Earnings Labs

Digital Turbine, Inc. (APPS)

Q4 2017 Earnings Call· Wed, Jun 14, 2017

$3.48

-2.66%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+5.10%

1 Week

+6.12%

1 Month

+12.24%

vs S&P

+11.72%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon and welcome to the Digital Turbine Fiscal Fourth Quarter Conference Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Brian Bartholomew, Senior Vice President of Capital Markets and Strategy. Please go ahead.

Brian Bartholomew

Analyst

Thank you. Good morning and welcome to the Digital Turbine fiscal fourth quarter 2017 earnings conference call. Joining me today to discuss our results are Bill Stone, CEO; and Barrett Garrison, our CFO. Before we get started, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you that our remarks today will include forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are based on our current assumptions, expectations and beliefs including projected operating metrics, future products and services, anticipated market demand and other forward-looking topics. Although we believe that our assumptions are reasonable, they are not guarantees of future performance and some will inevitably prove to be incorrect. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements. For a discussion of the risk factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from those contemplated by our forward-looking statements, please refer to the documents we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Also during this call, we will discuss certain non-GAAP measures of our performance. Non-GAAP measures are not substitutes for GAAP measures. Please refer to today’s press release for important information about the limitations of using non-GAAP measures as well as reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial results to the most comparable GAAP measures. Now, it is my pleasure to turn the call over to Mr. Bill Stone.

Bill Stone

Analyst

Thanks, Brian, and thanks to all for joining. I want to cover our four main areas in my remarks. First are some macro comments about where I see our business today; second, we’ll be closing our fiscal year 2017; third is some operational updates for the current June quarter; and finally, we will provide an update on our strategy on how we are leveraging our Ignite platform beyond just our DT Media business. First, I want to begin with our stated goals on previous calls which is to make Digital Turbine a sustainably profitable business. I’m pleased to report that over the past few months, gross profit dollars have exceeded cash operating expenses. We still have work to do to turn this into positive net income, but we’ve made material progress in building a profitable and sustainable business. It’s taken us much longer than anticipated but the combination of our O&O revenue ramp, expanding gross margins, and better cost discipline is now paying dividends. Going forward, we expect the diversification of our revenues across many partners and migration to higher margin O&O partners will continue this favorable trend. I’ll provide some additional detail later in my remarks and Barrett will provide some more specific financial guidance. Now, let me turn to closing out 2017. Reflecting back on 2017, it was the year we made the pivot to scale our O&O business and took material steps in achieving profitability. The March quarter was the first in the history of Digital Turbine to generate positive cash flow from operations. Revenues for the O&O business were up 81% year-over-year. We are now operating the O&O business at scale, delivering Ignite across many millions of devices per month. This was driven by solid performance with our largest North American partner but also material growth…

Barrett Garrison

Analyst

Thanks, Bill, and good afternoon, everyone. As Bill mentioned, we’re pleased with the progress we made in the quarter towards our primary objective of delivering sustainable profitability and generating positive free cash flows. We continue to see expanding gross margins and expense reductions, leading to improving adjusted EBITDA and are encouraged by the trajectory of our business leading into fiscal 2018. For the fiscal year 2017 we reported $91.6 million in revenue, growth of 6% from prior year and GAAP net loss of $0.36 per share as compared to a loss of $0.46 per share in the prior year. Now, let me turn to the specific financial performance in the quarter. Total revenue in the quarter of $22.4 million was up 1% sequentially and down 3% year-on-year. Advertising revenue of $15.2 million decreased 6% sequentially from the seasonally strong fiscal third quarter. And within advertising O&O revenue of $11.6 million decreased 1% sequentially and grew 46% year-on-year. Our continued O&O growth is driven by existing partners as well as new partners launched on to the platform. Inside advertising, our legacy A&P revenue was $3.6 million in the quarter, down 19% sequentially and 49% year-on-year, and stabilizing near these lower revenue levels. As a reminder, we executed cost reductions in our A&P business at the end of fiscal Q3 and at the beginning of fiscal Q4. This important step to align our expense structure with these lower revenues enables our A&P business to generate positive contribution margin in the quarter where gross profits exceed our direct expenses. Content revenue of $7.2 million in the quarter grew 18% sequentially and down 10% year-on-year. Revenues at the level since being impacted from revisions to the opt-in policies at our largest DT Pay partner in the fiscal second quarter. And we are encouraged by…

Operator

Operator

We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] Our first question comes from Mike Malouf with Craig-Hallum Capital Group. Please go ahead.

