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SuperCom Ltd. (SPCB)

Q3 2014 Earnings Call· Mon, Nov 3, 2014

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome to the SuperCom’s Third Quarter 2014 Results Conference Call. All participants are 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. I would now like to hand the call over to Matthew Selinger of SuperCom. Mr. Selinger, would you like to begin?

Matthew Selinger

Management

Good morning everyone. Thank you very much for joining us today for SuperCom’s third quarter 2014 results call. Joining us on the call are Arie Trabelsi, President and Chief Executive Officer; Simona Green, Chief Financial Officer; and Ordan Trabelsi, President of SuperCom North America. Our press release detailing the quarterly results crossed the wire at approximately 8:00 AM this morning, and is available on the company’s website at www.supercom.com. Following comments by the management, we will open up the floor for questions. In addition, we encourage you to visit the company’s website for further information regarding solutions, services and products. Before we start, I’d like to point out that this conference call may contain certain projections or other forward-looking statements regarding future events or future performance of the company. These statements are only predictions and SuperCom cannot guarantee that they will in fact occur. SuperCom does not assume any obligation to update that information. Actual events or results may differ materially from those projected, including as a result of changing market trends, reduced demand and the competitive nature of the security systems industry, or due to risks identified in the documents filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, following the company’s disclosure of certain non-GAAP financial metrics in today’s earnings release, these non-GAAP financial metrics will be discussed during this call. Such non-GAAP metrics are used by management to make strategic decisions, forecast future results and evaluate the company’s current performance. Management believes that the presentation of these non-GAAP figures help investors understanding and assess the company’s ongoing core operations and prospects for the future. Unless otherwise stated, it should be assumed that the financials discussed in this conference call will be on a non-GAAP basis. A full reconciliation of non-GAAP to GAAP financial metrics is included in today’s earnings release. So at this time, I would like to turn the call to Mr. Trabelsi. Ordan, the floor is yours.

Ordan Trabelsi

President

Thank you, Matt. Good morning everyone. I’d like to welcome you to our third quarter call. First, I’d like to thank the shareholders who have supported us over the years. We are honored and supported by continuing to execute on our business plan to provide EID scalable platforms and M2M innovations and solutions with our suite and product and technologies. I’d like to begin with some high level preview on the quarter. Then I’ll give the floor to Simona Green, our CFO, who will highlight financial results for the quarter. When she is finished, I’ll make some closing – Arie will make some closing remarks, and open the floor for questions. To begin, let me discuss what we are seeing in the industry. According to NFC [ph] national EID global revenue is estimated over $12 billion annually. Our addressable markets, developing countries and international tenders between $10 million and $200 million is estimated at over $1.5 billion in size. Our segment in the market is seen consistent and very rapid. Our customers have expanded technology infrastructure and increasing security needs. Once we gain our confidence, we are able to offer more products and solutions. This allows us comfortable expansion into adjacent markets, such as the markets where border control e-Gate systems, which alone is projected to continue growing at a rate of 20% per year to over $750 million by 2018. We have already been experiencing this forecasted growth, and in conjunction with our recent contract wins, we are seeing an increase in RFPs in our market segment. Our base process has also become more efficient. While once we were able to send out only one proposal every one to two months, we can send up to three proposals for a month, a significant increase in our bidding capacity. As…

Simona Green

CFO

Thank you, Ordan. I will now walk you through our financial results for the third quarter of 2014 compared year-over-year with the third quarter of 2013. Thereafter, we will be happy to take your questions. Revenues for the third quarter of 2014 was $9.1 million, way ahead of the $2 million reported in the third quarter of 2013, and an increase from the $7.1 million in the second quarter of 2014. I will be presenting the rest of the financial results on a non-GAAP basis, which excludes the non-cash income tax benefit we had in 2013, as well as amortization of software and IP and customer contracts to intangible assets, which were created as a result of the acquisition of the SmartID division in December 2013. For a full reconciliation from GAAP to non-GAAP numbers, you can refer to the press release we issued this morning. Our gross margin in the third quarter of 2014 was 76%, below 82% in the third quarter of last year and in line with the 76% margin in the second quarter of 2014. Please bear in mind, that the shift in gross margins relating to the proportion of revenue, it is recurring and the portion which is derived from new contracts. The recurring element tends to be at a very high gross margin, while new contracts and the initial installations tend to be lower gross margins. Normally, our expectation would be for gross margin to trend throughout the 75% level. Operating income in the third quarter of 2014 was $4.1 million or 45% of revenues, compared to $0.5 million or 25% last year and an increase from $2.6 million in the second quarter of 2014. Net income was $4.1 million compared to $0.4 million last year. Earnings per share were $0.30 versus $0.05 last year and $0.19 in the second quarter of 2014. EBITDA for the quarter was $4.2 million compared to $0.5 million last year, and $2.6 million in the second quarter of 2014. On the balance sheet side, by the end of the third quarter we had increased our cash and cash equivalents by over $3 million. Trade receivables continued to remain at high level by the end of the quarter, reflecting the significant revenue increase during this quarter. We increased our working capital to $14.2 million at the end of September versus $3.9 million at the end of 2013. Shareholders’ equity increased to $29.1 million at the end of the third quarter as from $19.4 million at the end of 2013. With that, I conclude the financial summary. And now I will hand it over to Arie. Arie? And open it for questions. Yes.

