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Senstar Technologies Ltd. (SNT)

Q4 2017 Earnings Call· Wed, Mar 28, 2018

$2.86

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Magal’s Fourth Quarter 2017 Results Conference Call. All participants are at present in listen-only mode. Following management’s formal presentation, instructions will be given for the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. You should have all received by now the Company’s press release. If you have not received it, please contact Magal’s Investor Relations team at GK Investor and Public Relations at 1646-688-3559 or view it in the News Section of the Company’s website www.magal-s3.com. I would now like to handover the call to Mr. Kenny Green of GK Investor Relations. Mr. Green, would you like to begin.

Kenny Green

Management

Thank you, operator. I would like to welcome to Magal’s fourth quarter and full year 2017 conference call. I would like to welcome all of you to this call and thank Magal’s management for hosting this call. I first want to apologize that we late we release that we normally do as well as the late start of the conference call, this was due to the our Board of Directors meeting later than they normally do in the day due to the availability of some of the board members. With us on the call today are Mr. Saar Koursh, CEO and Mr. Kobi Vinokur, CFO. Saar will summarize the key highlights followed by Kobi who will review Magal’s financial performance of the quarter. We’ll then open the call for the question-and-answer session. Before we start, I’d like to point out that this conference call may contain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or the future performance of the Company. These statements are only predictions and Magal cannot guarantee that they will in fact occur. Magal does not assume any obligation to update this information. Actual events or results may differ materially from those projected, including as a result of changing market trends, reduced demands and the competitive nature of the security systems industry, as well as other risks identified in the documents filed by the Company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition during the course of this conference call, we will describe certain non-GAAP financial measures which should be considered in addition to and not in lieu of comparable GAAP financial measures. Please note, in our press release we’ve re-consult a non-GAAP financial measures to the most already comparable GAAP measures with accordance with regulations requirement. You can also refer to our website at www.megalsecurity.com for the most directly comparable financial measures and related reconciliations. And you can also find it on our recent press release on the website. And with that, I would now like to hand over the call to Saar. Saar, please go ahead.

Saar Koursh

Management

Thank you, Kenny. I would like to welcome all of you to our conference call and thank you for joining us today. We’re very pleased with the result of the quarter, which represent a vast improvement over the previous few quarters and it's also a solid year-over-year improvement. The most important improvement, however, is our exceptionally strong backlog and what it represents for the future. At the year end, our backlog was one of the highest quarter and levels that we ever had and today giving the orders we have already announced in the first quarter, our backlog is grown even further and is the highest ever for Magal. This solid backlog provides us with a strong revenue visibility for the coming few quarters and gives me confidence for 2018 will be an improved year for Magal. Looking at the fourth quarter, we reported revenue of 23 million up 14% year-over-year and EBITDA of 2.3 million, up 20% year-over-year. Furthermore, we had a solid cash flow in fourth quarter generating 4.6 million of operating cash flow in the quarter. We ended the year with 52.4 million in cash and zero debt. This strong level of cash provide us with the working capital to continue to grow our business organically and at the same time, it enabled us to take advantage of the many potential opportunities we see in our end markets to complement our organic growth. We are indeed actively looking and we aim to complete another acquisition in 2018. We’re also very pleased with the progress that our video solution have made throughout 2017. Our fourth quarter revenue from the video and cyber segment were up 32% over Q4 last year and 20% in 2017 as a whole, and we are pleased to say that the segment is now…

Kobi Vinokur

Management

Thanks Saar. Revenues for the fourth quarter of 17 were $23 million, up 14% year-over-year. The geographic revenue breakdown for the quarter was as follows, North America, 25%, Latin America 31%, Africa 13%, Europe 19%, Israel 9%, Asia and the rest of the world 3%. Fourth quarter gross margin was 46.6% of revenues versus 49.6% last year. The balance was due to the sales mix in the quarter and is within our expected range. Operating income in the quarter was $1.8 million compared with 1.5 million last year. I know that our operating expenses were affected, an increase in USD terms due to the stress of the local currencies in the areas we operate primarily the Canadian dollar and the Israeli shekel versus the U.S dollar. This of set real efficiency steps we took during the second and third quarters of the year. During the fourth quarter we recorded a financial expense of 0.5 million versus financial income of $0.5 million in the fourth quarter last year. The financial income and expenses mostly relate to the non-cash financial charges generated through foreign exposure primarily by our Israel based U.S dollar denominated deposits. In terms of taxes, we saw a tax expense of $1 million versus a tax rebate of $0.9 million in the fourth quarter of the last year. The higher level of tax in the fourth quarter was primarily due to a recent change in the U.S tax regulations whereby there was a one-time reduction in all differed tax assets. I know that this is also a non-cash expense. Net income in the quarter was $291,000 or $0.01 per share. Net income in the fourth quarter of the last year was $2.9 million or $0.13 per share. The EBITDA which is more representative for performance of our business in…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time we’ll begin the question-and-answer session. [Operator Instructions] The first question is from Sam Rebotsky of SER Asset Management. Please go ahead.

