Executives
Thomas Clarke - Chairman & CEO
Eric Ashman - CFO
James Lonergan - President & COO
Chaela Volpe – IR
Analysts
Mark May - Needham & Company
Doug Kass - Seabreeze Partners
Richard Fetyko - Merriman Curhan Ford
William Morrison - JMP Securities
Jack Ripstein - Potrero
Michael Marzolf - MRM Capital
Bill Lennan - First Albany
Andrew Sole - Esopus Creek Advisors
Ursula Moran - Bear Stearns
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TheStreet.com, Inc. (TSCM) Q4 2006 Earnings Call February 15, 2007 11:00 AM ET
Operator
Good day ladies and gentlemen and welcome to TheStreet.com 2006 fourth quarter and full year earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) I would now like to turn the presentation over to your host for today's call, Ms. Chaela Volpe, Investor Relations Manager. Please proceed, ma'am.
Chaela Volpe
Thank you. Some of the statements made on this earnings call not related to historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements which may concern TheStreet.com's financial performance, as well as its strategic and operational plans, are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ. The company undertakes no duty to update any such statements.
The risks and uncertainties are described in the company's SEC filings, which are on file with the SEC and available at its website at www.SEC.gov. Additional information will also be set forth in TheStreet.com's quarterly report on Form 10- Q for the quarterly period ended December 31, 2006, which will be filed with the SEC in the near future.
I now turn the call over to Tom Clarke, TheStreet.com's Chairman and Chief Executive Officer.
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Thomas Clarke
Thank you, Chaela. Good morning. Thank you for joining us today to review our fourth quarter and full year 2006 financial results. Following our usual format, our CFO Eric Ashman will review our numbers in detail and then we will hear from our President and Chief Operating Officer, Jim Lonergan, who will provide a summary of operational accomplishments during the fourth quarter of 2006.
I would like to start by going over the top line results and then take a look at our performance in 2006 on initiatives we set out to accomplish at the close of 2005. For the year, net revenue totaled $50.9 million, an increase of 51% from net revenue of $33.7 million for 2005. Revenue from advertising, subscription and syndication all increased significantly to contribute to this performance. Advertising revenue increased 62%, subscription revenue increased 45%, and other revenue, which is primarily syndication revenue, increased 67% on a year-to-year comparison.
I am pleased to report that we generated net income of $12.9 million, an increase of $12.6 million from the $0.2 million last year. Our earnings per basic and diluted share were $0.48 and $0.47, respectively and compare favorably to the $0.01 for last year. Our traffic grew nicely as our strategy of moving our revenue mix more toward an advertising-based model started to take hold. Page views for the fourth quarter came in at 244 million. This was a sequential increase of 25% with our number of average monthly unique visitors reaching 4.5 million, a 10% sequential increase.
On our year end call last February, we outlined our goals for 2006 and I would like to take a moment to review our success in delivering on those goals. We said we would focus on several initiatives in 2006:
Increasing traffic to our sites, margin expansion, expanding our editorial staff and advertising sales force, growing and fine-tuning our subscription offerings and educating the mass-market audience of individuals looking to increase their financial intelligence and independence.
As I mentioned, with 244 million page views in the fourth quarter alone, the close of 2006 marked record traffic with 880 million page views for the year. This is an increase of 80% from 2005. The company's average monthly unique visitors were 4.4 million, up 46% from 2005. The migration of TheStreet.com's ratings content to our free online platform, along with the rebranding and relaunch of TheStreet.com TV, our video segment, have helped grow traffic significantly. Combining these initiatives with a focus on providing additional personal finance content and spreading awareness about our robust offering of free content allowed us to achieve our traffic goals. With plans in place to expand our content even further, we look forward to building on this momentum and continuing the trend of increasing our traffic.
On the margin front, our fourth quarter gross margin is at 66.1% versus 62% over the same period last year with our 4Q06 operating margin at 23.9% versus 14.6% in the fourth quarter of '05. Our EBITDA margin from continuing operations was at 26.9%, up from 16.8% a year ago.
In looking at the two areas of the company we wanted to expand, we invested in hiring additional editorial staff to generate more personal finance and ratings-related content as well as advertising sales staff to drive additional revenue. We will continue to expand both teams in 2007.
During the year, we did several things to grow and fine-tune our subscription offerings. As mentioned earlier, the subscription business grew 45% during the year and we ended the year with revenue per subscriber at $370. One of our initiatives towards increasing subscriber retention was the introduction of blogs to our Real Money subscription to make the product more interactive. In fine-tuning our offerings, we decreased the number of our services from 18 to 14 based on subscriber comments and trends with most of the offerings now geared to the broad consumer market. On Tuesday, we announced the launch of an exchange traded fund subscription service to begin on March 14.
Earlier in the quarter, we launched a consumer subscription package, Real Money Silver, which was our first bundled offering where subscribers access several subscription offerings on one platform for one price. Recently through enhanced interactivity and increased subscriber retention, we have added a video component to both our Action Alerts PLUS and Stocks Under 10 subscription services.
Finally, the fifth initiative we promised to deliver on was to delve further into educational content. Taking advantage of social trends driving the mass-market audience to the Internet for investment and financial planning resources, we approached this in two ways:
First, with the introduction of the TheStreet.com University.
Second, with the August 2006 acquisition of Weiss Ratings, which we rebranded as TheStreet.com Ratings.
Both initiatives are fully advertising supported and both enable us to offer educational ratings content in a format that not only drives traffic, but also creates stickiness within our site. The expansion of our video capabilities has also allowed us to provide an abundance of free educational material. With video channels that include everything from personal finance tutorials to CEO interviews, we are providing pertinent, trustworthy and timely content for consumption by our audience members at their convenience.
The mass-market audience has for several years now been turning more and more to online resources to help them learn how to make financial and investment decisions. As this trend continues to develop, we will continue to provide the tools and resources needed to meet consumer demand.
Now I will turn it over to Eric, who will review our financials and in detail.
Eric Ashman
Thanks, Tom. I'm very pleased to report that this was a record quarter and a record year for us in many ways. From a financial perspective, we delivered the highest full year and quarterly revenue, net income and earnings per share in the company's history. With respect to site traffic, page views and average monthly unique visitors for the year achieved record levels as well. We are excited by these results as they reflect the impact of our efforts in 2006 to expand our offerings to attract the mass consumer audience and provide a strong foundation for 2007 and beyond.
Digging into the details of our fourth quarter and 2006 results, we delivered net revenue for the fourth quarter of $14.4 million, an increase of 44% over the fourth quarter of 2005 and an increase of 11% from the last quarter. Net revenue for the year was $50.9 million, an increase of 51% over net revenue for 2005. Advertising revenue for the fourth quarter of 2006 totaled $4.8 million, a 49% increase over the same period last year and a 27% increase from last quarter. For the year, advertising revenue was $15.4 million, 62% greater than last year.
