Can Pandora Turn Itself Around With Its Earnings?

In the most recent earnings report, the company gave revenue guidance for the second quarter of 2015 as in a range of $280 million to $285 million.

Despite having the largest streaming music user base by far, Pandora just cannot seem to break even. It is an uphill battle that got even steeper when lost a court case to BMI and will now have to pay 2.5% in royalties instead of 1.75%. The main problems are twofold. First, its per-user value is comparatively low, and second, it is too inefficient.

If last quarter’s revenue is annualized against an active user base of 81.5 million, it comes out to $11.32 per user per year. Matched up to its market cap of $3.74 billion, that is $45.88 in capital value per user.

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The numbers actually make quite a bit of sense in context. Run Spotify on the same metrics, and the private music streamer is estimated to be worth $8.4 billion based on capital raises. It boasts a 60 million monthly user base with 15 million paid subscribers. By default, Spotify users are worth $120 per year, since they pay $10 a month, but take into account the entire active user base of 60 million and it is at $30 per user annually. That is 165% higher than Pandora’s per-user value, and Spotify is valued at 125% higher than Pandora. That is not quite 165%, but if we take into account that Spotify’s active user base is 25% lower than Pandora’s, the market valuations line up almost perfectly.

The company is looking to expand its horizons with its newest acquisition that gives it more insight into the analytics of streaming music online. As a result, Pandora announced back in May that it agreed to acquire Next Big Sound, a provider of online music analytics. The deal marks the most recent step in Pandora’s plan to become an indispensable partner to the music industry, while at the same time it accelerates the company’s strategy of collecting and analyzing data for the benefit of music makers.

So far on the year, shares of Pandora have suffered and are down 22%.

The shares were up 1.3% at $14.05 on Thursday morning. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $21.89 and a 52-week trading range of $13.30 to $28.96.

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