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Operator
Good afternoon, and welcome to AudioEye's second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. Joining us today for the call are AudioEye's interim CEO, David Marotti, Executive Chairman, Dr. Cara Bettis, and CFO, Ms. Kelly Georgievich. Following their remarks, we will open up the call for questions and the company's publishing analysts. I would like to remind everyone that this call will be recorded and made available for replay via a link available in the investor relations section of the company's website at www.audioeye.com. Before I turn the call over to AudioEye's executive chairman, the company would like to remind all participants that statements made by AudioEye management during the course of this conference call that are not historical facts are considered to be forward-looking statements. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a safe harbor for such forward-looking statements. The words believe, expect, anticipate, estimate, confident, will, and other similar statements of expectation identify forward-looking statements. These statements are predictions, projections, or other statements about future events that are based on current expectations or assumptions that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Actual results could materially differ because of factors discussed in today's press release, in the comments made during the conference call, and in risk factors section of the company's annual report on Form 10-K, its quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, and in its other reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Participants on this call are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. which reflect management's belief only as of the date hereof. AudioEye does not undertake any duty to update or correct any forward-looking statements. Further, management's remarks today will include certain non-GAAP financial measures, a reconciliation of the most directly comparable GAAP financial measures to these non-GAAP financial measures This is available in the company's earnings release posted in the investor relations section of our website at www.AudioEye.com. Now, I would like to turn the call over to AudioEye's executive chairman, Dr. Carl Bettis. Sir, please proceed.
David Marotti
Thank you, operator. Welcome, everyone, and thank you again for joining us today. After the market closed, we issued a press release announcing our results for the second quarter ended June 30th, 2021. A copy of the press release is also available in the investor relations section of our website at AudioEye.com. I'll now begin just as we always do with a brief overview of our business. AudioEye is a leading provider of SaaS-based digital content accessibility platform and solutions. Our mission, eradicate all barriers to digital accessibility. We pride ourselves in addressing the largest range of issues that impact many people around the globe. At AudioEye, we also do more than just identify accessibility issues. We fix, maintain, and continuously monitor them. We also certify websites to demonstrate compliance with both the American with Disabilities Act, or ADA, and the latest Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Furthermore, we give our private sector clients an opportunity to gain an ROI from their investments and commitment to a large population of individuals with disabilities. Before turning the call over to our interim CEO, David Morardi, I'll provide a few highlights around our Q2 2001 results. In the second quarter, monthly recurring revenue, or MRR, grew approximately 25% year over year to $2 million. In addition, we more than doubled our customer count in prior year Q3 to 75,000, and grew revenue 14% year-over-year to $6 million. Gross margin continued to expand year-over-year, reaching 74.9% and increased from 69.6% a year ago. We remain proud of our customer retention rate. Our continued high retention rate speaks to not only the quality, stickiness, and transparency of our solution, but to the excellent service that our team provides to our customers. Our balance sheet remains well capitalized with zero debt and $24.8 million of cash at June 30, 2021. Regarding our two revenue channels, the partner and marketplace channel includes all revenue for our SMB-focused marketplace products and revenue from a variety of partners who deploy these same products for their SMB customers. These include content management system partners of all types, such as industry vertical partners like dealer.com, recently announced partners like Dealer Center and platform partners like Duda, and also general digital agencies. In the second quarter of 2021, this revenue channel represented approximately 56% of both revenue and MRR. As the second half of 2021 unfolds, we expect to continue to see this channel contribute the majority of our growth in customer count and ultimately in MRR. The enterprise channel continued to perform in the quarter contributing approximately 44% of revenue and MRR. While non-recurring revenue from our PDF product was down from Q2 2020, recurring revenue from enterprise grew notably over the same period. We again added prominent enterprise brands from our direct sales efforts and continue to renew our enterprise clients at a healthy rate. Before turning the call over to David, I want to welcome Kelly Djurjevic to AudioEye as our recently appointed CFO Kelly has been a true pleasure to work with and has the experience and the skill to help AudioEye during the next phase of growth. David. Thank you, Carl.
