Earnings Labs

Intrusion Inc. (INTZ)

Q3 2014 Earnings Call· Thu, Nov 13, 2014

$0.78

-3.85%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

+0.35%

1 Week

+0.35%

1 Month

-1.38%

vs S&P

+1.69%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon. My name is Kaitlin and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Intrusion, Inc. Q3, 2014 Financial Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speakers' remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions]. Thank you. Paxton, Chief Financial Officer, you may begin your conference.

Michael Paxton

Analyst

Okay. Thanks. Welcome to this afternoon's call to review Intrusion's third quarter 2014 financial results and discuss our business. On the call with me today will be Ward Paxton, Chairman, Co-Founder, President and CEO; Joe Head, Vice President and Co-Founder of the Company. Ward will give a business update. I will discuss financial results and Joe will give an ongoing projects update. We'll be glad to answer any questions following the prepared remarks. We distributed the earnings release at around 3:05 today. A replay of today's call will be available at approximately 6:30 p.m. central tonight for one-week period. The replay conference call number is 855-859-2056. At the replay prompt, enter the conference ID 31791974. In addition, a live and archived audio webcast of the call is available on our website, intrusion.com. Please be reminded that during this call, including the question-and-answer session, we may make forward-looking statements with respect to financial results, business strategies, industry trends, and certain other matters. Forward-looking statements are based on management’s current expectations and are subject to risk and uncertainties. We may be discussing our current outlook for the current quarter and fiscal year 2014. These discussions are based on our own internal projections could change prior to the end of the period discussed. Actual results may differ substantially from projections. Information in this conference call related to financial results, projections, and other forward-looking statements is based on current expectations, and we are not responsible to update forward-looking statements. Many factors could cause our projections not to be achieved, including current economic and market conditions and other factors which can be found in our most recent filings with the SEC, including our most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K filed March 2014. Our most recent 10-Q was file today. Now I turn the call over to CEO and President, Ward Paxton.

G. Ward Paxton

Analyst

Thank you, Mike. Welcome to Intrusion's third quarter 2014 conference call. It's good to be with you today to discuss our progress and results. Our net income in the third quarter improved slightly to about $150,000 compared to a near breakeven in the second quarter. Third quarter revenue increased to just over $2 million, up by $225,000 from the second quarter. Savant revenue in the third quarter was about $500,000 compared to $40,000 in the second quarter. Total orders in the third quarter were $3.3 million compared to $1.7 million in the second quarter. Included in the $3.3 million of orders was $700,000 of Savant orders. Savant is our newest product family and is focused in the new security market segment, which is called Advanced Persistent Threat. A lot of players in the network security business have some sort of an APT product. Of course we think that ours is the best and I’m sure you’ll share our view. Now, Mike Paxton, our Chief Financial Officer, will review our third quarter financial results that we released a little over an hour ago. Mike?

Michael L Paxton

Analyst

Okay. I apologize for sometimes being repetitive. Revenue for the third quarter was $2million compared to $2million in third quarter of 2013 and sequentially $1.8 million for the second quarter of 2014. Savant sales were at $500,000 this quarter, continuing to be far too low. We will continue to see slow movement in Savant sales this quarter. It has been a frustratingly slow process, but I continue to believe in the product and its need by customers to support their security applications. Gross profit margin was at 65 % for the quarter compared to 60% in the third quarter last year. Gross profit margin can be greatly affected by sales product mix of orders delivered in the quarter. In general our goal is 65%, but it will be directly attributable to the mix of products shipped. Intrusion’s third quarter 2014 operating expenses were $1.2 million, compared to $1 million for the comparable quarter in 2013 and $1.2 million in the second quarter of 2014. Operating expenses should remain consistent and future growth will be determined by decisions to invest more in sales and marketing and our research and development. Net income for the third quarter was $147,000 compared to a net income of $173,000 for the third quarter of 2013 and $22,000 loss in the sequential period of the second quarter of 2014. Breakeven will generally be at $1.8 million to $1.9 million in quarterly sales. To summarize, we increased sales sequentially. We now must continue to work with our sales team to increase sales of our commercial Savant APT product line. We hope to add new customers during the fourth quarter of 2014. Back to Ward.

Ward Paxton

Analyst

Thanks Mike, after the $270,000 loss in the first quarter and the near breakeven in the second quarter, the $150,000 profit in the third quarter continues a nice trend. Improvement is too slow, but we’re moving in the right direction. Now Joe Head, my partner, Co-Founder and Senior Vice President, will discuss our products and markets. Joe?

