Earnings Labs

Tucows Inc. (TCX)

Q1 2007 Earnings Call· Thu, May 10, 2007

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Tucows Inc., First Quarter Fiscal 2007 Results Conference Call. Please note that today's call will be archived for replay both by telephone and via the internet, beginning approximately 1 hour following completion of the call. To access the archived conference call by telephone, dial 416-640-1917 or 877-289-8525 and answer the pass code 2122-8036. The telephone replay will be available until Thursday May 17, 2007 at mid-night. To access the archived conference call via the internet, go to www.about.tucows.com. I would now like to turn the call over to Leona Hobbs, the Director of Communications for Tucows Inc. This call is being recorded Thursday May 10, 2007. Please go ahead, Ms. Hobbs.

Leona Hobbs

Management

Thank you, operator. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's call. With me is Elliot Noss, Tucows President and Chief Executive Officer; and Michael Cooperman, our Chief Financial Officer. Today, following market close, Tucows issued a news release reporting the company's results for the first quarter of fiscal 2007 ended March 31, 2007. The news release and other information for investors is available by going to about.tucows.com and clicking on Investors. Before we begin today, I would like to point out that the matters we will be discussing include forward-looking statements, and as such, are subject to risks and uncertainties that would cause actual results to differ materially. These risk factors are described in detail in our documents filed with the SEC, specifically the most recent reports on Form 10-K and 10-Q. We urge you to read our securities filings for a full description of the risk factors applicable to our business. I would now like to turn the call over to Elliot.

Elliot Noss

Management

Thanks, Leona. Good afternoon, and thanks for joining us today. As per our usual format, I'll begin with an overview of the highlights of the first quarter. Mike will then provide a detailed review of our financial results. And finally, I'll return to talk about why I believe that Tucows continues to represent tremendous value for investors. First the financial highlights. We are quite pleased with our first quarter results. Subject to the caveats expressed numerous times in our previous quarters, revenue grew to a record $17.8 million, an increase of 16% compared to the first quarter of last year. Adjusted net income was $2.4 million, also a record, and up 62% compared to the first quarter of last year, our 17th consecutive quarter of revenue growth and profitability. Net income was $0.7 million, marking our 19th consecutive quarter of profitability. And cash flow from operations was $1.1 million, our 21st consecutive quarter in positive territory. Net deferred revenue or deferred revenue less prepaid registry fees increased 12% compared to the end of the first quarter of last year. In summary, our financial results for the first quarter have put us firmly on track to achieving our objective of cash flow from operations in the range of $10 million to $12 million for the year. Turning to service highlights. There are three service developments I would like to talk about. First, as we have discussed before, we have developed the next evolution of our email system. On the fourth quarter 2006 conference call, I indicated that we expected to be releasing our new system to customers in the March timeframe. I also indicated that the problems we were solving with that release were focused on the backend infrastructure of the email system, and subsequent to that release, we would turn…

Michael Cooperman

Management

Thanks Elliot. As Elliot discussed, in the first quarter, we continued to deliver solid financial performance. We achieved record revenue, strong cash flow from operations, and continued growth in our differed revenue balance. Notably, this was the first quarter in which we achieved adjusted net income in excess of $2 million and perhaps more importantly, our results for the first quarter leave us solidly on track to achieve our cash flow from operations target up to $10 million to $12 million for fiscal 2007. Turning to the numbers, net revenue for the first quarter increased 16% to $17.8 million from $15.3 million for the corresponding quarter of fiscal 2006. Net revenue from domain name and other internet services increased by $1.9 million or 13%, to $16.4 million from $14.4 million. Revenue from domain registration was up 12% year-over-year to $11.9 million and accounted for 67% of total revenue compared to 70% for the first quarter of last year. Revenue from other internet services remained essentially flat at 25% of total revenue compared to the same quarter of last year and while we are disappointed in this growth level, as Elliot explained, with the release of our upgraded email system, we expect growth to begin to ramp over the next few quarters. The primary drivers that we expect to contribute to the continued shift in revenue mix are the increased contribution to other internet services or hosted email, the recognition of revenue from our recently acquired CNAME domain name portfolio and to a lesser extent, the revenue we generate from the sale of domain names. Revenue from advertising and other content sources for the first quarter increased 65% to $1.4 million from $844,000 for the first quarter of 2006. Main contributor to the growth in advertising and other content revenue continues…