We continue to diversify our advertising base. We had 148 advertisers on our site in 2006, an increase of 29% from 2005. Advertising revenue from non-financial advertisers, including automotive, technology and travel advertising, increased in the fourth quarter by 162% over the same period last year, and increased 39% sequentially. In the fourth quarter, advertising revenue from non-financial advertisers represented 33% of total advertising revenue as compared to 19% in the fourth quarter of 2005 and 30% in the third quarter of 2006. For the full year, advertising revenue from non-financial advertisers increased 111% from 2005 and represented 27% of advertising revenue as compared to 20% in the prior year.
As we have said in the past, not all page views are created equal and we're constantly focused on our monetization of page views. In 1Q06 we saw page views jump 55% sequentially over the fourth quarter of 2005 and as we have worked to absorb the significant increase in ad inventory, we saw our first quarter revenue per thousand page views fall from the levels we had achieved in 2005. So while revenue per thousand page views at $19.49 in Q4 was down by 12% as compared to the fourth quarter of 2005, it was 35% higher than in Q1 of 2006 and up 2% sequentially.
We had 4.5 million average monthly unique visitors in the fourth quarter, an increase of 32% over the prior year and a sequential increase of 10%. Average monthly unique visitors were 4.4 million for the full year, an increase of 46% over the average for 2005. We served 244 million page views in the fourth quarter of 2006, 68% more than the same period last year and a sequential increase of 25%. For the full year, we served 880 million page views, an increase of 80% from the page views served in 2005.
These are record annual numbers for us, and as I previously noted, reflect the success of our efforts toward attracting a growing mass consumer audience to the more than 20,000 stories we produced this past year on the free site. Much of this was new content that resulted from our acquisition of Weiss Ratings in Q3, our expanded video offerings and the strategic expansion of our editorial team.
With respect to our video content specifically, in the fourth quarter alone, we created 811 videos across our 12 video channels, an increase of 21% from the third quarter. We served more than 8 million videos views in the fourth quarter, an 80% sequential increase from the third quarter. Video advertising revenue accounted for 7.1% of total advertising revenue for the quarter, up from 4.4% in the third quarter of 2006.
Turning to the subscription side of the business, subscription revenue for the fourth quarter of 2006 was $8.8 million, a 36% increase over the same period last year and up 2% from last quarter. For the year, our subscription revenue was $33.5 million, 45% higher than last year. We booked subscription orders of $8.4 million during the quarter, an increase of 20% over the same period last year and a sequential increase of 20%. For the year, we booked subscription orders of $34.8 million, 35% greater than the bookings in 2005.
Our total number of subscribers at the end of 2006 was approximately 96,400, up 11% over last year's 86,900 and up 2% from last quarter. The average annual revenue per subscriber was $370 for the fourth quarter. This is an 18% increase over the $313 we reported in the fourth quarter of 2005 and an increase of 6% from last quarter's $348.
As you recall from our last earnings call, in the third quarter our bulk subscription deal expired, removing 10,000 low value subscribers from our subscriber base. The impact of this change has contributed to a stronger revenue per subscriber number, reaffirming our decision to move away from these bulk deals to focus on more profitable subscription and syndication opportunities.
Our deferred revenue, which represents subscription bookings that will be recognized as revenue over the following 12 months, was $12.7 million at the end of the fourth quarter, an increase of 28% over the same period last year and down 3% sequentially. Other revenue, which primarily comprises syndication revenue, was $800,000 in the fourth quarter, 171% higher than the same period last year and a sequential increase of 37%. For the full year, other revenue was $1.9 million, 67% higher than last year.
On the expense side of our P&L, fourth quarter operating expenses of $11 million were up 28% from last year and up 6% sequentially. For the year, operating expenses were $39.8 million, or 38% higher than last year. The increase in operating expenses were driven primarily by increasing costs directly associated with the growth of our business over the past year, including increased headcount, outside contributor payments and advertising serving costs, as well as non-cash compensation related to the expensing of stock options.
Stock option expense totaled $400,000 in the fourth quarter of 2006 as compared to $300,000 in the same period last year. Stock option expense for the full year totaled $1.8 million as compared to $300,000 in 2005.
We also began to increase our investment in traffic-driving initiatives in the fourth quarter, including investments in search engine optimization, paid search and online advertising. As we continue to broaden the appeal of our network of sites to the mass consumer market, we will invest in initiatives to expose this new audience to our content. We believe there is significant opportunity to drive growth through these initiatives which we approach with a focus on the bottom line, investing in these areas only when we see the likelihood of strong ROI.
With respect to profitability, EBITDA from continuing operations in the fourth quarter of 2006 totaled $3.9 million, an increase of 130% over 4Q05 and a sequential increase of 32%. Full-year EBITDA from continuing operations was $12.3 million, an increase of 117% over 2005.
Our fourth quarter net income from continuing operations was $3.9 million, or $0.14 per share on a fully-diluted basis. This is an increase of 120% over the fourth quarter of 2005 and a sequential increase of 28%. Our full year net income from continuing operations was $12.8 million, or $0.47 per diluted share, representing growth over 123% over 2005.
Fourth quarter net income was $4 million, or $0.14 per diluted share. This represents growth in net income of 125% over 2005 and sequential growth of 28%. Full year net income for 2006 was $12.9 million, or $0.47 per diluted share, as compared to net income of $200,000, or $0.01 per diluted share in 2005.
Our gross margin in the fourth quarter was 66.1%, up from our gross margin of 62% in the fourth quarter of 2005 and up sequentially from our gross margin of 62.2% in the third quarter. For the full year, our gross margin in 2006 was 63.7%, up from the gross margin in 2005 of 62.3%. Our operating profit margin was 23.9% in the fourth quarter of 2006, up from 14.6% in the fourth quarter of 2005 and up sequentially from the third quarter operating margin of 19.9%. For the full year, our operating margin from continuing operations in 2006 was 21.7%, as compared to a 14.5% operating margin in 2005.
EBITDA margin from continuing operations in the fourth quarter of 2006 was 26.9%, up from 16.8% in the fourth quarter of 2005 and up sequentially from the third quarter EBITDA margin of 22.6%. EBITDA margin from continuing operations in 2006 was 24.2%, an increase from the 2005 EBITDA margin of 16.8%.
We believe that there is still significant margin leverage in the business, and over the longer term, we believe there is room for gross and operating margin expansion. In the near term, we will look for opportunities to use that leverage to invest in the business to drive growth and to take market share in our sector. As I mentioned earlier, we will make these investments where we see strong ROI and with an eye on protecting the margins we've managed to achieve over the past 12 months.
