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Live Current Media Reports Q4 and Year End Financial Results

Tue. March 31, 2009; Posted: 09:01 AM
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VANCOUVER, Mar 31, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- LIVC | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating -- Live Current Media Inc. (OTCBB:LIVC), a media company built around content and e-commerce destinations which owns more than 800 domain names, today announced financial results for the fourth quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2008. All results are reported in US Dollars under United States generally accepted accounting principles (US GAAP). The financial results for the fourth quarter are extrapolated from the Company's unaudited financial statements.

Select Fiscal 2008 Highlights and Corporate Developments

-- Entered into agreements with the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI) and the DLF Indian Premiere League (IPL) to provide the exclusive, official websites for the Indian National Cricket Team and the IPL for ten years.

-- Entered into an agreement with Netlinkblue (owner of the IPL's global mobile and live-streaming rights) to form a venture combining the majority of the IPL's digital assets.

-- Appointed Dr. Boris Wertz, a known and experienced internet pioneer, to the board of directors, providing the board with additional operational and management experience in the consumer internet space.

-- Scaled the company's product and technology team through the acquisition of Auctomatic.

-- In a highly challenging capital market environment, closed a non-brokered $1.05 million private placement of equity units consisting of common shares and warrants.

-- Achieved double-digit e-commerce growth in health and beauty revenues, which consists almost entirely of Perfume.com sales, to $9.27 million in 2008 compared to $8.09 million in 2007.

-- Signed a letter of intent with Domain Strategies Inc., an internet development and management company, to establish a new company to build, monetize, and manage our domain name karate.com.

-- Sold a non-core domain name for CDN $200,000 in January 2008 and another for CDN $500,000 in December 2008.

Subsequent Developments

"The recent events in the global economy have caused Live Current's management team to critically reassess the Company's business plan that was put into effect at the end of 2007," states Live Current's Chairman and CEO, Geoff Hampson. "That plan anticipated both organic growth in the core health and beauty business and accelerated growth through the acquisition of media rights and technology companies. That strategy was dependent upon the Company having access to additional capital. In the fourth quarter of 2008 it became clear that raising additional capital at an acceptable market capitalization was not going to occur and as a result, management revised the business plan and moved to align business costs with a new growth strategy."

Live Current management has taken and continues to take actions in 2009 to restructure the company's operations and significantly reduce expenses to achieve the goal of being at positive operating cash flow by the end of the year, including:

-- Reducing total staff by 38%, including the departure of the company's prior President and COO.

-- Instituting a hiring and salary freeze.

-- Eliminating all 2008 bonuses, including those earned by Senior Management.

-- Appointing Mark Melville to the office of President in addition to his role as Chief Business Development Officer and deferring the payment of his signing bonus.

-- Chairman and CEO Geoff Hampson voluntarily deferring his salary and other compensation indefinitely.

-- Selling two more of the company's non-core domain names for $1.65 million in early 2009 as part of its strategy to market several non-core domain names as a non-dilutive form of financing.

-- Investing some of proceeds from the sale of the non-core domain names in supply chain strategies to increase margins for the health and beauty business.

-- Exploring strategic options for the cricket business including a possible restructuring of the rights and obligations acquired under the previously announced IPL and BCCI MOUs.

In connection with Live Current's restructuring, on March 25, 2009, the board of directors reduced the exercise price of all outstanding stock options granted pursuant to the company's 2007 Stock Incentive Plan to $0.65. The options are held by Live Current officers, directors, employees, consultants and agents. "The options were re-priced to provide an incentive for and to retain the remaining members of the Live Current team in these challenging times," stated CEO and Chairman Geoff Hampson. "Options form a big part of compensation in micro cap early stage companies and it is in the interests of the shareholders to have management align their interest with them. The reduced price is at a significant premium to our current market price."

Mr. Hampson continued, "We are beginning to see some positive effects from the actions taken since the New Year and have recognized significant opportunities for both top line growth and margin expansion in the core Perfume.com business. Revenues from the Perfume.com business are flat to the same period last year but margins have increased. In addition, our domain advertising revenue is experiencing double-digit growth month-over-month."

Fourth Quarter 2008 Financial Results

Total revenues in the fourth quarter of 2008 were $3.62 million, a decrease of 7.8% compared to the same period in 2007. However, this decrease was due to a large decrease in advertising revenues and miscellaneous income in the quarter compared to the same period of 2007. Overall, health and beauty eCommerce product sales represented 99.5% of total revenues in the fourth quarter of 2008, compared to 94.4% of total revenues in the same period of 2007.

Costs of sales for the fourth quarter of 2008 were $3.01 million compared to $3.09 million in the same period of 2007, a decrease of 2.4%. This decrease in costs of sales was primarily due to the slight decrease in sales in the quarter in the eCommerce business, as well as the inclusion of inventory on the balance sheet at the end of the fiscal year to reflect inventories in transit, which had been immaterial at the end of the 2007 fiscal year. Overall gross margin was 16.8% for the fourth quarter of 2008, compared to a gross margin of 20.6% during the same period of 2007.

