Earnings Labs

ReposiTrak, Inc. (TRAK)

Q4 2017 Earnings Call· Wed, Sep 13, 2017

$8.96

+3.23%

Key Takeaways · AI generated
AI summary not yet generated for this transcript. Generation in progress for older transcripts; check back soon, or browse the full transcript below.

Same-Day

-8.20%

1 Week

-5.47%

1 Month

-5.86%

vs S&P

-7.77%

Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good day and welcome to the Park City Group Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year-End Conference Call. Today’s conference is being recorded. At this time, I’d like to turn the conference over to Dave Mossberg, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, sir.

Dave Mossberg

Investor Relations

Thank you, Melissa. Before we begin, we will be referring to today’s earnings release, which can be downloaded from the Investor Relations page on the company’s website at parkcitygroup.com. I also want to remind everyone that this call could contain forward-looking statements about Park City Group within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements are statements that are not subject to historical facts. Such forward-looking statements are based upon the current beliefs and expectations of Park City Group’s management and are subject to risks and uncertainties which could cause actual results to differ from the forward-looking statements. Such risks are more fully discussed in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The information set forth herein should be considered in light of such risks. Park City Group does not assume any obligation to update the information contained in this conference call. Throughout this call we may be referring to both GAAP and non-GAAP financial results, including free cash flow, EBITDA, adjusted EBITDA, net debt, net income and earnings per share which are non-GAAP terms. We believe these non-GAAP terms are useful financial measure for our company primarily because of the significant non-cash charges in our operating statements. The reconciliation of non-GAAP results in earnings release and on the Investor Relations section of our website. Our speakers today will be Mr. Randy Fields, Park City Group’s CEO and Chairman; and Todd Mitchell, Park City Group’s CFO. With that, I’ll turn the call over to Todd?

Todd Mitchell

Management

Thank you, Dave, and good afternoon, everybody. We put up a record quarter in terms of total revenue and revenue growth. This capped off a great year that just got stronger and stronger. Results continued to be driven by growth from ReposiTrak. We signed three more Tier 1 retailer hubs in the fourth quarter and continued to see strong momentum in adding Tier 2 supplier hubs. As a result, we ended fiscal 2017 with nearly twice as many ReposiTrak hubs and supplier connections as we had at the end of fiscal 2016. The sense of urgency among industry participants has steadily risen. Food safety compliance is now one of the most critical issues on industry executive minds and they are coming to us. We are growing as fast as we can, while maintaining our high-level of commitment to our customers’ success. Our customers’ success is the bedrock of our company, because if our customers are successful and they feel in relationship with us, then they’ll want to buy more from us and they will refer us to others. I want to make some clarifying comments about our product offerings. ReposiTrak is our compliance management platform. We believe ReposiTrak is at an inflection point this year with regards to market acceptance as the industry’s standard compliance management platform. And I want to be clear, that’s what we’re referring to when we make that assertion. We believe there are certain attributes that every buyer needs to know about every supplier in the U.S. food and consumer products supply chain. ReposiTrak enables a retailer, wholesaler or product supplier to know that every one of its suppliers is compliant with any attribute. It determines to be important, whether they be the obvious regulatory attributes, such as a clean food safety audit, or proof of…

Randy Fields

Management

Todd, thank you. Dave, thank you. Once again, Dave asked me not to mention the fact that I will be reading these notes, and he’s now smiling. Okay, here we go. I’ll do this relatively quickly, so we can get a few questions at the end. Yes, it was an extraordinary year. Financial results were strong, but importantly the scale and scope of our network is growing at a terrific rate. And I would say at this point, we all feel as if we have a very clear vision going forward. On a more basic level, 2017 was a year of frankly incredible execution. We talk about execution all the time and I suspect through my comments and I know you just heard it from Todd. We’re in the execution business, why? Well, superior execution makes our customers successful, that’s the focus. Customer success makes them want to buy more from us and customer success is why in fact we now have a greater than 90% customer retention rate. Interestingly, those numbers have actually trended up with the addition of ReposiTrak. So superior execution is really the key for us in terms of our top line growth. But nearly as importantly, execution is important to the operating leverage that we want and desire, because if we execute well and we drive customer success then they will refer others to us. As we’ve always said, at least in this industry, the retail food industry, you start slowly with a few leaders. You execute well for them to drive their customer success and they begin to send others to you. That’s why we’ve been saying for the last several years that the growth rate of the company was limited by our execution ability, and we frankly still believe that. If referrals from…