Turning to the balance sheet, our cash, restricted cash and short-term investments at the end of the fourth quarter totaled $46.6 million. This balance is 37% higher than at the end of 2005 and is up 5% sequentially. Our cash flow for the quarter was $2.2 million, a $300,000 decrease from Q4 of last year and an increase from last quarter's cash flow of $1.7 million after excluding the cash impact of the Weiss Ratings acquisition. Our cash flow for the year was $15.7 million, excluding cash impact of the acquisition of Weiss Ratings, $13.8 million higher than our cash flow in 2005.
As many of you know, we have accumulated net operating losses totaling $140 million through the end of the 2005 tax year. Up until now, we have continued to carry a full valuation allowance on the deferred tax assets associated with these NOLs. Given the strong performance and consistent profitability of the business over the past two years, it is very likely that we will adjust that valuation allowance in 2007. This will require the one-time recognition of income which will boost our EPS in the quarter this adjustment is made.
This will have no impact on our actual tax rate, which will continue to be approximately 2% as our NOLs continue to offset any taxable income we may generate in the near future. We don't know exactly when this might happen, but we want you to know that it is somewhere out on the horizon so that it's not a surprise when that impact hits our bottom line.
Finally, the company paid its fourth consecutive quarterly dividend of $0.025 per share in the fourth quarter of 2006, bringing the total dividend paid to shareholders in 2006 to $0.10 per share. We are pleased to enter 2007 having delivered the highest full year and quarterly revenue, net income and earnings per share in the company's history, as well as having our site traffic reach record levels.
James Lonergan
Thanks Eric. During the fourth quarter, we were focused on the number of core initiatives that were directed at attracting the mass consumer audience, as well as meeting the growing demands of the online advertising community as we moved toward a more advertising-based revenue model.
Key fourth quarter initiatives included expansion of our video capabilities, online integration of rated content into TheStreet.com, gearing up for further development of TheStreet.com University and entering the online social networking space.
Let's go through each of these, beginning with video. As we mentioned on the Q3 call, we expected to roll out a new video player in Q4, and we did. We selected the ROO Online Network to power a relaunch of our video offerings, which we rebranded as TheStreet.com TV. The new platform enables us to produce higher-quality video, meet syndication opportunities more seamlessly, link to related stories from within the video player, provide RSSV to destinations such as My Yahoo! and Google and dynamically serve advertisers across multiple channels.
This last point is critical as TheStreet.com TV has grown to 12 channels of video that include everything from personal finance and luxury lifestyle programming to our newest offering, Wall Street Confidential, featuring Jim Cramer. Our online video advertising, which was a $225 million market in 2005, is projected to grow to $1.5 billion by 2009. We see tremendous opportunity and we expect to continue to be a significant player in the online video space moving forward.
Consistent with industry video consumption trends, since launching TheStreet.com ,TV we've seen increased demand from viewers coming to our website directly, as well as those coming from partners such as Yahoo!, Google and AOL. We were recently included in the Google Video Network and we partnered some months with Yahoo! Finance, where today, you can find our videos on the Yahoo! Finance home page.
As Tom mentioned, we've begun integrating video into our subscription offerings, which has been well-received, helping increase retention of current subscribers. As we continue building on this momentum to further integrate video across our web network, we will do more podcasts, seek out more syndication deals and fine-tune our current 12-channel offering on TheStreet.com TV. We are also building to a second TV studio at our 14 Wall Street office, which we look forward to completing by the end of Q1.
Our next big initiative in Q4 is to bring Ratings content online. In October, we completed the first stage of migrating Ratings content into the online space by embedding links to our independent stock ratings within articles that feature any of the 6,000-plus stocks that Ratings covers. In November, we syndicated our Stock Ratings earnings content through ShareBuilder, an online brokerage firm, along with several of our quantitative stock offerings, such as TheStreet.com Ratings Top 40 Fast Growth Stocks.
In December, we migrated mutual fund and ETF ratings content onto our free site, including introducing our Ratings Screener, where visitors can access proprietary data on a list of stocks, ETFs and mutual funds by market capitalization, sector and industry.
As we mentioned on our last earnings call, we have found a story with list-like content, i.e., top five ETFs to buy, typically generate three to four times as many page views as an average TSC story. So, during the past quarter, we've focused on increasing the production of these stories, the impact of which is evident in the record page views we reported in Q4. Further, we hired two additional writers exclusively working with our Ratings analytical team to increase production in this area.
In 2007, we look forward to realizing plans to bring additional ratings content online: life, health and property insurance ratings, HMO and Blue Cross/Blue Shield plan ratings and ratings on banks and savings and loans. We will also be launching a new long/short trading product geared towards sophisticated and professional investors that will be derived from the Ratings quantitative model.
In the near future, we will be launching ETF and mutual fund centers, both of which will center on Ratings content, stories and tools. These content enhancements directed at the mass consumer audience will be provided for free and will be advertising supported.
Regarding our further development on TheStreet.com University, we are looking to provide a more robust set of tools to help make the offering more interactive. In October, we formed a strategic alliance with the Foundation for Investor Education to deliver educational content to students nationwide.
Recently, we hired a managing editor, a senior level editorial position, to oversee the further development of TheStreet.com University. Our new managing editor has broad experience both in finance and in developing and implementing online courses, including having serviced Product Developer and contributing editor for Trump University. In the coming year, you will see TheStreet.com University become a major site for us and our network of properties.
Turning to the final Q4 initiative to be highlighted here, securing a position in the online social networking space is a key part of continuing to capture the mass consumer market. Having already incorporated blogs into our service, we went a step further. In Q4, we laid the groundwork for a joint venture with James Altucher to create a new website called Stockpickr, Stock Idea Network a joint venture in which TheStreet.com has 49.9% ownership. The web site is the first to combine social networking with stock investment ideas, allowing its members to compare their portfolios to others in the network, scan portfolios for investment ideas and open a dialogue with like-minded investors in a secure environment.
In the week after the joint venture was announced, the number of portfolios on the site and the number of registered users both doubled. Today, Stockpickr.com drives a portion of those strong traffic numbers we were seeing across the network of multimedia properties.
Q4 was a strong quarter that capped off a strong year. Pleased with our operational accomplishments and having successfully met benchmarks set forth last quarter, we are excited about what 2007 holds.
Now I will turn it back over to Tom, who will tell you a bit more about what to look forward to in '07.
Thomas Clarke
Thanks, Jim. So what's in store for '07? As we continue to implement our strategy of diversifying our revenue stream towards one that has a larger advertising supported component, the full benefit of the many initiatives we implemented in 2006 will become more apparent.
