Derek Dubner
Analyst · Chardan Capital. Please go ahead
Thank you, and good afternoon to all who are joining us today to discuss our third quarter results. Cogint is pleased to report a very strong third quarter with record revenues of $57.2 million, a 10% increase over the third quarter 2016. Gross profit margin increased 10 percentage points over prior year to 34%, and adjusted EBITDA increased 84% to $5.8 million. We experienced continued strong broad-base customer demand from existing and new products across both our risk management and marketing services business. Our record revenues and achievement of our set goal of very significant gross profit margin expansion is despite the unique non-recurring challenges we experienced in the quarter. We were impacted by the hurricanes in Texas and Florida as these events affected not only traffic acquisition, but key customers. Of note, our ability to target consumers in both key states was impacted by outages as well several key customers on the marketing services side of the business with reliance on large call centers were impacted by not only the reduction in workforce in preparation for the storms, but also during and after the storms which caused these customers to pull back impacting revenue, as well senior management across the businesses had to devote very significant time, effort and expense in negotiating and constimating [ph] an agreement with BlueFocus International in regard to our transformational transaction which I would discuss in detail shortly. Notwithstanding these challenges, we still posted strong numbers and I am very encouraged by Q4 pacing to date. Our information services segment revenue increased 54% to $22.8 million. Information services gross profit increased 182% to $10.1 million a 44% gross profit margin. Our performance marketing revenue decreased 8% to $34.4 million as we focused on higher-quality revenue which delivers greater margin. This is demonstrated by our performance marketing gross profit increase of 6% to $9.5 million, a 28% gross profit margin. Consolidated gross profit margin increased 10 percentage points to 34%. Turning now to a few themes [ph] that we have discussed in the past. During our last earnings call, I reviewed our priorities for the second half of 2017 and beyond. Of those priorities, I detailed our goal of leveraging our unique technology platforms and differentiated ability to aggregate data through the creation of proprietary data, both through analytics and real-time consumer interaction. I stated our goal of using our competitive advantages to seamlessly introduce new products and solutions to market, that saw for the needs of our customers. On the marketing side of the business, if you have listened to competitor earnings calls, you’ve heard a familiar mantra, success depends on knowing your customer and serving them intelligently. These themes focus on gathering insights on consumers in real time and at massive scale. When I hear this, it reinforces my confidence in our business as a whole and specifically our initiatives. Our marketing services business is unmatched in gathering real-time insights at massive scale. A great example of the leverage ability of our unique platforms is our just announced release of "FOREWARN "powered by our core platform, which delivers real-time solutions primarily via mobile application to the real estate industry. With the advancement of technology over the years, the real estate industry has moved online resulting in buyers relying less on agent representation and contacting agents directly to view properties. Our research indicated a glaring vulnerability in the industry, agents have no idea who they are now alone with in a property. Agents have a right to know who they are doing business with, and brokers are now able to reduce liability by making FOREWARN available to their agents with as little as a single data point. For example, an incoming phone number, agents can verify identity, evaluate risk by viewing the criminal history of a subject and validate financial and other information provided by the subject. In just 60 days, we developed and launched FOREWARN and the response has been nothing short of phenomenal. Not only from agents, but also real estate associations, and nonprofit organizations who has struggled for years to ensure agent safety. We have received quick praise in the form of coverage by the New York Post, CNBC and other media outlets. This is but one example of our ability to develop and commercialize products, derived from our technology platforms faster than others, in the marketplace. We are excited to execute upon our product pipeline, delivering innovative solutions such as FOREWARN to address the needs of various industries and our customers. As well, we are leveraging the cross functionality of our intelligent platforms, core and agile audience engine to create comprehensive marketing services solutions for Fortune 500 consumer package goods companies. Today, we are increasing client ROI, while expanding our margins. We launched new technology to deliver content to audiences via push notifications, which generated revenue of $586,000 this quarter. As well, we are now implementing several new content marketing strategies to deploy across multiple addressable channels, including Facebook, Google and ad supported apps. Our team is dedicated to developing highly targeted and refined original content to drive consumer interactions and to optimize ROI for our advertisers. Both video content and voice ads are on our roadmap to be launched in Q1 of 2018. We continue to scale our custom audience identity graph enabling more intelligent execution of our marketing solutions across a variety of verticals. We are now generating on average over 850,000 consumer registrations and over 8.8 million compiled survey responses daily with a recent record high of over 1 million registrations and over 10.3 million compiled survey responses in a single day. Turning back to the risk management side of the business, we continue to execute on our robot product roadmap. As we stated in the past, and as we will continue to do so, IDI core continues to evolve with new data sets used during the quarter and new functionality. We recently announced the release of our comprehensive report and IDI core offering, and an essential tool in the risk management arsenal for our customers. We are receiving great feedback. As with many of our offerings, this release was essential to further penetrate our markets and to get ourselves further ingrained in the daily workflow of our customers. While I’m excited about this release, I’m even more excited about the plan for this offering going forward. This offering alone has a dedicated product roadmap, where we plan to transform this solution into a report the market