Earnings Labs

Cantaloupe, Inc. (CTLP)

Q3 2022 Earnings Call· Sun, May 8, 2022

$10.83

-0.37%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to the Cantaloupe Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation there will be a question-and-answer session. Please be advised that today’s conference is being recorded. With me on the call today is Sean Feeney, Chief Executive Officer; Ravi Venkatesan, Chief Operating Officer; and Scott Stewart, Chief Financial Officer. Before we get into today’s call, I would like to remind you that all statements included in this call other than statements of historical facts are forward looking in nature. Actual results could differ materially from those contemplated by the forward-looking statements, because of certain factors including, but not limited to, business, financial, markets and economic conditions. A detailed discussion of the risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and events to differ materially from such forward looking statements is included with our filings with the SEC and in the press release issued earlier today. Listeners are cautioned to not take place undue reliance on any such forward looking statements, which reflect management’s view only as of the date they are made. Cantaloupe undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements whether because of new information, future events or otherwise. This call will also include a discussion of certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe are useful for among other things, evaluating Cantaloupe’s operating results. These non-GAAP financial measures are supplemental to and not substitute for GAAP financial measures, such as net income or loss. Details of these non-GAAP financial measures and the presentation of the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures and the reconciliation between these non-GAAP financial measures, as well as the most comparable GAAP financial measures can be found in our press release issued this afternoon, which has been posted on the Investor Relations section of our website at www.cantaloupe.com. And with that, I would like to turn the call over to Chief Executive Officer, Sean Feeney. Sean?

Sean Feeney

Management

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon and thank you for joining us today. We are pleased to report our results for the third quarter. We reported a solid start to the calendar year 2022, increasing total revenue by 18% year-over-year, marking our fourth consecutive quarter of double digit annual revenue growth. While we were negatively impacted by the resurgence of the Omicron variant in January and February, business recovered strongly in March. Transaction revenue for the quarter grew 31% year-over-year, encouragingly, the strength in the transaction volumes has continued into April as offices begin to reopen. Subscription fees grew 7% in the quarter, and we continue to drive subscription growth with initiatives like our recent launch of the Cantaloupe ONE platform, which Ravi will discuss in more detail shortly. Equipment revenue grew 1% this quarter. We expect a lift in equipment revenue in q4, typically our strongest quarter as more operators prepare for the 3G to 4G and EMV upgrades. We saw a 22% increase in active customers and in total, we achieve a 36% increase in total dollar volume of transactions, a record for the fourth consecutive quarter. Just last month we attended the NAMA show in Chicago, where we hosted a number of customers and prospects at our booth. We showcased many of our new products including Yoke 2.0, our AI-enabled merchandising offering with HIVERY, and Our Seed Warehouse App, to name a few. After speaking with a number of operators I came away with the following exciting takeaways. First, more than ever, the industry is poised for expansion and growth through innovation and technology is top of mind for operators. Second, the M&A market is very active, led by many large operator who are also seed customers and are leveraging seed to standardize their technology stacks across all…

Ravi Venkatesan

Management

Thanks, Sean. As Sean mentioned, we recently returned from NAMA, which was a great success for us. We had announced many of the new products that we launched this time at our last NAMA show in August 2021. And this year, it was energizing to showcase and actively sell these products to an enthusiastic customer response. I wanted to highlight a few recent launches. First, our Seed Warehouse app, which we released on March 16. This app streamlines the workflow within the warehouse, enabling functions like stock taking, inventory reconciliation, et cetera to happen rapidly through an easy to use mobile app. Customer feedback has been extremely positive. For example, Tommy Elliott from Tomra Vending and Coffee Services said, we used to dread doing inventory, but now we can do it twice as fast with the new warehouse app, saving time and making our business more efficient. Tyler Daily from the Jackson Brothers of the South recently said, we were having a hard time getting accurate warehouse and driver inventory information. Compared to other solutions, we are now saving money and are able to keep all our business information in one system. There was a no-brainer. We also launched our Cantaloupe ONE platform on March 23. This is a first of its kind bundled subscription model that solves the need for consumers or our customers to future proof their business. It brings the cloud computing like paradigm to unattended retail, eliminating upfront capital expenditures and the risk of hardware end-of-life due to transition such as 3G to 4G, EMV et cetera. Thanks to zero upfront fees, and a simplified monthly subscription model, this platform is starting to gain significant market traction. On March 29, we launched our ePort Engage Combo. In addition to all the benefits of our ePort Engage,…