According to its January 2, 2009 press release, ComScore, Inc., a marketing research company that measures use of the Internet, indicated that eCommerce sales declined during the 2008 holiday season as compared to the 2007 holiday season, defined as November 1st to December 24th of each year. According to their research, online sales of "flowers, greetings and gifts", a category Live Current believes is comparable to Perfume.com's business, declined by 7% over last year's holiday season.

In contrast to the performance of online sales trends as measured by ComScore Inc., Live Current was able to maintain strong sales during the holiday season, resulting in relatively flat eCommerce sales from Perfume.com in Q4 of 2008 compared to Q4 of 2007.

In Q4 of 2008, the combined health and beauty retail sites generated sales of $3.60 million compared to $3.71 million in Q4 of 2007, a decrease of only 2.7% year over year. Cost of purchases and shipping totalled $3.01 million in Q4 of 2008 compared to $3.09 million in Q4 of 2007. This produced a gross margin of $591k or 16.4% in Q4 of 2008 compared to $620k or 16.7% in Q4 of 2007. H&B eCommerce sales in Q4 accounted for 38.9% of total 2008 annual eCommerce sales compared to 45.8% of total 2007 annual eCommerce sales.

Full Year 2008 Financial Results

Total revenue for the year ended December 31, 2008 increased 9.1% to $9.36 million as compared to $8.58 million for the same period in 2007. Health and beauty eCommerce product sales represented 99.0% of total revenues in 2008, compared to 94.3% of total revenues in 2007.

Cost of sales for 2008 increased to $7.68 million as compared to $6.51 million for 2007. This resulted in an increase in costs of sales of 17.9% which is directly attributable to an increase in costs of sales with respect to the growth of our eCommerce business.

For the 2008 fiscal year, gross margin was 18.0% compared to an overall gross margin of 22.5% in 2007. These decreases are due to a material decrease in online advertising revenues which have very high gross margins, as well as an increase in efforts to generate significant sales growth by providing more aggressive discounts, coupons and promotions such as free shipping to customers.

All comparable revenue, cost of sales, and gross margin figures above exclude results in 2007 relating to a former subsidiary, FrequentTraveller.com Inc., which was disposed of in November 2007.

The company reported a net loss of $10.0 million for 2008 as compared with a net loss of $2 million for 2007. The loss from operations before other items in 2008 was $8 million compared to $2.4 million in 2007. This increase in net loss was primarily due to the following:

-- A decrease in our overall gross margin in 2008 of approximately $360k driven by lower advertising revenues which have high margins, and more aggressive discounting in our Perfume.com business.

-- An increase in non-cash items such as amortization and depreciation in 2008 of $280k, and stock-based compensation expense of $1.683 million compared to 2007.

-- An increase in management fees and employee salaries of approximately $1 million over 2007 as we expanded our staffing requirements in late 2007 and in 2008.

-- Significant increases in G&A expenses of $2 million as we incurred increased rent and overhead expenditures, telecommunications, investor relations, legal, accounting, travel and office expenses due to increased growth and strategic initiatives.

Detailed information regarding Live Current's 2008 financial results can be found in the Company's annual report on SEC Form 10K, which has been filed with the SEC and is available through the investor section of Live Current's corporate website at http://livecurrent.com/investors.php.

Conference Call to be Held on April 8th

Senior management will host a conference call on Wednesday, April 8, 2009 to discuss the Company's 2008 financial results and provide an update on general business developments. Details regarding how and when to access the live conference call will be available on the Investors section of the Company's website, at http://livecurrent.com/investors.php, in the next few days.

About Live Current Media Inc.

Live Current builds, owns and operates some of the most powerful and engaging content and commerce destinations on the Internet, such as www.perfume.com and www.cricket.com. Through subject-specific DestinationHubs(TM), Live Current properties connect people to each other and to the information, brands, and products they are passionate about. Live Current has headquarters in Vancouver, Canada with a location in Seattle, WA and is publicly traded on the OTCBB (LIVC). For more information, visit www.livecurrent.com.

All statements in this press release that are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements, including any projections of earnings, revenue, cash or other financial items, any statements of the plans, strategies, objectives and goals of management for future operations, any statements regarding future economic conditions or performance, statements of belief and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. These statements are based on expectations and assumptions as of the date of this press release and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, general economic conditions particularly as they relate to demand for our products and services; competitive factors; pricing pressures; changes in operating expenses; our ability to raise capital as and when we need it and other factors. Live Current Media Inc. assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or actual outcomes and does not intend to do so.

SOURCE: Live Current Media Inc.

Live Current 
Investor Relations 
Andrea Laird, 604-453-4870 or 1-866-898-4354 
andrea@livecurrent.com
For full details for LIVC click here.

    


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