Thunderbird Entertainment Group Inc. (TBRD.V) Earnings Call Transcript

The discussions today going to be led by CEO, Jennifer McCarron, who is also joined by CFO, Simon Bodymore. We'll break for questions at the end of the formal presentation. When we do break, we encourage questions. As a reminder, we're only taking questions through the web portal. If you're listening over the phone, please access the web link that we sent early today to ask a question. You could submit a question using the text box within the portal at any time. I'll ask the questions on the air for everyone to hear and Jennifer and Simon will then answer. I'm not going to reference any names, but simply read the questions asked. And as we have a very large audience today, if I can't get to your question online in time and has not yet been addressed during the call and can be. I'll come back to you by e-mail. I'm not going to read the forward-looking statements, but I do state that they apply, and I reference them on Page 2 of this presentation. With that said, once again, thank you for joining us. We do encourage questions to help you better understand the business and its growth path. And now I'll turn the call over to Jennifer to start her part of the discussion and presentation.

Thank you so much, Glen, and thank you all for joining our webinar Thunderbird Entertainment. We are a high-quality global content company. We create, own and distribute award-winning factual, animated and scripted content worldwide. We're well on our way to becoming the next major global studio and have over 250 partnerships such as Netflix, HBO Max, Apple, Disney, Discovery Channel, NBC, Universal and many more. We'll skip through the forward-looking statements now and head into our company overview. Our mission is to create content that makes the world a better place, makes people happy and provides a much needed escape. Content remains king, and it's here to stay. I think if we go back 1 slide, Simon, we can see some of our amazing work with LEGO, where we've handled LEGO Star Wars, LEGO Marvel Avengers, LEGO Marvel Spiderman, LEGO Pixar to name a few and we've enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with LEGO with work planned for many years to come. On to the next slide, our executive summary. We were founded in 2003 with the mission of creating libraries to lift and fund IP exploitation and create major global brands. We're micro-cap company with a fiscal year '24 year-end revenue of $165.3 million, and we've exceeded our fiscal year '24 guidance by 30%, with an increase to adjusted EBITDA to $16.7 million. We carry no corporate debt and have always maintained a positive cash flow. You can think of us as an IP conversion platform with incredible service production wing where we handle major global brands like Spiderman and provide great cash flow to continue to invest in the long-term growth, value and prominence of Thunderbird. Canadian brands like Peppa Pig and PJ Masks sold for billions of dollars. And you can see the power of older brands in the market like Paddington, converting to be supercharged. We keep hitting singles and eventually we're going to get that grand slam. In 2014, Great Pacific Media was acquired and in 2016 Atomic Cartoons and our mission remains very much alive today as our major global brands delight audiences around the world, and we're increasing our footprint into ancillary businesses like distribution, games, consumer products and toys. Our service and IP production site continued to grow with Thunderbird working alongside all the major players keeping quality as our North Star. And as buyers look to commission more quality over quantity, increasingly Thunderbird with our high-quality reputation and huge benefits of being a Canadian domicile studio is the destination of choice. Not to mention our recently announced increase to B.C. tax credits, which Simon, I'm sure we'll get into later, but those are effective January 1. Thunderbird recognitions in the last year include the company being nominated Playback's Indie List 2024, 5 Leo Awards, a Canadian Screen Award and as well as we placed third on the annual Hot Kidscreen 50 that was Atomic in the top 10 production companies in the world and the company ranked #360 on The Globe and Mail's annual list marking a 3-year revenue growth of 105% for top growing companies. Going on to our next slide, our executive team. We're all highly operational and are doubling down on the health of the business while constantly looking for future strategic growth opportunities that will add meaningful value to our shareholders. The 2 main drivers of our company, as I noted, are Atomic Cartoons our Kids and Family division, and Great Pacific Media our factual division. We're uniquely positioned in that both factual and animation, are the cornerstone of each buyer strategy to glue that key co-viewing audience, which is essentially families gathering at home to watch content together. This is known as the stickiest of all demographics as people are less likely to subscribe and insubscribe when kids and family are glued. Our award-winning team of over 1,000 artists is based in Los Angeles, Vancouver, Ottawa and Toronto. Again, our strategic priorities include growing key brands, investing in owned IP and expanding and deliver consistent service revenue from returning in new series. Moving on, we'll take a closer look at our divisions. At Atomic Cartoons, we produce high-end content across multiple 2D and 3D pipelines and genres spanning preschool, comedy, action adventure, adult and everything in between. Some of the titles you recognize are Spiderman, Ironman, My Little Pony, Rick and Morty work we've done, Young Love, CoComelon just to name a few. Partner managed shows like Dr. Seuss library we are handling for Netflix, Red Fish, Blue Fish or we also embark on co-hosts like the highly successful Molly of Denali, which also won the coveted Truth and Reconciliation Award for our company, which we're so proud of. We have a solid mix of service and IP with an eye to increase IP ownership. Having recently greenlit Mermicorno: Starfall, which you'll see on the screen here, Super Team Canada, [ Rocket Monkeys ] and The Day You Begin. Our owned IP provides ancillary revenue opportunities like toys, video games, merchandise, music and more. Increasingly, we are moving into the digital world as well with presence on YouTube, Roblox, TikTok and more. Our work is highly sought after as evidenced by handling these major global brands like Donald Duck, 101 Dalmatian, Spiderman, Trolls, Ironman the list goes on and when you do an amazing job handling service, it's that much easier to turn around and sell your own IP. Moving on to our unscripted division, Great Pacific Media. We are a global leader in unscripted television widely considered the best-in-class, leading stats in ratings and renewals in Canada. We generate almost all our own IP at Great Pacific and it's developed by award-winning content creators with an eye for diverse entertainment across genres with authenticity and aspiration, which is befitting for our Canadian TVs. New IP recently announced or shows like Timber Titans for Discovery and the weather channel, Wild Rose Vets style for HGTV and Hulu, just renewed season 2 of Deadman's Curse for history in Hulu, also renewed into Season 2 and Season 3, which is airing. So we've got a lot of repeat work, which is fantastic and constantly launching new IP. Highway Thru Hell, which is here, that's Jamie Davis, is going into its 13th season and it will hit the incredible milestone of 200 episodes was delivered in 2024, which is huge. We're also expanding our footprint into U.S. service unscripted with some very, very cool high-end announcements coming soon. Moving on to our scripted slide. This is also handled under our Great Pacific Media division and the further expansion into live auction scripted will build out the third key content vertical on Thunderbird's path to becoming a major global studio while adding value to our existing library. Great Pacific Media president Lindsay Macadam heads our scripted operations, working with Hillary Zwick Turner, our SVP of scripted content in L.A. Two fine best-in-class creators and hone in on new exciting projects in scripted live action across adult, young adult and family spaces. I am beyond thrilled to announce that we actually have a bonafide hit on our hands with Sidelined: The QB and Me a Tubi original film, staring Social media star Noah Beck, James Van Der Beek from Dawson's Creek fame, [ Franklin listening ] and Netflix star Siena Agudong, which debuted over the American Thanksgiving weekend. It was confirmed by Tubi just last week as being the #1 movie in Canada and the U.S. on the AVOD. And in its first 7 days, Sidelined was viewed by almost 18% of total viewers in the U.S. and almost 20% of total viewers in Canada. It also landed at #5 on Variety streaming originals chart for the week of December 6. Additionally, the movie boosted Tubi to the #1 spot in entertainment's top free apps leading to a correlated lift in Apple App Store downloads last week by over 240% in U.S. and 400% in Canada, which is incredible. So congrats to the whole team. Getting best possible early indicators of the success of this division, we've already placed 2 shows in active development with major U.S. networks and have begun network negotiations on a third. Moving on to our Consumer Products and Distribution division. In '22 and '23, we saw the official introduction of Thunderbird Distribution and Thunderbird Brands, respectively, to the industry and potential content buyers and merchandising partners. It's headed up by Richard Goldsmith, who we saw on our executive slide, who joined us in 2021. And it shows the strides we've made in exploiting our own IP and merchandising and select third-party properties. Owning our own IP and media distribution and merchandising rights two IP properties means more control in building, exploiting and profiting from brands. Last year, we announced Jazwares as the major global toy distributor and licensee for Mermicorno: Starfall, which is our owned IP based on the hugely popular lifestyle and collectibles brand Tokidoki, this will launch early in 2025. And additionally, we'll see playsets, plush, Squishmallows, other toys, books, Roblox games, you name it, personal care, slippers, anything you can think of. In 2022, we acquired the merchandising rights for third-party IP like Mittens & Pants. It's cleared green lit for more seasons, and we've sold more than 50 territories with sales to major broadcasters like France TV, Warner Bros, Discovery, Peacock, Tubi, Roku, this is just illustrating the power of these brands. It's a very chaotic series that's developing a social media presence and the inventive mixed-media is currently rated at the top show on the commissioning platform, Sky in the U.K. And in September, we announced our latest third-party property BeddyByes, and the beautiful CG Series for young preschoolers. The third-party IP like Mittens & Pants, BooSnoo!, which is another one, and BeddyByes allows us to build and exploit our IP library. With new alliances with toy companies like Jazwares that I mentioned, digital game producers like Outright Games and publishing companies to be announced, again, we're further able to leverage our IP and content into the world of consumer products in several categories and retail challenges, which will open up new and lucrative revenue streams for the company. Heading on to the next slide, we do attract outstanding partners. This is just a sampling of everyone we work with and more. And we've been really careful over the years to maintain great relationships with all of our buyers not putting all of our eggs in any one basket. Essentially, we're in over 200 territories in 40 different languages. So the power of content is real, and we reach a lot of homes. Going to the next slide. Recent sales and owned IP. This is just a slide illustrating the success we've had in launching our own IP and our strength as an IP conversion platform, monetizing our owned IP into all forms of cross-media exploitation. Overall Thunderbird continues to grow and shine as we move into the next generation of major global media companies. Now I will pass it over to our CFO, Simon to delve more in detail into the financial and business models for our company.

