Earnings Labs

Tucows Inc. (TCX)

Q1 2016 Earnings Call· Mon, May 9, 2016

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Tucows first quarter 2016 conference call. Earlier this afternoon, Tucows issued a news release reporting its financial results for the first quarter. That news release and the financial statements are available on the company's website at tucows.com, under the Investors 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. Before we begin, 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 the 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 reports on the Form 10-K and Form 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 the call over to Tucows President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Elliot Noss. Please go ahead Mr. Noss.

Elliot Noss

Management

Thank you, operator. And thanks, everyone, for joining us today. With me is our Chief Financial Officer, Mike Cooperman, who by the way celebrated his 65 birthday yesterday. Today's call will follow our usual format. I'll begin with an overview of the financial and operational highlights for Q1, Mike will then provide a detailed review of our financials, and I'll return with some concluding comments before opening the call to questions. The first call was a very solid start to 2016, as we saw strong year-over-year growth in each of our key financial metrics. Revenue increased 13% from Q1 of last year to a record $45.6 million. And the steady performance of our domains business, combined with the continued growth of Ting Mobile, contributed to further expansion of our gross margin to 33%. It was also a record quarter for profitability, with adjusted EBITDA coming in at $7.5 million and net income coming in at $4.4 million or $0.42 per share. Ting Mobile had an outstanding quarter, adding over 12,000 accounts and 18,000 devices. That brings our total to over 140,000 accounts and 220,000 devices. This was a significant spike-in as relative to recent quarters. And I must note was driven by a one-time influx of customers, migrating from another MVNO that closed its doors. In late January, PlatinumTel Wireless, also known as PTel, alerted its customers that it will be shutting down the service and included Ting among a few recommended mobile providers. Ting welcomed roughly 7,000 of these customers and early behavior and usage indicate that they are satisfied and well-suited to be great additions to our base. Ting churn also fell to 2.39% in Q1, down from 2.73% in Q4. This appears to be the result of three factors. The first is seasonality. With a history of…

Michael Cooperman

Management

Thanks, Elliot. As Elliot mentioned at the outset, Q1 of 2016 was another quarter of solid performance, highlighted by strong growth across all of our key financial metric. Revenue grew 13% to a record $45.6 million from $40.5 million in the first quarter of 2015, and primarily reflects the impact the large Ting subscriber base is having on Ting Mobile service revenue. Cost of revenues, before network cost, increased 8% to $28.9 million from $26.8 million. This resulted in increasing gross margin before network costs of 23% to $16.8 million from $13.6 million in the same quarter of last year. As a percentage of revenue, gross margin before network cost expanded to 37% from 34%. Looking at gross margin by line of business. Gross margin for network access increased by $3.3 million or 59% to $8.9 million from $5.6 million of Q1 last year. Most of this growth was generated by Ting Mobile services gross margin, which grew by $2.8 million to $8.4 million compared to the first quarter of last year. In addition, we generated $0.5 million in gross margin from the provisioning of high-speed internet access, internet hosting and network consulting services, which was an increase of $0.3 million over Q1 of last year. As a percentage of revenue, gross margin for network access increased to 50% from 43%. Gross margin for domain services decreased by 2% to $7.9 million from $8.1 million in Q1 of last year, the result of an outside portfolio sale that occurred during Q1 of last year that wasn't repeated. As a percentage of revenue gross margin for domain services fell slightly to 28.5% from 29.3%. Breaking domain sales down into its individual components. Gross margin for the wholesale channel is up 2% to $5.5 million from $5.3 million and as a percentage…

