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Transcript
OP
Operator
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Perion Third Quarter 2011 Results Conference Call. All participants are in listen-only mode. Following management’s formal presentation, instructions will be given for the question and answer session. For operator assistance during the conference, please press * 0. As a reminder this conference is being recorded. With us today from Perion, we have Josef Mandelbaum, CEO, Yacov Kaufman, CFO, and Rob Fink from KCSA Strategic Communications. I will now hand the call over to - Rob, please begin...
RF
Rob Fink
Management
Thank you all for joining us today for the first earnings conference call following last week’s announcement that the company has changed its name to Perion Network as a part of a rebranding effort to better reflect its portfolio strategy. On today’s call, management will be reviewing the financial results and business highlights of the third quarter 2011. The press release detailing Q3 results is available on the company’s new website perion.com. Also posted on the website is the live webcast that contains a slide presentation that will be used on this call and which will be archived. Before we begin, I’d like to read the following Safe Harbor Statement: Today’s discussion will include forward-looking statements. These statements reflect the Company’s current views with respect to future events. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, including those discussed under the heading “Risk Factors” and elsewhere in the Company’s annual report on form 20-F that may cause actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performances or achievements anticipated or implied by these forward-looking statements. The Company does not undertake to revise any forward-looking statements to reflect future events or circumstances. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Josef Mandelbaum, Chief Executive Officer. Josef, the call is yours…
JM
Josef Mandelbaum
Management
Thank you Rob and welcome everyone to our third quarter 2011 earnings call. Today I would like to focus my comments on three items: first, a progress update on our strategy, specifically our recent rebranding to Perion; second, a top line summary of our financial results; and third, an update on the Smilebox acquisition and other operational highlights of the past quarter. After my prepared remarks I will turn the call over to Yacov who will review the Q3 financials in detail and provide updated guidance for 2011. We’ll then open up the call for questions. These are exciting times for our company as the strategy we outlined comes to life through the execution of our plan. In the past 14 months we have methodically and successfully, executed the initial phases of our strategy. We have made investments in our infrastructure to allow us to scale, reduced headcount in some areas to invest in adding and investing in new skills sets and people, established a labs group and corporate development team to grow our product portfolio through organic and non-organic means, all to help transform our business from a single product company overly dependent on one revenue stream, to a multi product company with multiple revenue sources. The rebranding and renaming of our company to Perion Network is the next phase of this effort. Our new name signifies a big step forward, towards advancing a vision that I have discussed since joining the company as CEO over a year ago. While this may seem trivial, it is an essential part of how both internally and externally the company behaves and is perceived. Perion, which was derived from the English translation of the Hebrew word for “productivity, embodies our corporate vision -- to make the everyday digital life of our users…
YK
Yacov Kaufman
Management
Thank you Josef. Before reviewing the financial results I would like discuss the financial measure we will report in going forward. As we further implement our M&A strategy, following the completion of the Smilebox acquisition, we have decided to focus on Non-GAAP results. While we will continue to offer a detailed reconciliation of GAAP results in the financial tables in the earnings press release, the decision to focus on non-GAAP was made to better convey the operational state of the business. In general, the differences between the two bases of presentation are acquisition associated expenses, accounting treatment of deferred revenues and other non-cash or non-recurring expenses that we believe do not present fairly the operational aspects of the company. With that said, I will now go on to analyze our performance in the third quarter. As Josef already mentioned, this has been a very busy quarter. Revenues this quarter were $9.0 million, bringing revenue to a total of $25.7 million for the first three quarters of 2011, reflecting 19% growth year-over-year. This quarter’s revenues included $6 million in search generated revenues, which despite a slight dip in overall queries, continued to grow year over year. Product revenues were $2 million, which included $900 thousand generated by our Smilebox product in the single month consolidated this quarter, generating 56% year over year growth in product sales; and finally $1.0 million in other income, which grew three fold compared to the third quarter of 2010. All in all, as a result of the accelerated product growth and growth in other revenues, we have a much more diversified base, with search generated revenues accounting for only 66% of total revenues in the third quarter of 2011, as compared to 78% in the same quarter last year. As we consolidate increasing sales from Smilebox…
JM
Josef Mandelbaum
Management
Thank you Yacov. With a new brand to reflect our strategy and future aspirations, strong financial results, continued progress in our improving our operations, products and customer acquisition efforts as well as the successful integration of Smilebox, we are very excited about our current and future position. Thank you very much for your time. We will now open up the line for questions. Operator…
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. (Operator Instructions) The first question is from Nick Halen of Sidoti & Company. Please go ahead.