In looking at our business, there are four main content areas that we will remain focused on enhancing: video, ratings, education and social networking.
In terms of video, we are focused on making TheStreet.com TV the premium destination for financial news and analysis, while also offering our rapidly growing audience added lifestyle content with new entertainment programming and features. We want to give our video audience the best user experience possible, which will include an increased ability to interact with our hosts and personalities through video blogs and other forms of participation.
We are also focused on syndication opportunities as we want to be syndicated with as many natural partners as possible. These would include all appropriate web partners, including newspaper websites and potentially cable and mobile platforms.
With regard to TheStreet.com Ratings, the migration of additional content, such as bank and insurance ratings, will enable us to grow traffic and expand our advertising and strategic partnership opportunities.
One of the more exciting opportunities is in educational content. We're firmly committed to furthering our offerings in this space. With an expanded set of interactive and entertaining tools and a robust inventory of personal finance content, we take seriously our mission to help educate individuals who want to increase their financial acumen. As I have mentioned in the past, I believe the application of this education will subsequently help the subscription business.
As demonstrated in 2006, the company has strong organic growth potential and we expect all aspects of the company to grow in '07 with advertising leading the way. I look again to supplement this growth with accretive acquisitions or partnerships that broaden our reach in the financial segment. Our joint venture that created the social networking site Stockpickr.com is an example of the type of flexibility we will again look to exhibit in 2007.
On the heels of TheStreet.com's tenth anniversary, our second full year of profitability and in light of the first full year our shareholders have enjoyed dividend rewards, it has been my pleasure to report our record-breaking fourth quarter and full year results for 2006.
I would like to open the call up for questions at this time.
Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Your first question comes from Mark May - Needham & Co.
Mark May - Needham & Co.
Thanks for taking my questions. I might have to start using lists in my research reports. You've given me a good idea there. Congratulations on a great year.
My first question has to do with one of the things that was really strong last year, your incremental margins. Your margin improvement was significant. I think it was over 50% in each quarter of the year and 65% incremental margins in Q4. You made the comment that you are reinvesting in the near term. I think some of that is in product and some of that is in marketing.
What should we expect in 2007? Is 50% kind of overreaching this year, and what's a reasonable margin goal over the next two years?
Eric Ashman
Mark, I think the comment that we made was in the call just speaks to the extent that we see opportunity to make reasonable investment and growth in the areas that we talked about in terms of our SCO and other traffic-driving initiatives, or in terms of investing in the ad sales team to drive revenue growth; or on the editorial side to drive content expansion. We will do that with a baseline of looking to protect the margin that we've achieved for '06.
We will only do that to the extent that we see that there's ROI, so we will use the leverage that's in the business to the extent that it's appropriate. We don't give guidance, but in terms of our expectation for '07, certainly that's how we're looking at the business right now.
Mark May - Needham & Co.
So we're trying through read your comments, but when you talk about protecting your margins, I think you were 27% EBITDA margin for the year. You exited the year obviously a seasonally strong 29%. So is what we take away from that, is that a range would be reasonable, at least for the near term?
Eric Ashman
Yes. We look at it from the full-year margin perspective. So if you look at the full-year margins for '06, we look at that as kind of a baseline in terms of our performance going forward.
Mark May - Needham & Co.
Could you give us the contribution from the Ratings acquisition in the quarter? I don't think on the release you give out a cash-flow statement. Could you give us either your free cash flow number in the quarter, so operating cash flow less CapEx, or maybe even give us those two components?
Eric Ashman
In terms of the Ratings piece, as we said on the last call, we've just gone so far now in integrating Ratings into our business that we're not breaking that out as a separate component anymore. In terms of cash flow for the quarter, we reported it as $2.2 million.
Mark May - Needham & Co.
That would be OCF, less CapEx?
Eric Ashman
That's right.
Mark May - Needham & Co.
With the Ratings acquisition, maybe another way of asking it, does that business tend to be seasonally slower or stronger in the fourth quarter compared to the third quarter?
Thomas Clarke
No. Mark, I think the way you have to look at it is, there is really very little seasonality in the business. Remember, this was a print business that is really moving to an online world. So, as we bring more and more of this content, and I think it was reflected in the 244 million page views we generated in the quarter, that is where we see the biggest impact of ratings to be in the sense that there's a lot of content still to be brought over into our world, hence my comment about initiatives in '06 where the full impact would be in '07 that we think we can really monetize it.
Mark May - Needham & Co.
So with Ratings, it's fair to say in the fourth quarter, you saw some minor improvement and page views and usage from that, but you certainly have not seen the full benefit?
Secondly, I think in the area of syndication, it sounded like when you closed that deal that you were pretty excited about driving more syndication revenue. But, is it fair to say that those two kind of revenue synergies from Ratings, you didn't really see the full benefit?
Thomas Clarke
Correct. I think if you think about the migration of the content, as we have said in previous calls and we've said all along about the acquisition that one of the larger components that we felt was going to have an impact was the mutual fund in the ETF Ratings component, and that actually only came online in December. So we actually saw very little of that impact, and if you think about most people in the country owning mutual funds versus stock, we feel the full impact of that is really going to be in '07. We saw little, if any, impact in '06.
As for the syndication opportunities, I think it's safe to say my comments would mirror what I just said about the content itself in the sense that to get it into the online environment, that is where the syndication opportunity is really going to be for us. We had some applications there, but nothing as when we go forward in '07 we think the opportunities are.
Mark May - Needham & Co.
The relative economics of video advertising are superior to your standard advertising, and it was 7% of your revenue. I think you had been talking about a 5% to 10% range for '07, and you're already at the high end of that. Is it fair to say that it's outperforming your expectations and that you may come in this year at the high end, if not above, your previous expectations?
Thomas Clarke
I would say that's correct. I would say that it has done better than our expectations. The fact of the matter is, I think we're becoming in tune with our advertisers more creative in some of the content that we're putting out there.
In terms of where the advertisers, the experience we had, I think one of the things we mentioned on our last call was the fact that we were implementing ROO, which would give us the ability to serve dynamically ads within our channels, as opposed to serving one ad continually through a channel. I think that alone has helped and we think there are other syndication opportunities in '07 for video that hopefully will bring us to the high end of that expectation.
Mark May - Needham & Co.
Is it true that as more people are viewing videos, does one view count as one page view, despite the fact that they're sometimes viewing for several minutes? I guess the quality of that page view metric diminishes over time?
Eric Ashman
We count it as a video view. So to the extent that they watch one video, that equates to one video view.
Mark May - Needham & Co.
Then the page view metric that you give out, it's just one page view?
Thomas Clarke
Right.
Operator
Your next question comes from Doug Kass - Seabreeze Partners.
