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Transcript
OP
Operator
Operator
00:04 Welcome to Karooooo Limited Earnings Presentation for the Third Quarter of Karooooo’s 2022 Financial Year. Today, Zak Calisto, CEO and Founder will be presenting to you. Zak would take questions from participants after the presentation. Over to Zak to commence with the presentation.
ZC
Zak Calisto
Management
00:28 Good day to everybody that’s taken the time to look into our Q3 results, both potential investors and investors that are not too familiar with our structure, Karooooo is the entity and Cartrack was [where it originally started, it] was founded in South Africa and now are headquartered in Singapore. We have had the track record of being in the business for 15 years and as we go we've evolved over time. 01:03 We certainly are investing a lot into R&D to accomplish our vision and our mission. We see Mobility is core to all on-the-ground operations. What we also see is customer needs are quickly evolving at a relatively fast pace and it's going far beyond connected vehicles and equipment [indiscernible] by the technology where we’ve gone from GPRS to 3G to 4G to 5G and the field of technology has evolved us to be able to see a much larger opportunity that drives much stronger value for our customers. 01:45 Our mission is to establish the leading on-the-ground operations of cloud. What we do is we solve problems by transforming on-the-ground operations by our customers. We add value to the day-to-day operations of our customers. In that, we do the fleet and equipment management, the logistics and delivery operations management, we assist our customers with their field workers and management thereof. 02:16 We do video safety. We certainly and in today's day and age that there's more and more demand for ESG compliance and reporting. We're planning for controlling that. We do risk mitigation and we do integrations into the back office of customer systems and warehouses. We recently – and we're in beta phase, and we will be launching actually towards then Q4, early Q1, which is our [buying/selling] [ph] vehicles despite us launching the beta…
-C
A - Zak Calisto
Management
20:24 And the first question I’ll take is from Mike from Canaccord.
MW
Mike Walkley
Management
20:30 Great. Thanks, Zak. Just Zak I wanted to get your thoughts as far as recent IPO and the U.S. market getting a premium valuation, how do you compete with them? Do you compete with them, and if you do, how do you fair head to head and maybe you can talk about how their strategy is either similar or different from your strategy?
ZC
Zak Calisto
Management
20:54 The first thing that I'd like – I haven't really studied Samsara in huge detail, but from the literature that I've read, I think they very much play in the same market as us and other competitors in America like Geotab. There's quite a few competitors that we have. We haven't really come across any in the market, but from what I read I think they are a worthy competitor. They certainly appear to be doing a really good job in terms of growing their business. 21:29 I see their growth is 68%. They are allocating a tremendous amount of cash; they are not profitable, but they [indiscernible] growing at 68%. They're allocating a lot of cash into sales and marketing, which I think is quite a good strategy in America because I think America and South Africa have got similarities in the sense that COVID hasn’t quite affected America in the way it's affected Asia. 21:52 Overall, I think they're doing a good job. In terms of valuation, let's be honest, I'm not really an expert on valuating companies and [indiscernible] the other thing, what we're doing. Hopefully, we'll be out of COVID in Asia and then we can start going faster.
MW
Mike Walkley
Management
22:15 Okay. Thanks. And then follow-up question, just on the sales and marketing and investment, how would the hiring opportunity and how should we think about modeling sales and marketing as it ramps towards your longer term product of 17% and 19% target?
ZC
Zak Calisto
Management
22:32 At this point in time we'd actually ramped up – if you go and you look at Q1, I got it wrong. I thought another three to six months we – even when we gave our outlook, my view on that was that we will have COVID for six months, in the last six months of the year we'll probably be sitting with no COVID or little COVID effects. I got it wrong. It seems like we're going to have 12 months of full COVID effects, but despite that we're still going to meet our outlook. 23:06 In terms of sales and marketing, we went - and because I got it wrong, we started spending quite a lot of money on sales and marketing and realized that we were allocating capital not to the same financial discipline that we had had in the past. If you look at Q2 and Q3, we cut back on the sales and marketing spend. We're still getting the growth, but clearly if we want to start growing at over 30% or 40%, we're going to have to increase that, but we've got to do it when the market is then – once we're able to travel, we're able to deploy the people, we're able to execute. 23:42 At this point in time, the fact that we're sitting at 20% of the markets we are, I think that we feel comfortable that we're doing a relatively okay job, while still keeping good unit economics. I think there is an argument for us to weaken our unit economics and start growing faster despite that it's in the pandemic, but this is something management is continuously evaluating, evaluating whether we should just compromise on our unit economics so that we can get the growth. Hopefully, in the short-term we will see the pandemic being less restrictive.
MW
Mike Walkley
Management
24:27 Okay. Well congrats on keeping your full year guidance and the results despite COVID restrictions more than you thought. I'll pass the line to the next caller.
ZC
Zak Calisto
Management
24:37 Thanks very much Mike. The next caller, Alex from Raymond James.
AS
Alex Sklar
Management
24:45 Thanks. Zak, last quarter, you talked about the record ads in September, curious about if you can talk about how many you already played at the rest of the quarter? And with that, you called out some of the retention from some of the earlier customers that you kind of subsidized during the pandemic? Any update on how much of that is less?
