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Digital Turbine, Inc. (APPS)

Q4 2024 Earnings Call· Tue, May 28, 2024

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Digital Turbine Reports Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2024 Financial Results 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. Please go ahead.

Brian Bartholomew

Analyst

Thanks, Nick. Good afternoon, and welcome to the Digital Turbine Fourth Quarter and Fiscal 2024 Earnings Conference Call. Joining me on the call today to discuss our results are CEO, Bill Stone; and CFO, Barrett Garrison. Before we get started, I'd 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 I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Mr. Bill Stone.

Bill Stone

Analyst

Thanks, Brian, and thank you all for joining our call tonight. I'd like to break my remarks into three areas. First, I want to close out our year-end results. Secondly, you may have seen in our outlook that we're beginning to issue annual guidance for the first time and I want to focus the majority of my remarks on our plan to return to growth this fiscal year versus only focusing on a single quarter. And finally, I want to provide some commentary and updates on how we're positioned to profitably grow well beyond just this fiscal year. To close out fiscal '24, we achieved $545 million of revenue, $92 million of EBITDA and $0.58 of non-GAAP earnings per share. In addition to the numbers and despite a challenging operating environment, I'm proud of the team and specifically the notable progress we made on numerous investment activities that set us up for the future, including our progress on our new version of Ignite, our migration to our new hosting platform, our launch of SDK Bidding and many new back-end corporate systems consolidated and launched. We've also seen a number of tailwinds emerge that I'll discuss later in my remarks that will be catalyst for our return to growth. But we also continue to navigate a few short-term headwinds that are persistent in our very near-term results. Specifically, US device sales continue to be challenging. As some US operators have publicly reported, postpaid upgrade rates were approximately 3% of the base for the March quarter or a run rate of 12% per year. This would imply more than an eight-year upgrade cycle, which I think all of us would recognize as unsustainable for the long-term, but it is a reality in the present. Exacerbating this trend were fewer software updates on…

Barrett Garrison

Analyst

Thanks, Bill, and good afternoon, everyone. For the fiscal year 2024, we reported $544.5 million revenue down 18% year-on-year and generated $92.4 million in adjusted EBITDA or 17% of revenue and delivered $60.3 million in adjusted net income or $0.58 per share as compared to $1.15 per share in the prior year. While fiscal year 2024 presented its share of challenges, we are pleased to share that our strategic initiatives are gaining traction and setting the foundation for future growth, and I'll cover some of those highlights later within my remarks. Now turning to the financial performance in the quarter. Total revenue of $112.2 million in the quarter was down 20% year-on-year. On Device Solutions, our ODS segment revenues of $78 million were slightly below our expectations, largely due to weaker US upgrade rates that Bill described in his remarks. In our app growth platform, our AGP business. Q4 revenues of $33.8 million performed generally in line with our guidance expectations. We saw improving signs of spin levels, particularly within brand, evidenced by greater than 15% year-over-year revenue increases. The Q4 results in our AGP business reflects the impact of sunsetting certain legacy business lines in early January of this year. I'd reiterate Bill's earlier comments that despite the near-term headwinds, we're encouraged by the completion of our platform consolidation and expect these efforts to be an important catalyst for our future revenue growth. Before leaving revenues, I would point out, we completed sunsetting certain legacy business lines, marking an important milestone towards our priority of returning to growth and strategic focus. Looking ahead, we anticipate the March quarter revenues to be a period of normalization, free from the transitional impacts of our integration efforts. Drawing from historical seasonality trends, we anticipate modest sequential growth in the June quarter. Our…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. The first question comes from Omar Dessouky with Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Omar Dessouky

Analyst

Hi. Thanks for taking my question. We saw a news article today saying that T-Mobile is about to acquire UScellular. I think UScellular is one of your biggest -- one of your customers, but T-Mobile is working with one of your competitors. So do you foresee any impact to your business? And how should we think about the potential opportunity and risks relating to the merger -- potential merger?

Bill Stone

Analyst

Yes. Sure, Omar. This is Bill. I think that this is something that is -- what I read today is that it's going to be about a year plus away from closing. So it's not anything that's imminent. It has to go through a bunch of regulatory reviews. But with that being said, UScellular has been a fantastic partner for us, for ours. They do our highest revenue per device of any of our partners today. And they've been fantastic for us. Today, they're probably about 1% to 2% of our revenue. I look forward to having that as an opportunity to put another zero on it is hopefully T-Mobile can see the great performance they've been able to generate with us.

Omar Dessouky

Analyst

Okay. And if I could just ask one follow-up. Apple has begun enforcing new privacy manifest policy at the beginning of May. So wondering if you've heard anything from clients. I know there's a lot of focus on Android usually, but do you expect to see anything from the Apple side or just read through from some of the customers would be really helpful? Thanks.

Bill Stone

Analyst

Yes, yes, sure. So I think as far as Apple's new pricing goes, I think, it really depends upon what kind of app developer you are, I think for app developers that have kind of mid to hardcore gaming audiences, where maybe there are fewer numbers of people, but they spend more per person. I think the changes are pretty much more of a nonevent. I think for lower end, casual, hyper-casual games that are advertising based, and may not generate a lot per user, it's prohibitive. So I think our expectation, Omar, is that we're going to see the EU regulators weigh in on this later this year. And I think we'll see a lot of downstream impacts from that, whether that's from telcos, whether that's from OEMs, whether that's from publishers, whether that's from mega cap players. I think you're going to see a lot of downstream impacts depending upon how the EU rules on some of the pricing moves they've made as part of the DMA.

