Earnings Labs

Tucows Inc. (TCX)

Q4 2018 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 13, 2019

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Welcome to Tucows Fourth Quarter 2018 Investor Call. Management has pre-recorded its prepared remarks regarding the quarter and outlook for the company. In lieu of a live question-and-answer period following the prepared remarks, shareholders and analysts are invited to submit their questions to Tucows' management via email at ir@tucows.com. Management will then post a recorded audio response to questions, as well as a transcription to the Tucows website on Tuesday, February 26, at approximately 4 PM Eastern Time. Now on to management's prepared remarks, on Wednesday, February 13, Tucows issued a news release reporting its financial results for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2018. That news release, along with the company's financial statements, 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 a review of the quarter. Dave Singh, our Chief Financial Officer, will then review the fourth quarter financial results in detail, and I'll return for some concluding comments. We are now into our third quarter with the new pre-recorded conference call format. If you have questions coming out of the call, please e-mail them to ir@tucows.com. We will be addressing your questions either directly or in a recorded call that will be posted February 26 at 4 PM. We would also like to direct you to a new document we've made available to investors, the Tucows quarterly KPI Summary, which provides key metrics for all of our businesses by quarter for 2017 and 2018. It's available on the Investors section of the Tucows website. Now onto the quarter, the fourth quarter, once again, saw solid consistent performance across the business. Total revenue was $86.6 million [later corrected to $85.6 million by the company to align with published results] compared with $90.6 million for Q4 last year. Excluding one-time events, revenue grew 2% compared to Q4 2017. Gross margin dollars increased 8%. Net income was $4.4 million, which was down 60% from Q4 2017. However, I will note that Q4 2017 did benefit by almost $6 million due to the implementation of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Adjusted EBITDA for Q4 2018 increased 9% to $16.6 million. The quarter capped off another record year in terms of revenue, gross margin, adjusted EBITDA and cash flow from operations, with the exception being net income with again 2017 net income being outsized as a result of the positive impact of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. 2018 revenues increased 5% from the prior year to $346 million. Gross margin increased 16%. Net…

Davinder Singh

Analyst

Thanks, Elliot. Total revenue for the fourth quarter of 2018 was $85.6 million, which was down from $90.6 million for Q4 of last year with the decline primarily due to the bulk transfer out of approximately 2.8 million domain names throughout 2018, the bulk of which occurred in Q1 of this year. These names accounted for approximately $7 million of revenue in Q4 of last year that generated essentially no gross margin. Excluding these names, revenue for the fourth quarter increased year-over-year by 2%. Cost of revenues before network costs decreased 13% to $53.5 million from $61.1 million for the fourth quarter of last year with the decrease due to the decline in revenue in Q4 of this year. I will note that as a percentage of revenue, cost of revenues before network costs decreased nearly 500 basis points to 62% from 67%. Gross profit before network costs for Q4 increased 8% to $32.1 million from $29.5 million. As a percentage of revenue, gross margin before network costs expanded to 37% from 33% for Q4 2017 and notably 34% for Q3 of 2018. The year-over-year increase was primarily the result of growth in both Network Access and Domains gross margin, including the negative impact in Q4 last year from the acquisition of the eNom business, the accounting of which required amortizing into revenue, deferred revenue that was recorded at 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 fourth quarter increased 10% to $19.6 million from $17.8 million for Q4 of the prior year. As a percentage of revenue, gross margin for Domain Services for Q4 of this year increased to 22% from 20%. The increase on both an absolute dollar and…

Elliot Noss

Analyst

Thanks, Dave. For 2019, we are providing guidance of $62 million in cash EBITDA and CapEx in the $52 million range. This number compares to roughly $54 million in cash EBITDA for 2018, or roughly 15% EBITDA growth. The CapEx number breaks out into three components, roughly $35 million in fiber CapEx, roughly $13 million in datacenter CapEx and roughly $4 million in regular CapEx. The fiber CapEx will be increasing from $25 million to $35 million. The $10 million increase should be the number that those modeling at home pay the most attention too. If I were modeling this business from the outside, increase in CapEx on an absolute dollar basis, not a percentage increase would be the way that I would model. In a way, that is what I do. The number is absolute because these are construction projects with very real human inputs and are simply not a variable that scales in the way that we are used to Internet businesses scaling. Now more detail on the data center CapEx. In every Ting Internet city, we require a secure space to house our network electronics and as a termination point for our local fiber network. We plan to either own these facilities or lease them directly from a municipal partner as there is too much long-term risk in renting typical commercial space. We also need this type of facility in the rest of our businesses. We need this type of facility for our TV head-ends. We have significant datacenter financial commitments coming due in from the eNom deal. Once you build a small footprint, the incremental space is relatively inexpensive. Accordingly, we have made the strategic decision to aggregate our datacenter requirements in facilities that we will mostly own. We believe this provides significant long-term cost savings.…