Joe Head

Analyst

This quarter we were happy to report new orders for both TraceCop and Savant. In our last call the beginning of Q3, we booked initial orders for three new customers for TraceCop just over $1 million. Those three contracts alone will increase our billings by $1.65 million per year. And the rest of the third quarter orders added up to $3.3 million. Best of all was two initial orders from new Savant thread analysis customers for $310,000 and $356,000 respectively. In these we installed Savant at two initial campuses and have submitted monthly reports to the customers on numerous compromises we discovered. Our sales presentation continues to be refined and is getting simpler. In a security conference two weeks ago, I said if what you heard today is true, I'm wrong. If I'm right, every speaker, every other speaker has it wrong. Actually I heard an FBI guy talk about a study they were --where they were trying to train employee not to click on emails that might be suspicious to prevent infection with malware. This is insane. Didn’t the FBI know about source links? You don’t have to click on something to have it automatically fixed and executed. It's as naive as a three year old proposing that NASA land on the sun at night when it's cooler. Spear fishing is an art. If you receive a malware in the email, you can’t overcome the threat with user training. Security is no longer credible if you base your defense on keeping malware out. Every adversary that is worth there salt uses zero-day compromises. And just for the new folks on the call, a zero day is defined as a custom designed, never seen before attack and they use those to prevent these new attacks from ever being detected. That…

Ward Paxton

Analyst

Thanks Joe. We have a lot of new potential customers for both the Savant advanced persistent threat business and the TraceCop business. Our expectations for growth in both business segments are significant. The whole Intrusion team is excited about the potential of our business, and are working hard to achieve our expected results. We thank you for joining our call today and for your interest. Mike?

Michael Paxton

Analyst

Okay, operator can you remind the participants on how to ask questions?

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of Walter Schenker. Your line is open.

Walter Schenker - MAZ Capital Advisors

Analyst

Well, progress is better than no progress I guess, even if it’s a little disappointing. I went back and looked at the transcript from three months ago. This is to Joe more and Michael both because we had a discussion last quarter about TraceCop and the fact that you expected -- I just listened, TraceCop to accelerate in the September quarter. Joe, I thought you said you had some new customers and that TraceCop should be running at a level basically to cover the $1.8 million, $1.9 million not using it. And I went back and looked and I tried to get your well above $2 million and Michael said now about $2 million and Joes said yes, somewhat in that order and hopefully we’ll get some more. Yet TraceCop continues to run at $1.5 million. Did some stuff get pushed out? Were we too optimist? When do we see TraceCop actually start some growth?

Joe Head

Analyst

Some of those, Walter that we’ll renew this quarter I think fulfills that things. So our hedging of a little above, a little below had to do with how quickly that they come in, things that have expired and get renewed, but it’s all -- I had no dropouts

Walter Schenker - MAZ Capital Advisors

Analyst

But we have no growth either. It’s $1.5 million for the quarter just ended, it is -- if I had to go back over two years, here are better quarters, there are worse quarters, but $1.5 million is, we had some 1.8, we had 1.2 million, but that’s basically running with some quarter to quarter variability sideways. Therefore, I’m supposed to take away that looking forward you expect that to move up to a higher level.

Joe Head

Analyst

Right. I think with the 3.3 million orders that we didn’t book $2 million and sell $2 million. We booked 3.3 and shipped two. So it’s up a bit.

Walter Schenker - MAZ Capital Advisors

Analyst

Okay, could you just -- two other things. First, the people you made a positive comment about, your Savant installations, it is doing as you look at it, which is at the highest level, you are very, you’re happy, very happy it’s really doing what you thought it was capable of doing in a real commercial installation?

Joe Head

Analyst

Yes. That was what I was really looking for. We can do our best, think it’s great and the customer can go, ho, ho hum, showing somebody cold fusion for the first time. They can say wow, that’s the biggest breakthrough everything. So what, it glows? The nice thing is that the board -- the customer’s board meeting they came back and said they’re just completely happy. They used a colloquialism about a pig and something or other, but they were happier than that. So it enthused our resale customer to increase their effort to sell more, which is good. It’s not just us thinking it, but our reseller and the end customer really love it. That’s been one of our two big installations. The second one we haven’t gotten ecstatic reports, hadn’t really gotten any meaningful feedback yet other than yeah, we got and we fixed the stuff you told us.

Walter Schenker - MAZ Capital Advisors

Analyst

Okay and when you have moved beyond your secret big reseller and you’ve indicated you’ve added some smaller people. They are operating at a different level of customer or they’re just looking at the areas that the big guy hasn’t gotten to? So they’re now looking at Fortune 100 or 200 companies or they’re looking at?

Joe Head

Analyst

The resellers so far have been looking at government, state and Federal government and international customers that are shippers, banks, insurance companies and things like oil fields and harbors. It’s a different market than our reseller has been looking at so far.

Walter Schenker - MAZ Capital Advisors

Analyst

They have history in the security area?