Elliot Noss

Management

Thanks, Michael. If you are listening to this call, you are likely a shareholder and if you are a shareholder, you are likely to be frustrated with the price of our stock. I can't tell you, how many times a month, somebody, an investor, a customer, a supplier, an employee asked me why our stock trades were traced. If any of you listening to these calls regularly know while we've stepped up our efforts in terms of marketing the company, our primary focus is on operating the business. And we think that in terms of operating the business, we've done a good job. I'm sure most of you also know that last quarter we announced the open market share buyback program. And as noted, under that program, last quarter, we bought and canceled 1.5 million shares. When we're engaging in open market transactions, we have to follow both AMEX and TSX rules. And within the slightly more stringent TSX rules, we bought all of the stock we were able to buy. Every quarter that the business moves forward and the stock price remained the same, the value in the stock increases. We will continue to look at all of the options available to us to see that this value is reflected in the price. As everyone on this call recognizes, investing is about risk and reward, with the objective being to maximize reward and minimize risk. And thinking about what I believe, there is such value in Tucows, I was thinking about the Tucows' investment proposition, those factors that I feel make this company an attractive, long-term investment opportunity. And what I've realized is that what those factors add up to for investors is low risk, low market risk, low business risk and low financial risk. From a market perspective,…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now conduct the question and answer session. (Operator Instructions). One moment for your first question. Your first question comes from Thanos Moschopoulos of BMO Capital Market. Please go ahead.

Thanos Moschopoulos - BMO Capital Market

Analyst

Hi good afternoon.

Elliot Noss

Management

Hi, Thanos.

Thanos Moschopoulos - BMO Capital Market

Analyst

Hi, Elliot. It's regarding the Nitido relationship. I just want to dig down a bit more there. Is this one-time licensing fee you're paying? Is this subject to the volumes you are doing? How does that work?

Elliot Noss

Management

This is a one-time licensing fee as well as a small ongoing royalty.

Thanos Moschopoulos - BMO Capital Market

Analyst

Okay. Not significant enough there, really have to worry about it from a margin perspective?

Elliot Noss

Management

No, it doesn’t impact our go-to-marketability at all.

Thanos Moschopoulos - BMO Capital Market

Analyst

Okay. And could you actually spell Nitido? I was having difficulty --

Elliot Noss

Management

Nitido. It's actually a Spanish word.

Thanos Moschopoulos - BMO Capital Market

Analyst

Okay. And just to clarify. You said the integration there is complete and you're not going to market with that combined offering?

Elliot Noss

Management

That's right. In the month of May, that will be coming up.

Thanos Moschopoulos - BMO Capital Market

Analyst

Okay. Any specific features that will -- so this is being on par with some of the other services or are there specific features that would perhaps take you ahead of those, in your view?

Elliot Noss

Management

First and most importantly, I think it’s a fantastic webmail experience. We've now started to use that webmail internally on top of the new infrastructure we built. And, I would tell you that the early kitchen table tests are extremely positive. In terms of going beyond, some of the things that you've seen from a lot of the big folks, that I generally mentioned, I do think that there is really interesting treatment of video and image files that, it's a matter of taste but it's better than anything that I've seen. I look forward to showing you some of that. But I think that really, where we want to step out and differentiate is now over the coming quarters where our view of webmail as desktop will really start to become more evident.

Thanos Moschopoulos - BMO Capital Market

Analyst

Okay. On the NetIdentity side, you said that the customer attention there has been good. Can we assume over 80% range or --?

Elliot Noss

Management

I don't have a break down of our percentages and I would need to kind of ground those in historical, but I am really comfortable to say it exceeded our expectations. We tend to be realistic when we are looking at the business as you know. And, we were quite pleased. The numbers are good and they provide sort of a great base to go forward from. And really, I think more than anything else, it speaks to the stickiness of that surname as email address concepts. We think we in no way want to use that stickiness to take anything for granted. We just wouldn't think like that. But, boy, if you've had your surname for years as your email address, as we believed it would be, it's very, very difficult to give that up. And we think going forward as we start to make that available for the wholesale channel that stickiness becomes something that we can leverage on a much broader scale.

