Earnings Labs

XTI Aerospace, Inc. (XTIA)

Q4 2014 Earnings Call· Mon, Mar 9, 2015

$1.92

-4.96%

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Sysorex Global Holdings Corp. Earnings Conference Call, for the Year Ended December 31, 2014. All participants will be in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] After today’s presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. [Operator Instructions] Participants of this call are advised that the audio of this conference call is being broadcast live over the Internet and is also being recorded for playback purposes. A replay of the call will be available approximately one hour after the end of the call through April 6, 2015. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Scott Gordon, Managing Director of CorProminence and Company’s Investor Relations Firm. Please go ahead sir.

Scott Gordon

Analyst

Thank you, Jamie. And thank you all for joining today’s conference call to discuss Sysorex Global Holdings Corp’s corporate developments and financial results for the fiscal year and quarter ended December 31, 2014. With us today are Nadir Ali, the Company’s CEO and Wendy Loundermon, the Company’s Interim CFO. At 4 PM Eastern Time today, Sysorex released financial results for the year and quarter ended December 31, 2014. If you have not received Sysorex’s earnings release please visit the Investors page at www.sysorex.com. During the course of this conference call, the Company will be making forward-looking statements. We caution you that any statement that is not a statement of historical fact is a forward-looking statement. This includes any projections of earnings, revenues, cash or other statements relating to the Company’s future financial results, any statements about plans, strategies or objectives of management for future operations, any statements concerning to propose these products, any statements regarding expectations for the success of the Company’s products in the U.S. and international markets, any statements regarding future economic conditions or performance, statements of belief and any statement of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. These statements are based on expectations and assumptions as of the date of this conference call and are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. Some of these risks are described in the section of today’s press release, titled Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Statements and in the public periodic reports the Company files with the Securities and Exchange Commission, investors or potential investors should read these risks. Sysorex Global Holdings Corp. assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements to reflect future events or actual outcomes and does not intent to do so. In addition, to supplement the GAAP numbers we have provided non-GAAP adjusted net loss and net loss per share information in addition to non-GAAP adjusted EBITDA information. We believe that these non-GAAP numbers provide meaningful supplemental information and are helpful in assessing our historical and future performance. A table reconciling the GAAP information and the non-GAAP information is included in our financial release. I will now turn the call over to Nadir Ali, Sysorex’s CEO.

Nadir Ali

Analyst

Thank you, Scott and good afternoon everyone. Welcome to our 2014 earnings call and thank you for joining us. I am joined today by Wendy Loundermon, our Interim CFO. Wendy has been a strong member of the Sysorex management team since 2002 and has proven herself to be an excellent financial manager for our Company through all of our phases of growth. We are pleased to have Wendy’s experience, professionalism and continuity as we continue to execute on our strategy. As many of you may know Sysorex has experienced a major transformation over the past three years with some significant changes occurring in 2014. I want to use this time today to reflect on some key highlights from 2014, but also to provide some insights into the interesting opportunities we believe we are positioned for in 2015. I am proud of our team and our achievements in 2014. Our revenues increased from 51 million in 2013 to 63 million in 2014. We uplifted to NASDAQ and acquired AirPatrol Corporation. We were awarded two patents for the AirPatrol technology in 2014 and have more pending. We have made tremendous progress in integrating the culture, system and management structure of four separate companies into one. In addition we’ve been able to integrate and combine our product and services offerings to bring more value to our customers and differentiate us in the market. We accomplished things together that no one thought we could when we started this journey and we believe we have positioned ourselves to be a leader in the data analytics and location-based mobile solutions. In fact our strategy has positioned us well for the top-two interests of CIOs today, security and big data. We also believe that our unique products provide a perfect solution for the Internet of Things of…

