Description

All amounts in Australian dollars (unless otherwise stated).

In light of Facebook’s structural issues (e.g. lack of ways for users to have strict control and strict privacy), a social app/website for parents (particularly Moms) shows significant promise: Tinybeans, run by the “anti-Zuckerberg”, Australian Eddie Geller.

SUPERIOR PRODUCT FOR PARENTS (arguably)

On social media like Facebook, parents face the growing concern of “sharenting,” oversharing that could compromise a child’s personal information or privacy.

For parents, Tinybeans has an arguably superior product, compared with Facebook and photo-sharing apps, because of several key features, including:  

·         Strict Control (for both access and content): parents, and only those they invite via email (like grandparents), have access to the posts/photos; unlike Facebook, parents can control exactly what is seen for each individual post (e.g. can turn comments on/off on a post, can control dates of a post)

·         Strict Privacy: Tinybeans’ advertisers may not see individual user data or even users’ aggregated data; however, brands may see data that is both aggregated and anonymized

·         Functionality specific to raising children: child’s height and weight tracking (against benchmarks), development guidelines, milestone tracking, etc.

The superior product may help parents over time to potentially trust Tinybeans more than Facebook. In a recent meeting with CEO Eddie Geller, I joked that Eddie was the “Australian Zuckerberg”. He corrected me with a serious expression and tone, stating “I’m the anti-Zuckerberg.” Tinybeans’ enhanced trust is driving solid user growth (below).

Tinybeans enjoys favorable user demographics: 80% in the U.S., 70% access Tinybeans on mobile, 67% millennials, average age of 32.5, average household income of $120,514, 83% college graduates, 39% have postgraduate degree, and 72% are employed, etc. Anecdotally, Marissa Mayer, a Mom who knows a few things about developing consumer apps/websites, uses Tinybeans and has mentioned it in an interview as one of her favorite apps, along with Gmail and Uber.

COMPANY AND MANAGEMENT

As of June 2019, company headcount is around 25, which is 12 in engineering and 13 in management and operations. CEO Eddie Geller had a prior exit with Unique World, acquired by Jacobs Engineering (NYSE: JEC) in 2011. He co-founded Tinybeans in 2012. He relocated from Australia to New York in 2014. He has four sons and seems rather fanatical about Tinybeans and its mission. Insiders own about 45% of shares. CEO Eddie and family own about 6.2 million shares (19%).

MONTHLY ACTIVE USERS (MAU)

Tinybeans shows solid user growth. Registered users have risen from 2.1 million at end of 2017 to 3.4 million as of June (recently, adding about 70k/month). Monthly active users (“MAU”; defined as using the app within the last 30 days) have risen from 800k at end of 2017 to 1.2 million as of June.

There are about 500k daily active users (“DAU”). That implies that about 40% of monthly active users are active daily, which is an impressive metric. Of the daily active users, 40% (about 200k) are parents and the balance are family/friends. Quite amazingly, about 400k photos are added per day, which is almost one photo each day per daily active user.

About 80% of sign-ups are parents who are having a baby or just had a baby. Most of sign-ups are from word-of-mouth. For registered users, the 12-month retention is 78%, and 24-month retention is 59%, which is “>4x the industry average”.

Just in the U.S., there is considerable upside potential (perhaps 100x) for daily user growth. In the U.S., there are 11 million families (70% with two parents) with children under the age of 18. By comparison, Tinybeans has about 200k daily active parent users today.

REVENUE MODEL (Advertising, Subscriptions, Printing)

Tinybeans has three revenue sources: advertising, subscriptions and printing.

Source: Company reports.

As can be seen in the chart, Tinybeans is enjoying exponential growth in advertising revenue. The company recently signed its 100^th brand partnership deal. The average advertising deal size for F19 to $32k, up 66% from F18. Brands include Huggies, Burt’s Bees Baby and AUVI-Q. In February 2019, Tinybeans signed a $200k advertising contract with life insurance company MassMutual. In April 2019, Tinybeans announced its largest advertising contract to date, a >$200k deal with toy giant Lego for its DUPLO products. In July 2019, Tinybeans announced a second advertising contract in the amount of $100-150k with Lego for its DUPLO Animals.

