Stephen Trundle
Analyst · Saket Kalia of Barclays Capital. Your line is open
Thank you, Matt. Good afternoon, and welcome to everyone. We are pleased to report fourth quarter and full year results that exceeded our expectations. Our SaaS and license revenue in the Q4 was $148.3 million up 10.3% over the last year. Our adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $45.6 million. Despite some uncertainty throughout the year, we delivered solid SaaS revenue growth by sharpening our focus on key initiatives. We also delivered record adjusted EBITDA and cash flow performance. I want to thank our service provider partners and our employees for their contributions to our 2023 performance. I'll focus my prepared remarks today on our long-term strategy. We believe that we have the right opportunities in our sites and the right plans to attack them. Our R&D program is positioned to leverage the growing universe of IoT data and to continue building innovative AI based offerings that will empower our service provider partners and deliver unique value to end customers. We have transitioned from a focus on one primary market where we have been very successful, mainly the North American Residential monitored security market to a more diversified business serving a larger overall TAM. We've expanded into the video market, both commercial and residential and the commercial access control and intrusion market. We developed an international business and cultivated new IoT enabled growth businesses like EnergyHub. These growth initiatives collectively represented 31% of our total SaaS revenue in 2023 and together grew 27% year-over-year. Let me kick through these various elements of our strategy. I'll start with the commercial market. We are attacking the market opportunity with a purpose designed solution that deeply integrates access control, intrusion and video monitoring into a single cohesive platform that the largest commercial integrators can leverage to solve their clients' multisite requirements. We've made good progress in our R&D pipeline here. During 2023, we launched third party camera support to enable our video solutions to operate with existing camera installations and originate additional SaaS revenue. We also launched a new access control product called Cell Connector. It leverages our work with LTE cellular networks to connect the access door controller directly to the Alarm.com platform rather than depending on an end customer's internal networks. OpenEye, our cloud-based video solution for large scale commercial customers launched new solutions during the year through its open ecosystem architecture. For example, SalesConnect is a new point of sale solution that integrates transaction data from the leading suppliers of point-of-sale systems. OpenEye triggers real time alerts for point-of-sale exceptions such as voids, refunds and overrides and retrieves the corresponding video of the transaction. OpenEye also integrated environmental sensors to launch a new solution that detects smoke from cigarettes and vapes, monitors temperature, humidity and air quality and detects sound anomalies. Both solutions are sold as an additional SaaS module and significantly strengthen OpenEye's position in the retail, grocery and quick serve restaurant verticals as well as secondary schools. Shifting to our video business, we're deploying increasingly capable video analytics solutions. Importantly, we leverage our R&D investment in video and video analytics across our residential, commercial and international businesses. Our goal is to take advantage of a significant shift in video-based monitoring technology that is underway. Traditional video systems operate only on premise and use legacy technology. These systems are being replaced particularly in business properties. Our video solutions employ intelligent AI processors at the edge coupled with flexible cloud-based software and storage and additional layers of more refined cloud resident video analytics capabilities. The market is competitive, but we believe we are in a strong position to capture share as the shift away from traditional systems continues to unfold. One area where you will see us extending our video capabilities further in 2024 is in the realm of proactive deterrence. In 2023, we launched a capability called Perimeter Guard. Perimeter Guard can already identify a person during times when the potential for trouble is greatest or when the subscriber is away and then trigger a series of responses. Video cameras enabled with Perimeter Guard can emit audible warnings and strobe life responses. An escalated video event can also be sent directly to the monitoring station through our alarm response software. This enables monitoring station operators to view video feeds and talk down through the cameras onboard mic or via an external microphone, so they can try to diffuse a potential threat before escalating a step further by initiating a police response. Shifting to our international business, we are driving growth by supporting our international partners to fully operationalize Alarm.com and deploy our solutions in the diverse range of commercial and residential markets they address worldwide. Last year's acquisition of EBS, a European based business that designs and manufacturers Universal Communicators will significantly expand our support for our international partners. Universal Communicators can work with a wide range of legacy control panels. Service providers can cost effectively upgrade existing customers to Alarm.com. EBS has been in business for 30 years and its product support control panels that have been widely deployed in international markets. The final element of our growth strategy is the continued development of our growth venture businesses. These SaaS based businesses consist of EnergyHub, Building 36, PointCentral and Shooter Detection Systems. Each is developing innovative IoT enabled applications that can further expand our TAM. As you know, these businesses are at various stages of development with EnergyHub being the most mature. We expect these growth businesses to continue to increasingly contribute to our overall performance next year and become more efficient with scale. Next, I want to comment briefly on our EBITDA margin strategy. EBITDA is a choice that we make in our strategic planning cycles. One can choose between investing in the future health of the business or harvesting profits to produce cash today. I believe that producing meaningful positive EBITDA while also making reasonable long-term investments inspires good operational discipline and allows the company to selectively evaluate both organic and inorganic opportunities. Our commitment to ongoing R&D investment into future opportunities is a cornerstone of our synergistic relationship with our 11,000 plus service provider partners who handle the bulk of the sales and marketing activities on our behalf. I have previously indicated that we have a long-term target range of adjusted EBITDA margin of 18%, assuming a similar mix of SaaS and hardware revenues and a similar go to market approach as we have today. Our target range remains unchanged, and as Steve Valenzuela will discuss shortly, our full year adjusted EBITDA guidance for 2024 implies an adjusted EBITDA margin of 17.5%. Lastly, before I hand things over to Steve Valenzuela, I also want to briefly discuss the settlement of the Vivint matter. In December, we announced that we entered into a long-term intellectual property license agreement under which Alarm.com will license to Vida, our intellectual property portfolio. The revenues associated with the new license agreement are reflected in our guidance for 2024. We simultaneously settled all outstanding litigation matters between the companies. We are not able to share the details of this confidential settlement and it will therefore be hard for us to answer detailed questions on this particular matter. But I can say that I believe that the outcome is a good one for Alarm.com and its investors. To conclude, I'm pleased with our performance in 2023 and I'm excited about the year ahead in 2024. And with that, let me turn things over to Steve Valenzuela. Steve?