Dave Mossberg

Investor Relations

Melissa, can you give instructions on how to poll up for questions.

Operator

Operator

Certainly. [Operator Instructions] And our first question will come from Ananda Baruah from Loop Capital.

Ananda Baruah

Analyst · Loop Capital

Hey, guys, thanks for taking the question. Hey congrats on a solid year, finished your strong year and a solid quarter here. A few, if I could, just with regards to ReposiTrak, this is really an ASP question. Given the acceleration of Tier 1 connections, and Randy you spoke of your layering in Tier 2, and I think you actually used the word that they’ve begun to accelerate although I don’t want to sort of misstate the - sort of really the tone of the message. How were ReposiTrak ASPs in the June quarter relative to the March quarter? And I guess, specifically, I’m wondering if they bottomed here. And then how should we think about blended ASPs as we go through 2018, given it sounds like you expect Tier 2 to become a bigger part of the mix? And I have a couple of follow-ups. Thanks.

Randy Fields

Management

Great question, Ananda, it’s even a difficult one internally. Rather than give a specific answer, let me identify the forces and there’s several forces. There is a one force, which is to maintain the current ASP, which is the large hubs that we do business with are all at in essence in MSRP. So they have all the same price, so if that’s all we did, the ASP would be the same. Well, on the other hand, we’re also introducing these other applications, products, et cetera, which tends to increase the ASP. Having said that, we also charged less to Tier 2, so the greater the percentage of Tier 2s going forward, the greater the downward pressure. So the truth is three different forces, one trying to keep it the same and you can argue that, because the base is becoming larger and larger. The largest of those three forces is the force that says the ASP will be stable. And then what we suspect happens in the long-term is, as we move down, no pun intended the food chain. The pressure to bring down that ASP, which will be Tier 2s that because they’re smaller. What then happens is, there is downward pressure, but we suspect that will at least be offset by customers taking up our other offerings, which increases the ASP. I know that’s confusing. But probably from where we are, we see most of the force to stay the same, some force to push it down and some force to push it up. Todd, do you agree?

Todd Mitchell

Management

I would agree, and I don’t think we really saw any change in trends in third quarter versus fourth quarter.

Ananda Baruah

Analyst · Loop Capital

Okay.

Todd Mitchell

Management

The bulk of the business is still Tier 1 and the pricing on Tier 1 is still pretty stable. I think that dynamic pretty much continues through most of next year. I mean, that’s where the bulk of the revenue is going to be coming from. And frankly, from where we sit, we can’t really say where the countervailing forces of more Tier 2s versus upsell into Vendor Portal on the Tier 1s, will take next year’s ASP. As Randy highlighted, we think Tier 2s really become more material in fiscal 2019.

Ananda Baruah

Analyst · Loop Capital

Right, right.

Todd Mitchell

Management

And hopefully by that point, we have deeper penetration of Vendor Portal to offset when those numbers, in isolation, would be to help with downward pressure on ASPs.

Ananda Baruah

Analyst · Loop Capital

Okay great. That’s really helpful, guys. And then the second one is just with regard to the success team, could you just sort of framework for us kind of where you are in the process of what it is that you’re looking to accomplish? And I know this is always a moving target. But you clearly have a strategy with how you want to kind of construct the sales, like the selling mechanism for the next meaningful stage of the company. And so, however, that - however, you guys think about that if you could just sort of, you kind of fill in that mental roadmap for us to give us some sense of what it is you’re shooting again? And not necessarily numerical targets because it could be sort of subjective stuff that you’re using and you talked about building a culture, maybe some of the things that underpin that, some of the metrics and the milestone that you want to have in place to really be able to go and scale the business? And I have one more, thanks.