Doug Kass - Seabreeze Partners
I have two questions, and I apologize, I just got on the call, so if you referred to it conference call, just tell me. What is the current level of accumulated tax loss carryforwards? As a corollary to that, what are the restrictions on the utilization of that loss carryforward?
In the press release, the syndication revenue went from virtually zero to almost $1 million in the quarter. What exactly is syndication revenue?
Thomas Clarke
Okay, I will try to take you in the order you asked. The current level is about $140 million of NOLs that we have accumulated over the years, kind of unfortunately for all those years I guess, but I guess fortunate to have it now that we're profitable for the last few years.
The restriction on that is really no restriction, it's really the performance of the business and how our auditors look at that, and that is why on the call, we indicated that at some time in '07, we're going to be taking a tax-deferred adjustment and will have a big impact.
Syndication is really our ability to take content and syndicate it to other partners. The big syndication jump you saw that you indicated was really from the Ratings business, and that has to do with the settlement, the Wall Street settlement that the brokers do. We are a third-party participant in that, so for example, if Merrill Lynch, if you're a client of Merrill Lynch and you get your statement, you will see on it that we will have a rating on a stock next to the rating that Merrill gives to it because we're a supplier of information to brokers in that settlement piece.
Doug Kass - Seabreeze Partners
Thank you very much.
Operator
Your next question comes from Richard Fetyko - Merriman Curhan Ford.
Richard Fetyko - Merriman Curhan Ford
Just looking at the advertising subscription businesses, if you could compare the margins between the two segments, just greater or smaller, lower.
The CPMs that you're realizing on the Ratings content, there is a lot of demand from consumers but also advertisers. Just curious what kind of CPMs relative to your other content average CPMs that you have on the advertising inventory, how it compares as well?
Eric Ashman
Richard, I would just answer the first question in terms of margin. The margin on the sub business ranges, the gross margin of the sub business, ranges in the 60% to 65% range, while the ad side of the business, the gross margins exceed 70%.
To answer your question on CPMs, the CPMs generally run fairly consistent across the different types of contents, so we're not seeing that Ratings content is driving higher CPMs than we're obtaining across the rest of the site.
Richard Fetyko - Merriman Curhan Ford
Obviously, Ratings has been an amazing acquisition for you, you stole that business for $3.5 million in cash. Any other content acquisitions or other acquisitions that you're considering, and what type of acquisition would you consider? Thanks.
Thomas Clarke
Thanks for your comments on the acquisition. We think it's a solid business and we're very pleased with not only the content, but the employees that we got with that business have all helped with our success. I think when we look at acquisitions going out, obviously we have a stated strategic objective of looking to increase the amount of ad supported revenue we have in our revenue mix. I would look for businesses to do that.
With our strategy of going more ad supported, the tools arena -- so planners and things like that -- are obviously on our radar screen. I think it's important to note that we want to kind of stay within the financial segment, meaning that I don't think we probably have an expertise, or I certainly don't have an expertise, to look outside the financial category and think that is a good fit for us. We know finance, we are a pioneer in the finance space.
However, saying that, I think we can broaden what the finance category is. So I mean, as we look at retirement, educational funding, banking information, mortgage rates, that people have in their financial well-being, those are the things we will probably look at. The Ratings business was unique in the sense that it was an offline business that we could bring online. I hope there's a couple more out there, but if not, I'm pretty confident that we can find something.
For us it's always about the same thing. If they have a very good product and they could benefit from our large distribution network, that's a home run for us and that's where we would look to put it in.
Richard Fetyko - Merriman Curhan Ford
Makes sense. Thanks a lot.
Operator
Your next question comes from William Morrison - JMP Securities.
William Morrison - JMP Securities
On the cash flow side, Eric, I think you said your free cash flow $2.2 million, but in your release, your total cash flow was $2.2 million? So I'm just wondering it that's a coincidence or if that is the true free cash flow? Can you break out operating cash flow and CapEx for us?
Eric Ashman
They are the same number. So I don't know if we have CapEx in the release, but we had CapEx in the quarter of about $350,000 to $400,000, but they should be the same number.
William Morrison - JMP Securities
Operating cash flow then was around $1.8 million, somewhere in there?
Eric Ashman
That's right.
William Morrison - JMP Securities
On the margin side, I guess I wanted to try and get a little bit more clarification on what you're saying. Are you saying that we should expect margins to be flat, operating margins and EBITDA margins to be flat in 2007, or are you saying that you will use the same discretion as you have in the last couple of years of balancing, of spending 40% or 50% of your revenue growth on growing the business and delivering that incremental margin that you have historically?
Thomas Clarke
Bill, maybe I can lend a little clarity to this. I think that, number one, we want to use the same discretion, but I think you also have to look at what our strategic plan is and where we're going. As you know, Eric just kind of answered it a minute ago, in looking at the margins between the two business lines that make up predominantly the majority of the revenue, which is subscription and advertising, if the advertising margin is better than the subscription business and our strategic plan in '07 is to bring more of that ad supported revenue into the business, then by definition, I think you will see improvement in the margin.
However, again, if there are opportunities where we think we can invest in the business, I think we're in a position where we want to grow this business in a very significant way, and we want to do so in the way we've done in the past, in a smart way. So I hope that gives a little bit more clarity to it. We will be very discreet about it. We always want to improve the margins; that's a fact of what we want to do.
However, I think if there was an opportunity where we could grow in a land grab opportunity and keep that margin flat for a quarter, maybe we would look at that. But we will use our discretion. We have done it over the last couple of years, we're confident we can continue to be very positive about it.
William Morrison - JMP Securities
So, I guess what I'm hearing is that we should expect margins to improve. I mean, you had I think a 700 or 800 basis point improvement in margins in '06, and it has probably given your growth opportunities that we should not expect that level of margin expansion in '07, but we should expect some growth in margins?
Thomas Clarke
I would say that is correct.
William Morrison - JMP Securities
Can you give me the sell-through rate on the advertising inventory, on the page views, for the quarter?
Thomas Clarke
Sure. Sell-through rate was 90%.
William Morrison - JMP Securities
Where should we expect that to go? I know you have obviously had another surge in page views, and in the past, when you have had that kind of growth in any given quarter, it takes time for the sales force to catch up to the growth. Where can we expect the sell-through rate to go over the next year?
Thomas Clarke
You know, I would look to see that sell-through rate to kind of stay within the same range. We expect to continue to grow. As we continue to bring more content into the ad supported world, we continue to see our traffic grow. I think we'd like to see that sell-through rate kind of be in that range.
William Morrison - JMP Securities
In the kind of low 90% range?
Thomas Clarke
Yes. I would say, you know, if you look it at over year, we probably average somewhere between the 86% to 90% range in any one quarter. I think you would be safe to say that that's kind of where it would be.