ZC
Zak Calisto
Management
25:05 That's basically - since we started subsidizing customers, it's really at the tail end. Even in this last year Q3, we churned in the region of about – I haven't got the exact number, but we churned between 11,000 and 16,000 vehicles that were really vehicles that we had been subsidizing, we hadn't been invoicing for a good six months, that we've actually switched them off. 25:36 We probably have another 20,000 of those vehicles that we'll probably do in Q4 and then after that I think it's business as normal and we won't have any of those where we're still having the cost of sales while we're doing no revenue on the back of COVID. Despite that, we still got very good net adds in the quarter.
AS
Alex Sklar
Management
26:03 Got it. Okay. And then on the messaging evolution now to kind of the on-the-ground operation cloud, what can you tell us in terms of where you're investing today and what kind of going into core telematics offering versus kind of everything else in the platform? And then with that longer term, how do you think about the monetization of that broader platform?
ZC
Zak Calisto
Management
26:24 We've got a great – there's various ways of looking at this. The first thing is, we've got great operating margins, we've got great unit economics. We are investing substantially more in R&D, as you could see, compared to a year ago we've increased R&D spending by 80%; that's quite material. A lot of that investment is for the medium and the long-term. 26:53 Having said that, where are we spending the money? A lot of it is going into the video safety, it's going into the integrations into customer assistance, it's going into software to help our customers in terms of last-mile delivery, in terms of consignment centers where different customers can send consignments to one center and then we can distribute it for them using third-party couriers or using outsourced drivers. 27:29 We're driving all of that integration into the stores of large retailers, into their warehouses, in terms of the management of fleets, but not on the ground in terms of their administration where we had lots of customers doing things on various systems or manually or in Excel. 27:49 We're helping them digitalize and help the process of all the vehicles, the equipment that they use in their operations. We're doing a tremendous amount of work over and above the fleet management that we have traditionally done in the past. What's allowing us to do this clearly technology. When we first started out in the business there was only SMS. Then came GPRS and 3G, 4G, and what we can do with data today is substantially more than what we could do years ago. 28:26 So, I think at least 18 months ago, that's when we started developing all this extra verticals onto our platform. We launched our latest platform towards the end of last year, and we believe we've got a long way to go to improve on our platform, to improve on our offering, and we see us investing for quite a long time into the future to be able to deliver a world-class product for our customers.
AS
Alex Sklar
Management
29:02 Great. Thank you.
ZC
Zak Calisto
Management
29:04 Thank you. Thanks. Next, Matt Pfau from William Blair.
MP
Matt Pfau
Management
29:13 Hey Zak. Thanks for taking my questions. Wanted to first ask about impact of omicron and what you've seen so far from that in the fourth quarter?
ZC
Zak Calisto
Management
29:26 I happened to be in South Africa at the time that Omicron surfaced and what we saw at that point in time, Asia just started opening up their borders approximately for two weeks into the neighboring countries like Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia. They were opening it up. Then Omicron surface and then all the borders got closed again. 29:48 I had to get onto – all the flights got cancelled from South Africa. It was a nightmare getting back into Singapore. My family was supposed to come out to South Africa; we couldn't do that. I think that's on the one [indiscernible] where all the immediate reaction by different governments and different policies. 30:09 On the ground, what we saw in South Africa is that the hospitals, the hospital beds, there's nobody in hospital. I speak to doctors that it doesn't seem to be a huge problem, Omicron. I think that makes me feel that it's just a question of time where the markets will open up again, and I'm hopeful of that. 30:32 Clearly, certainly I was getting very hopeful and everything went into lockdown again. I'm not sure if I've answered quite your question.
MP
Matt Pfau
Management
30:48 Yes. I think that does. You know, and you mentioned ramping up sales and marketing and investments into next fiscal year, maybe you can just give us some idea about what the priorities are in terms of where you're going to allocate some of those investments?
ZC
Zak Calisto
Management
31:06 So, I think we've got to do it in a bit of a prudent way, and we certainly – for us, our biggest priority is Asia, but you've got to be able to execute otherwise we're just burning money, if that makes sense. So, we certainly – Asia is our top priority and certainly Europe as well. So, we want to get investing – because I think that's the real opportunity. The biggest opportunity for us with the longest runway is clearly Asia and Europe. 31:40 South Africa we've already got 11% of the vehicles on the road, or 10%. We believe we could grow really well for maybe another five, six, seven years and after that the only way we're going to generate revenue growth is by starting to charge for the additional verticals on our platform. It's something that we can start looking at that probably in South Africa in about two years' time, three years' time, to increase revenue and ARPU once we've got – once we believe we've got a lion’s share of the customer, the potential market. But I think Asia and Europe is still very early stages with a lot of opportunities, specifically Asia.
MP
Matt Pfau
Management
32:32 Okay, great. Thanks for taking my question Zak.
ZC
Zak Calisto
Management
32:36 Okay. Roy from Morgan Stanley.
