Pivotree Inc

XTSX:PVT

Earnings Call Analysis

Earnings Call Transcript 2024-Q2

[Dennis Fong]

Welcome to Pivotree Inc.'s Second Quarter 2024 Earnings Call. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, Pivotree would like to remind listeners that certain information discussed today may be forward-looking in nature. Such forward-looking information reflects the company's current views with respect to future events. Any such information is subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements.

For more information on the risks, uncertainties and assumptions related to forward-looking statements, please refer to Pivotree's public filings, which are available on SEDAR. During the call, we will reference certain non-IFRS financial measures. Although we believe these measures provide useful supplemental information about our financial performance, they're not recognized measures who do not have standardized meanings under IFRS. Please see our MD&A for additional information regarding our non-IFRS financial measures, including for reconciliations to the nearest IFRS measures.

Now I'd like to turn the call over to Pivotree CEO, Bill Di Nardo.

[William Di Nardo, executive]

Thank you, Dennis. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for joining us on our second quarter 2024 conference call. With me today is Mo Ashoor, our Chief Financial Officer. As we do normally each quarter, we've published a CEO letter in conjunction with the earnings results, and that's available on our website and filed on SEDAR, and I'll be covering some of that material today.

2022 and '23 thus far, have been periods of significant transformation across the business. I'm pleased to say that we delivered our seventh consecutive quarter of positive adjusted EBITDA, while continuing to invest in our Managed & IP Solutions that we call MIPS for short. We've seen positive indications in MIPS, where revenue is up 56% and bookings were up 19% on a rolling 4-quarter basis. And while we continue to be awarded POCs, it's from a healthy pipeline of opportunities.

We're spending more time with customers. I am getting out more frequently, especially this quarter and reaffirm the opportunity that we have to help them simplify their digital environments, reduce operating costs and positioned to leverage the latest AI and ML technologies going forward.

The team delivered a company high of $10.1 million of total managed service bookings, and this was largely driven by large multiyear renewals in the Legacy Managed Service category. So that's the LMS. That was up 309% year-over-year. Now I think it's important to note that looks terrific, and these renewals offer great visibility to future revenues, but it's the Legacy Managed Services. We know what that is doing. There's a reason we broke that out. So that's not going to translate into growth. It's just extending the timeline as that continues to slide.

It's however, important to note that completing the migration of the final customer out of our data centers, and we've closed those now and move them to the cloud that should provide and improve our ability to manage the profitability of those revenues going forward. It is a lot easier to turn off a cloud environment with a customer departure than it is to shut down a data center. So a huge credit to our team to have migrated customers. And again, a lot of those migrations led to those renewals and large bookings you saw.

The MIPS bookings were flat sequentially. And I think I've talked about this a couple of times in the past when we started disclosing MIPS, it's lumpy. And while they appear down in Q2 or versus Q2 2023, we had an exceptionally large booking in that period. And I had indicated again that you should see lumpiness with the kind of deals that we're doing in there.

Now importantly, our trailing 4-quarter average is up 19%. And we continue to see late-stage pipeline build in the MIPS category, and we've been focused on driving those opportunities to close. So again, I'm extremely optimistic about MIPS and in particular, SKU build. The size of those deals is quite substantial, and we're starting to see the length of contract is growing. Some of that, again, is coming from PS as well. So we have -- in this particular quarter, we have some, what I'll call, MIPS assisted PS bookings. So depending on the type of contract, we're fairly rigid about whether it falls into the Managed & IP Solutions bucket or into the PS bucket. We have some MIPS-assisted wins this quarter, rather substantial in fact, close to $1 million. We've included them in the PS bucket rather than in the MIPS bucket. And we believe some of those things will convert to our more traditional managed IP solutions or managed service bookings in the future.

The -- and there's a lot of positive signals. We've got a lot of POCs going on in there, and again, some really interesting industry verticals where we're starting to see some concentration. So again, quite excited about the prospects there.

Now PS had some success in new logo wins, but it was $9.4 million. It's down sequentially, and it's about 3.3% year-over-year. Now there were some notable new logo wins in that. And that is always important for us longer term is to get the new logos because they start to expand and renew. And there were 7 different new logos, including, as I said, $1 million SKU build deal in there, but again, defined as PS.