Wendy Loundermon

Analyst

Thank you, Nadir. We are encouraged by our progress in 2014. We saw good revenue growth and solid margin expansion for the Company. Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2014 was 15 million, revenue for the year ended December 2014 was 63 million, an increase of approximately 25% over 2013. The increase is primarily due to the acquisitions we have completed and excludes approximately 1 million in sales from our IT commercial operating segment that was not recognized in the fourth quarter as a result of a shipment that was delayed until first week of 2015. Gross profit for the fourth quarter 2014 was 4 million, gross profit for the year ended December 2014 was 19 million compared to 12 million for the year ended December 2013. Fourth quarter 2014 gross margin was approximately 29%. Gross margin for the year ended December 2014 was approximately 30% bringing us within the guidance provided compared to approximately 24% for the year ended December 2013. The increase in gross margin is a result of our sales shifting to higher margin products from recent acquisitions and an increase in revenue from our data analytics and managed services in the IT Commercial Operating segment. GAAP net loss attributable to stockholders for the fourth quarter 2014 was 1.8 million. GAAP net loss attributable to stockholders for the year ended December 2014 was 7.5 million compared to 4.3 million for the year ended December 2013. GAAP net loss per share for the fourth quarter 2014 was $0.09 a share. GAAP net loss per share for the year ended December 2014 was $0.42, compared to a GAAP net loss per share of $0.35 per share for the year ended December 2013. The increase in net loss was primarily attributable to the AirPatrol acquisition, amortization of intangibles, stock-based compensation…

Nadir Ali

Analyst

Thank you, Wendy. While we have previously provided guidance regarding our anticipated future results of operations, variations in our revenue resulting from the timing of customer adoption of our products and services and other related matters increased the likelihood that our actual results could defer materially from expectations. Therefore we have determined not to provide guidance in the way that we have done in prior quarters. We continue to build our sales pipeline and remain enthusiastic as it relates to our prospects going forward. We have over 1,500 customers across the Company resulting from these acquisitions and we are reaching out to them about our combined offerings. We are in high growth markets like big data and IoT that have 30% CAGR rates and devices that are expected to grow from 7 billion to 50 billion over the next five years. Security is another high growth market that we address uniquely with our products. We’re also leveraging the salesforce of our very large established resellers and strategic partners. These are all indicators of Sysorex is headed and how fast we can grow. Our highest growing products and services in terms of percentage are AirPatrol and our big data analytics platform and managed services. These are what will drive our business going forward. So let’s take a look at how these products come together and some real customer use cases we are working on. Sysorex is providing solutions to customers who face massive amounts of potentially useful real world data and digital data that are at a loss of how they analyze and examine that data to make it useful. One of our key partners has engaged us with a customer that is looking to improve healthcare outcomes with location-based asset management. We are working on a pilot in which we…

Operator

Operator

At this time we have allotted 30 minutes to address questions from participants. [Operator Instructions] And our first question comes from Joe Maxa from Dougherty & Company. Please go ahead with your question.

Joe Maxa

Analyst

Nadir I just wanted to ask you a little more about the Lilien business, I see that it looks like you have had revenue fall off from the first half of the year in the last two quarters. And I am just wondering if that’s been a change in the previous product mix, and maybe give us a little more color on what you are seeing out there in the market near-term. I know you have talked about a lot of opportunities coming but I am just kind of curious how I should be thinking about that moving forward?

Nadir Ali

Analyst

Yes I mean we definitely have that order in Q3 we talked about where our project got cancelled but customer is still is doing business with us. But in Q4 it was really pretty close in line with what we saw in the first half of the year except that we had a million plus approximately of orders that in December shifted a few days later and so that revenue is not going away just being recognized in Q1 as opposed to Q4. And that would have put us closer in line with what we did in the first half of the year. But just generally the focus on the Lilien side of the business is really to grow our Data Analytics Platform business and our Managed Services business. The higher margin pieces which are more strategic to us and then combining that with the AirPatrol products and so that’s where we are focused but that also means that it’s SaaS-based revenue right, using a SaaS model and so you don’t necessarily capture all of that revenue upfront. So those are the trends that we are facing and that’s why I mentioned that earlier on the call, which it’s not just a Sysorex issue many licensing companies and restart companies are transitioning to SaaS models. So you will see necessarily the pickup on the top-line there in terms of percentage than you would normally see but if you are building a book of business you are building a backlog, and recurring revenue streams.

Joe Maxa

Analyst

So are you deemphasizing the previous more retailer nature of the business as you focus on the higher margin business?

Nadir Ali

Analyst

We are certainly yes emphasizing the higher margin business, we are not necessarily turning away the other business, but the trends are that as folks move to putting their data in the cloud and hosting application to the cloud that reseller business is not as high growth. And so we are going to see the growth on these other sides of the business and strategically that’s more important to us.

Joe Maxa

Analyst

So should we think about Lilien being more I am kind of thinking as top-line being maybe a flat year in 2015 yet but deferred revenues pick up, is that kind of a fair way to think of the business?