Nick Halen – Sidoti & Company: Hi, guys thanks for taking my questions.
JM
Josef Mandelbaum
Management
Hey, Nick. How are you doing?
Nick Halen – Sidoti & Company: Good, good. So, the first question I had is, I know it’s only been about a month or so, did you mentioned I apologize if I missed it, how much revenue you guys did from Smilebox in the quarter?
JM
Josef Mandelbaum
Management
Yacov did mention it; in the month it’s about $900,000.
Nick Halen – Sidoti & Company: $900,000 okay. Okay. Just in terms of the media buying it seems like you guys are pretty happy with the ROI that you’re seeing on that. But do you guys kind of have somewhat of a timeline as so when you expect to may be scale back a little bit of that spending or is it as long as its ROI positive we can expect to continue seeing higher expenses on that end?
JM
Josef Mandelbaum
Management
Nick Halen – Sidoti & Company: Okay. And just lastly, I know there was a pretty significant jump in accrued expenses on the balance sheet this quarter, did that have anything to do with the acquisition, and I guess, in working we could expect that to be by the end of the year?
YK
Yacov Kaufman
Management
Yes. You hit on the note, that expense is accrual of the coming payment that we’re expecting to pay for the most part in March of 2012 for the acquisition of Smilebox, and we’re expecting that number to be in the neighborhood of $6 million to $7 million.
Nick Halen – Sidoti & Company: $6 million to $7 million. Okay, all right. Great, thank you guys.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question is from Christopher Ferris of Noble Financial. Please go ahead.
Christopher L. Ferris – Noble Financial Group, Inc.: Hi guys. Thank you for taking the question. You touched a little bit on the lower search in the quarter, and I was wondering is that kind of a number we should expect to see going forward over the next couple of quarters down mid single digits number or is that a one-time item in the quarter? And then, I think next question you kind of touch on this, but I was just curious about the customer acquisition cost and if you could drill down a little bit more there and is that sort of the run rate we should expect going forward for the next couple of quarters?
JM
Josef Mandelbaum
Management
Sure. Nice to have you on the phone call, Chris.
Christopher L. Ferris – Noble Financial Group, Inc.: Yeah. Thank you.
JM
Josef Mandelbaum
Management
I’ll answer the first one in order. So, the answer is that as we looked at the business of the searches to date, we believe it was a one-time issue as we adjusted it to a) Google’s changes. I think if you look at a lot of comps out there, there are a lot of companies that had a little bit of a dip as you have to kind of readjust to the new terms of service. We’re already seeing, we’re in the middle of Q4, so we are already seeing the uptick. So we don’t expect, we expect Q4 to be much stronger than Q3. We think it’s one-time, and the bug from one of our partners, it happens sometimes. There was bug in one of our partners we had and now it caused us some issues and we think we had passed it. So we think going forward, we shouldn't see a decrease in our single-digits on a going forward basis, that’s number one. Number two, with regarding to customer acquisition, I guess I'm not sure what you're looking for more clarity, but I will say the following; we’re looking and I think we’ve mentioned this. In the first six to nine months of the year, we’re pretty consistent in saying, we’re doing a lot of testing, we are building our infrastructure, and we are testing in multiple countries, multiple campaigns, multiple channels, from affiliates to PPC to display advertising. And as long as the return, we think is double-digits and higher for us as we look at how we spend our money given where we can make money today using our cash. It's a pretty good return on investment for us. It also helps us in the long-term by building up our base, which ultimately leads to more vital acquisitions as well both for IncrediMail and for Smilebox. So, I think the run rate you’re seeing today, I can't guarantee it but I’d say we look more like the run rate today than we look in the first half of the year on a going forward basis. That will be our best guess today as the run rate you see in Q3 and Q4 will likely be the run rate we will start seeing in 2012, which is what we predicted at the beginning of the year if you recall.
