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Tucows Inc. (TCX)

Q1 2011 Earnings Call· Wed, May 11, 2011

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Tucows First Quarter Fiscal 2011 Conference Call. Earlier this afternoon, Tucows has issued a news release reporting its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2011. The news release and financial statements are available on the company’s website at tucowsinc.com under the investor’s heading. Please note that today’s call is being broadcast live over the Internet and will be archived for replay both by telephone and via the Internet beginning approximately one hour following the completion of this call. Details on how to access the replays are available in today’s news release reporting the first quarter financial results as well as Tucows website. Before we begin today, let me remind you that the matters the company will be discussing include forward-looking statements and as such are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. These risk factors are described in detail in the company’s documents filed with the SEC specifically, the most recent report on Form 10-K and 10-Q. The company urges you to read its security filings for a full description of the risk factors applicable for its business. I would now like to turn them over to Tucows’ President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Elliot Noss. Please go ahead, sir.

Elliot Noss

Management

Thank you operator. Good afternoon and thanks for joining us today. With me is Michael Cooperman, Tucows’ Chief Financial Officer. For our call today, I’ll begin with a brief overview of the financial and operational highlights for the first quarter of the year. Mike will then review our financial results in more detail and I will return with some concluding comments before opening the call up to questions. Our financial performance for the first quarter of 2011 was again demonstrative of the consistency and reliability in our business. Revenue grew by just over 10% from Q1 of last year to a record $22.6 million. Once again, we generated solid cash flow from operating activities at $1.6 million. Each of the components of our business continued to perform well in the first quarter. Year-over-year growth in OpenSRS domain transaction volumes was 6% excluding the impact of the customers discussed last quarter, new registrations were up almost 15% and renewal registrations were up 10%, with our renewal rate remaining solidly above the industry average. Domains under management grew almost 10% from Q1 of last year to just shy of $11 million and subsequent to the end of the quarter crossed the $11 million name threshold. All of this, contributed to year-over-year growth in domain services revenue of 14%. Again this quarter we continued to win business. Our company-wide focus on wholesale continues to benefit us as does our persistence. One of these customer wins has been in the pipeline for nearly four years proving how this business is all about building and keeping relationships. The recent momentum in email, including the customer wins that I discussed on our last call, contributed to the strongest quarter for this service offering in more than a year, highlighted by year-over-year revenue growth of 7.4% and…

Michael Cooperman

Management

Thanks, Elliot. Net revenue for the first quarter of 2011 increased 10% to $22.6 million from $20.4 million for the first quarter of 2010, which as Elliot mentioned earlier is another record. Cost of revenues before network cost increased by $2 million or 14% to $15.7 million from $13.7 million for the first quarter of 2010. Gross margin for the quarter increased 4% or $200,000 to $5.3 million from $5.1 million for the same period last year. On a percentage basis, gross margin decreased marginally to 24% from 25%, largely the result of the 7% price increase implemented by VeriSign in July of last year as well as the continued shift in sales mix from higher-margin services to lower-margin domain name services. Gross margin from our OpenSRS service, which includes domain name services, email services and other wholesale services increased $400,000 or 9% to $4.4 million from $4 million for the first quarter of last year. Gross margin for the domain services component of OpenSRS increased to $3 million from $2.8 million. Gross margin as a percentage of revenue decreased to 17% from 18% primarily as a result of the VeriSign price increase and sales mix shift I mentioned earlier. Gross margin from YummyNames was $1.2 million compared with $1.5 million for the first quarter of 2010. This decrease was essentially due to two factors. One, gross margin for making domain sales in our portfolio available for sale or lease decreased by $200,000 to $1.1 million when compared to the first quarter of last year, and primarily reflect the timing of portfolio domain name sales that Elliot mentioned earlier. Second, gross margin from our parked pages program decreased by $100,000 when compared to the same quarter last year and primarily reflects the lower contribution we received from third parties as…

Elliot Noss

Management

Thanks Mike. A couple of quarters ago I spoke for the first time about our new unified control panel that will provide resellers with a single modern interface for managing all OpenSRS services. The new control panel will not only make it easier for resellers to support the customers but also make it much easier for us to cross sell and up sell our services. During the first quarter our customers began to see what the new control panel will look like, as we launched our new trust service and our new publishing service. Last week, we launched a completely redesigned control panel for domain services, the most important of the bunch. To accomplish this, we have had to perform some fairly significant re-architecture of the OpenSRS platform itself. It is now worth observing that we are nearing the completion of the re-architecture of all our major business units. We built YummyNames from scratch. We took three disparate retail businesses and combined them into Hover which has seen great success. We took an old Windows desktop software download business and with Butterscotch we focused it on mobile and video and we completely rebuilt our email system. With OpenSRS specifically we are taking an important step forward with its potential as a service delivery platform for what we believe is the best distribution channel in the internet economy. Even more impressively, we have done of all this not only without materially impacting our cash operating expenses but after controlling for the Canadian dollar actually lowering our cash operating expenses from where they were four or five years ago. At the same time we reduced CapEx significantly. We’ve done all of this and returned significant capital to shareholders, which we think inarguably shows the consistency and reliability of the Tucows’ business and its ability to generate cash and operate efficiently all in the context of growth. And with that, I’d like to open the call to questions. Operator?

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions). Your first question comes from the line of Thanos Moschopoulos with BMO Capital Markets. Your line is now open. Thanos Moschopoulos – BMO Capital Markets: Hi. Good afternoon.