Randy Fields

Management

Yes, that - of the things we’re working on, that is the one. My life experience before this in Mrs. Field Cookies was that the best way to supervise people is with a culture, not with managers. Meaning that most of the time people are unsupervised, you cannot hear every word every person says to a customer. So the question is, how do you get people to care about the customer and deliver the kind of message that you would like to be delivered. So we’re highly focused on getting people inside this business and the success team that care about customers. And interestingly, many of them are younger. And what’s begun to happen and I think this is pretty peculiar, but I think an indication of our success at it. Virtually all of the recruits that we’ve had in the last six months into the success team have come from the success team. They are bringing people that they know in and therefore our turnover is extraordinarily low. And more importantly, people in essence are saying to friends and people that they know, you’ll like working here, this is a good place to work. So that we get people who care, because my - again, my life experiences, I can teach you almost anything, I cannot teach you to care. You have to find people that care about a customer that they feel personally connected, and I can give you some interesting vignette, in fact, I’ll give you one. So I think it sounds - it’s appropriate. The other day I was talking to the group about things that were meaningful. And in the middle of my talk, so imagine, here’s the CEO of the company talking to the newest group of recruits. And in the middle of that,…

Ananda Baruah

Analyst · Loop Capital

It is. That - that’s helpful and actually dovetails into my third question, guys. And so look, this is going to be the annoying analyst question of my trio of question, but I’ll ask it anyway, because you finished. You put up 35% revenue growth for the quarter. Clearly, you talked about how Tier 1 - if Tier 1 connections are up too actually year-over-year. You talked about, you gave some color being up again next year, you’re sort of scaling it to Tier 2, and Todd, you would talk the Vendor Portal also starting to layer. And so my question is, why not remove the low end of the guide or raise the low end of the guide, the 25%? And then the part B is, look, I think we all fully appreciate not allowing the guide to get ahead of itself. So I won’t ask why not raise it, but what would be the sorts of things that would allow you to kind of tease up the 35% high end of the guidance next year? Thanks.

Randy Fields

Management

I want that question. First of all, what we said is, for the next three to five years, that’s the range that we expect. It’s not year-to-year. So rather than every year give you a different guidance number, I really think that’s a sustainable long-term growth rate for us in that bracket 25% to 35%. And if the question is and I just need to be very cautious here. What kind of factors take us to the high end versus the low end? We’ve taken a lot on our plate this year between Vendor Portal, MarketPlace, et cetera. And to a certain extent, we just don’t know. So we’ve got a pipeline that we think keeps us well in that range. We know our ability to execute. And what you don’t want to do with a company that has this much potential is to stretch it too thinly, because then of course you run the risk that none of the good stuff you want to happen, happens. So, I think people at the midpoint of that range are closer than anybody at either end, it doesn’t really matter. So that’s not additional guidance. Some years in the next five are going to be 25%, some years in the next five are going to be 35%, and I also said, when we put this out there last year, it’s possible depending on those three forces that we talked about. If the force that pushes our ASP up is stronger than the force that pushes it down then that growth rate can move to the higher end of the range we might have a couple of years outside the range. But it’s really a function of the number of new customers we take on and our ability to bring people inside the culture who can take care of those customers, that’s the constraint. So we’re not being coy, we’re being straight, and it’s not easy to give you a narrower range.

Ananda Baruah

Analyst · Loop Capital

Okay, got it. That’s helpful. The context is good. I really appreciate. I’ll cede the floor now. Thanks a lot of guys. Good luck and congrats.

Todd Mitchell

Management

Thank you.

Randy Fields

Management

Thank you, Ananda.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] And our next question will come from Joe Feller with ATW Company.

Joe Feller

Analyst · ATW Company

Hello, Randy, how are you doing?

