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Inuvo, Inc. (INUV)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 3, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Inuvo 2015 Year End Financial Conference Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Alan Sheinwald, Capital Markets Group, LLC. Please go ahead, sir.

Alan Sheinwald

Management

Thank you, operator and good afternoon. I'd like to thank everyone for joining us today for the Inuvo fourth quarter and full year 2015 shareholders update conference call. Today, Mr. Richard Howe, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman; and Mr. Wallace Ruiz, Chief Financial Officer of Inuvo will be your presenters on the call. Before we begin, I'm going to review the company's Safe Harbor statement. The statements in this conference call that are not descriptions of historical facts are forward-looking statements relating to future events, and as such all forward-looking statements are made pursuant to the Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties and actual results may differ materially. When used in this call the words anticipate, could, enable, estimate, intend, expect, believe, potential, will, should, project and similar expressions as they relate to Inuvo, Inc. are as such a forward-looking statement. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, which may cause actual results to differ from those anticipated by Inuvo at this time. In addition, other risks are more fully described in Inuvo's public filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which can be reviewed at www.sec.gov. With that out of the way, now I'd like to congratulate management on an outstanding year of growth across all financial measures and turn the call over to Mr. Richard Howe, CEO of Inuvo. Rich, the floor is yours.

Richard Howe

Management

Thank you, Alan and thanks everyone for joining us. We are proud of what we accomplished in 2015 both financially and operationally and I am pleased to report that we exceeded our 2015 targets. Between the first quarter of 2014 where we delivered $10.1 million in revenue, and the most recent fourth quarter of 2015 where we delivered $21 million in revenue, we've grown the company 108% and that’s in less than two years. At $70.4 million year-over-year revenue in 2015 was up 42% and we delivered this result while increasing net income 11% to $2.3 million for the year. We’ve now been GAAP income positive for eight straight quarters in a row all the while continuing to make the investments necessary to build a bigger and financially stronger business for our shareholders, our employee and our partners. Adjusted EBITDA and free cash flow are important operating measures for us as a result of certain non-cash items in the P&L. We find that these measures provide a clearer view of the operating cash being generated by the core business. So while we delivered $0.01 of GAAP earnings per share in 2015, at $4.6 million in the year there was $0.19 per share on a free cash flow basis. This 48% year-over-year improvement in free cash flow was a driving force behind the retirement of our debt in 2015. We also ended the year with $4.3 million of cash on the balance sheet. Now comparing 2015 to 2014, both business segments were up year-over-year with partner up 18% and own and operated up 68%. As we mentioned in the past certain partner revenue from sites we acquired earlier in 2015 is now being recorded in the owned and operated segment. The impact of this acquisition is now fully represented in the…

Wallace Ruiz

Management

Thank you, Rich. Good afternoon everyone. Today we reported another consecutive quarter of strong revenue growth, profitability and cash flow. Inuvo reported revenue of $21 million in the fourth quarter of 2015 compared to $15.5 million in the fourth quarter of last year, a 36% increase. $6.2 million came from the partner network and $14.8 million from the owned and operated network. The partner network delivers advertisements to our partners’ websites and applications. It reported $6.2 million in the fourth quarter of this year compared to $7.6 million in the same quarter last year. As Rich mentioned the sites we acquired from a partner earlier this year now has its revenue recorded in the owned and operated segment, which has the effect of lowering the partner segment revenue and increasing the revenue of the owned and operated segment. The revenue shifted was approximately $1 million per quarter when we acquired this site in March 2015. The sites have grown quickly under Inuvo’s ownership. The owned and operated network is made up of a collection of websites and apps we own and income is derived from advertisement. The owned and operated network represented 71% of the company's total revenue in the current year quarter. The owned and operated network reported $14.8 million of revenue in the fourth quarter of this year, an 87% increase over the same quarter last year. The growth in this business segment is largely due to the investment made in proprietary content, effective marketing campaigns and the acquisition of partner sites. Gross profit in the fourth quarter 2015 was $16.4 million compared to $9.3 million last year, a 75% improvement. Gross profit as a percent of revenue or gross margin was 78% in the fourth quarter of 2015 compared to 60% in the same quarter last year.…