Joe Head

Analyst

Correct. These guys, one of them is a supplier of data centers. They’re an integrator big data centers and they’re adding security on top of it, which they’ve done in the past but it hadn’t been very effective. It’s just tip over firewalls and IDSs. So they’re adding the Savant to differentiate themselves from other suppliers.

Walter Schenker - MAZ Capital Advisors

Analyst

Okay and you directly are also marketing the product?

Joe Head

Analyst

Through them mostly, but yeah. I’m going as my name Intrusion directly to the customer with them.

Walter Schenker - MAZ Capital Advisors

Analyst

Joe Head

Analyst

Correct. That’s correct. Think it’s a little bit faster sale cycle.

Walter Schenker - MAZ Capital Advisors

Analyst

We would expect, I know you said 700,000 of Savant was sold in the last quarter. Hopefully this quarter we would sell more than that?

Joe Head

Analyst

I would hope so. Currently I’ve got a little less than that in the queue for immediate orders .I think I have about 530 or something in the queue right now.

Ward Paxton

Analyst

Walter, you have to keep in mind the fourth quarter is a sleepy quarter for our road. Sometimes you get things that get delayed into the first quarter. It’s not unusual.

Walter Schenker - MAZ Capital Advisors

Analyst

Again, I’m not asking revenues. Sometimes you can say to people who particularly done sales.

Ward Paxton

Analyst

Same thing, orders and revenues, the fourth quarter frequently is the smallest quarter of the year.

Joe Head

Analyst

Yep. People get into the Christmas spirit early.

Walter Schenker - MAZ Capital Advisors

Analyst

Okay. I will follow up with you on the next couple of days about trying to move Joe to the big city one day.

Joe Head

Analyst

But I’m doing end customer calls a couple of days a week.

Walter Schenker - MAZ Capital Advisors

Analyst

I know.

Joe Head

Analyst

It’s a good uptake for me.

Walter Schenker - MAZ Capital Advisors

Analyst

Good. Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator instructions] Your next question comes from the line of [indiscernible]. Your line is open.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

With APT, your sales ramp, if I’m understanding it right, is now starting to accelerate because the reseller is rolling Savant out to their salesforce compared to before where it was just the beta test clients who saw it worked great and they wanted to buy. Is that a good summary?

Joe Head

Analyst

Yeah, you said …

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Compared to three months ago, the re-sellers moving into the initial innings of the salesforce promoting Savant compared to before where the salesforce wasn’t even really involved because it was ..

Joe Head

Analyst

Yeah that’s correct. Our reseller they had a small specialty security branch that was selling our stuff. There was a dozen or so specialists. In this last quarter they’ve incentivized the whole salesforce to sell it, but that’s it’s still in the state where they don’t all know about it. But now they have a trained person in every region, a couple of 100 folks that have been trained on and have the slide decks and supposedly know how to sell it. Everything else it will grow from a smaller group to the larger group.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Last conference call discussed forms of bad guy communications a DNS I believe malware that’s invisible to the virtualization machines, but it is visible to Savant and lights up with Savant. The companies like FireEye and Symantec, Cisco, Palo Alto, which of those are able to detect that new DNS APT attack that you described in the last conference call?

Joe Head

Analyst

I would say all of them theoretically could if they would, but the way they would it would be a little bit cumbersome. So for all of those guys that you named, if I was working at them, I would take the DNS, the internal DNS resolvers, create a DNS log and then scrub that and start analyzing it. I’m not aware that any of those guys have such a product. It would be a sucky thing to have to do because you get so many billion DNS queries a day. I don’t think it would scale well without our patents. I’m not trying to dodge the question, but anybody could look for such of a thing, but I don’t know that they’d find it.

Ward Paxton

Analyst

We’re saying theoretically they have the capability but they really can’t do it.

Joe Head

Analyst

Correct.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

All those security companies are allowing that APT DNS threat to get through and the stolen data goes back to the hacker. That’s what’s happening right now?

Joe Head

Analyst

That is correct. There’s a few guys along the way that do some DNS sync holing which they basically go to the DNS server and they say here is a list of things to block and of the names that you listed, I believe Hewlett Packard and Cisco are the two that do some DNS sync holing. The problem is -- my comment like I said about Target, Neiman Marcus and the rest of them, if the columns made from this campus are different than have been made anywhere else in the world, they don’t know what to put on their list. We’re basically doing behavioral profiling and discovering those. To put it in prospective, if I look at the last month’s reports from our existing Savant customers, I believe about one in five or probably one in seven things we reported had DNS ex-fill. The rest were other more traditional coms using FTP or Mailer something else to get the data out. You’re right, the newest ones are DNS and in fact a new killer one got announced today.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

For your team the Home Depot, the JPMorgan breaches news, that was not a surprise?