Thanos Moschopoulos - BMO Capital Market

Analyst

Okay. On the OpEx side, you came a bit below my numbers, which is good. Going forward, anymore opportunities for continued cost savings or should we expect that to rise going forward to the business, can you just spill that out?

Elliot Noss

Management

Well, I'm just going to push it back to that standard metric that I've put out where OpEx should grow no more than half the rate, as margin is growing. We've gone through some pretty big changes around the email platform, around the email defense platform. It is often the case, if that stuff settles down it’s always possible that opportunities present themselves.

Thanos Moschopoulos - BMO Capital Market

Analyst

Okay. And, I guess can we talk a bit about the [park pages] business. You are seeing some good growth there. I guess can you provide a bit of color as to how that's proceeding, I mean the shifts you are taking to help that continue further?

Elliot Noss

Management

Sure. I think that we are now to the place where we are starting to sharpen the pencil a bit around things like the layout around the park page and trying to look at steps to refine our yields. Its not something you would see live on the web right now, but that's certainly where the work is going on. I would note though that the growth that we've experienced has really been a function of volume. One of the things that's been experienced industry wide and it's been discussed in a number of other places is that on a pure yield basis, some of the Google yields have been actually going down. And, obviously that's not something that we expected to happen nor do we expect to continue. But it is something that we've had to manage into.

Thanos Moschopoulos - BMO Capital Market

Analyst

Okay. If you could define what do you mean by yield?

Elliot Noss

Management

It's just what your take will be per 1,000 pages.

Thanos Moschopoulos - BMO Capital Market

Analyst

Okay. I got you. Like what proportion of the people coming to, let's say, watch click on something.

Elliot Noss

Management

No. It's less about the clicks.

Thanos Moschopoulos - BMO Capital Market

Analyst

Okay.

Elliot Noss

Management

More about the value of those clicks.

Thanos Moschopoulos - BMO Capital Market

Analyst

I got you. Okay. And then my final question, the domain business seems to do well, I guess no particular changes in the committed front there, just continues to proceed as it has historically with ongoing good growth.

Elliot Noss

Management

Yeah. I think that's right. The next big change will really be if something happens in the process for new gTLDs, and that work is ongoing on a policy level and hopefully over the next couple of quarters, we will see some real progress there.

Thanos Moschopoulos - BMO Capital Market

Analyst

Okay, great. Thanks. I'll pass the line.

Elliot Noss

Management

Thanks, Thanos.

Operator

Operator

Your next comes from [Warren Deralac] of Raymond James. Please go ahead.

Warren Deralac - Raymond James

Analyst

Hi, gentlemen. Good quarter.

Elliot Noss

Management

Thanks, Warren.

Warren Deralac - Raymond James

Analyst

Couple of questions and thoughts, more on the peripheral side of things, in light of the business revenue increasing in the scale you talked about where you create some leverage there. And what we may [foresee] this value in stock price here. The guidelines and restrictions you have on buying back shares. Is there a serious consideration given to other means of doing it, at a pace that maybe more apt to benefit the company's shareholders on a timeliness basis? And then, I'll just look to the other question, and that is again peripheral question. Will there come a time where consideration might be given also to both credibility and exposure to consider the NASDAQ Exchange over the AMEX?