Thanks, Jen. All right. So let's start off with just a quick overview of the different types of revenue that you'll see and the different types of things we do. When you really simplify things, we have a couple of buckets that you can look at, and it's IP and service. So as Jen mentioned, we've got some really great IP titles that we've developed over the years, but we do IP across all genres, so we do animated IP, unscripted IP, scripted IP, and then we purchase third-party IP, which we can leverage. The great piece about the IP ownership is that you have the rights to do whatever you want with it over the long term. So you develop it or you purchase it upfront, but then you get to just control what happens to it for many, many years to come. It's the gift that keeps on giving in this world. And it's something that, over the last few years, we have been very selectively investing in to kind of continue building up that library and we focus on real high-quality titles. We don't go for a mass IP library approach. We go for quality titles that we know we can leverage over many years. Saying that, the bread and butter of our business has been the service side. If you look at our revenue for last year out of the $165 million that we recognize, about 80% of that came from service work, mostly on the animation side. We do some services on the Great Pacific Media side as well, but the animation services business is this great kind of base of revenue that allows us to then take the cash flow from that and invest in IP production. It's completely cash flow by our customers, very low risk to us. We have to set budgets upfront, agree terms with the customer and then just execute and it is cash flow by the customer as we go. And one of the great things here is that it really allows us to demonstrate the quality of our work, the quality of our teams and really demonstrate that we can look after some of the biggest brands in the world. And by doing that, it gives us the ability to then go out and sell our own IP a lot easier because we can prove that we are allowed to steward and shepherd these amazing brands for big entities. And then on the right-hand side of the screen here, you see a reference to what we call partner managed. This is service work, but it's additional kind of responsibility where some of our customers will ask us to take over the entire production. They'll ask us to do some of the writing, they'll ask us to go all the way through from start to finish on a product. So again, fully cash flowed by our customers, but it gives us a little bit more responsibility for the production. And again, it's a great way for us to demonstrate the skills of our team, our ability and also home the skills to our team so that when it comes to producing our own IP, we can stand up proud and go. We know what we can achieve. From a financial standpoint, we're a really strong company. Anyone that's paid any attention to this industry over the last couple of years, will have seen it. It has not been an easy place to do business. Going back several years, you have this concept of kind of peak TV where all the buyers were buying as much content as they could as quickly as they could and then they changed and kind of started scaling back. So you've seen a lot of companies over the past couple of years really struggle to maintain growth rates. And we have managed to stay steady in a very tough market, which is something we're incredibly proud of. Now part of this is our service business that allows us to really just see longer-term and plan longer term. Our contracts are generally 18 months to 2 years plus. We have great visibility going forward. It's steady cash flow. It's really allowed us to kind of maintain the size of the studio and just weather the storm that other companies have seen within the revenue numbers there, especially between 2023 and 2024, you would see that the percentage of revenue we took increased slightly in 2024 to more service type work by a couple of percent. But that really just demonstrates, a, the quality of our own IP that we put out because our IP business has -- is pretty much stayed as flat as you can get in this market, and our service business is still growing. When you look on the right-hand side, the adjusted EBITDA, like every company in the industry, we took a bit of hit in 2023, but we're very, very quick to react. Back in around November 2023, we took some steps to really look at the staff we have, the structure we have as a team, the cost base, and we made some difficult decisions, and we cut back our costs with an eye to getting back on a