Overall, we're seeing improvements in our sales organization, and that's critical. I've told everybody, this is the category to keep an eye on. Bookings is going to proceed the real turn for us. I don't think we've hit the turn yet. I think our pipeline looks healthy. But more importantly, our sales organization is really starting to transform. Our new logo win rate is up versus the same period last year. It's still not where it was in 2022. So again, we're seeing some green shoots, but again, way too early to declare victory.

The speed to close deals has improved 10% year-over-year and 30% compared to 2022. But again, our new CRO feels like we should be fighting tougher battles. He thinks we're really closing the easier wins right now. So again, I don't expect that these velocities to continue as we start to go after some of the tougher deals.

The average deal size has started to improve. It's up almost 50% year-over-year. So again, we're seeing customers make bigger commitments. This has been fairly volatile for us. Prior to the economic doom and gloom that started 18 months ago, we were seeing very large deals. We then saw them shift to smaller quarterly type deals. We're starting to see them expand again. It's tough to say whether this is a permanent trend or just the types of deals that we happen to have in our pipeline right now.

So again, we're seeing a bit of volatility around PS. We are continuing to focus on making sure we make money at whatever level these bookings are at. And I'm going to pass it over to Mo, to give you some of those financial highlights.

[Moataz Ashoor, executive]

Great. Thanks, Bill. So total revenue was $20.3 million in Q2. It's a slight decline sequentially, but it is down 11% or $2.4 million over the prior year. MIPS held steady sequentially and contributed $4 million in revenue, which is over 30% growth year-over-year. This was delivered through additional volume of SKUs that we've processed, and within key customer and some key growth areas with application support that followed PS.

Our Legacy Managed Services, a slight decline sequentially, but it's down 32% year-over-year. So along the lines of what we've been sharing in the past with the declining trend of our -- the [ Oracle and Hosting ] business. And they made it the primary driver of the production on the year-over-year basis at a total revenue level.

PS revenues were 11.1% and slightly down sequentially and a 8% decline year-over-year. But I do want to highlight, as Bill had shared within our PS revenue, we are recognizing some of the SKU build offering where it's contracted more as a professional service that leverages our technology. These opportunities continue to position and expand our opportunities to be more oriented in offering outcome -- SKU outcome offering and also an ongoing maintenance where it leverages our automation capabilities and therefore, driving higher margins.

Q2 gross margin was 44.2% compared to the prior year of 45.5%. I think it's important to highlight within there. We did have some costs on milestone-based contracts that Bill had met through CEO letter as well. And with the revenue that we held back and we're deferring the revenue until the milestone signed off on. Normalized, that would improve that 44% to 47%. So we do have timing of revenues that we will catch up on in Q3.

We expect also through our data center and legacy contract [ moves ] and Legacy Managed Service, that when we moved out of the data centers, we're now shifting to a more variable model where we have better control of our costs in relation to those revenues.

Looking at the chart on the right, we present the adjusted OpEx trend, which reconciles to the reported adjusted EBITDA. Adjusted operating expense was $8.7 million. It's been reduced from $10.3 million of the prior year, and it's also down sequentially versus the $9.3 million of Q1 of 2024.

So over time, as you've seen, we've incurred restructuring charges, which continue to support improving our OpEx run rate while also creating capacity to continue our investment in our strategic products. We've completed the data center closures as well as continuing to rightsize our operation and increase the efficiency of our go-to-market initiatives. So despite the decline in revenue, we continue to deliver positive EBITDA, which also included the investments mentioned.

Turning to the balance sheet. We ended the quarter with $6.2 million of cash. In Q2, we used about $1.1 million from operations. And you could see that a large contributor of that is the restructuring effort in Q2, which should improve our operating expenses moving forward. And this -- and we also had the additional working capital benefit as some expenses weren't paid out in relation to a similar restructure, which contributed to a $300,000 benefit in the quarter.

In Q2, we did not purchase any shares under our NCIB program. We will continue to drive NCIB decisions using the balanced approach that considers our cash projections and available investment option that contribute to creating value for our shareholders.

