Larry Stock
Analyst · Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead
Great. Thanks, Jeremy, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. I'll share with you some details of our fiscal second quarter results in just a moment, but I'd first like to focus my remarks today on the strides we've made as an organization that I'm very proud of, particularly in the face of a challenging backdrop. Despite current top-line revenue trends, our financial discipline has never been stronger, as evidenced by our sequential adjusted EBITDA growth and margin expansion. But what I'm most pleased about is our balance sheet. In my tenure, it's arguably never been in better shape, with a 17% sequential increase in cash flow from operations and record high cash conversion. To help frame this, let's step back for a moment to our fiscal fourth quarter of last year, which ended on June 30, 2023. At that time, we made the prudent decision to accelerate the remaining quarterly issuances of Sangoma shares owing to the star-to-star sellers that were scheduled to continue until fiscal '26. Fast forward to this past quarter, which ended on December 31, our robust and reliable cash generation enabled us to successfully expedite the remaining tax benefit payment to the star-to-star sellers well ahead of schedule. This marked an accelerated end to Sangoma's payment obligations and balance sheet complications relating to this acquisition. These deliberate decisions reflect our dedication to simplifying the company's financial landscape by eliminating the lingering complexities. By settling this financial commitment ahead of schedule, we have strategically unburdened our balance sheet, providing us with a clear path to prioritize and fuel Sangoma's growth initiatives. From an operational standpoint, inventories remain at healthy levels, down marginally versus last quarter, and our robust and reliable cash generation has enabled us to consistently pay down debt. So how did we get here? Well, in our fiscal first quarter, we made the difficult but necessary decision to right-size the organization through headcount reductions, real estate and vendor consolidation, and other related rationalizations, all with the objective of becoming more agile and focused. As compared to our first quarter annualized run rate, these structural changes have resulted in approximately $6 million of cost savings in the fiscal year and $9 million on an annualized basis, considerably ahead of our internal forecast. Now let's get to results, metrics and guidance. Revenue for the second quarter of fiscal '24 was $62.3 million, a fractionally compared to the same period a year ago, and down 1% on a sequential basis. Let's look a little deeper. Services revenue increased to $50.7 million, representing 81% of total quarter revenue, up 3% compared to the same period a year ago, yet declined just under 1% sequentially. Our services business has experienced a notable uptick in revenue year-over-year, and the slight decrease in services revenue quarter-over-quarter is attributable to the transformation of our go-to-market strategy, that Jeremy and Charles discussed earlier. Product revenue, representing 19% of total quarter revenue, declined from $11.9 million to $11.6 million, a decline of 3% sequentially, in large part due to prevailing geopolitical and global economic conditions which many companies are facing related to CapEx. Cost of sales during the second quarter decreased 5% to $18.3 million, compared to $19.2 million a year earlier. The decrease is primarily due to overall revenue mix. This translated to a second quarter gross profit of $44 million, up 3% compared to the same period last year. Gross margin for the second quarter was approximately 71%, up 2 percentage points from the same quarter last year, due to the favorable revenue mix. Our second quarter operating expenses, consisting of sales and marketing, research and development, general and administration, and amortization of intangible assets, totaled $44.5 million versus $45 million in the first quarter. Starting in the second quarter of fiscal '24, the company has removed amortization of intangible assets from the general and administration expenses to give a more accurate view of the company's hard costs. The slight decline in operating expenses was due to cost savings initiatives and previously announced headcount reductions. Second quarter adjusted EBITDA was $10.4 million, representing approximately 17% of revenue, and up nearly 6% sequentially on higher margin due to the revenue mix and the cost savings initiatives. Net loss for the second quarter was $3.2 million, or $0.10 per fully diluted share, compared to a net loss of $2.7, or $0.08 per fully diluted share for the equivalent period last year. Now before moving on to the balance sheet and cash flow performance, I'd like to comment on operational metrics. We've heard the feedback from the investment community on the importance of disclosing relevant operational metrics as valuable tools used in effectively measuring the health of our business, and we agree. Specifics around how and when we disclose particular operational metrics will evolve over time, but we anticipate sharing greater operational transparency beginning in our fiscal '25. In the meantime, an operational mainstay of Sangoma's platform that I'm particularly proud to share is the stickiness of our services business. Our FY '24 to-date services revenue churn is 0.9%, underscoring the reliability and value our services provide to our customers. With that said, let me discuss in more detail a few cash flow and balance sheet items referenced earlier that I'm particularly pleased about. During the second quarter, we generated $9.19 million in cash flow from operations, almost double the $4.98 million generated in the same quarter last year, and a 17% increase over last quarter. This was driven by our ongoing focus on efficient working capital management and our prudent approach to cash spending. Cash conversion of cash flow from operations to adjusted EBITDA during the second quarter reached 88%, almost two times the rate compared to 47% a year ago and 79% from the immediately preceding quarter. We finished the quarter with cash balances of $10.6 million, paid down $4.4 million of our term loan, satisfied the contingent consideration payable of $2.1 million, and continued to trim inventory. Each of these metrics reflects our consistent progression of quarterly cash flow generation and laser focus on working capital management. I remain pleased with our cash flow from operations and look forward to sharing with you our cash allocation methodology currently being finalized on our next call. As you may recall, we temporarily suspended financial guidance on our fiscal fourth quarter earnings call in September as we embarked on our strategic transformation. Given the strides we've made to date in our transformation plan and Sangoma's pivot to sustained profitable growth now in motion, we are confident enough in our visibility to resume forward financial guidance. We are already seeing results from the changes we've made and we expect to continue to see those contributions as the go-to-market transformation continues. With that said, we expect fiscal '24 revenue in the range of $245 million to $250 million and adjusted EBITDA in the range of $41 million to $44 million. Before I close, I'd like to thank Sangoma's dedicated team members around the world for their commitment and focus. I'm sure that they are all as excited as we are as Sangoma continues on our journey. With that, I'll hand it back to Charles for a few closing remarks. Charles?