Randy Fields
Analyst · Loop Capital. Your line is open
Thanks, John. I recognize that it might be counterintuitive for a CEO to be excited about announcing results when the high-level view shows declining year-over-year revenues for the quarter, but that's exactly what I'm going to do on today's call, frankly for good reason. Our calculated and deliberate efforts to reduce onetime revenue to move our business into a more predictable and profitable recurring revenue-driven model is taking hold. In the quarter, one-time revenue other than MarketPlace was negligible and recurring revenue is growing. The worst year-over-year comparisons of this transition are now behind us and it demonstrates three important facts. First, we have the financial ability and strength to lean more heavily on recurring rather than one-time revenue. It's right for the business and it's right now. Second, it supports our confidence in MarketPlace. And finally, it's based on adding some highly proprietary capabilities to our supply chain applications that should allow us to increase recurring revenue more rapidly. In my view, profitable growth is still something largely overlooked these days. The startups and emerging high-tech companies of all sizes have embraced to grow it at any cost mentality. In contrast, I believe that cash is still king. A strong balance sheet is critical, particularly true on our case as our customers require it. Our balance sheet screams that we'll be here for the long-term. Our balance sheet and deep customer network serves as a very wide moat around our business, a durable barrier of entry for startups or outsiders who might seek to displace this. It's because we have the financial structure that we do that underpins our ability to drive our business toward much higher recurring revenue in the core part of our business. This shift will not take years. We're moving quickly on both forgoing onetime revenue and accelerating recurring revenue. So by year-end, the mission will largely be under our belts. While we continue to strengthen our balance sheet, we're also focused on growing our network of blue-chip customers. Each of the three suites of our platform, are now attracting net new participants. And as John shared, we're meticulously focused on growing recurring revenue excluding MarketPlace transactions and further penetrating our existing customer base. We've said that, cross-selling to our existing customer base, has the potential to double if not triple the size of our business. Let me speak to the key performance indicators which will contribute to the financial performance of our company in the future. First, network scale, as of September 30th, we had about 340,000 total connections. That's up, 13% from last year's same time. Tier 2 connections, is an area of focus for us on a critical basis. And I will share more about that shortly is growing very, very rapidly. Recurring revenue doesn't conveniently begin the first day of every quarter. As I've said, new customers every month come in. And we're seeing a rapid acceleration of our month over last year's same month revenue. For example, on an as-reported basis, our Tier 2 revenue increased 8% year-over-year for the whole quarter. But we exited the quarter on a run rate that was 35%, higher than the run rate at the same point last year. Over the next few years as we continue to drive the scale of our network, we can see our way quite quickly to 500,000 total connections and then on to one million. Important to keep in mind, that the real mission of the business is to scale the network until we touch and connect everyone in the supply chain of the U.S. food world and replicate that bundle outside the U.S. As you know the economic value of each connection varies as a function of the service offered, from a few hundred dollars per year to many thousands per year, per connection. This also may help explain to you why the financial results, in any given quarter very much depends on what type of connections we focused on for that particular quarter. The growth and the scale of our network has obviously been the driver of our profitability and as generated the cash flow, that we needed to build out the full platform. Our build-out has been sequential, so as to reduce the dependency on outside capital. And it's obvious and inevitable pollution. We're financing each stage of the platform with cash generated from the previous components and simultaneously, improving our balance sheet to keep our customers secure. Our next focus is to leverage this loyal network and expand our relationships with existing customers. In other words, increase the scope of our offerings. Harvesting our existing customer base represents an additional 8-figure opportunity for us and is a primary focus. As we've said many times, our customers have only so much time and energy, at any given moment. Our deployments take time. Our retailers move slowly. And we can't simultaneously sell two different offerings, to the same customer. Once a customer has fully embraced an application, we can go back for more. This ability to grow revenue much faster than cost is a key leverage point in our business model. During the quarter we made very significant operational progress in each of the three components of our platform. So let me speak to each of them. Compliance, we're methodically executing on our Tier 2 initiative and we're winning. As we said from the beginning of our compliance management initiative years ago, our goal is to connect all of the entities in the global food supply chain. To do that, we must drive deeper and deeper from retailers and their suppliers, to the suppliers of the suppliers then to the suppliers of the suppliers', suppliers and so forth, is exactly where we're headed. During the fiscal first quarter we on boarded 20-plus Tier 2 hubs on the ReposiTrak platform. By comparison, a year ago we had only 25 total Tier 2s. We ended the September quarter with a total of 71 of those kinds of hubs. Our marketing initiatives are clearly working. And we're on track to reach 200 Tier 2 hubs by the end of this fiscal year. And oh! By the way, that represents a 400% increase. From network perspective, in just this year we could add nearly 15,000 more customers to our current network of 23,000 customers. That would represent a 65% increase in the single year. Please keep in mind, that each of those new suppliers itself becomes an up sell candidate. Most recently, we're actually able to raise prices in our Tier 2 initiative with no customer pushback or hesitation. The opportunities amends, the task of signing them all was sure as hell daunting. But we want them all. Equally as important, during