Christopher L. Ferris – Noble Financial Group, Inc.: Okay, thank you very much.
JM
Josef Mandelbaum
Management
Welcome.
OP
Operator
Operator
The next question is from Aram Fuchs of Fertilemind Capital. Please go ahead.
Aram Fuchs – Fertilemind Capital: How does the interruption of this one partner and the change in the Google SERP impact the accuracy of your ROI calculations on this media spend, because your media spend has gone up dramatically and search queries have gone down, just from a public and analysis of your public filings, it’s difficult to see how you can be getting a positive ROI?
JM
Josef Mandelbaum
Management
First of all, nice to have you on the phone, Aram. Thanks for the question. If you notice the slide again that Yacov had you saw a dip in July as an example, where we had to re-calibrate after the Google changes and some of the issues we had with a partner. We had to re-calibrate and make sure then in fact we weren’t losing our shirts on the ROI. We did re-calibrate in July and we really took the media spend down significantly, but what we did in the month of July as well as we optimized for the revenue per click that we get and how we get more money from our partnership with Google frankly working with them and just doing a lot of work ourselves to increase to lifetime value. And what we built internally over the last maybe nine months to a year is we build some pretty sophisticated statistical models that taking to account these variables on a daily basis and literally everyday we go into our systems and we have predictive models that tell us, what we expect the lifetime value to be. And it does that on a campaign basis, on a country basis, on a channel basis, and we have people analysts pointing over this all day long to make sure that if we do find something that isn’t making money, we shut it down. We give it a few days to see if it’s something, which is abnormal, which is not, we shut it down or re-calibrate and something is working, we start spending more. So, right now, the models are telling us and we have pretty high confidence, where we’re going with the model are accurate based on what we’ve seen so far this past year that we think it’s a pretty accurate number and that so far, we’re very confident that the ROI is there and we’ll be going forward. And as changes will happen, and they always do, we’ll take that into account and we’ll adjust accordingly.
Aram Fuchs – Fertilemind Capital: But, as a most downloadable software, aren’t you getting the majority or a huge portion of the revenue in the first quarter or two and then that would imply that we should start – we should have seen some revenue impact from that this already?
JM
Josef Mandelbaum
Management
First of all, I think, we are showing significant growth, so I think, it excluding even Smilebox, so I think we are starting to see some of the revenue from Q1 and Q2 and in Q3, were we have the big (inaudible) we just start it seeing in Q4 and beyond. I mean, I think in Q4 as you know, most of the revenue is in the first six to nine-months, but I would like to evaluate the amount right now is a year. Well most of them is in the first six, nine-months and you’ll see that in, if we spend money in Q4 you’re primarily seeding in 2012.
Aram Fuchs – Fertilemind Capital: All right, and then on the Smilebox integration, you mentioned that they were growing their top line sales at 35%, but judging from their filings they are also consuming a fair amount of capital during that point, so is there any sense that you can get of what a gross would be like if they were absolutely producing. Well first, self-sustaining and then producing free cash flow for shareholders?
JM
Josef Mandelbaum
Management
Two things. I'm not aware of any filings we did so.
Aram Fuchs – Fertilemind Capital: They are not filing, first they announced they were raising equity, when they were private company.
JM
Josef Mandelbaum
Management
But I’m happy to answer the question anyway. I mean, I think we mentioned during the call, we are hopeful and we expect that they should be break-even already in Q4 and then in Q1, they will be profitable as we go forward based on what we have seen, we knew that we’ve made the acquisition obviously. Although harder for our investors to see, because yielding to due diligence we did, and we expect the growth frankly to continue potentially even more so that once we get a free cash flow on a positive basis Q4 or Q1 of this coming year, we should – I mean, I don’t see a reason why the growth would slowdown, because they get the free cash flow. Their investments, in some of the investments that I actually as I mentioned on the phone in my remarks was in content licensing for example, it made sense what they did, but the reality is there is easy ways of conserving more cash, still getting the same quality product out there and that doesn’t impact your top line. There is also optimizations we can do with media buying and customer acquisitions. They also have a vital organic part of their business, which is doing well. So, I mean, overall, we expect it to continue to grow, just that once we get over a certain threshold as you know from a fixed cost base, your profitability starts increasing and that’s the point is Smilebox is out when we booked them, and that’s what we assumes and so far knock on wood that’s what is happening.