William Morrison - JMP Securities
Can you maybe give us a little bit more commentary as well on what your expectations are for subscriber growth over the next year, just in absolute, incremental subscriber additions for the year?
Thomas Clarke
Again, we don't plan it out that way. As I have said, I think we said it in our previous call, we expect this year that the subscriber business to grow somewhere, you know, 5% to 7%, and we are working to that. That is kind of the levels we're doing, so I think you could just do the math and figure it from there.
William Morrison - JMP Securities
So is that 5% to 7% subscriber growth, or subscription revenue growth?
Thomas Clarke
Subscription revenue growth.
William Morrison - JMP Securities
Lastly, if you look at your stock, even given the positive reaction today, to me it looks like your stock continues to trade at a level well below your peers. And I'm just curious if you have thought or would think about -- and I know you have a dividend -- but also about potentially putting in a stock buyback program?
Thomas Clarke
We still have money in a buyback program already under our previous 10 million, we still have a couple million, 2.3 million to be exact, that is out there. The Board and myself, we look at this all of the time. If we continue to see that we're undervalued, then certainly we have the ability to do that.
We're going to invest in this business, we're going to grow this business. We did this too, the dividend, last year. We want to grow. Our focus in '07, as it was in '06, is to really grow this business. If we can do so and we think a buyback makes sense within what we're seeing, then we will do it. But the focus is on growth.
William Morrison - JMP Securities
What was the change? How much stock did you buy back over the last quarter?
Thomas Clarke
We have not bought back any in the last few quarters, again, focusing on the growth of the business.
William Morrison - JMP Securities
Alright, thanks a lot.
Operator
Your next question comes from Jack Ripstein - Potrero.
Jack Ripstein - Potrero
I wanted to understand a few things about the subscription business a little bit better. If I heard correctly, you said the margins were better on the advertising than subscription, and I'm just trying to figure out why that might be, because it seems like once someone is a subscriber, there is obviously the underlying cost of the generation of the content, but you're doing that anyway. So maybe just a little more clarity there?
Thomas Clarke
Within the subscription world, there are different types of subscription type products. For example, if a subscriber was a subscriber to RealMoney.com, which is a web site, right, the incremental subscriber there, the margin on that is very, very good because of the fact that we have a fixed cost of putting up the web site and paying for the content on it.
If it's a newsletter type product, the difference is that different newsletters have different revenue shares with the creator of the newsletter, so that creates a different type of margin as you get with the subscription business. So that's why, when you look at it overall, it's probably not as good as the advertising business.
Jack Ripstein - Potrero
In terms of where you're getting the new subscribers, are they predominately skewing towards these newsletters, or are they predominately skewing towards, say, your more let's call it generic content that you're already putting up?
Thomas Clarke
I think they're skewing more to the newsletters because they are fine-tuning their areas where they want help. A lot of our newsletters are directional in nature but we're very specific about our recommendations as to when we want someone to get in and out of security, and I think a lot of people finding that that's very helpful for them as opposed to some generic other type of information.
Jack Ripstein - Potrero
What about your churn rate on these products?
Thomas Clarke
The churn rate really has not changed at all. When you look at the fourth quarter, the renewal rate on monthlies was 89%, which was up a little bit sequentially from the third quarter, and the renewal on the annuals was up 3% sequentially over the third quarter also.
As I have said many times on these calls, those numbers really don't change dramatically over any one quarter to another, nor do they for the year. If you go back and you look at kind of a two-year window, within a few percentage points, the numbers are in the ranges I just gave you.
Jack Ripstein - Potrero
So just looking at your deferred revenues, and I apologize if this is sort of subscription 101, but it's probably helpful, I'm assuming that means that most of your subscribers are on a monthly basis, given that your bookings were high and your deferred does not match that. Is that correct?
Thomas Clarke
79% of our subscriber base is on an annual basis.
Jack Ripstein - Potrero
Then how does the bookings reconcile to declining deferred revenue?
Thomas Clarke
You have to think of bookings as an initial sale, and some of those are monthly sales that come in that we recognize at the end of the month; the rest of it is split over a 12-month window because most of them are annual sales.
Jack Ripstein - Potrero
So shouldn't deferreds be larger? I mean, I'm looking at the sequential declining in deferreds and I'm just trying to figure out why it wouldn't grow if your bookings were up in the quarter? I understand you're pulling some out every month, but…
Eric Ashman
It's just a matter of momentum, so you're dropping, and when you hit a booking for an annual, you're basically putting 11 months worth into that deferred number, but you're also burning off larger pools from earlier in the year. So you get a look at the flow of bookings throughout the year to get a feel as to how deferred will play against that.
Jack Ripstein - Potrero
But there was a huge uptick from '05 to Q1 of '06; up and then down a little. Should we expect a similar sort of fiscal year 2007 start where the deferred grows? Is it sort of, there's an annual at the beginning of the year, or are they all off-cycle? I'm just trying to figure out how that flows.
Eric Ashman
It could. It's very early in the quarter, but what you will see is a lag between those two numbers. So you could see that where the bookings shifts in one quarter, deferred actually goes the other way and they kind of play off of each other that way.
Jack Ripstein - Potrero
I understand the advertising is the hot button of the day, but it seems like the subscription is a nice business that does continue to give you some stability. Are there other subscription products that you're thinking about launching? I'm thinking in a bull market, these IPO trackers seem to do well and it seems to be something that people are paying for?
Thomas Clarke
Yes, we're looking at that. As we mentioned on the call, we're launching an ETF product on March 14, so I think when we look at pockets of opportunity within the subscription world, we will come out with products that fit that, and we think the ETF product is a perfect example of that.
So yes, we love the subscription business. I know a lot of people don't like it. I love the annuity gives that it gives us, it gives us a big cash flow, it a gives us a lot of stability and it gives us the ability to use that cash to invest in other aspects of the business like the ad supported side. So we're not going away from it, it's always going to be a large portion of our revenue stream. I would just like it to be more in sync kind of on a 50/50 basis with the ad business as we go forward.
Jack Ripstein - Potrero
I was just curious, I mean, for those people who may be had subscribed to some of those things that MarketWatch, once it went private so to speak or became part of Dow Jones, they started refunding you your subscription portion on a prorated basis, then went away from it. I'm wondering, is that something that, if you guys were private you'd think about doing? Is this a trend that we're going to see more of? Just any sort of thought process, not on what they're doing, but how?