Richard Howe

Management

Thanks, Wally. In summary, we had an exceptional 2015, a year in which we exceeded our target growing revenue 42%, free cash flow 48% and net income 11%. We had an owned and operated business model that continues to fuel growth and a fantastic new product SearchLinks that we expect will deliver strong year over year growth in 2016. At December 31, 2015 mobile revenues were above 42% of total, debt was zero and the cash balance was $4.3 million. Our overall strategy has not changed. In 2016, we expect to continue expand content in O&O segment and broadly distribute SearchLinks within the partner segment. We will continue to use our O&O segment as a testing ground for new ad technologies. At over $70 million in profitable annual revenue and an organic growth rate well in excess of our peers, we believe we have demonstrated that we have a model capable of scaling. We exist in a very competitive marketplace where size really does matter. Being bigger gives us ability to negotiate better terms with partners. They become more efficient operationally and it provides certain reputational marketplace advantages. We believe it in the best interest of shareholders that we continue to make investments in our business to drive scale, believing that a larger platform provides opportunity to increasing margin. We’ve had a longer-term goal to reach a $100 million profitable run rate by the end of 2017 and we believe we are on track to deliver against that goal. Q1 is typically the weakest quarter in our industry as the price paid for ad placements by advertisers drop following the holiday season. This drop usually impacts both revenue and margin. With that said, we had strong sales in January where unaudited revenue came in above $6.5 million which is well above last year and a strong star to 2016. With that, I'd now like to turn the call over to the operator for questions.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And we’ll go first to Eric Martinuzzi of Lake Street Capital.

Eric Martinuzzi

Analyst

The growth that you got – in the press release you talked about the January and if I just take that $6.5 million unaudited revenue that you just mentioned, and I am not sure what the seasonality is within the quarter. But just that and multiply it times 3, that would be a $19.5 million quarter. A) is there anything wrong with that logic? And then B) that growth rate in comparison to a year ago when posted a $13.4 million quarter would be a pretty strong acceleration in growth rate entering the year versus the quarter you just finished? So I'll start there.

Richard Howe

Management

I think that’s a fair way to look at it.

Eric Martinuzzi

Analyst

And then obviously you do have a revenue concentration you talked about it in your 10-K every year. In 2014 Yahoo! was 54%, it was 44%, I know you have a budding relationship with Facebook but can you talk about where you finished at 2015 on a revenue concentration and your goals for the coming year?

Richard Howe

Management

Yes. In the past as you know, Eric, the vast majority of the revenue was through Google and Yahoo! and we’ve made a concerted effort to diversify as much as possible and we’ve had some success this year bringing on some new direct relationships and we think that, that’s going to continue into 2016. It’s certainly a strategy that we put together that we expect to grow over time year after year. However we do realize that Yahoo! and Google will continue to be a very very strong or big part of our revenue stream.

Eric Martinuzzi

Analyst

And then obviously I don’t want you to get too specific on it but I will just kind of use the last year’s numbers is probably a good proxy for 2015. Let me shift over to the profitability. I know goal here is to get to $100 million but as I look at the year just ended, I am sorry, the quarter just ended, we had a terrific growth in Q4 2015 with the revenue up 42%, and yet there was a decline in the adjusted EBITDA, I am talking about $1.6 million that you did this quarter versus $1.8 a year ago. What should we be thinking about as far as how you play with that profitability flow [ph] in the coming year?

Richard Howe

Management

So all of our available cash and profitability that we have, we want to put it into growth.

Operator

Operator

And we’ll go next to William Gibson of Roth Capital Partners.