Scott Stewart

Management

Thanks, Ravi. Good afternoon, everyone. During the third quarter, we continued our strong trends of year-over-year growth. Q3 2022 revenue was $50.3 million, an 18% increase year-over-year, driven by subscription and transaction fees of $42.1 million and equipment sales of $8.2 million. Transaction fees grew 31% in the third quarter, another company record. Subscription fees increased 7% year-over-year. The 21% increase in combined subscription and transaction fees year-over-year is primarily driven by the 36% increase and total dollar volumes for Q3 2022. Compared to last year. Equipment revenue for the third quarter was relatively flat year-over-year, as many customers held off on delivering a 4G device upgrades and so closer to the discontinuation of 3G network support starting in 2022. Due to this, we expect equipment revenue to accelerate through the end of 2022 calendar year. Active customers increased 22% year-over-year to 23,800 customers. Active devices totaled 1.1 million as of March 31 2022, an increase of 4% year-over-year. Total gross margins for the quarter was 32.2%, up from 29.7% in prior year fiscal third quarter. We've meaningfully expanded gross margins on our transaction fees to the mid-teens during the quarter, which we believe will continue going forward. Subscription and transaction revenue margin was 40% versus the prior year quarters margin of 41%. Equipment revenue margin for Q3 FY 2022, improved 11 basis points to negative 8% from negative 19% in prior year. Operating expenses in the third quarter totaled $15.3 million, compared to $14.7 million in Q3 2021. We've continued to increase our investment in R&D for product innovation, and in our sales force to acquire new customers, while we continually reduce G&A. Net income applicable to common shares improved for the third quarter to $1.8 million, or $0.03 per share, compared to a net loss of $2.2 million,…

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Mike Lattimore from Northland Capital Markets. Your line is now open.

Mike Lattimore

Analyst

Yes. Thanks. Great results there. Just on the subscription and transaction gross margin grew sequentially despite transaction growing as a percent. I guess, you touched on it there. I guess the one you said -- I think you said the transaction gross margin was in the mid-teens percent? I guess that's the first question. The second, should this level of gross margin be sustainable or improve a little bit going forward? And then what drove the transaction -- gross margin?

Ravi Venkatesan

Management

Scott, do you want to answer that one.

Scott Stewart

Management

Yes, sure. Thank you very much for the question. So overall, what we're seeing is our margin on transactions are increasing. And a lot of that is due to two different things. The first is that we've worked over the past year to manage our costs. And so, we've entered into some new agreements to get some additional incentives and rebates, which is really helping reducing our costs, which is growing the margin. The other thing that we're seeing is an increase in the average transaction price. So when we began the year, we were around, I guess, last year's average was around $2.05 per transaction. Now we're up to $2.17 per transaction. And so that's helping increase the margin as well.

Mike Lattimore

Analyst

Thanks Scott. And then you talked about a number of things that seem like they can drive subscription. I guess, is there any way to rank order them or discuss like what would be the biggest drivers of subscription? Is it Seed? Is it RPC, new connections? How should we think about the biggest subscription drivers here?

Sean Feeney

Management

Yes. It's a great question, Mike, and you know that's something that we are very focused on. So first of all, signing large customers like Buffalo Rock are key to kind of growing the subscription revenue, and that has the biggest kind of near-term impact. Secondly, we're very excited about the initial market reaction to the Cantaloupe ONE Platform as a Service, and we've sold into the hundreds of customers on that. It fits very well in the SMB part of the market, not quite as attractive to the high end of the market because they like to buy devices and depreciate them. But the market was asking to kind of future proof of platform, and we answered it with that. So I think that will -- you'll see some improvement in that. Now it will have a negative impact on equipment revenue, but I think we're all very happy to trade equipment revenue for subscription, especially when it's bundled into the subscription, we get higher margins on that. The next would be RPC and yield probably equal there in driving additional subscriptions. And then HIVERY would be probably the third kind of priority of where we will see contribution to subscription growth.

Mike Lattimore

Analyst

Great. And just last one for me. The implied fourth quarter revenue range is about $10 million, I guess, what sort of moves you to the upper or lower end of that range?

Sean Feeney

Management

The upper or lower end of that range is really key around two things. Subscription is pretty steady. We'll see some growth there. If we see kind of continued transaction growth that we saw in March and into April, as people begin to come back to the offices and travel, business travel and business hotels kind of come back around that. And then, we've got a number of kind of remaining 3G and 4G upgrades on that, and it really determines kind of on what the hardware sales are for Q4.

Mike Lattimore

Analyst

Yes. Got it. Thank you.

Sean Feeney

Management

Thanks Mike.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from the line of George Sutton from Craig-Hallum. Your line is now open.

George Sutton

Analyst

Thank you. I'm curious on the Cantaloupe ONE offering in the following context. Investors understand that Apple has been extremely successful with a hardware as a service offering, and the markets seem to yarn at your release. And I'm curious with that up against the initial reaction you've seen, do you just think the market doesn't appreciate the significance of this? Or I'm just trying to get a little bit more perspective there.

