Earnings Labs

Champions Oncology, Inc. (CSBR)

Q3 2017 Earnings Call· Thu, Mar 16, 2017

$5.90

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Transcript

Ronnie Morris

Management

Hi. I’m Ronnie Morris, the CEO of Champions Oncology. I’m joined today by David Miller, our Vice President of Finance and Administration. Thank you for joining us for our quarterly earnings call. Before I start, I will remind you that we will make forward-looking statements during the call and actual results could differ materially from what is described in those statements. Additional information on factors that could cause results to differ is available in our Forms 10-Q and 10-K. Certain non-GAAP financial measures may be discussed on this call. Reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP financial measures are available in the earnings release. It has been an eventful quarter for Champions, so there’s a lot of information to discuss. We will cover an update on our business strategy, as well as the financial results. We continued our year-over-year quarterly revenue growth, while maintaining a careful watch on our operating costs, positioning us for profitability going forward as we further grow our business. In fact, with the previously discussed cost saving initiatives expected to be fully implemented by the second half of 2018, we are confident in near-term growth achieving cash flow positive results on a consistent basis. We continue to experience quarter-to-quarter volatility as a result of the timing of our customer engagements. We are laying the ground work to reduce this volatility and strengthen our financial position as we enter the final quarter of our fiscal 2017 and look towards fiscal year 2018. I am increasingly confident that we are on a clear short-term path to profitability and increasing shareholder value. Year-over-year revenue growth in the third fiscal quarter of 2016 was 40%, driven primarily by the growth in our TOS segment. David Miller will talk more about the underlying drivers later in the call, but at this point, I…

David Miller

Management

Thanks, Ronnie. Overall revenue for the quarter was $3.6 million. Our year-over-year revenue growth for the quarter was 40%, driven primarily by 50% growth in our TOS segment. As we mentioned nearly every quarter, we experienced and continue to expect various levels of volatility in our revenue and overall results quarter-to-quarter. I will explain some of the challenges in predicting financial results shortly. Our revenues for the quarter demonstrate this volatility, with a year-over-year increase of 40% get down sequentially. The year-over-year increase in our revenue was due to the sustained strong bookings growth we’ve achieved over the last several quarters. However, our revenue recognition policy, which is in -- which is in accordance with GAAP dictates that we only recognize revenue when the study model completes. Typically study times generally run between four months and six months. The length of the study is heavily driven by the time it takes for tumor to grow in the mice and then get treated with pharmaceutical drugs. Each tumor is different and while we analyze growth curves when designing a study it is not possible to predict the exact completion date. As such, studies and associate revenues that we predict to complete at the end of the quarter can easily get pushed into subsequent quarters. While we expect this volatility to continue as our revenue and bookings continue to grow we expect these fluctuations have less of an impact on profitability. TOS segment gross margin was 35% for the quarter and 11 basis point improvement over the same period last year, but still below the true gross margin of the business if revenue and expense recognition were aligned. As such, gross margin continues to be a difficult metric to accurately understand our income statement. As our revenue continues to grow we expect…

Ronnie Morris

Management

Thank you, David. Our results demonstrate another solid quarter with 40% revenue growth and record bookings. This is an exciting time at Champions as we are strengthening our position, emerging areas and developing sponsored research opportunities to expand our offerings. We look forward to providing you additional updates as we continue to make progress. With that, we will open it up to questions-and-answers. Carla?

Operator

Operator

Yes, sir. [Operator Instructions] And your first question comes from the line of [ph] Larry Diamond (14:40). Your line is on.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you. Your report had mentioned there were some customer timing issues, which impacted revenues this quarter. Do you expect that to reverse next quarter or sooner after?