stronger financial footing from a profitability standpoint. We made steps to eliminate about $3 million out of our cost base and those costs are permanent reductions. So we saw back in 2024, a return to growth on the EBITDA front. And we're guiding to see continued growth on that front as we move through 2025. Our current guidance that we put out with our last quarterly earnings is for 20% revenue growth in fiscal 2025 and 10% plus in EBITDA growth for the same period. There's a slight disconnect there between the growth rates because we're being creative and looking at different kinds of work. On the unscripted and scripted side, we're actually experimenting with some production services work on scripted projects, unscripted projects as well as some reality TV. And that comes at a slightly lower margin, but what it has done is it's allowed us to gain exposure to a different buyer set that we haven't maybe experienced before as well as demonstrate the quality of our work to a new audience. So I think while on the face of it, it doesn't look great that the EBITDA growth isn't as high as the revenue growth. We're incredibly proud because we think that long term, this opens up new areas of the business for us. We recently released the results of our first quarter, our first fiscal quarter 2025, and they were really good. We were very happy with them, right on plan. We showed revenue growth of 36%, predominantly because of a couple of production services engagements that we've done and our EBITDA growth is 64% higher than the same period last year really is the impact of those cost reductions kicks in. Now I have to caution, look back at our guidance, our full year guidance, 20% revenue growth and 10% plus on EBITDA growth. So unfortunately, we won't see 64% growth in EBITDA every quarter this year, but a phenomenal start to the year from our perspective and just shows that we're executing on our plan. Now Jen mentioned previously, tax incentives. This is one of the key things that's so valuable to us as a company, and it's one of the things that really gets our customers coming to us. We are able to take part in a number of different federal and provincial schemes that the government in Canada offers. This is actually out of date, but I left it in because it's factual as of today, and I'm very particular on that. So we can get up to 35% taxes today on a tax rebate back on the costs we incur on servicing our customers. When we're creating our own IP, there are multiple buckets that we can dig into that means we can get a similar amount back in cash taxes basically. Starting in January of next year, these numbers go up. So the 35% has scope to go up by 6% to further allow us to kind of be competitive against other people, other firms from around the world. This truly is something where the Canadian government gets behind companies that create content in Canada, and it's something that really, really puts us in such a strong position when facing competition from outside of Canada. On top of that, the Canadian government has put in place some new rules. So $200 million a year has to be followed into creating Canadian content and that's going to be paid for by anyone that broadcast into Canada. We haven't seen a direct correlation to any specific piece of new work yet, but it does mean there's going to be more business coming to Canada and more Canadian production. So all in all, this is a very, very well supported industry in Canada, and one that we take absolute advantage of in every opportunity. Looking at our balance sheet, it's very clean. No corporate debt, strong cash balances, strong working capital, really just a nice clean balance sheet. We take pride in making sure that we are good stewards of the company. We don't overleverage ourselves to do things. We make sure that when we go into IP creation, we have a finance plan that shows that it will be profitable. We're a very measured company that looks after its investors' money. We've got strong free cash flow so far this year, $9 million in the first quarter, and we expect to continue on the same track with kind of responsible investments as we go. From a kind of share structure perspective, we've got just under 50 million shares outstanding and a couple of million options. We were last trading when this deck was put together at CAD 1.88 giving us a market cap of just under $100 million, very much undervalued when you look at the market cap relative to the earnings and the earnings growth that we're forecasting, definitely a strong capital structure here. And at that point, I think we will pass over to questions.