Aram Fuchs – Fertilemind Capital: Great. Thanks for your time.
JM
Josef Mandelbaum
Management
Pleasure.
OP
Operator
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Your next question is a follow up question from Aram Fuchs with Fertilemind Capital. Please go ahead, sir.
Aram Fuchs – Fertilemind Capital: Maybe you could you tell us, give us a hint of what is working in the media buying, you can slice and dice it in so many different ways, the PPC, banners, geographies, verticals, keywords, can you extract broad lessons from it already or are you still in the learning phase?
JM
Josef Mandelbaum
Management
I mean, first of all, we are always in a learning phase. Anybody who says you’re not and really buying – I think I don’t think he’s been completely honest, there always be things we do that won't succeed and we learn from it and keep on moving, and frankly we’re not taking risk like that, we’re not pushing [emblem] to see where we can really grow the business. But on a broad strokes, I’d say couple things, one, the US market will have clearly the highest lifetime value; it’s also the most competitive market. We’re making an ROI, a positive ROI, but it tougher. You see much better ROI opportunities outside the United States, not necessarily in considerable countries, I’m just saying outside of United States, it could be in France, it could be Germany, could be UK, it could be Canada, could be Brazil; then you have emerging countries, Eastern Europe and like India, that I think there are definitely opportunities as well. The problem with those is, the lifetime value is very low, but the acquisition cost is even lower. But on a pure margin basis you can make more money, but we’re also looking to get users as well. In terms of, on a geographic basis, we’re still doing you know significant in the US. I don’t know the exact breakdown on top of my head, but the ROIs on a percentage basis are usually higher outside of United States because there is so much competition in the US. In terms of what channels are working, you know I don’t think it’s a mystery. In PPC works, there are natural ceilings on PPC, which is the biggest problem. In terms of, you know, you can’t buy as much as you like to buy because the higher…
YK
Yacov Kaufman
Management
We feel that we recently secured a long-term loan from the banks and we did this as a consortium. So we know what’s the price for accessing the markets would be. We have pretty good feeling for that right now. In the meantime, we have to get tap into that. So it’s available to us, and it’s a quite favorable terms right now actually.
Aram Fuchs – Fertilemind Capital: What are the basic terms on that?
YK
Yacov Kaufman
Management
Well, we have this puzzle and the chance that there, a couple of points about the LIBOR, few points about LIBOR and it’s a moving, it’s a floating rate. So it changes at time.
JM
Josef Mandelbaum
Management
(Inaudible)
YK
Yacov Kaufman
Management
Right. I have still to clarify; it’s a floating rate until we take it down. So once we take it down, it will be a fixed rate.
Aram Fuchs – Fertilemind Capital: Great, thanks for your time. Those are last my last questions.
JM
Josef Mandelbaum
Management
Pleasure. Thanks, Aram.
OP
Operator
Operator
There are no further questions at this time. Before I ask Mr. Mandelbaum to go ahead with this concluding statements, I’d like to remind participants that a replay of this call will be available in three hours on the company website www.perion.com. Mr. Mandelbaum, would you like to make your concluding statement?
JM
Josef Mandelbaum
Management
Thank you. Thank you everybody for joining us today for our Q3 2011 earnings call. I hope as you listened to our comments and followed us in the presentation, you will notice that we are really being [statical] about executing the strategy we outlined. We have full confidence and believe in the efficacy of our strategy and execution. And as we see over time, we strongly believe that and the shareholders will be rewarded for sticking with us as we come out of this as a stronger company called Perion with multiple products, multiple revenue streams, growth and profitability. Thank you very much. Have a nice day.
OP
Operator
Operator
Thank you. This concludes the Perion’s third quarter 2011 results conference call. Thank you for your participations. You may go ahead and disconnect.