Ronnie Morris

Management

I think what we are describing is the nature of our business that it takes approximately several months for a study to be completed. So, as an example, often times a study will be six-week study or four-week study and then the sponsors, the pharmaceutical companies decide that they want to extend the study for another month or two and they want to continue the cohort of models on the drug or they want to see how the response of the drug did for an extra month or two. And so we have to extend the study. We can’t recognize revenue. That’s one example where is good for us. We actually get more revenue but often times sponsors will ask us to extend studies, which our current lab facility and our current environment is a little problematic for us, because we can’t the next study and so one of the studies starts, because we have certain issues of capacity. So I believe as we move into the new lab some of these issues will take care of themselves. We will always have a little bit of problem with this up and down volatility. I also believe that as the bookings continue to grow the volatility will always -- is always going to be there, but the difference is we believe that we’ll always have volatility, but we will always be profitable. So volatility won’t hurt us as much.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of [ph] Kenny Green (16:38). Your line is live.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi, guys. A question actually about the cost savings you are going to see from the new office, you said in the fiscal second half 2018. I wonder your current OpEx is around, I think, $2.5 million. How much, I mean, once you’ve done the move to the new office, how much you think this will lower in the second half of 2018 or once everything is move?

Ronnie Morris

Management

So, I guess, the easiest way to answer you, Kenny, is that, on a current revenue, if we were in the new lab today, we would probably save about a $1 million a year. So about $100,000 a month, something in that range or around a $1 million a year, that’s under our current volume. As we continue to grow, we actually see more of a savings on every dollar of revenue that is incremental. But, again, that’s the easiest way to answer on our current, if we were to take our current operations or current revenue. We were in that lab today, that how much we would have saved.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

All right. Another, I mean, the -- you are starting with 30% growth in bookings from your previous stake, when do we see that actually making it into revenues, is it immediate or there are still going to be four months to six months and certainly that will be use of completing itself?

Ronnie Morris

Management

Yeah. I would say it generally takes us and this is a little bit of a general comment. But it generally takes us about two quarters to see that. It depends on the type of bookings. Also, again, some of our bookings are shorter studies, some of the bookings are longer studies, but on average I would say, probably, two quarters you get to see before impact of the higher bookings.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Really the first quarter of ‘18 we should…

Ronnie Morris

Management

Correct.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

… see some, okay, impact, okay.

Ronnie Morris

Management

Correct. Correct.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

So one last thing actually thing is maybe building on the previous question, Larry’s question. The revenue that was sort of mix because of the unpredictability of the business. What -- is this revenue that just let between quarters or this just push everything out or sort of pushed it out maybe in a little bit will come in Q4 ’17 and then Q1 ’18 or will equal some sort of a high level revenue next quarter that you won’t expect it, I think…

Ronnie Morris

Management

Right. So, I think, it’s better to look at it is just pushing everything at little bit. I think there was a combination of some factors. I think some of the revenue we are expecting in this quarter actually got pushed forward. It got push up to Q2, and of course, Q2 to be little bit better than ordinarily would have been. And I think some of it just, just got pushed back, but that is also going to cause some of the revenue in the Q4 to be push back. Part of the problem is, as we do different -- lot of different studies, we do leukemias, we do syngeneric work, we do PDX type work in our current facility even though we aren’t at capacity in terms of our cages, we are at capacity in terms of rooms and all of these different types of work have to be done in different rooms. So even if there is capacity in one room, we can’t mix some of the leukemic work, with some of the immune-oncology work, with some the syngeneric work. So it does restrict us from just doing a lot or at once. Starting in July as we move into the new facility we are not going to have those restrictions. So we feel it’s going to help us push this through a lot more of the studies or at once and again we will be able to sustain our increase bookings and moving to higher revenues.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

And July of next year or July this year coming -- July 2017?

Ronnie Morris

Management

July, August of -- I am sorry, it’s probably close to August, August of 2017.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Okay. So coming soon.

Ronnie Morris

Management

Yeah.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

All right. Final question, I think, I remember you have revenue guidance of around plus $16 million to $18 million. Is that still possible or we’re going to get some funding more?

Ronnie Morris

Management

Yeah. I would say that we are looking at the lower range of that as a -- what we say, I would say, a close to probable and if we miss a little range it’s not going to be very large, so we are probably looking in that area.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. You are still expecting it a fairly good fourth quarter then will be stronger than this quarter.

Ronnie Morris

Management

Yeah. Yeah.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. All right. That’s it from me. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

And at this time, there are no further questions in queue.

Ronnie Morris

Management

Thank you.

David Miller

Management

Thank you.

Ronnie Morris

Management

Bye everyone.