Ordan Trabelsi

President

Operator, can we open up for questions please?

Operator

Operator

Yes, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we would do question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) Please stand by while we poll for your questions. The first question from Josh Nicolaus [ph] with B. Riley. Please go ahead. Josh Nicolaus [ph] – B. Riley & Co: Yes, looking at the August 4 announcement for the $22 million contract, over the nine months that the revenues are going to be recognized. Is that pretty level, or are you anticipating that the revenue recognition might be kind of lumpy?

Ordan Trabelsi

President

The revenue recognition for new deployments. Typically growth over the first nine months quarter-after-quarter is the beginning, recognition is a bit slower and then it ramps up towards closer to the end of the nine months. So it’s a natural process as we deploy our system. Josh Nicolaus [ph] – B. Riley & Co: Okay. And real quick, it looks like R&D and the sales and marketing expense have been bouncing around a bit. I was a bit surprised that sales and marketing would be down considering the new contract announcement. I would figure that you might have to pay that out. Could you give me a little bit of color on the R&D in sales and marketing expenses a little bit?

Simona Green

CFO

Our sales and marketing expenses are usually put at the same frame. The only thing that is declined between one quarter to another are sales and marketing expenses related to contract. This quarter we don’t have any promoters’ expenses or any other outside of spending the sales and marketing expenses unusual. Regarding the sales and R&D expenses, were recognized one-off our capitalized R&D expense with [indiscernible] products during this quarter. Josh Nicolaus [ph] – B. Riley & Co: Okay. Thank you.

Simona Green

CFO

You’re welcome.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Brian Abrams of Lazarus. Please go ahead. Brian Abrams – Lazarus Investment Partners: Congratulations on another great quarter guys. I want to ask you a couple of questions. First one about the new mobile payment products. You suggested in your opening remarks there might be some synergies with the EID and government business. I’m wondering if you could elaborate on that a little bit, and also if you could speak to the revenue potential for these products in the next one to three years?

Ordan Trabelsi

President

Thanks Brian. So the whole notion of the – we deploy in two different developments here, the mobile money and mobile payments. Mobile money is the notion more for development countries where you can transfer payments between people and give a bank account through a mobile phone to the un-banked which the present population are more prevalent in developing countries. The synergy here is that the governments which we are already serving needs the correct payments for their passports or ID cards, their taxes or bills from their citizens around the country, and they don’t have an proper way to do that. In places where the citizens are spread up around and there is no proper banking infrastructure, they have trouble doing so. And with the current technologies out there, they weren’t able to find a solution which had appropriate pricing and it could be ubiquitous and [indiscernible] on their citizens. So our mobile money platform, which runs on any mobile phones we operate in regions of the world helps them solve that request. Your second question was the amount of revenues. We’re currently planning on deploying the mobile money through our current customers and government customers, and through that extending into regions around the world. The market is very big in size right now. We don’t yet know how much of the market you’ll be able to take a grasp of, but even a small portion of this will be significantly larger than our current revenue base as we’re talking about very high growth and large tenant markets in development countries around the world. And the notion of mobile payments, again in the U.S. also, there is a lot of problems with paying with your phone. You cannot pay with your iPhone 4 or your iPhone 5, some of them don’t have NFC capabilities to make the mobile payments, and over there it’s a very large market as well and then you’re trying to reach them too, we have a specific technology which allows any phone to make payments and it helps also to capture a nice market share there. Brian Abrams – Lazarus Investment Partners: That’s great. And I guess that leads to my next question which is, you’ve spoken previous quarters about targeting about $100 million of revenue in the next few years. I’m wondering, A, if you still see fees to reach that goal, and B, what do you think the product mix might be at that point between the EID government business and somebody in your products on RFID or M2M or m-Pay side of things?