As mentioned, the business is moving towards operating cash positive. And we believe this will be accomplished while continuing to make the necessary investments to grow our product revenue. So as a reminder, to the cash that we have, we also have access to the National Bank line of credit that continues to exist. In addition, [ we worked ] up to $12 million and also access to a $15 million accordion.

So with that, I'll pass it back to Bill for a closing summary and our questions.

[William Di Nardo, executive]

Thanks, Will. I'm going to keep it short this session. The team continues to find ways to operate more efficiently, and we are seeing good leading indicators with our new solutions.

I'd like to thank everybody for taking the time to attend the call. and I look forward to updating you on our progress on the next call. We'll ask Dennis to help moderate with our analysts.

[Dennis Fong]

Thank you, Bill. We'll now take questions from the analysts. [Operator Instructions]. Our first question comes from Max Ingram from Canaccord Genuity.

[Max Ingram, analyst]

So my first question is on sort of a broader question on demand. Last quarter, you'd said conversations with customers have been more optimistic than in the past. I just wanted to hear if that's still the case. Because if I look at some of the names in our space, demand commentary even quarter-to-quarter has been sort of mixed. So any color you could give would be helpful.

[William Di Nardo, executive]

Yes. Look, I think the problem, Max, maybe we're talking to others is, for us, I think we dropped more significantly than our peer group. And I think that was a function of our sales process. So I think there's a little bit of catch-up that we have to play around improving our sales process to get back to sort of a level set. So for us, probably, it's a relative issue. I think we're all feeling the effects of a tighter economy, but we have the benefit of having started at a lower spot. I think we're seeing some green shoots for us around what's in our pipeline.

The one challenge we continue to have is this push issue. Every quarter, we've been optimistic at what's in the pipeline and what our sales team says is going to close. And every quarter, we always run into the same issue as CFO or someone shows up on the final [ throes ] and pushes a couple of million dollars into the next quarter. And that's been true every quarter.

So we see the demand there. We just see the amount of time to get through it. Now having said that, a bunch of new stuff hit the pipeline. And as I said, that we noticed some velocity improvement on a couple of key deals. I think we're working in a space particularly around data where those decisions are getting made quicker. I'll tell you, our commerce and supply chain ones, I think probably better resemble what you've been hearing from some of the other folks in the industry.

[Max Ingram, analyst]

Okay. That's helpful. And actually, my second question was on the data side. I was going to ask on the demand for your data management that you're seeing?

[William Di Nardo, executive]

Yes. Anything specific you want to hear about?

[Max Ingram, analyst]

I mean, I guess maybe just more generally, it's just something that we generally track. So any color you could give would be helpful.

[William Di Nardo, executive]

Sure. So a couple of observations that talking to CEOs, CIOs, we've been hearing is their ecosystem too expensive, too complicated. They're seeing overlap between applications in their ecosystem. And they're asking a lot of questions about how do we reduce complexity and simplify.

One of the common themes underneath all of those is the quality of their data. So again, I think with the data piece of this, cleaner data leads to more efficient data flows. And in fact, I think we're starting to be able to point out to customers where with better quality data, they can probably get more done with fewer applications. And so we are finding on the data side that the opportunity to go in and help clean up their data, and then this theme where we want to transition to is once we give you clean data, how do we help you ensure it stays clean.

And again, the reason this stuff is so important, clean data lends itself to better use of machine learning and AI. So there's an element of how do we make your current systems more efficient, but there's also the -- how do we help you set up an ability to leverage machine learning and AI to automate even further going forward. So I don't think it's any surprise. Data is foundational, and we're seeing that in the kind of deals we're getting done now.

[Dennis Fong]

Our next question comes from John Shao, National Bank.

[Meng Shao, analyst]

So Bill, you mentioned a number of small proof-of-concept deals in the SKU building categories. I'm just wondering what needs to be happening there to have those smaller deals transform into larger multi-quarters ones?

