Douglas Valenti
Analyst · Stephens Incorporated
Thank you, Hayden, and welcome, everyone. We just completed a very successful quarter and fiscal year. And we entered a new fiscal year with great momentum and with more capabilities and confidence about our future than at any time in the company's 22-year history. Fiscal Q4 and fiscal 2021 results again demonstrated the underlying strength and the momentum of our business, as we continue to be a leader in serving one of the biggest long-term trends and market opportunities in the world. That is the shift to effective, sustainable, brand-safe and consumer-friendly, digital marketing and advertising. Revenue in our just completed fiscal year 2021 set a company record and approached $600 million. Growth in quarterly revenue, excluding divested businesses accelerated to 47% year-over-year in the June quarter, setting a Q4 record. Adjusted EBITDA grew 71%, expanding margin even as we aggressively invest in a wide range of growth and the product development initiatives. And we finished the year with over $110 million in cash, more than we had at the beginning of fiscal 2021, even after outlays of over $60 million in the year for acquisitions and strategic investments. We delivered all that in FY '21 after divesting businesses that did almost $75 million of revenue in FY '20 and while overcoming the pandemic's impact on credit-driven client verticals. Looking forward, we believe the market opportunity in our current footprint represents billions of dollars of potential revenue for QuinStreet. We believe we are better positioned to compete and execute against that opportunity than at any time in company history. And we are investing in big, new initiatives and opportunities in number and at a pace unprecedent in company history. In the meantime, current business momentum is strong. Everything is up and to the right. All of our client verticals and all of our major initiatives performed well in fiscal Q4 and continue to do so. Insurance budgets continue to migrate to digital and to our performance marketplace solutions. We had more major carriers spending over $1 million per month with us in Q4 than at any time in company history. And most of those clients are still early in the ramp to the wallet share we eventually expect to earn. Also in insurance, we are successfully adding and scaling multiple new product and service offerings, including, of course, QRP, which continues to progress with the pipeline continuing to strengthen and where our estimates of the size of the opportunity have only gotten bigger. We expect revenue from the ratings platform to inflect from just over $1 million in FY '21 to at least several multiples of that in FY '22. Home services continue to grow at high rates in Q4. And we expect strong organic growth in FY '22 as we add two existing client budgets, signed new clients and expand into new service verticals and in-market where client budgets continue to migrate to digital as do consumer shopping habits. That's three big executional growth vectors in the midst of a long-term rising tie in home services, one of our largest addressable markets. Then, there are the credit-driven client verticals, mainly personal loans and credit cards, that returned to year-over-year growth in the June quarter. We are well positioned to continue the momentum in personal loans and credit cards in FY '22 as the economy and employment improve. In total, and in summary, there has simply never been a better time for QuinStreet. Turning to our financial outlook. As you probably have now realized, we expect double-digit organic revenue growth to continue in fiscal Q1 and FY '22 and frankly well beyond. As a reminder, we lapped the Modernize acquisition on July 1st. Revenue in the September quarter, our fiscal Q1 is expected to be between 150 and $155 million, seasonally consistent with last quarter's outperformance and representing 20% year-over-year growth excluding divested businesses at the midpoint of the range. We expect fiscal Q1 adjusted EBITDA to be between 13 and $13.5 million. Our initial outlook for full fiscal year 2022 is that revenue will be between 635 and $665 million, representing 15% year-over-year growth excluding divested businesses, at the midpoint of the range. With full fiscal year 2022 adjusted EBITDA estimated to be between 63.5 and $66.5 million, representing about 25% growth at the midpoint of the range and another year of margin expansion. With that, I'll turn the call over to Greg.