Earnings Labs

Loop Industries, Inc. (LOOP)

Q4 2008 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 11, 2009

$1.39

+4.51%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to LoopNet Earnings Conference Call for the Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2008. The date of this call is February 11. This call is a property of LoopNet and any recording, reproduction or transmission of this conference call without the expressed written consent of LoopNet is strictly forbidden. This call is being recorded. You may listen to a webcast replay of this call by going to the Investor Relations section of LoopNet's website. I will now turn the conference call over to Erica Mannion, Investor Relations for LoopNet.

Erica Mannion

Management

Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us to discuss LoopNet's financial and operating results. With me today are Rich Boyle, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman; and Brent Stumme, Chief Financial Officer. Today, Rich will begin with an overview of the business and the overall corporate strategy, continued by a summary of the company's fourth quarter performance and review of the marketplace. Brent will review the fourth quarter financial results and provide first quarter 2009 guidance. During the fourth quarter, the company will representing a Credit Suisse’ 11th Annual Global Services Conference on February 24, in Phoenix, Arizona. I would like to bring the following to your attention. On the call today, you may hear forward-looking statements about events and circumstances that have not yet occurred. Actual outcomes and results may differ materially from the expectations contained in these statements, due to a number of risks and uncertainties. Please refer to the company's recent SEC filing at the SEC's website at www.sec.gov for detailed discussions of the relevant risks and uncertainties. The company undertakes no responsibility to update the information in this conference call under any circumstance. The press release distributed today that announced the company's results is available on the company's website at www.loopnet.com in the Investor Relations section under Financial Press Releases. The current report on Form 8-K, furnished with respect to our press release is available on the company's website in the Investor Relations section under SEC Filings and on the SEC's website. You will also hear discussion of non-GAAP financial measures, reconciliation of these non-GAAP measures to the most comparable GAAP financial measures are contained in the press release distributed today, and available on the company’s website. Now, I will turn the call over to Rich Boyle, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman.

Rich Boyle

Management

Thank you, Erica. I would like to welcome all of you to the LoopNet fourth quarter and full-year 2008 earnings call. Along with discussing our recent performance, today we will also share our perspective on the current market conditions in the commercial real estate industry, and how they are impacting our business. I will first give you an overall update on the market and our business. And then Brent Stumme, our Chief Financial Officer will be taking us through the numbers in some detail. Revenue for the quarter was $21.1 million, an increase of 8% over the fourth quarter of 2007. And adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $9.5 million, which translate to a larger to 45%. For the full-year, revenue came in at $86.1 million, an increase of 22% over 2007. Full-year 2008 adjusted EBITDA was $39.9 million for a margin of 46.4%. We also generated $25 million in cash flow from operations during the year, ending the year with $65 million in cash and no debt. These solid financial results coming at a time of unprecedented turmoil in the broader economy and the commercial real estate sector, we believe, a testimate to the value of the value of the services we provide to our customers and to the strength of our business model. While we fully expect these challenging macro conditions to continue for the remainder of 2009, we also believe that our team and our business is well-positioned to execute through this recession and to take advantage of our strong financial and market position till a long-term benefit of our customers and our shareholders. During 2008 we made progress in many areas in terms of strengthening our business for the long-term. We made many enhancements to the core functionality of LoopNet marketplace and saw increasing activity as…

Brent Stumme

Management

Thank you, Rich. LoopNet's revenue for the fourth quarter of 2008 was $21.1 million an increase of 8% from $19.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2007. The increase was due to higher average monthly prices for premium membership and continued growth of our non-premium membership products. On a year-over-year basis, we experienced a 17% increase in the average monthly price of premium membership resulting at an average monthly price of $65.64. This increase was primarily the result of the shift to volume based pricing structure for listers which the company began to implement in Q3 of 2007 and completed in Q4 of 2008. LoopNet's adjusted EBITDA for the quarter was $9.5 million or 45% of revenues compared to $9.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2007. The company has reported adjusted EBITDA which we define as EBITDA excluding stock-based compensation and litigation related cost, because management use it to monitor and assess the company’s performance and believes it is helpful to investors to understand the company’s business. GAAP net income for the fourth quarter of 2008 was $4.1 million or $0.12 per dilute share compared to $5.7 million or $0.14 per dilute share in the fourth quarter of 2007. Non-GAAP net income which we define as net income before stock-based compensation and litigation related cost, for the fourth quarter of 2008 was $5.3 million or $0.15 per dilute share compared to $6.4 million or $0.16 per dilute share in the fourth quarter of 2007. The effective tax rate for the fourth quarter of 2008 was 40.9% compared to 38.1% in the fourth quarter of 2007. As of December 31, 2008 the company had $64.6 million of cash, cash equivalence and short-term investments and no debt. Now I would like to review some of our key operating metrics. The number…

Rich Boyle

Management

Let me conclude our formal presentation today with just a few thoughts. At the beginning of 2008, we said that we were entering an uncertain year and uncertainly turn out to be one. If you look at the full-year, despite the deteriorating market conditions, transaction volume is down over 70% and asset value is down 11.5% on the for sales side of the business. Our revenue grew 22%, and we delivered EBITDA margins of 45%. We also grew the size of our marketplace organically as well as through acquisitions. All in all, we believe it was a very good performance in such a tough environment. 2009 will be another challenging year, no doubt about that. For the long-term prospects for our business model and our company are strong and we intend to capitalize on them. So with that, I would like to thank all of our employees for their focus and dedication. Thank you all for listening, and let's open up the call for some questions.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, sir. (Operator Instructions). Our first question comes from Brett Huff from Stephens, Inc.