In addition to advertising, Tinybeans has premium subscriptions. Premium subscribers receive benefits such viewing “memories” without ads, the ability to save long videos (up to 5 minutes), free shipping worldwide for photo books, unlimited digital albums (in high res), enhanced search, and the ability to download all “memories” with one export. Premium subscriptions are $7.99 a month, $50 a year, or $250 for lifetime. Tinybeans has about 14k premium subscriptions. The CAC for subscriptions is about $11. The renewal rate for premium subscriptions is currently 83%.

Printing revenues are very small. Printing has roughly a 40% GM.

Annualized 4QF19 revenue per monthly active user is now $4.06. The company expects that important metric to rise above $5 by the end of 2020 and above $10 in the long-term. 

Overall, for monthly active users, the company reports a recent Lifetime Value (LTV) of $24 and a CAC of $3.57. The company believes that LTV can grow into the “hundreds if not thousands of dollars”.

PARTNERSHIPS AND CONTENT

Since 2013, Tinybeans has been working with Mom365, a premiere newborn photography company. About 200,000 registered users have come to Tinybeans from this partnership. The partnership was recently expanded to give free 3-month subscriptions to Mom365’s customers.

In April 2019, Tinybeans launched a curated content platform as a resource for parents. Instead of hiring full-time writers, the company is using influencers and external publishers. In less than two months, monthly unique views exceeded 100,000. The content platform will continue to be enhanced. For example, authors will be able to share summaries of their books.

Tinybeans has an improving Net Promoter Score (NPS), rising from 73 in April 2018 to 80 in February 2019.

COMPETITORS

Tinybeans competes primarily with Facebook, which includes Private Groups on Facebook. Other platforms include 23snaps (500k users), Lifecake (based in London; acquired by Canon; 2 m users), and FamilyAlbum (5 m users). However, these other platforms are focused on photo-sharing and lack much of the core functionality of Tinybeans (e.g. search, milestone tracking, height/weight tracking, videos, collections, parental content).

VALUATION

We could take three scenarios: bear, base, bull for F22 (June), three years from now. Assume GM remains at 80%. Note that SG&A run-rate is about $6.4 million.

Bear case: MAU grows to 2.0 m and is then flat. Revenue per MAU grows only modestly to $6. That implies revenue of $12 m. With 80% GM and SG&A perhaps growing to $8 m, that’s $1.6 m EBIT. 12x (little/no growth) implies $19.2 m MC, or $0.48 stock with 40 m shares (a decline of -52% from today’s price).

Base case: MAU grows to 3.0 m. Revenue per MAU grows to $8. That implies revenue of $24 m. With 80% GM and SG&A doubling to $13 m, that’s $6.2 m EBIT. 15x (growth multiple) implies $93 m MC, or $2.33 stock with 40 m shares (+133% upside).   

Bull case: MAU grows to 5.0 m. Revenue per MAU grows to $10. That implies revenue of $50 m. With 80% GM and SG&A doubling to $13 m, that’s $27 m EBIT, which rivals Facebook’s EBIT margin. 15x (growth multiple) implies $405 m MC, or $10.12 stock with 40 m shares (+1,000% upside). CEO Eddie Geller has hinted at these numbers in recent meetings with investors.

The bull case of a potential ten-bagger makes Tinybeans worth paying attention to.

RISKS

Competition. It’s possible that the competing photo-sharing apps/sites improve their functionality and features such that Tinybeans loses its lead.

Digital ads. The significant majority of Tinybeans’ revenue is from digital advertising. Personally, I find the digital ads (both in the mobile app and desktop versions) to be rather annoying. My family would have to become a premium subscriber in order not to see those digital ads.

Cash burn. Tinybeans is still burning cash and will need to raise some capital (perhaps a few million) to support its growth initiatives.

CATALYST: POSITIVE CASH FLOW

Cash burn for 4QF19 (June) was $480k, and cash balance was $1.0 m at the end of June. Cash burn is expected to be $300-400k for 1QF20 (September). Based on some growth initiatives, 1QF20 (December) is expected to be cash flow positive with cash flow of $50k.

CATALYST: U.S. LISTING

Tinybeans raised $6.5 million in its April 2017 Australian IPO and another $3.5 million in a subsequent private placement. The company may do a small financing (perhaps $3-4 m) before the end of this calender. Within three years, the company could seek to list on OTCQX or Nasdaq.

Catalyst

POSITIVE CASH FLOW

U.S. LISTING

CONTINUED GROWTH IN MAU AND ADVERTISING