Elliot Noss

Management

Hello. Thanos Moschopoulos – BMO Capital Markets: Hi, Elliot. So, on the OpenSRS line as you mentioned last quarter that was affected by two of your customers transitioning off. I believe you said at the time if there was limited margin impact from that. Is that correct?

Elliot Noss

Management

Yeah, that’s right. There is still in the case of one of them very significant business with us and then the other still a nice amount of business. And both are very high volume, therefore relatively lower margin, that’s right. Thanos Moschopoulos – BMO Capital Markets: And, so the revenue impact from that transition in the quarter, are we talking below seven figures or could you just quantify it?

Elliot Noss

Management

I would have to think about that, I don’t want to jump to an answer there. Thanos Moschopoulos – BMO Capital Markets: Okay. It’s good to see you have some good growth despite that impact on that front?

Elliot Noss

Management

Yeah. And where you especially see that is at new registrations. Because that’s where people tend to first migrate to the new platform. Thanos Moschopoulos – BMO Capital Markets: Okay. The Hover business obviously as you mentioned, very strong growth there. And so how sustainable do you think that is as you mentioned from a GAAP perspective the deferral means that we’ll see that growth continue for some quarters. But from I guess the bookings perspective, do you see this momentum continuing for the next while?

Elliot Noss

Management

Well, so I think it’s going to – depend on a couple of things. First, we don’t see any slowdown at this point. So that’s continuing, which is obviously very promising. Second, the limits will come around our ability to find really two things, additional great promotional vehicles, like some of the ones that we’ve had real success with. And what we are seeing as a continuing social media ground as well. So, Facebook and especially Twitter are now great contributors to this business and as you know, you can’t buy that word of mouth. We’re seeing that accelerate not decelerate. So it’s tough to say, I think that that’s a question that I invite you to ask me again next quarter and keep with. But right now, we’re still very encouraged. I should add, I mentioned the personal names business, there is one or two other irons in the fire that we think can sort of keep this momentum going. Thanos Moschopoulos – BMO Capital Markets: Okay. On the OpEx front, should we be looking at OpEx coming down at all since you completed to meet your R&D initiatives or will you be reallocating that budget towards other projects?

Elliot Noss

Management

No, what you’ve really seen there is that as we finished those initiatives, we have moved investment from working on fixing old thing, first fixing things that are broken then building them for the future. And now you’ll really see – we’ll see us reallocate that stuff. So, we want to take that and put it towards the future. So I think that we think we’ve got a nice controlled level of OpEx and if you look at our OpEx levels, they’re pretty reasonable. So, we expect to sort of push that towards future initiatives. Thanos Moschopoulos – BMO Capital Markets: Okay. Now you have some hedges in place. So as those hedges roll off, does that mean that we’ll start to see a bit of an increase just as the effect of the Canadian dollar gets more reflected in your results?

Elliot Noss

Management

We’d like to give ourselves as much runway as possible. It’s tough to predict the future of the currency. We’re certainly good for a few more quarters anyway. And we’re always selectively trying to extend our coverage out on softness. But, the one thing that we do that as you heard me talk lots about the fact that I’d like to give ourselves runway. So, we’re always keeping ourselves with a lot of room to of course correct if we need to. Thanos Moschopoulos – BMO Capital Markets: Okay. Then Mike, if you could just clarify what the magnitude of the ForEx translation gain or loss was in the income statement?

Michael Cooperman

Management

The gain was $113,000 if I remember correctly. Give me a second, I’ll just make sure. Yeah, $113,000. Thanos Moschopoulos – BMO Capital Markets: Okay. And then finally, I guess regarding the new TLDs it sounds like that process is sort of kind of politically, any thoughts there in terms of whether that moves ahead or what the outlook is in that front?

Elliot Noss

Management

Yeah, I think that everybody is still hopeful. I think we’re watching the political process play out. And really the Singapore meeting is going to be extremely important. So, I think you could see anything from the Singapore meeting starting gun goes off, and the process is initiated to what I would call indeterminate delays. But, I will say that the Singapore meeting is really the first meeting where there is a material chance that we get this whole process started. And I’m certainly hopeful. And that by the way is in third week in June or so. Thanos Moschopoulos – BMO Capital Markets: Okay. That’s very helpful. Thanks guys. I’ll pass the line.

Elliot Noss

Management

Thanks Thanos.

Operator

Operator

(Operator Instructions) You have a question from Thanos Moschopoulos from BMO Capital Markets. Your line is open. Thanos Moschopoulos – BMO Capital Markets: I thought I could hop back in for one more.

Elliot Noss

Management

Sure. Thanos Moschopoulos – BMO Capital Markets: So, regarding the new OpenSRS platform, what would your expectation be in terms of that starting to have an impact? I guess your launch get around now it will take some time for that to rollout. But how should we think about I guess the timing and sort of the magnitude of impact that we’ll have driving some more top line revenue for you guys?

Elliot Noss

Management

So, everything we do it’s always a slow ramp. And building that big snowball to sort of keep rolling and I mean that’s a beauty and the consistency of it. I don’t think there is anything that would be kind of a shot in the arm type increase till Q3, where email gets on the platform, where email gets on the new control panels and then we’ll really start to go out to cross sell there. And that’s something where we could see some pick up that would be a little bit of step function. And we’d love to have you out and give you a little demo too. Thanos Moschopoulos – BMO Capital Markets: Okay. Sounds good, thanks guys.

Elliot Noss

Management

Thanks Thanos.

Operator

Operator

At this time, there are no more questions in the queue. I’ll turn the call back over to Mr. Noss.

Elliot Noss

Management

Thank you operator, and thank you all for joining us. And I look forward to speaking with you again next quarter.

Operator

Operator

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