BuzzFeed gave investors their first look at its financial performance since going public in December, though its performance was somewhat overshadowed by news that job losses and a shakeup to its content strategy were looming.
The company reported 24% year-over-year revenue growth for the 2021 fiscal year, with an 18% increase in Q4. Despite the company’s efforts to have more of its revenue come from commerce, advertising remains its biggest source of revenue: it grew 37% in 2021 and 24% in Q4, including both direct and programmatic ads on its sites and from social media content. While revenue from commerce – primarily comprised of affiliate commissions earned from editorial shopping content – was up 19% for the full year, it was down 26% in Q4.
In a call with analysts, CEO Jonah Peretti attributed the fourth-quarter decline to a shrinking audience on Facebook, and that it was now focusing on faster-growing platforms like TikTok. However, Peretti added that the current monetization opportunity on short-form videos was not as big as with long-form, though he expected that to be developed more in the future as TikTok and Instagram Reels mature.
BuzzFeed’s content revenue – comprised of custom content created for brands, as well as film and TV projects produced by BuzzFeed Studios and Complex Networks – grew by 9% in 2021 and 33% in Q4.
It should be noted that BuzzFeed closed on its acquisition of Huffpost in Q1 2021 and Complex Networks in Q4 2021, and thus were not included in the 2020 results. On a pro-forma basis, including Complex in the year-ago first quarter, BuzzFeed projects its first-quarter revenue to be down in the low single digits; excluding Complex, it expects revenue to be up by roughly 30%.
The other notable figure from BuzzFeed’s results was its ballooning expenses, which were $25 million USD higher than its full-year revenue and $7 million higher than its Q4 revenue.
One area where the company is looking to cut back on expenses is on its editorial team, which has won awards for its investigative and culture journalism but has typically not been a major contributor to the company’s income. According to The Information, BuzzFeed’s three most senior editorial staff – editor-in-chief Mark Schoofs, deputy editor Tom Namako and executive editor of investigations Ariel Kaminer – had resigned Tuesday morning, ahead of job cuts the company signaled would be coming. In a memo to staff, Peretti said he expects job cuts to impact roughly 1.7% of the company’s workforce.
In the call with analysts, Peretti confirmed that there would be a change in leadership and focus for the news division, which would prioritize coverage of the “biggest news of the day, culture and entertainment, celebrity and life on the internet” and be more of a financial contributor to the overall business.
Shortly after BuzzFeed closed on its acquisition of HuffPost last year, the company shut down its Canadian operations and laid off 23 staff.