Nadir Ali

Analyst

Yes, and for me and I think our Board we are looking at are we seeing progress in growth in those segments right in the higher margin pieces and I think that’s a good way to measure it. But yes I mean if you want to generalize about the consolidated top-line for that segment, then that could be.

Joe Maxa

Analyst

And you would expect a higher gross margin of course.

Nadir Ali

Analyst

Right.

Joe Maxa

Analyst

Sampling along the AirPatrol line, I mean there is lot of projects where we’re not seeing all that come to the revenue side yet. Do you have a backlog or bookings number you could share just maybe show us some growth metrics you are seeing in that business?

Nadir Ali

Analyst

We don’t want to share bookings and pipeline numbers at this time. But what I can tell you is we’re definitely making good progress on that front. We’re having solid discussions with a variety of customers. Agreed, that some of these sales cycles are longer. We talked about the government sales cycles that impacted ’14 for the most part. Last year, the revenues that we expected were really government driven and some of those things have taken longer. ’15 we expect that to have less of an impact because we have built a strong pipeline of commercial customers. But again, this is a early stage technology, it’s a new technology that’s being adopted. We’re kind of at that hopefully reflection point that we’ll start seeing some of the change, and pick up in the revenue on that side. But again, it’s lumpy. And we may have an average quarter, followed by a great quarter, and then an average quarter. So, that’s why we’ve kind of moved away from providing guidance on that front. I think we’re going to see more and more traction there. We’re still very enthusiastic about everything that’s going on in that side. But it is something that takes longer. And partly because of that example I talked about earlier with the various stakeholders, some of these engagements that our AirPatrol team is involved in, the opportunities are expanding, which means there could be potentially more revenue but it also means a longer sales cycle because you now have to deal with multiple departments evaluating the product.

Joe Maxa

Analyst

So there were a number of large potential deals in the government sector in 2014 that didn’t materialize for you. Have those gone away, are they just being pushed off, and it could be another couple of years or what color can you just share there?

Nadir Ali

Analyst

No, they haven’t gone away. What I would say is those are issues around budget and sequestration and bureaucracy with government contracting. But we will definitely see some of those in 2015 some will get pushed into 2016. We at least have them budget through this fiscal year, come September-October we’ll see what happens with next year’s budget. But, we do certainly expect some of those deals to convert to orders this year and then some may get pushed out.

Operator

Operator

Our next question comes from Jason Revland from Blueprint Capital. Please go ahead with your question.

Jason Revland

Analyst · your question.

Two questions, the first is about just beacons in general and that’s just become a very fuzzy topic and everything I read about beacon suggests that retailers are positioning themselves for this tremendous multibillion dollar opportunity. What can you say about how AirPatrol can participate in burgeoning ecosystem, and how would you participate in that opportunity?

Nadir Ali

Analyst · your question.

Sure I mean in first we have also have a beacon product that we’re rolling out and it will be part of the InPlace. But the good news is that as Apple and some of these other companies that have beacons out there and people are starting to understand the technology it helps to educate the customers which is something that we could definitely benefit from in the retail segment. But we can provide a much more comprehensive solution then what most beacon providers can do today. And so I think while we can if somebody is price sensitive or has a limited application then certainly they can use the beacon product for fulfilling their needs. But using our AirPatrol centers we can provide them much more comprehensive information capturing much more data across their customer set, a larger majority of the customers and then to provide the analytics on top of that. So, I think it definitely is helping our adoption and education in the marketplace we welcome that. But we think we’ve got a much stronger product offering.

Jason Revland

Analyst · your question.

And as the follow-up to that, is there an opportunity for your technology which shift proprietary could that be delivered through a licensing arrangement as well as simply through the sale of your hardware?

Nadir Ali

Analyst · your question.

So we have various partners in retail verticals and other verticals and we’re exploring all sorts of arrangements that would make sense. So, as we’ve said before AirPatrol is leveraging the channel, leveraging strategic partners and we continue to explore those opportunities.

Jason Revland

Analyst · your question.

And my last question is a balance sheet related question. It was nice to see your cash position went up 500,000 in the quarter and I think you would repay a small amount of debt. Can you just give some general color on the working capital dynamic that took place during the quarter and how that might position you for the next six to 12 months?

Nadir Ali

Analyst · your question.

Sure I mean I think Q3 we had more of a impact because of the lower revenues so that impacted our cash flows. We’ve started to make improvement on the revenue side and we expect that to continue and improve our cash flow going forward. We also through the integration effort have more operating efficiencies. So I expect all of those things to continue to help improve that situation.

