead generation and content marketing services. It also plans on launching “very high value” subscription products in data services across its sectors.
To view an interactive timeline of Aspermont’s product development since 2000, visit Aspermont’s website.