Sean Feeney

Management

Yes. I think, George, you've hit the nail on the head with kind of -- if you look at kind of the traditional cable model, Apple has done it a couple of days after we announced. Peloton came out and announced, they were bundling their hardware into a platform as a service. I just think that it's -- they want to see those results coming out probably in general. I feel like the company just keeps performing better and better, and as we all know, the stock price isn't reflecting that performance yet. But the market reaction has been very positive to bundling our software products with hardware and removing kind of the worry about is there an upgrade that I'm going to have to go forward with. And our initial reaction is, been a great launch so far. So, we'll give you some more details kind of probably at the end of the next quarter where we have a full quarter's worth of results from that. But I'm very positively impressed with our sales organization has done so far in the reaction. And what I'm hearing primarily, as I said in the small- and medium-sized business. The larger guys like to buy the hardware and get the depreciation right off and have the balance sheet. But for capital challenge, smaller customers, it works very well.

George Sutton

Analyst

So more broadly, on the hardware side, you had a competitor make a strategic decision to maintain very low gross margins on the hardware side, at least temporarily. I assume your position is still -- you'll gladly take a service deal instead of a hardware deal if that's how it comes out, and you're willing to work with other hardware vendors. Am I thinking about that the right way?

Sean Feeney

Management

If I understand your question, George, yes, we -- our software works with everybody else's hardware. And while we prefer -- and I'm working on some things that would make it better for our software to work with our devices, many large operators use our competitor products and have kind of strategies around two or three competitors. But -- and then the second part is, I will gladly trade as much Cantaloupe revenue -- one revenue as I can for hardware, because the hardware margin is better and the likelihood of it going beyond the initial term is very good as everyone knows from other kind of platforms as a service. Apple, you mentioned, I mentioned kind of the cable company. That's what we've seen with our rental program before we've just turned it into a rental program that bundles in the software.

George Sutton

Analyst

Just so anybody reading this as it confuses, you said you'd trade hardware revenue, you mean software revenue, you prefer the software revenue?

Sean Feeney

Management

I prefer subscription revenue, yes.

George Sutton

Analyst

Yes. And last question on international. I didn't hear any new updates on this call. I know it's a strategy. Can you just give us a quick update there?

Sean Feeney

Management

Yes. We're still working in Latin America and Mexico. We've got a couple of good things working, and they're very close to having our devices certified there. So I'm optimistic that we will see revenue in our next fiscal year, which, of course, starts in July 1. We have hired our first employee in Europe, and we did a bunch of meetings during NAMA with international operators, and we are more confident than ever that there's a Seed opportunity in Europe, and we're moving aggressively towards that. I'm very happy. One of the reasons that we hired Jeff Dumbrell as our Chief Revenue Officer was, he had a lot of international experience. He's begun -- the guy we hired in Europe is one of his former teammates, and we're aggressively kind of moving in those markets as well as in Latin America. So I'm disappointed I don't have something more firm to announce, but it's coming.

George Sutton

Analyst

I'm hoping years from now the Cantaloupe employee can very eloquently talk about how he's the number one Cantaloupe employee in Europe.

Sean Feeney

Management

I'm very excited about that as well and optimistic.

George Sutton

Analyst

Thanks guys.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your next question comes from the line of Cristopher Kennedy from William Blair. Your line is now open.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi, guys. This is Mark on for Chris. And thank you for taking my questions. I just wanted to touch on the expansion beyond vending. I know you mentioned Yoke at NAMA. I just wanted to see if you had any more updates. I know talking about other stuff such as vehicle charging stations. So any update or color there would be appreciated?

Sean Feeney

Management

We continue to focus on growing our total device account and moving into adjacencies is key. We've got a lot of good activity around unattended spaces beyond vending with our Yoke platform, and we're working on a couple of exciting partnerships. We continue to kind of work in the electronic vehicle charging station. We think that, that, of course, is going to be an explosive growth. We, of course, have a couple of partners we work with there. So we're expanding there as well as in the traditional ones we've always worked in with our partners in Laundry and with CSC and others in the airbag space. So continue to make progress there as you can see by the customer count. In some cases, those are small, but will grow, we believe, rapidly in the coming years. So got some good stuff coming. So stand by Mark, I think you'll see some things here either in this quarter or the next.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Got it. And then just one follow-up with Cantaloupe ONE. So, on the upgrade cycle, are you seeing any of your SMB customers convert to the Cantaloupe ONE offering when they are approached with upgrading with 4G?

Sean Feeney

Management

Yes. Yes. That's driving a lot of that, either EMV or 3G to 4G upgrades.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Got it. I appreciate that. Thank you guys.

Sean Feeney

Management

Good to have you on the call, Mark.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions]. There are no further questions at this time. Speakers, you may continue.

Sean Feeney

Management

Great. Thank you for your interest. I know today is a busy day with earnings, and we look forward to following up with everyone over the next few weeks. Thanks, operator.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you all for participating. You may now disconnect.