Super. Thanks, Simon. Thanks, Jennifer. [Operator Instructions] We do have quite a few questions in the queue already. So I'll just get going. So first question, with a variety of genres within factual and scripted TV animation, how do you determine or evaluate which projects to prioritize?

Yes, it's a great question. Right now, we're seeing what's moving in the marketplace with this brands with some notoriety around them. So we do that. We also use data analytics wherever possible, certain companies to help us predict market trends, book scouts, we've talked to librarians. So we're constantly getting data in terms of what is going to sell and repositioning our slate will have anywhere from 25 projects in any given division shuffling those to put forward what we think has the best chance of lifting. It's a great question.

Many of your clients such as Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. are also content creators. How does the ecosystem work? How do you balance partnerships and competition as it makes sense with these companies while positioning yourself as a global studio with its own IP seeing they have a much larger budgets and global reach.

Yes. So those companies have used us for service work over the years, shows like Spiderman, Ironman. We're doing Red Fish, Blue Fish for Netflix right now. So we're also positioned in Vancouver, which is a 2-hour flight, no time change, great tax credits, as Simon went over. It's so much more cost effective to do shows here with amazing talent. We work with them on so many different levels. They also need IP from different sources, all of them. So they're not just developing their own IP, they're going to third-party IP developers like Thunderbird. So we have a real competitive advantage to not only service their brands, but lift and sell our own IP because great talent, same time zone, better price point, we can put more on the screen. It is hard to say no to us in that regard.

Okay. What do you consider your key competitive advantages in the global content creation market? And how do you plan to maintain or enhance these advantages?

I'd say talent is a huge one. We have talent that's joined us from Pixar, National Geographic all around the world. We also have fantastic, as I mentioned, tax credits, our location is amazing. Same time zone to our flight again. So the competitive advantage is we can put more on the screen and we can deliver at the same high-quality price point. So when you look at that, you get a better budget, same quality, and it's really hard to say no to that -- a weak Canadian dollar.

Are there any plans to expand into new markets or platforms? And what are the potential challenges and opportunities you foresee in these expansions?

Absolutely. We're constantly thinking we need to fish for the fish hours. So where are people watching content. People increasingly like it in smaller digestible bite-sized bits. So we are working with companies to help us monetize content launching in TikTok, Roblox, YouTube, whatnot. So there's some exciting work going on there. In terms of other genres, sports is huge. We do a lot of sports documentaries. We're looking at other avenues to get into that, different geographical locations, where streamers need to go to increase subscriptions. If we have a footprint in those places a trusted provider on the same time zone managing it. There's really a lot of opportunity for us. And we always go to that 500,000 foot view that content is here to stay. It's not going away. And we increasingly are seen as the dominant player, at least in Canada, which offers so many advantages.

And speaking -- staying on the content theme, are there any plans to develop content specific to certain regions and appeal to local audiences such as higher growth -- such as high growth regions like Asia Pacific, Latin America or other regions?

