Earnings Labs

Anterix Inc. (ATEX)

Q3 2018 Earnings Call· Tue, Feb 6, 2018

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the pdvWireless Third Quarter Update Conference Call. At this time, all participants have been placed on listen-only mode and we’ll open the floor for your questions and comments after the presentation. It is now my pleasure to turn the floor over to your host, Natasha Vecchiarelli, Director of Corporate Communications. Ma’am, the floor is yours.

Natasha Vecchiarelli

Management

Thank you. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us. With me today are Brian McAuley, our Chairman; Morgan O’Brien, our Vice Chairman; John Pescatore, our President and CEO; Tim Gray, our CFO; and Rob Schwartz, our Chief Strategy and Development Officer. Before we begin, I’d like to highlight that during today’s call we will refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures. We have provided reconciliation to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure in this afternoon’s earnings release, which is available on our Investor Relations page. As a reminder, the following discussion may contain forward-looking statements and our actual results may different materially from our current expectations or those implied. Information regarding factors that could cause such differences can be found in our SEC filings. With that, I’d like to turn the call over John.

John Pescatore

Management

Thanks, Natasha. Hello everyone and thank you for joining us this afternoon. Today, we’ll be highlighting our results for the quarter ended December 31st and sharing information on the progress we’ve made across our strategic priorities. Our highest priority remains achieving success with our regulatory initiative aimed at modernizing the 900 megahertz band. At the same time, we continue to identify compelling enterprise use cases for our spectrum in a broadband configuration. And while mindful of near-term operating costs, look to increase sales of our current product offerings. I’ll provide a brief update and then Morgan will share his view of where we are in the process and the kind of compelling opportunities that can be addressed by reconfiguring our spectrum. As we prepare for a broadband future, we continue to draw on a team of world-class advisers that collectively have been instrumental in support of our mission. In that regard, I’m pleased to announce that Jack Markell, former two term Governor of the State of Delaware and wireless industry innovator, has joined us in a strategic advisory capacity as a Senior Advisor to the company. Jack is focused and key strategic and regulatory objectives. His extensive experience and track record in both the public and private sector makes him a unique and vital resource for our PDV and we are very pleased to have him on the team. Turning to our dispatch and solutions business. During the third quarter, we saw an increase in service revenue and as of today have approximately 6,500 units in service. The third quarter represented our best sales order activity to-date. Therefore, as of today, we also have a healthy backlog of units in the fulfillment process. Churn remained relatively low through the end of the third quarter and network usage continues to grow…

Tim Gray

Management

Thanks, Morgan. Good afternoon, everyone. I will review the key highlights of the Company’s financial results for the third quarter of fiscal year 2018. My review is not intended to replace the full financial disclosures enclosed in the Company’s Form 10-Q filed today or our most recent annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC. And we encourage listeners to review these filings for additional information. Revenue for the Company’s third quarter ended December 31, 2017 was $1.6 million compared with $1.3 million for the quarter ended December 31, 2016. Also for the quarter, the Company reported a net loss of $5.7 million or negative $0.40 per share versus a net loss of $7.3 million or negative $0.51 per share for the same quarter in the previous year. The third quarter included a $2.8 million benefit or $0.19 per share to decrease our deferred tax liability due to the lower corporate rate going forward from the new tax law passed at the end of 2017. As previously disclosed, in accordance with GAAP, we continue to increase the valuation allowance each quarter to cover 100% of our deferred tax assets, which resulted in expense of $650,000. Both of these transactions resulted in a net $2.1 million tax benefit for the quarter. Adjusted EBITDA for the third quarter was negative $5.9 million compared with negative $5.5 million for the same period in the prior year. The decrease in adjusted EBITDA over our previous year is due to an increase in consultant costs to support our regulatory initiatives and higher sales and marketing costs, partially offset by higher dispatch related revenues. As of December 31, 2017, the Company has $104.2 million in available cash, a decrease of $6.3 million from September 30, 2017. There were $250,000 of purchases of spectrum in the quarter and we will continue to opportunistically purchase additional spectrum when they make strategic and financial sense. In support of our efforts going forward, it’s important to note that we do anticipate additional expenses for regulatory efforts and continuing to expand our business development pipeline. I’m also pleased, as John mentioned earlier that the ATM equity program we set up will provide us with additional financial flexibility, should we need it for future strategic initiatives and other general corporate purposes. That concludes our prepared remarks. Thank you for joining us. The operator will now accept questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. The floor is now open for questions. [Operator Instructions] Your first question is coming from Mike Crawford. Sir, your line is live.