Elliot Noss

Management

Thanks, Mike. As Mike noted a moment ago, we bought back a little stock during the quarter. This is not reflective of any change in our philosophy around returning capital to shareholders. We've always said that repurchases would vary from quarter-to-quarter. The more the stock falls in a given quarter, the more we are likely to buy, and more the stock rises in a given quarter, the less we are likely to buy. This is simply a matter of moment and process. The Board setting a price subsequent to the meeting that takes place just before the calls. The stock right now is up over 25% from the time of the last earnings call. And all things being equal that is likely to be a quarter in which we buy less than another. With a solid start to 2016, we are comfortable reiterating our previous guidance for the year of $30 million in adjusted EBITDA. With respect to capital expenditures, for our Ting Internet fiber buildout, on our last call, I provided a range of between $15 million and $20 million for this year with the caveat that the actual number will depend on the type of builds and the speed of the builds. The first quarter ended up being a little slower in this regard than we initially thought. That said we expect spending in the new markets to commence in the second and third quarters. But at this point, I won't be surprised if we come in below $15 million for the year. To conclude, the first quarter of 2016 unfolded on-plan. Our domains business continues to perform well, and we took advantage of a great opportunity to generate some efficient step function growth in that business through the acquisition. Ting Mobile earnings continue to grow, while Ting Internet takes crucial steps towards being a strong competitor to earnings in the future. 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 Hubert Mak with Cormark Securities.

Hubert Mak

Analyst

Can we just talk about the Ting Mobile business?

Elliot Noss

Management

Sure.

Hubert Mak

Analyst

I think I heard you talked about some meaningful changes in Q2 for this business. Can you elaborate on that whether that were just the marketing initiatives or is there something else that I guess, maybe you can just provide some color on that? And then the other part is that, obviously, you had a pretty strong sub-adds this quarter over 12,000. And if I were to back out sort of the one-time, you look at 5,000, so obviously that's potentially some seasonality here in Q1 from the Q4. Are you able to sort of give us an idea how do you see the outlook here on a quarterly basis, I guess, or what do you think is a good target that you're looking for?

Elliot Noss

Management

So first of all, I don't remember in what context I used the word meaningful. There is a lot of work going on in Ting Mobile; almost all of it is with respect to generating more gross add. Certainly, a fair amount of work going into continuing to drive that churn number down, but the real focus is on generating more gross adds; and I think that with all of the three headings or three buckets that I have talked about, they all take real work to put the pieces in place. So that work is certainly meaningful. That work is kind of the core focus of all of the people in that group. And I think the simplest way to think about it, if you want to take a good positive look at that, I talked about the simple exercise of routing calls between support calls and presales calls, that's something that just about every company, every mobile phone company in the world does, and they tends to do it with an aggravating IVR system. We're really looking at taking the 15% to 20% of our interactions today that are presales and trying to more efficiently route, maybe it does end up being IVR much simplified, but even getting that 15% to 20% of interactions in the hands of folks that are more trained up and skilled up to convert those leads into sales will have an impact, so it's really simple blocking and tackling like that. Sorry, I didn't answer your second question, apologies. So its easy to do the math 12 minus 7 is 5. We also said Q2 looks kind of like Q1. I think you want to be modeling in that 5%, 6%, 7% and we'll take you up and keep you tracking as we're going along there.

Hubert Mak

Analyst

And then on the domain business, obviously you acquired the assets this, I guess, post quarter. I just want to make sure I understand, you had some classification on EBITDA line, but you're reiterating the guidance for $30 million. But I think am I correct, like it's not adding much EBITDA from your acquisition or is there something I'm missing here?

Elliot Noss

Management

Sorry, no. There is nothing you're missing. I'm just not restating guidance. So I'm not adjusting guidance. I'm always going to make a comment on it. I'm reiterating -- I don't want to be moving the number every quarter. So I don't think you should read anything into that. I would be as happy reiterating that $30 million number, if we didn't have the acquisitions that we did.

Hubert Mak

Analyst

And then sort of, just to go back, a quick follow-up here on the Ting Mobile side. Given these initiatives you're putting in place, do you foresee additional sales and marketing spend over the next few quarters?

Elliot Noss

Management

Possibly some, but it should be meaningfully noticeable in the numbers. I think we're trying to put wood behind the arrows that are hitting their targets. And so that really should kind of come concomitant with some successes. Now, certainly with any [ph] calc you're going to have a little bit of upfront, but there is nothing going on right now, where all sort of meaningfully take that number up and ask you to adjust your model.

Hubert Mak

Analyst

And then lastly, other than marketing initiative you're putting in place, what is the actual key one that you think from currently is the actually support call or is that the main one or is it really the pushing to different channels like?