Absolutely, those conversations are underway because there's a hugely untapped market as well for our buyers. They have the ability to expand and grow in those regions, increase subscribers. Doing that alongside trusted providers like us who have a proven ability to lift, fund, monetize IP, also do incredibly successful builds. Absolutely, those conversations are underway, and it leads to huge possibilities for us down the road.

Are there any additional -- or is there any additional value add from the production division aside from increase in revenues and contribution to the bottom line?

100% because when we handle major global brands like Ironman, Spiderman, Star Wars working with Lucasfilm. And we absolutely nail it, which the teams do is that much easier to turn around and sell your own IP because people need content and they go, if you get a great idea and you're a buyer and you don't know how to put it together, that's one thing. When Thunderbird comes to the table and they know that not only is it a great idea, but we're going to execute on it flawlessly. it's a very compelling move. So the service helps us in so many ways.

Okay. I think you just answered this question, but I'll ask it anyway. Is there any synergies from this division that carries into the IP division?

Absolutely. I think it's just our ability to handle content. And again, if you're looking at greenlighting content from multiple studios and Thunderbird is at the table with its strong divisions, Atomic, Great Pacific Media are scripted as well and you see this huge body of work that we've already done. We don't have to overly develop something. We don't have to spend, I'll add to the answer, millions of dollars on a pilot. We can just spend a couple of hundred thousand dollars in development script, trailer and then that's our risk. If it sells, great. If it doesn't, it's not a huge write-off. And we don't have to prove out that we can handle the creation of it because we have this giant body of work behind us.

Can you explain how content is monetized using past show as an example? What -- or what value you could expect one of your new projects to potentially bring to Thunderbird?

Simon, do you want to take a crack at this? I've been talking? If not, I'm happy to keep going.

Yes, I'll take a crack at this one. So I think -- it's interesting. When you look at how you monetize own IP, you kind of get an initial license sale when you go and sell the product and it goes and airs on an anchor broadcaster. You then go to all the secondary territories, which are -- and I say secondary, the first one is usually the biggest territory where you can get the most money because that's part of the financing plan when you kind of create it. All the other territories then can be sold. So you have these continuing license sales for an initial period. And then that initial period expires and then you go and resell again in the same territory for little bit less money, but you keep on reselling. You then look at other ways of monetizing that. So if it's a show that allows you to do something fun with the kind of consumer product side, if it's something that would look good as a Squishmallow or something on bedding, then you can go and do contracts to sell properties like that to pretty much anything you can think of that can show an image. And then I think over time, you have all these expanding reaches of different kinds of viewership. So you have fast channels, you have cases where you can get revenue share arrangements for showing content over time. So you just keep on selling and selling and selling.

Is the monetization of IP aside from distribution rates limited to games, music, apparel and toys or are there other avenues that investors should be considering?

It's anywhere you see a brand. The power of these brands when they hit is massive. We believe it's law of the averages. We're keeping hitting the singles. We will continue and that elusive grand slam. But you would see it on toothpaste, diapers, anything you can think of brands are used. And when you own a brand and that content, the life span of it is forever.

Can you talk about the market and its appetite for purchasing rights to own content?

Yes. So I think that means in terms of the market needs IP. They like to come in as an anchor sale. A lot of the buyers will pay for a period of exclusivity to air that brand. The Mermicorno deal is essentially that with Warner Bros, HBO Max, Cartoon Network. It's an anchor sale. And then that IP comes back into our library to distribute around the world and continue to make sales distributing it to things like Latvia, Air Canada, you name it. As well as in my aforementioned speech, all of the other things we have set up like Squishmallows Roblox Games, you name it.

Thanks. I keep feeling like we're making a dent into the questions, but I see they keep growing. So I guess lots of interest here. Next question, can you talk about the progress being made with respect to the licensing business?