Jason Revland

Analyst · your question.

With respect to the operating efficiencies, does that meaning there might be a lower level of SG&A, just to be specific?

Nadir Ali

Analyst · your question.

I am sorry a lower?

Jason Revland

Analyst · your question.

Well when you say operating efficiencies are you referring to headcount or what specifically does, what does that mean operating efficiencies?

Nadir Ali

Analyst · your question.

Sure I mean to some degree it’s headcount, it’s when you combine four different companies into one and are creating efficiencies not only on headcount but also in infrastructure and professional services. Other areas we certainly again combining offices where it make sense to all of those things factor into that and some of that of course will be offset with growth in the areas that we need to add, right, whether it’s sales or engineering to deliver our new product lines and revisions there. So it’s a combination of things, but yes you are on the right track there.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Ross Silver from Vista Partners. Please go ahead with your question.

Ross Silver

Analyst · your question.

So just, you mentioned the 1,500 as a number of customers can you give us any kind of sort of what that is year-over-year that number. And then going forward how the sort of sales cycle works and how continued customer adoption may work and the way to look at it in terms of a percentage. Or I mean how should we look at that kind of going forward and what has that increased just over the last year?

Nadir Ali

Analyst · your question.

Sure yes I mean roughly it’s 1,500 customers, I would say we are engaged with 1,000 to 1,200 typically in a given year. And they come from across the company. But we have 50 plus sales reps and inside sales folks and then we have marketing folks that are focused on demand generation et cetera to really reach out and adopt or attract new customers. So whether it’s on the data analytic side of our house or the locationing products we are reaching out and providing all sorts of marketing activities to bring new customers. And I think the fact that we have got answers to as I mentioned the top two issues on CIOs mind in terms of security and data, we can get the doors opened and have those conversations. So we are seeing traction on not only bringing new customers but we are really going to focus on more and more of the cross-selling within this base of customers that we have across the company. So the InPlace product that we mentioned to collaboration of the old assume division or e-solutions division and the AirPatrol product line right and taking that to the 700 plus customers we have in that space. And similar efforts are going on with the other parts of our business.

Ross Silver

Analyst · your question.

And then just a follow-up question on the Jason’s question that you just kind of mentioned about the all the talk in the media of beacons and there is this trend of providing granularity for call it a department store as it relates to say a specific consumer and there is this trend towards getting that sort of micro information on that person right before you maybe were counting customers via security cameras someone sitting there with a clicker at the door. Where do you see this sort of the trend or this push towards gaining additional information and as much information as you can get from some of these customers that you are pitching. Is it something that they are very active in adopting or something they are sort of still considering just because there has been some adoption but it’s not fully proliferated amongst, where do you see this sort of within the cycles. Sort of the early stages starting to gain traction or just any from a macro level what would be your thought?

Nadir Ali

Analyst · your question.

I think it’s definitely starting to gain traction where we are hearing about more and more supermarkets, retailers, casinos et cetera that are looking at using beacons or other technology because they know that they are not really getting the full picture when they use cameras or other methods of trying to detect how many customers, there is no real good conversion units. If you think of online right you have got click through and impressions and easier ways to capture how effective those Web sites and ad campaigns are. In the real world it’s much harder and that’s why we are so well positioned for this because we can make that connection, we can capture much more of the customer base that’s walking through a Macy's or a Nordstrom’s or a supermarket and know exactly where they are what they are looking for within that environment. But it also ties into if they have a Macy’s app or the mall app or whatever it maybe, so that you have much more information about that customer’s profile and can, not send them and bombard them with things that are not relevant to them but get more accurate and relevant information at the time that they need it not when they’ve left that part of the store, right. Other folks that we compete with can’t get there because their locationing is not as accurate and their analytics side is not there to be able to connect all of this in real time and deliver quickly. So, that’s what we’re talking about putting together and making it much more useful for our customers.

Operator

Operator

And, ladies and gentlemen we’ve reached the end of today’s question-and-answer session. I’d like to turn the conference call back over for any closing remarks.

Nadir Ali

Analyst

Thank you, Jamie. I want to thank everyone again for your time today. We’re going to be presenting at the ROTH Conference next week in Laguna Niguel and then several others over the next couple of months. I hope to see you at one of these events. And we appreciate your time and interest in Sysorex. Thank you.

Operator

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude today’s conference call. We do thank you for attending. You may now disconnect your telephone lines.