Elliot Noss

Management

So I think the simplest way to think about it, the way that I've been expressing it is, we did a great job for four years doing things differently than everybody else has been doing. We've kind of taken that to where we've gotten and now we need to start learning from the things that everybody else is doing. The good news in that for me is we have loads of examples to learn from. It's a lot easier to try and layer in things that are working consistently for most are all of your competitors around you than it is to try and come up with new and normal strategies. So I think if we can just do an okay to pretty good job of doing what everybody else is doing that in the coming quarters that starts to have a real impact.

Hubert Mak

Analyst

And I think you may have alluded to this during your comments, but is pricing part of that strategy?

Elliot Noss

Management

Well, I think I had always said two things or have consistently said them for the last little while, one, that our data prices are too high, and as competition in the industry has stepped up that's really been exposed more and more, and then that that's because our costs are too high, and that our gross margins are towards the top end of our range. So there is nothing that I have to announce, so that's evident, but certainly those two things are both true.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of David Tomljenovic with Cantor Fitzgerald.

David Tomljenovic

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald.

Just a quick question about Melbourne IT, I just wanted to make sure that did close, there was none of that in this quarter?

Elliot Noss

Management

That's right. No, nothing in the quarter; 1 April. It was nice and neat for everyone.

David Tomljenovic

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald.

Sorry, say that again.

Elliot Noss

Management

Nice and neat for everyone.

David Tomljenovic

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald.

Yes, how convenient. Thank you. With regard to the Melbourne, you had given some general parameters around the $13 million of revenue and $2 million of, we could say, gross margin. Did you mean EBITDA?

Elliot Noss

Management

No, I meant gross margin.

David Tomljenovic

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald.

Like contribution margin?

Elliot Noss

Management

Yes, like contribution margin, right?

David Tomljenovic

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald.

Right.

Elliot Noss

Management

And in that range is a little bit more that we've got opportunities around when it comes to some cross-sell and some up-sell, there is a little bit of natural efficiencies we get just by bringing some pieces of business over, that what would I call that, sort of the wiring and the machine, our arcane domain stuff, as I explained it. So we think, we can do a little bit better than $2 million, but we think that the some people saw the revenue number and their eyes got a little wide.

David Tomljenovic

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald.

To be fair, I was among those because --

Elliot Noss

Management

I didn't even remember that, so.

David Tomljenovic

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald.

I thought there was an opportunity there to leave behind more cost than there were.

Elliot Noss

Management

I think the one thing we want to make sure people appreciate was it was a nice pick up at a multiple level. It worked for both companies, because it was really an orphan in their hands.

David Tomljenovic

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald.

I noticed that the selling and marketing expense was up quite a bit. Where there some one-time cost in there related to the Ting Internet advertising that you had told us about or is it some more new normalized selling and marketing expense run rate?

Elliot Noss

Management

I guess, there is two things that I'd call out there. One, with those 7,000 PTel customers, we offered a service credit to bring them over and turning out to be great piece of [ph] calc, but all of that gets taken in, in the quarter. So there's a fair bit there. And we did that program that I've talked about with the ad campaign in the various Ting towns, there was a bit of chunk of upfront cost in production, et cetera, et cetera, as we were rolling that out. And should note, the placements are up, I mean we're spending little bit more; not as noticeable as it would be, but we are spending a little bit more as we're going more aggressively at those Ting towns.

David Tomljenovic

Analyst · Cantor Fitzgerald.

And just a general comment about, I know, you had mentioned about some of the initiatives with regard to Ting Mobile. Do you see any other non-organic opportunities out there that might come to closure in the next, I don't know, six to 12 months?

Elliot Noss

Management

Unlikely; and I mean one of the biggest challenges, David, is price points. And so you have to be able to bring over another company's customer base at something similar around price points. So for instance, a deal or two that we look at, you might see, and only from a distance because by the way there's not a lot of action in the vertical in the space, you might see a chunk of unlimited customers with really, really high daily usage. You've almost got to assume them as a 100% churn when you're bringing over. And if you're vendor, you want to get paid for that, right. So you're going to want to find somebody who has got plans that you can map on to a little better. So it's tricky. I think its, what? It's good business, but it's hard to find.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Patrick Retzer with Retzer Capital.

Patrick Retzer

Analyst · Retzer Capital.