William Gibson

Analyst

Hi, I want to follow up a little bit on focus on Eric and focus on profitability. But first, just in relation to the gross margin you mentioned, 78% versus 60%. Could you give us a little more detail on what that reserve adjustment was, how much that impacted the quarter? Hello could you hear me?

Operator

Operator

It appears that our speaker line has been disconnected. Please stand by while we resolve.

Richard Howe

Management

Hello. Thank you. We are back.

William Gibson

Analyst

Okay. Good. Did you hear my question before you got cut off?

Richard Howe

Management

We did not, Bill. No, we apologize. We did not. We just had to dial back in, so we apologize to the audience that’s listening. What was the question, Bill?

William Gibson

Analyst

Well, first, I just wanted a little more color on the reserve adjustment that impacted gross margin in the fourth quarter and what was the effect of that on the improvement and what was the adjustment?

Richard Howe

Management

Yes, so we had an adjustment made earlier in the year that was associated with a traffic source that we had, that we needed to verify. And once we had verified that source was what we thought it was, we were able to release the reserve.

William Gibson

Analyst

And then just following up on Eric’s question, I understand the investment in driving scale and the O&O. But it seemed to me what you talk about the custom projects and the increase in SearchLinks, that we are to start leveraging profitability do a little bit in the first quarter or am I just being too optimistic – speaking of a partner network contributing more?

Richard Howe

Management

Generally what we’re trying to do is build a business that can operate at scale and sometimes you have to lead that effort – so SearchLinks is a perfect example of that. As that business scales, we have additional account managers to hire additional salespeople and we have to – to some degree lead the revenue on some of those items, and that of course has an expense associated with that. We also have developers that they design. So when we say we are investing in the growth of the business, it’s things like that that really – we are talking about.

William Gibson

Analyst

So internationally do you have a timeline when you think that, that investment starts to pay off that we see it in profits?

Richard Howe

Management

Yes, I think we’ve always said that once we hit a $100 million we’re going to start seeing a turning point. At that point we have enough leverage in our relationship, in our contracts, and in our financial statements that, at that point we’re going to – we expect to start seeing some better margins.

Operator

Operator

And we’ll go next to Jon Hickman of Ladenburg Thalmann.

Jon Hickman

Analyst

Hi, I just want to follow up on Bill’s question. Can you give the size of that reserve, like how many margin points is it?

Richard Howe

Management

It had an effect on owned and operated about 2 percentage points.

Jon Hickman

Analyst

All my other questions have already been asked and answered.

Operator

Operator

And we’ll go next to Lisa Thompson of Zacks.

Lisa Thompson

Analyst

Hi, just talk a little bit about more of your investment, obviously you don’t have to pay them debt this year. Are you going to have all that freed up, right, to also pour into marketing?

Richard Howe

Management

That’s right. We’ll have more cash available to go into R&D and into marketing, that’s right.

Wallace Ruiz

Management

That being said, though, that – that was being part of the overall expenses last year, with couple hundred grant and interest expenses maybe we won’t see this year. It’s not immaterial, Lisa and it wasn’t a gigantic number. We spent more money hiring five people than we will on the interest expense associated with that debt.

Lisa Thompson

Analyst

So it’s not what you have X amount of cash one on the balance sheet, anything over and above that you’re going to spend, or –

Richard Howe

Management

No, we have targets obviously that we set internally for where we want to be with the business this year, profitability targets, cash flow targets, revenue targets. So we don’t want to mislead people. Look, is the business doing well, we grew income last year over the year before and there is a chance we might get this thing this year, what we are saying is we are not tooling the business at this point because we are trying to lead our growth to that. It may happen because we are diligent in how we spend our money. But we are thinking about growth first and foremost around here because we see a model that can scale and we want to make sure we capitalize on that while we have the means to do so.

Lisa Thompson

Analyst

So can you talk a little bit more about what you’ve learned about the competition, SearchLinks, how you stack up against Outbrain and Taboola and I also saw in web content that apparently discarded the Coldfield [ph] deal with AOL. Talk to what’s going on out there?