Sam Rebotsky

Analyst

Tell me the March 22nd press release with the 20 sites, is that included in backlog, is there a quantification of that number?

Saar Koursh

Management

It's the announcement that we made last week related to the 20 new sites it’s included in our backlog, yes it is, as of today…

Sam Rebotsky

Analyst

So, the 50 million that you sort of -- the 20 million was January 2018. So of the 30 million say how much of that went into the December 31st, or any event and what is for 2018?

Saar Koursh

Management

As we -- as you know, we usually don't publish specific numbers for because, but as we can sum up all of the recent announcement that we made over the last few months and as I mentioned already we finalized the backlog with very strong backlog by the end of the year and right now it's actually at the highest point ever. So without putting numbers, you can understand where we are.

Sam Rebotsky

Analyst

Now the acquisition you're looking to make, what kind of cost for the 55%, and what kind of sales would that produce going forward?

Saar Koursh

Management

We haven’t published the amount of money of the acquisition because it's insignificantly in the amount. The main motivation of buying ESC BAZ for the technology and for the product portfolio and therefore the amount that we are spending is non-significant and therefore we’re not publishing it.

Saar Koursh

Management

And as far as the acquisitions that you're looking at other than this particular one, is there a range of size of the acquisitions you're looking at?

Sam Rebotsky

Analyst

As I mentioned in the past we are looking in two directions. One direction is for technology acquisitions, very similar to the ESC BAZ to broaden our portfolio, both in the hardware and the software. And in parallel channel, we’re looking also to acquire a much bigger organization, leveraging the cash positive there that we have. We’re looking on both directions at this point.

Saar Koursh

Management

Now, with all this backlog I assume we would be profitable, which quarter we expect to be profitable?

Sam Rebotsky

Analyst

We’re not – we’re not going into quarters, because we are talking all of this backlog is related –or most of it is related to our project business and there’s still lumpiness in the project business but definitely we’re looking to be profitable throughout 2018 and beyond.

Saar Koursh

Management

And this -- all these projects will be completed by the end of 2018?

Sam Rebotsky

Analyst

No, not all of them would be completed in 2018. And most of it or vast majority of it will be accomplished in 2018 but still some of the projects are big projects that would take us – would take us also for 2019 as well.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Dan Weston of Westcap Management. Please go ahead.

Dan Weston

Analyst

I had a first question relating to the acquisition of the ESZ BAZ. Saar, is there any indication or color you can give us relating to what kind of accretion of revenues this will bring in and any difference in the margin profile on that business to what would you tracking at right now.

Saar Koursh

Management

It’s a tough question because we haven’t give this information but what I can say its less than 10% in revenue but not much less than that.

Dan Weston

Analyst

And gross margin profile.

Saar Koursh

Management

Very similar to our solution business.

Dan Weston

Analyst

And just to follow up on your previous callers question relating to backlog, I know you don’t give the actual number, but could you just refresh us, may be you could give us what the Delta was between your backlog at the end of the year to where it stands today.

Saar Koursh

Management

I think you can actually do them yourself because as we mentioned already, the announcement, just the announcement on the project business that was about $50 million in the fourth quarter and on and you know that this quarter was $23 million. So I think you can do the math, its relatively easy.

Dan Weston

Analyst

Okay very good. I appreciate that. Let me see, I think last quarter you had mentioned, I think may be one of your previous callers asked a question relating to the critical sites for the regulation of the medical marijuana industry. Is there any updates you can give us their it sounded like you were pretty excited on that opportunity?