[William Di Nardo, executive]

Yes. That's a great question, John. So the nature of SKU build and SKU enrichment is, I think, it's a category that's existed for many years, long before machine learning and AI. People need quality data and attributes completed. But what we talk -- when we talk to a lot of customers, we find their past experiences doing that have been either expensive or unsuccessful. So there might be a little bit of disillusionment in the category. So they come to us and say, "Look, here's 50,000 SKUs, show us you can do it quickly, show us the quality and the completeness will be there". And at the price points that we're sharing with them, there's a deal -- a bigger deal to be done at the end.

So a lot of these things are starting with, here's 50,000 SKUs, show us what you can do. And the more POCs we have on that, I think the better leading indicator there is a larger SKU build deal on the back end. Now what I can tell you is we have a deal right now that we're working on closing this rather substantial where they're willing to take on a bit of risk of, as long as they can have an [ out ], that the first 50,000 they get, they'll sign a longer contract. So we're seeing a little bit of a shift as we build more credibility in the space we may not have to go through the POC phase. But today, I think we're still early on in demonstrating our capabilities. And so these POCs really are the front runner. Before someone is willing to sign a multiyear, multimillion dollar contract, they want to see the evidence. And it's -- this is definitely a show-me category. We have the ability to demonstrate, and I think people are taking advantage of that and asking for it.

[Meng Shao, analyst]

Okay. I'm just curious about what you hear from your customers regarding the AI opportunity given it's almost 1.5 years into that story. Do they still consider AI an early-stage opportunity? Or are they're finding more useful cases to support their business?

[William Di Nardo, executive]

I mean, look, borrowing from other language in the industry, I think we're moving through the hype cycle. I can almost guarantee there'll be some trough of disillusionment at some point. But I think the practical reality is it's here, it's here to stay, everybody knows it. The question is how do they apply it, how do they start demonstrating an ROI.

And I'll be really candid with you. When it comes to outcome orientation and let's use SKU build as the example, I don't think our customers really care how we get them enriched SKUs. They care about the time, the quality and the cost. Now we can't deliver on the time, the quality and the cost without automation and without those tools. But frankly, if we were able to, I don't think they would care. It's a means to an end. And I think we have to start seeing the end in more of these promising applications. But I think we're still in the early innings of proving out the ROI.

It's inevitable. It's going to happen. We see it. It's just how long it will take and what areas are going to lurch forward first on actually securing the wins economically. Again, it's a tool. We can never lose sight of the fact it's a tool, outcomes are what matter.

[Meng Shao, analyst]

Okay. That makes sense. And last question for me is, how should we think about the M&A opportunities down the road in the current environment? Do you see the valuation pulling back?

[William Di Nardo, executive]

I mean, look, you know my predisposition has always been to leverage acquisition. It's part of the reason we went public. If I'm being candid, I have taken my foot off the gas on M&A right now. It's very hard to do with our stock price where it is currently. We've continually had interesting discussions with folks, but when they're private, they can make up for whatever valuation they want, then it's really hard to have a relative valuation conversation when you have a public number for them to look at.

So for us, I think we've got to focus on our core. We've got to produce more cash, we have to demonstrate our MIPS are working. The market has to respond, and then I think we can start to get more aggressive about how we do M&A. So I don't feel like I'm in a great position to tell you, M&A for us is going to change. I can't speak to what other people are seeing in terms of their own acquisition strategies. But I think we've got a bit of work ahead of us before you start hearing me talk about imminent M&A deals.

[Dennis Fong]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Jesse Pytlak with Cormark Securities.

[Jesse Pytlak, analyst]

First, can you maybe just remind us your mix of B2B and B2C customers? And then can you characterize maybe any similarities or differences you're seeing in their willingness to commit the projects with you?

[William Di Nardo, executive]

Mo, I don't know if you have handy the mix of B2B and B2C?

[Moataz Ashoor, executive]

Yes. I don't think, it's not something that we reported, but I would say it's -- it's not weighted -- heavily weighted to one or the other. So I would say it's fairly balanced across and we continue to see a lot of conversations on the B2B side continue, especially around kind of the SKU build and data, or there are many factors or distributor of various components. So I would say it's fairly balanced without kind of sharing specific numbers.