RC
Roy Campbell
Management
32:43 Thanks, Zak. Just a quick question on the on-the-ground opportunities. So, you may be focused just a little bit on Carzuka, so you recognized global revenue over this, perhaps how profitable is that revenue recognition? And from here, what would you expect the growth and the opportunity to be with the last of that Carzuka? And maybe can touch on the insurance and the acquisition of Logistics acquisition as well? Thank you.
ZC
Zak Calisto
Management
33:19 Carzuka is in beta phase. In Q2, I think we did about ZAR9 million revenue. In Q3, we did about ZAR24 million. I'm estimating that we'll probably do over ZAR40 million in Q4. We're hoping to go live towards the end of Q4; we might be a little bit later, live in Q1, and then we'll have a platform where we can really start scaling the business. 33:43 At this point in time it's more about getting our tech ready and it's more about us getting the model right in terms of processes and procedures. I feel comfortable we will be able to execute and have a very good business within two to three years. So, I'm feeling very comfortable about that. 34:03 We're deriving a lot of [value] [ph] out there, a lot of value to our customers. That opportunity, in terms of insurance, we're being over 1000 policies a month, that's been quite flat for the last two, three years – two, three quarters rather. We're hoping to start scaling that also in the next financial year. 34:32 In terms of Picup, we have been working with Picup for over two years and we – a lot of the subscription revenue that they were generating came through the contract platform already. They were more focused on the integrations into the warehouses and into the retail stores of customers and into doing the cloud-sourced drivers and the professional couriers. 34:59 We're now at this point in time merging their side of the technology to our technology and then we're going to bring all of it into one single platform, which is our platform. At that point in time then we're obviously going to spend time and money investing in scaling that business, and I believe that is an important part for the long-term driver of what we're doing in terms of assisting our customers with their operations.
RC
Roy Campbell
Management
35:31 Thank you, Zak.
ZC
Zak Calisto
Management
35:34 Next question, Parker Lane from Stifel.
PL
Parker Lane
Management
35:40 Hey Zak. Thanks for taking the questions. Wanted to talk about the unit economics of the business, so obviously very strong today at 9x LTV to CAC, what does that look like when you enter some of these newer markets in Southeast Asia and Europe? Is that typically a fair bit lower than scales over time, or do you really see those as unit economics hold true regardless the location you're trying to acquire customers [present] [ph]?
ZC
Zak Calisto
Management
36:05 So, at the moment it's 9x. I certainly believe that we could certainly drop that when we initially start scaling, but I believe if we are able to keep our unit economics once we've taken any sector away from – because what we find is when you starting scaling, there's always a bit of fat and a bit of spillage, but once you're able to work out the spillage, and I think provided the pricing remains where it is today, I certainly believe we can keep very similar LTVs to CAC.
PL
Parker Lane
Management
36:44 Got it. And then just thinking about the broader strategy here of on-the-ground operations, how much will tuck-in acquisitions play a role in expanding the platform going forward, obviously, the pickup deal, but could we expect that to be a normal cadence of a dealer to each year going forward as you widen the scope of the platform?
ZC
Zak Calisto
Management
37:05 So, the reality is this is the first acquisition that we've done. Traditionally, we are very much a vertically integrated. As I say, even if you look at our internal systems, the way we run the business internally that’s all proprietary software. 37:20 What led to this acquisition was that we had been working with Picup for over three years; we know the management very well, we know what they're [evolving] [ph], and we realized the value on bringing it to one single platform like ours, the real value that that can generate over time. 37:38 So, that's what made us buy this asset and then to integrate into one single platform. I don't believe we are wired to grow by acquisition. We're not against it, but we're certainly not on the trail to do acquisitions in order to grow. I believe, we've got enough tailwinds to be able to get the growth that we want organically.
PL
Parker Lane
Management
38:05 Appreciate the feedback. Thanks again.
ZC
Zak Calisto
Management
38:21 I’m just reading out a question up from [Gregory] [ph]. What do you see as the largest challenge to your growth? Is it internal, external capacity competition, exposure or something else? 38:35 I think, you know I always, Gregory, I always say the biggest challenge is normally what you don’t know, and because you don’t know what to do about it. So, at this point in time, the real challenge is human capital. I think all businesses face the same challenge. It's the human capital, whether it’s for sales and marketing, G&A, R&D, it's never easy. 39:00 It's always difficult. And obviously, there are challenges that will come and what we do find is being in business it's always – there's always something that you couldn't think of that's just around the corner. But I think what's important is over time we are a very agile team and we are able to address the challenges as they come. 39:28 Then we've got [indiscernible]. Hi, Zak. Given the strong and underleveraged balance sheet and healthy cash and cash equivalents, can you give an indication of the company's inorganic growth strategy or the M&A opportunities or are you pursuing currently bolt-on acquisition, partnerships, diversify the business, and if so, what sort of businesses are on the radar? 39:58 So, I think fundamentally we're not, like I said earlier, looking for businesses to acquire, or to bolt on, or to do M&A, but clearly we're very pragmatic and being so, and we're very realistic, there will certainly be I believe a great opportunity to do an M&A at some time or another, given I don't believe – I think the market is large enough for there to be multiple winners. So, there could certainly be an opportunity for M&A, and if we…
OP
Operator
Operator
42:24 Well, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.