Mike Malouf

Analyst

Great and thanks for taking my questions and thanks for all the color on the call. Bill, maybe we could just talk a little bit about open market. That sounds like it’s doing well for you, especially coming out of basically zero in the September quarter. First off, can you talk a little bit about how many phones, rough numbers that you’re ramping on now and how that is growing and a little bit more color? And then, second of all, how are the number of partners growing? I think you started with just Amazon, and how many partners are you working with now?

Bill Stone

Analyst

Yes, sure. Thanks, Mike. First on devices. We continue to see devices ramp each quarter as devices get circulated through the system. And I would characterize it kind of in the low-7 figures devices, just to give you kind of a general target. But we’ve seen that number ramp as people exchange out S7s, give their S7 to their family member or recycle it and then they get an S8 and then that S7 may have a SIM card popped in it from somebody else associated with it. So, we’re seeing a lot more of those in the system, in not just here in United States, but also in other geographies around the world. So, we’re quite excited about that in terms of the incremental revenue opportunity with it. As far as the specific number of partners, I’d say right now, Mike, we’re working with between 10 to 20 different partners on this. And our strategy is we’ll continue to have some big brand names to people we are familiar with such as Amazon and Yahoo! and then stay tuned for some other announcements on that. But really, when we see open market devices, we see an opportunity for a lot of utility type apps. So, if you think on the iPhone, you have things like weather and stocks and things like that, similar on Android with more generic utility apps where we can do revenue share off the advertising inside those apps with the provider or we can just go buy the apps ourselves and take all the revenue for ourselves, which we currently do with the flashlight app. So, a lot of opportunities there in the space, just again another revenue stream off getting Ignite on the phone.

Mike Malouf

Analyst

And when you say several hundred thousand in the December quarter, are you talking, what 400 to 500 or 600 to 800; I mean can you just give us a little bit more clarity on that?

Bill Stone

Analyst

Yes. So, we’re talking about kind of mid-6 figures, Mike.

Mike Malouf

Analyst

Okay, great. And so, if you doubled off of 500, just to use that example, that will $1 million of gross profit, which would basically be about 18% of your entire gross profit is generated in the March quarter through open market, it’s pretty significant.

Bill Stone

Analyst

It’s definitely growing.

Mike Malouf

Analyst

Okay, great. And then, just one more follow-up question with regards to Ignite direct...

Bill Stone

Analyst

Delivers.

Mike Malouf

Analyst

Delivers, sorry. Can you give us a little bit more color on how that relates to the Blended Flow and AT&T?

Bill Stone

Analyst

Sure. So, the Blended Flow is really the ability to do the Wizard out of the box. So, when you go and you get your phone and you can select the apps you want at first boot as well as being able to again deliver apps silently behind the scene, similar to what we do with Verizon. So, being able to do both of those versus just one or the other is what we call Blended Flow. And as I mentioned earlier, that is now live with AT&T where we are continuing to operate the Wizard, but we also are now adding those incremental slots silently which is materially improving the revenue performance with AT&T. So that’s Blended Flow. Ignite Delivers is really the capability where we can go to anybody who wants to get apps on the phone, so think people like Facebook, Twitter, Snap and a lot of other big and small companies that want to get apps directly to the consumer versus having to go to an app store to redeem those, we can do with one click. So, we’ve just started out with some small publishers on our A&P business; it’s early days, I don’t want to get over our skies here but the results are directionally encouraging. And so, now, it’s up to us to see how we can grow and scale that business.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Brian Alger with ROTH Capital. Please go ahead.