David Morardi
It is my pleasure to speak with you today. I want to start by welcoming a couple of our recent executive hires, our CFO, Kelly Georgievich, and Chief Architect, Mace Gray. Kelly's career has been focused on SaaS and technology, and she was most recently the CFO at e-commerce platform, Sticky.io. She previously served as financial controller at software platform Fuse and spent seven years of her career in the audit practice at E&Y. She holds an accounting degree from the University of Northern Iowa and is a CPA. Mace Gray has a proven track record of leading engineering teams and delivering industry transforming products. He was most recently at Facebook, where he served as its product and technical lead for advanced workload and data management infrastructure powering their next generation advertising systems. Before that, he was one of the original architects at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and led engineering teams at Amazon and several startups. As I've said on prior calls, one of the reasons I continue to be so confident about the bright future of AudioEye is the strength of the team, from top leadership to the quality of team members across all of the business functions. Simply put, our team is the strongest in the industry. In addition, we have the most advanced patented technology in a market, which we expect will grow substantially over the next few years. These factors all set us up for success in our mission to eradicate all barriers to digital accessibility. Now I'd like to review our progress year to date and outline how we see the balance of 2021 unfolding. I'm pleased with the second quarter results and our continued transition to a higher margin, highly scalable SaaS company. All of our recurring revenue business lines grew sequentially from the first quarter. We're investing further into R&D and sales and marketing to drive growth. I want to reiterate what I discussed in our last call. We're in a very strong position. First, the market for accessibility solutions is still in the early innings and growing. Second, our technology and transparent approach to solving accessibility for our clients are differentiated. Third, AudioEye's platform is highly scalable. Fourth, we have exceptional talent to execute on our growth plans. Fifth, we are very well capitalized. Finally, and importantly, there are tangible reasons for us to be optimistic about what lies ahead. In addition to the 75,000 current customers we have in various subscription tiers, our current partners have several hundred thousand potential AudioEye clients that are not yet in our customer count. Moving on to guidance. As discussed in our first quarter conference call, our guidance for accelerating revenue growth in the back half of the year was based on customer conversions to higher tier offerings and new partnerships. While we have made significant progress in customer count, aspects of these initiatives rely on external timelines, which has led us to adjust our own. We remain enthusiastic about these growth opportunities, but since they are no longer tracking to our calendar year plan, we are converting our forecast to one quarter at a time. In terms of guidance for the third quarter, we believe revenue will be between $6.1 to $6.3 million, representing 16% growth year-over-year at the midpoint. On to cash flow. In the first half of the year, we managed the business to have positive cash flow from operations while setting a foundation for future growth. Over the last two years, we have demonstrated the ability to manage costs when warranted, focusing on long-term shareholder value. Given the significant growth opportunity ahead, we are now increasing R&D and sales and marketing investments to capitalize on this market. As such, we expect to use cash in the second half of the year as certain initiatives unfold with the view to revisit our cash flow investment program for 2022. It's a great pleasure to turn the call over to our CFO, Kelly, to walk through additional financial results. Welcome, Kelly.
Kelly Georgievich
Thank you, David and Kar. I'm excited to be joining AudioEye and work with such a high-caliber management team, help continue to drive significant revenue and MRR growth, and play a part in eradicating all barriers to digital accessibility. In my first weeks at AudioEye, there are two key observations that are worth noting. The team is hyper-focused on growing MRR, setting us up for continued long-term success. We are also focused and have excelled in customer retention. Tara already summarized most of the results and key metrics for the business, but I wanted to mention a few other items. In Q2, OpEx was $7.6 million, which was an increase of about 68% versus Q2 last year. This increase was strategic and was primarily driven by increases in R&D as we focus on product development and expanding our sales and marketing efforts. The increase in our G&A are mainly driven by equity compensation expenses. Our total R&D spend in Q2 was approximately $1.9 million, with approximately $600,000 reflected as software development costs in the investing section of our cash flow statement. This total R&D spend is about 32% of our revenue this quarter versus 10% last year, and reflects the commitment towards investing for scale in this emerging market. Net loss in the second quarter of 2021 was $1.8 million, or 17 cents per share, compared to $1.4 million, or $0.16 per share in the same year-ago period. On a non-GAAP basis, our Q2 net loss was $1.3 million or $0.13 per share compared to the same year-ago period of $0.2 million or $0.02. The primary adjustments to GAAP earnings and EPS for both comparable quarters were non-cash share-based compensation and in Q2 2021, gain on forgiveness recorded in connection with the full forgiveness of our PPP loan. With that, we open the call for questions. Operator, please give instructions.
Operator
Thank you. We will now take questions from the company's publishing analyst. To ask a question, you may press star then 1 on your touchtone phone. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing the keys. To withdraw your question, please press star then 2.
David
At this time, we will pause momentarily to assemble our roster. Now our first question will come from Zach Cummins with B. Reilly Securities.
Operator
Please go ahead.
spk06
Hey, thanks for taking my questions. Hi, Car, David, and welcome to Lord Kelly. I guess, David, just starting off, I mean, can you give us a sense of kind of what ended up happening with some of those major partners and kind of why we're seeing this pushed out timeline at this juncture?
David Morardi
Yeah, sure. Yeah, as mentioned earlier, we're dependent on external timelines, which are pretty much outside of our control. Our partners have not ramped up as fast as we initially expected. So we're going to take a more conservative approach by shifting to quarterly guidance. We still feel really confident we'll get these opportunities and partnerships. This is just more based on timing. We did see growth in the quarter in each of our channels. In enterprise, we had a good quarter. Agency and digital began to ramp up as well.
spk06
Understood. And just digging into that enterprise channel opportunity, I mean, obviously Q2 of last year had a lot of the PDF remediation revenue, but can you give us a sense of kind of the core growth rate within the recurring revenue in the enterprise segment?
spk03
Sure. Kelly, do you want to take that one?