Joe Head

Analyst

No.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Because you’ve been seeing that these bad guy communications are being let through the virtualization machines every day because you‘ve seen some of the potential clients sharing their log with you and you see how they get through all these bad communications?

Joe Head

Analyst

Correct. They don’t even have to instantly share. We’ve had Savant installed at internet backbone level for years now. We’ve got a pretty good representative sample of the world’s coms.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Unless there are other choices, every Fortune 500 company would require Savant in order in order to be safe against this new style of APT attack. Is that correct?

Joe Head

Analyst

Yes. I’d say yes. That’s a qualified yes. Are there alternates if we were to fall on our face? Yeah, you could start looking at traffic analysis on top of net flow or something on top of some kind of communication log to do it another way. But yeah, we have a ripe big market and that’s why I focused in the last paragraph of my comments about, it’s my job to get our sales pitch out to all of the guys that are in the value added security -- the big security integration groups. My intention is to go pitch to each of those guys that says -- name all of the security value added resellers in the world. I intend to see them all this quarter and say here’s what we can do for you and here’s -- I think it closes a blind side that you all have. Would you like some?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

The last conference call you mentioned that head to head competition Savant beat out Mandiant. Also in the last conference call, it was mentioned you had six to eight likely clients to be signed out of the 15 to 20 that were in discussions. How many are likely to be signed up possibly now and in discussion with, et cetera?

Ward Paxton

Analyst

I think we are still working on the group that we talked about at the last conference call. As Joe indicated, we’ve gotten two clients now with installations and expecting those to grow. So the overall set of customers is growing.

Joe Head

Analyst

I think your summary, I was sort of sign when you were asking that question because as the salesforce is growing, we’ve lost some visibility about all the quotes that they are doing. I’ve got the same probably 15 or so on my list. Their short list of things that they expect orders from I believe was five or seven as of two days ago at the big reseller. But then on the other hand I’ve got another dozen with the new channel as well. It’s net doubled. How many would I expect to order this quarter? I don’t know the answer to that, great is the right answer. But I would hope for -- I think I’ve got three in the bag and looking for another four.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

That’s this quarter out of those …

Joe Head

Analyst

Correct.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. The number of sales people that the security experts at the reseller is using for the sales ramp at Savant has increased the last three months?

Joe Head

Analyst

Correct. They’ve gone a dozen -- originally three security experts to then 19 and now they’ve added another 200 those original guys and then those support a salesforce of lots of thousands. The number they’ve actually engaged is still small, but if the boss says, hey ding it. The one that we beat Mandiant is the one that came back from the board meeting and said they were happier than a pig and something or rather with our results. And so that’s my comment about ripples in a big pond. If they really turn on, it will be incredible for us, but we’ve been watching them mess around for a year with not a groundswell of change. So big places accelerate slowly. But I think the trend is at least positive rather than ho-hum we don’t care.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

I didn’t quite get all that. So the last quarter there were about three experts and now there are 19 or 200?

Joe Head

Analyst

Yeah. From second quarter we had three and then the third quarter they’d trained 19 and then at the beginning of this quarter they had expanded and have 200 regional security specialists that they’ve trained. And so now all of their global salesforce have a regional security guy that’s been trained on Savant.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. So that’s why you feel like you could get three customers this quarter?

Joe Head

Analyst

No. That’s -- I think when those guys turn on we are going to be seeing a lot a week. The question is when will they actually start getting orders? Will they actually make that turn on? And I’m not trying to be negative other than just to be realistic, is big places like that. If it was a small place you’d expect reaction in a month and big places ramp slowly. And those turn on the numbers I quote will be wrong grossly on the small side.

Michael Paxton

Analyst

All right, final question, Keith.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

What preceded the comment by the -- was it the reseller that said get ready or what preceded that optimism or comment? Was that from -- I didn’t quite catch that.

Joe Head

Analyst

That was their comment back from their first customer, which was one of the two we installed last quarter. They got such a positive response because the CEO of their company was at the end customers’ board of directors meeting. And he got such a positive response for what we’ve been able to find and no else had that had closed real security breaches they had, that they were saying get ready for lots of orders because we are pushing you.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. That was the resellers telling you get ready for a lot of orders?

Joe Head

Analyst

Correct.

Michael Paxton

Analyst

Thank you, Keith. Operator, do we have any other questions?

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time.

Michael Paxton

Analyst

Okay. At this time we’ll wrap up the call, thank you for participating in today’s call. If you did not receive a copy of the press release or if you have further questions, you can contact me at 972-301-3658 or email mpaxton@intrusion.com. Thanks a lot.

Operator

Operator

This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.