Arie Trabelsi

Analyst · Lazarus

First of all, today, a quarter after we talked last time, we feel more confident that we’ve reached this point and even higher numbers, what we see in the increasing demand through our product and through our solution that probably would be willing larger content and to be significant shorter term that [indiscernible]. So we do believe that everything we said in our last quarter, we should continue to be reaching these goals even earlier. Now about the mix between revenue. The revenue between the EID, M2M and payment, we do believe that in three years, our revenues from the M2M is going to be over 50% of our total revenue. And from the – although the EID is going very faster than the M2M market, is much going fast. So to answer your question, yes, we are very confident reaching this point. Brian Abrams – Lazarus Investment Partners: Great. Thanks guys. Congratulations again.

Simona Green

CFO

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) Please stand by while we poll for more questions. The next question [indiscernible] Capital. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi, thank you for taking my question. My first question is, can you clarify for us the product that you plan to market in the U.S. Does that include the PureSecurity solution and also the mobile payment solution? Thank you.

Ordan Trabelsi

President

Sure. So regarding PureSecurity solution, we are launching the product which is a house arrest or GPS tracking products for offenders. The current technology and common technology is one piece GPS that you put on someone’s leg to finalize that unit has GPS, GPRS and everything at one place. The battery runs out up to two days leaving the offender to actually connect to the leg, so the wall which is not unsafe but also likely to be forgotten. Our solution has a battery life of between three to five years on someone’s leg and inherently communicate with the mobile phone to add more capabilities and advantages. Regarding the mobile payment products, we have a whole suite. We have the SuperPOS, which is a mobile point-of-sale, which is like any merchant in the U.S. or any person for example getting to U.S. [indiscernible] any sort, he makes their phone or the tablet into a mobile point-of-sale with just software, no additional hardware needed. And we have software for the mobile phone, for any type of phone which allows you to make those payments. So you can have an old feature phone from Nokia or you could have an iPhone4 or you can have the new Android, regardless of the phone type, you can still come and do your payments as bringing their phones close to the mobile point-of-sale.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. So I mean regarding the reason you said the Apple payment was rejected by several major retailers in the U.S. because they have prior contract obligations to implement another different, although may not be as convenient as Apple payment different system. So do you see that as kind of an obstacle to you for marketing your mobile payment technology in the U.S.?

Ordan Trabelsi

President

Well, it certainly is an obstacle, but we do not see as a major one, because our platform does not require any additional hardware or any additional systems. You can put additional software under current point-of-sale system and allow all these new billions of phones around the world who currently cannot do mobile payment can now do mobile payment at your merchant location.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Should we expect...

Ordan Trabelsi

President

Sorry, what was that?

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Go ahead, sorry. Go ahead.

Ordan Trabelsi

President

I’m sorry, over time the phenomena would also be much better for merchants as they are essentially taking some fighters out of the chain, but that’s more confusion, I’m sorry, continue please.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Shall we expect some revenue from either the PureSecurity solution and also the mobile payment solution in the U.S. in 2015?

Arie Trabelsi

Analyst · Lazarus

Yes. We have already contracts with both of them for the PureMoney. Those were the contracts that we’re implementing there through different contracts in emerging countries. And for PureSecurity we have contract as well. So we should see substantial revenue in the year 2015 for both product lines which you just mentioned now.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. And my second question regarding the financials. Can you give us some kind of guideline as to how much you are going to spend on R&D, and also selling and marketing expenses going forward?

Arie Trabelsi

Analyst · Lazarus

Okay. In general, R&D is – we are going to keep it in the range of 5% to 7% in the quarter, and we believe it’s going to be certain amount of investments because we do believe that our revenue is growing. The second is about sales and marketing. Our sales and marketing is mainly our fixed sales and marketing group around the world which we are increasing. And also in order to capture more and more sales [indiscernible] our promotion or I think our sales representative around the world. So we believe that we continue to be in revenues that you see this quarter.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay. Could you tell us the current share count? The number of shares outstanding?

Arie Trabelsi

Analyst · Lazarus

I think it’s close to 13.7 million shares.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay, got it. Thank you.

Arie Trabelsi

Analyst · Lazarus

That’s this quarter.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

The next question [indiscernible] of Ross Capital Partners. Please go ahead.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Hi, good morning. Just a couple – most of my questions I think have been answered, but maybe some clarification here on the mobile money payment products. They’re going to contribute in 2015, but is there first half or second half. And then can just describe the margin structure for those products? And then finally, are EID products a prerequisites or any other payment products going forward? Thanks.