Kelly Georgievich
Yeah. Growth in enterprise in recurring revenue was approximately 13% period over period in Q2.
David Morardi
And with MRR growth, is that the MRR growth in enterprise?
Kelly Georgievich
Yes, that's MRR growth in enterprise. Overall MRR growth with all channels was 25% from 2 million in Q2 2021 from 1.6 in Q2 2020.
spk06
Understood. David, I mean, do you plan to have any sort of changes into your go-to-market approach now that you've kind of reset expectations for the timeline for some of these other major partnerships?
David Morardi
No, I think this is just based on timing. We're going to do everything we've been doing, invest into R&D, sales and marketing people. We think there's a massive opportunity in front of us, so we're not going to change anything that we're doing. In fact, we're going to accelerate everything.
spk06
Understood. And then just a final question for me. I mean, have you seen any kind of major changes in the overall competitive landscape? It seems like digital accessibility has become an increasing popular topic here, especially under the new administration.
David Morardi
Yeah, there's definitely a little more competition. We like the competition. We have a differentiated and superior product, as you know. It is the most transparent solution with an accessibility score, continuous monitoring, and the highest level of automation. So we feel very confident.
spk06
Understood.
spk03
Well, thanks for taking my questions, and best of luck here in the coming quarters. Thank you, Zach.
David
Again, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star, then 1.
Operator
Our next question comes from Scott Buck with HC Wainwright. Please go ahead.
David Morardi
Good afternoon, guys. Thank you for taking my questions. First, I'm curious if some of these, or maybe absent the kind of pushed-out customer conversions, what the sales pipeline looks like. Are you still seeing a fair amount of engagement from potential customers, or is this kind of slower pace more reflective of the industry as a whole? We're still in discussions with all the same folks, and so nothing has changed from In that respect, it's just more we don't control the timing of when they do things.
spk03
Okay, yep, no, understood.
David Morardi
And the second, you know, some of the increased investments, I'm curious, you know, whether we should be thinking about this as something more temporary over the next, you know, six quarters, or is this reflective of a permanent change in the kind of cost structure of the business? This is a massive opportunity here. The TAM in the market is probably about $250 million today total with all the consultants and the digital side. We think over the next few years, we're going to see a $2.85 billion to $3 billion TAM. So we're going to be investing into that.
spk03
All right. That's perfect, David. I appreciate the call. Thank you, guys. Thank you.
David
Our next question comes from Alan Clee.
Operator
Please go ahead.
spk01
Yes, hi. For the new platform that you've put out, is there an issue or can you explain in terms of the timing of signing up new customers, how long that takes?
David Morardi
If it's on the marketplace on the website, it's instant. An enterprise client is also very quick. A platform partner who's going to bring tons of sites is going to take a bit longer from an integration standpoint. That could take a few months.
spk01
Okay. And it looks – is it – so you used to have – One of your guidance, one of your things that you, I don't know what the term is, but you used to say that you would turn operating cash flow positive. I'm not sure if it was for the year or for a certain quarter. But what are the factors that are going to cause that to now be negative in the second half?
David Morardi
Sure. Yeah, we believe we're in the early innings of digital accessibility and expect that this market is going to grow rapidly over the next few years. So we're going to invest to increase our tech lead, which we think is going to maximize the long-term shareholder value. We're already starting to see positive momentum from the sales and marketing investments we're making and expect to ramp up further there and on the R&D side.
spk01
Okay. Could you tell me what the share count is as of the latest time you have it?
Kelly Georgievich
Yeah.
David
As of August 6th, it was $11.3 million. Okay.
spk03
Thank you.
spk01
My last question is just how much do you have left of the ATM or how much did you raise during the quarter and how much is left?
Kelly Georgievich
In March we raised $16.5 million and we did not raise again in Q2 2021. Total cash balance as of now is $24.8 million and so it's not bringing through it very quickly.
spk01
Okay. Thank you so much.
spk03
Thank you.
David
At this time, this concludes our question and answer session. I'd now like to turn the call back over to Mr. Marotti for his closing remarks.
David Morardi
Thank you for joining us today. I especially want to thank our employees, partners, and investors for their continuous support.
spk03
We look forward to updating you on our next call.
David
The conference is now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. Before we conclude today's call, I would like to remind everyone that a recording of today's call will be available for replay
Operator
We have a link available in the investor section of the company's website. Thank you for joining us today for AudioEye's second quarter 2021 earnings conference call. You may now disconnect.
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