has never seen, at a more mature state, expect to see novel data points and data visualization unlike anything that competition is offering today. On our last call, we discussed the formation of several strategic relationships with leading mobile identity authentication and background screening solutions providers. As a reminder, our optimism was premised upon the extensive markets that these providers serve, including banking, financial services, insurance, healthcare and technology, and that we won these relationships from larger, more established competitors. I am pleased to report that we have concluded testing and that these integrations are now revenue-generating with great prospects for growth. Also, on our last earnings call, I emphasized a key primary initiative of increasing demand for custom data products as these products generate our most profitable dollars, providing margin expansion on little to no additional traffic acquisition costs, or TAC. We did exactly what we set out to do this quarter. Despite leaders in the digital marketing space suffering hired TAC this quarter, we delivered lower TAC as a percentage of gross revenue as we continue to leverage our custom audience identity graph more intelligently for the purposes of executing performance marketing and consumer acquisition campaigns across a variety of verticals. In sum, we are highly focused on the highest-quality revenues, which delivers us greater margins. That is one reason you see 44% margins in our information services segment. Notwithstanding our valiant performance since we started this company, an incredible company we built in just over two years time, there are some who do not entirely understand the combined assets of our company. Our innovative technology, the products suite, the product roadmap driven by our unique and differentiated technology platforms and the synergies that exist. As well, we believe there to be certain investment mandate that impair an investors ability to invest in one or the other type of companies, whether the risk management business or digital marketing business. As a result, in September we announced the transformative transaction of business combination with Silicon Valley headquartered BlueFocus International. BlueFocus will contribute to Cogent $100 million in cash and its largest international assets Canadian-based marketing communications Company Vision7 International, and U.K.-based global socially-led creative agency We Are Social, with BlueFocus paying or refinancing Cogent’s existing debt upon closing. The transaction values Fluent Alone at $415 million, a significant premium. Immediately prior to the closing Cogent will spin-off its data and analytics operation, and asset into a new public company expected to be listed on NASDAQ name Red Violet. The shares of Red Violet will be distributed to Cogent’s shareholders as of a record date to be determined as a stock dividend upon closing of the transaction. The arrangements will result in Red Violet launching with cash of a minimum of $20 million and no debt. The current management team of Cogent will be the management team of Red Violet and Ryan Schulke and Matt Conlin, current CEO and President of Fluent respectively will continue in those roles at Fluent. Upon the closing, BlueFocus International will own 63% of the combined company on a fully diluted basis and Cogent shareholders of record will own 37% of the combined company. Cogent shareholders of record will own 100% of Red Violet. This transaction creates tremendous shareholder value in our view, as Cogent shareholders of record will upon closing own shares in two publicly traded companies, and will receive a cash dividend of approximately $1 per share. As further benefits of this transaction, first, as mentioned the transaction delivers a significant and immediate premium to our shareholders, not only with the immediate value assigned to Fluent, but with greater value certainty resulting from the combination of our digital marketing business with BlueFocus’s marketing services companies, as compared to Fluent’s standalone prospects. We believe the transaction will bring greater clarity to the marketplace as the each company’s core competencies allowing each to compete more effectively within their respective markets. As our risk management and digital marketing businesses have distinct financial and operating characteristics, the separation of the businesses will allow each to adopt strategies and pursue objectives appropriate to their respective needs, to focus more exclusively on improving each company’s operations and to enable the optimization of capital deployment and investment strategies necessary to advance their respective compelling innovation roadmaps. This business combination creates a world class global marketing services company. Our combination with Vision7 and We Are Social is a transformative event for our digital marketing business, which has been steadfastly focused on developing mobile first data-driven performance marketing solutions for brands and marketers across a variety of verticals. Our new partner agencies, Vision7 and We Are Social create a framework to deliver a more holistic offering to the market, combining best-in-class creative, brand strategy and global communications with Fluent, unique custom audience development and performance-based marketing model. Prior to entering into this deal, it was on our 2018 roadmap to establish an international presence for Fluent. This expansion would take significant time and resources. This transaction provides Fluent the access to Chief Marketing Officers of leading brands around the world. The combined businesses create a unique marketing services company delivering end-to-end solutions to the world leading brands from creative, to digital, to performance marketing, key attributes of which many leading companies possess one or the other, but not possessing all. Red Violet will be a pure play data and analytics company, continuing its expansion within the risk management industry. As I mentioned, it will have a minimum of $20 million in cash and no debt, but again upon the closing of the transaction our shareholders of record will be owners of two publicly traded companies and will receive a cash dividend of approximately $1 per share. We are working through the various closing conditions. We have already secured majority shareholder approval and recently announced that the Federal Trade Commission granted early termination of the waiting period under Hart-Scott-Rodino. We expect to file our information statement by November 28, 2017. We are in the city [ph] as process and will set a record date once that process is cleared. We expect the transaction to close in the first quarter of 2018. Now, I will turn it over to Dan to discuss the financials.