Elliot Noss

Management

Let me deal with the second question first. And so, I will come back to that buyback question. Warren, I think right now, as it relates to NASDAQ. It's not something we are really discussing or thinking. But I will tell you that our experience was for years. I had people saying to me, that one of the reasons that the stock price was undervalued was because we traded on the OTC. As, you know, the stock traded on the OTC from 2001 through 2005. We expected, when we did the secondary offering in 2005 and listed on the AMEX and the TSX that, that would in a significant way address that comment. And I will tell you that all of the shareholders at the time that we spoke to the banks, analysts, et cetera, felt the same way, "Yes, boy that will be much better". We experienced no benefit from that effectively, as it relates to the stock price. So, I think its kind of something that as you are looking at it from a distance, I understand you, sort of saying, "Hey, you know, what about this?" But our experience was what it was, and I really think that information is readily available now and markets have reached such a level of efficiency that I am not sure that, that would have a material impact. It’s not to say that at some time it doesn’t become appropriate for a host of other reasons. I don’t believe it’s the cure to the ills of the stock price. And as it relates to your first question, I think I kind of referenced back two earlier comments that I made in my remarks. One that, it is certainly the case that every quarter the business continues to progress and the stock price stays the same. We just think there is more value in the stock. And two, its incumbent upon us to look at all of our options in that regard.

Warren Deralac - Raymond James

Analyst

Okay, thank you.

Elliot Noss

Management

Thanks, Warren.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from Aram Fuchs of Fertilemind Capital. Please go ahead.

Aram Fuchs - Fertilemind Capital

Analyst

Yeah, it’s Aram Fuchs, Fertilemind Capital. I don't agree with you, Elliot, I don’t think it matters what stock seems here as, I think it's important just to focus on generating free cash flow. And with that in mind, I was wondering if you could tell us, what shareholders got for their $1.2 million and expenses for new hardware for the email and what shall we look going forward on CapEx for that business?

Elliot Noss

Management

Sure. So, I think first, when you say what shareholders got, I think that was part of just kind of laying in what we needed to sort of do the launch to step up at a systems level. I don't think that's something that you would expect to see on a continuous basis. We made the comment previously that CapEx for 2007 would be below levels of 2006 and we are quite happy to stick to that. I think given the nature of the work, the type of work that we did, let's say for Q3, Q4, Q1 of this year, that, what you've seen are some outsides CapEx investments. It was also the case that this quarter, we moved datacenters. That something that you do once every four, five or six years and our VP in charge of that, her comment is we want this move to be done so well that we never move again. Obviously, when you do a move like that, when you are moving hundreds of servers, it's an opportunity to upgrade around some switches and some routers and other equipment of that nature. So, you have also seen that play a role here. And then you get down to things like, hey, let's improve the racking and the cabling et cetera. So, you've got some events that are not part of the run rate business, but I think it is contributed to that.

Aram Fuchs - Fertilemind Capital

Analyst

And then regarding the NetIdentity, when will you open that up to your resellers, the surname based emails. And why do you think you've been pretty patient with that process?

Elliot Noss

Management

Well, I don't think anybody in this building would call me patient. I appreciate you saying that. So, I will take that as a corporate comment as opposed to a personal one. I think that Aram, because of a bunch of unintended stuff, anybody here planned for some of the problems that we experienced in the back half of last year. And that just back ups the road now. So, instead of playing offense, which, work like this would be, you end up playing defense. And that just backs things up. So, I don't have a release date, I can just tell you that I think we are all very excited to get that out as soon as possible.

Aram Fuchs - Fertilemind Capital

Analyst

And just one last question about spam industry wide, it seems that surge in spam in Q4 of '06 and perhaps the first part of '07 has been solved. Is that a correct assumption, at least temporarily?

Elliot Noss

Management

When you say solved, I think in an industry level, what everybody is doing is just digging deeper trenches and putting more and more sentries around the forts. They just get used to operating in thinner oxygen. I guess it would be the best way to describe it. So no, I don't think it's solved. I think it's a cat and mouse game that we have to continually be playing. At the same time, it's a lot more effective for us to do that in a centralized way. If we are doing it right, then it is for service providers in a one-off way around 50,000, 5,000, 1,000 customers having to lay the stuff in. So, we think that as the macro trends that probably helps the business, not hurts it.

Aram Fuchs - Fertilemind Capital

Analyst

Great. Thanks for your time.

Elliot Noss

Management

Thanks Aram.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). There are no further questions at this time. Please continue.

Elliot Noss

Management

Thank you, operator. We will look forward to speaking with you all again next quarter.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes the conference for today. Thank you for participating. Please disconnect your lines.