Mike Crawford

Analyst

Thank you. Mike Crawford from B. Riley FBR. Can you comment on any of the collaboration -- the post collaboration process with some of these entities that you’ve worked some swaps and other deals with? Have you been able to for instance start rebanding radios and found not to be as easy as you envisioned?

John Pescatore

Management

Sure. Yes, of course, we can comment generally about that. I did mention the example of a letter that was filed with the FCC on behalf of LIPA. That one in particular is in the process of -- it has not yet gone forward in terms of the swap itself, it’s got to be filed, and they’re in the process of putting a new system in. And of course, those are great times to be able to reconfigure a network seamlessly; it’s planned in a major project of an implementation of a system like that. And so, that one in particular is not done. But, we have done others where the systems have been deployed now in the two-by-two. And so far, we’re everything is consistent with what we’ve been saying. We have find -- we find the ones that we’re doing now that -- we work through the benefits and requirements they have. And so, the example of a swap is one. There was an example also where they wanted to move out of the band and we were able to facilitate doing that. So, I think our experience is telling us what we had surmised is true. These things are not just possible, it’s happening and they’re happening in major markets like Southern California or New York, New Jersey, very spectrum constrained markets that were able to work through the logistics of relocating spectrum into the two-by-two of a pretty massive and complex LMR network or system.

Mike Crawford

Analyst

Right. Thank you. That’s good to hear as some of the opponents expressing fears that maybe when it be quite so easy to make some of these changes, but that doesn’t seem to be the case so far.

John Pescatore

Management

Yes. And ultimately, Mike, in a big network, it is a logistic challenge and that there’s been a tremendous amount of past experience with rebandings that have been done of even public safety, which are even more complex. And I don’t think Morgan can speak to this a little bit, there’s not an example of one that hasn’t been able to be affected. That’s not to say that we don’t respect and appreciate the complexity and some of the concerns that are raised, of course, we do. But when you sit down and work through it, and there is a plan that gets put in place customized to that entity that we believe is effective. Morgan, do you... Morgan O’Brien: Yes. Mike, there’s no comparison between this task and the task that was performed over the 800 megahertz. 800 megahertz was far more complex, many, many more systems, thousands of systems. And so, we’re not surprised that as we go through the process, which is the same process, we’re having the same results. Having said that, there are relative handful of very large, very extensively -- very geographically extensive systems with lots of sites, lots of frequencies. And those require a lot of planning and no sudden moves, because they are running mission critical voice communications over them, and in some cases forms of data. So, those are well known to us and in some cases we’re in very constructive discussions and in other cases, I frankly think we’re waiting, because the incumbents are waiting just to see what the FCC has got to signal before they engage, but many more are engaging than are not.

Mike Crawford

Analyst

Thank you, Morgan. For outsiders, following the NOI proceedings, are we at a stage now or we probably shouldn’t be expecting to see anything else land on to the record as we did see these additional comments, like from LIPA after the initial reply comment deadline? And in conjunction with that the next thing one might see if it were to happen, would be a potential move to an NPRM and that could just happen one day or are there other milestones to look for? Morgan O’Brien: Okay. So, let’s start with -- there is no formalized procedure from this point on. The FCC is now fully capable of taking almost any action they want and taking that action whenever they want. On the other hand, this is not a proceeding in which we are recruited from talking with the staffer. So without going into any details, I would say, we’re not aware that they’re waiting for anything else to show up on the record, and we have reason to believe that therefore the process of moving towards in an NPRM is the next thing we should expect.

John Pescatore

Management

But to address whether you’ll see anything else on the record comment, it is a Notice of Inquiry, so at any point time, additional information can come out on the record. So, you may -- I wouldn’t be surprised to see other comments -- commenters come in… Morgan O’Brien: Yes, by friend or foe.

John Pescatore

Management

By friend or foe. And so, we’re just -- you’re right, this isn’t something now -- there is no defined process, but we feel like we’ve built collectively a record that gives the FCC a good basis on which to make their next calls. And as Morgan said in his remarks earlier, we can’t necessarily predict or read their minds as to what those actions and when they’re going to take place. But, that’s why the commercial efforts to engage with the incumbents and the critical infrastructure industry in general, those efforts just provide the best kind of support because they are the kinds that are independent third parties that are weighing in, in support of their needs. And it’s great to think about a choice in the market for a private enterprise broadband solution that they can access.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions in queue.

John Pescatore

Management

Well, thank you. We want to thank all of you who listened in today. We greatly appreciate it. We remain available if there are any questions. Feel free to call one of us or contact Natasha. We’re happy to follow up on any particular items and look forward to speaking again soon. Take care, everyone.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This does conclude today’s conference call. You may disconnect your phone lines at this time and have a wonderful day. Thank you for your participation.