Earnings Labs

Tucows Inc. (TCX)

Q3 2018 Earnings Call· Wed, Nov 7, 2018

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to Tucows Third Quarter 2018 Investor Call. Management has prerecorded its prepared remarks regarding the quarter and outlook for the company. In lieu of the live question-and-answer period following the prepared remarks, shareholders and analysts are invited to submit their questions to Tucows' management via e-mail at ir@tucows.com. Management will then post a recorded audio response to questions as well as a transcription to the Tucows website on Friday, November 16, at approximately 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Now onto management's prepared remarks. On Wednesday, November 7, Tucows issued a news release reporting its financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2018. That news release along with the company's financial statements and 10-Q, are available on the company's website at tucows.com under the Investors heading. Please note 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.

Elliot Noss

Analyst

Thanks, Michael. I will begin our remarks with the review of the quarter. Dave Singh, our Chief Financial Officer, will then review the third quarter financial results in detail, and I will return for some concluding comments. Before I begin, a few notes on the new format. The approach has had an overwhelmingly positive response. That said, as it was our first time last quarter, we ask for your feedback, and many of you requested that we post the responses to questions sooner after the call than we did last quarter. This quarter, we will take questions until Monday, November 12, and we'll post our responses by the end of the day, Friday, November 16. Now onto the quarter. Q3 was another solid quarter across the business, once again demonstrating how the consistent performance and cash flow generation of our Domains and Ting Mobile businesses are enabling us to invest in the Ting Internet footprint, setting up for our next phase of outside growth. Total revenue was $83.5 million, which was down marginally from $85 million in the same period of last year but in line with our expectations due to the bulk transfer of 2.7 million domain names, with essentially no gross margin associated with them. As you can see, with gross margin dollars increasing 18% in the same period. Net income for the quarter increased 55% to $5.3 million from $3.4 million, while adjusted EBITDA increased 27% to $11.9 million from $9.4 million. I'll now review the performance of the individual businesses. Our Domains business saw another quarter of consistent performance. In the wholesale channel, total registrations were approximately 3.8 million, which was essentially unchanged from Q3 of last year, net of the bulk transfer mentioned earlier. Importantly, we are seeing the positive impact of the price increase…

Davinder Singh

Analyst

Thanks, Elliot. Total revenue for the third quarter of 2018 was $83.5 million, which was down slightly from $85 million for the same period of last year, primarily due to the bulk transfer out of almost 2.7 million domains in Q1 of this year. These names accounted for approximately $6 million of revenue in Q3 of last year but had generated essentially no gross margin. Also of note in the third quarter of 2018, there was an additional bulk transfer domain names for approximately 240,000 names, resulting in a further acceleration of $1.7 million of no margin revenue. The company expects a similar size acceleration in the fourth quarter of 2018. Cost of revenues before network costs decreased 10% to $54.5 million from $60.4 million for the third quarter of last year, with the decrease due to lower revenue in Q3 of this year. Cost of revenue for network costs decreased 10% to $54.5 billion from $60.4 million for the third quarter last year with a decrease due to the lower revenue in Q3 of this year. Gross profit before network costs for Q3 increased 18% to $29.1 million from $24.6 million. As a percentage of revenue, gross margin before network costs expanded to 35% from 29% for Q3 last year. The year-over-year increase was primarily the result of growth in both Ting Mobile and Domain gross margin, included the negative impact in Q3 last year from the acquisition of the Enom business, the accounting of which required amortizing it into revenue, deferred revenue that was 1/4 a fair value at the acquisition. I'll now review gross margin for each of the Domain Services and Network Access areas. For Domain Services, gross margin for the third quarter increased 15% to $16.1 million from $14 million for the same period in…

Elliot Noss

Analyst

Thanks, Dave. When I provided our full year cash EBITDA guidance of $54 million in February, I noted that we expected to spend roughly $3.5 million investing in the Ting Internet business. In fact, that investment has been over $5.5 million. Despite that additional $2 million spend, I want to reiterate the $54 million number. The business has been resilient enough to be able to make that additional investment. In the domains section, I noted the solid progress we're making on the new domains platform. It has now moved from concepts and plans to something more tangible. So much so that for the first time since the launch of Ting Mobile, we are really looking at growth opportunities in additional services for domains. At this point, we have also realized about half of the additional synergies that we expected to realize from the Enom acquisition. We have expressly taken these savings and reinvested and redeployed into 2 areas; investing in our core technology infrastructure and investing in our data practice. A lot of this has taken the form of redeploying quality people from areas of redundancy or less than optimal use into areas that the company in more leveraged ways. At this point, I'm also ready to declare Ting Internet a business. It's no longer a test or an experiment. It is a working, thriving business. We have now seen at a city level business can turn cash flow positive in 18 to 20 months, and we'll be right around breakeven or start to contribute cash in its second year. But the third year, it's a business. And by the fourth, a solid business. We're at the point now where we can model things at a city level with some position and analyze returns as well as target where to…