Brian Alger

Analyst

Hi, guys. Good afternoon and congrats on a clean quarter, which is much appreciated. One follow-up for you just left off with the Ignite Delivers. We talked a little bit about the potential of this, when we were in Spain at Mobile World Congress. Curious as to how the partners are thinking about this, in terms of rev share and the business arrangement? And obviously the potential of the products is pretty diverse. Wondering how from a business standpoint it’s being approached.

Bill Stone

Analyst

Sure. There is really two different ways we envision monetizing this, one will be through our existing A&P publishers. And just like today, Uber can come to us and say hey, we will pay $1 for every app install, and then we have to go and find publishers, like Weather Channel or CNN or Baidu or whoever to run that traffic. But that’s a very competitive space. So, one way, we would see improving monetization is -- rather than today what happens is our competitors may say, hey, I’ll give you $1.01 and so we start to give you $1.02 and that puts risk on margins. We can now say, hey, we can do it for $0.98 or $0.95 or $0.90 and thereby increasing our gross margins and getting more share of those campaigns. So, it really becomes an extension of our A&P business, where we can expand our gross margins with our existing A&P publishers. So, that would be business model number one. Business model number two would be, where we do it as a transaction fee basically where a publisher is improving their click to install rates are basically -- the ease by which consumers can get the apps to their phones and that improvement means that they can therefore sell more app installs and so they’ll basically pay us a transaction fee for their improvement in it, so almost think of it like a toll bridge that’s saving them time and money.

Brian Alger

Analyst

Okay, just clarification of the transaction aspect of it, because that’s effectively their business and their monetization. I would presume it would then be a rev share off of their revenues, is that correct?

Bill Stone

Analyst

It could either be a rev share off their revenues or it could just be a simple transaction fee to say, we’re going to pay X cents for every app that goes on the phone through Digital Turbine’s Ignite offering. And so, those deals are being negotiated real time. I think the transaction model may be a little bit cleaner for folks but we’re talking about that real time right now.

Brian Alger

Analyst

Okay, great. And then, shifting gears a little bit. You’ve discussed a little bit about getting paid for AppFlash, very pleased to hear that obviously given that another company’s brand is -- or at least the company’s name is all over that software itself. I’m curious as to why Verizon is paying a license fee to you versus using a product for you instead?

Bill Stone

Analyst

Yes, sure. So for those -- AppFlash is Verizon’s search and recommendation product. Actually this morning on CNBC I heard Tim Armstrong talking about the product is part of a key tenant with the AOL and Yahoo! integrations. And really that product is, is a way to help consumers search and discover apps more easily and more readily. The issue is you got to get the apps to the phone, and there isn’t any way for them to do that today. So, they are using the Ignite platform to handle that delivery and management for that product. So, it’s still early days I think on that product, again some bullish comments around it this morning publicly, but we are getting paid a license fee for utilizing our app delivery capability with that product. And the point I want to make here for investors was it is showing improved dimensions in revenue streams off our core Verizon relationship.

Brian Alger

Analyst

Great. And then, just one last one on the OEM business, obviously Lenovo and Indus with an operating system. Now they hold really, really big unit number figures but how is that being monetized, how is that ultimately resulting revenues for Digital Turbine?

Bill Stone

Analyst

Yes. So, Indus, it’s a rev share off the applications that we deliver. And what we were seeing right now, it depends on the applications but we see revenue per slot as high as $0.10 and as low as $0.02. But it depends on how many slots we are delivering, how many apps the consumers are selecting and so on. So, the first thing we need to do which is similar to how we started this business in United States in the early days of Verizon is we need to get the home screens and we bring the demand. We did the same thing in Latin America to get the home screens, now we are bringing the demand, and the monetization is improving sequentially. Now, in India, it’s the same thing. We’ve got the home screens and now we are bringing the demand across. So, we’re really -- now that we are seeing a nice ramp-up in the home screens, we’re really focused on how we can scale that demand.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Sameet Sinha with B. Riley. Please go ahead.

