Earnings Labs

Tucows Inc. (TCX)

Q3 2019 Earnings Call· Fri, Nov 8, 2019

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Transcript

Monica Webb

Operator

Welcome to Tucows' Third Quarter 2019 Management Commentary. We've pre-recorded prepared remarks, regarding the quarter and outlook for the Company. A transcript of these remarks is also available on the Company's website. In lieu of a live question-and-answer period following the prepared remarks, shareholders, analysts and prospective investors are invited to submit their questions to Tucows' management via email, at ir@tucows.com, until Tuesday, November 12. Management will address your questions directly or in a recorded audio response and transcript that will be posted to the Tucows website on Thursday November 21, at approximately 4:00 PM Eastern Time. We have extended the timeline to respond this quarter, due to the Company's Board of Directors offsite meeting. Last month, we rebranded Tucows to better reflect both our legacy in the technology space, and the core philosophy that guides our business, making the Internet better. A big part of that effort is a new website, including an enhanced Investors Section. We encourage you to take a look and provide feedback on ways we can continue to improve our online resources for investors. We would also like to advise that the updated Tucows’ quarterly KPI summary, which provides key metrics for all of our businesses by quarter, since Q1 2018, is now available in the Investors Section of the website, along with the updated Ting Build Scorecard. Now for management's prepared remarks. On Wednesday November 6th, Tucows issued a news release reporting its financial results for the third quarter ended September 30, 2019. That news release and the Company's financial statements are available on the Company's website at tucows.com, under the Investors section. Please note that the following discussion may include forward-looking statements, which, as such, are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause 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 Forms 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'd now like to turn the call over to Tucows' President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Elliot Noss.

Elliot Noss

Analyst

Thanks, Monica. I will begin our remarks with a review of the third 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. Now on to the quarter. The third quarter was highlighted by year-over-year growth in revenue, gross margin, and adjusted EBITDA. Total revenue increased 6% year-over-year to $88.1 million from $83.5 million for the third quarter last year, while gross margin dollars increased 17%, when correcting for the non-cash impact of the purchase price accounting treatment for the Ascio transaction. The as reported number was up 14%. Adjusted EBITDA increased to $14.8 million from a $11.9 million for Q3 of last year. Net income was $4.2 million, compared with $5.3 million in Q3 last year. Our Domains business continued to perform well in the third quarter. Once again demonstrating the consistency of the business and the success of our focus on managing this business for gross margin contribution and profitability. In our Wholesale channel, gross margin dollars were up 17% year-over-year. Within these results, both Domain Services' and Value Added Services' gross margins were also up 17%. For Domain Services, approximately 40% of the increase was generated by our legacy business, with an equal contribution from the pricing alignment implemented last year and from organic growth. The other 60% was generated by the recently acquired Ascio resellers. And again, the Ascio contribution was dampened by the accounting treatment mentioned on previous calls. Also worth noting, you will recall that GDPR became law in the EU in 2016 and we were required to become compliant by May of last year, which we did. While the contribution from Domain Privacy has held steady since then, we've recently started to see a gentle decline in this…

Dave Singh

Analyst

Thanks Elliot. Total revenue for the third quarter of 2019 was $88.1 million, an increase of 6% from $83.5 million for the third quarter of 2018. The increase was primarily driven by growth in the wholesale domains channel, the large bulk sale of domain names from our portfolio that Elliot discussed earlier, and the incremental contribution of the Ting Internet business. These were partially offset by lower revenue from Ting Mobile. Cost of revenues before network costs increased 1% from $55.8 million, from $55.1 million for the same period last year, with the slight increase due primarily to the higher year-over-year revenue. As a percentage of revenue however, cost of revenues before network costs decreased by 300 basis points to 63% from 66%. Gross margin before network costs for Q3 increased 14% to $32.4 million from $28.4 million or as a percentage of revenue, increased to 37% from 34% for the same period last year. I will now review gross margin for each of the domain services and network access businesses. Starting with Domain Services, gross margin for the third quarter increased 23% to $19.9 million from $16.1 million for Q3 of last year. As a percentage of revenue, gross margin for domain services for Q3 of this year, increased to 31% from 27% for Q3 last year. As a reminder, as a result of the purchase price accounting on the Ascio acquisition completed on March 18 of this year, overall Domain Services gross margin was negatively impacted by the amortization into revenue of the deferred revenue that was recorded a fair value at closing of the transaction. That had the impact of lowering overall Q3 gross margin for the Domains business by approximately $0.9 million, which brings the cumulative impact for the year to $1.9 million of the total…

Elliot Noss

Analyst

Thanks Dave. It is been a while, since I have reported any share repurchases. As a reminder, especially for any newer investors, we view share buybacks as an important tactical element of capital allocation. In February of this year, we once again renewed our open market buyback program, which has been in place for the last number of years, with the ability to purchase up to $40 million of our stock until February of 2020. As Dave just mentioned in his remarks, we repurchased roughly 102,000 shares, with a total spend of just under $5 million and an average price of $48.95 per share. We were quite pleased to be able to acquire shares at these levels. I'd also like to reiterate our previously provided guidance of $52 million in cash EBITDA for 2019. We're now deep into our planning for 2020, this is always a time for reviewing the year that was and preparing for the year that will be. This cycle, I'm particularly struck by the amount of long-term work that we are engaged in. This work touches every corner of the business, we've talked about the domains platform and the two decades of technical debt we've been digging out of, which was not made easier by throwing an additional acquisition on the pile. 2017 was about digesting, 2018 was about planning and getting started. In 2019, we built the foundational pieces and in 2020 we start to operationalize those pieces. We're also finishing up the building of the data center in Colorado, which has fundamentally changed our whole data center strategy. And, importantly, we've taken the work we are doing on the domains platform and generalized large pieces of it to allow us to modernize billing and provisioning for both mobile and Internet. And we're doing all of this while growing the investment in fiber operating expenses necessary to build an organization that can take advantage of the massive, long-term opportunity in fiber-to-the-home in the United States. It has always been the case that our shareholders have appreciated our focus on long-term cash flows, not GAAP accounting and quarterly profits. They have appreciated our willingness to be bold, when pursuing long-term opportunities. They've appreciated our attention to lean operations and they have appreciated our approach to capital allocation. So why am I sharing this? Because our shareholders have also appreciated knowing what we were thinking about. And what was important to us, and in this planning cycle, where we're in the later stages of a big body of generational work, this is what is consuming us. We consider ourselves quite fortunate to be able to continue to generate solid returns, while still making these investments and look forward to sharing in the benefits together with our shareholders. And with that, I look forward to your written questions and exploring areas that interest you in greater detail. Again, please send your questions to ir@tucows.com. Thank you.

Q -

Analyst