Saar Koursh

Management

Yes, I am actually it looks even better and better every day and opportunity is huge, I can tell you that I think I mention it that just in Canada, we are looking or the Canadian are looking to have more than the 1,000 sites over the next day 3 to 4 years. We’re looking to take to some portion of the pie, of course not everything, but we have very good at positive request, and we’re a part of a group that was awarded to a nice potion of sites and we’re planning to go to the execution phase in the next few months.

Dan Weston

Analyst

In the 1,000 sites that you're speaking of how many different owners does that represent?

Saar Koursh

Management

Tell you the truth. I don't know the answer for that but this is less important. The more importantly may be parameter is the ability to duplicate solutions from site over site. Nobody wants to start designing every site from scratch and everyone wants to take advantage of site that’s already done and just duplicate it and since we have a proven solution I mentioned already, that we were awarded on several sites already and now for us is just a middle of matter of lot of course for the design phase.

Dan Weston

Analyst

That's great and then I know it's early because it was just fine, but is there any indication relating to the omnibus bill that was signed last week on may be benefit to your North American business?

Saar Koursh

Management

I'm not sure when which one are you referring to. Are you referring to the $5 that we reported last week?

Dan Weston

Analyst

No, the omnibus bill that was signed out of Washington last week just relating to your North American border security critical infrastructure any color that you give us there?

Saar Koursh

Management

As I mention I think in their previous calls, CBP is running several processes that we take part of them. We’re expecting some news in the upcoming weeks, and once we will have some news we will be happy to share it with you.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Ken Liddy of Oppenheimer. Please go ahead.

Ken Liddy

Analyst

I just have one question regarding your recurring revenue, you’ve talked about in the past that you’re looking to try to grow that, what was there recurring revenue in the quarter and for the year?

Saar Koursh

Management

So, indeed we continue improving our recurring revenue portion. We do publish this information in 20-F that is going to be filed later today and you’ll see a continuous improvement in this ratio for us.

Ken Liddy

Analyst

And what type of avenues are you trying to boost that number through -- with service contracts?

Saar Koursh

Management

Yes, so actually we operate in all of our three segments of operations, turnkey projects, products and video and cyber. All of them are a good basis for improvement of recurring revenue. So when we’re talking about the video segment, then the maintenance and support contract that we’re selling is basically are major kind of revenue in this segment. And for products we are basically we are selling also product maintenance,, sensor care program, which provides with recurring revenue on debt. And projects of course this is the post project maintenance contract. So, overall currently, we’re talking about around 26% of our revenue being recurring and our goal is to continue and gradually increase this percentage.

Ken Liddy

Analyst

And related to some of your efforts with security at airports, I saw that recently you installed at the North American Airport. Is this something that you look for other similar subcontracts in the United States?

Saar Koursh

Management

Yes, we do, actually we -- our subsidiary Senstar just announced I think yesterday it was that we successfully completed the Memphis International Airport security solution and we’re looking on many other airport as well. Later this year in May there’s going to be a big conference here in England by the way in many major U.S. security officers from the major airports, they’re coming to Israel to learn more about airport security and as you may know that Israel Airport are secured with very high standards and many security officers from around the globe are coming here to see newer technology and we are going to be part of this conference as well.

Ken Liddy

Analyst

And just one more question with regards to some of the security at the border, in Israel. Do you expect to have any project wins in the coming year?

Saar Koursh

Management

Yes, we do. Yes we do. Israel is planning to continue investing in the border security -- in our border security, as we understand from the Minister of Defense, there’s budget allocated for this year, for 2018, and we are definitely working to take a nice portion of that.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] There are no further questions at this time. Before I ask Mr. Koursh to go ahead, with his closing statement, I would like to remind participants that the replay of this call will be available on Magal’s website, www.magal-s3.com. Mr. Koursh, would you like to make your concluding statement?

Saar Koursh

Management

Yes. Thank you. On behalf of the management of Magal, I would like to thank you for your continued interest and long-term support of our business. I look forward to an active 2018 and to updating you in next quarter. Have a good day and happy holidays for Easter and Passover. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes the Magal Security Systems Fourth Quarter 2017 Results Conference Call. Thank you for your participation. You may go ahead and disconnect.