Serving up a digital feast

FOODIE Media Bhd’s co-founder and chief executive officer Nicholas Lim Pinn Yang brushes off concerns about the company’s stock price performance as he settles in to talk about the digital lifestyle media and commerce company’s future plans.

“There’s been profit-taking of course, but for me, I’m long term and my objective is not to drive up the share price of the company but to continue with my strategy of fulfilling what we have promised in our prospectus,” Lim tells StarBiz 7 at Foodie’s spanking new headquarters in Sunway.

To the chagrin of some investors, the company’s stock price is trading over 30% lower than its all-time high of 57 sen since it got listed late last year.

This is despite it delivering growing sales, earnings and new high-margin businesses.

The Penang-born Lim reckons that many retail investors may still not understand the entirety of Foodie Media’s business which is split into content, commerce, creator and community.

“We are doing a lot of education in this area, and have started with the institutional investors. They will take some time to understand our business as it is not that straightforward.

“But our diversity remains attractive to investors because we are future-proof and the first of our kind in South-East Asia,” he says.

Why future-proof, one may ask.

“This tiny screen is feeding everyone a lot of information everyday and I don’t think that’s going to change anytime soon,” Lim says, gesturing towards his mobile phone.

Foodie Media kicked off its business by posting food content as “food unites everyone”, but this has grown to cover other industries within the region such as skincare, travel, home and shopping.

The company, which is more than 51%-controlled by its founding team which includes Lim, his wife and his brother, currently makes most of its profit from its content business which includes producing digital content for big corporations and small medium enterprises (SMEs).

Lim says on average, the price per content is RM6,000 for SMEs and RM17,000 for big companies.

“Everyday, we post more than 20 different content, and these are all done by our in-house editors.”

The company is also growing its other segments of businesses, including conducting live streaming for its clients, where it earns a percentage of their profits from the live sessions.

“I think in five to 10 years’ time, Malaysians are going to become even more into digital content,” he says.

Aiming to over-deliver

“In terms of our earnings, we always try to over-deliver,” Lim says.

“Last year, we did a revenue of RM37mil. This year up to the third quarter of our financial year ending Aug 31 (FY26), we have done RM39.7mil on net profit of about RM11.2mil. We have one more quarter to go, we are hoping to hit RM50mil in revenue.”

Recalling his earlier days, Lim, now a popular Internet personality, says before 2023, he was handling Foodie Media’s operations from a back-end perspective.

“But in January 2023, I decided to create my own personal brand and came out as Pinn Yang, which is my real name. Things changed after that as more and more people got to know me and wanted to work with me.

“Now, sometimes when I am out, people will stop and want to take photos with me,” he laughs.

One of the key challenges the company faces is finding good talent.

“We rely on good talent and we need more of such talent. In fact, we are hiring massively now.”

He reckons artificial intelligence (AI) is complementary to Foodie Media’s business.

“Everyone here uses AI, it’s not a threat to us.

“We are a very young and vibrant company, the average age here is 27 and they know content and social media very well.”

In its “buy” initiation report on Foodie Media released on July 2, Maybank Investment Bank Bhd (Maybank IB), which also was the principal adviser, sponsor, underwriter and placement agent for the company’s IPO, says the group is well positioned to capture a larger share of digital advertising expenditure through its market-leading audience reach, deepening penetration of premium clients and expansion in content production capacity.

Supported by its other non-core segments, Maybank IB forecasts FY25 to FY28 revenue/core net profit compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 31%/32% for the company, adding that its target price of 51 sen is pegged to the domestic consumer sector’s average 2027 price earnings ratio of 17 times.

Maybank IB in its report notes that Foodie Media’s revenue quality has improved materially over FY22 to FY24, driven by a compositional shift towards premium customer segments.

Revenue from advertising agencies nearly tripled from FY22 to FY24 at 73% CAGR, while revenue from large corporations grew at 20% CAGR over the same period, it notes.

Concurrently, the number of agency and corporate customers expanded in tandem, reflecting both a growing customer volume base and increasing wallet share from premium customers, it adds.

Competitive landscape

In terms of industry risks and challenges, Maybank IB highlights that Malaysia’s digital media landscape remains competitive and fragmented and while Foodie Media has established its lead within the food and beverage segment, its expansion into adjacent verticals may expose the group to competitors with stronger brand recognition and category expertise, which could limit market share gains.

Maybank IB also notes that content quality is highly dependent on the creativity and execution of Foodie Media’s existing production and content creation team.

“As the business is largely people-driven, the loss of key content creators could disrupt content production.

“We also note that management’s planned workforce expansion requires successful recruitment and integration of new creators.”