Yes. We're making steady and good progress. And we've been careful again as a publicly traded company not to get ourselves into a debt situation. But we are making steady progress and really I think, in the sweet spot of what the market wants now, there will be some more good announcements coming. And we're really focusing in on our large slate of what is going to lift and sell those brands are what is hitting right now. Everyone -- all buyers are looking for that quality over quantity now. And in that shift in the marketplace because we've always kept quality as our North Star, Thunderbird is incredibly well positioned.

Okay. And this question may be a little bit forward-looking, but I'll let you decide how you'll answer it. Is there any IP projects that management expects to bring value in the short term?

I think Mermicorno is one of them and on our -- Great Pacific Media side, we have the gift that keeps on giving with shows like Highway Thru Hell are becoming format shows. So that's a show that is so successful, 200 episodes. Now we have Rocky Mountain Records in the U.S., which is essentially a format of that in the U.S. We had Rescue 401 in Toronto. So all of those IPs are continuing to provide upside for us.

Will the focus remain on organic growth? Or are there plans to explore M&A opportunities, any under services content verticals?

Absolutely. We are certainly maintaining the health of the business, continuing our organic growth, continuing to hit our guidance, which we put out. But in a time where there has been headwinds, no one's better positioned to serve than Thunderbird now that they're becoming tailwinds. And there's a lot of assets out there that aren't doing well, not that we wish a will on anyone. But it is a time in terms of nonorganic growth for us to be nimble and opportunistic. And so I think there's some great moves that we are exploring.

Can you talk a little bit about the margins and the revenue breakdown of different divisions? Will there be more -- will there be more of a focus on any one of these divisions going forward?

So in our financial results, we don't segment out and show margins separately. So I'll talk kind of high level at the different types of things we do and the margin profile. So Production Services is obviously our biggest piece of revenue there. The margins are, I'm going to say, fairly predictable. They have been under pressure over the last couple of years. As you would have seen our gross margins kind of come down a couple of percentage points over the last few years. But they are, for the most part, pretty predictable, pretty reliable and pretty steady and obviously, forming 80% of our business, production services form a large part of our margin. So margin profile isn't too far off that kind of level you see in the financials. Owned IP can be much better than the production services. It depends on the stage of getting the show to market. So if it's something it's in season 1, the margins are maybe a little bit lower than they would be in Season 2 and Season 3 where we pick up efficiencies in filming and kind of getting that show out to market. What you will see and what we've talked about on past investor calls is some of the areas that are a bit newer to us, such as production services in the unscripted and scripted side of the business. They're generally a little bit lower because the work we're doing is a little bit more confined to a set kind of piece of work. So we will come in and will take either a flat fee or will take a low percentage for doing the production work there. So we're willing to do that because it allows us to showcase the skills of our work and the skills of our team and get access to buyers who will then hopefully turn around and purchase our own IP in the future. So we're seeing a few cases of that this year, where we're trying to get creative with some of our teams to category, okay, let's go demonstrate we can do another piece of work. And those margins on those production services engagements are a little bit lower than normal.

Thank you. Can you comment on the consumer side at all?

The consumer and distribution side, the margins are actually pretty good once you get going. So there's an initial hurdle to get out in the market where you're paying for some advertising dollars and you're kind of paying to get the product out there. But once they go the margins are very healthy and much better than the production services work.

Do you disclose backlog? And if so, what does your backlog or bookings look like on the production services side?

We don't disclose that. We've tried a few years ago in the past, and it confused a number of investors, so we chose not to do that. It is something I thought about again, but it's difficult to get it out there because it's a nonstandard term.

Can you, I guess, comment on who you think your biggest competitors are?

Yes. I think we play alongside the big leagues with DreamWorks, certainly, other large U.S. unscripted companies. We're often in the same running as IP with them. Our competitive advantage is because, we are a smaller company. If we option and IP, we give it our full attention, which often wins us work. If you're looking for comps on the Canadian public market side, you could look at Boat Rocker or WildBrain. And I think you'd be pleasantly surprised to see how well Thunderbird is doing.

Was your work on the QB and Me for Tubi purely service work? Or is that IP that will exist in your library moving forward?