Randy Fields

Management

Hi, Joe, how are you?

Joe Feller

Analyst · ATW Company

I’m pretty good, pretty good. How are you, Randy?

Randy Fields

Management

Excellent, thank you.

Joe Feller

Analyst · ATW Company

Al right. Well, I have two questions. Two of the - according to your own thing from last year, two of the five biggest retailers are not doing business with you guys. And now with the buyout of Whole Foods, there will be three of the five, I expect, because I don’t believe you guys have done business with either of the partners in that buyout. How do you guys hope to deal with that? And how do you hope to deal with blockchain?

Randy Fields

Management

Okay, good. is that the one question, or is that two questions, Joe?

Joe Feller

Analyst · ATW Company

Let’s say, it’s one question. How do you plan on dealing with blockchain?

Randy Fields

Management

We’re not going to deal with blockchain, it’s a non-event. Remember, I don’t want to be too techie here. Blockchain is a way of storing information. There’s nothing interesting or intriguing about it except this presumed security, that’s the presumed idea. The way people are thinking of using blockchain is for tracking and tracing, that’s not our business. It’s our capability. It’s just that we don’t get any revenue from it. And as Todd mentioned, we see very little market interest. Blockchain underneath has a real problem, as do - anybody who has an RFID tag, or any tracking and tracing mechanism. All mechanisms required, they be put on a cart. So it doesn’t matter, whether it’s an RFID tag or a label. Blockchain has to get the information from somewhere. It’s just a database. It’s a distributed database is the way to think about it. So somebody has to scan the information in, that requires a physical device and human labor. And the problem with that is, I can just assure you, because people have been trying this now for, I don’t know, 10 years. They can’t get it cheap enough at the labor level to do it. So the top 50 CPG companies, consumer packaged goods potentially could afford to do something like that. And so the top 50 CPG companies with a few retailers might do something around tracking and tracing their good. But the reality is, people don’t die from Kraft macaroni and cheese, that’s not our - that’s not the risk profile out there. The risk profile is the smaller vendors. So it’s the cost of creating the label, scanning the label at every single stop, that’s the impediment. When people want to do tracking and tracing, we believe what they’ll want to do is…

Joe Feller

Analyst · ATW Company

Well, then my next question is, with the buyout of Whole Foods, don’t you think those guys are going to be in the top five? I mean, from everything I’ve seen, the purchaser not to name names has always ended up in the top five of whatever genre they end up being in?

Randy Fields

Management

Yes, I think, let me go back to what I think is fundamental. There are hundreds and hundreds of supermarket chains from a few stores to thousands of stores. Strangely enough, they all have a comparable number of vendors. So if you’re a chain of 10, you still have a 1,000 to 1,500 vendors on your shelves. And if you’re a Whole Foods, you have a 1,000 to 1,500 vendors. So in our business model, it really doesn’t matter to us whether it’s a large chain or a small chain. And honestly, sometimes easier to get the smaller guys to do business with you than the larger guys. But we do have three of the five and frankly it doesn’t make any difference to me if it’s three of the six or whatever it would be. We’re certainly pleased with where we are. We do not have to get everybody. We’ve never thought we would get everybody in the retail world to do business with us, but we’re getting more than our fair share at this point. So…

Joe Feller

Analyst · ATW Company

Fair enough. Thanks, Randy

Randy Fields

Management

Oh, you bet, Joe. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

And that does conclude our question-and-answer session for today. I’d like to turn it back over to our speakers for any additional or closing remarks.

Dave Mossberg

Investor Relations

Okay. Thank you, everyone. This is Dave Mossberg. Our phone number is on the press release. If you have follow-up questions, we are available for those, and look forward to you, our next call, which will be in…

Randy Fields

Management

The 9th of November.

Dave Mossberg

Investor Relations

9th, around the 9th of November.

Randy Fields

Management

Around the 9th.

Dave Mossberg

Investor Relations

Okay. Take care.

Operator

Operator

That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for your participation.