Thomas Clarke
I'm not one to think of a hypothesis and say if we were private or not or a public company, but I can tell you, in the subscription business, we like it. We have been a pioneer in it. If you take away DowJones.com, which you could argue is really not a subscription business per sae, it's the newspaper moving to the online world, we're one of the largest subscription business is on the web, and with $370 per subscriber, the numbers are pretty substantial. So we like it, we're going to be in it. I can't see us going away from it, we're not going to be refunding money to people. It's just not something that we're going to do. We like the business.
Jack Ripstein - Potrero
Okay, fantastic. Thank you.
Operator
Your next question comes from Michael Marzolf - MRM Capital.
Michael Marzolf - MRM Capital
Wonderful quarter, guys. Just a couple of quick questions. The CNBC ratings from Cramer's Mad Money, did it sequentially go up, is it just holding up like it has been in the past?
Thomas Clarke
Again, I'm an observer to the process, but I can tell you that I believe that the numbers continue to go up quarter to quarter.
Michael Marzolf - MRM Capital
I like to hear that. The total advertisers, what were they for this quarter?
Thomas Clarke
The number of advertisers for the quarter were 85 and 148 for the year.
Michael Marzolf - MRM Capital
Wow, so 85, and that was up from 71 last quarter, correct?
Thomas Clarke
That's correct.
Michael Marzolf - MRM Capital
Nice. Can you elaborate, the accounts receivables appeared to go up $2 million from last quarter.
Eric Ashman
There's nothing specific driving that. It's basically just timing.
Michael Marzolf - MRM Capital
Is it a lot of subscription growth this quarter versus last quarter, or is it just timing?
Eric Ashman
It would have been just timing. It wouldn't be directly related to subscription actually. It's more related to the ad side of the business than it is on the sub side.
Michael Marzolf - MRM Capital
Tom, as far as buying back stock, obviously with the stock up to $11 and when it was just $8 not too long ago and the shorts were leaning on you and what have you, I look at your dividend and I look at your cash, and would you guys consider doubling your dividend? It may be construed in some instances as, some people may think it's not growth, but in my circumstance, I think it would actually be a very bullish thing, because buying back the stock here unless you get a humongous buyback, which would take a lot of your cash and you're trying to grow and make acquisitions and what have you, have you guys thought about that?
Thomas Clarke
You know, Mike, with our fiduciary responsibility, we look at all of those things. Our focus is on growth. We have a lot of cash. If the acquisitions that are out there don't require us to use it, any and all is on the table. We want to give our shareholders a reward for being with us, and doing a dividend is pretty good. There are so many opportunities we're seeing right now to grow the business, especially within video, that we're really focused on looking at that. But, the dividend discussion will come up the next the time the board meets.
Michael Marzolf - MRM Capital
I must tell you, the video product is great.
Thomas Clarke
Thank you, appreciate that.
Operator
Your next question comes from Bill Lennan - First Albany.
Bill Lennan - First Albany
Could you tell us the number of employees at year end, and/or currently?
Thomas Clarke
181 at year end.
Bill Lennan - First Albany
181 at year end. I wanted to drill down a little bit on the strength in bookings; that was pleasantly a surprising number. Was there any impact at all from Weiss here? I know you don't want to break it out, but just generically, did Weiss help that, or is it all organic from the core business? And if so, where is that coming from? You mentioned newsletters. Are there particular products that are outperforming others right now and driving that ARPU up?
Thomas Clarke
Most of it was organic, Bill. What we're seeing, as I just mentioned a couple of minutes ago, we are seeing a lot to the directional newsletters where we're giving specific recommendations on specific moves we would make in the investing cycle. So we're seeing a lot of interest in those. We expect the ETF product to give us a boost on the subscription side for the same reason because we think, number one, it's a sector a lot of people are talking about and two, we have a very talented contributor who's going to be working with us on that. So, most of it was organic.
Bill Lennan - First Albany
Okay. Could you talk about '07? What are some of the operational metrics that people have in their goals? I don't mean so much financial, I know you want to grow revenue, you want to obviously keep margins where they are or make them better. But if we drilled down a little bit, what are some of the metrics that you watch internally that people will be judged on this year, whether it's sub numbers, number of video streams? What are like the two or three top metrics internally that you focus on for the year?
Thomas Clarke
Bill, that really speaks to specific areas of the company, so let's look at video. So video metrics that I would look at would be the type of production of video content we do, are we expanding it to be more entertaining, is there a comedy aspect or something we can put in; syndication opportunities, the number of CEOs we're getting in there an the level of CEOs, and are we doing more; the number of videos that someone is viewing, are we getting someone to go deeper into the video channel? So, rather than see one or two videos, are we really bringing them in.
If you look at editorial, are we writing stories where, when you look at the average page view per story, that number is going up. How many page views per visit is an individual getting, are we getting them to go deeper into the site, are they visiting TheStreet.com University for educational content?
And on advertising side, do we continue to grow? I know the knock on us has always been the financial advertisers, but if you look at the non-financial number of advertisers we have and where that part of the business has gone, that is a metric we look at from the ad sales team.
In general, when I'm specifically looking at different aspects of the organization, I'm looking at the growth of the business per sae, meaning I want more traffic, I want more subscribers, I'd like the revenue per subscriber to go up if that's a metric that we can continue to grow. I like the page views to go up, but most importantly, visits per page view.
With video, I have high expectation that, number one, that this is going to be content. We heard some very nice comments from some of the people on the call already about the quality of the video. We think the quality of the video is so good that we should be syndicating this out to other sites where they don't have the capability to produce it.
Bill, I think I mentioned to you once before, one of our goals is really to be agnostic about how someone wants to consume the information that we provide, whether it be in text, whether be in a podcast, whether it be in a video, it's important for us to really expand the multimedia aspects of the type of content we have and really have people look at it. So those are the kinds of things that we are really looking at.
Bill Lennan - First Albany
Can you talk about the trend line in demographics as you add Weiss content? Are you trying to get away from the hard-core white male day trader, are you seeing any progress here in getting more women on the site, or in any other way, expanding the demographics in a way that will lure a type of non-financial advertisers?
Thomas Clarke
You know, I think we are. We have seen more women coming to the site, but I don't want you to leave with the impression that this is a site that is dominated by women. Unfortunately it's not, it's still a male-dominated site. But each quarter that we go on, the percentage of females visiting the site is going up. I think that's not just generic to us. I think more and more women are getting involved in the financial matters of their lives, so I think that's a good trend for us overall.
From an advertising perspective, as you know, part of it is a game of reach. 244 million page views in the quarter takes us up to another level that we had not reached ever before. That will bring on another level of advertisers in the non-financial category that will be positive to us.
So for us, it's using our distribution networking. We haven't talked a lot about it on this call, but our deal with Stockpickr, the social networking side, I think as we bring the advertisers into that and continue to leverage that type of content, that's also going to be a very positive benefit for us.
