Richard Danforth
Analyst · Stephens. Go ahead
Thank you, Kim, and welcome to everybody. If you look on our website, you'll see the earnings release as well as a press release that has been hung up on the wire service but likely come out during this call announcing the win of a large enterprise SaaS award to a company called Aramco, which happens to be the largest company in the world from a market cap basis. So with that, we are off to a strong start in fiscal ‘z23. With our largest SaaS booking quarter-to-date. Our software business continues to gain momentum, as evidenced by the 6.1 million in SaaS bookings in the first fiscal quarter of this year. The strong bookings include an enterprise award from as I mentioned a moment ago, Aramco, the largest market cap company in the world, and the California counties of San Diego, where they bought GEM, Riverside, where they bought Zonehaven. Subsequently, they had bought GEM and IMNS, San Mateo, which bought Zonehaven, and Monterey County which bought both Zonehaven and GEM. These results along with our rapidly growing SaaS pipeline, further reinforced our strategy of investing in software development, sales, marketing and customer support. The addition of the world's largest oil and gas company in large California counties to our global automobile manufacturing, and regional critical infrastructure customer base, elevates our SaaS profile and demonstrates our ability to successfully close, cross sell and support large enterprise and public safety clients. Our international results are also robust this quarter, as our strategy to rationalize business development by establishing sales offices in APAC, Europe and the Middle East have proven successful. During the first fiscal quarter, 50% of our bookings were international and APAC revenue more than doubled year-over-year as the entire region emerges from COVID related lockdowns. With the world economy picking up we are seeing pipeline growth across all of our international sales regions. We expect strong fiscal year bookings in APAC, Europe and the Middle East, driven primarily by hardware orders, as well as developing pipeline of SaaS opportunities. Total bookings for the quarter at 8.6 million up 23% year-over-year. Hardware bookings for the quarter were 2.5 million as pending orders moved into our fiscal second quarter. Fiscal second quarter hardware bookings through January are already 40% higher than the total first quarter hardware bookings. We expect fiscal 2023 bookings to follow our typical pattern with a large step up in fiscal Q3, driven by international hardware bookings in fiscal 2023 are expected to substantially exceed fiscal 2022 hardware bookings. In what is typically our slowest quarter, fiscal first quarter revenue was 10.5 million slightly lower than the prior year quarter and in line with our expectations. Following the usual pattern, we expect sequentially, quarterly revenue to increase in the fiscal second quarter and then strengthen in fiscal Q3 and four putting us on a solid footing for the seventh consecutive year of revenue growth. Inflation resulted in increased hardware component cost and product mix was a factor in the decreasing first quarter gross margin to 43.3%. We expect our gross margin to return to more normal levels in the second half of fiscal 23. As we discussed on our fiscal fourth quarter conference call continued investment in our SaaS business drove a 10.5% sequential quarterly increase in operating expenses in line with our expectations. Given the confidence in these investments to accelerate our SaaS business growth. We anticipate operating expenses in fiscal '23 to increase by approximately 5 million year-over-year. While SaaS bookings and revenue are growing, hardware continues to be a majority of our business, representing 90% of the total revenues in the fiscal first quarter. Our commanding competitive position as the de facto global supplier of Long Range Acoustic devices gives our hardware business a compelling economic profile. We continue to diligently manage and dedicate resources to growing our global hardware business. Recent attacks and increasing threats to critical infrastructure, particularly electrical substations, by generating large business opportunities for our remotely operated LRAD 950NXT system. The NXT uses a proprietary technology to identify and respond to potential threats. Since the NXTs launch last April, we have received orders from international navies and critical infrastructure orders for [indiscernible], data centers, ports, and electrical substations. Large NXT critical infrastructure and international defense sales are expected to be a major contributor to hardware revenue this fiscal year and beyond. Our hardware bookings are typically lumpy. We currently have a large number of hardware opportunities expected to close this fiscal year. The U.S. Army program of record and its international orders are anticipated to drive bookings growth and substantially lift hardware backlog in the second half. Hardware will continue to be the economic engine that powers the