Richard Howe

Management

You bet. So those are all companies competing – for spot where we have products available. Yes, the market for ad technology is a competitive marketplace, that I don't think that’s any surprise to anybody. The way you win is you’ve got a product that integrates well with the publishers’ content and it delivers most value. So what I can say – I can’t speak to their business, because that’s their business. But I can speak our business. We are winning deals, we are signing up clients, and in some cases some of the folks that you mentioned are doing business with these publishers. So we feel good about our ability to compete against that landscape given the four, five, six months that we have been at this with SearchLinks.

Lisa Thompson

Analyst

Or there is a niche or anything that you are being able to excel at or is it broken out like that yet?

Richard Howe

Management

Yes. We have tended to sign more publishing clients in the health verticals than others, not that we haven't signed some up in other verticals but health has been a particularly interesting vertical for us.

Lisa Thompson

Analyst

Is that your product or the spread that you are in there, other similar companies.

Richard Howe

Management

It’s a lot of reasons, Lisa but probably more than any other reasons, SearchLinks itself was originally designed and commercialized from our own health site and I think that gave us the ability to be able to go out and offer it to other people so that they could also make some money from the product. So it’s probably more to do with that than anything else.

Lisa Thompson

Analyst

Maybe one thing is give us kind of example of a customer that –

Richard Howe

Management

Yes, as you well know, because we get asked this question a lot, we are careful not to talk too much about the publishers that we do business with. But in the script for the first time I did mention that our ads are showing on Kiplinger, so Kiplinger is a finance site. So there is an example. We have many.

Lisa Thompson

Analyst

And then how did you come about how to get in touch with them and then how did they like it, how does that go?

Richard Howe

Management

Yes, good old fashioned hard selling, you basically have to sell them a value proposition based on making them more money and while at the same time providing a good experience for their users really to whatever the content that we are showing our ads on. That’s what we do and in a lot of cases we’re being successful doing that.

Operator

Operator

And we’ll go next to Juan Melissa [ph] of B. Riley. Q – Unidentified Company Speaker: Could you address how you plan to allocate resources between partner and O&O in the coming year?

Richard Howe

Management

I am sorry, we’re quiet for a second. I am just – I wasn’t expecting a question about the breakdown of our resources. I don’t have with me, so I’ve got to think about what it is generally. We do have a lot of shared resources in the company, mostly the IT and database resources. When you take those out of the mix, I think we have more resources in O&O but generally because of the content team, which numbers maybe 20 now, Walley, give or take. So if you look at the development analytics side, I think the resources complement on both sides are about equal and you have more content based writers than publishers on the O&O side. Q – Unidentified Company Speaker: And then do you provide any type of breakout in terms of marketing dollar spend? You mentioned before you spent on website acquisitions, in marketing spend et cetera?

Richard Howe

Management

Our marketing spend is in the financials that we really publish every quarter, it’s been growing. Q – Unidentified Company Speaker: But a break of that, that’s how you provide?

Richard Howe

Management

That’s it. That’s what we break – yes, we give the total number that we spend.

Operator

Operator

And with no further questions in the queue, at this time I will turn the conference back to Richard Howe for any additional or closing remarks. Somebody signalled that if you would like to take them?

Richard Howe

Management

Yes please.

Operator

Operator

We’ll go next to [Mike Sherlinger of MicroCap]. Mr. Sherlinger, your line is open.

Richard Howe

Management

Yes, he is not there, operator. End of Q&A

Operator

Operator

And that concludes our question and answer session. I will now turn the conference back to Richard Howe for any additional or closing remarks.

Richard Howe

Management

Thank you, operator. I would like to thank everyone who joined us on today’s call. We appreciate your continued interest in Inuvo and we certainly look forward to reporting our progress over the coming quarters.

Operator

Operator

And this does conclude today’s conference. We thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.