Sameet Sinha

Analyst

I apologize if the questions have been asked; I joined the call a little late. Talking about next quarter’s guidance, is the implemented [ph] 2.5 million from last quarter, assuming kind of revenue per device of about $2, talking about 1.2 and 1.3 million devices but assuming that’s much more than that has been sold, of the Samsung devices have been sold in this particular quarter. So, if you can help us think about kind of the puts and takes between last quarter’s revenue trends between the different business units [ph] and help us model that appropriately. And secondly, there seems to be a stream of more information about new ad units, either talking about Delivers, talking about AppFlash and all the other things that you spoke about. Can you talk about kind of the product development whereas you see the opportunity as your relationships mature and as your scale kind of develops on a worldwide basis?

Bill Stone

Analyst

Yes. Sure, Sameet. Let me take the second one and I’ll it over to Barrett for the first one in terms of the current quarter. Yes, really, the key thing here is we see the most important thing is getting Ignite to the device. And once we have Ignite on the device, it can do a lot of really amazing things. One of them is selling app installs to Ubers and Starbucks and eBays et cetera, which everyone here is familiar with. But now, these licensing models that we’re seeing that we started with Reliance Jio and Millicom in Latin America and now with AppFlash and some other opportunities we have than with another model. And then, we have the opportunity as well to do this with Delivers, which we just started, which is not us delivering -- not us having a relationship with the advertiser, but still delivering the application to the device, more like UPS, we’re making it simpler and easier to postal services is really what that is and capturing a premium for that efficiency to get the app to the phone. So, we’re very excited about that. And I’ve touched on some of the other opportunities around data and pay and additional screens and things like that. But the key is getting Ignite to the device. And so, what you’re starting see is a lot more dimensions around that. And as we start doing more of these transaction fees, it’s something we’re excited about from a gross margin perspective going forward. So, stay tuned and we’ll give you guys continued updates.

Barrett Garrison

Analyst

Hey, Sameet. I think on your first question, it’s kind of surrounding what are the catalysts giving us from where we ended to our guidance on revenue of $25 million, just a couple of things. We’ve been excited about, I’ll end with S8 but I’ll start with the engagement with AT&T and the progress made there; Bill described with the Silent and the Blended being launched in the quarter. The second element, just to kind of help you with on as it relates to the S8 devices and the growth we’ve seen there. Those are -- we’ve seen a number of few partnerships that we’re excited about launching the S8 and it was end of April launch. And so, we’ve experienced almost the full quarter. And of course, we’ve got a good comp to grow over from prior year. But that growth is largely coming from the North American carriers, I’d say they make up the majority of that growth, some is American Movil and of course we’re excited about some of the open market growth. But I’d say largely, most of that comes from North American carriers.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Ilya Grozovsky with National Securities. Please go ahead.

Ilya Grozovsky

Analyst · National Securities. Please go ahead.

I just had a couple of questions. So, first on the housekeeping side. You gave the revenue per slot. Can you just repeat that again? I don’t think I got that.

Bill Stone

Analyst · National Securities. Please go ahead.

So, Ilya, what we talked about is the revenue for slot on the Verizon and AT&T and other U.S. cellular combined was -- let make sure I’m not misspeaking here, was 40 -- excuse me, was $0.44 and that compares to $0.38 on the S7 a year ago? So, really, the point, we’re trying to make here for investors is that the advertiser demand to be on the home screen on this flagship device is something that’s continuing to grow and develop. So, we’re quite excited about that -- it’s a fundamental health metric of the business.

Ilya Grozovsky

Analyst · National Securities. Please go ahead.

Got it. Okay. And then, so, on the Q1 of $25 million with like two weeks left to go in the quarter, can you just give us a little bit of a sense of the mix that you are anticipating? Is the growth from the 22 to the 25 all in the O&O business and everything else is stable or is there growth anywhere other than O&O in Q1?

Barrett Garrison

Analyst · National Securities. Please go ahead.

