Orlando-based Izea Worldwide Inc. (Nasdaq: IZEA) is seeing an influx of influencer marketing managed services leads, and CEO Ted Murphy said bookings in that category are up by 53% compared to a year ago.
Managed services refers to the company's hands-on influencer campaign development and support for brands rather than basic platform access.
In the wake of his company’s fourth-quarter 2024 earnings report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on April 4 — which showed a 1% increase from $8.8 million to $8.9 million — Murphy told Orlando Business Journal its customer growth was 25% higher than the previous quarter and further, the company established “a robust new opportunity pipeline from the last quarter of 2023 and set an all-time record for pipeline in Q1.”
The company’s Izea Flex platform — a marketplace for brands to find and broker deals with influencers — is sold on a subscription basis to brands and agencies. Similarly, Izea’s FormAI, which launched in September 2023, is an AI-charged content creation platform available to brands as a standalone product.
However, both platforms are foundational to Izea’s managed services, and Murphy said most of the company revenue comes from managed services.
“We have many more customers who are software customers than managed services customers,” said Murphy. “The price point on our software is very low, whereas if you look at a managed services campaign, it's typically hundreds of thousands of dollars to start and then the campaigns grow from there. But it's all using the same underlying technology.”
Izea has grown steadily since 2019, when its revenue was $18.96 million for the year. By 2022, it was up to $41.1 million.
On Dec. 3, 2023, Izea announced it had acquired Hoozu, an influencer marketing company headquartered in Sydney, Australia. The acquisition was one element of a global expansion plan for the firm, which recently opened offices in China, South Korea and the United Kingdom. During the Q4 earnings call, Izea announced more acquisitions are on the way.
Commenting on the state of Izea’s managed services, Murphy said, “It's noteworthy that over 90% of this quarter's bookings were organic, stemming from our own growth initiatives rather than through acquisitions.”
Even so, the company’s managed services bookings totaled $7.6 million during fourth-quarter 2023, compared to $7.9 million for the same period in 2022, largely due to the loss of a major non-recurring customer, which was not named in the earnings call or news release.
Meanwhile, Barron’s said it’s a good time to buy Izea stock, as the share price was at $2.39 at close of business on April 5.
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