Brett Huff

Analyst

Good afternoon, guys.

Rich Boyle

Management

Hi, Brett.

Brett Huff

Analyst

A couple of quick questions here and I think some of it were always in your opening commentary, but I didn’t maybe get it down quite fast enough. When we look at the number of profile views that fell off more sharply than I expected, can you just give us a little more color on that, just sort of more of your thoughts is that searchers not doing as much or kind of what is the driver of that?

Rich Boyle

Management

Yes, I mean it's definitely the amount of people coming to look at listings on the system and I think it falls into the general heading of the seasonality that we normally see in Q4 every year. So, on a normal basis Q4 is a relatively light quarter for us, it was worse on for sequential and relative basis than in past year as this year. So, if you look at for example the transition from Q3 to Q4 prior year's this year was little bit steeper. And what we really feel like it was driven by the macro environment and in particular if you recall, it seems like so long go now but the wave of bad news has began hitting the market around late September. We think it had a material impact on people. So, the activity intends to lighten up around Thanksgiving normally was lighting up earlier in the quarter than normal for us this year.

Brett Huff

Analyst

Okay. And then thoughts on as we lap the pricing changes, the volume based pricing changes, if I recall that lapped about in the middle of Q4, is that right?

Brent Stumme

Management

Yes, this is actually Brent, there was a little bit of pricing that was going on in November- December as well. We are pretty much done putting everybody in the new pricing plans, but there was a little bit that went on in fourth quarter as well probably not quite as much as the third quarter but there was some in the fourth quarter.

Brett Huff

Analyst

Okay. And so that end given the environment, what is your thoughts for changing in pricing just, I know you are obviously thinking about how to make the pricing a little bit more specific for value. What are your thoughts on that for at least '09 maybe?

Brent Stumme

Management

Yes, I think its consistent with what we talked about last quarter which is that we do think given the environment overall any major changes the pricing level are probably not going to be happening at this time.

Brett Huff

Analyst

And then just one more little sort of twist on pricing and trying to move that into an idea of organic growth. Some of your growth is coming from the pricing increases, is the increase in usage on the part of the marketers, sort of how close is that to the decline in usage that we are seeing in the units, the unit number of premium subscribers on the searcher side?

Brent Stumme

Management

I am not sure I got it.

Brett Huff

Analyst

Well, I am trying to get to, it seems like the marketing use is going up as people who want to use your system as a high ROI marketing tool.

Brent Stumme

Management

Yes.

Brett Huff

Analyst

On that listing side, but on the searching side you have usage going down. And so, how does those two relate, I guess is my question is one larger than the other by a factor or how does that work?

Brent Stumme

Management

Well I think you even need to cut one step further which is on the marketing side. The behaviors we are seeing on the sale side of the system and the leasing system are quite different right now, meaning there is a segment of listers on a for sales side, particularly what we call transactional users. People that come one the system to market one listing at a time, they get occasionally,

Brett Huff

Analyst

Right.

Brent Stumme

Management

They are just simply not getting listings right now, because they are not building they are not being marketed to be sold at the moment. So, there are declines in that group as well as declines in the searchers that are primary source of declines right now. And those are being partially offset obviously, by growth in other area is there was a net decline of subscribers in Q4.

Brett Huff

Analyst

I think there is a last question, based on overall usage and mix and how much people use and therefore how much revenue you get per paid user. Axe the pricing that we have seem in the past, do you expect that to be fairly flat or do you think that there is some organic overall increase in usage among those who are using?

Brent Stumme

Management

I think at the moment I would describe it as relatively flat.

Brett Huff

Analyst

Okay. [That’s what needed]. Thank you for your time.

Brent Stumme

Management

Sure, Thanks Brett.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions).Our next question comes from Mitchell Bartlett from Craig-Hallum.

Mitchell Bartlett

Analyst

Hi, you talked about 58% listers, 42% searchers, but could you characterize that even if you don't want to put a number to it on the spread on the for sale side of that equation?

Rich Boyle

Management

The searcher side the revenue from paid searches skews pretty heavily towards the for sale side of the system, we know relatively few paid searchers on the for lease side of the systems. And within the marketing side the 58% that is marketing, it may be is little bit weighted to the for sale side but there is a reasonable balance between those.

Mitchell Bartlett

Analyst

So, it won't be wholly different than what its showing here, if you were to split for lease and for sale.

Brent Stumme

Management

Yes, I think that's correct.

Mitchell Bartlett

Analyst

And then you talked about taking your bill a little bit what is headcount doing overall?

Rich Boyle

Management

So, we ended the year at little over 300 people.

Mitchell Bartlett

Analyst

Okay. What was it last quarter?

Rich Boyle

Management

It was pretty much flat, at the end of the third quarter it was like 307, we ended the year at 305, so it’s down a couple.

Mitchell Bartlett

Analyst

Okay.

Brent Stumme

Management

And what we did right after the first of the year was a small and realignment where we do eliminate a few positions. We did reassign some people from where they have been in prior positions to where we felt like we needed the headcount now. In terms of some of the investments we are doing.

Mitchell Bartlett

Analyst

Perfect, thank you.

Operator

Operator

I am showing no further questions at this time. This concludes our Q&A session for today's conference. And ladies and gentlemen, thank you for participating in today's conference call. This concludes our program for today. You may all disconnect and have a wonderful day.