Yes. Ilya, we wouldn’t guide just by business unit but certainly, you take from our remarks, we see A&P stabilizing; we’ve seen some modest growth with pay but it suggests the majority of our growth is coming from our flagship O&O and Ignite product and across the areas that I described for Sameet earlier.

Ilya Grozovsky

Analyst · National Securities. Please go ahead.

Okay, got it. And then, also you guys have talked about in I guess previous quarters kind of looking at strategic alternatives for the A&P business and maybe the content business. Given that they are both now pretty stable and you sound much more comfortable with them, is that still on the table or can you give us any update on what’s going on there?

Bill Stone

Analyst · National Securities. Please go ahead.

Yes, sure Ilya. The short answer is I don’t have any updates to provide on unlocking value on any of these legacy business. But other than to say that there is definite interest in those businesses and we are in the midst of many active conversations. We’ll continue to update you guys on our progress. But, to your point, the businesses are stabilizing. I touched on some of the Delivers opportunity on the A&P businesses. So, we’re really looking at how we balance short and long-term here.

Ilya Grozovsky

Analyst · National Securities. Please go ahead.

Okay. And then, my final question is on -- just can you just give me a sense of how the Verizon AppFlash licensing paying you a license fee compares with the IQ product? Because I sort of -- to me it seems like that’s a competitive threat to IQ that they can just license it rather than use your IQ. Is that essentially one in the same or is it competitive?

Bill Stone

Analyst · National Securities. Please go ahead.

No, it’s not competitive. We really have gotten out of the IQ business and we are still doing some legacy revenues with T-Mobile here in the United States on that business, but for all things and purposes we focus our resources on Ignite and how can we use Ignite to help Verizon’s AppFlash product to be better and get the applications to the phone. So, definitely I’ll see it as a competitive threat there. What I see is us helping Verizon to be successful in their quest to get the right apps to the right customers.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is from Shane Ortiz with BTIG. Please go ahead.

Shane Ortiz

Analyst

Hi. I was wondering, what portion of your revenues are now coming from outside the United States or from clients besides Verizon and AT&T?

Barrett Garrison

Analyst

Can you repeat the question for us, please?

Shane Ortiz

Analyst

I was wondering, what portion of your revenues are now coming from outside the United States or from other clients besides Verizon and AT&T?

Barrett Garrison

Analyst

Yes. So, the large portion of -- if you think about our business units, obviously the majority of our pay business which it was around $7 million in the quarter, we didn’t disclose the Verizon account. But I would tell you outside of the country inclusive of pay, it’s in the 50% to 60%.

Operator

Operator

Our next question is a follow-up from Brian Alger with ROTH Capital. Please go ahead.

Brian Alger

Analyst

Following up on the cash side of things, Barrett, nice job by the way, seeing a positive increasing cash quarter on quarter certainly was surprise to me at least. You talked about EBITDA positive for the full year fiscal year 2018; we talked about EBITDA improvement for the current quarter. Are there any major cash expenditures, CapEx or R&D investments that we should be thinking about as far as affecting cash flow outside of the normal uses of working capital and just the P&L?

Barrett Garrison

Analyst

Yes. I think -- thanks by the way. I think one of the area that I tried to draw the attention to is we have our annual audit and some accounting expenses also noted with the company’s making an investment in some of the controls environment that we’ll see largely that will be spend, cash spend that happens in the June quarter. But outside of that I wouldn’t point you to any significant cash investments throughout the year. Obviously, we’d be opportunistic, but currently nothing I would point you to.

Brian Alger

Analyst

Okay, great. And then just looking at the cash flow estimate, I do see that there is a impairment of intangible assets that popped up; you guys have trued that up in the past. Is that going to lead to a lower amortization number as we look at the 2018 P&L numbers?

Barrett Garrison

Analyst

Yes, it will be but it will be -- it’s modest.

Operator

Operator

This concludes our question-and-answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Bill Stone for any closing remarks.

Bill Stone

Analyst

Great. Thank you very much for all who joined and all for support of the Company. We look forward to catching up with you guys again on our June earnings call, which we anticipate will be in mid-August timeframe. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today’s presentation. You may now disconnect.