I have a couple of questions on the fiber business.

Elliot Noss

Management

Yes.

Patrick Retzer

Analyst · Retzer Capital.

Do you anticipate adding any additional markets this year?

Elliot Noss

Management

Short answer is yes.

Patrick Retzer

Analyst · Retzer Capital.

Could u give us a little color on how many do you expect perhaps or what?

Elliot Noss

Management

I would say best guess two or three. Four is not impossible; one is not impossible; but best guess two or three.

Patrick Retzer

Analyst · Retzer Capital.

How many markets are you actively talking to now, can you tell us that?

Elliot Noss

Management

It's really a function of how you define active. I'd bet you if I just look at what's in the pipeline, well, like 12, 15 anyway. But there's plenty. And those are ones that we've decided to actually enter into the internal tracking system. There's probably another a dozen, 20 on top of that, where there has been a contact, the discussion, an engagement of sort of. It's very much sellers market in that regard.

Patrick Retzer

Analyst · Retzer Capital.

And then the last question, do you anticipate the backbone of the buildout and Charlottesville will be completed by the end of this year?

Elliot Noss

Management

I don't know if backbone is quite the right language. I think I know what you mean. By the end of this year, the overwhelmingly most addresses in Charlottesville will be able to order. There will be the odd little pocket where that's not the case, and of course, with MDUs that's a building-by-building another thing. And Charlottesville does have a fair number of MDUs over a third of the residences. But we're actually just starting in this last quarter, we've really just started to get to the final stages and start to light up our very first MDUs.

Operator

Operator

Your next question comes from the line of Jamie DeYoung with Goudy Park Capital.

Jamie DeYoung

Analyst · Goudy Park Capital.

Elliot, I just had a couple of questions for you. I may have jumped on a couple of minutes late, but if you could just provide a little more detail into kind of what you're seeing on the affinity marketing front, where you feel you've got the most opportunities over the next 12, 18 months to make some progress as another potential revenue channel for the company?

Elliot Noss

Management

Within affinity, in particular -- and I would say, if I had to rank the three buckets that I've been talking about, I'd probably put, direct sales, one; affinity, two; and retail, three; although, each of them come along differently. Affinity, in particular, is quite kind of step function. You're going after kind of a longer lead time big fish there. And I think when I say about affinity is we continue to have good discussions, there are a couple of interesting trials going on this quarter. Those tend to be -- they're not things that are visible. It would be great, if we have one or two of them to begin to talk about specifically next quarter. But I'd have to take a step back and think about short of something that's very visible, like consumer cellular with AARP. If we really want to be on the call talking about detail around some of that, I know, that I'd love if some of my competitors is were. So I'd want to give that some thought.

Jamie DeYoung

Analyst · Goudy Park Capital.

And then, I just wanted to make sure I was clear, strong EBITDA in the quarter, kind of run rate for the year of $30 million, and then with the Melbourne IT acquisition, that would be on top of kind of what you hope to accomplish this year, given the close on April 1, did I read that correctly?

Michael Cooperman

Management

Yes. And just again, I don't want to be back every quarter readjusting that number or working with precision. And I think, I'd probably think a little bit more about that, if we were trading at a higher multiple as well. So I am not feeling too fast about the $30 million number at this price.

Jamie DeYoung

Analyst · Goudy Park Capital.

And then lastly, I just wanted to touch basically, you bought a little stock in the quarter, last quarter you had $40 million buyback, you had put in place that you were going to end in February of '17. So is that really just being opportunistic going forward?

Elliot Noss

Management

It's always being opportunistic. And to put a final point on it, we'll decide what we're going to do for quarter typically in our Board meeting, which will take place typically the day of the call, the day before the call. If you go back to the last call, stock was in the 18s at that point, so we're going start price on that basis. I think you as a smart trader will appreciate as much as anyone. You don't want us kind of being super aggressive off that price. And the stock traded up pretty quickly, and so that's really going to be an impact there, but tactically we go through that exercise on a regular basis.

Operator

Operator

There are no further questions at this time. I'll turn the call back to Elliot Noss for closing remarks. End of Q&A

Elliot Noss

Management

Thanks, very much and I look forward to speaking with you all again next quarter. Thank you, operator.