Omar Dessouky

Analyst

Okay. Thanks a lot guys. I look forward to catching up later.

Bill Stone

Analyst

All right. Thanks.

Operator

Operator

The next question comes from Darren Aftahi with Roth. Please go ahead.

Darren Aftahi

Analyst · Roth. Please go ahead.

Hey, guys. Good afternoon. Bill, you talked about some traction with Tier 1 publishers on the open app distribution side. Could you indulge us a little bit more about kind of the traction you're seeing and if you said there may be some contribution this fiscal year? Like how material is that?

Bill Stone

Analyst · Roth. Please go ahead.

Yes. So, yes, thanks, Darren. So as far as Tier 1 publishers, we're seeing great relationship with some of the gaming folks, I'd call it King, I'd call out Playtika, I'd call out PlaySimple, I'd call out Scopely, it's kind of some specific publisher names that we're working with in the alternative space. And so as they are looking to diversify away from paying a 30% tax to Apple or Google. Obviously, alternative distribution is something is highly attractive to them, given it's the single biggest line item on their P&L right now. So we look forward to being good partners with companies like that and help them achieve their strategic goals.

Darren Aftahi

Analyst · Roth. Please go ahead.

Great. Maybe if I could ask one more. Barrett, you made some commentary about sequential improvement in June relative to the annual guide. I guess maybe I missed or I didn't hear it correctly, if you said anything specifically about the cadence in margin that you guys historically have always given one quarter out guidance and given sort of 30 days left in the quarter. I'm just kind of curious if you have any thoughts there.

Barrett Garrison

Analyst · Roth. Please go ahead.

Yes, Darren. Our focus has been we've been wanting to provide annual guidance for some time now. We think this is a good opportunity. I also wanted to focus on there can be ins and outs in the quarter, and we thought this would simplify for stakeholders, our approach and intent for growth. I also, you'll notice, I did comment on some seasonality, flattish to modest growth sequentially between the June and March quarter.

Darren Aftahi

Analyst · Roth. Please go ahead.

Got it. Great. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions]. The next question comes Tim Nollen with Macquarie. Please go ahead.

Tim Nollen

Analyst

Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the question. I'd like to ask about things on the AdCo side, where you had said previously with some of the longer tail customers that you were kind of not bringing on as part of your consolidation efforts would be, I think you had said would be kind of cycling out as lost business around this time kind of early 2025, fiscal '25. Just wondering if you could update us on that. And maybe comment a bit further on. It's been a very interesting market with the two biggest players in the space AppLovin and Unity reporting very different types of results in ad tech. Just wonder if you could talk a bit about your positioning versus them and kind of what you're seeing in terms of demand from your customers to use your DT Exchange and other services. Thanks.

Bill Stone

Analyst

Yes. Thanks, Tim. Yes, so you're referencing in the first part of your question around the deprecation of our AdColony exchange. And the AdColony Exchange had many, many tens of thousands of publishers and a very long tail of publishers, some of which were doing hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars. And it didn't make economic sense for us to go out and migrate a lot of those legacy publishers over to our consolidated Digital Turbine Exchange. And so we're rolling through those comps right now. So as we go forward in the year, you'll see that no longer be a negative comp for us like it has been in the rearview mirror. But with that being said, the reason we did that is we wanted to consolidate around Digital Turbine Exchange. And we believe we've got something pretty special and unique here, not just with our performance advertisers, but also with brand advertisers. As I mentioned in my remarks being certified by GroupM as a global distribution partner. That's a really big deal in terms of unlocking brand dollars where now those brand dollars has historically had gone to other channels, whether that's retail media or CTV or other places on the web or what have you. So now in terms of in-app advertising for mobile, that's something that's unique for us, and that's something our competitors do not have. So if you talk to most game publishers and others out there, they'd much rather see a P&G ad or a Coca-Cola ad than an ad for competing game is trying to take their users. So and we think this is something that is very sticky and something that has now allowed us to consolidate around in terms of differentiating our exchange versus others that are out in the marketplace. So that's something we're pretty excited about.

Tim Nollen

Analyst

Okay. So could I just follow up on that point then, Bill. So is the momentum and the growth return to growth you're talking about for next year, is that maybe more coming from those advertisers? Or do you also see the gaming advertisers using a platform more...

Bill Stone

Analyst

Yeah, we'll continue to work with our performance and gaming advertisers. But you'd asked the question around differentiation. And we feel like the brand dollar is rolling through, whether those are direct brand dollars, those are PMP to brand dollars or whether those are coming from omni-DSPs like The Trade Desk or Google DV360. That's something we're really excited about in terms of that's unique to us in the marketplace on our publishers. So that's something we're really focusing on how we can differentiate there.

Tim Nollen

Analyst

Yeah, very clear. Got it. Thanks.

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

Yes. Thanks, everyone, for joining the call tonight. I feel the weight of our stock performance on our shareholders, employees and all of our stakeholders. And I want to make sure everybody knows we as a team are fully committed to returning to growth. We have a number of encouraging activities and growth drivers are going to help us achieve this. We look forward to reporting our progress against all the points that we made on today's call and we'll talk to you again on our fiscal '25 first quarter call in a few months. Thanks and have a great night.

Operator

Operator

The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.