the first quarter we signed our first ReposiTrak compliance hub in the United Kingdom. It's a very important win, as this is one of the largest wholesalers in Britain. And over time it will generate more incremental recurring revenue, expand our addressable market, and lead us to additional opportunities as the next year unfolds. This win interestingly was based on intense reference checking. And our sterling reputation no pun intended, cemented the win. MarketPlace, as we've said before MarketPlace is potentially the most significant product launch in the company's history, because of its ability to increase the scope of our engagement across the scale of our network, without commensurate increased touch. During the first fiscal quarter, we added two new buyers, not previously customers of any of our applications to the MarketPlace network, a wholesaler and a large drug chain. In fact the wholesaler came to us from a retailer, who had worked with us. And they had in turn been trying to solve a sourcing problem that they were having. Good news is it means the word is spreading. Our pipeline of new buyers and new opportunities with MarketPlace continues to expand, interest and it remains very, very high. We hope to add, a few more buyers and several new programs, over the balance of the year. We're feeling better and better, about MarketPlace. Supply chain. In supply chain, we continue to see industry dynamics driving dramatically higher interest in our applications, especially for our out-of-stock management capability. We continue to believe supply chain, could be the standout performer in our fiscal 2020 year. While each add in our compliance business is relatively small financially, each add in our supply chain business has much more impact. In fact if you want to think about it, it's actually an order of magnitude larger in terms of revenue. As online competitors like Amazon expand home delivery, out-of-stocks have taken on critical importance for food retailers, and their lost sales. More importantly, it's not just the lost sale it's the customer loyalty that's being eroded, when a product isn't in stock. Historically, retailers have had no easy way to address this. And availability has become the most important consideration to-date, not price. Consumers don't care as much about saving $0.02 on an item. They probably don't even notice. But they certainly notice if they drive to a store hunt for an item. And discover it's out of stock. Many retailers are now beginning to recognize the magnitude of this challenge, as customers come in to their store, don't find what they need, pull out their phones, see it's in stock on Amazon. And decide to go home and shop from their couch instead. We believe that out-of-stocks are potentially an existential threat, to the retail food industry. Our ReposiTrak out-of-stock management capability is based on many, many years of research, terabytes of historical data and proprietary algorithms that we've built. At this point, all I can say is, we're uniquely good at this. Our effectiveness at reducing out-of-stocks exceeds, even my own expectations. We're seeing about 80% of the suppliers getting significant reductions, 40% in less than three months of use. Over time, this will help us expand our footprint substantially, within our existing customers. And importantly, the service is only available as a service not on a license basis. And it should assist us therefore, in growing our recurring revenue and avoiding cannibalization, by licensing in our supply chain activity, to double win, growing our existing customers and at the same time, attracting new ones. In fact, we've added a number of additional salespeople over the last few months to capitalize on these opportunities. So from a summary perspective, we're unique in our ability to help the buyers source that and transact efficiently, with a new supplier. We have multiple moats around the business that led us to build out the scale and scope of our network. And we're doing this in what we think, is a very strategic and deliberate manner that allows us to maximize each component, while simultaneously generating exceptional profits and cash flow. To judge our progress in fiscal 2020, I would have you look for the following. The overall goal is to nurture this acceleration that we're seeing in recurring revenue, so that by year's end, total revenue except for MarketPlace, will increasingly be driven by this growing predictable revenue stream. We believe importantly, that by shifting to more recurring revenue, we make Wall Street's ability to forecast our progress much, much easier. A question could be asked, how will we grow both compliance and supply chain recurring revenue? Well, let me reiterate. First, we're going to execute on our Tier 2 initiative to drive the compliance recurring revenue. In fiscal 2020, we have a goal to increase the number of Tier 2 hubs as I mentioned by 400% to a total of nearly 200 by year-end and we are on track to do that. Second, we're going to drive our out-of-stock management program to rapidly grow our supply chain recurring revenue business. That will be done by expanding our footprint with our current customers. And in most cases, we could double our revenue with them over time. Our supply chain business by year-end should be accelerating dramatically based on our out-of-stock management ability and our new sales staff. And finally, we will grow our recurring revenue as a percentage of total revenue. We'll continue to grow our bottom line and cash-generation capabilities. As we said, in fiscal 2019 the percent of recurring revenues increased to 70% from the mid-60s in the prior year and our goal in the next few years is to drive that consistently in the '80s. We achieved this goal in the first quarter. Now we have to keep it there. Profitability is strengthened in our balance sheet, which is a critical concern for our customers and it's enabling us to continue to buy back shares without additional borrowing or impairing our growing cash balance. Very soon, we'll be in a place where the need to increase the cash balance will diminish. To the strategic and deliberate execution of our strategy, we will expand both the scope and the scale of our network. Our customers will see what we're doing for them that will enable us to reaccelerate our revenue growth all the while generating growing profitability, cash flow and cash. In turn, we expect that this should help to increase shareholder value. To be clear, while we're acutely focused on our earnings power and cash generation we still expect fiscal 2020 to be a year of top line growth. With that, let's open it up for questions. Operator?