[William Di Nardo, executive]

I think to answer your other question, Jesse. It really is a tale of 2 [ cities ]. So obviously, B2C has invested much more ahead of the curve on how we would refer to things as frictionless commerce. I would tell you that the B2B right now is playing more catch-up. B2B particularly in some of the segments that we're focusing in on, they're really shifting from individual relationship salespeople, most of the data they need in the ERP, and so historically, maybe data not as important to now they're looking at how do they push through more channels, how do they leverage more e-commerce like capabilities? How do they automate more of their sales processes.

And so what we're finding with that is a lot of these data-related contracts we're winning right now, are B2B, and it's front-running, more of a -- they want to move through more channels. And we also see more e-commerce platform opportunities percolating up in the B2B segment. So it's -- maybe it's a little further behind in many ways. And as a result, it has more investment required to catch it up in what we would think of as frictionless commerce. A lot of our B2C customers are very advanced. And I think what they're finding is maybe they've overinvested and they're looking for ways to take cost out while still maintaining a quality experience for their customer.

So I think if you compare the conversations I'm having with B2C CEOs, it's show me how to do more with less. Show me how to make my environment simpler. In fact, we've got a good number of strategic engagements or just that. Let's look at rearchitecting to simplify. Very different than the conversations we're having with Execs in B2B. It's very much a -- we have to transform the way we're doing business. We need more channels, and we need to automate, and that starts with primarily data but we've had a couple of really interesting commerce deals this year in B2B as well. So they are definitely different conversations. I think it's a really good question, Jesse.

[Jesse Pytlak, analyst]

Very helpful. Maybe just moving on, I think you mentioned you're seeing some concentration in certain industry verticals for MIPS. Can you maybe just elaborate on these verticals and why you think your products are resonating with those industry groups?

[William Di Nardo, executive]

Yes, we haven't talked a lot about this. And so again, it may be news, but it's certainly part of our investment record when we did it, originally. But inside the SKU building category is a concept of a digital asset, right? It's a complete SKU with all its attributes filled. And so with the benefit of an industry vertical approach to that is when you complete a SKU that is common among multiple distributors, if you're doing the work for manufacturers is the case in one of our recent contracts. Those digital assets start to have value. You can resell them without having to run through the entire process.

So for us, it's almost -- it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. We want to drive verticalization because it makes the process more efficient. Our acquisition of an asset now has value and leverage. So it's a byproduct really [ with a ] strategy. In fact, we really tasked the team for the next couple of quarters, let's not go broad, let's go really deep and focus. And work on trying to get real value from each asset that we build in kind of that digital pool.

So I would say, in the B2B industrial, automotive, MRO, electrical, electrical parts, those kind of categories right now, we're finding we're getting a lot of traction.

And then there's this natural, as we pick up speed in that space, the participants in that space are going to want to [ partake ] our data because without it, they're going to be behind their colleagues. So I think it's going to be a virtuous cycle for us.

[Dennis Fong]

Our next question comes from Daniel Rosenberg from Paradigm Capital.

[Daniel Rosenberg, analyst]

My first question was around some of your IP and product portfolio. So in the past, we saw you guys develop some interesting IP. Obviously, you're investing in data, but I'm just wondering how you think about the road map going forward? Are there any areas of interest for you that you'd like to put more resources into? Or -- if you could just elaborate on that, please?

[William Di Nardo, executive]

Yes, I'm going to give you the conservative answer, Daniel. Like I've never been short of ideas. And with an unlimited supply of money, I'd probably be doing too many things. We don't have an unlimited supply of money, and I think we're continuing to narrow our focus on the ones that we think we can really accelerate and run profitably right now. So SKU build is taking a lead internally. There's still some good things happening around control tower. We'll be announcing some big progress this next quarter on some of the new capabilities. Those 2 are our front runners. And in fact, again, I think there's a lot we can feed on there for a while.

With the CPO, he's done a really nice job of pulling information from our field force and really what is the kind of work we're doing daily for customers? And are there some product ideas or product opportunities in there. Again, I think we're not going to start anything fresh from scratch just based on idea but we may start to see some things come out of work we're doing for customers that we're getting paid for that we could start to productize.

But I'd say it's going to get conservative investment while we're in a capital-constrained environment. We've got a couple of front runners. We have a pipeline of capability. I think the ability to tap that pipeline is going to depend heavily on our cash production and how much we can reinvest. But today, our 2 front runners are SKU build and control tower.

