Sue Swenson
Analyst · Lake Street Capital Markets. Please go ahead
Thank you, Michael. Good afternoon and thanks to everyone for participating in todays call. We really look forward to sharing our Q2 results and updating you on our continued progress we’re making in our transformation and our hardware only provider of wireless communications equipment to a provider of comprehensive IoT solutions with a high margin SaaS software and service offerings. While there is obviously still work to be done to complete this transformation, I'm very pleased with the changes we’ve made today. And our results are showing that we are moving in the right direction. Looking back to Q2 last year, we have seen the following significant improvements in our key metrics. Number one, quarterly adjusted EBITDA has improved by $4 million to positive $1.7 million from a negative $2.3 million. Number two, non-GAAP gross margin has improved to 37.9% from 30.9%. And number three, subscribers have increased to 557,000 via the acquisition of Ctrack and FW. This year we expect these improvements to result in increasing adjusted EBITDA in every sequential quarter in 2016 and EBITDA of more than $4 million in the fourth quarter along continuing to improve throughout 2017. For those of you on the call who are new to the Novatel Wireless story, I began my tenure as CEO at the end of October 2015. It was very clear to me from day one that we needed to quickly focus on two things. One was to identify areas of the business which were best positioned to drive revenue and profit growth and two was to streamline or sell business units which did not fit our vision of being a leading player in IoT SaaS services and solutions. Over the past few months strategic planning began to rapidly transition to implementation. We divested our cellular module business to Telit on April 11 and just last week completed the targeted substantial restructuring of our MiFi and Telematics hardware businesses. In our MiFi business we’re clear that we’re not longer pursing unprofitable projects at carriers other than Verizon. Instead we’re increasing focus and resources on our largest and most profitable customer. With these other projects now completely phased out, we were able to narrow our MiFi business in late July. In our Telematics hardware business known to many you as Enfora, we made the decision to streamline the business to focus on manufacturing and developing hardware for Ctrack. I am pleased with the extent of the business transformation at Novatel since I became CEO last October and want to thank all of our team members across the globe for working to make this transformation a reality. We’re now well positioned and laser focused on SaaS services and solutions and well positioned in high growth verticals of IoT. Turning to Ctrack, our Telematics SaaS services and solutions business including fleet management, the pace of subscriber growth has greatly accelerated each successive quarter since acquiring Ctrack. We see three key differentiating factors for Ctrack contributing to this accelerating growth. Number one, Ctrack is well positioned in global regions experiencing rapid Telematics growth. Number two, Ctrack's board portfolio aligns well with market opportunities and number three, Ctrack has strong relationships with wireless carriers and automotive OEMs. As far as Ctrack being well positioned in regions that are growing rapidly in the Telematics space we’re bullish on the prospects for robust growth for Ctrack in Africa, Australia and the Middle East. We believe these regions are in the early stages of rapid and sustainable growth. One important partnership win with MTN the largest carrier in Africa is a key differentiator for us facilitating broad regional penetration. Ctrack’s product portfolio is being leveraged in regions when and where it makes sense. Whereas most of Ctrack's competitors have a fix set of products, Ctrack’s broad portfolio and end-to-end expertise enable Ctrack to meet customer demand for both established and emerging Telematics solutions. In order to meet the needs of utilities customers, Ctrack has customized its core fleet management platform to meet the very specific software and hardware needs of this particular vertical market. And as a result Ctrack is having great success with utilities customers in the U.K. and Australia. In South Africa, Ctrack has developed a pioneering usage based insurance solution which leverages Ctrack’s sophisticated driver behavior algorithm. The platform has many innovative use cases and Ctrack has partnered with VUM insurance to deliver an on demand pay by the mile usage based insurance offering for UBER drivers. As you may know ride sharing is starting to get traction in many geographies with several OEMs. In the U.K., Ctrack has deployed three successful instances of a ride sharing application. And as mentioned on previous earnings calls for the U.S. and several other regions, we’re currently overhauling the user experience and user interface of its fleet management platform to develop an [indiscernible] intuitive platform specifically designed for small and mid-sized businesses. We have received very, very good feedback from potential customers some of them are using somebody else's product. They were so impressed with what they saw, they’ve expressed interest in becoming one of our customers when the product becomes available. In addition to our direct channels, we believe our strong relationships with wireless carriers and automotive OEMs will help drive long-term growth. Ctrack has won three partnership deals with global carriers over the past few quarters and is in discussion with two additional carriers. For some of these carriers such as MTN, Ctrack white labeled the product. You may recall from our announcement a couple of months ago that MTN is one of the largest global carriers with 300 million subscribers across Africa to Middle East, Europe and Asia. For the other carrier dealers, the carrier self Ctrack branded product to both its existing wireless subscriber base and new customers. Based on our ongoing discussions with automotive OEMs, we believe this channel remains committed to exploring aftermarket solutions or fleet management and other Telematics Solutions. Ctrack was the pioneer in the development of Telematics Solutions for automotive OEMs in the past and we've been quite encouraged with some recent early-stage discussions with new potential automotive customers. Turning to FW our IoT services business we are very pleased with the progress we’ve made transitioning FW from a consulting and integrator business model into a scalable, more profitable solutions focused IoT business. The common themes for these products is combining hardware, provisioning logistics and support, device management and recording and data plans into a unified offering. By doing so we’re giving our customers a simple solution that previously was time-consuming and complex. We now give customers a bundled solution with a single point of contact taking the hassle out of the process making them more productive and reducing their cost. Recent experiences we’ve had with customers such as Fastenal, Milwaukee, the City of San Francisco and Heartland Payment Systems, as well as Omaha Steaks makes us optimistic about the market demand for these offerings and scalability of this business moving forward. In fact the service offering has gotten enough interest that we’ve landed a partnership with the Tier 1 U.S. wireless carrier. We believe this partnership will be unique in the marketplace and we really look forward to telling you more about this partnership later this quarter. What’s important to me and helpful to our transformation growth and scale is that the infrastructure that we’ve been working on for these service products will provide a framework for all recurring revenue and subscription products for Novatel's U.S. operations including the launch of an SMB fleet management platform in the U.S. by the end of this year. Turning to mobile broadband and MiFi post our recent streamlining efforts, this hardware business is an important piece to growing our SaaS services and solutions businesses. We the expect stable revenue and consistent profitability for this business will fund our portfolio of IoT SaaS and services opportunities. Our plan for MiFi hasn't changed and it remains very simple. Continued focus on delivering cutting edge mobile broadband devices to Verizon and working strategically with Verizon to support their network transitions and our plan is working. We continue to estimate that more than 25% for Q4 '16 revenues from Verizon will be driven by non-hotspot products highlighting the diversity efforts already underway. Our second half '16 product launches at Verizon remain on track. Clearly our strategic direction, initiatives and execution are firmly taking hold. Ctrack is firing on all cylinders. FW is in the midst of an exciting new product launch with a major carrier. And MiFi is seeing both growth and diversification opportunities. This is truly a dynamic period in Novatel's history. We are very excited and optimistic about our future and we hope you are too. With that, I will turn the call over to Mike Newman.