Ordan Trabelsi

President

I’ll answer the first and then actual clarification on the second question. We should already start seeing in the first half of 2015 some revenues, the general structure from payments are either from point-of-sale, where they pay the fee for the software and from transaction fees. So it is essentially people using their SuperPay on their mobile phone, then you don’t have to go through a credit card. So some of the transaction fees are going to be going to us. Those are the two main modules or the main business models for that. What was the second question?

Arie Trabelsi

Analyst · Lazarus

A few million dollars of revenue from the mobile payment.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

The second part was maybe just around the margin structure, sort of the revenue stream. Is there a level that you can disclose for us from that perspective, and then, are the EID products prerequisite at all anywhere for the payment products like...

Arie Trabelsi

Analyst · Lazarus

The gross margin for the PureMoney, it’s is going to depend on the structure we build out positively on the [indiscernible] bank. Another, that we do believe that it is going to be above the 80%.

Ordan Trabelsi

President

And in terms of the – do you guys need prerequisites? I am not sure if I understand it. It doesn’t have to have – it doesn’t have to be…

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

Yes, you have to have them or it depends you have them and not have them.

Ordan Trabelsi

President

No, well, if we have an EID relationship with that government, then it just helps us employ for the payment solution side of that, but irregardless we can go to a new government also then only the mobile payments and mobile money solutions.

Arie Trabelsi

Analyst · Lazarus

Just understand, in general where we are [indiscernible] PureMoney solution to some new government contract. One, the citizen will use our PureMoney solution to pay government and there will be a requirement for our SuperPOS from other group that will – probably would like to take advantage of this type later and this would increase our revenue also from the private and commercial market.

Unidentified Analyst

Analyst

All right, great. Thanks a lot.

Ordan Trabelsi

President

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

The next question is from Robert Schnell, Dougherty. Please go ahead. Robert Schnell – Dougherty & Co: Hello, nice quarter.

Arie Trabelsi

Analyst · Lazarus

Thank you. Robert Schnell – Dougherty & Co: From a receivables and cash standpoint, both moved up in the quarter. I’m just wondering what your thoughts are about those numbers moving into Q4. Do you expect to generate decent cash again, and will you revenue will bounce start not flattened out here. And then I’d also like to know what different status of your NOL is? Thanks.

Arie Trabelsi

Analyst · Lazarus

Okay, first of all our cash flow is positively and going – right now I think in the first month – end of the quarter we receive additional almost $6 million in cash, and we have had to fixed number in the next 60 days, but as you see, our revenue is growing and our field is growing but from cash flow point of view, we part of deploying significant operation. We have very good cash flow and we continue and believe that it’s going to be growing in a very fast rate. Robert Schnell – Dougherty & Co: Can you update us on what was your net operating loss carry forward is do you have in this company?

Arie Trabelsi

Analyst · Lazarus

Right now, our NOL in – so we have NOLs both in Israel and in the U.S., and right now we are reevaluating our NOL to be actually will pick up end of 2015 of tax assets or using the tax asset. Robert Schnell – Dougherty & Co: Could you guys know what that number is or was the last time you went through the review?

Arie Trabelsi

Analyst · Lazarus

I think it was…

Simona Green

CFO

That’s around $8 million to $10 million [ph] for NOL still here, that we’re still analyzing and we’ll be analyzing by the end of the year. Robert Schnell – Dougherty & Co: Okay, could you repeat that number, I’m sorry I missed it.

Arie Trabelsi

Analyst · Lazarus

Additional $15 million. Robert Schnell – Dougherty & Co: Okay. Thank you.

Arie Trabelsi

Analyst · Lazarus

Thank you.

Simona Green

CFO

Thank you.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. Before I ask Mr. Trabelsi to go ahead with his concluding statement, I would like to remind participants that a replay of this call will be available on three hours on SuperCom’s website www.supercom.com. Mr. Trabelsi, would you like to make your concluding statement?

Arie Trabelsi

Analyst · Lazarus

Thank you. On behalf of the management of SuperCom, I would like thank you all for joining us today. I look forward to next speaking with you when we discuss our fourth quarter and full-year results in about two months from today. Have a good day.

Operator

Operator

Thank you. This concludes the SuperCom Limited third quarter 2014 results conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may go ahead and disconnect.