self-funding of our SaaS business development in the future. Our priority focus is fully integrating our SaaS solution and increasing the capabilities of a data driven protective communication platform. Our SaaS system suite is evolving with the integration of GEM, Zonehaven and IMNS into a seamless platform, expanding our capabilities and empowering Genasys to address a much larger scope of enterprise and public safety crisis. New platform features including flood and traffic modeling, continue to expand our platforms multi-hazard capabilities for use during hurricanes, storm surges, tsunamis, avalanches, flooding, debris flow, wildfires, chemical plumes, active shooter, and other natural and manmade disasters. Some of our new capabilities were deployed during the recent atmospheric river condition, the inundated Northern California. Our protective communication platform was used in many counties to communicate the location and extent of flooding, avalanches, debris flows, road closures, hazard condition and recovery resources. During the severe weather events, hundreds of 1000s of residents accessed the Genasys aware sites to check the evacuation status of their neighborhoods and for other lifesaving information. Our land and expand strategy continues to grow our footprint with government public safety customers. Increasing demand for our protective communication platform has 16 California jurisdictions now using multiple Genasys platform elements, with three counties using the entire platform. Riverside, one of California's largest and most populous counties, recently purchased zone haven to integrate with the previously purchased GEM services and IMNS installations. As we announced earlier this month, the city of Laguna Beach is a notable example of how to perform -- the performance of our IMNS network created another upselling opportunity. The successful use of IMNS during two wildfire last year, led the Laguna Beach City Council to prioritize the further expansion of its Genasys network. In Marin County, California, we have provided emergency warning services for the city of Mill Valley since 2019. And 2021, IMNS installation equipment was solar power and battery backup are positioned in other areas within the county. The follow-on order announced last week further expands the county's IMNS network. We have also expanded our footprint in Alameda County with UC Berkeley's purchase of IMNS which will be integrated with the city of Berkeley's Genasys network. As we announced last week, the extended network and the county's use of our Zonehaven evacuation platform will expand emergency warning coverage and notification channels during public safety threats for more than 45,000 students, staff and facility. We expect additional California jurisdiction to join Alameda, Marin and Riverside counties in adopting the full Genasys platform this fiscal year. In the enterprise market, the addition of Aramco, along with previously announced global auto manufacturers and critical infrastructure elevates our SaaS profile and demonstrates our ability to successfully close large enterprise customers. Extending the capabilities of our software platform further differentiates us and opens doors for new and follow on business opportunities. Our approach to the vast enterprise sector is to target key verticals where we can reference our proven execution. We have spoken before about our ongoing investment in the SaaS platform and SaaS sales growth. Since late 2021, we've expanded our software development sales, marketing and customer support teams and added new personnel with the skill set needed to achieve our revenue goals. To build brand awareness and accelerate platform growth. We have recently appointed as Avnita Gulati, as Vice President of Marketing. Avnita is a highly successful enterprise marketing executive with extensive experience leading revenue-based marketing organizations. She has implemented global go-to-market strategies and led customer acquisition programs for leading companies in the software, semiconductor, medical and financial markets. Avnita was a key addition to our leadership team who will help us drive scale and growth. The whole team here has energized and psyched by the increasing adoption of our software SaaS platform and the burgeoning opportunities fueling growth in our pipeline. Our pipeline of qualified SaaS opportunities is now 25% greater than it was just a few months ago. The SaaS bookings we delivered in the first quarter further validates the investments we are making in our protective communication platform, and we believe are a strong indicator of its potential. With Genasys software now in use in 23 states and seven countries soon to be eight with the addition of Aramco. We are gaining traction in new markets and building our software footprint globally. We are reiterating our expectations for continued revenue growth in '23. With strong international sales, continuing LRAD deliveries to U.S. military, and increased software services sales and significant SaaS revenue growth. With that, I'll turn it over to Dennis.