[Daniel Rosenberg, analyst]

Okay. I appreciate that context. And then just on the cash bridge slide you provided. So restructuring aid up a piece of cash. I'm just wondering if you could help us understand what you see in the quarters ahead? Or does that roll off? What does it look like in terms of your cash profile?

[Moataz Ashoor, executive]

Yes, so Daniel, we're still shifting towards kind of obviously protecting our balance sheet and the cash. And at this time, I would say, we probably should be probably in a bit better cash position, but we do have some milestone structured arrangements that should recover in Q3 and Q4. So overall, we're not managing to -- we're managing to kind of protecting it and continuing to see and drive how we grow it, but not to continue to consume cash like we've done in the first half of the year.

[Daniel Rosenberg, analyst]

Okay. Perfect. And then on the bookings, I mean, it was nice to see the year-over-year improvement. It seems like it gives some visibility to the future. I was just wondering how you think about staffing as it relates to fulfilling what you see in the pipeline? If you could provide some commentary there would be helpful.

[Moataz Ashoor, executive]

Yes. I think Bill touched on in this CEO letter. I think the important thing to highlight with the booking and where we saw the growth was actually within some of our Legacy Managed Service, where customers continue to expand the life of the assets and technology and the infrastructure. But those are going to be multiyear. So those won't convert to any revenue growth. I'm not sure -- we don't want to signal that Legacy revenue is going to grow. That continues to kind of continue to have a tail end and some customers are extending 2 in some 3 years for what's remaining. So we had some of those contracts that contributed to the booking results in Legacy.

I think Professional Services is probably lighter than where we'd like it to be, but part of it is where Bill shared around, kind of, deals shifting into Q3, where we know they'll continue, just contracting and booking has kind of delayed. And that's just some of the rigor and governance that they've got on the customer side as well. So -- that's -- I think we're well staffed to manage the PS business, and we're not seeing any pressure there. So those are probably the 2 largest areas of bookings that hopefully provide more color.

[William Di Nardo, executive]

And look, Daniel, I think full transparency, too, like as Mo said, if you look at the actual yellow bar, it's better than, let's call it, Q3 2023. We thought we were starting to see that turn Q4 and Q1. There's just still a little too much volatility in PS. We've got world-class people in the things that we do in PS. And so really trying to hold the world-class capabilities as we wait to see that PS volatility decline and get more predictable. And so that's the one we kind of keep an eye on internally because that volatility also is the one that has the biggest impact on our cash production.

LMS now is very predictable. We start signing 2- and 3-year contracts. We know what we're going to get for the next 2 or 3 years. PS volatility is what makes the business challenging. And so again, our team is focused on getting more predictable outcomes in there in order to facilitate the right staffing requirements. But we have world-class people in this category, and we want to get them to work. And I think, again, we're seeing enough of it in the pipeline. We just need to see it start converting on a more consistent basis.

[Daniel Rosenberg, analyst]

Okay. So from what I'm hearing, you're well staffed to meet the demand and the growth you're having is more on kind of data and stuff. So not necessarily heavy lifts in terms of people requiring to stand these up?

[William Di Nardo, executive]

If my colleague who runs that group heard me answer the question as yes, make light of how hard it is to manage staffing but she's very good at what she does, and that team is good. So yes, they're not telling us we're going to have any trouble managing to the opportunities.

But the other thing I'll put out there for the group and particularly in MIPS, the more of the product that we're building and working on delivers on the promise of automation, the less we rely on our staffing to drive the scaling. And so, even some of the deals we're constructing today may still have a heavier component of staffing in order to execute on them. But every quarter, our expectations are, the capabilities of our product are going to make every staff member that much more efficient.

So we think there's a convergence over the next couple of quarters where efficiency will drive scalability more than our ability to scale the people.

[Dennis Fong]

Thank you. There's no further questions. I'll turn it back to you, Bill.

[William Di Nardo, executive]

Thanks, everyone, for showing up, maintaining an interest in what we're doing, and we look forward to being back in November to tell you about our Q3 results. Have a great week, everyone.