So I'm pretty bullish about our opportunity to continue to drive a good demographic. With the subscription business, you know, we have information about our subscribers that also make them an attractive partner for our advertisers.
Bill Lennan - First Albany
Tom, I know you're a big Yankees fan. We've got Mariano Rivera on the cover of The Post saying, I want to know what my status is beyond '07. On a similar note, I wonder if you can give a little insight as to when we should expect to know more about Jim Cramer's status for the long term?
I attended your tenth anniversary party, which was great, by the way, and Jim was very passionate that he's not going anywhere, and his stake in the company is certainly the first clue that he would probably want to stay around. But, for people who want to see something in dried ink on a contract, when will we know more about what Jim's status is beyond this year with his contribution to the site?
Thomas Clarke
I'm glad you brought it up, Bill, because I know a lot of people asked about it. I will answer it the way I answer most of the time when the conversation revolves around Jim and his contract. Jim is the largest shareholder, he is passionate about the business, these are businesses that Jim wants to be in, he creates himself in new mediums all the time as we saw with him leaving radio to spend more time with video. He is always at the cutting edge of that.
Jim and I will sit down and by mid-year or going into the third quarter, we will sit down and we'll figure out what makes sense for the firm and for Jim, and we will get it done. I have no apprehension about getting it done. We don't see any reason to get it done immediately and we'll continue to work through the year and we'll figure out where we want to use Jim's talents in the best way, and that's probably the reason why we don't get it done now is because I don't know what the next six months are going to bring and we may have an acquisition and Jim's talents may be better suited to working with, helping us integrate that, and I would make that part of obviously any contract we do going forward.
So I would expect somewhere between, after the middle of the year and the third quarter.
Operator
Your next question comes from Andrew Sole - Esopus Creek Advisors.
Andrew Sole - Esopus Creek Advisors
Good morning, Tom, thanks for taking the call. My question goes towards Jim Cramer and his association with CNBC. He is obviously a top-rated talent for NBC, appearing on not just CNBC, but MSNBC, NBC. And with the announcement of the Fox Business Channel being launched, and I certainly wouldn't ask you to tell me what steps you might be taking for competitive reasons, but are you taking steps to protect the value of the franchisee that you've build up with Jim and of course Jim's own association with CNBC? That would be the first question.
The second question is, given Jim's association with NBC, is TheStreet.com precluded from doing a joint venture or getting involved with News Corp., or for that matter, any other network?
Thomas Clarke
Let me take them in the order you gave them, and thanks for your kind comments, I appreciate that. In thinking about the franchise value that we have created with Jim, and as a co-founder of the firm, certainly at the forefront of creating that value, you know, that value is really created at TheStreet.com level. It's really not created at the CNBC/Mad Money level.
As we've said many times, we're a beneficiary of that relationship, we continue to be a beneficiary of that. Jim is having fun doing it. But I think most people know, if you really want to know what Jim is thinking about the market, if you really want to understand where his head is, you're going to find all of that information at TheStreet.com. You're not going to find it on Mad Money.
As to the News Corp. relationship that you alluded to, we are not precluded by any relationship that Jim has with CNBC, NBC, MSNBC or any of the other kind of GE associations from doing anything if we think it's in the benefit of TheStreet.com to go have that relationship, we would do it. I think those entities would really have to take a hard look at their relationship with Jim and determine where that goes, rather than anything that TheStreet.com would be precluded from having at its disposal.
Andrew Sole - Esopus Creek Advisors
Okay, thanks Tom, and great job this year.
Operator
Your next question comes from Ursula Moran - Bear Stearns.
Ursula Moran - Bear Stearns
I was curious if you could say a little bit more about the non-financial advertisers that you're now attracting in larger numbers, and how you're organized to go after them? Whether there are specific segments you're focused on first, or how you're thinking about that?
Thomas Clarke
I'm thinking about it very positively after the last two quarters, to be honest with you. The way we look at it, our ad sales team continues to grow, Ursula, as I think you and I talked, and the fact of the matter is, it's really a unique visitor page view gain for the advertiser, for certainly the non-financial advertisers. It's about reach and it's about breadth and it's about the ability that, are they putting forth an advertisement that our demographic finds attractive. Fortunately, over the last couple quarters, we are seeing that.
If you look in the last quarter, some big non-financial advertisers for us like Hewlett-Packard, Dow Chemical, United Technologies, and then you get into the car companies like Lexus and Ford, I continue to see that as a trend that will continue. I don't see that actually falling off in any way.
Our sales team is set up regionally where we go after a lot of these accounts. Frankly, some of the accounts are finding us because when their agencies go out and they look at sites that can deliver either a certain demographic or a certain reach, we're now at a level where we're competing with some sites that we had not done so before. So we're all pretty bullish about it.
James Lonergan
I think one other point is, while it's financial, what we've been able to do over the last year or so is go beyond those people looking for traders, people that are doing quick trades, to actually selling their mutual fund and that money market product, not as active kind of product. So while it's still in the financial realm, it's allowing us to expand what kind of products we sell to financial institutions and what they advertise.
Ursula Moran - Bear Stearns
Could you also talk a little bit if you would about the role that the video might play on the advertising side, where it is now and whether you have a view yet on where that might go?
Thomas Clarke
I think someone brought up earlier, our view was that it would be 5% to 10% maybe of our revenue stream in '07. We came into the fourth quarter and it was 7% of our advertising revenue stream in the fourth quarter alone, continuing to exceed our expectations.
Advertising demand in video content right now is exceedingly high. I think all of us who have been either early adapters of video or certainly as we look it, we see, certainly that will continue for awhile, but at some point, the demand will be pushed in a different direction because of the fact that some other people will have it, in terms of pricing. But I think the demand is going to be there, and the reason that's occurring is because broadband is not that expensive.
More and more people consume video content. I saw statistics the other day where, if you look at the consumption of video content just in the last six months, it's up dramatically. It's probably up 25% to 30% from where it was before and the trends that they have going out into 2007-2008 continue to, to be honest with you, astound me. I know the younger generation consumes an enormous amount of video, but now you're seeing all levels of people consume it.
So, we're very bullish about video. We see it as a land grab opportunity for us in '07 and we're going to do everything we can to get a good piece of that pie.
Ursula Moran - Bear Stearns
Thanks.
Operator
At this time, there are no more questions in queue. I would now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Tom Clarke, Chairman and CEO, for closing remarks. Please proceed, sir.
Thomas Clarke
Thank you. I just wanted to thank everybody for being on the call with us today. As we look out in '07, we're excited about the business we have built, we're excited about where the business is going and we think we have a platform that we can really take this firm to the next level. So I would say, keep watching, stay invested and I look forward to talking to you again next quarter.
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